So, is Halo "done" as a game for average players?

Games Other Halo
1

I know a lot of people active on this message board are excellent players: Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and above, congratulations! Truly, I respect and admire your skill, but I’m not one of you. I float between the mid-Bronzes and low Silvers in most playlists, and I’m totally OK with that. I’ve played Halo since Halo 3, and love the lore, setting, and format of the universe. I’ve put a generous (for me) amount of time into gameplay over the course of many months or years. I’m competitive to the extent that I like the chance to do well, and want to feel like I can hold my own, even if I’m never going to command top-tier status. I want to play against players like me, and expect all the code and magic behind the scenes to make that happen. Unfortunately, however, it just doesn’t in Halo 5.

While I love the look and feel of Halo 5’s multiplayer modes, and appreciate all the ways it felt instantly familiar and fun, while bringing all kinds of new things to the table, now several months in, I am stunned by just how bad game balance is. Or rather, this is what I thought the problem is. But really, is the problem me? has the game I love so much simply left me behind, and there’s no room anymore in multiplayer for someone who’s just average?

Case in point: In my experience, Team Arena objective matches are getting shorter, and slayer matches aren’t much better—1 or 2 players (on either side) are dominating kills and stats, leaving little for people like me to do but to drop to the ground before we even saw our opponent in a 1v1; when I review who I was paired with and against at the end of a match, I find at Silver 1 or 2, I’m far, far more likely to be going up against people with Gold or even Platinum CSRs than I am people with Silver or Bronze. Or someone who’s unranked, but a quick look at their Gamer Card shows it’s a brand new account of someone who got bored with their Onyx rank (or whatever) and wants to go through the leveling process again. There just doesn’t seem to be many of us true “scrubs” out there. I’ve gone days now with only a handful of Team Arena matches where I was able to maintain a KR above 1.0, and really the only way I can do this is by hiding and camping, which isn’t fun and isn’t the spirit of Halo’s small-map gameplay. I don’t want to be one of those people—I want to help my team! But more often than not, my team don’t need or want my help; they’re too busy mopping up the unfortunate souls like me on the other team.

Warzone/Warzone Assault and the Social playlists are, if anything, even worse: I’ve been in Warzone matches where a single player has achieved 50+ kills (the most I ever saw was 62. SIXTY TWO.) Then there’s a small group of people who are able to hang at a similar level—Maybe 20-30 kills—and then people like me, hiding by the Core, with 5 or fewer kills, 10 or more deaths, and nothing else in terms of stats or achievements to show for it. Why are we even being paired with such dominant players? Let them play against one another, not crushing those of us who are at the “omg double kill! I got a double kill! YAY!” stage. Or are there just not enough of us to pull a match together, so the game logic has no choice but to tack us onto the end of team of “real” players?

This is not to say I haven’t managed to ever do well—I’ve lead stats in a handful Team Arena matches (particularly Strongholds—I like that game format a lot as it really seems to emphasize overall gameplay and player positioning, not just kills), and surprise myself with a Killing Spree or even (gasp) a Frenzy, now and again. But I compare against how often I was able to do this in Halo Reach and Halo 4, versus how often I found myself on the receiving end of that style smackdown, and things just aren’t the same. At all. I don’t mind losing; what I do mind is feeling like I had no contribution to the win or the loss. I was just fodder for much better players.

So, what do people think? Is there a place in Halo multiplayer anymore to be an average, social player? I have to acknowledge I’m not a teenager, and haven’t been for a long time. I’ve struck up conversations with some random players who’ve admitted they put 6+ hours a night, every night, seven days a week into Halo 5. They all seem to do extremely well. Am I just being naive to think I can have a place in Halo 5 multiplayer without a similar commitment?

2

I can relate to what you’re saying. I’d like to add one little comment to it. The spawns in Halo 5 are horrible. If you can learn to take advantage of the bad spawning system, great. But mostly I find myself, as you said, “falling to the ground before I even see my opponent”.

