If You Are a Competitive Gamer...

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I’m not, actually, but a few days ago I created this thread and learned something you might find of interest.

As I said, I am not what most player would call competitive, but if you have been playing Halo as long as I have you must at least understand what makes Halo so appealing for gamers that are. I do vividly recall in Bnet’s H3 forums how so many competitive-types wanted some sort of “noob-free” zone that would exclude, frankly, people like me. I didn’t like it, but I understood it. If you filtered out the -Yoink- from the wannabees, what you had left was a genuine desire to have a place where you knew that both your teammates and your opponents were worthy. I had always thought that the only place that could possibly happen was in a tournament. But as it turns out, Bungie had a solution built right in to Halo 2.

No, not ranks. Clan support.

I’m still trying to find out how they did it, but there were apparently exclusive playlists, slayer and objective, for clans. If you were not a clan member, you could not play those games. No guests, and (I’m told) no split-screens.

Now there was at least one person that posted in the other thread that actually participated in this exclusive format and he said that for the most part it was a very competitive environment. I can’t help thinking that this is what today’s competitive Halo player is looking for. I’m trying to find out why clan support was dropped, and all I can gather is that the trash-talking got out of hand, and so did the netcode hacking, the latter being the most serious. Yet a decade later and a new developer and still no clan support or a reason for no support, despite the fact that there is clearly community support.

I bring this up because if you are a competitive player, or if you just want to see things like MLG and AGL really take off, you need to understand how important it is to have organized teams. The problem with things as they are is that when a tournament is announced, people show up and form teams on the spot, then they learn to play together during the tournament. They expect fans to pay to watch that? They expect sponsors to foot the bill for that? Well, it’s not happening, is it?

It’s OK. Baseball used to be like that. So did football and basketball. What happened? Teams got real. Rules got settled. Players got paid.

Clans are teams. If they thought of themselves that way they would field teams. Slayer teams. Objective teams. Griffball teams. Whatever. After time certain clans (organizations) would become known for the Teams they fielded. Players would strive to become members of those organizations and be on those Teams. Sponsors would want their logos plastered all over players on those teams, and would pay to make sure you were able to see those logos when you tuned in to watch the game.

And for all this to happen, you’d need an Xbox, and the game would have to support exclusive playlists for organized teams. You know, like it used to, only better.

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A clan took all of 5 seconds to make. Select “Create a Clan” enter a name, and you were good. There were no special requirements to get into a clan playlist, you simply had to have enough players for the playlist and everyone had to be in the same clan. You could only be in one clan at a time but you could jump between clans at a whim, you just needed someone of “authority” to invite you to the clan, or so have your own and invite some friends in.

As far as “worthiness” or “skill” it was just the same as regular match except you were matched by the rank of the clan instead of individual ranks.

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First off, thank you for that. If there’s just one thank for your post, it was from me.

Secondly, I can see where this system had some potential for abuse, but it’s a good place to start from. I can also see now why clans got hijacked by friends lists.

I wonder how many of those clans ended up as MLG teams? Or was that connection ever made?

I also wonder if perhaps “clan” was the wrong term to use. The game ChromeHounds had a similar system (no exclusive playlists, though) in that you could start a “Squad”. You could invite people to be in your Squad, and people could ask permission to join your Squad. You could then go online and put out a “Squad Call” to get your Squad together for a battle.

Perhaps a more military term would have been more suitable. Or, they could go with the Team theme that Halo is famous for. Blue Team, Gray Team, Noble Team, Crimson, etc. There could be levels such as Companies, Brigades, Divisions, etc.

I just think this creates a good framework upon which a good competitive environment could be built. I also happen to think that respected teams might be a more valuable resource for insight than individual players that happen to do well on their own.

4

Clans were a neat concept in Halo 2. The clan playlists were eventually dropped from matchmaking due to inactivity in the playlist, but that can also be blamed to bad gametypes within the playlist.

They still kept clans in the game, even after removing the playlists. It didn’t really have much of a purpose after that except for finding new players to play with, and basically having a secondary friends list (friends lists were capped at 100 individuals each).

I remember playing with some friends in a small clan, and we’d try to go undefeated as long as possible. If we ever lost a game, we would delete the clan and start a new one. It was fun, but I can’t say for sure if the Halo community ever took the clans to be very serious. They were removed before MLG-style playlists (Battle Rifle starting weapons, basically) were implemented into the game.

