I’ve been having a few bad days playing Halo 4 lately, but by losing so much I can see why it dropped in player population so quickly and why people stopped playing.
Personal Ordnance causes random matchups in which you can’t know what the opponent has until it is too late. I can grab the power weapons on Longbow and sweep around the edge of the map but come up against someone with a SAW or rocket launcher and I’m dead. This is frustrating because you’re dying to many times with no way to fight against this.
Sprint closes the distance between players or lets them escape. So many times have players ran straight at me to melee me, throw and stick plasma grenades, or use the boltshot/sword/shotgun. If I catch a player out in the open, I can shoot them but they will just turn around and run into cover (even if they put themselves in a vulnerable position) because it takes so long to kill someone. This is frustrating to new players who come from Call of Duty or Battlefield because you cannot capitalize on that kill. Players come into this game, see how frustrating it is to just get a kill and go back to playing something else.
Radar has a huge range compared to past Halo games. This allows vehicles, and opponents to see you faster, sprint to cover the distance, run past grenades and overwhelm you. There have been so many times I’ve been overwhelmed by a whole aggressive team throwing grenades before they even see me because of a small red blip on their radar.
Spawns coupled with sprinting causes maps to feel small. Players will get killed, and spawn nearby (this is even more evident in FFA matches) and run right back to kill you. This is frustrating because if you barely get a kill, you can’t defend yourself fast enough. Which leads to my next point:
Shield recharge is so slow that if you kill someone, odds are they will spawn and sprint back to you as your shield is recharging. This has happened over and over again with players just running right back at me. They know where I am because of the kill cam, and if they don’t they can find me with radar.
Armor abilities are frustrating to play against because you don’t know what people have until it is too late. If you’re hiding from someone, they might have promethean vision, and therefore you’re bombarded with grenades and you die.
If you have the higher ground or catch someone unaware, they have jetpack and hold the boost while they kill you with an assault rifle. If you’re trying to gain ground on Ragnarok, you’ll get destroyed by active camo snipers or DMR/LR users. If you try to gain ground by shooting at someone, they won’t descope out so all they have to do is continue to shoot at you from a comfortable position while you are vulnerable. Even if you see the person first, odds are they will kill you first.
This is frustrating because it makes it really hard to prepare/defend/attack against such random assortment of options. Couple this idea with loadouts/perks/armor abilities and there is an endless amount of options to try and defend/attack against. Having loads of options in Call of Duty/Battlefield works because you can kill someone in a few milliseconds. Having over a second kill time (while seems very short when you read “a second”) makes this gameplay experience frustrating.
The CSR system across every playlist matches you up with super competitive people who are either far below your rank, or way above your rank. This is partly because of the low population, HOWEVER sometimes players just want to have fun. By having every playlist use CSR and trueskill so strictly (especially with parties over 3), it becomes frustrating to get beat into the ground when you don’t want to try really hard, but only just a bit.
Also there is no release “playlist”. Firefight usually handled this. If you got frustrated at multiplayer, you could load up firefight or social playlists and just take it easy and cool down. In Halo 4, Spartan Ops isn’t the same experience and if you’ve already played the campaign you’re pretty much left with quitting the game altogether. You could play forge or use the theatre but they’re not as interactive or fun for a large audience of gamers.
tl;dr: I think this is why the population dropped off so quickly: Halo 4 offers Halo but with frustrating game mechanics that play against each other and offer too much randomness to lock down a consistent experience. Other games offer a smoother, more enjoyable experience with far less frustrating “What just happened?!” moments.