3

I am one of those u speak of and Id say that if u think u aren’t then u aren’t but just the same if u think u r then u r… We as a halo community speak to each other as if we are the best or what have u but when it comes down its all in the love of the game… I personally think that there is room especially due t all the social they add wih weekend and everything and Warzone… Seems to be made for players such as urself and other such as myself that enjoy the hardcore competitive (not sayin u don’t) playlists , can even enjoy those as well where we all are in he same boat… As far as skill goes I think that if u have been playing so long and haven’t reached the point where u r on the level as the more competitive players then that’s ur experience and still love the game then there is absolutely in ur case(and plenty others) room for social playing… Love for the game is all that matters…

A lot of times I am one of those people who get mad at people who go real negative and we lose due to that… But no matter what I say I would never want anyone to ever stop playing anything every in life, ecspecially if they love it…

4

And this game is not all about killing as u said… Objective types are very much so a big part of this game always have been…

5

There are a lot of things going on here. Yes, the game is partly responsible. Or more specifically, skill-based matchmaking. The game believes that you are whatever skill level that your team mates are. Which is wrong. Therefore the game cannot accurately assess skill. Therefore the game cannot put together an accurate match. There is, of course, a but. But, this is no different than Halo ever was. Halo 3 in particular suffered from all of these faults, only most of us were too inexperienced or uninformed to recognize it.

The other big thing that’s going on here is us, the players. Especially the average- to less-than-average players, like you and me. This game was never very forgiving and evolution has not made it more so. Nor do skill-sets improve with age. I’ve become only marginally smarter in fifteen years, but my reflexes have deteriorated a lot. And my patience has deteriorated even more. The game has begun to fell subjectively like a roll of the dice. There are too many things happening too quickly - things that I either am not perceiving correctly (if at all), to the point where I can often no longer understand why or how things happen. Or they are just subtly different enough from the formulas of previous Halos that I’m confused by why something that used to work one way now works differently.

In the end my solution has been to focus on the Halo 5 experiences that seem to work (for an older, slower player) like Warzone, while completely abandoning the parts of the game that seem the most random and arbitrary like every single Arena game type. I look forward to Warzone Firefight as the crowning achievement of Halo 5, although I suspect that it will still be far more “player vs. player,” as in scrambling to steal kills and points from one and other, and far less a true “player vs. environment” game mode. Whatever it may turn out to be, it will be better than anything we have right now.

Short version: Warzone rocks, Arena sucks. Long live Halo.

6

I still think they should go back to the 1-50 system.

7

I suspect thepeople deliberately deranking are not helping things as they go to pick on the lower ranked players on different accounts. I just wish the system had no seasons and let you work up divisions properly and let you permanently display your high csr.

8

4 and 5 have seemed to lack a diversity in player ability. Just about every H5 game has been a massive sweat fest and it’s the lowest KDR I’ve had in a Halo game in a long time.

I still think 3 had the best setup - Ranked and Social - although I do not think that 5 has the player base to support. In Australia it is extremely hard to find a game outside of evenings.

9

Of course not! It’s the “average” players that keep multiplayer games going. Don’t kick yourself.

10

Honestly, I see no reason why 343i added in this new, and so called “improved” ranking system to begin with. The sort of thing you’re describing was almost never a problem in previous Halo games. The average players, like yourself, are the middle class of the community, the inner layer. The skilled onyx and diamond people should be at the top, but should also not bring imbalance to the game. Yet they do in Halo 5, even though by all logic they should not based on the ranking system. You are by no means the problem. In my opinion the problem is currently unidentified, but nonetheless should be found and fixed.

