The Misconseption of the Casual Halo Audience

Games Halo 5: Guardians
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Ideally this would be presented in an exhaustively long rant form, complete with colorful descriptors such as “imbecilic”, but for the sake of avoiding the inevitable tl;dr I’ll keep it short. :wink:

A recurring argument across these forums is that Halo must, for reasons of monetary success, cater to the casual/non-competitive audience in order to sell as many copies as possible, and, as a result, stay afloat as a franchise.

I see this all the time, and especially considering the fact that Halo enjoyed overwhelming success before it’s “casualization”, it’s extremely confusing. Markedly so considering the question where the Yoink! is the casual playerbase?

One has simply to look at population statistics to see that Halo 4’s casual aspects currently yield a maximum 30,000 players a day.

So there you go. 30,000/2 (to account for the hardcore, stickler competitive comumnity) = 15,000 people out of how ever many million bought the game. Less than one percent of the playerbase.

Now the point of this is that Halo has the franchise power and marketing team to sell millions of copies on day one, so profit is practically guaranteed, regardless of what playstyle the game caters to. Now if this is true, why should 343i make a game that favors the casual playstyle when it clearly makes the games worse, as overwhelmingly shown by both competitive AND casual players alike?

WHY U CATER TO CASUAL 343?!!

And yes, I’m aware that, however true this argument is, it is none the less hyperbolic in nature.

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30 000 is a bit generous

http://halocharts.com/2013/playlists_halo4.php

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This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not flame.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

> One has simply to look at population statistics to see that Halo 4’s casual aspects currently yield a maximum 30,000 players a day.

What casual aspect? Look at what type of combat dominates this game and you see to whom its been made for, hardcore jerks who think that the very pinnacle of FPS gameplay is slogging through a slow, tedious mess of semi-automatic rifles. The fact that there are other superficial features slapped onto this as well doesn’t change the fundamental character of what this game is or in any way validate this shameless scapegoating.

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> 30 000 is a bit generous
>
> http://halocharts.com/2013/playlists_halo4.php

Think he meant in a day as in total of who comes in and out, which is prob over 30,000.

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>

I’m not sure if you’re intentionally being selectively ignorant, but I would applaud you if you came across any Halo game that wasn’t dominated by semi-automatics, not to mention that the very “tedious mess” that exists in Halo 4 can be almost entirely attributed to 343 caving to the wishes of a disproportionally-vocal crowd of casual members that would infinitely prefer a space-age CoD, but settled for Halo 4 instead.

Also, default sprint? Ordnance? Loadouts? Do explain how these elements qualify in the slightest sense as superficial.

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> ignorant, but I would applaud you if you came across any Halo game that wasn’t dominated by semi-automatics, not to mention that the very “tedious mess” that exists in Halo 4 can be almost entirely attributed to 343 caving to the wishes of a disproportionally-vocal crowd of casual members that would infinitely prefer a space-age CoD, but settled for Halo 4 instead.
>
> Also, default sprint? Ordnance? Loadouts? Do explain how these elements qualify in the slightest sense as superficial.

  1. I defy you to even state reasonably how any of those features are “casual”. Sprint is a pretty basic function you see in most games regardless of their orientation. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for example isn’t exactly the most inviting game on the market and neither is Section 8 (quite the contrary that’s probably the most hardcore sci-fi FPS out there) but they both sport loadouts and sprint AND section 8 even goes so far to include an elaborate loadout system.

You might be setting your standards base on old arena shooters but I invite you to take a look at Unreal Tounrament 3. That game HAS sprint, though dressed up a bit in the form of the hoverboard. And yet UT3 makes Halo look like PBS at 3pm because there are more fundamental aspects of a game’s design than these token features that define its intended audience. They contribute NOTHING towards the focus of a game because they can hardly be said to be the game in itself. They are offshoots, tangential factors intended to add spice or gameplay adjustment where necessary. There is no possible context (except a badly structured set of priorities) where you can say they characterize Halo 4 even relative to others in the series.

