I feel like my favorite bit about all the "Halo is dying" posts is that there seems to be one absolutely forbidden theory no one wants to discuss

Games Halo Infinite
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And if you try to, you get downvoted or mocked for doing so.

That theory?

The Age of the Arena Shooter is over, and nothing 343 could’ve done would change that .

Infinite saw huge launch numbers because it was immensely hyped and promoted by Microsoft and looked really good - there is no doubt in that. But it’s an Arena shooter - a relic of a bygone era; it’s not hip. It’s not “cool” and trendy anymore.

It’s not providing the kind of gameplay and moments the 2021/2022 gamer is looking for en masse. You’ll note that pretty much EVERY Arena-styled shooter in the past decade, no matter how well-made or polished has launched and immediately flopped straight into the dirt shortly after. The much vaunted Splitgate experienced this, as did DOOM 2016 with it’s own mulitplayer (to the point where DOOM 2016’s PvP is/was considered a complete waste of space and development effort despite being perfectly functional and even fun). For two examples.

One need look no further than the Top 10 for most months on consoles AND PCs - every month, month after month, Fortnite, APEX and Warzone dominate (usually followed by GTA V or a Valve/Riot game, then some new singleplayer game etc. Last month it was Elden Ring, for obvious reasons) - typically by a large margin. As much as I loathe Dr. Disrespect, he wasn’t wrong - the gamer of the modern era doesn’t care about the kind of gameplay that Arena Shooters like Halo provide anymore. They want the constant stories and rush from Battle Royales or the super-easy and constant dopamine hits from Call of Duty/Siege style shooters, not the effort, sweat and often times punishment that comes with a game like Halo .

343 could’ve launched Infinite with 14+ PvP maps, your perfect idea of a progression system and 20+ gametypes and I’d bet you cold, hard USD right now you’d still be seeing drop-offs of 70% or more in the player population of Infinite (since that seems to be the only metric people care to measure).

From where we’re sitting, sure it might look like a 24k run of bad decisions by 343 - but the truth is the game was lost from the start.

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Okay so what exactly is a 2021/2022 gamer looking for if not an arena shooter? Because I can guarantee that there’s still a number of people who are looking for an arena shooter. Don’t get me wrong, times are changing but 343 has also made some really bad decisions with this game. There are definitely other theories that fit the facts better.

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trends come and go, games like TF2 and CSGO live eternal by sticking to what works and what their fans want. 343 spent their entire tenure over Halo chasing trends and implementing them into Halo.

Splitegate and Doom16 have a myriad of MP issues while also failing to attract the Halo audience, not exactly a sign of the irrelevance for the arena shooter genre.

Well yeah, Infinite’s core gameplay sucks so no number of maps would have kept most players. But if you make a game with an eternal gameplay loop you will survive just like TF2 and CSGO.

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They’re looking for Battle Royales and the next CoD - mostly the BRs though. MAYBE a Hero Shooter in the vein of Overwatch if someone could do it to the level of production without messing anything up.

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This theory can be easily dismissed because of the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield which are also arena shooters which have both historically done well.

Modern Warfare 2019 came out… in 2019 and boomed. Yes Warzone took over, but MW2019 still boasts reasonable player counts and CODs after that still support arena style games.

This ‘theory’ is utter nonesense.

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The thing about Halo isn’t it being an arena shooter, in fact, 343 making Halo Infinite a hypergeneric arena shooter is the reason it’s a failure. Most people loved classic Halo for the crazy cool maps, weapons, and wild physics, where you always had fun or laughs in matches, and could talk trash in pregame, game, and postgame, then continue to be toxic if they stuck around. However, if you didn’t care about being sweaty, Halo was about goofing off, communicating by teabagging, befriending the enemy, working with your team to invade the enemy base, or just annoy your team by standing on their heads or punching them to get their attention. Maybe you shared a Warthog with the enemy, and you both just laughed about it until someone killed you both. Maybe you have a bag party and the enemy joins and bags their teammate. Halo was always about having fun.

What really made Halo unique was Forge mode. This lead to an absurd amount of cool artwork, modes, and maps in File Share. You had practically endless content. I would play endless hours of Halo 3 and Reach customs. I even still would play over 24 hours straight of customs in MCC with friends and randoms before they added custom games lobby searching. Older Halo games never got boring. There was always some way to have fun or laughs.

