I’ve been seeing threads like these pop up quite frequently over the last couple weeks. Those interested in Arena and possible changes have been patient since the beginning of September when we were once again handed a duplicate season to last with many inherent flaws that never got fixed. These include the Jetpack AA, Unbalanced maps, and other exploits of the matchmaking system itself for cheating purposes. (The 2s trick)
Come December if nothing has changed despite continuous and logical outcry from the community I would be willing to go to far as to say someone should spearhead a boycott of Halo: Reach until we cease to be ignored. I for one WILL be leaving Reach come December if nothing changes. I understand there are obviously more pressing concerns than adhering to Arena such as Halo 4 and maintenance on CEA but as the creator of a similar thread to this has stated “some acknowledgement would be nice”.
I would also not be surprised if I am not the only one who decides to leave Reach. As much as I enjoy the game I cannot handle broken mechanics, unbalanced maps, and matchmaking cheating in the ONLY ranked playlist in Reach. This goes without saying their needs to be variety…
343: If you are truly looking to bring back the more “competitive side” of Reach, Arena should be at the top of your priorities. Otherwise you are simply adhering to the Casual side of it which DOES NOT need to be fixed. The casual community cares little about the implementation of reduced bloom or bleed-through damage as I would imagine these changes would be more geared towards the competitive community.
I for one am not asking you to bring back a “Halo 3 style” of Reach. Reach is good as it is but one of the things that has always made Halo stand out above all other silly casual shooters like Call of Duty is the ranking system. It’s not too late to fix Bungie’s mistake of making Reach epic-casual, I hope and would be very pleased to see you make this game more competitive, balanced, fair, and fun.
Hypno
PS: Based on the number of sheer number of views the title of this thread alone will get should be a strong indication that the community is HIGHLY interested in the answer to this question…
Look man, 343 obviously is going to take their sweet time doing anything. Honestly, boycotting the multiplayer might be one of the best ways to get them to wake up.
Unfortunately, Boycotting will lead them to the same mislead conclusion that Bungie did with the rest of the Arena playlists: “nobody is playing Arena so nobody cares about rank or competitive play, we can get rid of this playlist.”
They will completely ignore the fact that the settings suck & the ranking system itself suffers from a severe lack of clarity. I mean why are ratings still displayed when they do nothing? You wouldn’t even believe how many people I’ve talked to who avoid Arena simply because they still think it’s FFA ratings.
Halo 3 is over 4 years old now and its TS playlist has more than twice that of Arena on any given day, despite the terrible hit detection, cheating & foreign host. Know why? The settings are playable, not these “one team gets rockets/sniper & the other gets a pistol” starting spawns or the “hide behind corners with shotgun/sword/concussion” gameplay of Arena.
> Unfortunately, Boycotting will lead them to the same mislead conclusion that Bungie did with the rest of the Arena playlists: “nobody is playing Arena so nobody cares about rank or competitive play, we can get rid of this playlist.”
>
> They will completely ignore the fact that the settings suck & the ranking system itself suffers from a severe lack of clarity. I mean why are ratings still displayed when they do nothing? You wouldn’t even believe how many people I’ve talked to who avoid Arena simply because they still think it’s FFA ratings.
>
> Halo 3 is over 4 years old now and its TS playlist has more than twice that of Arena on any given day, despite the terrible hit detection, cheating & foreign host. Know why? The settings are playable, not these “one team gets rockets/sniper & the other gets a pistol” starting spawns or the “hide behind corners with shotgun/sword/concussion” gameplay of Arena.
I unfortunately do not see an alternative because clearly the community stating clear and valid implementations that would make Arena more playable is not working. It’s also boycotting in another sense. Bungie was aware of the reasons why no one liked Arena for quite some time and chose to do nothing. If 343 is handed their problem from Bungie and still continues to ignore it I see no other choice but to not play the game as a sign that they actually DO NOT CARE about community feedback. What I also don’t get is what was with the TU Beta. It has yet to be explained if/when any of the tweaks in the Beta will ever be implemented besides the over-hyped and boring CEA. I do not take favour with supporting a company that does not listen to it’s customers regardless if they were theirs in the first place.
All I know for sure is if they start up next season with the EXACT same settings for Arena they will have effectively killed it. I see no purpose in fighting for a rank that no one can see, everyone cheats to get high at by exploiting the matchmaking system, includes broken mechanics such as the AA Jetpack (I think a pickup would be fine on some maps), and that includes unbalanced maps.
Halo IS NOT a game like Call of Duty where all the kids get to choose their gun load outs so the game is unbalanced from the start. In Halo you’ve always had to fight for the power weapons but balance and fairness take a backseat because of these issues.
I am not advocating for MLG as the only ranked playlist but this I find would actually be a welcome addition to the Arena playlist because they seemed to be able to balance it out. 343 should take a lesson from MLG and correct many of Bungie’s mistakes which killed this games competitive vibe…
The only reason that Arena isn’t as popular as ranked was in Halo 3 is because your Arena Division is not tied to your overall military rank, like it was in Halo 3. The number of players not playing Arena because of the settings is almost certainly dwarfed by the amount of players not playing Arena because they see no tangible benefit to do so. Until something like a global visible rank occurs (which it never will, since it would require a GUI patch, something 343 obviously isn’t going to do), Arena will not be popular regardless of the settings.
The only way to increase the popularity is simply to merge it with the regular TS playlist.
> The only reason that Arena isn’t as popular as ranked was in Halo 3 is because your Arena Division is not tied to your overall military rank, like it was in Halo 3. The number of players not playing Arena because of the settings is almost certainly dwarfed by the amount of players not playing Arena because they see no tangible benefit to do so.