Where they matter most is in simply constructing these contrive “it’s all the other group’s fault” arguments which serve no other purpose than trying to pointlessly jokey for position within the community. It’s entirely unproductive and it should therefore END now.

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>

The only thing in H4 that caters to the competitive crowd is the Turbo update and the Global Championship. Personal ordinances randomly bringing weapons, casual. Competitive people would rather have to fight for weapons on the map, not have them handed to them. Sprint default, casual. Competitive people would rather have higher base movement speed with better strafe mechanics. Starting AAs, perks, and loadouts, casual. Competitive people would rather everyone start off on even ground and use their skill and creativity to separate themselves. No descope, casual. Competitive player would rather have to fight for the right to be the one scoped in in the battle. Not being able to drop the flag and constant indicator, casual. Competitive players began using flag dropping to move faster while sacrificing stealth, and this was literally put in to counter that.

So I am sorry to say it, but your argument is completely invalid.

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> Competitive people would rather have to fight for weapons on the map, not have them handed to them.

As those weapons are handed out if you happen to control an arbitrarily selected plot of land? But hey call it map control and a gameplay gimmick ripped from the constraints of the first multiplayer shooters becomes good and decent territory for competitive gaming.

This is all entirely subjective. I shouldn’t need to point this out in any case but there is NO WAY of describing how any single feature favors one demographic or another except where it influences the game’s usage. And how the hell has that changed? Competitive format down the core of the game in line with whatever icon of the genre you care to cite. CTF is still CTF and the objective of slayer is still to slay without any meaningful alterations that would make that objective somehow the playground of people who just want to have fun. What Halo 4 is is simply not likable, in your eyes, compared previous titles and I’d thank you to take that fault within your own community rather than projecting it out onto other demographics. They have not benefited from any of these changes either because, guess what, the game’s core mechanics have not been essentially touched. The DMR and its kin are still the weapons of choice and matches are still structured around them. How you happen to get that rocket launcher is totally insignificant because what that offers the “casual” player is moot in the face of a game still built on hardcore gameplay (to one whose basis for that is Halo itself of course.) One might hope for that moment of easily accessible joy, but to reach it you’ve got to slog through the rest of the game.

There’s a certain word that’s probably at the heart of this discussion, and that’s perspective. Have a sense of it and stop fixating on minor gameplay tweaks as being the defining characteristics of a game.

> Sprint default, casual. Competitive people would rather have higher base movement speed with better strafe mechanics. Starting AAs, perks, and loadouts, casual. Competitive people would rather everyone start off on even ground and use their skill and creativity to separate themselves. No descope, casual. Competitive player would rather have to fight for the right to be the one scoped in in the battle. Not being able to drop the flag and constant indicator, casual. Competitive players began using flag dropping to move faster while sacrificing stealth, and this was literally put in to counter that.
>
> So I am sorry to say it, but your argument is completely invalid.

Again do try to state reasonably how that ANY OF THAT caters to a casual audience. What you’ve provided there is merely a set of tasteless truisms no better than if I were to say “Forced weapon choice on badly flowing maps, that’s got to be hardcore!” which, mind you, would reflect only my distaste for such gameplay rather than any intended pandering on 343’s part.

That’s the ONLY point I’m trying to make, stop trying to find scapegoats for a game you simply don’t like. You’re certainly welcome to fault Halo 4 (I certainly do) but blaming anyone besides 343 is wide of the mark.

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My only problems are that you provide no definition for what constitutes a casual player and that your numbers are made up on the spot.

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> My only problems are that you provide no <mark>definition for what constitutes a casual player</mark> and that your numbers are made up on the spot.

A person who does not care about score, rank, K/D and simply wants to play/laugh.

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> > My only problems are that you provide no <mark>definition for what constitutes a casual player</mark> and that your numbers are made up on the spot.
>
> A person who does not care about score, rank, K/D and simply wants to play/laugh.

I don’t try to care about score, rank, and K/D because they’re meaningless as anything other than descriptive statistics. I also quite enjoyed Fable. But that said I also like Unreal Tournament and Counterstrike and not because they are in any way the virtual equivalent of a Bob Ross painting.

