Do you remember the hours put into halo 3 custom games, you would find full lobby’s of people having fun even after 3 years of its release. Halo reach seems to not have this anymore. I rarely ever see lobby’s to join on these forums, so I’m asking for someone to host a large custom game lobby for people to join, with good maps from forgehub or of your own.
Thanks.
-Exigent Remorse
I think you are better off going to Forgehub or XForgery for customs. They deal with maps, and people are constantly looking for map testers. When I was more active in XForgery, they had custom game nights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays for map testing, so this may be good for getting in some customs.
But as far as customs go, you will be lucky to find any that are not within some form of group.
EDIT: Here are some links for those who are curious-
At least for me, custom games in Reach are dead. They were so from the very beginning, actually. Not that I dislike custom games - quite on the contrary! But somehow everyone I encountered was far more interested in playing matchmaking, doing challenges, and generally earning credits than they were in just playing funny and/or competitive custom games.
> At least for me, custom games in Reach are dead. They were so from the very beginning, actually. Not that I dislike custom games - quite on the contrary! But somehow everyone I encountered was far more interested in playing matchmaking, doing challenges, and generally earning credits than they were in just playing funny and/or competitive custom games.
Unfortunately it has to do with Matchmaking being promoted more often than any other game mode in Reach, with Campaign and Firefight sometimes getting some love here and there, and as you mentioned it has do do with challenges and credits. With Reach, there is no incentive to play customs other than for the sake of fun, which is all good, but due to how many people think and how the system is set up for matchmaking promotion (achievements, credits, challenges, commendations), they want the biggest pay off to get them farther within their Reach career (or rank).
Granted there are those who have other reasons to play matchmaking (it is their idea of fun for example), but again I think it has to do more with promotion than anything. If there were no credit system, commendations, challenges, or achievements relating to matchmaking, I think there would probably be less matchmaking in general and more people playing customs, as they get the same amount of in-game reward for playing either matchmaking or customs.
Of course that does not mean people would go completely cold turkey on matchmaking, as sometimes people just want to play a game without having to worry about setting up the entire game or dealing with those kinds of people who only want to play their kinds of games.
Thankfully there are groups like Forgehub and XForgery for customs. Granted that they exist more for presenting maps than anything else, but still they can function as a place to play customs. If these groups did not exist, I can only assume that customs would have less population than the least played playlist in matchmaking.
EDIT: Another factor that I just realized is that there is no search function for customs. I am not talking about something like matchmaking, but something that allows players to find open lobbies for games. That could also be matchmaking is favored over customs.
IMO Customs havent been the same since halo 2,they were alright with Halo 3 but i dont have any reach pals anymore so theres just no point to them for me.
Well, Customs are only alive for me if friends play Reach.
But, like myself, almost all of my friends stopped playing a month or two after it came out so ye.
> IMO Customs havent been the same since halo 2,they were alright with Halo 3 but i dont have any reach pals anymore so theres just no point to them for me.
Which brings up another really good point as to why players who want to play customs can be seen trying to recruit others to get a game going. Though not everyone suffers from this, there are those who simply do not have enough players on their friends list to play customs or get a good amount of players to play a particular gametype or map. For example, I may have around ten friends on my list who play Reach, with about maybe four of them playing at any given time, and most of the time they want to simply play matchmaking.
However, this can be solved by doing a bit of “internet dating”. Now by this I do not mean making a profile and listing your hobbies and so forth, but to simply look around for others who also want to play and trying to collaborate a small group who likes to play customs with one another. Granted that means using other means to hook up with other players such as the recruitment section of these forums, but if one really wants to play customs it is a better alternative than playing chat roulette with matchmaking in hopes of finding others to play customs (randoms are random)(and no I do not mean the actual chat roulette website. I do not think anyone wants to go through that).
My friends absolutely loved playing customs in Halo 3. I’d spend an hour or two making a map and game mode and then we’d play it for hours on end. Although most of them weren’t particularly good at Halo and it wasn’t their favorite game, they all agreed without hesitation that custom games were a ton of fun. Even when there were only a few of us on, nearly everyone on all of our friends lists was playing Halo 3 and custom games could be found easily.
However, the sole reason practically none of them bought Reach is because they argued that we didn’t have enough friends within are group to make buying Reach only for custom games a justifiable purchase. I explained that we could join a site like Forgehub etc, but they deemed that it was too much work. They wanted to be able to play only custom games and couldn’t care less about matchmaking. I can’t blame them either. Even though I enjoy matchmaking and I’m pretty good, the most fun times I’ve ever had in Halo 2/3 was in custom games. Which is why with every new Halo game I hope a custom game browser is included.
Credit feature= tangible reward for playing
MM= Lots of credits
Customs = Few credits
It ain’t rocket science.
> Credit feature= tangible reward for playing
> MM= Lots of credits
> Customs = Few credits
>
> It ain’t rocket science.
If people play for credits, what does that tell you about the gameplay?
You know you’re doing something wrong if you ar eplaying a game like a chore to get a tinted visor for your characters helmet.
> > Credit feature= tangible reward for playing
> > MM= Lots of credits
> > Customs = Few credits
> >
> > It ain’t rocket science.
>
> If people play for credits, what does that tell you about the gameplay?
>
> You know you’re doing something wrong if you ar eplaying a game like a chore to get a tinted visor for your characters helmet.
Indeed. Reach is little more than a Skinner box, and since the Custom Game lever doesn’t give as much food as the Matchmaking lever, barely anyone ever presses it.