Mhh…I don’t feel concerned at all by ranking or anything related to this, but I’d feel enclined to support your cause, simply because it doesn’t harm things I like in the game.
But I must tell you, boycotting won’t work.Companies don’t care if you play or not this game or another, because you have already BOUGHT it, and they know you’ll buy the next one, and you’ll keep paying for XBL.The only weapon you have is your money…
> But I must tell you, boycotting won’t work.Companies don’t care if you play or not this game or another, because you have already BOUGHT it, and they know you’ll buy the next one, and you’ll keep paying for XBL.The only weapon you have is your money…
True for most games but not Halo, Halo is the Nr 1 IP to sell the next gen xbox, if Halo fails MS and “xbox 720” will have a very, very hard time selling. MS needs Halo to be good, popular and as strong as ever, if CoD signs a deal with Sony/Ps3 they’ll loose a lot of teh 360-users, and without Halo they got no FPS worth mentioning that will convince people to stay on xbox.
Guess why we got a remake so shortly after Reach flaws were shown, why the remake got Reach multiplayer (to boost online stats and help people get back to playing Reach). Guess why Halo 4 is no longer a rumored xbox 720 but a confirmed xbox 360-release?
MS are scared Reach hurt the Halo IP bad (true) and that people might migrate to other games, and systems. Online stats = everything to a Halo.
> > But I must tell you, boycotting won’t work.Companies don’t care if you play or not this game or another, because you have already BOUGHT it, and they know you’ll buy the next one, and you’ll keep paying for XBL.The only weapon you have is your money…
>
> True for most games but not Halo, Halo is the Nr 1 IP to sell the next gen xbox, if Halo fails MS and “xbox 720” will have a very, very hard time selling. MS needs Halo to be good, popular and as strong as ever, if CoD signs a deal with Sony/Ps3 they’ll loose a lot of teh 360-users, and without Halo they got no FPS worth mentioning that will convince people to stay on xbox.
> Guess why we got a remake so shortly after Reach flaws were shown, why the remake got Reach multiplayer (to boost online stats and help people get back to playing Reach). Guess why Halo 4 is no longer a rumored xbox 720 but a confirmed xbox 360-release?
> MS are scared Reach hurt the Halo IP bad (true) and that people might migrate to other games, and systems. Online stats = everything to a Halo.
I do hope they do something to get the population up. I feel that Arena just doesn’t function correctly without a big population. I am also hoping they add more maps into the rotation.
i’ll CONTINUE to boycott this terribad playlist till JET PACK is removed.
it has literally no place whatsoever in the playlist. none. nadda. its a complete, and total joke that goes against the entire purpose of arena to begin with.
> i’ll CONTINUE to boycott this terribad playlist till JET PACK is removed.
>
> it has literally no place whatsoever in the playlist. none. nadda. its a complete, and total joke that goes against the entire purpose of arena to begin with.
I’d love to see a Classic version of Arena. They should at least try it for a season. I think that would be really fun. Some of the Forge maps in combination with Jet packs really do take the fun out of the playlist.
Otherwise, I feel your pain. But I don’t think a visible rank can save this game at this point and it probably requires a crap ton of buried coding anyway.
It’s so sad that Bungie pretty much snubbed us for a year. It’s almost as if Bungie didn’t want us to play Reach because it’s their game not ours.
343 has done an amazing job so far, starting back with the defiant map pack and I’m excited to see what other changes they can make, but it’s seriously too late for this game.
I’m not trying to be negative because I still love this game and crack out on it at least once a week
But people just don’t care anymore. They are playing other games and people (at least a lot of people I roll with) really felt like Bungie just ignored us and were worried about credit bans, mute bans, AFK bans and cR limits.
They never addressed the gameplay issues. They just got their jollies off policing the Internet and writing weekly updates about the ban hammer.
> i’ll CONTINUE to boycott this terribad playlist till JET PACK is removed.
>
> it has literally no place whatsoever in the playlist. none. nadda. its a complete, and total joke that goes against the entire purpose of arena to begin with.
What’s so hard about shooting a bird out of the sky?
Jetpacks = easy kills for a marksman.
Sprint is worse if you ask me. I’m shooting you and you run away and hide like a noob?
I’d be willing to bet if AA’s are removed from Arena, the population would be even weaker.
It’s been the trend this far.
Most of the top Arena players have stopped playing it and haven’t bothered to play it this season because of how dumb and broken it still is. Pretty much all the 1% atm are all cheaters who booted for it, with a few exceptions (who obviously 2’s tricked and/or used a booster). The normal 1%'s just haven’t cared or bothered.
It needs to be changed otherwise its going to die off completely, in fact more playlists need to incorporate its ranking system.
> > i’ll CONTINUE to boycott this terribad playlist till JET PACK is removed.
> >
> > it has literally no place whatsoever in the playlist. none. nadda. its a complete, and total joke that goes against the entire purpose of arena to begin with.
>
> What’s so hard about shooting a bird out of the sky?
> Jetpacks = easy kills for a marksman.
>
> Sprint is worse if you ask me. I’m shooting you and you run away and hide like a noob?
>
> I’d be willing to bet if AA’s are removed from Arena, the population would be even weaker.
> It’s been the trend this far.
Get better and play GOOD people who use the jet-pack. If you were to use the jet-pack it might be an easy kill, but at high level onyx people know how to break the map.
Imagine someone with amazing aim who now has the ability to eliminate lines of sight and cover, combine that with good call outs and we have an overpowered map breaking killing machine. Also put another amazing player 100 feet above the battle ground, assuming you understand the advantages of high-ground. 10 secs is more than enough for a good player to get a few uncontested kills.
Rockets are now useless against a jet-pack, and if the jet-pack has rockets ROFL.
