It will be the end, not just for halotracker either.
I’m thinking this is the way that 343 will take complete control of stats. I already miss HaloCharts, I just signed up on HaloTracker about 2 months ago.
While stats aren’t super necessary, they are an outside aspect to the games that keep people coming back and playing the game.
In the February Bulletin it’s mentioned that 343 will have something in place in the summer. I think it eluded to being able to save screenshots and films, and not stats. Hopefully that was just an oversight in the bulletin and stats will be included.
With respect to 343, their stats here on HaloWaypoint are very much lacking in comparison to some of the fan sites out there.
343, please understand that checking our stats IS important to we fans. Many of us use those to gauge where we are against the rest of the community and show what areas we need to improve on. They most definitely keep us coming back for more.
I think we’ll understand if those won’t happen for Reach or the older games. However, it MUST happen for Halo 4. The system you have in place now is (respectfully) inadequate. Not enough information.
If anything you should be getting those folks who ran/run the best Halo stat sites and employing them. They’ve done a great courtesy to the community and would be of great service to you and continue to keep the community going and growing.
Respectfully,
HaloFanForLife
> I’m thinking this is the way that 343 will take complete control of stats. I already miss HaloCharts, I just signed up on HaloTracker about 2 months ago.
>
> While stats aren’t super necessary, they are an outside aspect to the games that keep people coming back and playing the game.
>
> In the February Bulletin it’s mentioned that 343 will have something in place in the summer. I think it eluded to being able to save screenshots and films, and not stats. Hopefully that was just an oversight in the bulletin and stats will be included.
>
> With respect to 343, their stats here on HaloWaypoint are very much lacking in comparison to some of the fan sites out there.
>
> 343, please understand that checking our stats IS important to we fans. Many of us use those to gauge where we are against the rest of the community and show what areas we need to improve on. They most definitely keep us coming back for more.
>
> I think we’ll understand if those won’t happen for Reach or the older games. However, it MUST happen for Halo 4. The system you have in place now is (respectfully) inadequate. Not enough information.
>
> If anything you should be getting those folks who ran/run the best Halo stat sites and employing them. They’ve done a great courtesy to the community and would be of great service to you and continue to keep the community going and growing.
>
> Respectfully,
> HaloFanForLife
Everything you just said right here is so true. 343 listin to this guy. btw i feel your pain with halo charts I was not only a supporter but a sponsor to it was such a good site and will be missed just like halotracker and bungie.net thoe I have high hopes for 343.
Thanks Z. I was a lifetime member at HaloCharts. I was even player of the day once. I would check that site a couple times a day, more on the weekends. It was just fun to see if I ranked up with the use of a weapon, or my exact K/D ratio was, or how I had improved from the previous 30 days, and so on.
Not to mention all the matches they set up, the groups that had, and so much more.
To go from having all of this to next to nothing starting in April and going on for who knows how long shows bad planning on the part of 343. I mean no disrespect 343, but the facts show for themselves here as admitted in the most recent bulletin.
My faith that you’re going to have an epic game is honestly waning. The lack of any info on Halo 4, taking over for Bungie with nothing to replace, etc., well it doesn’t reflect well on you. I know you folks are passionate about putting out a great game in Halo 4. However that shouldn’t mean you ignore the franchise previously that got you to the positions you’re in now. It’s a good 9 months before Halo 4 comes out. You’ve got time to do right by we very fans that keep the franchise alive.
If you’re not going to have something dedicated to these other games or at least Reach, please be forthcoming, other than an open ended answer in the bulletin.
I understand that you, 343, wish to be the hub for all things Halo. That’s great, but not at the expense of other sites that are doing something you either aren’t doing or aren’t doing as good a job as.
If you want to be the best, then go for it, but you’ve got to provide at least on par service from what’s already out there. Otherwise HaloWaypoint won’t live up to it’s fullest potential, Halo 4 or not.
On another note, you’ve really got to do something about the plethora of repetitive posts, the constant degrading of forum user about/to other forum users. That really takes away from a pleasant experience on the boards.
I’m saying this all as a passionate fan who cares for Halo and what it will become. My forum name and gamertag reflect that. Any criticism you read from me is not meant to demean, but rather be as a call of action to do better.
