TRUE HALO FANS BEYOND THIS POINTPREPARE TO DROP READ: The following is a Mature discussion on the multiplayer direction of Halo 4. This thread contains intelligent, well-developed ideas and advanced theories not everyone will understand. This is a progressive halo thread, everyone is welcome, questions, comments, and input encouraged. You have been warned we are watching.
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The following thread will explain benefit the a 1-50 ranking system. My argument is that the lack of a 1-50 ranking system in Reach made it so that every playlist became the equivalent a Halo 3 type social playlist. This meant that competitive players could not get the competitive games they wanted. As a result competitive players steam rolled through matchmaking and as they got bored, they lost incentive to continue playing, the competitive side of Halo suffered, and ultimately the Halo community as a whole suffered.
Incentives and the Player Spiral Theory
The premise is that Halo has a player base and naturally, overtime the game will gain some players and lose others. This is an attempt to explain the determinants of population in order to understand what affects it. Knowing this 343 can hopefully make better decisions and extend the longevity of the game. First off, this is an analysis of what people in general will do. Furthermore, I am presenting an issue that considers more than the actions of you or I because frankly nobody cares whether you or I will play or not play given a situation. So justify through the means of saying I will buy, not buy, play or not play is a mistake. Instead, we must ask what people do as a whole and what affects their actions have.
The foundation of the theory is that population is determined by incentives. The biggest incentive of course is core gameplay or how fun the game is at its core. Unfortunately, people get bored over time, fun will diminish and they will stop playing. So what can we do about this? Well, we can offer more incentives like new maps to masters. It is easier to retain players than to draw players in (has to do with push vs. pull) so it is important that players do not lose incentive early on.
The basis of the player spiral theory is the idea that incentives and population have a circular relationship. Idea is that large populations give players an incentive to play a game and smaller populations give players less incentives to play a game. The reason may not be initially obvious but my explanation is yes people can play are more likely to be able to play with more of their friends on games with larger populations, but also people want to be where the party is at and if everyone plays Halo then they want to play it to. So what does this all means? Well, it increases the importance of player retention and therefore increases the importance of incentives
Take an example where one person loses incentive to continue playing so they quit playing. The immediate effect is on the people on that person’s friend’s list whom they play the game with. These people have one less player that they can play with so all them play slightly less, I will call these people tier one. Tier one then impacts tier 2 with a slightly less effect and so on. However it does not end there because, there is nothing stopping someone tier 3 being friends with some else on that same tier or any previous or later tiers. This can lead to a spiraling effect where tier 3 effects tier 1 again. This is the spiraling effect of one’s immediately sphere of influence, but it affects everyone in the form of matchmaking times as well.
Now what does this mean? This means people with larger spheres of influence are more valuable to the community than those with not so large spheres. Because I would suspect competitive players to have the largest spheres of influence, I can say that a typical competitive player is worth more to the community than a single noncompetitive player is. However, it would be a mistake for me to assume that all competitive players combined are worth more than all noncompetitive players combined because obviously the population of noncompetitive players is larger. What I can say though is that it would be in the best interest of 343 to encourage people to have larger spheres to achieve a sort of upward spiral and what better way than encouraging competitive play. Enter the ranking system.
Rank was without a doubt served as one of the biggest incentives in Halo 2 and 3. Naturally, it encourages competitive play and sucks people in. It does this by giving people a reason to care about their gameplay, try harder, and get better, and link up with others and play more. Obviously ranks creates the problem of cheating but incentives that ranking system creates far exceeds the incentives that cheaters take away from other players therefore it is only logical that a ranking system be included. Without a ranking system, the game will not benefit from the upward spiral and may even be subject to a downward spiral. Ultimately, the lack of a ranking system will mean lower population and player retention.
What does this mean for 343? Obviously better player retention means more money for them. Therefore, when analyzing game decisions one of the most important factors to consider is what impact it may have on incentives for players. In other words, who ever came up with the brilliant plan to cut the ranking system deserves to be fired. Hell, hire me at least I know the intricacies of halo and my methodologies are infinitely better.
Examples of the Incentive Spiral at Work
Halo 2: Ranks in Halo 2 reset several times during the life of the game. I contend that people having after having their ranks reset, people had less incentive to go through the ranks a second time, and after a third ranks reset even less incentive to go through the ranks a third time. In other words with each subsequent reset or start-over scenario people have less incentive and therefore with each reset the game would lose a significant amount of players.
Halo 3: The genius of double experience weekends in Halo 3 was that they had the opposite effect, creating an upward spiral of players. These playlist included incentives for those, looking to level up faster, improve the look of their service record, and those looking to play limited time oddball gametypes (i.e. zombies, griffball, etc.). As a result, people went out of their way to play during these events and thus encouraged friends to do so as well.
Reach: Halo Reach suffered from the rank reset problems as Halo 2 but to a far worse extent. This difference is due to expectations. In Halo 2 there were no announced plans to reset ranks whereas in Reach there were plans to reset ranks at predetermined intervals. If people can expect the fruits of their labor to be erased at a predetermined date sometime in the future they will have less incentive to play today. On the contrary, if people do not have this expectation, they will have more incentive to play today. In other words, expectations play a key role in people’s decision-making. This is by far the biggest reason the Arena failed.
