Distinction, winning, and incentive.

Games Other Halo
1

Analogy, skip if you want.

Jimmy is your co-worker. You and Jimmy have the same job as about 10 others at a company and pull work from the same source, and all have the same wage and benefits. You have coordinated amongst your group who will do what so everything gets done. But Jimmy spends most of his day having fun in the BreakROom. You want to keep the boss man happy so you all take care of his work. Besides, he won’t care. If you all can do it without Jimmy doing his part, you can handle that much work anyways - pleading or complaining won’t help.

You eventually get frustrated and quit the company. You take a vacation to clear your head and hit up the casinos. You see a lively table of Blackjack and decide to give it a try. You don’t really know what you’re doing but you get free drinks and have fun conversations. However the casino is taking all of your chips. Now the rest of the table has slowly slipped away because they aren’t keeping their money either, since you joined. You call it a night, down $1000.

The next day you recall watching that movie about people scoring huge by counting cards. You do some research and learn about the basic strategy of blackjack and how counting can help you beat the odds. After some free online practice, you head back to a table. You win some you lose some, but generally you are making money instead of losing it, while still pulling in free drinks and great conversation. Awesome!

/analogy

It’s all about incentive. Incentive to play legitimately towards a win in the gametype. Remove noticeable incentive, OR provide diversionary incentive, and the gametype is ruined. Winning is not an incentive. What you get for working harder/smarter than the other guy and ending up victorious… that’s incentive. Something you now have that he doesn’t because you earned it. And we see none of that in Halo anymore.

It doesn’t have to be a number/rank. There are many unconsidered possibilities. The sarkathlon challenges in H3 were an example, though particular. The Reach nameplates were another.
When you look at reach, the main reason we have no incentive (after the removal of ranks) is that losers essentially earn as much in game payout as winners. I can get to inheritor in reach even if the only thing I ever do is continuously jump off the map or suicide every single game. I will unlock all of the armor, all of the effects, everything. H4 appears to have a similar system. Even if you lose every game you play, you will eventually appear equal to someone who has won every single game in their “career.” This is acceptable?

Take away rank, that’s fine - it’s very base. But give the winner 100% payout and give the loser 50% or 10% or 0% payout even. As it stands, winning is irrelevant. If I don’t need to win the game to progress, what else can I do in the game? Maybe hide, grief, hold the objective, etc? All those are fun, if you ask the right people! So where are the people who want to play the gametype they voted for in the playlist they entered? Trapped in whatever meta-game other players have created.

It’s not about punishing those on the losing end, but about rewarding those on the winning side enough to encourage a proper fight for the top spot. Moreover, It’s not about forcing players into a specific playstyle (i.e. use whatever means you choose, but fulfill your objective).

Why should someone who has played 5 games have access to exactly everything someone who has played 1,000 games does? They shouldn’t. But just because you played, doesn’t mean you deserve all the prizes. The best rewards should brew competition to bring out the best of everything Halo, and be awarded appropriately.

Winning games should only be one of several ways to distinguish yourself. Forging could be another, and spartan ops yet another. But the core Halo experience is matchmaking, and distinction should certainly be available there.
So… why is it not?

2

In some pictures there have been large payouts for winning so be happy. also remember that casuals are the majority and that having too harsh a system is bad. on the flip coin reach’s system wasn’t harsh enough and there wasnt any meaning behind the ranks since everyone used the laser designator exploit. The armour in reach stopped becoming new or unlocked after a somewhat early rank and they were always overpriced.

basically the system now is a good comprimise in MY opinion

3

I can not agree more with Pope on this matter.

A system that effectively rewards player is almost a necessary, integral part of the Halo series. It differentiates it from many other FPS’s out there. I myself am not asking for the 1-50 system, but something that can effectively give the players who put forth the best effort would be highly enjoyable to anyone.

Casuals and more competitive gamers can all agree on that. If one is truly a casual gamer, some form of ranking system would be indifferent. As well, they’d be grouped with players of their skill level if they chose to engage in ranked game play, as it were. For me, as I play Reach, there isn’t much incentive other than armor to really achieve a better game. As Pope stated, continuous play will ultimately unlock it eventually. I would argue that even the reduction of credits earned would be something to consider.

This isn’t necessarily about catering to the competitive player, but rather, about giving incentive for all players to perform at their best. As we’ve seen in the bast, the 1-50 system fostered many forms of cheating such as deranking, DDOSing, etc. I think we’d all like to avoid such things. I know I would like to see these things avoided.