Halo Infinite removed most of the fun. Maps are generic and all feel the same. Weapons are mediocre and Plasma Pistol is nerfed. You can’t rocket jump, plasma jump, grenade jump, or hammer jump. 343 added tons of kill zones if you try to climb up high or use grapple TO GET HIGHER LIKE GRAPPLE SHOULD BE USED FOR. Vehicles are painfully weak both offensively and defensively. Idk what they did to the poor Scorpion, but you can barely drive that thing now, can’t sit on the sides, and all the maps have no room to drive it. There’s no team collision anymore either. On top of all the nerfs to the fun classic Halo stuff we knew and loved, 343 says to our faces that they know we love these classic Halo things, and they have no intention of bringing them back. 343 is determined to stick to the hypergeneric arena shooter concept and kill Halo.

If that’s not bad enough, on top of no progression, lacking customization, removed core Halo features, and dull maps and gameplay, there’s horrible ping and desync, making the already awful gameplay and borderline punishment challenges 10x more painful than they should be.

Halo Infinite is dying because it sucks. It’s not Halo. It doesn’t feel like Halo. It feels like any other generic modern arena game. That’s why it’s dying. Unless 343 fixes it, it’ll keep dying, unless Forge saves it.

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IDK if u know this but till 2020 mid this game was absolutely diff wat we see. wat ever we got in 2021 onwards was done in 1 year. I cant say more than that bcoz these info were given by people who left 3… ind… its a matter of time before everything leaks out. (It was totally diff game u wouldnt even call it Halo game if u knew). Like people thought it was covid or the new game engine but it was not, this game was a finished product but they changed it entirely at the end. thats y we never got any trailer or gameplay of multiplayer. If u want to know more find ex empl. I cant tell u more

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Neither of those are Arena Shooters; Arena shooters are defined in a very specific manner in that they have Fair (Same) Starts for everyone in the match and respawns and all upgrades/power-ups/weapons are pick up from the map itself with set respawn timers and spawn locations that are the same within that map.

CoD and Battlefield have neither of those things - CoD is an arcade-style shooter and Battlefield is a class shooter that turned into an arcade shooter with 2042.

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They’re not really arcade shooters though.

Unless you can define the term.

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What others game are arena shooters then? If you’re saying COD isn’t an arena shooter… LOL. Okay.

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Maybe you’re right, I don’t know. I do know that I enjoy this style and I know a lot of other folk that do. I was hoping for more than what we got, so was literally everyone else.

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Doom. QUAKE. Splitgate for examples.

CoD 4 even had a gametype that imitated this old-school gameplay, as did the Battlefield 3 DLC Aftermath as examples of non-Arena shooters having Arena-like gamemodes.

A game can be a blend of different genres, but if you don’t have A: Totally fair spawns + starts and B: Standardized, map-based pickups then it isn’t an Arena shooter.

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R6S has amazing gameplay too every match is different unless you play the same team twice in a row and even then, it won’t be the exact same

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It’s pretty simple really;

Arena Examples: Halo, QUAKE, DOOM, Splitgate

Tactical Shooter: Old Rainbow Six, Old Ghost Recon, Insurgency, SQUAD

Simulation: ArmA, Operation Flashpoint

Class-Based: Battlefield (pre-2042), Team Fortress 2

Hero Shooter: Overwatch, Paladins, Rogue Company

Battle Royale: APEX, Fortnite, PUBG

You can blend different types together, but each class typically has some feature/element that if you violate it can’t be that type anymore (EX: If you don’t have fair spawns and fair starts, you’re not an arena shooter).

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100%, this. 343 has sucked the fun out of playing Halo. Even in one of the recent updates, they said adding grenade jumps, would cause chaos. In past games, it caused fun.

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Give us masterchief virtual reality helmets that fit like dirtbike helmets so that we can forge in vr

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Yeah those all make sense, but I’ve never heard CoD or even BF2042 specifically labeled as “arcade shooters”.

In fact most arcade shooters I’m familiar with are typically top down as the common trope.

CoD (post CoD3) is a military twitch shooter at its core, and BF2042 is still a class based shooter despite the generalized approach to classes.

I was more focused on the arcade shooters more than a list of shooter subgenres.

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Quoting New Vegas, I see.

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Completely disagree, but im tired of writing long posts no one cares about.
Reason this game is in the toilet and halo is on life support is thats it an unfinished mtx heavy dumpster fire.

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Splitgate was not ready for large player counts, that is why the game dropped off.

I personally didn’t find DOOM’s MP to be very fun.