Most respectfully,
HFFL
I am disappointed in the news that the API is being stopped, to say the least.
The Reach API allowed the community to pick up where Bungie and 343 left off and provide services tailored to both the casual and hardcore sides of the community. Whether it is the live challenges on top of the HBO forum and elsewhere, stats crunching sites like the Tracker and Charts, or challenge sites like Fire Team Zulu and HaloChallenges.
This is something that uniquely defines Halo. Call of Duty doesn’t have a stats API and requires people to pay to access extra stats analysis, while your community has done it for free and more thoroughly. Plenty of fan sites will have to close or simply suspend their activities on March 31st - even if they’re forced to screen scrape, only some of the stats are available by Waypoint. A whole ecosystem of stats apps will die overnight.
The API lets use do numerous things. We can track uploaded files for contests. We can automatically grab stats for a gamertag and run Firefight or Campaign challenges without the user needing to manually cut and paste a game link or type in a game score. We can extend Halo for the existing userbase and advertise Halo to more potential players. This level of deep stats and analysis allows players to improve their game or figure out what kind of player they are.
Unfortunately, along the current path Microsoft seems to be taking this functionality out of the community’s hands and assuming complete control by the company’s hands. It doesn’t sit well that the only way to get stats will either be by a Windows Phone 7 or IOS app, or the (currently) unreliable and lacking Waypoints website. If I recall correctly, you can’t even link to another person’s Service Record so even pushed to scraping, those stats are beyond being able to be acquired.
I kindly but firmly ask that Microsoft and 343 reconsider your not-plans for continued support for an API. I know Halo 4 is around the corner and you just can’t wait to show us the game, but please continue to fully support the game you’re still charging 35$ of DLC for.Please do not take discontinuing the API lightly.
Regards,
FyreWulff
i think 343 is mainly listening to the noobs instead of the true halo fans
> i think 343 is mainly listening to the noobs instead of the true halo fans
You are kidding right?
The ‘noobs’ didn’t suggest to removed the API support, or Nameplate support, or community websites based on stats.
It was a joint decision at 343 because, most likely, limited resources.
> limited resources.
Not that microsoft lacks the funds and/or resources…
> > limited resources.
>
> Not that microsoft lacks the funds and/or resources…
343 Industries are working on Halo 4, hiring more people to simply do this then kicking them off, not happening.
> > > limited resources.
> >
> > Not that microsoft lacks the funds and/or resources…
>
> 343 Industries are working on Halo 4, hiring more people to simply do this then kicking them off, not happening.
-Yoink!- off fan created communities and trying to bring them onto a lower quality product is definitely the way to go.
> > > > limited resources.
> > >
> > > Not that microsoft lacks the funds and/or resources…
> >
> > 343 Industries are working on Halo 4, hiring more people to simply do this then kicking them off, not happening.
>
> -Yoink!- off fan created communities and trying to bring them onto a lower quality product is definitely the way to go.
I really fail to see the big deal, they are busy with a more important game than Reach, they didn’t even have to pick up Reach, they could have left it to rot, they didn’t have to update their website to allow the stats we have, they don’t need to pick up on anything they have other than making Halo 4.
Be happy with what you have, you are just getting greedy, 343 =/= Bungie, they don’t have to provide an API and as I have said many times, the Halo Tracker owner has plans.
> Be happy with what you have, you are just getting greedy, 343 =/= Bungie, they don’t have to provide an API and as I have said many times, the Halo Tracker owner has plans.
I’m not happy when I got from a decent quality product to a mediocre one.
> > Be happy with what you have, you are just getting greedy, 343 =/= Bungie, they don’t have to provide an API and as I have said many times, the Halo Tracker owner has plans.
>
> I’m not happy when I got from a decent quality product to a mediocre one.
Feel free to go back to Bungie then, 343 have made their statement, there is no plans on API support for Reach from them.
This whole topic is about Halo Tracker, who claim he has a workaround but not as much stats, let him do it, then judge.
I hardly check my stats, but to now know that they will be likely frozen(or much less) is really sad.
Suffice to say, whatever the reasons, I think not having a stats API with live stats going foward is a bad idea. There are literally entire communities that revolve around it’s use. You don’t stop people from gathering Halo stats without an API - people just go back to using something called screen-scraping. With screen-scraping they download the web pages that everyone sees and filter out the stats information - which costs more bandwidth and processing to both parties.
