> in all honesty, i feel as if these changes were made because the ‘fans’ that 343 listened to were the ones who wanted Halo 3.5, which is fine, but don’t assume everyone wanted their game changed.
This seems to be a case of “squeaky wheel gets the grease” played out in a very lousy way. When Bungie was in control of this game, they listened - but then made a bigger mess of things. Remember the outrage over betrayals and being booted in Firefight? Their solution - turn betrayal booting off. BAD MISTAKE!
Now we have kids - and I use the term loosely - running around with FRCs, Rockets and Blueberries raging whenever you take their kill or you see a heavy weapon lying on the ground and swap out your DMR for it to protect yourself for those up close charging Brutes & Elites when your Sniper Rifle hasn’t found the mark. And the way they rage … pestering you with shots from these weapons knocking you off the sniper perches on Glacier, Overlook or Beachhead, or from a spot on top of the Wrecked Gun on Outpost. And there is nothing you can do!
343i is simply following in Bungie’s failed footsteps and listening to all the “bloom” whiners and the “AL-haters” and basically giving in to their demands. It’s a symptom of the planet - not just in the games. Look at these slackers in the Occupy movement. There they sit on their iPads and iPods all day chanting stupid stuff at cops trying to accomplish what … nothing!
It’s the same here. Bungie, and now 343i, are just trying to shut people up but instead of addressing the bigger issue they make a bigger mess of things. Anyone who played Firefight in Halo 3: ODST can vouch for this – the issue in Matchmaking Firefight has never been about betrayals or AFKers or noobish antics of spamming heavy weapon blasts everywhere … it’s about the CLASSLESS people playing it. When it was a system where you had to KNOW someone to play with them in ODST FF, it worked nicely. If you got betrayed too much, you just never played with that person again if you were a “try hard” wanting to achieve something. And if you went in there to mess round and invited someone who wanted to earn points and achievements and was a real try-hard, then you might want to avoid them next time.
You have a group of hardcore gamers intermixed with social screw-offs. You have try-hards mixed with try-nots. You get people who are all about getting better playing with people all about getting new armour for their Spartan Barbie.
If Bungie had wanted to FIX the issue - they would have stuck to the method that worked best — RANKED PLAYLISTS and SOCIAL PLAYLISTS for BOTH multiplayer Matchmaking and Firefight matchmaking! So if 343i really wants to resolve the issue … STOP making more playlists and just re-do them altogether.
Create a playlist based on the old RANKED system for the TRY-HARDS with incentives for decent team play and winning games and a a playlist based on the SOCIAL system for the try-nots or the barely-tries to go screw off, have fun and still earn cR for their Spartan Barbie armour.
What we have now are basically only Arena and MLG for the try-hards and everything else is a mixture of both … and in FF it’s just a debacle thanks to not being able to remove the non-team players who spam enemies and friendlies with FRC blasts out of rage.
Address the REAL issues and stop listening to the Bloom whiners and the AL-haters.