I wonder how things would be different if they had brought more competitive gametypes into the playlist? I know for a fact that the SMG starting weapon on larger maps were a real pain in the -Yoink-, and likely turned off many people.

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I definitely think clan support is crucial. I’d like to see clan integration into Waypoint make an appearance in Halo on Xbox One.

I certainly still want my competitive ranking system, but clan support only strengthens social competitive aspects.

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I participated in the halo 2 clan playlist back in the day and I have to say I really enjoyed it. Made it much more team based because you only faced off against other teams. Epic battles ensued. But like everything else, people tarnished it. But there wasn’t anything like it. You always wanted to win. Our clan sought other players constantly, looking for people who were specializing in certain areas (sniping, cq, etc). Was something I always missed, and if done right and 343 focused attention on, could make Halo 5 even better.

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This:

Or this:

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While I agree with you for the most part, this

> The problem with things as they are is that when a tournament is announced, people show up and form teams on the spot, then they learn to play together during the tournament.

is totally false. Teams always practice online weeks before the event. Always. Tournaments can cost hundreds of dollars for INDIVIDUAL players to attend depending on where it’s being hosted, and if you think all these dozens of players are making such an investment on the assumption that they’ll find enough talented, free players to form a team that actually has a chance of placing top 8 to make that money back you’re out of your mind.

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> A clan took all of 5 seconds to make. Select “Create a Clan” enter a name, and you were good. There were no special requirements to get into a clan playlist, you simply had to have enough players for the playlist and everyone had to be in the same clan. You could only be in one clan at a time but you could jump between clans at a whim, you just needed someone of “authority” to invite you to the clan, or so have your own and invite some friends in.
>
> As far as “worthiness” or “skill” it was just the same as regular match except you were matched by the rank of the clan instead of individual ranks.

“matched by the rank of the clan” is what makes the most difference here. You had to play in full parties, with a group of players that were all your friends, no randoms. And if you ranked yourself up you were playing against the best of the best.

That kind of thing goes beyond regular ranked playlists in H2 and 3, or the crap we have now where nothing is ranked, and you get matched against anybody and everybody regardless of skill.

With Clan Support disappearing after Halo 2, and then Ranked disappearing after Halo 3, and now this constant push to drop the skill gap with as many random factors as seems humanly possible, the Halo franchise really feels like a scrub-fest lately.

Unless 343i takes the franchise back to basics, takes a good hard look at Halo 2, and focuses on figuring out exactly what made that game tick? Halo will never gain the popularity it had in the mid to late 2000s.

MOST players want a COMPETITIVE setting, preferably if every single function in the game is developed with a COMPETITIVE mentality. The more it feels like a game plays itself for you, or hands you free kills/wins on a silver platter (such as Reach’s skill-less MM, and Halo 4’s aim assist/personal ordinance drops), the less appealing it gets to players who, to quote a children’s song from the 90s, “Want to be the very best, like noone ever was.”

Instead of giving players the goal to “get x kills with this weapon” via challenges and commendations, players should be given the goal to be BETTER THAN THE REST. That’s what Ranks, Clan Ranks, and the general design ethic of Halo 2 accomplished. Nowadays the game is all this dumb “Your greatest enemy is yourself, conquer your own records” zen hippy crap. Back then it was "Screw feel good philosophy, you either get good, or you get left behind’

10

> While I agree with you for the most part, this
>
>
> > The problem with things as they are is that when a tournament is announced, people show up and form teams on the spot, then they learn to play together during the tournament.
>
> is totally false. Teams always practice online weeks before the event. Always. Tournaments can cost hundreds of dollars for INDIVIDUAL players to attend depending on where it’s being hosted, and if you think all these dozens of players are making such an investment on the assumption that they’ll find enough talented, free players to form a team that actually has a chance of placing top 8 to make that money back you’re out of your mind.

I’d like to believe you, but I’ve watched a few tournaments and, thanks to the low production quality, some things made it on to the stream that probably shouldn’t have. Some of those teams may have practiced together for weeks, but they acted like they just met.

Besides, what I’m proposing here is that an environment that encourages teams to practice together for months, and endeavor to stay together for much longer. The Halo 2 clan support system seems to me to be a good starting point. Some decent (guaranteed) cash prizes would help.