Multiple Solutions to the August Reach update

Games Other Halo
#1

As we all know, this update outright sucks. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.

Opinions:

First off, Anniversary Only owners can’t do FFA or BTB anymore. Way to alienate purchasers of your first published game, 343.

Secondly, Squad DLC’s removal is absolutely terrible, mainly because the matchmaking system doesn’t always match-up eight player parties with DLC with another eight players with DLC. Achievements were hard enough to get. Now people quite literally have to boost them, since they won’t ever show up. I paid $20 for the Noble and Defiant packs and now I can’t play them because of this.

Firefight Doubles was great because it was just you and one good buddy. Its removal wasn’t as bad but I think it should still exist because four players in Firefight can get hectic and laggy, full of killsteals and ridiculousness from four players that aren’t cooperating trying to get daily/weekly challenges.

Personally, I didn’t care for Action Sack, but it was a community playlist full of wacky gametypes that were meant to be fun. It shouldn’t have been removed.

Now then, the solutions:

  • Keep these playlists, just put them in the reorganization plan. Simplest,probably wont happen.
  • Keep Anniversary FFA and BTB, and Squad DLC, downsize the price of the Noble and Defiant packs, even go and make Noble free and require it for all playlists. Microsoft and “free” don’t exactly mix, but this is a viable option.
  • Go through with the updates, save the Anniv. removals and make certain playlists Noble and/or Defiant DLC required and downsize Noble’s price.

I’m sure 343 has been made aware of the public outcry over this update and is reconsidering their plan, hopefully we’ll get some sort of compromise in the form of the above suggestions.

#2

DLC won’t be made free but even if it was i want a refund for maps that i can’t even use.

#3

> As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
>
> Opinions:
>
>
>
> First off, Anniversary Only owners can’t do FFA or BTB anymore. Way to alienate purchasers of your first published game, 343.
>
> Secondly, Squad DLC’s removal is absolutely terrible, mainly because the matchmaking system doesn’t always match-up eight player parties with DLC with another eight players with DLC. Achievements were hard enough to get. Now people quite literally have to boost them, since they won’t ever show up. I paid $20 for the Noble and Defiant packs and now I can’t play them because of this.
>
> Firefight Doubles was great because it was just you and one good buddy. Its removal wasn’t as bad but I think it should still exist because four players in Firefight can get hectic and laggy, full of killsteals and ridiculousness from four players that aren’t cooperating trying to get daily/weekly challenges.
>
> Personally, I didn’t care for Action Sack, but it was a community playlist full of wacky gametypes that were meant to be fun. It shouldn’t have been removed.
>
>
> Now then, the solutions:
> - Keep these playlists, just put them in the reorganization plan. Simplest,probably wont happen.
> - Keep Anniversary FFA and BTB, and Squad DLC, downsize the price of the Noble and Defiant packs, even go and make Noble free and require it for all playlists. Microsoft and “free” don’t exactly mix, but this is a viable option.
> - Go through with the updates, save the Anniv. removals and make certain playlists Noble and/or Defiant DLC required and downsize Noble’s price.
>
> I’m sure 343 has been made aware of the public outcry over this update and is reconsidering their plan, hopefully we’ll get some sort of compromise in the form of the above suggestions.

Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.

Anniversary FFA mainly always had a low population, the same can’t be said for BTB, during peak times it was always up in the 1000+, but the fact it was just Big Team Battle, with limited settings and only three maps, made it a redundant playlists, the way you say the alienate the players of Anniversary is laughable, considering the population of FFA alone was always low, trying to say alienating would be more understandable if they removed something like Team Slayer, Big Team Battle or Living Dead, but not Anniversary FFA.

Squad DLC was another playlist with another low population, even during peak times it never got past 400-500 players, last time it did was when 343i whacked a Super Jackpot on the playlist which even then, barely got it into the thousands because of the lack of DLC owners and people who enjoy Squad DLC’s settings (AR starts on Ridgeline or Highlands, really?), if people were actually playing the playlist, it would be staying, when 343i added it back, they even said, we will be monitoring this playlists population, if it remains lower similar to Premium Battle, it will be removed, it was no higher than Premium Battle, so it is being removed come Tuesday.

Firefight Doubles, although good for those who want to avoid lag, play with a buddy or simply prefer it, is redundant when there is already a Firefight playlist available with more variety of settings compared to Doubles, just like Squad DLC & FFA, it also has a low population and only shoots up when there are Firefight challenges on which is usually every Thursday.

You didn’t even put up an argument for Action Sack, but let me tell you, those gametypes aren’t fun, they were half–Yoinked!- gametypes that Bungie made with Megalo and forgot about, lets not forget the amount of Slayer variants in there that make stat padding a dream, a few would be Hotshot or Power Slayer.

