“For Halo 5: Guardians, eSports was a core consideration from the very beginning. We engaged with members of the Halo pro player community early, as well as used the expertise of the ex-pro Halo players on our own development team, integrating them both into our design process. Our goal was to build an Arena multiplayer experience that catered specifically to the aspiring eSports player, rewarding pure skill-based play within a sandbox that’s hyper-competitive”
Don’t do this. ESports was never the primary goal of halo multiplayer; never was and never should be. Halo had a competitive scene that developed naturally from the community without misplacing the casual fans. Halo 5 on the other hand was developed with Esports in mind from the start while also allowing the 1% pro players to heavily influence it. Look where it got them: the game’s population tanked so hard only a few months after release they haven’t disclosed any population numbers for the game. Ever.
Take the hint 343, maybe ESports isn’t worth alienating a majority of your population.
You are making a lot of assumptions on the break up of the Halo population… what the population drop may or may not have been… and what were the causes of the drop.
Halo wasn’t designed for ESports simply because they weren’t around when Halo first came out.
But that doesn’t discount their importance going forward. It’s not my cup of tea (I’m way too old for those shenanigans)… but I can see that they are only going to get more important in regards to the perception / marketing of the game.
Halo 5 is not what you get when pro Halo players have heavy influence, the whole idea is a joke.
At best, the pro players may have had an influence on static timers, the combat evolved mechanic, a decent utility weapon off spawn, and apparently had some influence on the return of descope if I recall correctly. None of that is the reason Halo 5 is such a mess. At best you might be able to blame part of the pro team for Halo 5’s notoriously bad aiming, but there still an entire studio that designed and greenlit the changes after the beta so shrugs.
I do think its fair to say that Halo 5 was heavily influenced by the idea of “Esports”, but the idea of “Esports” is not at all the same thing as the grassroots Halo competitive scene. 343’s focus on Esports was on presentation, not catering to the whims of the “1%”
Just about every part of the Halo community got shafted in one way or another with Halo 5, laying the blame on the pro team is absurd.
A heavy focus on competitive play isn’t the core of what makes Halo 5 flawed. Halo 5 wasn’t even made with the thoughts of what pro players wanted in mind, but from what 343 thought they wanted.
You’ll find plenty of complaints from comp players about Halo 5, like the base movement speed being too slow, the presence of grenade hitmarkers, the exceptionally high bullet magnetism (which could give Reach and Halo 2 a run for their money), a BR that’s too weak, a sniper that’s too easy, a DMR that cannot compete with the Magnum, an AR that’s too good at mid range but not good enough at close range, an OP Storm Rifle, etc…
If 343 don’t focus on making the game at the very least suitable for balanced high level play, we might end up with another Halo Reach or 4. They were fun, but that fun wore off as the cracks of loadouts and armour abilities showed through.
Halo 5’s main problems were the lack of content at launch, badly executed campaign, and MTX. I hope Infinite has a balanced focus on making casuals and high level players happy, much like Halo 3. 3 can get sweaty, but it has plenty of fun for the more relaxed player (although I’m not a fan of the BR’s inconsistency in that game. RnG just compresses the skill gap).
Esports is a growing field and it’s important to keep it in mind. But it shouldn’t be their primary focus for the entire game. I found myself enjoying halo 5 competitively but had a harder time playing non competitive. Arena should mock that competition vibe halo 5 gives off. But campaign, customs, social (and if war zone returns) should all not have such a competitive feel. It alienates the casual group.
