You may hear me say “We” often. I am an ex-semi professional Halo 2 and 3 player. I’m informing you so you understand why I use the pronoun. Also, the competitive community doesn’t automatically equal the MLG community. Please get that through your head.
I’m also not saying that this game needs to be tailored for competitive play. It is just nice to have a balanced sandbox that suits all players.
I’ll I’ve heard today are people who hold valid points about Halo’s CORE gameplay and those who are rebutting with ridiculous words referring to MLG and how competitive players need to quit complaining and accept the game how it seems to be. They end up making a bunch of false accusations claiming that “If MLG had their way it would be nothing but symmetrical maps, no vehicles, et cetera.” They claim that adding new feature after new feature is better than not sticking to some of your original guns- the original guns that made the game so great. They pretend that competitive gaming is almost as ridiculous as their rebuttals and that the whole playerbase of MLG is “whining, entitled kids.”
What I have to say to that? Stop complaining? Everyone is entitled to an opinion as well as you even if you disagree with mine. We are whining and entitled? You do understand that the competitive play that Halo originally had made it the huge success through multiplayer that it is today, yes? You do understand that Halo: CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 were absolutely amazing for competitive and casual play and did almost everything right(Halo 3 sort of did), yes? You do understand that Halo: Reach tried many new things and ultimately lost a player base and projected download revenue, yes?
Hell, it isn’t so much as saying ‘We want it to be super MLG PRO 1337’ as it is us saying we just want Halo, a game that is to its roots and has stuck to its guns. A game that still has that core Halo feel. A game that is playable for all players: casual, competitive, skilled, and unskilled. The original Halo’s had that. Halo: Reach did not and Halo 4, as it is painted, does not seem to either.
And, another idea I’ve heard slung around is,“If these players want the game like this so bad why don’t they go out and make it?” This is moronic. Why? Because we shouldn’t have to. Why? Because FPS gaming skill does not translate into artistic skill or coding and level design skill.
Don’t make the excuse that we need to go find another game. More often than not the people you are telling,“If you don’t like how it is changing don’t play or play another game,” have been playing this game since the start. Don’t act like just because they are upset that it is changing into something not Halo they should just ditch. That isn’t right nor is it considerate.
I’m not saying adding new features into games and change is wrong- I’m saying if it isn’t broke don’t fix it. Halo wasn’t broke and hasn’t been for a while. Making it play like other games only makes sense after Halo 3- after Halo: Reach it DOES NOT make sense to try and implement so many different, game changing features. The competitive community realizes that the game is changing and is running away from what made it play so well for not only them but everyone. You need to open your eyes and realize that they aren’t saying,“Make it JUST FOR US” they are saying,“Make it for ALL OF US.” If they and a large community feel left out and you feel okay that isn’t very fair, now is it?
Do you want to know how this looks from a marketing standpoint? Then read below as it is an overview of marketing viewpoints I’ve written:
Ka7aclysmiK(Me):
If you think Halo 4, the way 343i has painted it to be on the canvas of Game Informer sounds great you must have learned marketing at the same damn school 343 has, apparently. That isn’t to say you can’t have your own opinions on what games should play or how they should feel. You need to look at it from a marketing perspective. Please before you read get the idea out of your head that reads “If it is close to being more along the lines of Call of Duty then those players will buy it!” That isn’t necessarily the case.
You never alienate your current and loyal customers. Bungie did this, do you see how well Halo is doing in comparison to the others? Not too well, look at the sales for downloadable content and the current player base- shattered. (This is arguably not true due to “statistics.” I’m sorry but just because your statistics show a positive and slightly elevated gain, doesn’t mean they come close to resembling the projected sale statistics that should have been relative to how popularity of the game should be.)
Due to the alienation of the current fanbase that has left, unless there was a promise of retribution with this game over the last game the fanbase that has left but is awaiting good news will be disappointed and stay gone. The players that are on the fence now will leave like those before them, and the only players you have left are the fans who are hurt, but will buy the game because they feel obligated because they love Halo(I’m a large lore fan myself ontop of an ex-semi professional player) and the fans that came in young at Halo: Reach and don’t understand what a traditional Halo franchise game should feel like. Outliers will exists so do not circumvent the point.
The point of the above paragraph is to stress how little of the community will be there, and if there is no one playing the game{in relation to how many there would be had it been a worthy successor to Halo 3) then who is going to tell all the Call of Duty players that this is the Halo game for them? No one. Word of mouth is some of the best advertisement and if their goal was to attract some of that Call of Duty money they should have logically thought this through.
Sure, there may be customization options to make it play how we want it to play, but they must not be too great at PR if they didn’t think to mention that in Game Informer- instead they lead us to speculate and hope for the best while letting us wallow in our own self-induced misery while we lament the very idea and reality of this new knowledge atomic bomb.
At the end of the day what is the point of trying to attract all the Call of Duty players? I can only assume from what I’ve known of the loyal CoD fans I have met they have a strong disdain for just the name Halo, regardless of gameplay. So logically it leads me to question the competence of the company. Alienation of a fanbase to potentially attract a sworn rival fanbase is never a smart business decision unless they are able to incorporate both new and old seamlessly- which, if they can, they should have Yoink! mentioned.
Hell, this isn’t to say the game will flop. They will still make a good amount more than likely; it is Halo regardless of it actually BEING Halo. But it isn’t good to sully the name of a fresh, not yet ripened company. Giving yourself a bad rep so soon into the game will not make you as profitable as you should be.
I know I seem a bit of a negative Nancy, and maybe I’m just talking out my -Yoink!-? Who knows, but this is how I feel. My feels are nothing but heartache towards what I have read and I really hope they surprise me with great news.
Without more knowledge on what is to come I can’t make any definitive decisions, but I can tell you from what I know and what I don’t know that this isn’t looking good.