> > Credit feature= tangible reward for playing
> > MM= Lots of credits
> > Customs = Few credits
> >
> > It ain’t rocket science.
>
> If people play for credits, what does that tell you about the gameplay?
>
> You know you’re doing something wrong if you ar eplaying a game like a chore to get a tinted visor for your characters helmet.
Unfortunately this also has the side effect of showing the people who designed the whole matchmaking stuff (including credits, challenges, etc.) that they are doing it right. Whether what they do is actually any good stands to reason because people will quickly go towards the “there’s a bigger reward for me” sign.
As for a custom game lobby browser, I wish it was just like in Halo PC. A list of all servers and other people hosting games, the list could be sorted according to ping, number of players, map, gametype, etc. That was just great, as was the ability to jump right into a game even if it was already in progress. So great, in fact, that I played more games in H:PC alone than in H2, H3, and Reach combined.
What are you all on about? You just don’t have the right people on your friends lists.
> What are you all on about? You just don’t have the right people on your friends lists.
Sad but true. Still, making it easier to play custom games, more specifically to find and join them, would considerably increase the amount of people playing custom games.
It’s not dead just less fun than Halo 3; which everyone knows and loved.
> > > Credit feature= tangible reward for playing
> > > MM= Lots of credits
> > > Customs = Few credits
> > >
> > > It ain’t rocket science.
> >
> > If people play for credits, what does that tell you about the gameplay?
> >
> > You know you’re doing something wrong if you ar eplaying a game like a chore to get a tinted visor for your characters helmet.
>
> Indeed. Reach is little more than a Skinner box, and since the Custom Game lever doesn’t give as much food as the Matchmaking lever, barely anyone ever presses it.
Thats the most depressing appraisal of the situation ive ever read 
Theres probably a lot of truth to it, but it think its more to do with the fact that there are so many other good games to be playing on the regular now compared to the halo 3 era, its almost impossible to get more than a handful on any game at once. Also people never invite or answer invites anymore 
This is also why the population appears to be much lower than halo 3 too, free market competition.
> Theres probably a lot of truth to it, but it think its more to do with the fact that there are so many other good games to be playing on the regular now compared to the halo 3 era, its almost impossible to get more than a handful on any game at once.
I don’t think that this is the case. If people only could play a certain number of games, why would they play matchmaking if custom games can easily be (and usually are) more fun? While I can’t actually back that up with facts, I do get the impression that people with lots of matches played in total played a lower number of custom games than players who didn’t play as many matches.
Personally, I think it has a lot to do with players being lazy. Instead of setting up a custom game and inviting friends, going into matchmaking is far easier and quicker.
> Also people never invite or answer invites anymore
Oh, I respond to invites. But if you send me an invite and immediately afterwards go into matchmaking where I can’t join you until the match is over, I don’t bother anymore. If you want me to play with you, which you obviously do if you send me an invite, then have the courtesy and common sense to wait until the match I’m currently playing has ended.
> This is also why the population appears to be much lower than halo 3 too, free market competition.
There simply are more games in total, and more games that are better than Reach. Besides, the current trend seems to be to not play a game for more than two or three months, if at all. After that many people leave for other games, which in turn they then leave for yet another game a couple of months later, and so no.
> What are you all on about? You just don’t have the right people on your friends lists.
this.
I play customs everyday from octagon to fat kid to other silly customs like indiana jones or infection slide, or even cool custom maps made by friends or on most downloaded.
People make this game not fun by trying to not have fun on it.
> > What are you all on about? You just don’t have the right people on your friends lists.
>
> this.
> I play customs everyday from octagon to fat kid to other silly customs like indiana jones or infection slide, or even cool custom maps made by friends or on most downloaded.
> People make this game not fun by trying to not have fun on it.
I’m going to try and phrase this as respectfully and neutrally as I can. Even so, I know someone’s going to be offended by it.
I mean no offense to anyone who builds or plays those games, but: they take very little Forge expertise to build; most of them take very little skill of any kind to play; and all of them are repetitive beyond measure. I mean, can anyone honestly claim that “Super Happy Slide”, for example, takes effort to build, is challenging to play, or that it isn’t the exact same experience every time you play it? They’re not necessarily bad, but they are extremely casual, and there’s always been a huge portion of the population that doesn’t find them appealing because of that.
The reason those games are so much more popular is because Reach as a whole is unchallenging, and a side-effect of this is that it appeals more to casuals. This drove a lot of non-casual players out of Reach, which means that while casual Customs have continued to flourish, it is extremely difficult to find a full lobby’s worth of players that won’t quit out if you host something that isn’t full-on up-to-eleven casual.
Reach revolutionized Custom Game construction by giving us Forge 2.0 and Megalo and the largest map in the history of the series’ Multiplayer and a massive Forge palette for that map… and yet Custom Games are deader than they ever have been and Forge communities are stagnant beyond measure. I can’t think of a better explanation than simply that Reach alienated non-casuals – the people who demand innovation in Forge and Customs, and who reward and encourage that innovation with high download counts and praise.
[Note: I’ve edited this about ten times now, trying to soften it and avoid offense. I apologize if I failed in that regard.]
So reach apparently appeals to casuals eg people who just want a bit of fun, and the tryhards have flown away in disgust…ive yet to read why that is a bad thing. Its a game, games are supposed to be fun. Why is everyone working from the mindset that reach being a casual game is a bad thing?
I dont play many customs anymore but theyve always been way more fun than halo 3 customs were. So many more things are possible in Reach forge.