I have faith in you, Shishka!

Games Other Halo
1

i know your sitting in your chair, thinking this dearly beloving community has forgotten all about you, and how you made sure matchmaking was running smoothly, balanced, and fun. well, i am here to tell you we have not forgotten! and we know that once you get your crafty hands on reach’s multilayer, you will not be afraid to make the changes necessary to bring things back to ol’ glory in 2007. i now have moved my faith to 343 for this exact reason- no, not just you, your not that special, but half of the bungie staff left just before reach was released. the bungie staff we know. the ones that will fix thing once and for all!!!

can i get an a-men, community?!

2

Shishka’s Match Making running ranged for me. I like all the playlists (a lot), but I think there were a few gametype/map issues were gametypes the did not play well on a map were frequent or not removed, along with some other minor issues. That being said, managing a Halo game’s multiplayer matchmaking is NOT easy, and I have to tip my hat to him. Also, he is very versatile as a developer from what I know. Finally, his bad–Yoink- “I’m not taking your crap” attitude never ceased to amuse me. Happy he’s at 343.

3

While some of his matchmaking changes were indeed questionable, they didn’t bother me much. I was happy with the matchmaking offerings in Halo 3.

Shishka was my favorite Bungie Employee and I’m glad he is at 343 now. :slight_smile:

4

Yes Shishka much respect and thanks. If you do get to mess with Reach’s matchmaking please give infection some lovin.

5

> Yes Shishka much respect and thanks. If you do get to mess with Reach’s matchmaking please give infection some lovin.

Shishka once banned me from the bNet forums for calling him a flesh eating chupacabra.

It was clearly a joke and it was amongst a very serious and well thought out post regarding the radar in team snipers. I do not think shishka is particularly good at his job. Don’t get me wrong, there are much, much worse people that could be put in his position, however, Halo 3’s matchmaking to this day is very unpolished and lacks the refinement you would expect of a game of it’s caliber after 5 years. If Shishka had total control then quite frankly I am disgusted by his performance, however if other people had a large influence on what gametypes etc were allowed then I understand.

Things like:

Radar in team snipers and the removal of grenades.
A high occurrence of sandtrap in BTB.
Guardian AR’s - really?
AR starts that did not have BR secondaries (ridiculous, I know)
And just overall the lack of map balancing throughout every playlist.

Honestly, if you asked me today, by tomorrow I could have a group of some of the best players in each playlist refining the maps ensuring that they are balanced. Shishka had easy access to some of the greatest halo minds and yet he failed to take advantage of them to ensure a balanced game.

I view this as a failure.

Combined with his blatant disrespect for the community it was quite frankly insulting. If he was actually doing a good job then it would have been okay for him to come onto the forums banning people and insulting them, but to do that whilst ignoring major issues - letting MM burn away - is unacceptable.

Honestly, if you are going to let Shishka run MM the please for everyones sake give him a council filled with experts from each playlist that are forum regulars with a good perspective on the community and what it needs.

6

Yeah, I kind of disagree with this. I did like and respect Shishka. Caught him on the Bnet forums sometimes, amusingly. I also enjoyed the playlists that I felt he pulled off well, like most of the ranked ones. However, I didn’t feel his playlists were comprehensive and varied enough.

Example, Reach right now has Grifball and Infection playlists. These two gametypes were a rather large part of Halo 3 Customs for me, yet to this day, they’re still not in Matchmaking. They DID frequently appear as Double EXP weekends (and to much better effect than Reach’s badly thought out mechanics for each playlist - will explain later), but they were never permanently added to anything but Grab Bag.

However, Jeremiah is also currently, how you say, doing it wrong. For one thing, he seems too lazy to actually go through the community files and find good Infection maps. As a result, Infection is consistently plagued by Pinnacle, Sword Base, and Zealot, all of which work poorly for the gametype. There are some good custom maps and gametypes out there for Infection in Reach. All Bungie/Jeremiah need do is look.

As for Grifball, this was also done better in Halo 3. Maps actually varied (Remember the Mayan Arena?), while the Halo 3 Gravity Hammer worked VERY well for Halo 3 Grifball. Reach’s GravHammer is an inconsistent mess, as much of the area of effect was heavily nerfed. Not only that, but there are also some glitches and just plain poorly thought out areas. For one thing, the ball carrier now takes 2+ hits before death. I had one instance where I was hammering on his back 3-4 times, directly on his back, lunging and all, to no effect. Making the ball carrier anything but slightly faster was just a bad idea. Also, health packs really ruin the dignity of the experience. It’s annoying to almost kill a guy, only to watch him move away to a health pack and heal up. I understand the positives of the idea, it’s simply just not a good feeling for defenders. I feel AAs were implemented into Grifball well, so I won’t complain there…

Yeah, this is a lot of -Yoinking!- for two playlists, I get that… But this was my main problem with Halo 3’s Matchmaking, and they’re present in Reach, along with several better-than-Halo 3 playlists.

7

Please don’t create threads about specific individuals. Feel free to discuss topics such as general matchmaking management, though. Thanks!