Can anyone explain this to me?

Games Other Halo
1

How does two game developers not notice that Reach is a dying cause and they need to fix it NOW?

343i announced that they were going to have a patch for Reach coming up in the upcoming months and I’m not going to lie. I damn near had an asthma attack. I was so excited for someone new to take over and fix what Bungie was just not going to fix.

I think over half the community, maybe even more doesn’t enjoy Reach. I know some will disagree with me but something is wrong when the most populated playlist is Living Dead. The numbers DRASTICALLY dropped from Halo 3, I mean -Yoinking!- DRASTICALLY. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like Halo to me. I still play it though because it’s Halo. I don’t know how to say anything else than that, it’s just Halo. I’ve been a Halo kid since I was 11 years old. I am now 18 and this game franchise has my commitment. The DMR “had” to be put in because of the time-line issues that would be caused by having the BR in it but let’s be honest, I would rather have like 1000 people have a problem with the BR being in the game than over half the community bickering over the DMR.

The casual players don’t know how to use the DMR. They spam and spam and spam. Even watch the Bungie employees on their stream for the Bungie Day, they spam away too. The competitive players do not like the DMR, we pace out shots perfectly and get shafted out of kills. Take out the bloom and prolong the amount of time it takes to shoot one shot or at least fix the bloom so I don’t get cross mapped 5 shot spammed by some kid with the gamertag, xXsUpAsO1di3r420xXx. You could increase the amount of bloom that one shot gives you and make it retract faster so that spamming would be completely out of the question.

How did Bungie not take into account that having a weapon that shoots randomly inside of a circle is not going to work well in an online environment?

Anyways, of course after a few weeks, I see a post from Frankie on Neogaf and my heart sank. Here is 343i’s chance to fix this game, turn it around and bring back that Halo community from Halo 2 & 3 and they aren’t doing anything with it. They have a thread asking US, the community what we want to see changed in the game. It has to be well over 100 pages by now and let’s be honest, they aren’t going to do anything that is going to make people come back to this game.

This game has been out for close to 9 months and it feels like it has been out for 3 years. I’m actually ready for a new Halo game. I don’t think I’ve ever been ready for a new Halo game as much as Halo 4.

tl;dr

How hard is it to listen to the community when basically the entire community is ACHING for -Yoinking!- change in this video game? We don’t care about fall damage or whatever petty little changes you are making, expecting to bring back over 10000 players, we just want a Halo game. We all voice basically the same opinion and it isn’t just like 1000 people saying it, it is 1000’s of people who want this game fixed. They want to see Halo flourish.

Why is it that no game developer sees that we don’t want spartans jetpacking and holograming around the map with -Yoinking!- bloom style weapons? Those things in itself drove away over half the community. It seems Bungie/343i wants to give CoD a bigger fanbase.

We… want… Halo.

2

I’d really love to see where you get your statistics. “Half”? Really? Half. Take Bloom away and the DMR is the exactly the same as the BR… except balanced. Even if all the “problems” the community sees get fixed, CoD will still have a flourishing player base and probably always will. You know why? Accessibility. It is easier to hop into a game of CoD as it is Halo, or Battlefield, or M.A.G.

343 will fix the real problems. Not some of the snotty ones the community complains about.

Also, who is this “we”. I like Armor Abilities and I welcome reticle bloom.

3

> I’d really love to see where you get your statistics. “Half”? Really? Half. Take Bloom away and the DMR is the exactly the same as the BR… except balanced. Even if all the “problems” the community sees get fixed, CoD will still have a flourishing player base and probably always will. You know why? Accessibility. It is easier to hop into a game of CoD as it is Halo, or Battlefield, or M.A.G.
>
> 343 will fix the real problems. Not some of the snotty ones the community complains about.

I’d love for us to be able to compare the amount of players Halo 3 had on at one time in peak hours to Halo Reach. There is your half. When I search by myself in any of the playlists, I will hear at least once every night, “WHY IS THERE BLOOM? IF THERE WASNT BLOOM, I WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM.”

People are obviously sick and tired of it. I thought the skill gap for Halo 3 was low but -Yoink-, any person who picks up a controller can spam and get lucky against someone pacing their shots, ESPECIALLY if they are on host.

