Objective Reasoning Regarding The Halo Franchise

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

FIRST AND FOREMOST:
In an attempt to preemptively stop the flame posts, I urge you to please realize that this post is largely based upon my personal beliefs and observations of both the community and the franchise as a whole. It does not represent the community, nor is it attempting to. Try and read it as unbiased as possible, taking in the facts and opinions as they are, and understand the difference between fact and opinion.
I’m going to try and go by sections, so bear with my sorted thoughts.

Current Direction Of The Franchise:

At this point in time, it seems the goal of 343i is to push themselves away from the footprint that Bungie left. To be fair, it’s huge shoes they’re trying to fill. With the more-or-less “death” of Cortana, they severed the iconic staple of the Halo franchise. The only logical conclusion for me is that (besides following the lore) they want to shed the quintessential skin that is the old trilogy. Here’s some backstory from what I remember:

343i came into conception near the end of Reach’s development, in order to manage the servers and develop and release DLC for the, at the time, thriving population of Reach. Shortly after Bungie abandoned the franchise though, many a fan left with them. I believe that, that initial population drop scared 343i as a company, and destroyed any chance at a stable, well-received takeover of the franchise.

Scared and attempting to regain dignity, they pushed out the DLC. From what I remember the DLC was good, and I believe that was the general consensus among the fanbase. I think it was at this point that 343i’s ego blew out of proportion, as they were officially inducted to the Microsoft team as the new “Halo Team”. Snowball effect taking place, they pushed out Halo: CE Anniversary. The remake was well received and was definitely deserved, though again this only contributed to their already enormous ego.

Flash forward a year, and they’ve just released Halo 4. It blew sales goals by a mile, and only grew that bloated ego. After the so-called “honeymoon period”, numbers dropped fast and 343i scrambled to retain their shrinking player base by releasing “Spartan Ops”, which was received well by some, though poorly by others. Numbers continued to drop, and the minds at 343i must have resolved to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get back the fan base.

Thus was MCC conceived I believe, as 343i looked back on their success with HCEA. Though curiously enough, the only bits developed by 343i was the interface and networking. Judging by the release of Halo 5 assorted content, it was conceived mid-development of MCC, and the team was split into two teams; one to work on the Halo 5: Guardians Beta, and another of a probably smaller number of members to finish development of MCC (this would explain the massive failure at launch). it would also make sense to assume that currently the 343i team is trying to recoup from this disaster while at the same time continue work on the beta, which would explain the continued issues. (A full development team should’ve been able to fix the issues by now, or at least put a heavy dent in them).

This is my opinion based on observations, and 90% shouldn’t be taken as fact.

The Collective Opinions of the Community Regarding 343i:

From what I’ve observed it seems that there is a general love/hate vibe for 343i at the moment. Many users who were/are outraged at 343i’s actions thus far have been almost evenly met by other users defending 343i. While there are many viable reasons for liking/disliking the company, there is still an ungodly amount of uneducated spam flaming 343i, supporters, and detractors alike. It’s alarming that the community is starting to resemble a YouTube comments page (not meant as an insult, again this is just my observations), and I think we need to as a community calmly discuss our opinions like we always have instead of flaming eachother just because we don’t all share the same opinions.

Personal Opinion Of 343i:

Personally I believe that 343i can both fix issues with the current situations (games and fans alike), and move forward as a company only if they attempt to work with the community. Again though, with the community in such disarray it’s difficult for anyone to get a solid consensus out of this, though I think it would be smart of them to position the whole development team at the forefront of the MCC issues, so that users have something to entertain them whilst 343i work on everything else.

Out Of The Ashes, Into The Sun:
As a reminder, this post in it’s entirety is largely opinion; though I think as a team of both the community and the development team we can work together to get what we both want: games that work and are awesome for us, and a loving fan base for the development team (plus money of course, but that’s not why 343i’s in this, right? :p).

