<mark>This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not create alternate accounts to bypass forum bans. Alternate accounts will be permanently banned, and offending users will be subject to both temporary and permanent bans.</mark>
*Original post. Click at your own discretion.
It’s hard to argue that the recent Halo releases have fallen short
Game sales are down, player counts are down, the community is a fraction of what it once was
That’s not to say that there haven’t been some positives since the golden era of Halo
I really believe Halo: Infinite has a chance to float this sinking ship
The purpose of this post is to discuss what we think went wrong
Suggest how 343 can make a game that brings the franchise forward once again
I personally believe Reach was the first misstep, however looking back it wasn’t as bad as I first thought
There is a clear feeling in the community that Halo: Infinite may be better served building upon the success of the original trilogy
At the very least in gameplay and art style. Going back to a simpler game, no sprint, no abilities, a truly classic Halo
This is something I would personally want to see, I think Halo needs to stop trying to copy other titles
Halo was great because it was unique. However that’s not to say it doesn’t need to evolve
What I am saying is we can move the title forward without throwing out what worked
The old saying, if it isn’t broke then don’t fix it was clearly ignored long ago
The sad truth is I find it hard to believe 343 listen to the community
We have had two major titles from them that have been disappointing
I have been playing Halo since the beginning, like many of you I am sure
Just like any loyal fan I have invested ample time and money into this franchise
It has given me most of my best gaming memories, is it too much to ask for a game that replicates that magic?
I would love to hear everyone’s opinions on the matter.
I agree it started going downhill with Reach, even though people don’t want to admit Bungie messed up. Then 343i came along and instead of fixing its problems they ran with it, H4 killed Halo in my opinion, it was just too far in the wrong direction. Then we got H5, which even though fixing some of the issues from Reach/4, still is just too different from Halo, it at least revived a little bit (for me anyway). With some role changes that have happened H5 is at least better now than it was under old leadership, MCC is actually getting attention after being ignored for so long, and now we see Infinite’s art style is a return to old. Will Infinite be what Halo 4 should’ve been? A true evolution of Halo and not a different game with the Halo name? Maybe not, but I’m hopeful it’ll feel more like Halo than 4 and 5 have.
I remember not liking Reach campaign much but played the heck out of multiplayer. Then Halo 4 really killing my interest in Halo for a while. I didn’t enjoy the campaign, didn’t like the look of the game, and was my least played Halo multiplayer. It looked like the game graphics couldn’t properly run on the Xbox or something, dunno what it was.
Halo 5 was a lot of fun although the campaign wasn’t very replayable for me. But liked the big battles of warzone and the visual was much better than Halo 4.
My most played campaigns are probably Halo 1 then 2, then 3.
For Infinite I’m very glad they have a new engine to work with, that’s yuge
It absolutely boggles my mind that people can’t see this trend. 343 has clearly even seen it with reverting to a more classic art style for Infinite. 4 and 5 aren’t bad games, they’re just not Halo games and people can tell that when they play them. 343 needs to take a step back gameplay wise and maybe not go 100% classic but they have recapture the Halo feel which has been lost. There’s plenty of advanced movement games floating around right now but none that feel like how Halo used to. I think 343 changed too much too fast just to try and make Halo their own. But change just for the sake of change is never good.
Oh boy! Another one of these threads!
Do I think halo has hit rock bottom … no. With 343i hiring more people to fix mcc, hiring people to make more side halo games like FireTeam Raven, Halo Wars 2, and Spartan Strike only shows that 343i is doing alright to afford doing all of these things. With the whole “halo reclaimer saga” pushing for halo 4, 5, 6, 7 at a minimum suggest that halo will still be around past Halo Infinite.
As for the whole “golden era of halo” is opinionated tbh.
(The Halo cycle: hate the current game, like the past game, love the game before the past game)
(Bungie)
-Halo CE came out as was the best received halo game of all time and has receive some rather rediculous gaming rewards and hall of fame status.