There are no clear boundaries between interest bases except where they are arbitrarily defined in arguments like these. Don’t pay much attention to them.

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> As those weapons are handed out if you happen to control an arbitrarily selected plot of land? But hey call it map control and a gameplay gimmick ripped from the constraints of the first multiplayer shooters becomes good and decent territory for competitive gaming.

have you played sports? board games? any other form of competitive person vs person experience? they all have “map control” and in all of them theres a point on the map/field/board worth controlling hence map control, it isn’t a constraint of a time gone by like you ignorantly posit.

what other “gameplay gimmicks” are there in a shooter? loadouts? what other ways can weapons be spread out effectively and fairly? the style that halo used to use involved something loadouts don’t have anywhere near the amount called risk, there still is risk, but the balance between risk and reward is very skewed now in comparison to what it used to be.

game theory is a mathematical system, the economic system. whilst there is no objective way to determine how someone enjoys someting, there is a way to monitor it and find a general equilibrium that will satisfy a broad audience ( what halo 4 tried to do).

there is also a method for determining competitiveness called mechanism design theory and is contemplated when determining what mechanisms the devs are wanting for there audience. when you take away some risk but have higher rewards, this can be felt, even by many who don’t care about mechanics. it changes the pace, the cadence of combat engagements, positioning, awareness, readability. it changes the game, and it shows that the changes made in h4 are certainly not everyones cup of tea.

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i was hoping this thread was going to be about what is a better casual experience based on the title, because there is a misconception i see quite often regarding who wants what.

i see many people say split into ranked and social, ranked be classic and social be infinity, but who is to say certain social players want infinity settings?

the whole point of a social/casual experience is that there are many audiences that enjoy many different things (trick jumping, forging, doing stuff with film, taking photos, custom games, jumping on for brief periods of time as a wind down, speed running, playing as serious as possible, glitch finding, group play, leaderboards etc), a game that caters to as many audiences as possible, offering them a layered extensive experience, without deterring other audiences, is what will be a game devs highest chance of gaining interest in the consumer over a long period of time.

though that is moreso a value more wanted by a consumer than a producer and may not be of interest when trying to find general equilibrium.

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You are the one that has the misconception. Casuals but the game en masse, they consist of the bulk of the purchasers that but the game at launch. But casuals are casual, and when they see a shinny new game come out they might leave Halo behind. Surely, to stick around with Halo for more than a few months would be a significant feet for a casual player. So they buy the game and then they leave.

343i built a game for those players, but they were the first to get out the back door when the time came. Second to leave were the hardcore competitive community. These players are usually the bulk of the post-launch population as they would regularly play the game religiously and will do all they can to hold on to their skill. With most of those two communities gone, the bulk of the remaining population is the hardcore Halo fanbase, the faithful followers that would probably never give up on Halo. These are few, and they can be both casual and competitive. These are the poor 30,000 we can see today.

I stopped playing Halo 4 in the past few months. I’m almost ashamed of saying this, as I consider myself a Halo uberfan, but it’s true. 343i took out Dominion (which was basically the only playlist I played repeatedly because it was fun and I was hoping to get the armor), and I started playing Skyrim. I think it will suffice to say that the only thing that brought me back to Halo in the last 4 months was the short-lived return of Dominion, and I just returned to Skyrim after that. Nothing in Halo 4 made me want to return to it, which is a first for a Halo game. This happened to a lot of people, so now even the biggest Halo fans are mostly gone.

It’s a shame, really.

My suggestion for 343i is to split the multiplayer in half to support both casual and competitive playstyles, but failing that I think they should build a game for those that will stick around. That means that the game should be competitive-friendly even if it’s not completely comprtitive, and it means that casuals should suffer the same “abandonment” that the core community felt in a Halo 4. It’s sad, but unless they can pull off a split multiplayer it’s the only thing that will beat Halo back into shape.

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I think that the biggest misconception here is that anybody who enjoys Halo 4 is automatically labelled as a casual player, while anybody who doesn’t is labelled as competitive. That is completely wrong.