What I’d like to see for responses to this is calm and composed thoughts and opinions of what you agree with and disagree with, formatted simply as Agree, Disagree, and Personal Thoughts. I want to know how far off I am on this, but flaming posts towards any user, whether they agree or disagree with me, will be reported for spam. This is not the place for it.

Thanks guys!

2

> 2533274921709801;1:
> FIRST AND FOREMOST:
> In an attempt to preemptively stop the flame posts, I urge you to please realize that this post is largely based upon my personal beliefs and observations of both the community and the franchise as a whole. It does not represent the community, nor is it attempting to. Try and read it as unbiased as possible, taking in the facts and opinions as they are, and understand the difference between fact and opinion.
> I’m going to try and go by sections, so bear with my sorted thoughts.
>
>
> Current Direction Of The Franchise:
>
>
>
>
> At this point in time, it seems the goal of 343i is to push themselves away from the footprint that Bungie left. To be fair, it’s huge shoes they’re trying to fill. With the more-or-less “death” of Cortana, they severed the iconic staple of the Halo franchise. The only logical conclusion for me is that (besides following the lore) they want to shed the quintessential skin that is the old trilogy. Here’s some backstory from what I remember:
>
> 343i came into conception near the end of Reach’s development, in order to manage the servers and develop and release DLC for the, at the time, thriving population of Reach. Shortly after Bungie abandoned the franchise though, many a fan left with them. I believe that, that initial population drop scared 343i as a company, and destroyed any chance at a stable, well-received takeover of the franchise.
>
> Scared and attempting to regain dignity, they pushed out the DLC. From what I remember the DLC was good, and I believe that was the general consensus among the fanbase. I think it was at this point that 343i’s ego blew out of proportion, as they were officially inducted to the Microsoft team as the new “Halo Team”. Snowball effect taking place, they pushed out Halo: CE Anniversary. The remake was well received and was definitely deserved, though again this only contributed to their already enormous ego.
>
> Flash forward a year, and they’ve just released Halo 4. It blew sales goals by a mile, and only grew that bloated ego. After the so-called “honeymoon period”, numbers dropped fast and 343i scrambled to retain their shrinking player base by releasing “Spartan Ops”, which was received well by some, though poorly by others. Numbers continued to drop, and the minds at 343i must have resolved to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get back the fan base.
>
> Thus was MCC conceived I believe, as 343i looked back on their success with HCEA. Though curiously enough, the only bits developed by 343i was the interface and networking. Judging by the release of Halo 5 assorted content, it was conceived mid-development of MCC, and the team was split into two teams; one to work on the Halo 5: Guardians Beta, and another of a probably smaller number of members to finish development of MCC (this would explain the massive failure at launch). it would also make sense to assume that currently the 343i team is trying to recoup from this disaster while at the same time continue work on the beta, which would explain the continued issues. (A full development team should’ve been able to fix the issues by now, or at least put a heavy dent in them).
>
> This is my opinion based on observations, and 90% shouldn’t be taken as fact.
>
>
>
>
> The Collective Opinions of the Community Regarding 343i:
> From what I’ve observed it seems that there is a general love/hate vibe for 343i at the moment. Many users who were/are outraged at 343i’s actions thus far have been almost evenly met by other users defending 343i. While there are many viable reasons for liking/disliking the company, there is still an ungodly amount of uneducated spam flaming 343i, supporters, and detractors alike. It’s alarming that the community is starting to resemble a YouTube comments page (not meant as an insult, again this is just my observations), and I think we need to as a community calmly discuss our opinions like we always have instead of flaming eachother just because we don’t all share the same opinions.
>
> Personal Opinion Of 343i:
> Personally I believe that 343i can both fix issues with the current situations (games and fans alike), and move forward as a company only if they attempt to work with the community. Again though, with the community in such disarray it’s difficult for anyone to get a solid consensus out of this, though I think it would be smart of them to position the whole development team at the forefront of the MCC issues, so that users have something to entertain them whilst 343i work on everything else.
>
> Out Of The Ashes, Into The Sun:
> As a reminder, this post in it’s entirety is largely opinion; though I think as a team of both the community and the development team we can work together to get what we both want: games that work and are awesome for us, and a loving fan base for the development team (plus money of course, but that’s not why 343i’s in this, right? :p).
>
> What I’d like to see for responses to this is calm and composed thoughts and opinions of what you agree with and disagree with, formatted simply as Agree, Disagree, and Personal Thoughts. I want to know how far off I am on this, but flaming posts towards any user, whether they agree or disagree with me, will be reported for spam. This is not the place for it.
>
> Thanks guys!

