Longevity

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. Think back at all the good multiplayer games of the past: Goldeneye, Doom, Quake, Halo CE, Halo 2, CoD 4/WaW, Halo 3, BFBC2, just to name a few. Probably the last truly great (I mean almost instant classic) multiplayer shooter to be released was BFBC2 in 2010 (still developed primarily before 2009), or if you don’t like that game, then CoD:WaW in 2008. Now, something happened in the year 2009: the release of MW2. This game, while being one of the most fun games ever, imo, was very subtly designed to reward noobs more than long-time players. Scar-H at level 8? UMP at level 6? Grenade launcher after 10 kills with a gun? All the while rewarding camping, usually an easier strategy (one man army nube tubes with claymores at all the entrances are still OP, guys), with maps designed very vertically (which, generally speaking but not always, leads to better camping spots and easier to defend buildings. Anyone remember getting on top of the building on Highrise?). Now, you may be saying, “Yes, Blinky, we all know that. What’s your point?” The release and massive success of this game taught publishers and developers that there was a lot of money to be made making a game that appeals to the casual gamer (not that there is anything wrong with being casual, I believe that we all have an inner casual). Look at the releases after the release of MW2: Halo: Reach, Halo 4, Black Ops 1 and 2, MW3, CoD Ghosts, Battlefield 3/4, Titanfall, Destiny, etc. None of these games have been considered as part of that legacy of epics and I doubt that people will continue to play a game like MoH: Warfighter in 10 years in the same way people still play Halo 1 or 2. That being said, all of those games save for a few were financially successful.

Consider this: Microsoft is trying to sell as many Xbox’s as they can so that they can have people buy Xbox Live and games and all of those accessories. They need a system seller, and they know it. Look at their lineup right now: Sunset Overdrive, Ryse, Forza, and MCC. It isn’t convincing enough to go buy the console, unless you are a huge Halo fan, but even then, people probably have heard by now the state that the MCC is in at the moment (not knocking the quality of those games, I especially love Sunset Overdrive, it’s very underrated). Microsoft needs a game that will sell not just itself, but the console; for the Xbox original it was Halo 1 or Halo 2, depending on how far in the life-cycle you were, and for the 360 it was Halo 3. Microsoft needs a game that will appeal to that casual consumer, and Halo 5 does that, and I have to applaud 343i for trying to make the game work for a less casual audience. That being said, I can’t see this being considered a classic by many; it generally follows the same formula for success that most other mainstream shooters do at this point, and, while people here may know the difference between Halo 5 and CoD AW, someone who picks up the game to play every weekend for 2 hours might feel like it is too similar to AW or Titanfall or Destiny. Again, I’m not saying it is, only that with a limited knowledge of the game and limited playtime, a casual gamer might not know that. Microsoft knows that this game will sell a lot, and will probably move a lot of Xbone’s. I don’t think this game will do poorly financially; however, I do have doubts about the quality of this game. I don’t see people playing this game for the next decade because of the gimmicky features (yes, at this point the movement systems, ADS, etc. are a gimmick, here’s the Merriam-Webster definition if you doubt me.)

I don’t feel that people will continue to play this game for a long time after release and I don’t think many people will consider it to be as good as Goldeneye or Doom or CoD 4. Ask yourself: in 2024, do you think you will still play this game? I don’t think I will, and I don’t think you will either. I just don’t see them making a game that you will want to play for more than a few years at most as they want you to keep buying more games, and quality games that become classics just aren’t where the money are anymore, which is a sad thing to say. Now, I could be wrong, and this could be the best game of all time; I have no problem admitting that I’m wrong when I am, but I am pretty confident I won’t be. What do you think about this? Can Halo 5 be a classic? or will it fall to the wayside like those other releases after MW2?

2

I’ll have a better understanding once the beta in launched or if I decide to buy MCC. I can’t tell you from feed back but from what I saw I think it’ll last a year or may that. And a half till it gets dull.

3

I haven’t been following the Xbox One a lot lately, but one of the main reasons I’ve held off from buying the One is the lack of interesting exclusives.