I consider myself to be a casual player. I don’t care much about my K/D, about whether I win or lose the game, and just want to have fun. However, Halo 4’s new random mechanics aren’t fun for me at all. I quite dislike sprint, personal ordnance, armour abilities and perks, yet I am not a competitive gamer in any way.

Halo 4 doesn’t really cater to the casual fanbase nor to the competitive crowd. Even us casual players enjoyed Halo over any other game due to its mentality of every player being equal, therefore having every match’s winner be determined by skill.

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> I think that the biggest misconception here is that anybody who enjoys Halo 4 is automatically labelled as a casual player, while anybody who doesn’t is labelled as competitive. That is completely wrong.
>
> I consider myself to be a casual player. I don’t care much about my K/D, about whether I win or lose the game, and just want to have fun. However, Halo 4’s new random mechanics aren’t fun for me at all. I quite dislike sprint, personal ordnance, armour abilities and perks, yet I am not a competitive gamer in any way.
>
> Halo 4 doesn’t really cater to the casual fanbase nor to the competitive crowd. Even us casual players enjoyed Halo over any other game due to its mentality of every player being equal, therefore having every match’s winner be determined by skill.

This is also true. I wouldn’t call myself a competitive player at all but I still prefer classic Halo multiplayer.

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> > Competitive people would rather have to fight for weapons on the map, not have them handed to them.
>
> As those weapons are handed out if you happen to control an arbitrarily selected plot of land? But hey call it map control and a gameplay gimmick ripped from the constraints of the first multiplayer shooters becomes good and decent territory for competitive gaming.
>
> This is all entirely subjective. I shouldn’t need to point this out in any case but there is NO WAY of describing how any single feature favors one demographic or another except where it influences the game’s usage. And how the hell has that changed? Competitive format down the core of the game in line with whatever icon of the genre you care to cite. CTF is still CTF and the objective of slayer is still to slay without any meaningful alterations that would make that objective somehow the playground of people who just want to have fun. What Halo 4 is is simply not likable, in your eyes, compared previous titles and I’d thank you to take that fault within your own community rather than projecting it out onto other demographics. They have not benefited from any of these changes either because, guess what, the game’s core mechanics have not been essentially touched. The DMR and its kin are still the weapons of choice and matches are still structured around them. How you happen to get that rocket launcher is totally insignificant because what that offers the “casual” player is moot in the face of a game still built on hardcore gameplay (to one whose basis for that is Halo itself of course.) One might hope for that moment of easily accessible joy, but to reach it you’ve got to slog through the rest of the game.
>
> There’s a certain word that’s probably at the heart of this discussion, and that’s perspective. Have a sense of it and stop fixating on minor gameplay tweaks as being the defining characteristics of a game.
>
>
>
>
> > Sprint default, casual. Competitive people would rather have higher base movement speed with better strafe mechanics. Starting AAs, perks, and loadouts, casual. Competitive people would rather everyone start off on even ground and use their skill and creativity to separate themselves. No descope, casual. Competitive player would rather have to fight for the right to be the one scoped in in the battle. Not being able to drop the flag and constant indicator, casual. Competitive players began using flag dropping to move faster while sacrificing stealth, and this was literally put in to counter that.
> >
> > So I am sorry to say it, but your argument is completely invalid.
>
> Again do try to state reasonably how that ANY OF THAT caters to a casual audience. What you’ve provided there is merely a set of tasteless truisms no better than if I were to say “Forced weapon choice on badly flowing maps, that’s got to be hardcore!” which, mind you, would reflect only my distaste for such gameplay rather than any intended pandering on 343’s part.
>
> That’s the ONLY point I’m trying to make, stop trying to find scapegoats for a game you simply don’t like. You’re certainly welcome to fault Halo 4 (I certainly do) but blaming anyone besides 343 is wide of the mark.

My point was not to blame the casual community. I know that they did not design this game and they were not thes that chose to put certain characteristics in this game. It is quite obvious that the majority of the casual audience does not care for parts of the game as well judging from these forums and H4’s low population. My point in it all was that it was said that h4 catered to the competitive crowd, and that is very much not the case. This game needs to change for the better for both crowds.

