It’s so good that there are still some smart, sensible Halo fans left… Proximitty, an excellent H5 player and YouTuber, has just put up an excellent, spot-on video commenting the state of H3’s Anniversary and the overall climate within the H5 community/community in general, at the moment. The video is linked below:
Proximitty’s H3A/state of Halo Commentary
Whether or not H3A would’ve improved matters for the community, lots of great points are made here… it would’ve been interesting to see, it would’ve had to have been done right. The fact that there are shot-registration issues, aiming issues, projectile speed issues - as they relate to the frame-rate increase in the MCC… these would ALL have to be addressed in the correct manner in an hypothetical H3A, and if you aren’t an informed Halo player, you will not notice or be aware of these things. We really need a developer that pays attention to these minute details.
Now with his points regarding Halo 5… the fact that we have a game that is rotating playlists and game modes in and out, that SHOULDN’T even have to be, is like he says… “frustrating.” That is really an understatement… It’s TREMENDOUSLY frustrating. And when the feedback continues to roll in for 343, and still, nothing changes, or it takes months on end for it to change, when a simple playlist update or implementing some (already verified/tested) Forge additions to MM… I mean, this is easy stuff that would tenfold improve the experience for the community. It’s not like 343 is bound by contract with outside parties to keep promoting and supporting their product like the way it works with some businesses. That’s nonsense and they continue to pull the game back to it’s stale state time and time again, just to introduce another experimental playlist, that anyone outside of the hyper-casual community doesn’t like. It’s not an effective way to support the game, when it lacks staple content to begin with.
And it’s really sad, because at a foundational level H5 is a great game, a lot of fun… but the support for core players and core game modes and core content just is NOT there… it’s gotten stale, even map rotation values have gone heavily skewed and unaddressed for months now, almost a year in some cases for popular playlists… RANKED SLAYER… it might as well be called Mercy Slayer as it appears nearly 2-3 times out of 5-6 games. It makes the game get old quick. I haven’t played maps like Stasis or Riptide in nearly a month. This is just not acceptable… it’s easy stuff that has gone ignored for far too long.
But it’s the fact that we’re missing core game modes and playlists, this mismanaged temporary playlist philosophy that doesn’t work and is unsatisfactory to much of the community… pulling a core game mode Oddball out of the game again, when has this ever been acceptable for a Halo game? These are things that should be there from the get-go, not added a year and a half(+) late into the game’s life-cycle, only to be removed a week and a half later lol. It’s just not good… Snipers being heavily requested since launch, and just being added a couple of weeks ago? It’s just a configuration of Slayer… it’s these easy, little things, that are being over-looked, feedback ignored, just to promote these experimental, casual playlists… since launch? I mean, it’s no wonder why there has been such a population drop-off over time. Selective feedback… taking too long to address certain feedback, and leaving the game in a bare-bones, stale state. It gets boring fast and it’s making the game a chore to play… the structuring of content/split content pools, again, does not help. It’s a value-inefficient model for Halo players, that have their own preferences in how they play Halo. A hypothetical dev-BTB map, for example, that supported traditional Halo modes, as well as Warzone, like any other Halo game would’ve done it, has value to EVERY Halo player, no matter their preferred style of play.
I’ll likely be switching over to Destiny 2 once it launches, unless 343 can get their act together and address some of these problems. I will play Destiny 2 regardless, but I’d like have some reasons to keep coming back to Halo, and if some of these simple changes aren’t implemented soon, I can’t see myself lasting with this game much longer, wanting to grind… there’s just too much stale, similar content, poorly configured playlists, too much support for these experimental casual modes, to keep a long-time, traditional fan playing. Halo just never used to be this way… it effectively supported all players, it established staple playlists with a variety of gametypes within, that effectively supported the longevity of the game for a lot of players. It was difficult to get bored… now with this inefficient support/content model, it’s just getting so dry.
Things need to change. 343 needs to put their pride aside with all of these “fun little casual game modes for all of the Halo children” and support the game for the long time fans that know what to expect from a Halo game, even if it was a Bungie-established element… they’ve created their own game with H5… now please, just listen to the established (and sensible) Halo fans and incorporate the series’ core competitive offerings. There’s nothing stopping them, and we STILL have a shell of a game here with H5. Some new Forge maps would be awesome even, incorporate Oddball into some non-HCS objective playlists… again, it’s the EASY STUFF where the majority of the work has already been done… just take a couple/few days to plan it all out and implement it and never touch it again if you don’t want to… Just leave the game in much more content-rich state, where maps all have reasonable chances to appear in MM and aren’t skewed towards the newest additions. It’s things like this that the community shouldn’t even have to bring up… Yes, I’m frustrated… a lot of players are frustrated. If you’re not, congratulations… there’s bliss found in ignorance… but just know that Halo didn’t used to be supported this way. Trying to be as constructive as I can here… at this point, it’s becoming really difficult and more and more difficult to continue playing and trying to provide feedback/support this game, as a fan, when it just gets suppressed, questioned, and written off to begin with.
/rant.