Competitive Halo is Dead :'(

Games Other Halo
1

Hey guys, so this is my first post here in a really long time and I used to really dislike the negativity on the forums, but hopefully this post is more constructive criticism than anything else.

[You CAN skip this…]
I’d like to first preface everything based on some assumptions I’ve made:

  1. Many people who post and reads these forums are what the competitive community would consider “casual” players. (I’m a casual player too!) By casual, I mean that people just play this for fun and enjoy most of the gametypes. (I have a lot of fun on Big Team Battle and Ricochet :])

  2. Most of the players here don’t follow what goes on in the competitive community. By competitive community, I mean the players who travel to tournaments hosted by AGL (since MLG dropped Halo) and play for money. I’m guessing that those who follow the competitive community frequent the forums at Teambeyond instead of this site.

[Post really starts here.]
So here. we. go.

Since most of the people here are casual Halo players (myself included) are unaware of the going on’s of the competitive side of Halo, I’d like to spell it out for you guys. It’s dead.

Yup, competitive Halo is dead. It had it’s glory days back in Halo CE, Halo 2, Halo 3 and maybe even Halo Reach. But since the start of Halo 4, the competitive community has been struggling to survive ever since Major Gaming League (MLG) dropped them.

Luckily, a guy named Brad Weir (and some of his friends) came along and formed Arena Gaming League (AGL), which has been the home of Halo 4 after MLG dropped it. AGL got off to a rough start due to it being a brand new organization. But slowly and surely, the production value at every event got better and better.

It’s not all sunshines and rainbows though. There is currently an problem with AGL. The reason why competitive Halo is “competitive” is because the maps/spawns are mostly balanced out (thanks Gh057ayame) to provide the most fair experience to these players who are (most importantly) playing for MONEY.

The upcoming AGL is AGL 10, but AGL has not paid the top ranked teams since AGL 7. As a result, all of the teams are very skeptical about whether AGL will ever fulfill its promise to pay the players, especially since AGL is saying that there will be a guaranteed $10K prize pool for the top teams at AGL 10.

Some teams are going to AGL 10 because they’re attracted to the $10K. Others are going just to badger Brad about money that’s owed to them. A few other teams are considering not going at all.

There is an idea floating around the top Halo pro players: “AGL isn’t paying out, so we should switch to another game (CoD) to hopefully place into the money, because we know that MLG (which now hosts CoD instead of Halo) has a proven history of paying its players.”

I’m sure a lot of you guys have heard of the Halo 4 Global Championships. It was an amazing event (at least on Sunday) and the greatest thing about it was how it came down to an intense first-to-one-kill showdown between Ace and Pistola (two pro players who competed in AGLs) for $200K.

Some of you guys might think that this would have invigorated the competitive Halo scene. However, it may have been final nail in the coffin for some players. One of my favorite Halo pros, Mikwen, quit playing games professionally because

  1. He was broke due to AGL not paying out.

  2. The stark contrast in quality and production between the Halo Global Championships and AGLs is astounding.

The latter reason is also what is swaying professional gamers such as Ninja and Formal (two of the best in H4). They want to play on the main stage in front of a large audience again. And AGL just doesn’t cut it. Even though AGLs may generate a moderate number of viewers on its Twitch stream, there are hardly any viewers at the actual event. The excitement and adrenaline rush of playing in front of a live audience is a something that these pros crave.

If 343 Industries announces a new 4v4 Global Championship (or even a 2v2 one), I think a lot of these professional gamers would stick to Halo until at least the tournament is over. Especially if they are playing for a large sum of money.

At RTX, 343i said that they WOULD have additional tournaments, which is great. But I think it is imperative that they announce another soon.

TL:DR: 343 Industries really needs to announce a new team-based global tournament soon.

P.S. I’m writing this to make this community aware of what’s going on since it is quite saddening that a great competitive gaming franchise like Halo is basically becoming extinct.

2

> 1. Many people who post and reads these forums are what the competitive community would consider “casual” players. (I’m a casual player too!) By casual, I mean that people just play this for fun and enjoy most of the gametypes.

…excuse me? “Casual” players are now just people who post on forums? What does that make people who don’t post on forums?

A casual player is someone who doesn’t care about the franchises he plays, the gaming industry as a whole, and views gaming as something to do, when he has nothing else to do.

“Competitive” Halo isn’t really dead. Here’s how to know you’re being competitive.
A match starts, do you want to win? If yes, you’re being competitive. Everybody aims for the goal of the game. If not, then why aren’t all gametypes simply, “Infinite time and no scoring” for people to screw around in?

