I’ve made it a point not to read the forums for Halo 4 since forums have become a place where this self entitled generation goes to tell a game company that their game is terrible because it does not meet 100% of the player’s personal preferences. For some reason I was tempted to check after CSR came out to see if the community accepted or rejected CSR. What I have found is about as much complaining as I anticipated.
Why shouldn’t 343 make visible 1-50 ranks? People say that they loved ranking up in Halo 2 and 3, but I think you have all forgotten why the visible ranking system made multiplayer WORSE in those games than Halo Reach and Halo 4.
Boosting, modding, and purchasing of accounts in order to show off a 50 rank made multiplayer terrible after a certain threshold, and it was a nightmare for Bungie. Banning players and dealing with the appeals of those that were banned took up way too many resources for Bungie for Halo 3. Halo 2 did not have a system in place to deal with modders, and a legitimate 40+ player was almost impossible, as every game I played after rank 40 was against an unkillable modded player.
Halo 3 was plagued with boosting and people de-ranking. I played so many games where my teammates were committing suicide, or the other team quit out.
The community complained to Bungie that they wanted the rankings in Halo Reach because the majority of the players were competitive players. Bungie gives players the Arena, which to date is still the best judge of skill in Halo. You couldn’t boost yourself to Onyx. If you were Onyx, you were the best of the best. And guess what? That playlist had 400 players within a month of release. Because despite what the vocal minority on the forums say, people were not interested in super competitive gameplay. We just like seeing numbers next to our name get higher. This was given to us in two ways with Halo 4: A rank that rewards you for simply playing that will always increase, and a rank that goes up or down based on your performance. Since the latter is not viewable in game, there is no market for purchasing accounts, and boosting would be pretty darn pointless.
As it turns out, people who are paid professionally to design a video game knows what is best for us, despite some players’ unrealistic expectations.
343, thanks for making the first Halo that I actually want to play (unlike Reach, got stale pretty quick) that has not yet made me replace a controller that was destroyed out of frustration of some kind directly related to visible rankings and the griefing that occurred from people wanting to show off a 50, regardless of its legitimacy.
I fully expect to be called a fanboy, because these days liking a product and the company that made it is a bad thing. Won’t bother me a bit.