Being comprised mostly of Dads (not entirely, we welcome Uncles and even Moms too) we are a bunch of old-school Halo fans. Most of us can trace our Halo roots all of the way back to CE. For the most part we are NOT seriously competitive (we of course have members who are), although we do enjoy semi-working together and winning some games.
Circle back to Summer of 2021. Half the year into the original Infinite Delay; we took it in stride. We were, after 5 1/2 years of slow…steady…growth finally wrapping up our Halo 5 Company commendations and earning that Achilles Helmet. Our “popularity” was at an all time high… members both here on Waypoint and in our Discord server were engaged and active. Playing Halo, Talking Halo, Watching Halo, Following Halo! We were SO EXCITED to ride this wave into Halo Infinite at the end of 2021!
And ride into Infinite we did! Our Discord channel activity was at fever pitch! Our “Halo Thursday” event was getting fuller than Xbox Party-chat allows! Many members continued over from Halo 5 and other FoF members who didn’t join into our H5 shenanigans joined up for the ‘fresh start’ with the new Halo game! It was the beginning of the end.
The initial warning sign was the ending of Spartan Companies. This is to say nothing of company challenges or commendations. Spartan Companies on Waypoint were a recruiting tool! When you’re a 30-50 year-old dad with a few minutes to spend in some Halo matches and want to play with some like-minded individuals what do you do? You hop onto the “Halo website” and find people like you. This is where most of our Halo community members came from… searching the Waypoint company descriptions for people that met our play-style. But for Infinite, Spartan Companies don’t exist! We are old… and busy… many of us don’t have hyper-active Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc. for recruiting. We “thrived” on the passive recruiting of having our community posted in the place where everyone knows to go for Halo content: Waypoint! Since the end of Spartan Companies on Waypoint our new-dad-recruitment has been virtually zero. But that’s okay… we had TONS of Dads already playing regularly from our H5 days right?
Right! … Wrong. It started out that way; but the choices made for Infinite have killed our company’s enthusiasm. At first it was the BTB issues in December '21-January '22. We had a lot of people who wanted to play… and what mode was the best in Infinite to play with a large group? BTB of course! Only, we couldn’t play. This turned a lot of prospective new FoF-ers, who didn’t already know about the goodness working Halo has to offer, off. We never got them back.
The second issue were/are the challenges. The challenges as then (and now!) constituted do NOT encourage playing with others when everyone has different things to do and/or playlists to play. It’s easy to say “ignore them” but when you, as a father, have limited play-time and you’re in-game and the challenges are ticking down and giving XP to help move through the Battle Pass… it’s hard to simply ignore them. We know challenges are not going away and accept it. But, man! do we wish you could earn XP by playing the game-modes you want to play!
The third issue is the lack of campaign co-op. Enough said.
The fourth is Season 2’s featured event: Last Spartan Standing. In a game that currently has no co-op, BTB with only 4 maps, and only 1 Ranked playlist that can support more than two Spartans, 343 released a core Season-2 game mode that you HAVE to play by yourself. And it’s coming back for 6 weeks this season!
Our community members, our DADS; long time halo lovers, are abandoning Halo in droves. Before today our once thriving Halo Discord Channel hasn’t had real Halo conversation in almost 2 weeks (and that conversation was about Snip3downs damage-less rocket during the HCS LOL). We haven’t welcomed a new Halo member to our Discord since …scrolling… February!
The worst part is the negativity growing towards 343 and Microsoft that is making our Old Guys bitter. Our now small and loyal core is trying to hold things together; look for those rays of sunshine. Tell members that once played, that Halo is “not so bad” and to give it another chance. Sometimes it works for a day or week or two. But nobody is sticking around. There are other rounded-out, community-welcoming, fully-featured games to play and our playtime-limited members want to enjoy them WITH OTHER PEOPLE, WHILE ALSO WORKING THROUGH THE GAME’S REWARDS.
This is not a commentary on gameplay, sandbox, etc. We of course have opinions, concerns, hopes in those areas too. But above all we want to keep/grow our Halo community. We want to be able to have fun and PLAY TOGETHER. I’d think 343 would want that too… but their decisions say otherwise. Active communities build enthusiasm, add players to the game, make more money! I’d think this would be a no-brainer all the way around. A “win-win” as they say.
Please help us 343! Give us the tools we need to keep and grow The Federation (FoF)! Starting right here on the web’s home for Halo: Waypoint!
I know 343 has told us cool things are coming. But I don’t know if we’ll make it to November.
