How come nobody buys Halo map packs?

Games Other Halo
1

Something I’ve noticed about Halo is that it’s a game that a ton of people play, but never invest in. Halo 3 was the only Halo game where a ton of people on my friends list played it throughout the whole life cycle and bought all the map packs, played customs, and did mazes, and it was a blast.

However, a ton of people in Halo 3, and way more in Reach and Halo 4, don’t buy the maps. Why is that? I’m seeing that after a few months following Halo launches, the 2 gametypes that have life in them are Slayer, and BTB, and that most of the people have vanilla versions of the game. (Vanilla as in no DLC)

Is it because the games are bad? Is it because it’s boring? It’s something I’ve never put my finger on.

I played Halo 4 this past weekend, and the Crimson playlist had just south of TWO HUNDRED people playing it. 200!

That Saturday, I put in Black Ops 2 when my friends got on later, and within the 750,000 MP players (not including Zombies) , 290,000 people were playing the the “Revolution” DLC playlist. Almost 300,000 people were playing a DLC only playlist, and that is more than the entire daily population of Halo 4.

When we transitioned into Zombies to play Die Rise, we saw that 100,000 players were playing on that new map. So in total, on one Saturday, in real time, about 400,000 players were on the Xbox, playing Black Ops 2’s new DLC.

NOT INCLUDING PEOPLE WHO ARE PLAYING REGULAR PLAYLISTS WITH THE DLC IN THEM

TL;DR
400,000 people playing the DLC playlist on the Xbox for Black Ops 2
200 people playing the Halo 4’s DLC playlist.

How come it’s not like that with Halo games? Halo DLC is even cheaper.

2

for me just 3 words:

no offline replayability

thats my reason
no reason to spend more money to spend even more money to enjoy

3

Neither Reach nor Halo 4 have very strong map packs. Halo 3 had great maps in the map packs, so people downloaded them. If the Majestic map pack is good, word will spread, and people will download it. The Crimson DLC isn’t great, and people don’t think it’s worth $10. It’s as simple as that.

4

  1. Halo 3 DLC was required for many playlists.

  2. Halo 3 DLC was of vastly higher quality in my opinion. Blackout, Avalanche, Standoff, Sandbox, Foundry, Rats Nest.

What does Halo 4 have? A bunch of mediocre BTB maps in a game where BTB is horribly flawed.

5

cause word spreads fast on xbl… if they suck why waste money?

6

“Because halo 4 sucks”

I’m guessing that’s the main reason people would say.

And honestly, if I’m a gaming company I don’t know how much thought I’m going to give to “offline replayablity” because when e vast majority of your customer base is online…

7

The problem will be even worse for the next map pack I think. After the Crimson Map Pack “trial” fiasco, I doubt many will trust 343i. I have the Map Pass anyway, so I’m getting it. But like others said, the quality of maps aren’t very good either.

8

> cause word spreads fast on xbl… if they suck why waste money?

That’s the thing. Black Ops 2’s first DLC pack had about 100,000 people playing it within the hour of release. I would know because I was one of them.

Halo 4 probably had like 50 people.

Even if they suck, low amounts of people buy them to begin with.

9

It’s because majority of Halo 3 playlists required people to buy the new maps. no one bought halo reach’s dlc because there weren’t any playlist restriction. common sense, my friend; it’s something you could benefit from

look at gears of war 3, over 10000 players bought ALL 4 dlc because every playlist was blocked, there is a “no dlc” playlist and last time i checked the population was 138.

10

1.- Most maps are terrible.
2.- they show up in very rare occasion on rotation.

So why waste money on maps that you can’t play?

11

> It’s because majority of Halo 3 playlists required people to buy the new maps. no one bought halo reach’s dlc because there weren’t any playlist restriction. common sense, my friend; it’s something you could benefit from
>
> look at gears of war 3, over 10000 players bought ALL 4 dlc because every playlist was blocked, there is a “no dlc” playlist and last time i checked the population was 138.

I need common sense? You seem a bit angry.

Even with or without the playlist restrictions, people just don’t buy Halo map packs in general, and that’s my question. When Halo 4 announced its first DLC, people were like “cool”, and when it came out barely anyone has it.

Call of Duty announced DLC, and over 200k play it the first day.

It sucks that some games block playlists if you don’t have DLC, but I’m just curious why the majority of people just don’t buy it to begin with.

12

> > cause word spreads fast on xbl… if they suck why waste money?
>
> That’s the thing. Black Ops 2’s first DLC pack had about 100,000 people playing it within the hour of release. I would know because I was one of them.
>
> Halo 4 probably had like 50 people.
>
> Even if they suck, low amounts of people buy them to begin with.

I feel as if since we got the free map pack pass we should be able to play them first you know to test them out.

13

The Main reason was that all the DLC maps in that map pack were honorable BTB maps and after word of mouth no one buy the map pack and the people who did eventually figure out their crap maps to.

BTB in halo just does not work because:
-halo is an arena shooter at its core even though it has all this non arena style crap tacked on top of it like load outs and perks instead of pickups which belong in arena style games.
-8 players on an team is not a big battle (just look amount of players on one map of planet side 2) and the maps are too big for 16 player to play a good flowing game on.
-it takes too long to find the other team
-and that is just the cap of the ice burg

14

One thing about Halo 3 was they gave one map pack away for free and another one was reduced in price rather quickly, so those were picked up rather readily. Then ODST came out with all the maps included, so anyone who had that game instantly had all the DLC as well as the main game maps. That was probably the main reason there was a higher adoption rate of maps in that game than the more current ones (which ties into my next point).

Also most people are cheap and think they deserve something for free these days (especially so-called gamers), regardless of the time and work put in by the people making it. That is probably the main reason there is not a higher adoption rate of maps this time around.

15

3 reasons

1- Halo 3 required them
2- ODST Multiplayer disc
3- Halo 4’s are kinda bad

16

I buy singleplayer DLC. MP not so much. I would invest in more Spartan Ops though.

17

Welcome to Forge. It got better in Reach.

18

Halo 3’s map packs enticed the hell out of Forgers, which in turn enticed the custom games innovators, which improved the overall quality of gameplay.

In Reach, Forgers had no reason to buy the maps. Thus, those of us who are not content with spending 4 hours playing the same two or three default gamemodes on the same few base maps had no reason to buy them.
Halo 4 suffers the same type of map pack sickness as Reach.

Oh, and word of mouth is a powerful thing. The very first things I heard about the Reach packs were terms like “sucks, yuck, waste, non-forgeable”
I certainly don’t want maps that my buddies say are yucky, sucky, a waste of money, or non-forgeable.

19

Well most map packs blow so thats a reason. I wish i didnt get the first map pack for Halo 4. I hate all 3 of them and hope the next one offers more smaller maps.

20

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