Sunset Overdrive looks alright, and I would’ve bought MCC instantly if it actually -Yoinking!- worked. No other exclusives really have my interest though, I couldn’t care less about Forza or Ryse or etc. Maybe the list of exclusives has expanded significantly since I last checked though, but I don’t feel like dropping $300 just for two titles. There’s a few non-exclusive games that look alright, but I can just get these on the PC anyways.

Edit:
Yeah, just looked through this and there were only around nine exclusives I had any remote amount of interest in, half of which being cheap indie games.

Will this game be a classic? I don’t know but I’m doubtful.

Imagine that you’re a modern gamer, someone that plays CoD all day with their friends, someone that genuinely enjoys playing CoD with them. Suddenly, a trailer for a Sci-fi game is released. You notice some similarities, yet also many stark differences between this game and yours. Your friends don’t seem all that interested, they’re perfectly content playing CoD. A few of them say “meh whatever, I might get it if ____ gets it”. Do you feel like buying the game or not? If it helps, replace CoD with whatever shooter you like and “Sci fi” with whatever style of FPS you generally don’t have much interest in.

I don’t believe Halo 5 will attract many people besides Halo players.

4

I think you have a point, and this trend is something I’ve noticed as well … but I also think there are other factors. The biggest, I think, is the number of games and the frequency with which they’re released.

I think annual releases are a mistake; if every year I toss out one CoD for a new one, none of them are going to be memorable. They’re sabotaging the lifespan of their own games and have cheapened the franchise immensely.

5

> 2533274819302824;3:
> I haven’t been following the Xbox One a lot lately, but one of the main reasons I’ve held off from buying the One is the lack of interesting exclusives.
>
> Sunset Overdrive looks alright, and I would’ve bought MCC instantly if it actually -Yoinking!- worked. No other exclusives really have my interest though, I couldn’t care less about Forza or Ryse or etc. Maybe the list of exclusives has expanded significantly since I last checked though, but I don’t feel like dropping $300 just for two titles. There’s a few non-exclusive games that look alright, but I can just get these on the PC anyways.
>
> Edit:
> Yeah, just looked through this and there were only around nine exclusives I had any remote amount of interest in, half of which being cheap indie games.
>
> Will this game be a classic? I don’t know but I’m doubtful.
>
> Imagine that you’re a modern gamer, someone that plays CoD all day with their friends, someone that genuinely enjoys playing CoD with them. Suddenly, a trailer for a Sci-fi game is released. You notice some similarities, yet also many stark differences between this game and yours. Your friends don’t seem all that interested, they’re perfectly content playing CoD. A few of them say “meh whatever, I might get it if ____ gets it”. Do you feel like buying the game or not? If it helps, replace CoD with whatever shooter you like and “Sci fi” with whatever style of FPS you generally don’t have much interest in.
>
> I don’t believe Halo 5 will attract many people besides Halo players.

That’s interesting to note, but I would think that many of them look back at Halo 4, which was pretty commercially successful (and I know that H4 and H5 are very different), and think that it wasn’t a bad game. But yeah, that’s definitely something to think about.

6

> 2533274883669557;4:
> I think you have a point, and this trend is something I’ve noticed as well … but I also think there are other factors. The biggest, I think, is the number of games and the frequency with which they’re released.
>
> I think annual releases are a mistake; if every year I toss out one CoD for a new one, none of them are going to be memorable. They’re sabotaging the lifespan of their own games and have cheapened the franchise immensely.

That’s a good point, and the reason they do that is because they have to in order to keep the casual audience. They know that these people stop playing the same game after short periods of time, so they need to release new ones to attract people’s attention. They want to sabotage the lifespan of their games to force you to buy the next one.

7

Games like COD can simply never be classics because of the insane release schedule where they just re-release it once a year and make people start all over again. Even on the off chance that they actually did do something innovating and amazing they would just redo it the next year anyway. That said I don’t think things like ADS and sprint can outright be called gimmicks just because they stem from such games. Ground pound looks like a gimmick (and a slightly silly one at that) but the rest of the abilities look to me like they simply make the game a lot more fluid and mobile.

