I believe I speak on behalf of a fair percentage of the community when I say it is okay to have casual playlists in Halo 5. Not everything has to appeal first and foremost to competitive audiences. In fact, Halo has a long history of appealing to both casual and competitive players in equal measure.
Halo Combat Evolved: It was as casual or as competitive as you wanted it. You just set up a difficulty and/or invite your friends over for some fun.
Halo 2: Hosting online multiplayer, Halo 2 gave competitive players a means to expand their cravings. That said, custom games and campaign were still engaging for anyone that wanted to just pickup-and-play.
Halo 3: Similar to Halo 2, but with the addition of unlockables, forge, and later firefight. The only time a player ever had to leave their comfort zone was to unlock an achievement and/or get a sweet piece of armor. Firefight provided hours of fun for anyone who could hold their ammo in check.
Halo Reach: The real game changer. All progression was via a point/level system. The points could be gained from campaign, multiplayer, or firefight. Its multiplayer was more chaotic due to the use of armor abilities and unique weapons. Its firefight was set to heroic but was diverse and considered fair. The campaign was just awesome and had tons of replay value. Anyone who played had their pick no matter their preference.
Halo 4: Rather similar to Halo Reach and its point system, but also incorporating Halo 3’s achievement system. The campaign was beautiful, and finishing legendary unlocked some beautiful armor. Multiplayer was regarded as “too casual” due to custom loadouts (and the unholy DMR). Spartan Ops had a good story, but the gameplay occasionally got stale. None the less, people still had a decent selection for fun.
Halo 5: I won’t lie, the raw gameplay is beautiful. That said, the only way to unlock anything in the game is to play competitively and grind for hours on end. Every playlist involved fighting fellow humans. So when we heard Firefight was coming back, some of thought it might be a saving grace for casuals. The sad truth came to be that it was arguably HARDER than competitive multiplayer(my personal Win/Loss record is better for multiplayer than firefight).
So I ask: where is the casual fun? I WANT to play Halo 5. I WANT to give 343 industries my money. I CAN’T because this game is constantly turning me off with its intense difficulty. When I come home from work, I want to turn on the Xbox and feel like a High-tech-super-soldier, not a plain marine with a shield and jetpack. So I say again, it is okay to be casual. The point of game is to have fun, and the point of a game industry to make money from that fun. Well if people can’t have fun and feel relevant, then how is that going to effect the game itself?
EDITS: I’m slowly altering this whenever people point out large holes in my argument. Kinda like a community proofread.