-H2 was an utter mess at launch with CE fans hating that all the “true” halo weapons got changed and several for the worse. The multiplayer and campaign were bugged to high heaven with glitches, severe lag, 2 to 12 melees to kill someone, the list goes on. Campaign on Legendary was so unbalanced that completing LASO has only been done by 12 people the last I checked. The rather -Yoink- cliffhanger ending. The covenant magically knowing English out of no where. There are way more detailed posts on Bungie.net on why h2 was bad in the eyes of CE fans at that time but needless to say the halo fan base fractured there FIRST.
-H3 was probably the most stable launch halo has had excluding CE. But the long term fans at the time of course found its flaws. Campaign was almost just as linear as H2. All the weapons got changed AGAIN. The battle rifle didn’t even function the same in 1v1s. All the button combos were gone. Campaign was the shortest campaign of the 3 halo games. The ranking system was utterly filled with boosters or people grinding 50s for strangers. Lag Switch and aim bot became more and more of an issue as the game ages. Probably the least offensive halo game since they tried to copy h2 so hard. The core fan base was again fractured because of these issues.
-H3ODST it was a 60$ spin off game that practically no one bought because it was overpriced. If you did buy it at launch it was for the map packs tied to H3 rather than for the game itself. This is where the whole “Microsoft is milking halo” started for those of you whom are curious.
-HaloWars a console RTS. The Xbox controller isn’t complex enough to handle a true RTS akin to PC so the game was Dumbed down in unit counts and map sizes. Bringing nothing new to the table but extending the halo lore. I’m over simplifying this because HW wasn’t a FPS so people didn’t buy it.
-HaloReach man where do I begin. Bloom ruined multiplayer. Spartan Abilities ruined map design. Load outs were introduced. The game depended on cut campaign levels for multiplayer maps. Later on they added Forge maps to multiplayer, so enjoy looking at grey every game. The campaign was bugged to high heaven but not akin to h2. Cutscenes wouldn’t properly load, check points would disappear, backgrounds and skyboxes were inconsistent or flickering, the Friendly Ai was extremely familiar with Friendly Fire. Playable Elites had all their customization tossed out the window. The whole “migrating to new host” during gun fights was annoying. MLG left halo due to halo reach’s gameplay state. The most largest fracture of the halo community happened with this game.
343i
-Halo CEA. CE now with Reach graphics and multiplayer. Still the same CE at its core but the multiplayer spawns were trash. Only long term halo fans picked this game up.
-Halo 4 Fans hated the new art style, Spartan Abilities, prometheans, loadouts again, Spartan Ops was destiny before destiny was a thing (bad story and playing the same map 500 times), and multiplayer map design. The second biggest fracture of the halo community. Bugs were only introduced post dlc but everyone left before that so I won’t mention those specifically. Playable Elites and some game types removed.
- Spartan Assault a cheap lil mobile game. The story was fine, it was pretty cardboard (cheap and plain.) the main issue was the microtransactions being encouraged to finish the game.
- MCC make by a bunch of smaller companies (Havok, Saber, Certain Affinity) later had to be updates (ODST) by actual Bungie employees and even later to be worked one and fixed by 343i twice, long story short … too many people working on the same and tripped over one another. The game didn’t work in almost every aspect as launch. The third biggest fracture of the halo community.
-Spartan Strike the removal of co-op but overall an improvement from Assault.
- Halo 5 Guardians the fans almost universally have a distaste for the story and art style. Squad mechanic Ai are frustrating. The removal of split screen, a reduction of customization, the borderline false advertising prior to launch, no game modes and limited maps per playlist, btb and Forge were non existent until dlc. Microtransactions run the progression of the game and force fans to believe its pay-to-win or grind-to-win. The PC version was and still isn’t optimized. Still only playable Spartans, and the game required over a years worth of weapon tweaking to become more balanced and consistent. Spartan Abilities and ADS are still a turn off for fans. Hijacking abuse made vehicles useless. Another case for fracturing the community.
-Halo Wars 2 same issues as halo wars 1 but with microtransactions and a cliff hanger ending. Ranking was severely delayed and mods are non-existent.
-Halo Fireteam Raven: it’s an arcade game so … limited accessibility.