I have had friends that have played Halo since the first day of Halo 2 and just will NOT play Reach. Halo lost it’s base players with trying to help itself to the casual player market (which they -Yoinking!- failed at that too because no casual player wants to get on Halo and have to deal with timing their shots, timing weapons & getting all the random -Yoink- equipment all over the map and learning how to use each of them)

4

Take this to the multiplayer forum where everyone else is whining, and you might even get Frank to answer you, he’s posting right now.

But all I’m hearing is the same old song, and I’m seeing is the same old dance since yesterday.

5

> > I’d really love to see where you get your statistics. “Half”? Really? Half. Take Bloom away and the DMR is the exactly the same as the BR… except balanced. Even if all the “problems” the community sees get fixed, CoD will still have a flourishing player base and probably always will. You know why? Accessibility. It is easier to hop into a game of CoD as it is Halo, or Battlefield, or M.A.G.
> >
> > 343 will fix the real problems. Not some of the snotty ones the community complains about.
>
> I’d love for us to be able to compare the amount of players Halo 3 had on at one time in peak hours to Halo Reach. There is your half. When I search by myself in any of the playlists, I will hear at least once every night, “WHY IS THERE BLOOM? IF THERE WASNT BLOOM, I WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM.”
>
> People are obviously sick and tired of it. I thought the skill gap for Halo 3 was low but Yoink!, any person who picks up a controller can spam and get lucky against someone pacing their shots, ESPECIALLY if they are on host.
>
> I have had friends that have played Halo since the first day of Halo 2 and just will NOT play Reach. Halo lost it’s base players with trying to help itself to the casual player market (which they Yoink! failed at that too because no casual player wants to get on Halo and have to deal with timing their shots, timing weapons & getting all the random Yoink! equipment all over the map and learning how to use each of them)

Your still pulling your “half” statistic out of your -Yoink-. Also, anyone can say “If there wasn’t bloom, I would have killed him.” Excuses are excuses. I can easily say “Why is there zoom on the pistol? If there was no zoom on the pistol, I would have killed him.” or “Why is there a sniper on this map? If there wasn’t a sniper on this map, I would have killed him.”

Also, I take strong offense to your choice of words. And I think you know which. There is no reason to be using it and will not further solidify your argument. Anyone with anything who has host can out play another, that’s just the way it is, blaming it on bloom is just another easy excuse.

Halo lost it’s base players because they can’t stand change. Every anti-Reach argument I hear is based on the fact that that person wants Reach to be like Halo 3. I don’t want it to be, if I did, I’d put Halo 3 in and play that. Also, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the same monotonous gameplay every installment. The franchise HAS to evolve and change, otherwise it will die, and if the community won’t allow that change, then they are to blame.

Halo “lost” players because other games come out. People won’t play a single game for their entire life. They are entitled to wanting to play other games. Reach “lost” players because of school and work and life and other games. When Reach came out, I played it for months straight. After a while, I wanted to play a different game, so I started alternating between playing Reach and my other games. Does that meant I stopped playing it? No, clearly not. There is no statistical proof that every single person who was online in the first couple days/ weeks after Reach came out outright stopped playing.