One thing that 343 does poorly that Bungie excelled at was working with the community and putting them up on a pedestal. 343, as a company, seems much more closed off.

3

> 2533274794673678;2:
> One thing that 343 does poorly that Bungie excelled at was working with the community and putting them up on a pedestal. 343, as a company, seems much more closed off.

I would tend to agree with that statement, though in regards to 343i being closed off: It seems that rather than actually listening to the community, 343i is simply relying on numbers and logistics (i.e. Population, residual players, new players, etc… ) to determine the direction to take the franchise in. While this may work for other games and communities of those games, this is not the case for Halo. We users as a whole will not stand idly by and take everything with a grain of salt. Whether it be defending 343i or posting our opinions on things we don’t like, we all have voices. I don’t think any other game or development team out there can say that, and I think 343i needs to come to terms with the fact that we are truly the ones who decide if they survive another title in the series or not. Because sooner or later Microsoft is going to get involved and pull the plug on a failing franchise.

4

I agree with everything you’ve said.

but i have to ask how do you think we should approach the issues brought up by the beta in a gameplay perspective. I mean we’re bickering amongst ourselves because we don’t know what we want and there’s no way we can tell unless 343I releases a poll or something on each and every topic and see what the results are. and even if there was a solve all poll, how would you let everybody in the halo community know that such a poll exists.

I know this may be asking too much of 343I but maybe a couple more monitors on the forums wouldn’t hurt. Jotting down notes and straight up responding to rage thread just to ask “what would you like us to do to solve that problem?”. I know it’s late right now but i don’t think a forum monitor should just work during normal work hours and maybe it should be a job with shifts. It just feels barren sometimes and i often just want one of them to put a blank response in a topic just to let you know they’re there.

5

> 2533274811643195;4:
> I agree with everything you’ve said.
>
> but i have to ask how do you think we should approach the issues brought up by the beta in a gameplay perspective. I mean we’re bickering amongst ourselves because we don’t know what we want and there’s no way we can tell unless 343I releases a poll or something on each and every topic and see what the results are. and even if there was a solve all poll, how would you let everybody in the halo community know that such a poll exists.
>
> I know this may be asking too much of 343I but maybe a couple more monitors on the forums wouldn’t hurt. Jotting down notes and straight up responding to rage thread just to ask “what would you like us to do to solve that problem?”. I know it’s late right now but i don’t think a forum monitor should just work during normal work hours and maybe it should be a job with shifts. It just feels barren sometimes and i often just want one of them to put a blank response in a topic just to let you know they’re there.

I think we need to come up with a compromise. Previous titles accomplished this via playlists, and other gameplay mechanics such as killcams or abilities can be either added to playlists or offer each player the option to disable them completely. (And let me just mention that killcams in H2A is absolutely silly. They weren’t there in the first place, why add them now? Not everybody wants killcams in every game).

I’d almost go with something like this:

WARGAMES: Sprint & other Spartan Abilities enabled

  • Team Slayer
  • Assault
  • SWAT
  • Objective
  • Big Team Battle
  • Rumble
  • Regicide
  • Capture The Flag
  • King of the Hill
  • Territories

and

SPARTAN LABS**: Standard w/o abilities, things such as bullet magnatism disabled (As the title implies this is a playlist testing area)**

  • Team Slayer
  • Objective
  • Capture The Flag…so they can at least see for themselves if this is really what people want. That would definitely cut down on the arguments here.
6