-Halo Infinite: is probably going to be hated and h5 is probably going to start looking good and h4 would be some people’s gift from god like how the halo cycle ALWAYS repeats itself.
> 2533274909139271;5:
> Oh boy! Another one of these threads!
>
> Do I think halo has hit rock bottom … no. With 343i hiring more people to fix mcc, hiring people to make more side halo games like FireTeam Raven, Halo Wars 2, and Spartan Strike only shows that 343i is doing alright to afford doing all of these things. With the whole “halo reclaimer saga” pushing for halo 4, 5, 6, 7 at a minimum suggest that halo will still be around past Halo Infinite.
>
> As for the whole “golden era of halo” is opinionated tbh.
> (The Halo cycle: hate the current game, like the past game, love the game before the past game)
>
> (Bungie)
> -Halo CE came out as was the best received halo game of all time and has receive some rather rediculous gaming rewards and hall of fame status.
> -H2 was an utter mess at launch with CE fans hating that all the “true” halo weapons got changed and several for the worse. The multiplayer and campaign were bugged to high heaven with glitches, severe lag, 2 to 12 melees to kill someone, the list goes on. Campaign on Legendary was so unbalanced that completing LASO has only been done by 12 people the last I checked. The rather -Yoink- cliffhanger ending. The covenant magically knowing English out of no where. There are way more detailed posts on Bungie.net on why h2 was bad in the eyes of CE fans at that time but needless to say the halo fan base fractured there FIRST.
> -H3 was probably the most stable launch halo has had excluding CE. But the long term fans at the time of course found its flaws. Campaign was almost just as linear as H2. All the weapons got changed AGAIN. The battle rifle didn’t even function the same in 1v1s. All the button combos were gone. Campaign was the shortest campaign of the 3 halo games. The ranking system was utterly filled with boosters or people grinding 50s for strangers. Lag Switch and aim bot became more and more of an issue as the game ages. Probably the least offensive halo game since they tried to copy h2 so hard. The core fan base was again fractured because of these issues.
> -H3ODST it was a 60$ spin off game that practically no one bought because it was overpriced. If you did buy it at launch it was for the map packs tied to H3 rather than for the game itself. This is where the whole “Microsoft is milking halo” started for those of you whom are curious.
> -HaloWars a console RTS. The Xbox controller isn’t complex enough to handle a true RTS akin to PC so the game was Dumbed down in unit counts and map sizes. Bringing nothing new to the table but extending the halo lore. I’m over simplifying this because HW wasn’t a FPS so people didn’t buy it.
> -HaloReach man where do I begin. Bloom ruined multiplayer. Spartan Abilities ruined map design. Load outs were introduced. The game depended on cut campaign levels for multiplayer maps. Later on they added Forge maps to multiplayer, so enjoy looking at grey every game. The campaign was bugged to high heaven but not akin to h2. Cutscenes wouldn’t properly load, check points would disappear, backgrounds and skyboxes were inconsistent or flickering, the Friendly Ai was extremely familiar with Friendly Fire. Playable Elites had all their customization tossed out the window. The whole “migrating to new host” during gun fights was annoying. MLG left halo due to halo reach’s gameplay state. The most largest fracture of the halo community happened with this game.
>
> 343i
> -Halo CEA. CE now with Reach graphics and multiplayer. Still the same CE at its core but the multiplayer spawns were trash. Only long term halo fans picked this game up.
> -Halo 4 Fans hated the new art style, Spartan Abilities, prometheans, loadouts again, Spartan Ops was destiny before destiny was a thing (bad story and playing the same map 500 times), and multiplayer map design. The second biggest fracture of the halo community. Bugs were only introduced post dlc but everyone left before that so I won’t mention those specifically. Playable Elites and some game types removed.
> - Spartan Assault a cheap lil mobile game. The story was fine, it was pretty cardboard (cheap and plain.) the main issue was the microtransactions being encouraged to finish the game.