If anything, the people who spawncamp, hold objectives (while avoiding to score objectives) etc. just to boost their stats in order to show off their K/D ratio as “proof” that they’re part of the ultimate competitivep layers, are the ones who aren’t being competitive.

3

Another thing to notice is that right now a lot of the said competitive crowd are somewhat unpleassed with the new v5 settings an so a discussion has started in the beyond forums about if they should join top mids settings and abandon developer support or try to stuck with v5 settings and see what happens.

4

i never heard agl wasnt paying the winners. could you give a link please?

i have googled all i can and find nothing saying that…

5

> > 1. Many people who post and reads these forums are what the competitive community would consider “casual” players. (I’m a casual player too!) By casual, I mean that people just play this for fun and enjoy most of the gametypes.
>
> …excuse me? “Casual” players are now just people who post on forums? What does that make people who don’t post on forums?
>
> A casual player is someone who doesn’t care about the franchises he plays, the gaming industry as a whole, and views gaming as something to do, when he has nothing else to do.
>
> “Competitive” Halo isn’t really dead. Here’s how to know you’re being competitive.
> A match starts, do you want to win? If yes, you’re being competitive. Everybody aims for the goal of the game. If not, then why aren’t all gametypes simply, “Infinite time and no scoring” for people to screw around in?
>
> If anything, the people who spawncamp, hold objectives (while avoiding to score objectives) etc. just to boost their stats in order to show off their K/D ratio as “proof” that they’re part of the ultimate competitivep layers, are the ones who aren’t being competitive.

I explicitly said that by “competitive”, I meant the people who travel to tournaments and compete for money. Did you even read the rest of my post…?

6

> TL:DR: 343
[/quote]
I’m against 343i throwing money at Halo 4 at this point.
>
> The game design and networking is so bad it really is a lost cause at this point since 343i have already said they aren’t willing to do a massive overhaul.
>
> A completely reworked game with intelligent game design would put off a lot of current Halo 4 players who like the game for what it is.
>
> Casuals didn’t kill the competitive community, 343i’s bad game design and lack of custom options did.
>
> People need to stop blaming casuals for when developers make games that aren’t suited to competitive play.

7

> i never heard agl wasnt paying the winners. could you give a link please?
>
> i have googled all i can and find nothing saying that…

Here’s a YouTube video, where Mikwen explains why he’s quitting. I’m sure at some point they mention AGL and that they aren’t paying out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD3QkY8-BAQ

8

> > i never heard agl wasnt paying the winners. could you give a link please?
> >
> > i have googled all i can and find nothing saying that…
>
> Here’s a YouTube video, where Mikwen explains why he’s quitting. I’m sure at some point they mention AGL and that they aren’t paying out. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dD3QkY8-BAQ

sweet. thanks a bunch sir!

edit: about 11 minutes in they mention it.

thanks again!

9

> > TL:DR: 343
[/quote]
I’m against 343i throwing money at Halo 4 at this point.
> >
> > The game design and networking is so bad it really is a lost cause at this point since 343i have already said they aren’t willing to do a massive overhaul.
> >
> > A completely reworked game with intelligent game design would put off a lot of current Halo 4 players who like the game for what it is.
> >
> > Casuals didn’t kill the competitive community, 343i’s bad game design and lack of custom options did.
> >
> > People need to stop blaming casuals for when developers make games that aren’t suited to competitive play.
[/quote]
I never blamed the casuals at all. In fact, I consider myself a casual player. I was just trying to make the point that 343i needs to announce a new tournament. Your idea of 343i throwing money at AGL would be nice, assuming AGL actually paid out.

10

@ Neo

I think he meant casual Halo player, and that’s what 9/10 people on these forums are. Not to mention the terrible rep these forums have from the competitive Halo community.

The bottom line is that the competitive Halo scene is dead. There’s just no money to be made, and no Halo player can really be considered a “Pro Gamer” anymore. As far as FPS and console gaming goes, all the money is in CoD. So, I really don’t blame anyone for wanting to jump ship. If Ninja is willing to go to CoD, you know Halo is in deep turds, because basically he is the face of Competitive Halo.

It’s really too bad that CoD is terrible, I’ve tried to play, and done fairly well in their ranked system, but it’s just not fun, and as bad as Halo 4 was, IMO it’s still 10x better than any CoD or any FPS that uses aim-down sites.

The really sad thing is, that these pro Halo players are going to do terrible at CoD and they’re definitely not going to place in the money at MLG.

I will role with Halo until they shut the servers down. I’m a Halo guy, and always will be. That being said, if Halo 5 doesn’t have several features that make it competitive, namely an IN-GAME RANKED SYSTEM, then it might as well be the end of Halo.