> 2533274794673678;2:
> > 2533274921709801;1:
> > FIRST AND FOREMOST:
> > In an attempt to preemptively stop the flame posts, I urge you to please realize that this post is largely based upon my personal beliefs and observations of both the community and the franchise as a whole. It does not represent the community, nor is it attempting to. Try and read it as unbiased as possible, taking in the facts and opinions as they are, and understand the difference between fact and opinion.
> > I’m going to try and go by sections, so bear with my sorted thoughts.
> >
> >
> > Current Direction Of The Franchise:
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > At this point in time, it seems the goal of 343i is to push themselves away from the footprint that Bungie left. To be fair, it’s huge shoes they’re trying to fill. With the more-or-less “death” of Cortana, they severed the iconic staple of the Halo franchise. The only logical conclusion for me is that (besides following the lore) they want to shed the quintessential skin that is the old trilogy. Here’s some backstory from what I remember:
> >
> > 343i came into conception near the end of Reach’s development, in order to manage the servers and develop and release DLC for the, at the time, thriving population of Reach. Shortly after Bungie abandoned the franchise though, many a fan left with them. I believe that, that initial population drop scared 343i as a company, and destroyed any chance at a stable, well-received takeover of the franchise.
> >
> > Scared and attempting to regain dignity, they pushed out the DLC. From what I remember the DLC was good, and I believe that was the general consensus among the fanbase. I think it was at this point that 343i’s ego blew out of proportion, as they were officially inducted to the Microsoft team as the new “Halo Team”. Snowball effect taking place, they pushed out Halo: CE Anniversary. The remake was well received and was definitely deserved, though again this only contributed to their already enormous ego.
> >
> > Flash forward a year, and they’ve just released Halo 4. It blew sales goals by a mile, and only grew that bloated ego. After the so-called “honeymoon period”, numbers dropped fast and 343i scrambled to retain their shrinking player base by releasing “Spartan Ops”, which was received well by some, though poorly by others. Numbers continued to drop, and the minds at 343i must have resolved to go back to the drawing board and figure out how to get back the fan base.
> >
> > Thus was MCC conceived I believe, as 343i looked back on their success with HCEA. Though curiously enough, the only bits developed by 343i was the interface and networking. Judging by the release of Halo 5 assorted content, it was conceived mid-development of MCC, and the team was split into two teams; one to work on the Halo 5: Guardians Beta, and another of a probably smaller number of members to finish development of MCC (this would explain the massive failure at launch). it would also make sense to assume that currently the 343i team is trying to recoup from this disaster while at the same time continue work on the beta, which would explain the continued issues. (A full development team should’ve been able to fix the issues by now, or at least put a heavy dent in them).
> >
> > This is my opinion based on observations, and 90% shouldn’t be taken as fact.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The Collective Opinions of the Community Regarding 343i:
> > From what I’ve observed it seems that there is a general love/hate vibe for 343i at the moment. Many users who were/are outraged at 343i’s actions thus far have been almost evenly met by other users defending 343i. While there are many viable reasons for liking/disliking the company, there is still an ungodly amount of uneducated spam flaming 343i, supporters, and detractors alike. It’s alarming that the community is starting to resemble a YouTube comments page (not meant as an insult, again this is just my observations), and I think we need to as a community calmly discuss our opinions like we always have instead of flaming eachother just because we don’t all share the same opinions.
> >
> >
> > Personal Opinion Of 343i:
> > Personally I believe that 343i can both fix issues with the current situations (games and fans alike), and move forward as a company only if they attempt to work with the community. Again though, with the community in such disarray it’s difficult for anyone to get a solid consensus out of this, though I think it would be smart of them to position the whole development team at the forefront of the MCC issues, so that users have something to entertain them whilst 343i work on everything else.
> >
> >
> > Out Of The Ashes, Into The Sun:
> > As a reminder, this post in it’s entirety is largely opinion; though I think as a team of both the community and the development team we can work together to get what we both want: games that work and are awesome for us, and a loving fan base for the development team (plus money of course, but that’s not why 343i’s in this, right? :p).
> >
> > What I’d like to see for responses to this is calm and composed thoughts and opinions of what you agree with and disagree with, formatted simply as Agree, Disagree, and Personal Thoughts. I want to know how far off I am on this, but flaming posts towards any user, whether they agree or disagree with me, will be reported for spam. This is not the place for it.
> >
> > Thanks guys!
>
>
> One thing that 343 does poorly that Bungie excelled at was working with the community and putting them up on a pedestal. 343, as a company, seems much more closed off.

