*Long read ahead. Reasonable discussion welcomed.
Claiming that the Halo 4 population is dropping at a faster rate than previous Halo titles solely due to a gradual dropping in game quality is a blanket assumption. You must evaluate the audience surveyed first. Some unique users collected in these weekly-collected population data are probably playing less because of other responsibilities that hold greater value for time in their lives than playing video games. Ten years ago, my friends and I would play Halo for hours on end into the early hours of the morning. That was because we were in high school, when life was easy. Now, we have grown up to have full-time careers, families to care for, and other greater responsibilities. We have to mutually schedule times in the week if we want to play Halo 4 together. Sometimes, we do not even play during the week because of other things in life.
I acknowledge that there are some gameplay issues with Halo 4 that would make it not enjoyable for somebody to play as much as they did with Halo 2, for example. I respect a person’s decision for holding off on playing Halo 4 until they see likable changes. I am also aware that some players continue to play Halo 4 because they simply just enjoy the game as it is. Unless you are able to poll every unique player, you cannot make assumptions that speak for “most” players.
Sorry to go Statistics 101 on you, reader. Saying that you made a poll/discussion on Halo Waypoint that speaks for “most” players is a subjective claim. Your poll results & discussion only represents players who participated in it. This means one response is only representative of one player who: Is aware of Halo Waypoint forums; chose to go to the forums that day; chose to click on your thread; chose to answer/post in your discussion. Just because nobody actually chose to post something in disagreement within the discussion does not mean most everyone agrees with you. Some people just read the threads, have an opinion that agrees/disagrees or is indifferent, but choose not to reply. I do not know the numbers, but I do not think that all Halo 4 players choose to go to the Halo Waypoint forums. Let’s take for example, if there were 70 threads with a unanimously agreeing population of 1000 Halo Waypoint users in polls that say the storm rifle is “weak” instead of “underpowered”. Does that mean 343 should fix the storm rife accordingly because there is a popular opinion from one sample group? Just because something is popular on the forums right now does not mean there is a shared widespread opinion (Seriously, can’t all the boltshot threads merge into just one? They’re all practically the same). I do not think that it is fairly indicative of the opinions of ALL the other Halo 4 players that did not participate.
Seems to me that most posts on Halo Waypoint are more about criticisms than praises. Understandably so, because it’s easier to talk about things you do not like than things you do. They stand out more. Quick experiment - what can you name faster: 5 restaurants you would recommend and reasons why, or 5 restaurants you would not and reasons why? Chances are, you can list the undesirable ones easier because negative things stand out more than positive. Take a look at Yelp to see who gives more detail in their reviews. To segue back to Halo 4, do you think all players that really enjoy Halo 4 would come and take the time to post praises on the developer’s forums? Maybe not because they are spending their time just playing the game instead of putting in the time to find the video game’s forums on one website?
I personally do not care that much for population numbers. It seems very much “alive” to me. If you think about it, every single video game is dying since launch day. The numbers will always decrease over time. Comparing separate video game populations is subjective, too. You might as well say New York is dying because California, which entered the Union later, has a bigger population. As long as I can find 7 other players to fill a game of Infinity Slayer quickly, I’m content. There could be a playlist population of 400 or 400,000, it does not matter to me. I am playing with 7 other players, not 700,000.
TL/DR? Understandable. That’s OK with me. I’m looking to see if there can be a respectable discussion about this. I do not mean to sound patronizing in any way, so apologies if you felt that way. I might or might not check back on this thread to see what some people chose to say, because I do not have lots of time to spend with video game-related things. Discuss among yourselves.
My point is, people should not assume that ALL “real fans” are leaving because they are not dedicating X number of hours to a game. The population is not “dying” all because the players are unsatisfied. Not all of us are absent because of the gameplay. Some of us just cannot give the same amount of video game playtime like we did ten years ago, but we are still fans who love and enjoy Halo. Where do you think you will be in ten years? Do you honestly expect to be giving the same amount of time to video games ten years from now as you do today?