11

Thanks for the replies and support, everyone, I really appreciate it. I honestly wasn’t certain how my rambling would be received, so it’s nice to know the community feels similarly. To address one post in particular:

> 2533274873843883;5:
> There are a lot of things going on here. Yes, the game is partly responsible. Or more specifically, skill-based matchmaking. The game believes that you are whatever skill level that your team mates are. Which is wrong. Therefore the game cannot accurately assess skill. Therefore the game cannot put together an accurate match. There is, of course, a but. But, this is no different than Halo ever was. Halo 3 in particular suffered from all of these faults, only most of us were too inexperienced or uninformed to recognize it.
>
> The other big thing that’s going on here is us, the players. Especially the average- to less-than-average players, like you and me. This game was never very forgiving and evolution has not made it more so. Nor do skill-sets improve with age. I’ve become only marginally smarter in fifteen years, but my reflexes have deteriorated a lot. And my patience has deteriorated even more. The game has begun to fell subjectively like a roll of the dice. There are too many things happening too quickly - things that I either am not perceiving correctly (if at all), to the point where I can often no longer understand why or how things happen. Or they are just subtly different enough from the formulas of previous Halos that I’m confused by why something that used to work one way now works differently.

I agree, there’s a lot going on in Halo 5 multiplayer, and a lot to keep track of, and it’s hard for a 44-year-old-gamer like myself to really grasp everything and use it to my advantage. My ability to react to things and process them in time to know what to do is going to be way slower than someone who’s 14, 24, or even 34. And you’re right, I’ve never really thought about it this way, but Halo is incredibly unforgiving. There’s little margin for error. I suppose this is what I never realized about Halo 4: Its mechanics were so different than the games that had come before, that it allowed players of my skill level to carve out and rely on some abilities in order to succeed at a higher level than perhaps we should have. Halo 5 put things back the way they were (reliance on map/power weapon domination, few in-game metrics or events that over-ride raw skill, etc.) and knocked the chair out from under us.

Where we part company is Warzone. This is where I feel like things really fall apart—self-selected access to vehicles and power weapons is something you would think would level the playing field, but the REQ Energy re-charge rate prevents that. If my Warzone Assault team levels up to the point that I can cash in a REQ for a choice weapon or a tank or something, and I get killed by an ace player after only making short use of it, I’m sunk: It’s unlikely I’ll have a chance to cash in for another power weapon before the match is over. So I’m stuck with my load-outs, being dominated by someone scoring 20 kills in a row with a Banshee. I realize that top players would also benefit from a faster REQ Energy re-charge rate, but if everyone was spawning power weapons more often, it’d add enough entropy to the Warzone experience to perhaps level things out a little more. Because whether you’re a great player or only an average player, you can cause a lot of havoc with a tank, versus only a good player is going to be able to really tilt the outcome of the game with just their load-outs.

Anyway. All interesting. I appreciate your comments!

12

I sometimes feel like they want to make this game like football, in that they want it to be a game more people watch than actually play. It’s not very fun getting whooped on, and it’s not very fun whooping on people either. The close matched games are the fun ones, and with season resets every month, you get about 2 weeks of unfair matches, which go both ways. You dominate some, you get dominated some. The system eventually evens out. Then you get a couple weeks of nice quality matches. Then the system resets and you are back to imbalanced games. All in all, half of the time played in matchmaking is actually fun games that are competitive.

Halo is becoming a spectator sport.

