Its Not the Game...Its the Community...

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Playing a Halo nowadays feels more like playing Battlefield or Call of Duty. Why? The guns are different, mechanics are way different, maps are way different…EVERYTHING is different, yet they feel the same. Why?

The answer to that is simple. The COMMUNITY. Halo used to be all about the community, all about making new friends and discovering the game together. Instead, now when I jump into a game lobby and DARE to exit my party chat…well well, one ticket to the gates of hell please. Its full of 12 year old kids telling me about how they…erm…fathered me (Sonny I’m sorry but 1: Your balls haven’t dropped yet, and unless you’re a time traveler, that’s physically impossible), and their 14 year old brothers trying to teamkill in order to steal power weapons, vehicles etc…

EDIT: The result of this? All teamplayers have now secluded themselves to the prison of the closed party chat, and mostly don’t even bother trying to work with people in game, because they know that 99% will be the aforementioned…me being one of them. I am generalizing here, but this is my personal view on the matter.

Now in the past, there were ways to counteract this…Teamkilling too much? Temporary ban. Quitting too much? Temporary ban. Now I know some of you will say this mechanic is still in place but I beg to differ. 1st of all, the game devs have made it so that if you were recently shot, and are teamkilled by a teammate, it shows that you were killed by the opposing player as a cheap of way of pretending teamkilling has gone away… and to make it harder to get temporary bans. Why would the devs do this you ask? Because they long ago accepted the fact that they will stop catering to a mature community, and go for the squeekies from COD and BF who snuck under their father’s PEGI radar (or ESRB depending where you are from…haha). They KNOW that this new breed of community has 2 things…short attention span, and no patience. So to prevent them from throwing their controllers at the screen (of which they own neither…MOOMMMYYYYYYY!!!) the devs have sacrified the mature community, knowing that we won’t rage quit over a teamkill, and will simply let out a gentle sigh of frustration when we are run over by a warthog because we had a sniper rifle that looked yummy to a particular 10 year old… Looking at you Bobby Jr.

My point here is not to hate on younger players, because we had them in the community and some of them contributed quite nicely, but they were taught respect both by the community and the system. Nowadays, the system plays to their wims, and the community doesn’t seem to care anymore or moreover, the system actually punishes the “good guys” when we DO try to enforce some sort of discipline on the little rascals running about.

So yeah. To all of you “vets” - of which I am one myshelf (Get Sean Connery’d), don’t hate the game. Hate the players. 343 have made the game smoother, faster and just overall, gave it a new outlook without taking away the original Halo formula. Sure we didn’t have forge at the beggining and the maps were…weird to get used to…but they are POURING resources into adding content. We’ve already had two major DLC, and guess what, THEY ARE FREE - sure some of the gamemodes should have originally been there, but nobody forced them to make a dozen new maps! Big team battle? They could have just used the warzone maps for crying out loud, they are the right size! Its not the game that’s making you hate it or get bored. Its the lifeless and downright rude nature that this community has taken on.

Just my two cents, any opinions are welcome, and if you don’t agree please do so respectfully. Sorry for any spelling errors or if I was running-on at certain points, but this is a pseudo rant so I just blurted out my thoughts.

Cheers,

TheBattleMuffin

2

My Solution : Implement the punishment system from halo reach, and take out this silly mechanic that if you were shot recently, teamkills don’t count. People will be more careful with grenades and FF in general, and will improve the game massively. Also, the implementation of an INGAME reputation system would work wonders, since we all know the XBL one is useless…

3

How to get BANNED from Halo 5 Guardians! Halo trolls watch out for Halo 5 Arena BAN HAMMER! - YouTube ---- interesting video

4

Have you ever had that time where you are on breakout you’re on fire, you’re carrying the team, you pickup the battle rifle and then get team killed?

5

I miss the old days, i logged 2500+ games of halo 3. Evry1 played the shot out of halo back then.

6

@Sonic Roadhog - absolutely know what you’re talking about there…that’s exactly the kind of -Yoink- I mean - and there is no way to punish people.

@destroy1ner - Yeah Halo 3 and Halo Reach …ahhh… wipes tear

7

I never understand team killers. When your given a team it doesn’t matter who has what weapon, all that matters is that the weapon is used efficiently. If they want to fight over power weapons why don’t they just play FFA.

8

You never will understand them. The problem is that in previous games, we had tools to control them. Now the punishments seem to be pinpricks for them… since 343 are too afraid of losing customers for the next game, they don’t implement any REAL method of punishing these guys.