No only that, but they have to make the game catered to the competitive community as far as core gameplay goes. The casual Halo fan will still play it, and the competitive crowd will like it too. Halo 3 out of the box–take away radar–and it’s damn competitive and the maps were great. Halo 4 maps are boring and terrible, the best map is Pitfall and that’s a Halo 3 map. They have to ship Halo 5 competitive out of the box, and not play catch up.

Halo 4 is dead, but Halo 5 is either going to be the NAIL, or it’s going to change the tide.

11

If by competitive halo you mean paid turneys host by MLG etc then sure you can call it dead.

But i disagree with your use of both the words casual and competitive. I consider myself to be competitive considering i go out of my way to learn weapon spawn times best routes etc and play to win. Competitive is a mindset not a set of rules.

12

> If by competitive halo you mean paid turneys host by MLG etc then sure you can call it dead.
>
> But i disagree with your use of both the words casual and competitive. I consider myself to be competitive considering i go out of my way to learn weapon spawn times best routes etc and play to win. Competitive is a mindset not a set of rules.

All the good players are going away, because they understand game-mechanics. I am not saying other people aren’t leaving the franchise too, but the great players leaves mostly because Halo 4 is a totally broken game (and noobfriendly cod-ripoff).

I don’t play Halo 4, my friends doesn’t (Mostly 50s on Halo 3), The pro’s dislikes the game and is now leaving for COD because AGL doesn’t pay them …

Here’s some quotes I found in OP’s video:

Enable:

Mikwen - Hate Halo 4 and just wanna jump off a bridge when playing Reach/I never thought the game was good/Sprint is the worst thing that ever was added to an Arena Shooter, whoever added it die/They are ruining the game/All the maps sucks/The Lobbies are bad/

Formal - Just wanna play halo 3 and COD: Ghosts/They do all kinda suck (Talking about maps)/

(I think this was formal talking but I am unsure): Name one thing that is better in Halo 4 than Halo 3 and Halo 2,

Ghandi misses the satisfaction of actually outskilling someone.

Other Quotes: Camo is game breaking (as an armor ability), Halo 4s skill-based ranking system is poor, descope is really important, I think having four or five guns that are similar to each other kinda hurts the game,

Another Video:

Ghandi - Halo 4 and Reach just isn’t Halo

Another Video:

Ninja: (Talking about Halo 3) No matter what I search, I’m a 50, MLG, Doubles, the games are close, it’s also fun, there’s no stupid sprint/It’s hard to get a good game in Halo 4 (Poor-skill system)/ the ranking system that’s not obviously there/ (ninja naming many maps) the reason all the maps play bad, is because of sprint, it’s a lot easier to build a without sprint, than with it/

Basically, they all keep saying bad things about Halo 4.

If my friends buy Halo 5 it will only be for the campaign. I know I won’t buy it, not from 343 at least.

343 doesn’t understand they can’t have all this mess in Halo - Most of it works in COD because it takes absolutely no time before you die.

13

> All the good players are going away, because they understand game-mechanics. I am not saying other people aren’t leaving the franchise too, but the great players leaves mostly because Halo 4 is a totally broken game (and noobfriendly cod-ripoff).
>
> I don’t play Halo 4, my friends doesn’t (Mostly 50s on Halo 3), The pro’s dislikes the game and is now leaving for COD because AGL doesn’t pay them …
>
> Here’s some quotes I found in OP’s video:
>
> Enable:
>
> Mikwen - Hate Halo 4 and just wanna jump off a bridge when playing Reach/I never thought the game was good/Sprint is the worst thing that ever was added to an Arena Shooter, whoever added it die/They are ruining the game/All the maps sucks/The Lobbies are bad/
>
> Formal - Just wanna play halo 3 and COD: Ghosts/They do all kinda suck (Talking about maps)/
>
> (I think this was formal talking but I am unsure): Name one thing that is better in Halo 4 than Halo 3 and Halo 2,
>
> Ghandi misses the satisfaction of actually outskilling someone.
>
> Other Quotes: Camo is game breaking (as an armor ability), Halo 4s skill-based ranking system is poor, descope is really important, I think having four or five guns that are similar to each other kinda hurts the game,
>
> Another Video:
>
> Ghandi - Halo 4 and Reach just isn’t Halo
>
> Another Video:
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjSwYeA64Bg
>
> Ninja: (Talking about Halo 3) No matter what I search, I’m a 50, MLG, Doubles, the games are close, it’s also fun, there’s no stupid sprint/It’s hard to get a good game in Halo 4 (Poor-skill system)/ the ranking system that’s not obviously there/ (ninja naming many maps) the reason all the maps play bad, is because of sprint, it’s a lot easier to build a without sprint, than with it/
>
> Basically, they all keep saying bad things about Halo 4.
>
> If my friends buy Halo 5 it will only be for the campaign. I know I won’t buy it, not from 343 at least.
>
> 343 doesn’t understand they can’t have all this mess in Halo - Most of it works in COD because it takes absolutely no time before you die.