13

> 2533274938746218;11:
> > 2533274873843883;5:
> >
>
>
> I agree, there’s a lot going on in Halo 5 multiplayer, and a lot to keep track of, and it’s hard for a 44-year-old-gamer like myself to really grasp everything and use it to my advantage. My ability to react to things and process them in time to know what to do is going to be way slower than someone who’s 14, 24, or even 34. And you’re right, I’ve never really thought about it this way, but Halo is incredibly unforgiving. There’s little margin for error. I suppose this is what I never realized about Halo 4: Its mechanics were so different than the games that had come before, that it allowed players of my skill level to carve out and rely on some abilities in order to succeed at a higher level than perhaps we should have. Halo 5 put things back the way they were (reliance on map/power weapon domination, few in-game metrics or events that over-ride raw skill, etc.) and knocked the chair out from under us.
>
> Where we part company is Warzone. This is where I feel like things really fall apart—self-selected access to vehicles and power weapons is something you would think would level the playing field, but the REQ Energy re-charge rate prevents that. If my Warzone Assault team levels up to the point that I can cash in a REQ for a choice weapon or a tank or something, and I get killed by an ace player after only making short use of it, I’m sunk: It’s unlikely I’ll have a chance to cash in for another power weapon before the match is over. So I’m stuck with my load-outs, being dominated by someone scoring 20 kills in a row with a Banshee. I realize that top players would also benefit from a faster REQ Energy re-charge rate, but if everyone was spawning power weapons more often, it’d add enough entropy to the Warzone experience to perhaps level things out a little more. Because whether you’re a great player or only an average player, you can cause a lot of havoc with a tank, versus only a good player is going to be able to really tilt the outcome of the game with just their load-outs.
>
> Anyway. All interesting. I appreciate your comments!

Your observations about the nature of Halo 4 game play are 100% correct. What a shame that teen-aged ritalin addicts were so intolerant of a game play formula that still had a little breathing room for us old-timers. (And on the that score I have you beat - I turned fifty five months ago!)

I can understand exactly what you’re saying about warzone, and you’re completely right if you assume that warzone is a traditional, competitive, win-or-die Halo playlist. The true beauty of warzone, in my opinion, is that it can be whatever you want it to be. The next time you go into warzone I want you to stop listening to anything that Palmer says. I want you to forget about base caps, forget about enemy AIs, forget about every single mechanism placed in those matches with the intention of driving you to do whatever it is they want you to do. Don’t worry about your team mates, and for the love of all that is Halo, do not worry about the leaderboard or which team is “winning.” If you can get your head into that place then suddenly warzone becomes an entirely different experience. You choose which targets are of interest and which are not. You choose your own personal objectives, you choose the pace of play and the rate of engagement. Now it no longer matters if some hot dog on the other team is at req level 8 while you (and I) are still struggling to get to 4. He’ll pull out a banshee ultra… and immediately head for the warden or the next enemy base. Which makes him the most easily avoided player in the game. Just be where the blood bath isn’t and quietly go about your business. I make it my business to take out single-shot AIs like grunts and marines, and then occasionally go after the odd stray enemy spartan. I stay in my armory at almost all times, and I never call in power weapons or vehicles. I don’t have any. I sell them all. And you know what? My warzone win/loss is exactly the same as if I spent the entire match throwing myself against a wall of enemy sharp shooters. My warzone k/d, while obviously of only marginal value, is one fewer on the list of game features designed to make me feel inadequate. I get to practice my BR to my heart’s content. I get to pace my engagements with lots of recovery time in-between. I get to watch everyone else grinding away and trying to turn a video game into a rat race. I love it.

In short: think outside the box. Don’t conform to the game. Make the game conform to you.

14

I can relate to so many of the comments I’m reading here! I don’t think I’m all that bad at arena but I consistently rank only bronze or silver. This has to be at least partly due to worse players just giving up entirely.

Warzone is fun but I agree with comments above that the req system can penalize weaker players. I was thinking matches would be a lot closer if the losing team got req boosts, maybe proportional to the point deficit.

15

> 2533274873843883;13:
> Your observations about the nature of Halo 4 game play are 100% correct. What a shame that teen-aged ritalin addicts were so intolerant of a game play formula that still had a little breathing room for us old-timers. (And on the that score I have you beat - I turned fifty five months ago!)

As I suspected: The whipper snappers are just trying to keep us old timers down. NEVER SURRENDER! (Well, occasionally surrender. But not until after dinner, which is at 4:30pm) :wink:

> 2533274873843883;13:
> In short: think outside the box. Don’t conform to the game. Make the game conform to you.