6

> > > I’d really love to see where you get your statistics. “Half”? Really? Half. Take Bloom away and the DMR is the exactly the same as the BR… except balanced. Even if all the “problems” the community sees get fixed, CoD will still have a flourishing player base and probably always will. You know why? Accessibility. It is easier to hop into a game of CoD as it is Halo, or Battlefield, or M.A.G.
> > >
> > > 343 will fix the real problems. Not some of the snotty ones the community complains about.
> >
> > I’d love for us to be able to compare the amount of players Halo 3 had on at one time in peak hours to Halo Reach. There is your half. When I search by myself in any of the playlists, I will hear at least once every night, “WHY IS THERE BLOOM? IF THERE WASNT BLOOM, I WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM.”
> >
> > People are obviously sick and tired of it. I thought the skill gap for Halo 3 was low but Yoink!, any person who picks up a controller can spam and get lucky against someone pacing their shots, ESPECIALLY if they are on host.
> >
> > I have had friends that have played Halo since the first day of Halo 2 and just will NOT play Reach. Halo lost it’s base players with trying to help itself to the casual player market (which they Yoink! failed at that too because no casual player wants to get on Halo and have to deal with timing their shots, timing weapons & getting all the random Yoink! equipment all over the map and learning how to use each of them)
>
> Your still pulling your “half” statistic out of your Yoink!. Also, anyone can say “If there wasn’t bloom, I would have killed him.” Excuses are excuses. I can easily say “Why is there zoom on the pistol? If there was no zoom on the pistol, I would have killed him.” or “Why is there a sniper on this map? If there wasn’t a sniper on this map, I would have killed him.”
>
> Also, I take strong offense to your choice of words. And I think you know which. There is no reason to be using it and will not further solidify your argument. Anyone with anything who has host can out play another, that’s just the way it is, blaming it on bloom is just another easy excuse.
>
> Halo lost it’s base players because they can’t stand change. Every anti-Reach argument I hear is based on the fact that that person wants Reach to be like Halo 3. I don’t want it to be, if I did, I’d put Halo 3 in and play that. Also, I don’t know about you, but I don’t want the same monotonous gameplay every installment. The franchise HAS to evolve and change, otherwise it will die, and if the community won’t allow that change, then they are to blame.

Yeah, all the anti-Reach arguments are about change because the change that they made are the biggest -Yoinking!- let-downs I’ve ever seen in a video game, ever.

Look at Halo 1 to Halo 2 to Halo 3, they kept the same basis and everyone loved it and continued playing it. This is one of those game franchises where change isn’t needed to keep it fresh because everyone loved it how it was. Yeah, changing is part of business and business plays a big part in this but honestly, what they did was horrible. They single handedly killed a Halo w/ Reach.

Anyone who enjoys the bloom or the armor abilities never played Halo 2 and obviously cares nothing about this franchise. If Halo 4 doesn’t have bloom nor armor abilities, I -Yoinking!- put it on my grave that it will sell and have 10x as many people playing it as Reach does now.

7

wrong forum this should go into the multiplayer section

8

> How does two game developers not notice that Reach is a dying cause and they need to fix it NOW?
>
> 343i announced that they were going to have a patch for Reach coming up in the upcoming months and I’m not going to lie. I damn near had an asthma attack. I was so excited for someone new to take over and fix what Bungie was just not going to fix.
>
> I think over half the community, maybe even more doesn’t enjoy Reach. I know some will disagree with me but something is wrong when the most populated playlist is Living Dead. The numbers DRASTICALLY dropped from Halo 3, I mean Yoink! DRASTICALLY. Honestly, it doesn’t feel like Halo to me. I still play it though because it’s Halo. I don’t know how to say anything else than that, it’s just Halo. I’ve been a Halo kid since I was 11 years old. I am now 18 and this game franchise has my commitment. The DMR “had” to be put in because of the time-line issues that would be caused by having the BR in it but let’s be honest, I would rather have like 1000 people have a problem with the BR being in the game than over half the community bickering over the DMR.
>
> The casual players don’t know how to use the DMR. They spam and spam and spam. Even watch the Bungie employees on their stream for the Bungie Day, they spam away too. The competitive players do not like the DMR, we pace out shots perfectly and get shafted out of kills. Take out the bloom and prolong the amount of time it takes to shoot one shot or at least fix the bloom so I don’t get cross mapped 5 shot spammed by some kid with the gamertag, xXsUpAsO1di3r420xXx. You could increase the amount of bloom that one shot gives you and make it retract faster so that spamming would be completely out of the question.
>
> How did Bungie not take into account that having a weapon that shoots randomly inside of a circle is not going to work well in an online environment?
>
> Anyways, of course after a few weeks, I see a post from Frankie on Neogaf and my heart sank. Here is 343i’s chance to fix this game, turn it around and bring back that Halo community from Halo 2 & 3 and they aren’t doing anything with it. They have a thread asking US, the community what we want to see changed in the game. It has to be well over 100 pages by now and let’s be honest, they aren’t going to do anything that is going to make people come back to this game.
>
> This game has been out for close to 9 months and it feels like it has been out for 3 years. I’m actually ready for a new Halo game. I don’t think I’ve ever been ready for a new Halo game as much as Halo 4.
>
> tl;dr
>
> How hard is it to listen to the community when basically the entire community is ACHING for Yoink! change in this video game? We don’t care about fall damage or whatever petty little changes you are making, expecting to bring back over 10000 players, we just want a Halo game. We all voice basically the same opinion and it isn’t just like 1000 people saying it, it is 1000’s of people who want this game fixed. They want to see Halo flourish.
>
> Why is it that no game developer sees that we don’t want spartans jetpacking and holograming around the map with Yoink! bloom style weapons? Those things in itself drove away over half the community. It seems Bungie/343i wants to give CoD a bigger fanbase.
>
> We… want… Halo.