Thank you for posting specific quotes from that video I put up. :slight_smile:

However, I disagree with a few things you say. I do think 343i nowunderstands what needs to be done to make their Halo games great. It’s just that at this point, they don’t feel as though they should allocate resources to H4 when they could use those same resources to make H5 even better. So simply stating that you aren’t going to get H5 because of 343i’s first Halo game is a bit extreme, in my opinion.

The intent of my post isn’t to bash Halo 4 and state my opinions of the game per say. I’m just trying to let the people who don’t go to the Beyond forums know what’s going on with the professional gamers

14

I thanked you for your post. Welcome back.

15

To anyone who is failing to understand the topic of this post:

By competitive, OP means the part of the community that goes to tournaments that pay out. Yes, there are separate uses for that word, but in this case, it applies to a subsection of the Halo community.

As one of these “competitive” players, yes Halo is currently on life support. Please understand that I still love the game, but I have no interest in playing the current one. Especially not for money.

16

Are we talking about money or the game? Seems to me its more about money than the game.

17

> To anyone who is failing to understand the topic of this post:
>
> By competitive, OP means the part of the community that goes to tournaments that pay out. Yes, there are separate uses for that word, but in this case, it applies to a subsection of the Halo community.
>
[/quote]
And I do really have to say “so what?” to that. Halo never really was that much of a tournament quality game. It was certainly a popular one that above all else could draw attention, but that had everything to do with it’s other qualities that at the very least ran irrespective of the concerns of tournament style gaming. Dropping it is more suiting than a tragedy because it lets the franchise live on as the game it was always trying to be (ie. stupidly fun) in spite of how certain niches co-opted its bandwagon for their own self-promotion.

18

Wait, Mikwen, Formal, Enable, Gahndi, and possibly Ninja going to COD?

Halo is over.

RIP

Good trilogy

I admit

Should’ve ended at 3

Unless 343 really makes THE BEST HALO EVER for Xbox One. I’m not talking about Halo 3 or Halo 2, they need to go beyond those games. Wowing us like CE did 11 years ago is what it’s gonna take to revive the series.

They need to find a way to juggle the baggage with the franchise (Ex: Competing with other series, satisfying and bringing back competitive players while also working out casual and long time fans)

If not, they might as well drop multiplayer, put in a refined version of SPops or Firefight and just focus on the campaign.

343, with Halo 5, this is either the best decision you’ve made or the worst. Whatever it is, I doubt I’ll live long enough to find out.

19

> Are we talking about money or the game? Seems to me its more about money than the game.

Basically…yeah. It comes down to money. Money is the way that 343i can show that they’re still supporting Halo. The Global Championships was the first step. Another 4v4 tournament would be greatly beneficial.

Also, let’s face it: Halo 4 isn’t going to change anymore as a game, unless they release a title update that makes massive changes – which isn’t going to happen.

> Wait, Mikwen, Formal, Enable, Gahndi, and possibly Ninja going to COD?
>
> Halo is over.
>
> RIP
>
> Good trilogy
>
> I admit
>
> Should’ve ended at 3
>
> Unless 343 really makes THE BEST HALO EVER for Xbox One. I’m not talking about Halo 3 or Halo 2, they need to go beyond those games. Wowing us like CE did 11 years ago is what it’s gonna take to revive the series.
>
> They need to find a way to juggle the baggage with the franchise (Ex: Competing with other series, satisfying and bringing back competitive players while also working out casual and long time fans)
>
> If not, they might as well drop multiplayer, put in a refined version of SPops or Firefight and just focus on the campaign.
>
> 343, with Halo 5, this is either the best decision you’ve made or the worst. Whatever it is, I doubt I’ll live long enough to find out.

Mikwen is quitting all forms of e-sports because he’s broke af and wants to focus on real life problems (finishing school, getting a job, etc.)

Formal and Enable have teamed up with Snakebite to form a team of three for CoD. They’re possibly picking up Ninja, Ogre 2, or Maniac as their fourth.

Gandhi hasn’t been competing in Halo in a long time, but he has been casting at the Halo tournaments. He’s now trying to make the switch to casting CoD games.

Ninja, the Halo stream warrior (cuz he used to stream 10 hours of Halo a day) has recently been streaming CoD for the entire day to try and catch up to CoD pro’s level of play.

20

Competitive Halo isn’t DEAD. Next halo will bring back Competitive Halo. 343i learnt from there mistakes