Sure 343i could try and lock down their site and make it prohibitively hard to do screen-scraping but I can’t understand why they would. I made a cynical comment on another site that perhaps it was to push the paid-for ATLAS add-on for mobile: if players can’t get their stats on mobile any other way, it would have to be through the Waypoint app and the add-on would have greater exposure. I realise the decision probably isn’t as businessly cynical as all that - at least I really hope it’s not.
However I don’t see why 343i couldn’t adopt a similar model to Bungie in this regard and make API access $4.99 or whatever; for people that wanted it, that small price to pay would be worth it still. Or better yet bundle it with a ‘Waypoint Premium’ that includes ATLAS and API access and maybe some other perks. If you can’t justify giving it away for free, then make a business model out of it.
The Stats API is a good feature. No, I take that back, it’s a great feature - I don’t understand why it would be thrown away like this. In my experience “no current plans” usually means “we’re never doing it” - and it would be just as useful for Halo 4 too!
One of the reasons I like Halo is because it always went above and beyond the other games out there. From the plethora of custom games options that only kept expanding and expanding each game, the revolutionary matchmaking systems, freaking fileshares, ubiqitous replays in an FPS, the screenshots, the forge, the skulls and scoring and rich, complete, and easy to use, online stats and, yeah, the API access.
Beyond a few key tennents in the gameplay, all this stuff is what makes Halo, Halo. At least to me. Does that make us Halo fans spoiled? Yeah, maybe, but thats part of what kept us coming back game after game, participating in forums, creating and consuming amazing community content - all the while promoting the Halo brand! All these extended features have been amazing for community building and sustaining over the years. Halo isn’t just a gameplay sandbox.
Going back to stats, not supporting a stats API is obviously going to hinder sites like HaloTracker a lot. It’ll make it harder and more cumbersome for new sites or apps to come about which do cool things that perhaps 343i didn’t think of, don’t have time for/can’t spend money on. What we’ve seen so far on those community stats sites is only beginning to scratch the surface on what you can do with all that data being accessible in such an easy format.
I had a few ideas myself but it’d be no use to the community at all if it can’t use live data - the thought of building a screen-scraper is rather off-putting. With only legacy stats though the B.net API it’d be a shadow of what it could have been - a hollow monument to a vastness of potential.
The strangest thing about all this to me is that Achronos of Bungie once said that the stats API was a consequence of how they had chosen to build their own stats on b.net - that b.net uses the API itself to retreive the data. I don’t know what happened to that code and why 343i can’t use it, but rebuilding it in a similar fashion would seem like a good design choice to me. While you’re at it, even extending the API access to Halo 3 and ODST would be amazing, but at this point I’d just rather not lose features.
For what it’s worth, consider this me tossing my hat into the ‘please reconsider’ ring along with others in this thread and on other sites.
Deeply saddened,
RC Master
> I really fail to see the big deal, they are busy with a more important game than Reach, they didn’t even have to pick up Reach, they could have left it to rot, they didn’t have to update their website to allow the stats we have, they don’t need to pick up on anything they have other than making Halo 4.
We are 343’s customers here, and keeping us happy always makes business sense. I can’t really envision a world where dropping Reach entirely would not be met with pitchforks.
> Be happy with what you have, you are just getting greedy,
No, no, no. We are happy with what we have, we are concerned about getting less in the future.
A work-around is still a work-around, and it would be demonstrably better for all parties involved if 343i had a stats API.
I’m definitely surprised by this decision; the most cynical I’ve talked to have all attributed it to greed (if there is no API, MS controls access, and more people will pay for products like ATLAS) or lack of resources (343 simply doesn’t have the manpower to get the API running before March) - neither of these sits particularly well with me.
It’s really clear to anyone to looks that the stats currently available at Halo Waypoint are a shadow of what you can see at Bungie.net - but some (most? all?) of this disparity can be overcome by community-built sites like Halotracker (and HaloCharts before it). It costs nothing to enable these sites - except a working API.