Some form of incentive, at one level or the other, would be a great addition to MM. Without it, it does not ask the player to be a team player, really. I am not saying that winning should be the only central factor of a video game. After all, video games a means of recreation with people from around the world, or even friends via LAN and split-screen. But at the same time, a reward for doing better seems integral to get players to do better online, work more cohesively as a team, and create an overall better MM experience.

I’d like to see some type of reward/incentive/goal for players to achieve in MM myself.

4

This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not post spam.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

Threads like this and spamming like 10 year olds are why other forums make jokes about waypoint, thanks op.

5

I don’t understand why anyone has negative reactions to these kinds of points. What we’re essentially talking about here is reinforcing desirable behavior—creating incentives that reward players for fulfilling the purpose of the game, which is to succeed and win.

“But Madman, people all over the world play Halo just to have fun, and if those people want to just drive the mongoose around Valhalla like idiots, who are we to tell them they can’t play that way?”

Put that in real-world terms. Here’s another analogy:

Jimmy is the 12 year-old-on your Little League team. You put him in right field because not many hits go there in Little League. And when they do, Jimmy likes to just pick up the ball, giggle, and then toss it over the fence. And you have to play Jimmy because his parents say so.

Parents all over the place tell their kids the point of Little League is to have fun, and that’s true. However, it doesn’t change the fact that they’re playing a game with a purpose, and throwing the ball over the fence when you’re an outfielder is undesirable behavior. We’re not talking about punishing these types of players. We’re talking about rewarding players who play the game as it’s intended to be played.

Supposedly, Halo 4 features bigger payouts for players who win, but these payouts are limited in scope. They assume players care about unlocks. What’s more is, even if players do care about unlocks, that incentive has a limited shelf life. Eventually, each player will run out of unlocks.

Dynamic ranks provided an everlasting carrot on a stick. It’s true they were flawed because they promoted undesirable behavior of another kind and generally polluted gamer attitudes in matchmaking. Saying they were dark times, though, is just plain silly.

Thing is, we never really got to use TrueSkill in Halo matchmaking as it was originally intended. Bungie augmented it so that, instead of only needing 5 or 10 games to diagnose TrueSkill, it took around 50. They said they wanted to promote a “hill-climbing” experience, and then, when they saw we actually were invested in it and it was promoting some negative behavior, they said, “wait a second, guys. Don’t treat it like an objective.” That was a bit contradictory.

Personally, I think TrueSkill should be another stat on your service record, and I think players should get the option to display whatever stats they’re proud of for public view. Beyond that, why not even give players the ability to display a very special stat on their nameplate? Many players are proud of their stats and would love to wear them as badges of honor. Why not make it an option?

I’m not necessarily in favor of any of this, personally. I just recognize the need and wholeheartedly agree that Halo needs something beyond getting that next weapon as incentive to perform. Wins need to have meaning within the architecture of the game, IMO.

6

Rank added so much to the game IMO. Reach was a pretty boring game for me. I’m blaming that on the lack of rank. I’m unable to find a competitive match at will. Or ever. I can’t remember the last time I played a match of Reach and didn’t completely destroy everybody. There wasn’t a good method of searching at your skill level.

Halo 3 was a different story. When I wanted a good match, I would play on my 50 and play against other 50’s. I would match boosted or bought 50’s once in a blue moon. I think most people grossly overestimate the amount of illegitimate 50’s.

That’s what I think about rank. And it was something to work for. My rank in Reach doesn’t mean anything to me. Ranking up is completely worthless, as I suspect it will be in Halo 4, which is disappointing. However, I can’t even describe the moment that I first achieved my 50 in Halo 3. Wow, what a sense of accomplishment. That was an achievement that actually meant something.

Another thing is not knowing who you’re playing against. Everytime I get a match in Reach I have to go to each player’s service record and look at everyone’s k/d ratio. That’s the only thing that gives me an idea of what’s about to go down. As opposed to matching a team of 50’s in Halo 3 and knowing that it was time to set up and get it on.

I’m seeing a lot of complaining about second accounts in Halo 3. I never really saw any of this since whenever I played ranked, it was at lvl 50. Still, the actions of a few is not a reason to abandon a feature, it is reason to improve upon it.

Winning against opponents of equal or greater skill is satisfying. Winning against derp Timmy and his derp friends in Reach is meaningless to me.