Hey guys whats up.
A few days ago I created a thread in the form of a letter. Some of you may have read it and if you are one of the now over 200 people to have liked that thread I thank you very much for your support.
That thread was meant for the competitive community. It was a way for us to band together and rally. The goal was very simple, create a thread humbly and respectfully addressing our opinions on the Halo franchise and also address some issues and concerns we have with Halo 4. It was not a blind ignorant post saying we should remove the things 343 adds. it was not a hate thread, and it was not an attack on the casual community.
seeing how successful it has become and the amazing response it has gotten, it has inspired me to make this thread.
You see while i have been busying going over the letter and responding to the communities feedback, which has been overwhelmingly positive. I have been scanning over some other threads, and I’m a little disheartened by the schism that seems to be forming in our community.
Guys we need to stop. We need to stop fighting and start discussing. We need to stop arguing and start compromising. We need to stop all this mindless bashing and overly aggressive threads. It isn’t good for us. The community needs to “band together” so that Halo 4 is a Halo for all, not just a Halo for a specific group.
I believe we start with the different kinds of Halo players and learning to respect their part of the game. Just because you are an ultra competitive player and you have a very specific vision for what Halo is, that doesn’t mean your vision is the only one that should be taken account of because there are a lot of casual players out there that care nothing about skill or even playing fields or a 1-50 ranking system. All they want to do is pop in from time to time and play a game, buy some armor, sprint around and do what they want.
And then there are those who love the changes 343 is bringing. They love the idea of loadouts and abilities and a progression system where they can invest time in to a game and over time aquire new assets and starting options. Just as it is wrong for the competitive player to exclude the casual opinion, it is wrong for a casual to shun the competitive community and invalidate their opinions.
The fact of the matter is there is no one kind of halo player. Therefore there is never going to be one true opinion about the Halo franchise. There are those who care only about campaign, there are those of us who are cartographers and spend all their time in Forge. There are those who spend there time in firefight playing cooperatively, and when multiplayer is concerned there is a competitive group and a casual group.
So we basically have
Campaign
Firefight
Forge
Competitive Multiplayer
Casual Multiplayer
Each of these sections has a very dedicated and passionate community. People love the story and the campaign. Doing warthog tricks, finding skulls, speed runs, playing co op, looking for secrets, and a bunch of other things. Halo’s campaign is a huge part of the game.
With firefight you can team up with your buddies and try to survive as long as you can. I used to play it with my buddies for hours in ODST, and with Reach it grew even larger. Though i will say it lost a bit of its charm from ODST, the fact remains that firefight is huge and has a very strong community supporting it.
Then there’s Forge. They litterally have websites with their own community devoted to just this part of Halo. A place where you can go in and express your creativity and build something. It could be Forge Art, It could be a multiplayer map, it could be an obstacle course. The fact is that Forge is an amazing unique place in Halo that allows people to imagine and bring their ideas to life. It is something truly spectacular.
The casual community is another huge group. It doesn’t worry about perfecting their skill and outplaying someone. It doesn’t mind spawning with different equipment. All it cares about is fun. They want to fly around with jetpacks and rain death upon unsuspecting victims. It wants to customize their character and mix and match a bunch of options. It wants to have fun in a friendly non stress environment. And its totally ok and is an important part of Halo.
Then theres the competitive community. Probably some of the most passionate and vocal members of our community. Halo to them is and always will be skill based gameplay, even spawns, and as simple as possible. They don’t want loadouts, sprinting, or a progression system because in their eyes it ruins the competitiveness of the game. And they are completely right.
This is not a thread where I’m going to go over my perfect Halo 4, i would be here forever if i were to describe exactly what I would do.
the point of this thread is to open people’s eyes in a nonhostile, calm, and respectable manner about the multiple communities built around this great game we call Halo.
Now I ask you all.
would it be fair to remove the campaign? Just completely remove it. Despite the fact that millions of people love the story and fiction, and adore its characters, and have spent the last 10 years following it, would it be fair to just leave those people in the dust and forget them.
Would it be fair to remove Forge? After websites and groups have been created devoted to this one feature. After millions of hours have been spent creating and building, how would it be fair for someones favorite part about Halo be absent in its sequel?
Do you see where I’m going with this? The point is that it would be absolutely terrible and catastrophic to lose those aspects of the game. Just as it would be absolutely terrible to lose the competitive and or casual side of Halo.
Just as it would be absolutely terrible to copy Halo CE/2 exactly, it would be almost worse to completely abandon what so many feel in love with and changed Halo in to something else.
You see, we don’t need to be fighting for a Halo based around competition OR a Halo based around change. We need to band together as a community and fight for both. There isn’t a single member of the Halo community that should go in to Halo 4 and not be able to play what they want to play. There needs to be innovation. But there also needs to be classic Halo.
Now its up to you guys. I am but one voice on this forum. We can continue to complain, and fight, and argue and it will solve absolutely nothing.
Or we can come together and fight for Halo 4 to be a Halo for all. so when it is finally released, we can all experience the Halo we love, no matter what that may be.