But keep in mind that quote is from 2016. Halo 5 launched 2015. And infinite isn’t out until 2020. There’s quite a significant gap in times around halo
> 2533274885866882;1:
> See this:
>
> “For Halo 5: Guardians, eSports was a core consideration from the very beginning. We engaged with members of the Halo pro player community early, as well as used the expertise of the ex-pro Halo players on our own development team, integrating them both into our design process. Our goal was to build an Arena multiplayer experience that catered specifically to the aspiring eSports player, rewarding pure skill-based play within a sandbox that’s hyper-competitive”
>
> Don’t do this. ESports was never the primary goal of halo multiplayer; never was and never should be. Halo had a competitive scene that developed naturally from the community without misplacing the casual fans. Halo 5 on the other hand was developed with Esports in mind from the start while also allowing the 1% pro players to heavily influence it. Look where it got them: the game’s population tanked so hard only a few months after release they haven’t disclosed any population numbers for the game. Ever.
> Take the hint 343, maybe ESports isn’t worth alienating a majority of your population.
>
> *Quote taken from a 2016 interview with Kiki wolfkill about halo 5’s multiplayer.Halo World Championship Interview With Kiki Wolfkill | Fortune
I’m pretty sure the demise of multiplayer of Halo 5 arrived from the FPS release time. Almost every major FPS that released between 2014-2018 had some type of “advance movement” (garbage) gameplay.
IF anything, the ESports players they hired saved it from being any worse then what it could have been. I’m hoping that 343/MS look at the current FPS trend that CoDMW pulled off and the population increase of MCC since Reach. That they will actually push classic gameplay for Infinite. But one can hope right.
I loved the advanced movement gameplay, especially compared to halo 3’s slog fest.
Id contribute the halo 5 population drop to the lack of content at launch and the poor campaign. Half the community was disgusted with how casual and random halo 4 was, and the other half was turned off when they catered to the esports stuff in halo 5.
If you guys have better ideas on how to please the majority of one of the most pickiest fan bases in the world, by all means let’s hear them.
At the beginning Halo 5 multiplayer was much better imo.AR,SMG,BR were stronger and fun to use,you could use Ground Pound and Spartan Charge as intended.
Then overtime it became Pistols only boring "sweat"fest,made for Esports players and abandoning core players.
> 2533274860752574;8:
> I loved the advanced movement gameplay, especially compared to halo 3’s slog fest.
>
> Id contribute the halo 5 population drop to the lack of content at launch and the poor campaign. Half the community was disgusted with how casual and random halo 4 was, and the other half was turned off when they catered to the esports stuff in halo 5.
>
> If you guys have better ideas on how to please the majority of one of the most pickiest fan bases in the world, by all means let’s hear them.
Part of why Halo 3 feels slow is because of the low field of view affecting depth of field. The base movement speed is in fact faster than in H5 in terms of game units per second, games ended more quickly, and engagements were more frequent than in H5 due to the small map size. But it feels slow because of the visual lack of stimulation and sense of speed. Not to mention the guns are quieter than in H5.
If you watch Halo CE and 2 ESports however, it appears much more fast paced and chaotic.
There might be a kernel of truth in what you say but if they truly catered to pro Halo community then there wouldn’t have been absurd movement mechanics and major weapon balance issues.
I think they finally listened to what Pro and casual gamers want for Halo and created the recent Mythic playlist (which is incredible). But unfortunately, they came out recently and said the numbers haven’t been high enough to keep it around because they don’t like it splitting the “team arena” population. I think this was an awful decision. Mythic was the best thing to happen to Halo 5 in the last 4 years…
There were only a couple issues I had with Halo 5 overall.
lackluster campaign, mainly featuring a new guy who wasn’t the chief.
Big Team only has forge maps, even though a lot of them are very well made forge maps.
Other than that, it is easily my most played Halo since H3, and even made me skip out on the entire active life cycle of BF1. And I usually bounce between Halo and Battlefield. I honestly thought H5 was a really good modern take on the H2/H3 game play, I just wish we could get equipment back as map pickups.
I feel myself falling off halo 5 after getting onyx. But, I feel myself falling out of gaming in general. I’m too old for this… But I was never really a gamer. My friends had golden eye and stuff.
I guess the reality is that it’s really just a place holder until beach season. But, I hope my posts and creativity just like yours creates a better game for ppl with the passion for gaming.