> - MCC make by a bunch of smaller companies (Havok, Saber, Certain Affinity) later had to be updates (ODST) by actual Bungie employees and even later to be worked one and fixed by 343i twice, long story short … too many people working on the same and tripped over one another. The game didn’t work in almost every aspect as launch. The third biggest fracture of the halo community.
> -Spartan Strike the removal of co-op but overall an improvement from Assault.
> - Halo 5 Guardians the fans almost universally have a distaste for the story and art style. Squad mechanic Ai are frustrating. The removal of split screen, a reduction of customization, the borderline false advertising prior to launch, no game modes and limited maps per playlist, btb and Forge were non existent until dlc. Microtransactions run the progression of the game and force fans to believe its pay-to-win or grind-to-win. The PC version was and still isn’t optimized. Still only playable Spartans, and the game required over a years worth of weapon tweaking to become more balanced and consistent. Spartan Abilities and ADS are still a turn off for fans. Hijacking abuse made vehicles useless. Another case for fracturing the community.
> -Halo Wars 2 same issues as halo wars 1 but with microtransactions and a cliff hanger ending. Ranking was severely delayed and mods are non-existent.
> -Halo Fireteam Raven: it’s an arcade game so … limited accessibility.
> -Halo Infinite: is probably going to be hated and h5 is probably going to start looking good and h4 would be some people’s gift from god like how the halo cycle ALWAYS repeats itself.
Thousands of halo 3 games played and I’ve seen people lagging and people bein very good at getting headshots and actually I saw a guy mod the game one time,but I’ve never seen aim bot in halo 3 and only had a lag switch game one time.You talk as if those issues were a constant thing.Halo 3 was probably the most popular halo multiplayer but supposedly it fractured the core fan base?
> 2533275031939856;2:
> I agree it started going downhill with Reach, even though people don’t want to admit Bungie messed up. Then 343i came along and instead of fixing its problems they ran with it, H4 killed Halo in my opinion, it was just too far in the wrong direction. Then we got H5, which even though fixing some of the issues from Reach/4, still is just too different from Halo, it at least revived a little bit (for me anyway). With some role changes that have happened H5 is at least better now than it was under old leadership, MCC is actually getting attention after being ignored for so long, and now we see Infinite’s art style is a return to old. Will Infinite be what Halo 4 should’ve been? A true evolution of Halo and not a different game with the Halo name? Maybe not, but I’m hopeful it’ll feel more like Halo than 4 and 5 have.
> 2533274830166194;6:
> > 2533274909139271;5:
> > Oh boy! Another one of these threads!
> >
> > Do I think halo has hit rock bottom … no. With 343i hiring more people to fix mcc, hiring people to make more side halo games like FireTeam Raven, Halo Wars 2, and Spartan Strike only shows that 343i is doing alright to afford doing all of these things. With the whole “halo reclaimer saga” pushing for halo 4, 5, 6, 7 at a minimum suggest that halo will still be around past Halo Infinite.
> >
> > As for the whole “golden era of halo” is opinionated tbh.
> > (The Halo cycle: hate the current game, like the past game, love the game before the past game)
> >
> > (Bungie)
> > -Halo CE came out as was the best received halo game of all time and has receive some rather rediculous gaming rewards and hall of fame status.
> > -H2 was an utter mess at launch with CE fans hating that all the “true” halo weapons got changed and several for the worse. The multiplayer and campaign were bugged to high heaven with glitches, severe lag, 2 to 12 melees to kill someone, the list goes on. Campaign on Legendary was so unbalanced that completing LASO has only been done by 12 people the last I checked. The rather -Yoink- cliffhanger ending. The covenant magically knowing English out of no where. There are way more detailed posts on Bungie.net on why h2 was bad in the eyes of CE fans at that time but needless to say the halo fan base fractured there FIRST.
> > -H3 was probably the most stable launch halo has had excluding CE. But the long term fans at the time of course found its flaws. Campaign was almost just as linear as H2. All the weapons got changed AGAIN. The battle rifle didn’t even function the same in 1v1s. All the button combos were gone. Campaign was the shortest campaign of the 3 halo games. The ranking system was utterly filled with boosters or people grinding 50s for strangers. Lag Switch and aim bot became more and more of an issue as the game ages. Probably the least offensive halo game since they tried to copy h2 so hard. The core fan base was again fractured because of these issues.
