Spartans Never Die and Neither Will Halo

Community General Discussion
1

Hi guys what’s happening.So I’m a huge Halo fan.I have been since 2002 when I first played Halo CE and have remained a loyal fan to this day.Halo 5 is dividing opinion in this community…creating toxicity on the forums…driving players away from the game…this is all counter productive to our common goals…to make HALO a Goliath in the gaming again.Now we all know that 343i’s actions in the past and the community’s reactions and inability to let things go has led to a steady decline in Halo…but why are we allowing this to happen.Shouldn’t we,as a community, rally together to push Halo’s gameplay and scale to new and old fans.To re-ignite the love some people and new people could have for Halo. Now I’m aware some of you dislike Halo 5 and that this post will be met with sheer rage and hate and people are going to break my points down and try and point out inadequacies.To those people I say go for it…but let’s discuss this topic.I want Halo to rise again…probably not back to where it was at with Halo 2 in 2004 and Halo 3 in 2007 but we can and will make a dent if we work towards common goals , act in a mature fashion and provide solutions and feedback to problems we see in a constructive manner. Why would any company WANT to deal with such a toxic community. They have to deal with us no matter what but healing wounds in this community is the first step towards growing it further.

I find it hard to convey my thoughts to you guys in this manner.I did a little rant video thats 1 minute long on this topic last night.Have a look if you’re interested in motivating yourself and others to bolstering Halo again. Cheers
Spartans Never Die and NEITHER will Halo - Halo Motivation

2

The community is -Yoink-, plain and simple. At this point, it’s terminal.

3

If this keeps up it will die. How? Once MS decides the game doesn’t make enough profit anymore they will pull the plug.

Face reality we are already with 1 foot in the grave.

4

To be frank, it’s going to be really hard to rally the community back together. Yes, halo has always had it’s problems and there will always be complaints, but some people still think it’s 2007. People are constantly saying “without this mechanic, the game will be better. Halo would be better if it had this from ( insert previous halo game )” , and most of those people need to realise that in a complexity sense, it forces the game backwards. I can remember after playing the halo 5 beta and going back to halo 4/mcc that without the extra gameplay mechanics, the game had a jarring feeling to it.

I know someone is going to say “but imagine if that game was made this year with these new upgrades to hardware, software etc.”, and technically they’re not wrong, but the first step to making halo more popular to the masses is not catering to those that already know the franchise, but to appeal to those billions of others who have never heard of halo. How, well COD is popular, why not adopt similar mobility mechanics. And by making the mobility similar, 343 made the game more interesting to those involved in esports, giving it more attention and more consumers.

and here lays the problem. Now we have those that prefer the old day, the ones who were so used to similar mobility, gameplay mechanics, music, story arc etc, and those who have been recently introduced into the franchise, the ones 343 would be catering for, the ones who came from similar FPS games. And their combating over what is better for halo, this is what is causing the toxicity in the forums.

Now about my idea of having greater mobility to appeal to the esports community. There is going to be that one person that says “but counter strike doesn’t have great mobility, but it’s one of the most popular games to date” and I’m going to say to say this. In counter strike, when you get shot, you can’t move, so you can’t just go full Rambo and think you are going to win the firefight, imagine if in halo 5 or COD black ops 3 that when you got shot you suffered knock back, the mobility mechanics are completely negated, hence why they are not needed in counter strike. So since that knock back feature was not present in any halo game, the way forward is with increased mobility.

Now how to unite those opposite sides as to where halo should go, I have no idea, but if I had to choose which side to cater to for the highest profit, it would be the influx of players flocking from other first person shooters, the ones that wouldn’t complain.

Now mind you, this is all my opinion and you have a right to your own, but again in my opinion, 343 is a company, a business trying to make a profit, and the old fans who are still trying to fight for the game they loved are going to lose. Halo may become popular again, but almost definitely not as halo was before.

5

> 2533274986023686;4:
> Now how to unite those opposite sides as to where halo should go, I have no idea, but if I had to choose which side to cater to for the highest profit, it would be the influx of players flocking from other first person shooters, the ones that wouldn’t complain.

The problem with that idea is that they aren’t “flocking” from other First Person Shooters. They are still playing COD, and those that aren’t, are playing Destiny (A game which launched a whole year before Halo 5 but still remains higher on the most played list)

Halo 4 and 5 have sold on the Halo name and Campaign alone at this point. People buy them, play the story and try the MP then leave to play whatever it is they play. That’s two attempts at trying to convince “players from other first person shooters” to play Halo and the MP has not been the selling point or staying point of these games.

Halo MCC with all the bugs and problems lasted a year on the top ten and was only knocked when Halo 5 launched and finding a game became near impossible.

You guys also forget that COD is not the entire gaming audience, there are plenty of gamers who do not like COD, or enjoyed Halo for the easier entry bar in to the franchise. The more complex the game has become the less popular it is with the wider audience. Dropping Split Screen and LAN was not helpful in that respect either. Again, that was dropped in favour of 60fps to lure in the same crowd they tried for with Halo 4, failed both times.

So you can keep saying “but we need to cater to the wider audience”, but each time you do, you ignore that they have been doing that. That is all 343i has done. Maybe if you guys stop treating game design and evolution like a straight line and think outside of this “modern gaming” box you have all placed yourselves in, 343i might actually see profit in designing games a bit differently.

6

I came to Halo as a shooter partly because of the ‘great community’, which to be honest hasnt been shinning through since halo 5.
Halo 5 is great in my opinion… but the community is hmmmm… not what I expected… for the most part.
However forums like this keep my hopes up that the halo community shall rise again to be the best.

