The game has been out for less than a year, but the population makes it feel like the game has been out for 2 years. Halo reach was still strong in the LIVE activity charts for well over a year. Yet people say that Reach was the worst game because of bloom and armor lock, which halo 4 did not have.
These opinions were said within the first three months of halo 4’s release. But why would so many people leave so quickly?
The game had no classic gametypes at the start. The infinity settings were ok for some people, but many people did not like it and had nowhere else to go.
The game had no skill based ranking system.
The progression ranking system was way too easy to level up. Most people got max rank in a month.
In a nutshell the game was just terrible in the beginning and took too long to get decent.
oh and JIP sucks.
There are many reasons why a player stops playing a game, it is most likely that they got bored of the game or didn’t enjoy it.
> In a nutshell the game was just terrible in the beginning and took too long to get decent.
The same could be said for Halo 2 though. This community is weird.
The funny thing about halo 4 is that it fixed the few problems halo reach had but created 20 new problems in the process. To be honest they should have delayed it 6 months to a year. The game was released completely unfinished.
> > In a nutshell the game was just terrible in the beginning and took too long to get decent.
>
> The same could be said for Halo 2 though. This community is weird.
Halo 2 pre patch was better than halo 4 pre-patch. It had issues but was still a Halo game. Default Halo 4 infinity at launch was absolute trash. Thus the population fled.
Halo 4 introduced a whole batch of other problems, most of them quite unexpected.
I’m still playing Halo 4 though.
> The funny thing about halo 4 is that it fixed the few problems halo reach had but created 20 new problems in the process. To be honest they should have delayed it 6 months to a year. The game was released completely unfinished.
Would you say that halo reach was unplayable when it first shipped compared to halo 4 at release?
> > The funny thing about halo 4 is that it fixed the few problems halo reach had but created 20 new problems in the process. To be honest they should have delayed it 6 months to a year. The game was released completely unfinished.
>
> Would you say that halo reach was unplayable when it first shipped compared to halo 4 at release?
Hell no?! Halo Reach still had core Halo gameplay in it, plus the campaign was great. As for Halo 4, it had a good storyline but lost most of the core Halo story and gameplay that original fans, myself included, loved. Halo 4 has destroyed the population so horribly.
> > The funny thing about halo 4 is that it fixed the few problems halo reach had but created 20 new problems in the process. To be honest they should have delayed it 6 months to a year. The game was released completely unfinished.
>
> Would you say that halo reach was unplayable when it first shipped compared to halo 4 at release?
I think the simple answer here is no. I’m sure most people would agree that bloom, movement speeds, and AL were annoying, but 2/3 of those problems could be fixed in Customs; with Halo 4 sprint can’t be disabled, most of the maps are poor, flinch can’t be turned off, and the bullet magnetism/aim assist can’t be tweaked. Not to mention Forge and Customs were both completely fine in Reach from the start, unlike in Halo 4.
Halo 4 completely fails in comparison to Reach, which is really sad since so many people were upset with Reach.
> > The funny thing about halo 4 is that it fixed the few problems halo reach had but created 20 new problems in the process. To be honest they should have delayed it 6 months to a year. The game was released completely unfinished.
>
> Would you say that halo reach was unplayable when it first shipped compared to halo 4 at release?
No - not IMHO it wasn’t.
The primary issue for me is Lag (H4 uses “Host History” instead of picking the best connection for host in each game)- which is why I have gone back to Halo Reach.
70% of my H4 games lagged by 0.5+ seconds - 5% of my Reach (or COD II or GTA etc.) games lag by 0.5+ seconds. Killing anyone with 0.5+ seconds of lag in H4 using a precision weapon is an exercise in futility. That takes any hope of “skill” out of the game and makes it zero fun.
343 has had 10 months to even admit lag is an issue - and they haven’t let alone fix it (it’s in the game set up servers too - which means they can fix it without changing the game). All they do is add more gimmicks.
No local only search options. Always kills a game within the first few months. I stopped playing Halo 4 within the first week because of this reason.
Since then I’ve put more time into Reach in a single day then my total time with Halo 4. It has that option.
If you are asking what truly separates Reach from Halo 4 the shortest answer I can think of is:
Ordnance.
H4 was not at all an arena shooter at launch, thus the gameplay was fundamentally different than any previous title.
Secondary influences include but are not limited to:
Default Sprint
Flinch
Custom Loadouts including the Boltshot and Plasma Nades
Quick weapon despawn
Instant respawn
fundamental changes to classic gametypes (flagnum, etc)
Even if H4 was essentially a clone of default Reach though, I’m sure the population would still have dropped off quickly, simply because a great many Halo fans were put off by Reach. H4 instead of just lengthening a pre-existing problem added to it by making even more fundamental changes to the Halo formula.
Because it was space COD at launch.
Now it’s Halo.
Another complaint I noticed was that the maps for Halo 4 were bad.
Which on-disc maps were better: Halo 4 or Halo Reach?
Basically, when you’re let down twice you don’t tend to stick around long during the second time around.
The biggest reason is that Halo Reach was coming off the highly successful game, Halo 3. Halo 4 was by contrast was coming off of Halo Reach. The fact that gameplay wise it was grossly apparent a launch that Halo 4 was set to continue along the path that Halo Reach had set prior to it did not help increase its vitality either. This resulted in Halo 4 losing its player base quickly and early on.
Although Halo 4 was able to rebound later on, improving gameplay later in a games life never proves successful as far as bringing back players, at best it can only slow trend of player decline.
> The biggest reason is that Halo Reach was coming off the highly successful game, Halo 3. Halo 4 was by contrast was coming off of Halo Reach.
Halo 4 set the record in the franchise for day one sales, so I don’t think that has anything to do with it.
Infinity was the only game mode playable at launch. It changes the gameplay drastically from the first games, and the existing fans (including myself) didn’t like it. By the time 343i started making changes for the existing players, most of them had already left.
Halo 4 was released in an unfinished state, due to the game being months behind schedule, since 343i had a small team at the time, and was building their team. The game should have been delayed by a year at LEAST and they should have released it for the Xbox One as a launch title IMHO. The game NOW feels like a finished game, but it still has a ways to go to feel like a AAA halo game.
Now though, they have a team of I think 300, which is a decent sized team, but most AAA game devs have about that size of team. I am a little skeptical though, since most devs have that size of team, and the only one who does 2 year release cycles are COD devs (and we all know how good COD is), and more recently, Assassins Creed devs, but if I am correct, AC 4 is being done by a different dev than it usually is. And with 343i focusing on the TV series, Halo Xbox One, and now recently announced, another Halo related project (hopefully H2A) I don’t know how much longer QUALITY halo is going to last. I just hope that if Halo Xbox One is not pristine quality at launch, I may be done with Halo after the mess 343i made with Halo 4.
> The biggest reason is that Halo
> Halo 4 set the record in the franchise for day one sales, so I don’t think that has anything to do with it.
I never said anything about games sales, both games released with poor gameplay, however I believe people had more patience and confidence that things could improve in Halo Reach cause it was coming off Halo 3. People were neither as patient or confident with Halo 4 as it was coming off Halo Reach with a new developer.