> > -H3ODST it was a 60$ spin off game that practically no one bought because it was overpriced. If you did buy it at launch it was for the map packs tied to H3 rather than for the game itself. This is where the whole “Microsoft is milking halo” started for those of you whom are curious.
> > -HaloWars a console RTS. The Xbox controller isn’t complex enough to handle a true RTS akin to PC so the game was Dumbed down in unit counts and map sizes. Bringing nothing new to the table but extending the halo lore. I’m over simplifying this because HW wasn’t a FPS so people didn’t buy it.
> > -HaloReach man where do I begin. Bloom ruined multiplayer. Spartan Abilities ruined map design. Load outs were introduced. The game depended on cut campaign levels for multiplayer maps. Later on they added Forge maps to multiplayer, so enjoy looking at grey every game. The campaign was bugged to high heaven but not akin to h2. Cutscenes wouldn’t properly load, check points would disappear, backgrounds and skyboxes were inconsistent or flickering, the Friendly Ai was extremely familiar with Friendly Fire. Playable Elites had all their customization tossed out the window. The whole “migrating to new host” during gun fights was annoying. MLG left halo due to halo reach’s gameplay state. The most largest fracture of the halo community happened with this game.
> >
> > 343i
> > -Halo CEA. CE now with Reach graphics and multiplayer. Still the same CE at its core but the multiplayer spawns were trash. Only long term halo fans picked this game up.
> > -Halo 4 Fans hated the new art style, Spartan Abilities, prometheans, loadouts again, Spartan Ops was destiny before destiny was a thing (bad story and playing the same map 500 times), and multiplayer map design. The second biggest fracture of the halo community. Bugs were only introduced post dlc but everyone left before that so I won’t mention those specifically. Playable Elites and some game types removed.
> > - Spartan Assault a cheap lil mobile game. The story was fine, it was pretty cardboard (cheap and plain.) the main issue was the microtransactions being encouraged to finish the game.
> > - MCC make by a bunch of smaller companies (Havok, Saber, Certain Affinity) later had to be updates (ODST) by actual Bungie employees and even later to be worked one and fixed by 343i twice, long story short … too many people working on the same and tripped over one another. The game didn’t work in almost every aspect as launch. The third biggest fracture of the halo community.
> > -Spartan Strike the removal of co-op but overall an improvement from Assault.
> > - Halo 5 Guardians the fans almost universally have a distaste for the story and art style. Squad mechanic Ai are frustrating. The removal of split screen, a reduction of customization, the borderline false advertising prior to launch, no game modes and limited maps per playlist, btb and Forge were non existent until dlc. Microtransactions run the progression of the game and force fans to believe its pay-to-win or grind-to-win. The PC version was and still isn’t optimized. Still only playable Spartans, and the game required over a years worth of weapon tweaking to become more balanced and consistent. Spartan Abilities and ADS are still a turn off for fans. Hijacking abuse made vehicles useless. Another case for fracturing the community.
> > -Halo Wars 2 same issues as halo wars 1 but with microtransactions and a cliff hanger ending. Ranking was severely delayed and mods are non-existent.
> > -Halo Fireteam Raven: it’s an arcade game so … limited accessibility.
> > -Halo Infinite: is probably going to be hated and h5 is probably going to start looking good and h4 would be some people’s gift from god like how the halo cycle ALWAYS repeats itself.
>
> Thousands of halo 3 games played and I’ve seen people lagging and people bein very good at getting headshots and actually I saw a guy mod the game one time,but I’ve never seen aim bot in halo 3 and only had a lag switch game one time.You talk as if those issues were a constant thing.Halo 3 was probably the most popular halo multiplayer but supposedly it fractured the core fan base?
Gathering more new fans is not the same and losing old fans. H3 May have gather the most amount of halo players but that doesn’t mean it didn’t lose existing h2 and CE fans.