You’ve got some interesting ideas here, and I played a couple rounds of Warzone Assault this way last night. I think it might work better if I did this in regular Warzone, since it’s easier to sort of distribute yourself at different points of the map and still find some action, versus Assault where everyone focuses on a single objective at a time. I don’t know that it really made any difference (I’d still like to know how people are three-shot killing me with the pistol from across the map, while I’m running/dodging, but that’s a whole other conversation), but I’m going to stick with it. You’ve given me a project, and I like projects.

At the same time, I don’t know that I’m willing to let go of all of the game’s “expected” formats as easily as you—I am competitive, and want to do well at the objectives presented. If I wasn’t, I don’t know that I would play Halo multiplayer at all. But perhaps I need to start from scratch using Warzone as a playground to re-tool.

Ironically, I’ve actually had a few good games of Team Arena since the March season began. And by “good games,” I mean the winning team wasn’t determined 30 seconds in. Although I’ve had fair number of those, too. I’m also trying the Slayer playlist instead of Team Arena. It seems to be marginally better balanced, so I may stick with it until most players are ranked just to see if I have a better experience. As much as I enjoy objective games (where’s our Team Objective playlist?!), playing round after round of Slayer does help me get better at fundamentals, too.

16

Yup, a lot trickier to do on assault. And definitely not for everyone - especially those who have not yet had the last shred of competitiveness beat out of them.

The three-shot cross-map kill is also a puzzle to me. I’m constantly having things done to me that make no sense whatsoever. I rationalize them away with “oh, he must have been assisted by somebody I couldn’t see,” and “that must have been some higher req level BR variant,” and “that’s lag for you,” and “that guy’s the biggest f***ing cheater in Halo!” I rely on that last one quite a bit actually.

And yes, the “get a team” thing is much easier in theory than it is in practice. I have a company of really good people… and yet I still almost always lone-wolf it too. Scheduling is a problem, as you point out, but so too is skill gap. I don’t like to feel as if I’m letting them down. They’re all younger than me and faster than me and way better than me. And completely fearless. They don’t even care if they get killed and they certainly don’t question it or usually even try to figure out how it happened so they can avoid the problem the next time around. I guess Halo is a lot like life in that it was not made for those of us cursed with self-awareness. What’s a spartan gonna do?

Okay, best of luck, and who knows: maybe we’ll get lucky and run across one and other on the field some day!

17

I will stop playing warzone since the pro players are joining up now in teams to get a high kill-death-ratio. I can’t belive 343 realy belives they can make so much money with these pro players so they can ignore the rest of us.

At least until firefight will be availabe, so the competive pro players can play warzone while we others can have some fun again. But I don’t see any reason I sould spend my time so some pro freaks may have some fun. Sorry, not going to happen.

