I wholeheartedly agree with Sawtooth Grin.
I played reach for about 2 weeks (like, 12 hours a day, taking holidays at work and all) and never played it again.
Bloom on guns?
Jetpacks?
Loadouts?
Seriously?
Now there are those on here who are saying it was a ‘what-if?’ type scenario. To that I say – I doubt it. If they wanted to be reasonable in doing a ‘what-if?’ then they could have built a playlist that included these new additions.
They didn’t.
They built something they thought would compete with the previously inferior (in all important ways) CoD series. Cash is a wicked thing; it changes people at the core. Bungie were no different in the end, and 343 ignored all of Bungie’s good/original workings (ranked playlists, trueskill system, a 1-50 grading schema that relied solely upon wins and losses, not individuals sitting in corners trying to fluff up their own individual statistics).
There are some actors and directors out there who’d rather make a good film instead of a film that makes ridiculous amounts of money. They still make plenty of money, but they don’t create soulless pieces of work at the lowest common denominator that makes society angry. They stay true to themselves and earn the respect of critics and fans alike. Bungie should have stayed that way.
And then the sheer stubbornness of 343, who in refusing to acknowledge the series was in decline, and moreover, in decline as a direct result of this new and hideous direction, were basically saying to the core/diehard fans “we know better than you and we will do as we see fit, we don’t care that you are loyal and concerned customers, we are above feedback and opinion, we know it all”.
Halo multiplayer, for those on here bleating about the new direction being anything other than a wasteful failure, either didn’t play Halo when it was a ruler, and rewarded skill, planning and teamwork (and, more literally, rewarded winning instead of selfish individualism irrespective of result), or must have sucked at it (to those who sucked I say – go play CoD, you can sit in a corner with a claymore and go 9/6 and feel as though you’ve achieved something).
Halo 3 multiplayer is the best multiplayer game I’ve ever played. Here’s why:
- You start as equals – no ghost pro, no loadouts, no suppressors, no target finders on your OP’d automatic rifle that has no kick, just a largely superficial choice of what helmet to wear or what species to be. Same guns, no perks, no kill/scorestreaks. No advantage or disadvantage. Equality – may the best player win.
This was fantastic as you had to earn every inch of ground you gained as a player. You had to strategise and work as a team to lock down rockets, get the powerups, control sections of the map.
- The rankings system – no reward for sitting on it 19 hours a day by default – you had to WIN. A LOT. I see CoD players with ‘Prestige Master’ and they have K/D’s of 0.68 and score per minutes of 224. They’ve played 52 days and remain absolute junk.
In H3, after about 2 hours of gaming, you’d never see these players again if you won enough. Halo USED TO reward people for winning and playing the game as a team, communicating. Now you just sit on it for hours and get some rubbish classification system that is ambiguous and ill-formed instead of a trueskill ranking that is easy to follow and rewards the correct elements of gameplay (winning, teamwork, communication, improvement, strategy).
- Evenly matched contests – as per point 2, after burning your way through the bottom-dwellers you’d have to fight tooth and nail against an increasingly difficult enemy. This was not random; this was specifically due to the rankings system. The higher you got, the harder it became.
I played a lot of CoD after Halo betrayed me, and I feel empty inside going 32/4 and roaring a bunch of no-hopers to death with swarms and dogs. Nothing (gaming-wise) compared to beating a bunch of cracking players 50-48 in a game of Slayer, or sneaking home a biting victory in KotHill.
- Rewarding strategy, teamwork and communication and promoting skill and control – no arbitrary spawns, no carepackages containing chopper gunners, nothing but pure promotion of equality and skill.
Sprint for the BR, control those rockets, get those powerups, control those spawns, count that hill timer.
It sickens me that these companies’ objectives seem to be levelling the playing field to ensure the most amount of talentless hacks buy their game. If you make a proper skill and ranking system (OR IF YOU MERELY USE THE ONE THAT YOU ALREADY OWN!) the playing field is ALREADY LEVEL! See how everyone wins? It’s actually more consistent in ensuring players play against peers.
Who cares if I can put a black or pink bandana on my soldier, or whether he’s black, white, asian, male, female? I stand against none of these colours or genders, but seriously who cares?
I don’t care if they include that in the game, BUT NOT AT THE EXPENSE OF THE ACTUAL GAME ITSELF!
CoD: GHOSTS is an actual embarrassment. Halved HP so ‘everyone gets a go’, ridiculous spawns, so nobody can learn or practice map control, and not even proper radars, so it’s literally just a random free-for-all in the worst possible way. I don’t want Halo to go that way any further than it already has.
Winning a game of FPS multiplayer shouldn’t be random. It shouldn’t depend upon whether you happened to get a fortunate spawn, or you happened to have something good pop-up in your care package.
AND - get rid of sprint, just make the soldier move slightly faster to move in line with modern tech. Absolute equality. No gimmicks.
It should all be down to skill. Control. Knowledge. Teamwork. Communication.
Is anyone listening?
Aside from the few diehards on these forums that knew of and loved a life of properly crafted FPS multiplayer?
My thoughts are no, they are not listening. They are riding around jetpacks and choosing what colour goggles they want on their helmets.
