Criticism is a good thing, but only when it’s actually constructive.
Blind hate is rarely ever helpful or constructive, and is usually either someone just sitting out and seeing how many people he/she can piss off or someone who is stuck in rage-mode and isn’t a pleasure to deal with. There’s blind hate on a lot of titles, actually every game I can possibly think of, that all amounts to the same thing and is usually from a series taking a shift one direction or the other. So, I don’t put a lot of stock into it because it’s usually just baseless “I want this minor feature” when the game doesn’t explicitly cater itself to that one individual (in other words, they’re of an extreme minority asking for a feature or removal of a feature).
Most of the stuff on this board is blind hate. (“The campaign sucks,” “It’s not Halo,” “It’s COD,” “It’s stupid and the multiplayer sucks so let me go buy Blops 2 because that’ll be such a better game” etc…). Which is fine to feel, everyone has personal feelings and subjective opinions they adhere to, but it gets irritating when every last one of those people pour out their rage into a concentrated word form to post to the forums. Sometimes it does let, at least me, see some things from a new perspective – like the DMR issue – but not much outside of that. (It’s a FPS, I really didn’t expect the campaign to be as open as a RPG so the linearity didn’t bother me. I don’t expect fantastic story telling experiences from FPS’s either, so I was pretty impressed with H4’s and felt like it still stood with keeping Halo, Halo and not COD, or some other FPS with a mindless campaign full of holes).
Not everyone will ever like the same game, not everyone will like every story told, not everyone will enjoy the same food and pastries.
But when people say things, like
“The DMR weapon is imbalanced because it often outpreforms the other weapons at their respective ranges – here’s some evidence to substantiate my claim” it’s easier to go at it with a level head and really consider what that person is saying. Same thing with the competitive ranks – saying “Oh, you need it or your game sucks” doesn’t draw in the attention and listeners that a well thought out argument to have it in would – there was such an argument, somewhere on the board, and if more people approached the complaints they had in such a civil matter then more people would listen and they might be able to get enough support for it to warrant a look at from 343. (Because, really, I doubt 343 takes the “DMR SUCKS I’M QUITTING” that seriously).
tl;dr: Critique is good when it’s levelheaded and helpful. It’s not good when it’s blindhate and outright bashing.