Interesting Suggestion (I hope)

Games Other Halo
1

So I’ve been thinking about why Halo 4 might not have so many people playing it for a while. I enjoy the game, but I know I don’t play as much Halo as I have been very busy lately. There are many reasons as well as the end of the console cycle etc. However I’m curious as to how many people play less of stopped playing as they hit SR 130. I remember in Halo: Reach whether actively going for ranks or not, I really liked progressing to the next rank every so often. It did get really slow, but I liked the idea that I was always somehow progressing.

As for Halo 4 it is much easier to hit max rank, so there is a possibility that a lot of people that hit 130 stopped. I kinda liked Halo: Reach’s rank system a little better and the whole emblem and name thing was pretty cool.

Please don’t flame, I am so damn weary of it all. So just keep it relevant. Now this isn’t for the population thread either, it’s more about finding out why people play less and maybe, that it has something to do with hitting 130 easily.

So any thoughts on the whole 130 thing? If so do you think Halo 5 should have a more reach based system (as well as CSR in game fingers crossed)?

2

For me personally, the rank was never a factor.

In Halo 3, I took my 50 seriously (the trek to it at least) and played seriously. Many of my friends played it too. I was never into the armor and whatnot, just rank and the thrill of teamwork and winning.

Reach destroyed the number of my friends who were playing Halo. Only a few remained, and with the change in rank and the rank not showing, I basically ended up playing for fun. The “randomness” with the abilities and whatnot began to work in my favor as I exploited the overpowered ones to play better. The sheer amount of customization in appearance just wasn’t my cup of tea.

By the time H4 came around, I was no longer a “competitive” player but was a very regular casual player. That is, I played Infinity Slayer a lot. I reached 130 soon and didn’t really care about any customization. I played for enjoying the game. Like Reach, there was more randomness than the previous iteration, but by now I had/have learned to utilize the randomness in my favor to make the game easier for me and exploit it to do well in Infinity Slayer games. I played regardless of rank and unlocks; that was never a factor for me.

But what will cause me to greatly decrease my time spent playing will be the DLC lockout. Now I cannot play Infinity Slayer, the basic gametype, right out of the box. I have tried to do Ricochet, and while the maps, pace, and game size are the same, it is a different experience with the obvious inclusion of the objectives. Big Team usually will be Slayer, but the maps, vehicles, pace, and game size are all off. Doubles is too small and too focused on teammwork (you can only really play with friends, otherwise you can’t have that level of teammwork). Throwdown is a level of competitiveness that I would have relished back in H3, but now, I don’t like having no radar (I can deal without camo and ordinance, fine, but the radar is my main thing), especially since nobody uses mics.

Look at the population overall. 5000 people (yes, 5 thousand) left Infinity Slayer and have not appeared on other playlists, whose populations have remained approx the same. The DLC lockout kicked out a lot of people because a lot of people just played the “basic” slayer game mode. Now I’m not saying whether this is right or wrong (I believe you can create a SEPARATE, NON-DLC slayer playlist alongside the current Infinity Slayer to fix this problem - again, not right/wrong, but I believe there is a more amicable solution versus a zero-sum game approach), but you have a lot of people who just simply left at that.

So I believe it is the DLC requirement on the main slayer playlist that has given the low population as of late.

3

I see what you mean. I guess that I haven’t had this issue since I bought all the DLC day one. However in Halo 3 there was a DLC requirement on a lot of playlists and the overall game population didn’t decrease. Whilst saying that those playlists usually had a lower population than others that did not.

Maybe you have a good point there though, it does seem like a lot less people are playing Infinity Slayer. For me I’m still pretty competitive when I get a chance to play so I’m usually on Doubles or Snipers (sometimes Team Throwdown) so I guess I haven’t really noticed it as much.

That being said I think what you have suggested adds quite a bit to people playing less Halo 4. I guess it is really a combination of all these factors. I can see both sides of the DLC lockout, we’ll probably have to see how things pan out from now. With Halo 5 coming out so soon it shouldn’t really be too much of a problem as long as they nail it with Halo 5 day one on the matchmaking front. Rather than Halo 4’s slow blossom approach, which incidentally I didn’t find too many problems but that’s a matter of perspective.

OT: If you have 800 spare microsoft points I would recommend getting the Majestic DLC (I think that’s the only required one for infinity). It definitely has some of the best Halo 4 maps on it.