If you strip all that stuff out what you would be left with is basically just a graphically improved Halo 1 which isn’t really going to sell these days. The lack of mobility in the first few Halo games is pretty shocking in retrospect and really has made them feel quite dated since playing them again in the MCC. However when they were new I never noticed that because… well because there wasn’t anything that had come along and done something different.

8

> 2533274819302824;3:
> I haven’t been following the Xbox One a lot lately, but one of the main reasons I’ve held off from buying the One is the lack of interesting exclusives.
>
> Sunset Overdrive looks alright, and I would’ve bought MCC instantly if it actually -Yoinking!- worked. No other exclusives really have my interest though, I couldn’t care less about Forza or Ryse or etc. Maybe the list of exclusives has expanded significantly since I last checked though, but I don’t feel like dropping $300 just for two titles. There’s a few non-exclusive games that look alright, but I can just get these on the PC anyways.
>
> Edit:
> Yeah, just looked through this and there were only around nine exclusives I had any remote amount of interest in, half of which being cheap indie games.
>
> Will this game be a classic? I don’t know but I’m doubtful.
>
> Imagine that you’re a modern gamer, someone that plays CoD all day with their friends, someone that genuinely enjoys playing CoD with them. Suddenly, a trailer for a Sci-fi game is released. You notice some similarities, yet also many stark differences between this game and yours. Your friends don’t seem all that interested, they’re perfectly content playing CoD. A few of them say “meh whatever, I might get it if ____ gets it”. Do you feel like buying the game or not? If it helps, replace CoD with whatever shooter you like and “Sci fi” with whatever style of FPS you generally don’t have much interest in.
>
> I don’t believe Halo 5 will attract many people besides Halo players.

As someone who partly identifies with the demographic you described, I disagree. CoD was my game of choice since CoD4, replacing Halo and Gears. I dabbled with them, but they weren’t the shooters I played day-in and day-out. After Ghosts (which sucked), I basically waited until Titanfall came out. This is probably my favorite shooter, despite how new it is. I even did pretty well in the competative scene (not that there was much of one). Point being, Halo wasn’t on my radar. But this beta drew me back in quite surprisingly. I appreciate sprint (which isn’t the most popular opinion) but the dash is even more significant to me. Halo’s lack of mobility and relative inability to disengage always bothered me, but this new feature made it feel more like Titanfall (regarding the robots), which I’m familiar with. Dash also tends to make gunfights much more dynamic, rather than the one directional jump that left you helpless or the simple, boring strafing. I know this is a bit of a tangent but I really do want to stress how appealing this game is to me: a hardcore FPS player who doesn’t love Halo. I certainly didn’t think I’d be on a this forum a few months ago.

9

> 2732317809651779;7:
> Games like COD can simply never be classics because of the insane release schedule where they just re-release it once a year and make people start all over again.

Not true. CoD 4 and CoD:WaW came out back to back and are both considered to be classics. I would argue that they haven’t been that good because they don’t have to be; they will sell extremely well as long as they don’t make that core casual demographic mad.

> 2732317809651779;7:
> Even on the off chance that they actually did do something innovating and amazing they would just redo it the next year anyway.

That doesn’t necessarily mean people will play it. More people are playing BO2 than Ghosts, as of now.

> 2732317809651779;7:
> That said I don’t think things like ADS and sprint can outright be called gimmicks just because they stem from such games. Ground pound looks like a gimmick (and a slightly silly one at that) but the rest of the abilities look to me like they simply make the game a lot more fluid and mobile.

Not going to get into this debate

> 2732317809651779;7:
> If you strip all that stuff out what you would be left with is basically just a graphically improved Halo 1 which isn’t really going to sell these days.

MCC disagrees with you. it sold very well, and was literally old games with a remaster of 2 of them.

> 2732317809651779;7:
> The lack of mobility in the first few Halo games is pretty shocking in retrospect and really has made them feel quite dated since playing them again in the MCC. However when they were new I never noticed that because… well because there wasn’t anything that had come along and done something different.

Not getting into the argument of whether or not the old games are dated, but there were plenty of other games that did things like the current trend of enhanced mobility. The most notable was probably Mirrors Edge.