I don’t find anything in Reach needs fixing, to be honest.

9

> Yeah, all the anti-Reach arguments are about change because the change that they made are the biggest Yoink! let-downs I’ve ever seen in a video game, ever.
>
> Look at Halo 1 to Halo 2 to Halo 3, they kept the same basis and everyone loved it and continued playing it. This is one of those game franchises where change isn’t needed to keep it fresh because everyone loved it how it was. Yeah, changing is part of business and business plays a big part in this but honestly, what they did was horrible. They single handedly killed a Halo w/ Reach.
>
> Anyone who enjoys the bloom or the armor abilities never played Halo 2 and obviously cares nothing about this franchise. If Halo 4 doesn’t have bloom nor armor abilities, I Yoink! put it on my grave that it will sell and have 10x as many people playing it as Reach does now.

Really? The biggest let-down you’ve ever seen in a video game, ever? I’ve heard variants of that around, that is the biggest exaggerated lie I have ever read. Because in someone’s entire history of playing video games, there is always something else that can qualify.

Halo 1 > Halo 2 introduced dual wielding. Halo 2 > Halo 3 introduced equipment. Halo 3 > Halo: Reach changed equipment into Armor Abilities and introduced reticle bloom, a.k.a. the visual representation of bullet spread, which has always been in Halo. No franchise is immune to the need of change. I can guarantee you that if the gameplay of Halo 2 was kept for 3, consequently 3: ODST, and Reach, well, the latter two probably wouldn’t exist because of the sheer drop in sales and Bungie probably wouldn’t have achieve it’s independent developer status and probably would have been shutdown due to a lack of revenue from the Halo franchise.

Saying that they “single handedly killed Halo” is a downright exaggeration. Because if it was killed, then why are there a little over a half a million unique players daily? Sure, you can compare them to CoD numbers, but that’s all you can do, and all any “anti-Reach” individual can do. Compare it to CoD. Bloom like CoD, sprinting like CoD, jetpacks like CoD… oh, wait Halo: Reach really isn’t like CoD after all.

I welcome bloom and Armor Abilities, and I have played Halo 2. And clearly, I care about the franchise, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have bought the games and novels.

If Halo 4 does have bloom and some form of Armor Abilities, people will still buy it. And after 9 months, the population would drop, too.

10

the fact they didnt even say about problems we can all agree that are problems like the mute ban, or AFKer’s the fact that they think reach is perfect is just stupid.

I for one hate AL and think bloom needs to be made skillfull, but the fact they wont even achnowledge stuff we can all agree is a problem isz just sad

