HUGE Skill Gap Benefits EVERYONE!

Games Other Halo
1

take a look back at halos past. you will find halos 1 and 2, the most skill-intensive halo games that are widely accepted as god-tier games that were basically groundbreaking. those games were incredibly fun to play, and incredibly fun to learn.

why, though?

in my opinion, its because of the massive amount of skill gap those games had.

in halos 1 and 2, no matter how god-tier incredible you got, you could still get THRICE as good. because of this, newer players CONSTANTLY saw themselves improving on the little things because everything had so much room for mastery. the more you played these games, the better you got. the more you worked on your skills, the more skills you added to your repertoire. the better you got at the game, the more proud you were of your skill accomplishments. not only that, when more skill gap is added to the game, the game becomes a TON more fun to watch because when people pull off that sick halo 2 quad shot, players who learned how to quad shot can relate and say ‘WOW! HE JUST DID THAT!’ and know the immense amount of skill it took to pull it off!

i always hear people saying ‘but if the skill gap is too high, what about the casual player!’. the thing is, the casual player benefits just as much as everyone else does!

clearly we cant throw in mechanics that force players to be incredible at halo, or they’ll just fall flat on their faces though. as long as the skill gap in halo 4 is high, but its intuitive, logical, and straight forward in its design, it will greatly benefit everyone. new players will see themselves growing in their skills like never before. some call of duty players might try out the new halo game and think ‘WOW! THIS GAME ACTUALLY TAKES A LITTLE BIT OF SKILL!’ (unlike call of duty, where everyone and their mother is the same skill level because of the low skill gap, laughable sandbox balance, and abysmal netcode). we might even convert some COD players who want their skills to actually mean something, unlike call of duty where their skills mean virtually nothing, especially if they cant pull 4 bar connection every single game (host matters infinitely more than skill does in call of duty. always has, and it will likely be the same for the next 2 or 3 call of duty games).

THE ONLY WAY THIS CAN WORK, HOWEVER, is if matchmaking actually exists, and does its job. quite frankly, this doesnt happen in reach. matchmaking is a complete and total failure. its like the game could care less how good you are, or how good anyone is. it sees players searching for games, and just throws them into games without any consideration of how good the match will be. because of this games are, more often than not, incredibly lop-sided and imbalanced.

we absolutely CANNOT have another reach repeat where people are rewarded for playing terribly, thru either spamming their DMRs and being rewarded with kills, or sprinting and meleeing people because the no-bleed melee system protects them whilst they play like idiots. another good example of this is the mini nuke grenades in reach that are basically impossible to miss with, and even harder to dodge due to their insanely fast fuse times.

PERFORM BETTER = WIN ENCOUNTER

SHOOT BETTER = WIN 1v1 BATTLE

etc. etc.

make skill matter, pair people up based on how good they are, and have a large skill gap, and people will come en mass. they’ll say ‘seeya noob-a-duty, imma play a game where my skills actually mean something!’.

then, and only then will halo compete with COD. until then, COD will reign supreme because it will always do a better job of entertaining the casual crowd than halo can.

2

God bless you in every single word you said.

http://halo.xbox.com/Forums/yaf_postst31433_Is-343i-going-to-make-the-same-Bungie-s-mistake----------SERIOUS-SUBJECT.aspx

<<<< look at this, I wrote it a while ago.

This forum needs people like you, who will affect the future of Halo positively.(that if 343 is listening)

3

> until then, COD will reign supreme because it will always do a better job of entertaining the casual crowd than halo can.

Agreed with everything you said, especially this.

After (about) CoD 4, the developers of Call of Duty realised their market were widely casual gamers and children. Since then, the games have been progressively dumbed-down to suit this market.

What the Halo developer needs to realise is that in producing a well-balanced game with a high skill threshold, it will cater to both “competitive” and “casual” gamers alike.

I doubt any console FPS will have a skill gap as large as Combat Evolved did, but Halo 4 could hopefully achieve something of Halo 2’s stature.

4

> God bless you in every single word you said.
>
> http://halo.xbox.com/Forums/yaf_postst31433_Is-343i-going-to-make-the-same-Bungie-s-mistake----------SERIOUS-SUBJECT.aspx
>
> <<<< look at this, I wrote it a while ago.
>
>
> This forum needs people like you, who will affect the future of Halo positively.(that if 343 is listening)

Although I didn’t read a lot of your thread, I’m sure it was a very good thread. Anyhow, if you’ve seen me around here at all, it’s pretty obvious I do agree with both of you. In the end, it all boils down to two points:

  1. Approachability: the thing that makes the game popular
  2. Depth, skill gap: the things that make the game last long

Nail all these things in a game and it’s a quaranteed success. CoD surely did the first part beautifully, but it’s already starting to show signs of weakness as it failed at the second part. However, if Halo 4 had the approachability, if it had the depth and skill gap and they managed to hold the formula together for the whole decade, Halo would go on for another ten years.

