IMO 343i using ‘We’ll probably add it in later’ post-launch excuse to justify all of the MANY missing features in this game. They need to realize this is a big mistake (Constructive Criticism) and need to change this. Communication needs to improved on.
Edit: Also this is actual game-types missing, not just playlists.
Also read this post before you reply to this topic, it’s a post by GhostBuddy, my thoughts exactly:
> The population is large enough to survive a split population at launch with literally zero consequences, it’s only once your population count is on life support that it matters. Its better to start appealing to every single niche that has ever had a significant force in the community, before you lose their attention, then appealing only to the lowest common denominator, lose everyone else, then see what a significant fraction of the lowest common denominator might also like playing periodically, after you’ve already let your community die. This isn’t 2004, or 2007, and Halo has to compete with lots of competent shooters, Netflix, the golden age of television, Youtube, Facebook, free to play games, 200 hundred hour single player games, and ofcourse peoples personal lives. Most people don’t pay attention to video game news, they don’t read up on impending DLC, or how Halo just released a new playlist, that might to be your liking. I watch my friendlists every single time a new multiplayer game is released, and i’ve paid attention to all of my friends who I game with, and our group behavior. Once a game has lost peoples attention, most people will never go back. Even with all of the free DLC I had two friends who couldn’t access GTA onlines free multiplayer for the first week and a half because of a glitch, and they just gave up and never touched it again, and I personally stopped playing it when my other friends got bored of the existing content. An abundance of options have made gamers choosy and fickle about how they spend their time, and attention, and if you don’t appeal to them, you’ll drop off their radar.
> Launch and Christmas are also the two days you’re likely to see the most new players to the franchise. There are going to be people who boot up Halo 5, have no expectations of what Halo mutiplayer is, and they’re going to either enjoy the narrow set of experiences that arena offers, or the narrow set of experiences Warzone offers, or they won’t enjoy Halo 5 multiplayer. They won’t see how dynamic the game really is, and just how many shapes it can take, and his or her entire perception of whether it’s worthy to give Halo 5’s multiplayer a second glance will be based on an incredibly limited sample which I believe is unrepresentative. It’s the equivalent of an intelligent, witty, caring, fun, socially adept, charitable person who happens to coach a high school football team acting like a total dude bro every time he tries to introduce himself because he thinks that personality is a safe way to appeal to the median twenty something year old.
> 343 may talk about how they are learning from past mistakes, but I feel like we are in a time loop, and we’ve circled back to 2012. Except instead of the 4v4 arena crowd feeling like they were completely marginalized, every other niche is being marginalized. Hardcore fans might be disappointed, but the casual gamers who might of enjoyed infection, griffball, action sack, or team objective, some who could of been new fans who could of helped, I don’t know, help Halos popularity grow a meaningful amount for the first time in a decade, are for the most part never going to look back.
> Three final points:
> 1. The game is in the wild, we’ve known this for days. People have put the game in their disc tray, booted up custom games, there is nothing to speculate about. Arena has four gametypes available in the game, not in MM, in the game. Which means that it is literally impossible to play any of them unless they are one of the game types added at an undisclosed time. No griffball support at launch, no infection support at launch, no juggernaunt support at launch, no KOTH support at launch, no oddball support at launch, etc. The only gametypes you can play in Arena in matchmaking AND customs are variants of Slayer, CTF, and Strongholds. I’m not calling Breakout anything other than a gametype variant because theres literally nothing in the way that gametype operates that couldn’t of existed in a neutral flag or slayer variant eight years ago. At best it is a highly polished slayer variant.
> 2. Artificially nudging people to try the new modes, at the short or long term expense of almost every niche on which the communitys health thrives is an awful strategy. How about positive reinforcement rather than artificially lowering the number of choices they have? The mistake you and 343 are making, is that you are taking for granted the assumption that most of your day one audience who aren’t that drawn to the two narrow range of experiences that are on offer, will wait with bated breath for the games multiplayer to reach feature parity with an eight year old predecessor, so that they can get the sort of experiences they expect the game to deliver.
> 3. Your argument, despite what i’ve said has some merit, and is not baseless, but it is ignoring other factors that determine a games succeess in a modern ecosystem. Halo as of the last few years is only the fourth most popular online first person shooter. If Battlefront is any where as successful as EA thinks it will be, Halo will be bumped to fifth, unless Halo sees a resurgence with Halo 5, which is now a hope that is all but lost. Destiny neatly follows Halos recent strategy of having an anemic number of multiplayer gametypes. But every other game on that list has more playlist and gametype variety at launch. Battlefront literally has a playlist for every single gametype at launch. So it’s not a matter of making an appeal to an authority, Halo 5 is taking an out of the ordinary strategy with an extremely barebones list of gametypes, playlists, and types of experiences you can have in the game, and all of competing franchises clearly have playlist curators with a different philosophy. Halo has gone from the most dynamic FPS, with lots of variety and novelty to mine out of the game, to the shooter with the least variety out of all of the AAA competitors in this space. They took one of their biggest strengths and are putting it on the bench until some undisclosed time. The fact they are promising to add new gametypes after launch won’t change the metascore, much of the hit to the potential player base, the perception that the games multiplayer is repetitive or even regressive, and all of the negative attention Halo is about to get. The echo chamber full of fan boys (which I include myself in), are not going to be representative of the general population.