The other day I was playing with 3 guys. 2 were my friends and we were on Rig - holding the basement and nest, playing strategically. We were DESTROYING the other team, and suddenly the 4th guy starts to shoot us, and keeps shooting us the whole game.

I confronted him after on messages, and his answer? He was angry that we were campy noobs and he was always 3v1 (this coming from a guy who finished 5-21 (he bassicaly nearly lost us the game).

When you have to deal with people like that… it really takes the joy out of the game, and makes me think what sort of community I’m part of nowadays. It really is sad.

9

Actually some of the behavior on these forums sometimes reflects what I said…

10

Me playing BTB

oh hey nice sniper rifle. OH -Yoink- THERES A MOSQUITO ON YOUR BACK!!!

WHAM

hey look a sniper rifle

11

I mean, that’s the gaming community in general now. There are very few games which sustain a sensible fanbase without people who are annoying.

12

I do think it should show a team kill, but what you describe only seems to happen if an enemy shot them before the team kill, 3 friends and I were playing breakout, wondering why we were doing so well, then we looked at the recently shot stats on the side and saw that two guys were team killing each other.

It shows up, but, only if no enemy shoots you before the kill. Also, you may want to give the benefit of the doubt with grenades, they are really powerful how in H5 and mistakes happen at times.

13

Well said battle muffin! I do have to agree with you, sadly about this community, I have not posted anywhere near as much as I would of done through fear of ridicule and stirring the hornets nest. I do consider myself a “vet” as I am both in my thirties (which I am old by my son is very old) and have been on my halo journey since the original Xbox. Thanks for the read, it’s nice to see there are still some people out there that can have sensible conversations and get their points across concisely.

FBG

14

It almost feels to me like it was meant to be. Like I’m sure it’s just a glitch, but if I accidentally load some shots into a team tank, ghost, or warthog when I think it’s an enemy vehicle, and then the enemies destroy it, I get a vehicle assist for helping destroy my teammates vehicle. I was shooting a bunch of baddies on our flag and my friend had a ghost there, and I was just randomly shooting and he was shooting and I thought he was an enemy so I shot, boom got a betray and ghost kill.

15

It has always been like that in the Halo games. It doesn’t really help the game isn’t as good in my opinion. Those annoying players didn’t ruin the story for me, the campaign itself did. Those annoying players didn’t ruin the multiplayer for me, I never hear anybody talk and I don’t use player chat, it just isn’t the same gripping gameplay I’m used to.

16

It’s funny how you think 343 is doing this on purpose…

17

> 2533274869875453;16:
> It’s funny how you think 343 is doing this on purpose…

I don’t think they are ruining the game on purpose mate, but at the end of the day, 343 is owned by microsoft, and microsoft has to send shareholders a nice little bundle of information about how they are making money once a month.

Hence I say, 343 are avoiding using mechanics that would be considered “unfair” by … younger or less patient players who live in a perpetual grey zone and don’t really understand right and wrong in a game… Looking at you guy that has a mosquito on his back ^^. A 11 year old will not have MLG aspirations. They’ll just play games where they can mess around with their friends…take away the ability to mess around - you lose a little “dear santa” note for next year’s game.

runs away throwing grenades in the general direction of the enemy to get the kill – oh look a teammate…a -Yoink- it…

18

> 2533274796279407;13:
> Well said battle muffin! I do have to agree with you, sadly about this community, I have not posted anywhere near as much as I would of done through fear of ridicule and stirring the hornets nest. I do consider myself a “vet” as I am both in my thirties (which I am old by my son is very old) and have been on my halo journey since the original Xbox. Thanks for the read, it’s nice to see there are still some people out there that can have sensible conversations and get their points across concisely.
>
> FBG

See, the proof is in the pudding. People are afraid of “stirring the hornet’s nest” - why is it a hornet’s nest in the first place? Halo used to have one of the most open minded and welcoming communities…now people just slag others.

19

I don’t know, I don’t hear a lot of 12 year olds. Mainly people raging and saying BULL!@#$

20

> 2535409103705542;19:
> I don’t know, I don’t hear a lot of 12 year olds. Mainly people raging and saying BULL!@#$

I classify that behavior as that of a 12 year old hahaha.

Yes as I said I generalized a fair bit in my post (although there are many young kids playing this - since lets be fair, they’ve even taken blood out of MP, its the most child friendly AAA FPS out there at the moment I think), but the idea is that the community has deteoriorated