What comes to individual gameplay mechanics, something that helps the game be approachable and deep is to have very little things the player is actually forced to do, but have a lot of things the player can do and make the things player has to do, deep. Think about bloom, there was no way around it in Reach, you just had to cope with it. On top of that, it was a very shallow mechanic.

If we look at games that really require skill, Quake for example, they basically consist of three types of mechanics: movement, weapons, power ups. On the other hand, these mechanics are incredibly deep, especially the movement part.

So, yes. Halo 4 needs to be approachable and deep. These are all it takes to make a good game. And getting there requires simple but deep gameplay mechanics.

5

The higher the skill ceiling, the more competitive the game (in general). A gametype such as MLG needs to have as high as skill level as possible, and fiesta slayer does not and caters to casuals.

Regardless of the skill difficulty, it is ALWAYS possible to cater for casual gamers as long as there is the possibility for customisation.

IT IS FAR EASIER TO LOWER THE SKILL GAP OF A GAME THAN TO INCREASE IT!!!

It is for this reason, that to cater for all, the skill ceiling should be as HIGH as possible.

Good OP by the way :smiley:

6

I think I love you TC

7

It’s Saints Row syndrome. We all want the fun things, we all want to feel like we’re doing the impossible and basically just generally being a badass but if you don’t have to work on it, if they just hand it to you straight away, you lose the feeling of actually doing something amazing. In Saints Row 2 the player got a whole lot of over the top customisation and cool weapons after making it to a certain point, as the game went on and you did harder missions you would unlock better and crazier things. In Saints Row 3 you got most of these things almost immediately. You didn’t have to work for it so they didn’t feel special. Halo is suffering the same thing in some ways. Completing Legendary in Reach didn’t make me feel like I’d done something incredible because the other games had all been harder. It ties into what you were saying, while the game needs to be accessible (as tsassi said) it also needs a sense of accomplishment and the only way you can get that lasting effect is if you have to work for it.

8

Nice post my friend, everyone starts off as a casual player, I remember when i was, then i kept playing against people who were better than me which made me learn more and gain more skill, now I’m a very good individual on Halo, I’ve accomplished a lot on all the halo games and it only feels good!

9

I agree with the general tone but not the specifics. You think Halo 2 didn’t reward spammers? You think the sniper required skill? Are you on crack?

Now, the concept of a higher skill gap benefiting all players by allowing a large (albeit not too steep) learning curve I can get behind. I just don’t agree with your definition of Skill Gap, and your theory that you can’t get better by playing anyone at any level.

10

Except that most people don’t get into a franchise thinking “Oh yeah, I plan to play super competitively and become a complete bad -Yoink-”. Most games you start playing for fun and they have to allow you to win while you’re still not all that competitive.

When I first started playing the game, I played Lone Wolves. I was a noob, but I knew where the power weapons were, so I could beat down the kids I got matched up against. Eventually I worked my way into playing Team Doubles, and even though I was a scrub and used the AR, I still won matches because of good grenade chucks and double teaming at power weapon spawns. Worked my way up to skill 38 using the AR.

If I got completely dominated by kids with BRs when using the AR like the DMR dominates the AR in Reach, I don’t think I would have gotten into the franchise. The game wasn’t casualized at all, the skill gap increased but it was more random. Of course, you don’t think about those times when you’re spammy 5 shot kills the AR guy, you only notice when you don’t kill him.

Anyways, my opinion is, you have to have an entry point for players to enter the game and compete with players if they play smart but can’t necessarily aim well with the BR (TBH, nothing in the game makes is clear from the get-go that the precision weapon is the dominant weapon, coming from the last game I played Counterstrike, the weapons with scopes were generally considered inferior to non-scoped weapons).

I know this - Halo 3 wouldn’t be LAN’d if it wasn’t a game you could pick up and start fragging. Honestly, High Ground is the perfect example IMO of a good map for just having fun - variety of weapons, vehicles that aren’t overbearing, indoor and outdoor areas, long medium and short range fights, power ups, power weapons… the map was just good. It wasn’t the most competitive map, but Halo Reach utterly lacked fun maps like that.

11

> I agree with the general tone but not the specifics. You think Halo 2 didn’t reward spammers? You think the sniper required skill? Are you on crack?
>
>
>
>
> Now, the concept of a higher skill gap benefiting all players by allowing a large (albeit not too steep) learning curve I can get behind. I just don’t agree with your definition of Skill Gap, and your theory that you can’t get better by playing anyone at any level.

How can you ever get any better playing against noobs never doing jumps and walking in a straight line all the time? You won’t learn to strafe, do jumps or aim.