As for your solutions, I don’t understand the first one fully, this is the reorganising, remove playlists which have a low population and will make search times long after the game isn’t the main focus and are redundant with other similar playlists already existing.

The price of the DLC is entirely up to Microsoft, just because 343i is with Microsoft doesn’t mean they have any say on the pricing of DLC, also, let’s not forget that the following Halo DLC is still full priced, Halo 3 Mythic Map Pack II - 800 MS Points, Strategic Options from Halo Wars - 800 MS Points and Historic Battles from Halo Wars - 800 MS Points, if anything, those DLCs would become cheaper before Halo: Reach’s does, the DLC for Reach has been on offer countless times now with even the Anniversary Map Pack being cut down to 600 while Noble & Defiant were on 400 each, meaning a total of 1200 Points for all three map packs.

The facts are, the August update is the final one for a few months and it is aimed to consolidate the playlists, which is what it is doing, you were never going to please everybody, if they removed something like The Arena, you would get people here complaining, if they removed Grifball, you would get people complaining here, if they removed Super Slayer, you would get people complaining here, etc, the same response would be received from all the fans of all the different playlists.

If I may link to this tweet from bs angel found here, you will see how they aren’t looking to add any playlists to Reach at this point in the games life, take into account that the update on Tuesday is set in stone, any playlists removed then will NOT be added back, that is going in reverse for what they originally intended which is to allow players to find games faster once Halo: Reach isn’t the primary focus, you add back playlists that can barely keep a healthy population with 90-100k players on at one time, then they are close to, if not dead when the game will have population levels as low as Halo 3 did when Reach came out, and there is no denying that.

Now please people, will you understand that they aren’t going to add the playlists back, nor are they going to stop the playlist update on Tuesday, they are consolidating, Halo 3 had it and the complaints rolled in, but eventually they realised the goal of it was better for the games future, it removed Team Throwback (I think) along with Squad Battle, MLG FFA and other playlists which were already low on players while Halo 3 was still in its prime.

> i want a refund for maps that i can’t even use.

When you bought the DLC, you agreed to the notice that you can’t get a refund, as well as the fact you were not promised a playlist in Matchmaking, you can still freely play them in Custom Games & Forge as well as the playlists they show up in if all players have DLC in the game which although may not be common, still happens, I found games with DLC options today in SWAT, and it was extremely common.

If you want to see what playlists actually have DLC options in them, you can visit this page: Halo: Reach Playlists, just disregard Anniversary FFA, Anniversary BTB, Action Sack, Squad DLC and Firefight Doubles.

#4

How much does 343 pay you to vehemently defend their every action? All joking aside, your corporate apologist attitude is part of the problem here. Rather than waste too much time going into the specifics of who is being “alienated”, I will just state one example.

Imagine you are new company that just inherited a really beloved series, the first thing you do is remake/remaster one of the most beloved games of this series and try to justify repurchasing it. This standalone game contains maps and playlists that people with this disc can access. If they wanted to play FFA or BTB they could. Now they won’t ever be able to. You can easily try to spin this “Most people with CEA have Reach, Halo 4 is right around the corner, etc”, but the fact of the matter is, some people will now be without a method to play on these really well made maps. All of you CEA owners can kiss Headlong/Timberland remakes goodbye.

Also you need to keep in mind the way they handle this DLC fiasco will have a direct effect on Halo 4. How can you purchase 4 DLC with confidence when you consider the lackluster way it was handled in Reach? If your specific Halo 4 playlists aren’t “big enough”, prepare to have it axed. Funny really, the people who went above and beyond and shelled out extra cash after the initial purchase will be the ones given the second class treatment.

Also I may be wrong about this, but I distinctly recall the Halo 3 consolidations occurring after Reaches launch. Last night over 100,000 people were on Reach, and while not quite COD numbers, it still more people than nearly every FPS throughout every system. The game is still relevant.

In the end of the day I predict you just see us all as entitled children. Every update done is done with the best intentions in mind, and who are we to question or lash out as these decisions? We aren’t owned anything. Once we gave them our money, we signed off on our right to demand more. What a backwards way of thinking. Never mind this update was hidden below an amazing Halo 4 video, never mind that most people won’t know what hit them since they don’t frequent forums.

#5

> If they wanted to play FFA or BTB they could. Now they won’t ever be able to.

#6

My solution is to never buy DLC from 343 ever again.

#7

anniversary btb is not redundant, it has some of the best btb maps in the game that play really well in objective. Default btb is just filled with heavies on clunky forge world maps.

Action sack deserves to go, it was a playlist with poor custom game type variants.

Squad dlc should stay as it’s not the player’s fault that it’s not tu updated and has bad gametypes.