11

> > Yeah, all the anti-Reach arguments are about change because the change that they made are the biggest Yoink! let-downs I’ve ever seen in a video game, ever.
> >
> > Look at Halo 1 to Halo 2 to Halo 3, they kept the same basis and everyone loved it and continued playing it. This is one of those game franchises where change isn’t needed to keep it fresh because everyone loved it how it was. Yeah, changing is part of business and business plays a big part in this but honestly, what they did was horrible. They single handedly killed a Halo w/ Reach.
> >
> > Anyone who enjoys the bloom or the armor abilities never played Halo 2 and obviously cares nothing about this franchise. If Halo 4 doesn’t have bloom nor armor abilities, I Yoink! put it on my grave that it will sell and have 10x as many people playing it as Reach does now.
>
> Really? The biggest let-down you’ve ever seen in a video game, ever? I’ve heard variants of that around, that is the biggest exaggerated lie I have ever read. Because in someone’s entire history of playing video games, there is always something else that can qualify.
>
> Halo 1 > Halo 2 introduced dual wielding. Halo 2 > Halo 3 introduced equipment. Halo 3 > Halo: Reach changed equipment into Armor Abilities and introduced reticle bloom, a.k.a. the visual representation of bullet spread, which has always been in Halo. No franchise is immune to the need of change. I can guarantee you that if the gameplay of Halo 2 was kept for 3, consequently 3: ODST, and Reach, well, the latter two probably wouldn’t exist because of the sheer drop in sales and Bungie probably wouldn’t have achieve it’s independent developer status and probably would have been shutdown due to a lack of revenue from the Halo franchise.
>
> Saying that they “single handedly killed Halo” is a downright exaggeration. Because if it was killed, then why are there a little over a half a million unique players daily? Sure, you can compare them to CoD numbers, but that’s all you can do, and all any “anti-Reach” individual can do. Compare it to CoD. Bloom like CoD, sprinting like CoD, jetpacks like CoD… oh, wait Halo: Reach really isn’t like CoD after all.
>
> I welcome bloom and Armor Abilities, and I have played Halo 2. And clearly, I care about the franchise, otherwise I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have bought the games and novels.
>
> If Halo 4 does have bloom and some form of Armor Abilities, people will still buy it. And after 9 months, the population would drop, too.

You realize that the bolded part is a completely uneducated statement. Halo CE had bloom on automatic weapons (not sure if it was all of them or not) and on the pistol. The automatic weapons having bloom isn’t a problem for anyone, because they shouldn’t be accurate at long range. However a precision weapon should not have bloom. The Halo CE pistol did though, but the point is that it wasn’t a problem due to the way Bungie implemented it. The bloom reset incredibly fast, which made the only way to really have it affect your shot was if you held in the trigger. Thus it didn’t affect gameplay at all unless you were a completely new player to the game and didn’t know to pull the trigger for every shot.

H2 had bloom on automatic weapons once again, which is a good thing. The BR had a bullet spread because it was a burst weapon, which makes sense. However the spread was horrendous online and everyone complained about it so it was made tighter and acted like an actual precision weapon. This made it OP though, and the button glitches didn’t help to counter this.

H3 once again had bloom on automatic weapons. The BR had a bullet spread that reminded players of pre-patch H2, however it wasn’t nearly as awful and Bungie’s stance on not changing it wasn’t going to change this time around. So the community found a work around by upping the damage to 110% so that the final shot only needed two bullets to hit, instead of three, and because the first two bullets were pretty much dead-on accurate it fixed the problem for the most part.

In Reach automatic weapons have bloom again, and it is now visible on your reticule. This is a great thing, however the precision weapons now have bloom as well that does not work properly. The BR was a burst weapon, which meant it having bullet spread/bloom simply made sense because it shoots three times in a very fast time period. However a single shot weapon should not have this problem, which means bloom shouldn’t be on the weapon. They should have simply added recoil to the guns that way they would be harder to aim, but it would be completely based on the player’s skill during a gunfight that decides the outcome instead of the randomness that it is now.

Though honestly they could simply make the bloom more like Shadowrun, to where spamming is not effective at all, if they really want to keep it.

tl;dr

Bloom/Bullet Spread has always been in the game however it has never had a drastic effect on gameplay and when it did (Halo 3) Bungie gave us the tools to work around it. Bloom in Reach, on the precision weapons, is not a “visual representation” of bullet spread, because a single shot weapon (which all the precision weapons are) do not have a spread due to the fact that they are single shot weapons.

Bloom was simply integrated wrong and could be fixed easily, which would make it a great addition to Halo imo. However, it should still remain an option for us instead of being forced upon us.

12

Jericho vG, you already posted in the thread where this discussion is going on, so I know you don’t need a link. I’ll leave it for the other people who are interested in this subject matter, though.

http://halo.xbox.com/forums/games/f/7/t/2774.aspx