12

I totally agree with everything in the OP.

Very good post.

13

I agree with both Urza and and tsassi.

The game needs to have a high skill gap, while still being easily approachable. If new kids can’t pick up the game and get a few kills, then they won’t continue playing and the life of the game will shorten up. But if new kids get matched up against other new kids, or people of their skill level, then they will be able to do alright.

For example, if my fiancee starts playing Halo 4, she should be able to play other new kids/bad kids at first. Then, if you are doing really well, your trueskill level will rise and you will start to face people of your skill level or slightly higher. That way, she won’t end up playing people like me and get owned all the time from the very beginning.

A balanced weapon sandbox will also definitely help Halo 4 in becomming a great competitive game with a high skill ceiling.

14

But what about the casual gamers??

Just kidding (: if matchmaking works good enough, they will get matched up with other casual gamers.

15

As long as Matchmaking works right the skill gap will indeed benefit everyone. Casuals will play Casuals and Pros will play Pros. Its win win.

16

They can put the biggest skill gap they want. As long as a proper true skill system is put in that would NEVER match me with high tier players unless I request it then I’m fine. I don’t want to play a casual game and then find some scrub tryhard who jumps around with his precision weapon and wins the game single handedly. That was one of the main things that made me leave Halo 3 behind. True skill matched me with people it saw as equal to me and they were much better and I don’t feel like improving my game style.

I just want to play.

17

> They can put the biggest skill gap they want. As long as a proper true skill system is put in that would NEVER match me with high tier players unless I request it then I’m fine. I don’t want to play a casual game and then find some scrub tryhard who jumps around with his precision weapon and wins the game single handedly. That was one of the main things that made me leave Halo 3 behind. True skill matched me with people it saw as equal to me and they were much better and I don’t feel like improving my game style.
>
> I just want to play.

Problem with that is anyone rolls up a new account they start at the same true skill as you, which is stupid. Players should play qualifying matches, and if they’re way ahead skill-wise, they should start out further up the ladder. I agree that the Halo 3 system was bad in that respect.

18

> Except that most people don’t get into a franchise thinking “Oh yeah, I plan to play super competitively and become a complete bad -Yoink!-”. Most games you start playing for fun and they have to allow you to win while you’re still not all that competitive.
>
> When I first started playing the game, I played Lone Wolves. I was a noob, but I knew where the power weapons were, so I could beat down the kids I got matched up against. Eventually I worked my way into playing Team Doubles, and even though I was a scrub and used the AR, I still won matches because of good grenade chucks and double teaming at power weapon spawns. Worked my way up to skill 38 using the AR.
>
> If I got completely dominated by kids with BRs when using the AR like the DMR dominates the AR in Reach, I don’t think I would have gotten into the franchise. The game wasn’t casualized at all, the skill gap increased but it was more random. Of course, you don’t think about those times when you’re spammy 5 shot kills the AR guy, you only notice when you don’t kill him.
>
> Anyways, my opinion is, you have to have an entry point for players to enter the game and compete with players if they play smart but can’t necessarily aim well with the BR (TBH, nothing in the game makes is clear from the get-go that the precision weapon is the dominant weapon, coming from the last game I played Counterstrike, the weapons with scopes were generally considered inferior to non-scoped weapons).
>
> I know this - Halo 3 wouldn’t be LAN’d if it wasn’t a game you could pick up and start fragging. Honestly, High Ground is the perfect example IMO of a good map for just having fun - variety of weapons, vehicles that aren’t overbearing, indoor and outdoor areas, long medium and short range fights, power ups, power weapons… the map was just good. It wasn’t the most competitive map, but Halo Reach utterly lacked fun maps like that.

You sir summed everything I believe in perfectly.

19

> > They can put the biggest skill gap they want. As long as a proper true skill system is put in that would NEVER match me with high tier players unless I request it then I’m fine. I don’t want to play a casual game and then find some scrub tryhard who jumps around with his precision weapon and wins the game single handedly. That was one of the main things that made me leave Halo 3 behind. True skill matched me with people it saw as equal to me and they were much better and I don’t feel like improving my game style.
> >
> > I just want to play.
>
> Problem with that is anyone rolls up a new account they start at the same true skill as you, which is stupid. Players should play qualifying matches, and if they’re way ahead skill-wise, they should start out further up the ladder. I agree that the Halo 3 system was bad in that respect.

There should be an initial playlist that groups you into a certain true skill area. Also, casual playlists like Living Dead and Grifball should be in from the beginning. They would allow easy access and practice for newbies and would deliver casual fun for the rest of us.

Halo 3 indeed never specified anything and wasn’t the easiest game to get into. Without custom games the game was fairly repetitive.