I love halo and want to congratulate 343 on the daunting task of delivering us halo 4. It could not have been easy. I do like aspects of the game like campaign at times (i was disappointed with story) and the potential that spartan ops has. Hopefully it gets better.
Normally I don’t post let alone use the population argument to claim that a game is dieing however, I was looking at the population of Reach 7-8 months post launch was extremely surprised that it still had anywhere from 500,000 - 700,000 people! Halo 4 recently clocked in a little more than 50,000 the other day with an average now of less than 100,000. I’m not trying to hate on this game because I believe at its core it is the best halo ever. Some serious changes need to come into effect however to bring that population back. I believe it has to do with 343 trying to dumb halo down with ordnance which turns slayer into a fiesta and took away map control, etc. I don’t have to start with load outs, specializations, and “perks” (no matter how much you say they aren’t everyone in the industry knows they are 343) that changed the game from a competitive, strategic environment where fighting for weapons and map positions were key to run around mindlessly killing people till god decides to drop rocket, binary rifle, damage boost, incineration cannon from the sky. The game feels like halo but plays like a cheap call of duty rip off. The dmr destroyed the fun that was BTB because now everyone camps the sides of the map and spams dmr. Having a rifle that everyone spawns with that can shoot across a map like vahalla is game breaking and yet so painfully obvious i don’t know how someone at 343 failed to realize that. This game had the potential to be the best halo to date and while I applaud 343 for taking a chance with some things mentioned above, its not halo and desont play like halo. If they want to make a game like cod go make cod. Halo 3 was more popular than cod because it was nothing like it. It was unique, competitive and still fun with almost no random elements implemented making it fair from the start of a match to the end. it was halo. Halo 4 has armor abilities, specializations, tactical packages, support upgrades, and medals for just about anything. it becomes more difficult for someone to get better when a game is full of unbalanced game changing perks that give some players the advantage over others in otherwise equal scenarios just to cater to newbies (which failed)halo 4 is the least popular halo proved the the HUGE decline in multiplayer (chart links below) and that’s because the so obviously tried to copy cod. Either go back and start from halo 3 or please stop making halo because your alienating all the old fans and not gaining any new ones because the new kids are just gonna play cod instead of this poorly constructed copy.
On a side note there is no excuse for the amount of features that were left out of the game such as file share, assault, custom options, forge to name a few. 343 should have made all existing halo functions top priority and than focused on what they wanted to change and slowly implement their changes overtime to matchmaking. Instead we were given a drastically different and very limited halo and very slowly getting some old features returned. Soon… This has so much potential but I feel the lack of basic and rational decisions making for this game was out the window and is to blame for the decline.
Been playing halo in 01. Ive never done anything like this but for once in my halo career i needed to vent my frustrations and disappointment with this game and the unfortunate cod direction its taking.
Reach Charts
http://forums.bungie.org/halo/archive37.pl?read=1084475
Halo 4 Charts
http://halocharts.com/2012/chart/dailypeakpopulation/all
Should 343 start from halo 3 and build upon that or continue down their current path?