7

> 2533274818114287;1:
> Hi guys what’s happening.So I’m a huge Halo fan.I have been since 2002 when I first played Halo CE and have remained a loyal fan to this day.Halo 5 is dividing opinion in this community…creating toxicity on the forums…driving players away from the game…this is all counter productive to our common goals…to make HALO a Goliath in the gaming again.Now we all know that 343i’s actions in the past and the community’s reactions and inability to let things go has led to a steady decline in Halo…but why are we allowing this to happen.Shouldn’t we,as a community, rally together to push Halo’s gameplay and scale to new and old fans.To re-ignite the love some people and new people could have for Halo. Now I’m aware some of you dislike Halo 5 and that this post will be met with sheer rage and hate and people are going to break my points down and try and point out inadequacies.To those people I say go for it…but let’s discuss this topic.I want Halo to rise again…probably not back to where it was at with Halo 2 in 2004 and Halo 3 in 2007 but we can and will make a dent if we work towards common goals , act in a mature fashion and provide solutions and feedback to problems we see in a constructive manner. Why would any company WANT to deal with such a toxic community. They have to deal with us no matter what but healing wounds in this community is the first step towards growing it further.
>
> I find it hard to convey my thoughts to you guys in this manner.I did a little rant video thats 1 minute long on this topic last night.Have a look if you’re interested in motivating yourself and others to bolstering Halo again. Cheers
> Spartans Never Die and NEITHER will Halo - Halo Motivation

I think its important to understand that Halo is no longer in the hands of a small independent game developer who might, MIGHT want to listen to what the community wants. Halo is in the hands of Microsoft which is profit oriented. Therefore Microsoft’s influence will likely continue the deviation away from what the fans like for much longer. For those who want a Halo 3.5, that’s not going to happen, for those that want to continue the current path Halo is treading, again, that’s probably not going to happen because of its negative reception from Halo 4’s multiplayer and Halo 5’s campagin. I wouldn’t be surprised if in Halo 6, 343 takes Halo in ANOTHER new direction to try and reach a common ground it can’t find. The Halo community has a right to be annoyed, our game has been consistently, warped and needlessly changed out of what appears to be a perpetual act of self hatred of the pre-2010 Halo on behalf of Microsoft. Look at it, the Halo story has broken down into a bland, whimsical plot that played catch up with Microsoft’s marketing. We’ve been denied the ability to play a game we brought without an internet connection, or with our friends on the sitting room sofa. Our chance to play the old games have been ruined by the awful release of the MCC. There’s a whole heap of reasons why the community is angered with Halo, the truth is Halo is stuck and unless 343 designs to go back a few years and build off from the old games instead of effectively creating an entirely new franchise, there is nothing really the community can do.s

8

Its a numbers game at this point. Each halo game has banked on the reputation of the previous one to make sales: H4 counted on H3, MCC counted on H4, and H5 counted on the MCC. For this reason, H4 had the highest number of copies sold from the reclaimer saga, but since it was poorly received by the community, many fans left the franchise. This trend worsened with the MCC, which impacted the sales of H5 because many people lost faith in 343i after the issues the MCC faced. Similarly, the community hasn’t taken kindly to the direction of the story for H5, lack of split-screen, and lack of social playlists/gametypes meaning that even more fans have now left the franchise. As a result, I believe H6 will have fewer sales than H5 and at some point, MS will have to reevaluate their position on whether or not to continue with the franchise. This trend is evident by the number of copes sold for each game, with the exception of H5 because the numbers haven’t been made available possibly due to under-performance of the game.

Halo will end.

9

3 replies into the thread and you can still see the reason why this “community” is so torn… If you argue by saying stuff like “well people haven’t realized that it’s not 2007 any more” you destroy any possibility to have a reasonable conversation…

I have no idea how often I’ve seen posts like “who is going to read all of this, sprint is here to stay/the balance is fine/the game is fime/go play MCC grandpa” as long as those who like the game treat critics so disrespectful, the community will not change…

10

> 2535453138108435;8:
> Its a numbers game at this point. Each halo game has banked on the reputation of the previous one to make sales: H4 counted on H3, MCC counted on H4, and H5 counted on the MCC. For this reason, H4 had the highest number of copies sold from the reclaimer saga, but since it was poorly received by the community, many fans left the franchise. This trend worsened with the MCC, which impacted the sales of H5 because many people lost faith in 343i after the issues the MCC faced. Similarly, the community hasn’t taken kindly to the direction of the story for H5, lack of split-screen, and lack of social playlists/gametypes meaning that even more fans have now left the franchise. As a result, I believe H6 will have fewer sales than H5 and at some point, MS will have to reevaluate their position on whether or not to continue with the franchise. This trend is evident by the number of copes sold for each game, with the exception of H5 because the numbers haven’t been made available possibly due to under-performance of the game.
>
> Halo will end.

unfortunately it might… however 343 could save it in halo 6… its their last chance!

11

> 2533274986023686;4:
> Halo may become popular again, but almost definitely not as halo was before.

Then what’s the point of Halo then? We fell in love with a game that no longer exists because it “needed to change”. Why? Halo 1 was popular. Halo 2 was popular. Halo 3 was popular. Halo Reach-hit and miss, Halo 4-a failure and looks the same for Halo 5. The point is Halo pre-2010 was the most popular, after that Halo had a mid-life crises and a gradual decline of Halo began. If Halo is popular again but “no how it was before” then the half the community that actually cared for Halo’s lore, who actually knew the name of the Shipmaster in Halo 3, who actually found all the skulls and terminals will leave. The new community it seems, will be purely multiplayer based and Halo would become a generic fps like Battlefield or COD that has no or little lore, which represents a small amount of the audience’s time and gameplay.

12

Halo 6 is the last chance 343 ( or anyone ) has of savingv halo… lets all pray that they do something so good with it we are blown away.