Well. From what I see now from Bungie (regarding Destiny)… They -Yoinked!- up story to sell more DLC (more Activision fault, but Bungie shouldn’t team up with them in a first place), multiplayer is broken because of hit detection issues, lag issues. Weapons are not properly balanced, Supers are OP as hell, announcer in MP is tragic…
So maybe you are talking about Bungie from Halo days which doesn’t even exist.

7

#I will not buy Halo 5
https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/i-will-not-buy-halo-5/b414827f-3aaa-4d41-bc6e-a756dd99e717/posts

8

> 2535445390271381;7:
> #I will not buy Halo 5
> https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/forums/6e35355aecdf4fd0acdaee3cc4156fd4/topics/i-will-not-buy-halo-5/b414827f-3aaa-4d41-bc6e-a756dd99e717/posts

that’s nice, but it doesn’t mean, that you need to spam every thread with this message

9

I think 343i got tangled themselves up in something where they won’t get out easily anymore.

With Halo 4 people expected a sequel to Halo 3 and eventually you would expect (or rather hope) it is an overall improvement of Halo 3 based on its principles, concepts and defining characteristics.

To clarify a bit what I personally consider characteristics etc, here a few:
-movement capabilities and combat capabilities being independent of each other what forms a smooth and flexible combination of both
-one constant and flowing movement pace
-the chance to turn fights around/ turn odds around
-focus on strafing (offensive as well as defensive)
-powerful/impactful/flexible individual (applies to player traits and equipment)
-rewarding precision shooting
-rewarding/encouraging offensive play
-maps that are a gameplay characteristic on their own and so much more than a simple place to shoot each other

Alternatively they could have done something completely new and different with Halo, like for example trying to create a gameplay experience which is much more closely based on the lore (just as an idea, and yes I say H5’s gameplay is not based on the lore). Then however calling it Halo 4 would be quite misleading since it inherently implies sequel and I think they should have called it then Halo: title to underline the clear cut between Bungie’s Halo and 343i’s.

Now the thing is that H4 was neither of them but it was the attempted compromise/fusion between old Halo and the current most popular FPS.
As the result Halo got a split fan base with conflicting gameplay interests for the next title (most popular example: sprint and no-sprint).

So, the question was of course what do you do when you have a split fan base? Which interests do you address and follow and which not?
I think they had the same options as before H4 again. Either pick a classic game or the classic experience as a whole and overall improve said experience and eventually hope to convince the people to who this game is not specifically addressed to or try something completely new and different, make finally a proper closure to old Bungie Halo, and try to convince the market as a whole with your own and new ideas of Halo and build a new fan base.
But what did 343i do? They attempted H4 again just on a different way. They decided to get tangled themselves up even more by somehow trying to address and fuse conflicting gameplay interests.

I.e:
They perform awkward surgeries on old (popular) maps to make them work with all the new stuff. They perform awkward surgeries on a popular mechanic in FPSs that has however now proved more than once it conflicts with (old) Halo’s FPS gameplay characteristics. They implement the same old flawed weapon starts. They implement a bunch of currently trendy stuff to decorate the old dusty stuff to give it a new shine, a shine also specifically intended to attract “foreign” fan bases.

I guess what currently bothers me the most about Halo is that its gameplay they presented with the beta lacks a clear character. It hasn’t really the character of the old games which I have favorited over all the other shooters but it also hasn’t a new distinct character which I potentially could favorite over all the other shooters. It is more of a bland “everything but nothing”. Something I do not really know what to think about or rather really like/favorite about.