10

> 2533274840212973;9:
> Not true. CoD 4 and CoD:WaW came out back to back and are both considered to be classics. I would argue that they haven’t been that good because they don’t have to be; they will sell extremely well as long as they don’t make that core casual demographic mad.

Games like the new COD installments I meant. Also since when has World at War been considered a classic? The story was the last genuinely good one I played but the multiplayer was spray and pray hell. Irrelevant.

> 2533274840212973;9:
> MCC disagrees with you. it sold very well, and was literally old games with a remaster of 2 of them.

Yes… because MCC is a compilation of old games. We knew that going into it. Do you honestly think if Halo hadn’t been released in 2001 and instead launched this year people would think it was as amazing as we thought back then? Even if it had next gen graphics and the same excellent story it would still get some funny looks for the gameplay.

> 2533274840212973;9:
> Not getting into the argument of whether or not the old games are dated, but there were plenty of other games that did things like the current trend of enhanced mobility. The most notable was probably Mirrors Edge.

Mirror’s Edge came out in 2007. Six years after Halo: CE and also it is an entirely different genre of game so I’m not even sure why you’re bringing it up. I said that at the time of playing Halo: CE there wasn’t anything else that had done something different in regards to mobility and freedom.

The first 3D shooter I played was Goldeneye. It didn’t even have a jump button. Or crouch and strafing was performed via tortuous movement on the C-Pad. Perfect Dark introduced crouching but still had no jump and awful strafing. To even imagine sticking large maps and vehicles in these games would have been hilarious.

Then just look at the fact that you had to cycle out your weapons just to find a knife or a grenade instead of them being on seperate buttons. Compared to Halo the gameplay is tortuously slow and clunky. Also in Goldeneye you would end up picking up every weapon you walked over and find yourself stuck switching guns for ten seconds just to get back to your weapon after.

Halo wiped the floor with those games back then with changes that seem absurdly simple and obvious now. That doesn’t mean things have to stay the way they were in 2001-2004.

11

> 2732317809651779;10:
> > 2533274840212973;9:
> > Not true. CoD 4 and CoD:WaW came out back to back and are both considered to be classics. I would argue that they haven’t been that good because they don’t have to be; they will sell extremely well as long as they don’t make that core casual demographic mad.
>
>
>
>
> Games like the new COD installments I meant. Also since when has World at War been considered a classic? The story was the last genuinely good one I played but the multiplayer was spray and pray hell. Irrelevant.

Since when has it not? The story and zombies were both incredible for their time, and the multiplayer was highly skill based. How was it spray and pray? There were 11 automatics in the whole game, 6 of which are LMG’s which were not very good for spray and pray lol.

> 2732317809651779;10:
> > 2533274840212973;9:
> > Not true. CoD 4 and CoD:WaW came out back to back and are both considered to be classics. I would argue that they haven’t been that good because they don’t have to be; they will sell extremely well as long as they don’t make that core casual demographic mad.
>
>
>
>
> Games like the new COD installments I meant. Also since when has World at War been considered a classic? The story was the last genuinely good one I played but the multiplayer was spray and pray hell. Irrelevant.
>
>
>
> > 2533274840212973;9:
> > MCC disagrees with you. it sold very well, and was literally old games with a remaster of 2 of them.
>
>
>
>
> Yes… because MCC is a compilation of old games. We knew that going into it. Do you honestly think if Halo hadn’t been released in 2001 and instead launched this year people would think it was as amazing as we thought back then? Even if it had next gen graphics and the same excellent story it would still get some funny looks for the gameplay.

Yeah they would. That’s what they did for Halo CEA, and it also was relatively well recieved and was only disliked due to the lack of it’s own multiplayer.