I never really played anniversarry ffa, most people play anniversarry classic, but btb should stay, since it’s the only place to find two of the six anniversary maps.

#8

> > As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
>
> Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.

population doesn’t matter, cutting the playlists will not add noteworthy amounts of ppl to other playlists, it only serves to deny dlc owners their maps. Even if the population is low the playlists are needed to allow dlc owners to play their maps. i use this example: how would you feel if you bought something, say food, but then you were told, “well you can keep that food we sold you, but you cant eat it”. 343 owes us dlc playlists because we paid for the dlc, regardless of the playlist population.

#9

> > > As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
> >
> > Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.
>
> population doesn’t matter, cutting the playlists will not add noteworthy amounts of ppl to other playlists, it only serves to deny dlc owners their maps. Even if the population is low the playlists are needed to allow dlc owners to play their maps. i use this example: how would you feel if you bought something, say food, but then you were told, “well you can keep that food we sold you, but you cant eat it”. 343 owes us dlc playlists because we paid for the dlc, regardless of the playlist population.

Horrible analogy, the fact you can still play the DLC in other playlists just not commonly makes that moot, so you can still eat your food.

If the population if low, it doesn’t deserve its own playlist, it just results in extremely slow search times when the next game comes out.

#10

> > > > As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
> > >
> > > Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.
> >
> > population doesn’t matter, cutting the playlists will not add noteworthy amounts of ppl to other playlists, it only serves to deny dlc owners their maps. Even if the population is low the playlists are needed to allow dlc owners to play their maps. i use this example: how would you feel if you bought something, say food, but then you were told, “well you can keep that food we sold you, but you cant eat it”. 343 owes us dlc playlists because we paid for the dlc, regardless of the playlist population.
>
> Horrible analogy, the fact you can still play the DLC in other playlists just not commonly makes that moot, so you can still eat your food.
>
> If the population if low, it doesn’t deserve its own playlist, it just results in extremely slow search times when the next game comes out.

they come up very rarely and are usually not voted for. so no you cant realistically eat your food. perhaps a nibble here or their, which is negligible. if your experience has been different, do tell your secret.

#11

> Horrible analogy, the fact you can still play the DLC in other playlists just not commonly makes that moot, so you can still eat your food.
>
> If the population if low, it doesn’t deserve its own playlist, it just results in extremely slow search times when the next game comes out.

Except the fact that people who only bought the HCE:Anniversary will not be able to play their paid for DLC. Also the valuable Halo community is going to have to deal with their specific lovable gametypes disappearing from the face of multiplayer matchmaking for ever.

And I really have no idea what people are talking about “slow search times”, I play one of the least populated playlists in Halo and I’ve never had to wait longer than 1 minute. Is 1 minute of searching too long enough to justify cutting out playlists the community has grown to love?

There is no clear benefit whatsoever this update is going to have on the community.

#12

> > > > As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
> > >
> > > Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.
> >
> > population doesn’t matter, cutting the playlists will not add noteworthy amounts of ppl to other playlists, it only serves to deny dlc owners their maps. Even if the population is low the playlists are needed to allow dlc owners to play their maps. i use this example: how would you feel if you bought something, say food, but then you were told, “well you can keep that food we sold you, but you cant eat it”. 343 owes us dlc playlists because we paid for the dlc, regardless of the playlist population.
>
> Horrible analogy, the fact you can still play the DLC in other playlists just not commonly makes that moot, so you can still eat your food.
>
> If the population if low, it doesn’t deserve its own playlist, it just results in extremely slow search times when the next game comes out.

Then why is it super slayer not being cutted? It has lower population then most of the playlist being removed.

#13

Don’t expect a coherent or worthwhile response from some of these apologists and devils advocates. They are threatened by this influx of individuals who have never posted before, and feel the need to drive home their unpopular, borderline nefarious opinion, and think that their post count will in any way influence how we will respond.

You can make a weak argument as to why Squad DLC will be axed. Making such arguments over Anniversary playlists reeks ignorance and inconsideration. Not everybody owns every single Halo game. Maybe there are some people who only liked the first, or lack the money to own others. These people may also like Big Team and Free For All. How hard is it to put yourself in their shoes? How can you in any way expect them to be understanding or accepting? They literally will have less playlists to choose from than the day before. They literally won’t be able to play some maps outside of custom games.

And for the love of god, don’t spew rubbish like “You didn’t pay for the right to use matchmaking”. That stinks of foul play. As a liberated, intelligent consumer you must always demand the most from any service or product. That is how things advance.

#14

Lil B im God, I love you

but they should of COndenced andiversary into “DLC All-Stars”, requires All 3 packs and makes use of the gametypes in all 3, team size of 4-8, small chance for FFA with 4-5 person teams

I fracking hate paying for stuf I’m not going to use now.

