Halo Xbox One needs something for everyone.

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Population for Halo games has steadily been decreasing or getting too spread out over various Halo games over the years. The population overall still is small compared to Halo 3 in its height whether you liked it or not. What I think all of us can agree on is that the population has fallen because not everybody has been made happy with their option and 343i nor Bungie ever tried fully to make everybody happy. So I propose we do this.

4 playlist groupings:

Infinity
Classic
Ranked
Community

This gives a little something for everybody, but that isn’t all that should change about our Matchmaking structure.

Playlist consolidation is the scourge of Halo’s population. When Halo 4 began it held several gametype specific playlists all of which held their populations strongly for months in. King of the Hill, Oddball and CTF all have or did hold their populations because people could play the gametypes they loved without having to fight via voting. Yet look what happened with Oddball and KoTH. Team Objective came around and two playlists that held collectively around 5000 people deserted. Rather than holding the combined populations 4500 of those people left objective and moved on.

So why remove these playlists? Call of Duty does gametype related playlists and it is highly successful. Think about it, a Halo game where you never have to worry about getting Capture the Flag when you so desperately want to play King of the Hill.

Now I know many people reject Call of Duty for doing anything right, but they aren’t the only ones. PC games allow you freedom to choose gametypes or quests or objectives. Halo should do the same.

This what I propose.

Infinity:
Team Infinity Slayer
Big Team Infinity Slayer
Big Team Skirmish
Oddball
King of the Hill
Capture the Flag
Extraction
Dominion
(Assault?)
Regicide

Classic:
Team Slayer Classic
Team Objective
Big Team Classics
Classic FFA

Ranked:
Team Throwdown Slayer
Lone Wolves
Throwdown Skirmish
Team SWAT
Team Snipers

Community:
Grifball
Flood
Multi-Team
Action Sack

Yes this is indeed a LOT of playlists. However, didn’t Halo 3 have a lot of playlists? Halo Reach even more? Look at how successful both games were in the long and short term. Halo Xbox One should continue that by offering something for everybody. That is one of the main keys to keeping the population. Playlist consolidation can happen if necessary, but by offering something for everybody players can come and stay whenever they want.

Many of the community’s fights are over how playlists should feature this gametype or this gametype or take away armor abilities or Loadouts. This way removes this infighting. This may seem difficult, but look at what players can accomplish on their own by changing gametype settings around. If 343 can do this simply by using the settings they build.

2

Reach and long-term success? I’m not so sure about that.

The population isn’t small because there wasn’t something for everyone in matchmaking. It’s small because the game isn’t good. Ranks and classic gametype settings are only band-aid fixes if the core is weak (high aim assist, no option to drop the flag, no option to disable sprint, etc).

Frankly, I think your proposal would almost definitely warrant consolidation. Classic and Ranked should be the same and there certainly is no need for three BTB playlists, let alone two for Infinity.

3

> Reach and long-term success? I’m not so sure about that.
>
> The population isn’t small because there wasn’t something for everyone in matchmaking. It’s small because the game isn’t good. Ranks and classic gametype settings are only band-aid fixes if the core is weak (high aim assist, no option to drop the flag, no option to disable sprint, etc).
>
> Frankly, I think your proposal would almost definitely warrant consolidation. Classic and Ranked should be the same and there certainly is no need for three BTB playlists, let alone two for Infinity.

Out for several years and still holding 20,000 players? I’d call that relative success.

Now for Halo 4 how do you know that? I personally love the gameplay and so did many of the 60,000 or so that used to play the game before playlists started getting thrown together.

Big Team Skirmish is popular on its own so why not keep it? Plus people want to play classic gametypes in Big Team without Loadouts or armor abilities.

I could agree with putting together classic and ranked, but I’m going off what most people would want. There are many who want to play old Halo without getting kicked out by tryhards.

You are speaking about aim assist as if Halo never had it. Let me remind you of Halo 2’s massive aim assists and hot boxes. This isn’t about gameplay, this is about the ability to play the game without repression.

4

Something for everyone: CUSTOM GAMES. Something that 343i doesn’t seem to understand. Even if Matchmaking is screwed, Custom Games still have the potential to bring players back. At least, if Custom Games hadn’t been entirely gutted and deprived of options in Halo 4. Honestly, if Custom Games in Halo 5 have all the options from previous games and there’s a Custom Games Browser, I won’t care how horrible Matchmaking is likely to be.

5

> Out for several years and still holding 20,000 players? I’d call that relative success.

20,000 in its third year is not good, considering Halo 3 spanked those numbers at the same point in its lifespan with just as much competition. As for Halo 4, the fact that it can hardly break 30K in its first year is even worse.

> Big Team Skirmish is popular on its own so why not keep it? Plus people want to play classic gametypes in Big Team without Loadouts or armor abilities.

Allow me to clarify. Big Team Infinity Slayer and Big Team Skirmish should be the same playlist. There’s no reason that slayer and objective gametypes cannot co-exist in the same playlist. It’s worked in the past. Also, I can’t help but think that only a small number of people really want to play classic stuff in BTB, considering that the cry for classic gameplay mostly came from the 4v4 competitive players.

> I could agree with putting together classic and ranked, but I’m going off what most people would want. There are many who want to play old Halo without getting kicked out by tryhards.

Well, if the ranks actually work properly, then the tryhards will level up and be separated from the bad players.

> You are speaking about aim assist as if Halo never had it. Let me remind you of Halo 2’s massive aim assists and hot boxes. This isn’t about gameplay, this is about the ability to play the game without repression.

Halo 2 was the series’ foray into online console multiplayer. I imagine that things turned out the way that they did because Bungie didn’t want to risk difficult and frustrating aiming and damaging.

Long search times are repressions. I can assure you that if the next Halo game loses as many players as Halo 4 did in its first year, your strategy would not work at all. Sorry.

6

> Something for everyone: CUSTOM GAMES. Something that 343i doesn’t seem to understand. Even if Matchmaking is screwed, Custom Games still have the potential to bring players back. At least, if Custom Games hadn’t been entirely gutted and deprived of options in Halo 4. Honestly, if Custom Games in Halo 5 have all the options from previous games and there’s a Custom Games Browser, I won’t care how horrible Matchmaking is likely to be.

Is it bad to say that I like this suggestion a little better than mine? :stuck_out_tongue:

7

i don’t like what i am going to say… but if they want more players to get Halo for Mutliplayer, 343 will have to figure out how to draw people away from CoD or hope some how that franchise randomly implodes on it’s self before/during 2014’s holiday season

8

> Classic and Ranked should be the same and there certainly is no need for three BTB playlists, let alone two for Infinity.

I disagree. I am not a competitive player, I play just for fun, but Infinity BTB is crap. Infinity settings destroy map control and vehicle gameplay, the fundamentals of BTB.
Infinity Halo is not social Halo.