18

> 2533274938746218;1:
> I know a lot of people active on this message board are excellent players: Gold, Platinum, Diamond, and above, congratulations! Truly, I respect and admire your skill, but I’m not one of you. I float between the mid-Bronzes and low Silvers in most playlists, and I’m totally OK with that. I’ve played Halo since Halo 3, and love the lore, setting, and format of the universe. I’ve put a generous (for me) amount of time into gameplay over the course of many months or years. I’m competitive to the extent that I like the chance to do well, and want to feel like I can hold my own, even if I’m never going to command top-tier status. I want to play against players like me, and expect all the code and magic behind the scenes to make that happen. Unfortunately, however, it just doesn’t in Halo 5.
>
> While I love the look and feel of Halo 5’s multiplayer modes, and appreciate all the ways it felt instantly familiar and fun, while bringing all kinds of new things to the table, now several months in, I am stunned by just how bad game balance is. Or rather, this is what I thought the problem is. But really, is the problem me? has the game I love so much simply left me behind, and there’s no room anymore in multiplayer for someone who’s just average?
>
> Case in point: In my experience, Team Arena objective matches are getting shorter, and slayer matches aren’t much better—1 or 2 players (on either side) are dominating kills and stats, leaving little for people like me to do but to drop to the ground before we even saw our opponent in a 1v1; when I review who I was paired with and against at the end of a match, I find at Silver 1 or 2, I’m far, far more likely to be going up against people with Gold or even Platinum CSRs than I am people with Silver or Bronze. Or someone who’s unranked, but a quick look at their Gamer Card shows it’s a brand new account of someone who got bored with their Onyx rank (or whatever) and wants to go through the leveling process again. There just doesn’t seem to be many of us true “scrubs” out there. I’ve gone days now with only a handful of Team Arena matches where I was able to maintain a KR above 1.0, and really the only way I can do this is by hiding and camping, which isn’t fun and isn’t the spirit of Halo’s small-map gameplay. I don’t want to be one of those people—I want to help my team! But more often than not, my team don’t need or want my help; they’re too busy mopping up the unfortunate souls like me on the other team.
>
> Warzone/Warzone Assault and the Social playlists are, if anything, even worse: I’ve been in Warzone matches where a single player has achieved 50+ kills (the most I ever saw was 62. SIXTY TWO.) Then there’s a small group of people who are able to hang at a similar level—Maybe 20-30 kills—and then people like me, hiding by the Core, with 5 or fewer kills, 10 or more deaths, and nothing else in terms of stats or achievements to show for it. Why are we even being paired with such dominant players? Let them play against one another, not crushing those of us who are at the “omg double kill! I got a double kill! YAY!” stage. Or are there just not enough of us to pull a match together, so the game logic has no choice but to tack us onto the end of team of “real” players?
>
> This is not to say I haven’t managed to ever do well—I’ve lead stats in a handful Team Arena matches (particularly Strongholds—I like that game format a lot as it really seems to emphasize overall gameplay and player positioning, not just kills), and surprise myself with a Killing Spree or even (gasp) a Frenzy, now and again. But I compare against how often I was able to do this in Halo Reach and Halo 4, versus how often I found myself on the receiving end of that style smackdown, and things just aren’t the same. At all. I don’t mind losing; what I do mind is feeling like I had no contribution to the win or the loss. I was just fodder for much better players.
>
> So, what do people think? Is there a place in Halo multiplayer anymore to be an average, social player? I have to acknowledge I’m not a teenager, and haven’t been for a long time. I’ve struck up conversations with some random players who’ve admitted they put 6+ hours a night, every night, seven days a week into Halo 5. They all seem to do extremely well. Am I just being naive to think I can have a place in Halo 5 multiplayer without a similar commitment?

Its true. you have to play this game almost every day to keep your skills up. when I play a couple hrs a day my skills are great. its when I skip a day is when I feel rusty. There is just a lot of good players now

19

OP you’re definitely not alone.

This game is not only the first Halo game I’ve played online, it’s the first FPS I’ve ever played online against other people ever. (Yeah I know I’m a little late to the party.) I knew the learning curve was gonna be steep going in but I DIDN’T know how ultra competitive Halo 5 was going in. It’s been rough. REALLY rough. (I’m 34 btw.) It feels like everyone in the Arena is playing with a mouse and has the reflexes of an android to me. That’s by design. 343 built it to accentuate the skill gap as much as possible. I just went .2 k/d in SWAT a little while ago.

Just stick with it and try to enjoy yourself as much as you can. Try not to even look at your k/d if you can resist it. Just play and have fun. Recon gave me the same advice he gave you when I got started and to be honest I always have fun in Warzone win or loose. Don’t feel obligated to chase bosses or capture bases if you can’t do it yet. I’ve found a niche for myself in base defense. I’m the annoying guy camping in the bases with an SMG or shotgun LOL. But it’s a job that needs done in Warzone. I go for bosses or base captures when I feel comfortable. Before long you’ll earn some more REQs and have a fairer chance to be more aggressive.

Just hang in there and make a conscious effort to relax and have fun. It’s only a game. Good luck!