#15

> Lil B im God, I love you
>
> but they should of COndenced andiversary into “DLC All-Stars”, requires All 3 packs and makes use of the gametypes in all 3, team size of 4-8, small chance for FFA with 4-5 person teams
>
> I fracking hate paying for stuf I’m not going to use now.

Look, what’s done is done and there is no going back. I dont understand it. People are NOW complaining about DLC when for 2 years DLC has been horribly mismanaged and shafted by only having ONE playlist instead of multiple DLC required playlist. Yes, I understand the argument that u paid $60 for the whole game and shouldnt be locked out of part of it (ala Playlist) BUT sacrifices have to be made and weren’t made for Reach.

Complaining about the achievements? How many months has it been since CEA’s release and some of you still don’t have them all? Not everyone has to have all of the achievements but let’s face it if you don’t have them all by now and you care about it NOW then that’s your fault no offense. When they all came out there was a plethora of people going around grouping together to help people with them, I sorry for being cruel but you should’ve cared then and it would’ve been an effortless endeavor.

I doubt 343 will touch Reach again until 2013 and the only thing they will probably do at that point is not adding but more cutting.

Instead of taking out your frustration on 343, why dont you realize that -Yoink!- is the one who controls the DLC practices all Xbox. Until things change from the higher ups at -Yoink!-(as well as Game Companies who charge Day 1 DLC, companies such as Capcom with disc locked content such as characters that you PAY for etc), unfair DLC practices from all over the Gaming Spectrum will continue to exist. Next Gen wont be pretty I predict. Sadly I’m going a little off topic.

#16

If they want to streamline the playlists, why not just get rid of all the -Yoinking!- Slayer variants instead of taking maps away from us (for the most part)?

#17

Little Moa sounds like a used car salesman. What a pathetic joke this update is. Nice job managing the DLC for the last few years you bumbling idiots.

#18

Take TU off of everything and go back to Reach’s default settings. Apply the 5 standard AA’s to more of the gametypes that they were stripped out of. Remove Super Slayer. Add Highlands, Breakneck, and Ridgeline to Invasion and increase their chances in big team battle. Remove those crappy arcade gametypes from Firefight. Regular Firefight should have Firefight as the first option and generator defence as the second. Remove firefight NEP gametypes.

I think the single most important thing that must happen to Reach is to take out the TU and go back to default settings. Leaving the game fragmented into two playlist sections is a horrible idea. All they need to do is move all the playlists in the evolved section into standard without the TU.

#19

> > > > > As we all know, <mark>this update outright sucks</mark>. The categorization is nice, but quite plainly the the playlist removal is terrible.
> > > >
> > > > Speak for yourself on the highlighted part, people don’t seem to understand that these playlists had piss poor populations and didn’t even deserve their own playlists.
> > >
> > > population doesn’t matter, cutting the playlists will not add noteworthy amounts of ppl to other playlists, it only serves to deny dlc owners their maps. Even if the population is low the playlists are needed to allow dlc owners to play their maps. i use this example: how would you feel if you bought something, say food, but then you were told, “well you can keep that food we sold you, but you cant eat it”. 343 owes us dlc playlists because we paid for the dlc, regardless of the playlist population.
> >
> > Horrible analogy, the fact you can still play the DLC in other playlists just not commonly makes that moot, so you can still eat your food.
> >
> > If the population if low, it doesn’t deserve its own playlist, it just results in extremely slow search times when the next game comes out.
>
> they come up very rarely and are usually not voted for. so no you cant realistically eat your food. perhaps a nibble here or their, which is negligible. if your experience has been different, do tell your secret.

I was playing Matchmaking yesterday in the early morning, around 3am EST. I got DLC choices in multiple groups of people. It isn’t that rare.

#20

> Take TU off of everything and go back to Reach’s default settings. Apply the 5 standard AA’s to more of the gametypes that they were stripped out of. Remove Super Slayer. Add Highlands, Breakneck, and Ridgeline to Invasion and increase their chances in big team battle. Remove those crappy arcade gametypes from Firefight. Regular Firefight should have Firefight as the first option and generator defence as the second. Remove firefight NEP gametypes.
>
> I think the single most important thing that must happen to Reach is to take out the TU and go back to default settings. Leaving the game fragmented into two playlist sections is a horrible idea. All they need to do is move all the playlists in the evolved section into standard without the TU.

Why remove TU, though? Many players enjoy those settings. Nobody is taking Vanilla away from you, so don’t take away my tolerable settings.

But with your logic, we should remove SWAT and Snipers and Living Dead and Grifball and all the DLC, since they weren’t there day 1.