> 2732317809651779;10:
> > 2533274840212973;9:
> > Not getting into the argument of whether or not the old games are dated, but there were plenty of other games that did things like the current trend of enhanced mobility. The most notable was probably Mirrors Edge.
>
>
> Mirror’s Edge came out in 2007. Six years after Halo: CE and also it is an entirely different genre of game so I’m not even sure why you’re bringing it up. I said that at the time of playing Halo: CE there wasn’t anything else that had done something different in regards to mobility and freedom.
>
> The first 3D shooter I played was Goldeneye. It didn’t even have a jump button. Or crouch and strafing was performed via tortuous movement on the C-Pad. Perfect Dark introduced crouching but still had no jump and awful strafing. To even imagine sticking large maps and vehicles in these games would have been hilarious.
>
> Then just look at the fact that you had to cycle out your weapons just to find a knife or a grenade instead of them being on seperate buttons. Compared to Halo the gameplay is tortuously slow and clunky. Also in Goldeneye you would end up picking up every weapon you walked over and find yourself stuck switching guns for ten seconds just to get back to your weapon after.
>
> Halo wiped the floor with those games back then with changes that seem absurdly simple and obvious now. That doesn’t mean things have to stay the way they were in 2001-2004.

My point is, though, that it has only been the past year that these mechanics have been popular. I saw Mirror’s Edge in 2007 and not once did I say, “I wish I could do that in Halo 3.” I agree that Goldeneye is very outdated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Halo circa 2007 is. Not the point of this post, however, so I will end by saying agree to disagree.

12

> My point is, though, that it has only been the past year that these mechanics have been popular. I saw Mirror’s Edge in 2007 and not once did I say, “I wish I could do that in Halo 3.” I agree that Goldeneye is very outdated, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Halo circa 2007 is. Not the point of this post, however, so I will end by saying agree to disagree.

Ah right I see. Yeah you’re right but at the same time when I played Goldeneye I never thought ‘this control needs a second thumbstick’ or ‘why the hell can’t I jump?’ If I had read a preview on Perfect Dark in Nintendo Magazine (or whatever I read before the internet worked) and it said the game included a bright blue glowing sword on the map I think I would have been baffled. Yet as a power weapon it adds a certain element to Halo games.

I think it can be hard to predict what lies around the corner in terms of new gaming and, more importantly, what works and what doesn’t. The forums are filled with people leaping to dismiss everything Halo 5 has shown us as bad without even playing it. Rather than actually giving reasons why they think this mostly they are just saying it isn’t Halo 2. I’m just trying to keep a little more open minded about it.

13

^ To a certain extent however, from halo reach to four we have seen many of these “new” features at work and kinda know they do not work well.

14

MW2 was released in 2009, and BFBC2 in 2010.

15

Nice post OP.
I think the key point is that this is halo 5, not the first one.

Goldeneye and halo CE were new and different.
Halo 5 should have been a different game, different story, etc and if it is awesome it brings something new to the console. However, being a halo fanboy I and many others will always buy a halo game so it guaranteed them sales…

I do hope they develop something original next.
titanfall was fun but it was entirely multiplayer and there werent a grest deal of options to keep me playing all night

Small teams, sheilds and splitscreen capabilities are all I ask… change everything else

16

To me, longevity in the modern day is rewarding the player to keep going. Look at Titanfall, great game, addictibg gameplay. But it simply didn’t have the unlocks or rewards to keep people going. I remember in halo 3, I would play for hours just trying to get the rogue helmet, and in reach, grinding for days to get the the commando shoulder pads.

I hope halo 5 has a good system of rewards, because a good reward system = longevity

17

I think Halo loose this train with Reach, AAs and lack of ranks was a fail (arena rank didnt work). A shooter like Halo need options for get better and better… Easy to learn, hard to dominate and H4 was a disaster in this appearance.

18

-New Competitive Ranking system

-High Skill gap

-Spectator mode

If the game is fun as it seems to be then there should be no problem.

19

> 2533274857398125;16:
> To me, longevity in the modern day is rewarding the player to keep going. Look at Titanfall, great game, addictibg gameplay. But it simply didn’t have the unlocks or rewards to keep people going. I remember in halo 3, I would play for hours just trying to get the rogue helmet, and in reach, grinding for days to get the the commando shoulder pads.
>
> I hope halo 5 has a good system of rewards, because a good reward system = longevity

Yes maybe you’re right. In halo 2 and 3 for me it was the ranking system…halo reach it was about grtting to inheritor and halo 4 sucked once I got up to 130

20

I know it won’t happen but I’m not that bothered about achievements.

If only maps were rewarded for playtime
this would be a guarantee for longetivity