343 has been positive about its community - as a company, it seems to understand the benefit that can be derived from fans who WANT to contribute. The folks in charge ‘get it’ - there are financial benefits to fostering a fan community that might not be able to be marked down on a balance sheet, but are very real nonetheless. So I can’t see that this decision is greed… because even if they WERE all about the money (and I don’t believe they are), it STILL makes financial sense to offload some of the heavy lifting for some of this stuff to fans who are only too happy to do it for free.
And while I know nothing about the differences between the backend setups between Bungie and 343, the database content they’re both working from has to be the same, right? (I mean, there are far too many users to DUPLICATE that data, right?) So it’s not like the API has to be built from scratch - if there were a will to make it happen, Bungie’s Reach API should be hostable by 343. So it’s not lack of resources… or at least, not WHOLLY lack of resources.
I don’t get it. I’m not an accountant - but I would be amazed if the loss of goodwill from removing the API, plus the actual loss of stats functionality (because even the PAY options aren’t as good as what we have right now) didn’t outweigh whatever they might earn from ATLAS (or similar products).
Last weekend, Susan G. Komen announced that they were going to defund future grants for Planned Parenthood. The reason they gave was pretty flimsy - but they figured that the amount of money on the line ($700,000) wasn’t big enough to cause a stir; it’s less than 1/10 of 1% of Planned Parenthood’s annual budget. (It was made up in private donations to PP in 2 days, in fact.) What they didn’t count on was the number of Komen donors that saw this as a betrayal - and were willing, even for such a small chunk of change, to alter their future giving habits (it wasn’t about the money, it was about an organization devoted to women’s health suddenly getting political), to walk away from Komen. I worry that this sort of action on 343’s part could lead to the same sort of backlash; stats are a pretty small piece of the pie, overall… but the JUDGEMENT that allows this to happen gets called into question.
At least by me. 
I am asking, politely, that 343 reconsider this decision, or at least be clear about why they have chosen not to allow this to happen.
> > i think 343 is mainly listening to the noobs instead of the true halo fans
>
> You are kidding right?
>
> The ‘noobs’ didn’t suggest to removed the API support, or Nameplate support, or community websites based on stats.
>
> It was a joint decision at 343 because, most likely, limited resources.
Ultimate 343 fanboy here.
343i doesn’t care about the ‘little people’ and not even attempting Reach API is proof of this. 343i is slowly destroying what Halo is. Just wait for it, the worst is yet to come. And that’s all I have to say here.
> Feel free to go back to Bungie then, 343 have made their statement, there is no plans on API support for Reach from them.
>
> This whole topic is about Halo Tracker, who claim he has a workaround but not as much stats, let him do it, then judge.
That’s what this thread is about, about the huge mistake they announced they were making, and about us making them change their mind with enough community outcry. But you don’t really need to come onto the forums for that. You just have to go to every Halo fan site that has used the API in some way to see how decimating of an effect getting rid of it will be. Every site has already voiced an outcry to get the API back in some way. The API is pretty much like having the Forge. You can’t get rid of it unless you want to screw yourselves over. The communities has to have the API.
Like Louis Wu said a couple posts above, just how difficult is it really? Is it not the exact same data that has changed physical locations? Like, what is the issue? What is the issue? If it is the exact same data, why is there no API? Can an agreement not be worked out between Bungie and 343i to give them the API? Or is it Microsoft who’s holding it back for something and screwing us over? Seriously, what is the issue with us not having the API? 343i, you say you are community oriented? Then give us a straight answer. The entire Halo Community deserves and demands to know exactly why and not be left with an open ended question.
> For what it’s worth, consider this me tossing my hat into the ‘please reconsider’ ring along with others in this thread and on other sites.
Throw my hat into that ring too.
I have to completely agree with Louis Wu on this one.
Halotracker tracks current 205,000 gamers. And that’s current data. We keep our data fresh. Overall, we have tracked over the years 331,000 gamers.
205k gamers are going to come to halotracker on April 1st, and their frozen stats are not part of an April fools joke.
We offer a true skill ranking system. People go there to rank up. They keep playing MM to rank up.
I’m not sure what the future of halotracker is. I don’t want to compete with waypoint, I want to work with waypoint. So far 343 has been great to me. Jessica has really taken care of us, and been an excellent community manager.
I hope that something positive comes out of all of this.
Thanks to everyone for the support.