I’m sorry to have to post this, I really, truly am. I am not one of those internet trolls who gets a thrill out of causing drama, so get that out of your head right now. I am simply a guy who has loved Halo ever since he first picked up CE all those years ago. But this… I can’t stand for this. Not anymore. I can’t stand for a game studio that lets a game ship broken and unfinished for months on end, with no hope of ever fixing what I paid for. I try to play Halo 2 campaign with a buddy over Xbox Live, but it boots us out before the mission even starts. No, it is not a problem on my end – my NAT is open, his is also open, there is no issue on our side. I got him to host and it finally decided to work, but strange glitches began to happen late into our play session. The game would desync, causing the two of us to go off into our own versions of the same game session that were still technically connected, yet at the same time separated from each other. To me, it looked like he was just walking into walls and goofing off, but he claimed he was proceeding with the mission as normal. At first I thought he was pulling my leg, but I got him to stream it and sure enough, he was proceeding with the level as normal, looking at me, who was also running into a wall on his end.
Why is this game such a disaster? How could you do this? Don’t give me excuses about deadlines or any of that nonsense. If you have a deadline you can’t meet, there are two things you can do: Work harder to meet that deadline or extend it. That’s all you have to do. You don’t ship a game that’s broken beyond repair and call it a day. That’s taking advantage of the people who trusted you. That’s us, by the way. We trusted you, and you betrayed us.
This was the last thing I wanted to write about my favourite game franchise. Trust me, I love Halo. I f**ing love that game. Or, I used to, back when it worked. It actually physically pains me to watch its reputation be tarnished like this… to watch it crash and burn… This is a disaster, simply put.
The last time I tried multiplayer, it took an incredibly long time to find a match, and it kicked my friend out half way through when we finally got going.
I was patient the first month of launch. I was patient while you guys sorted out the issues. I was patient the second month, albeit getting frustrated. Fast forward to April, 2015… and I just can’t justify being patient with you any longer. This is why I’m calling on 343 to refund every customer who has played since the launch month the full price of the game. Put it on our accounts as credit if you want, so we can buy a game that actually works. I am also requesting to be reimbursed for our Xbox Live subscriptions for every month of issues since the game launched, since the game – to this day – still does not work. A lot people bought Xbox Live, or even the console itself, just for this game. That shouldn’t be a gamble. Whether a game works or not should not be something a consumer thinks about when they purchase it – not on a console.
I know this is a lot to ask, and I highly doubt we’re going to get it, but the compensation you’ve given us so far (a small extension to our XBL subscription and the yet-to-be-fulfilled promise of ODST being added for free) is simply not enough. We, the fans, deserve better than this treatment and you know it. I’m willing to compromise, though. I’m not an unreasonable man. Maybe an extra month of XBL is enough to earn back our trust. Some of us, anyway. A credit to our account to make up for the broken game you sold us is a step in the right direction. I highly doubt your ability to even patch such a broken game. I believe it’s far too broken to be patchable.
I am very disappointed in you, 343. I really, really am. It hurts to say… I’m sorry.