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I wish people would stop using the terms casual and competitive to describe players. Not all players consider themselves completely casual or completely competitive. I believe most players are somewhere in the middle: they play for fun, but they play to win as well. No one likes to lose, but not everyone tries ultra-hard to win every game, either. I believe it would be better to use casual and competitive to describe the qualities within a game, not the players who play them.

The best games (particularly in terms of multiplayer) have had a balance of competitive and casual. Games that are too competitive appeal to a select number of players who are ultra-competitive; players who play strictly for fun will lose interest very quickly because of the steep learning curve (e.g. Counter-Strike). Games that are too casual lack replay value because there is very little to get better at nor accomplish (e.g. any Kinect game). Games such as Halo 1/2/3 and CoD have achieved such mass appeal because they were competitive at their core while still having additional fun (casual) features. They are competitive and casual (fun) at the same time. Halo 4’s lack of success as far as online matchmaking population is concerned comes from the fact that it is all casual (fun) and no competitive. Unlike its predecessors, it only appeals to a few players on the casual side of the casual-competitive scale instead of the broader base.

> 1. I defy you to even state reasonably how any of those features are “casual”. Sprint is a pretty basic function you see in most games regardless of their orientation. Rainbow Six Vegas 2 for example isn’t exactly the most inviting game on the market and neither is Section 8 (quite the contrary that’s probably the most hardcore sci-fi FPS out there) but they both sport loadouts and sprint AND section 8 even goes so far to include an elaborate loadout system.

You make it sound like because any game has included any feature, any feature can be copy-pasted into any game. I have no idea why you would think this.

Yes, of course sprint in and of itself isn’t noncompetitive; when it works together with ADS, slow base movement speed, and fast kill times, it is almost necessary for the gameplay. However, in a game like Halo which has slower kill times, has already suitable movement speeds, and accuracy can be achieved without scoping, it adds an unnecessary complexity to the gameplay which detracts from the other aspects of the gameplay instead of working with them. Just because a particular mechanic or feature works in some games does not mean that it will work in every game.

Of course this may come down to “taste” as you say; however, I also believe that games should appeal to the broadest audiences possible. I’ve talked to many of my “casual” friends about Halo 4 who left the game very early. They didn’t know why they didn’t like it; they just knew it “wasn’t Halo.” After they attempted to go into detail about exactly what experiences they had turned them off to the game, I was able to explain to them how all of their problems they experienced were caused by features such as sprint, no descope, long-range weapons in loadouts, and Ordnance. It was amazing to see their eyes get wide as they said, “that’s it! That’s why!”

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> WHY U CATER TO CASUAL 343?!!

I think we all need to take a step back here and stop blaming the other guy. The community really doesn’t have much of a say about what goes into a game except for the occasional playlist or gametype, and even those changes happen on the devs time.

No “One side” of the community can be blamed for anything, because no “One side” of the community exists. The community is diverse, and a lot of people from both sides of the spectrum were hurt by changes made to the game. Sitting here and asking why they catered to the other guy instead of yourself or your group or this group or that group helps absolutely nobody, nor does it make anyone look like a desirable “group” to cater to.

It’s not like Casuals magically appeared in this game. It’s not like “casuals” had any say in what the devs did. It’s not even that all “casuals” like everything 343i, because players have different opinions on what makes a game good and fun. If you said anything in your post, it’s that players disliked what 343i did with Halo 4. Not that “casuals” liked it, not that competitive players hated it, but simply that the majority of a playerbase as a whole did not like it, or did not prefer it over other games on the market.

Furthermore, 343i have already stated that the inclusion of these new mechanics was based on dev feedback. An interview they did several months ago talked about how they hired people from outside the franchise who thought the game would “be better with x or y input.” and that while they like Halo, they thought “there would be items from other franchises that could make it better.”

Rather than blaming the other guy for our problems, we ought to be working as a community to generate a list of things that we can all agree on are problems, a list where we’ve gone over each individual potential problem and figured out why people like and dislike things, and possible compromises that would work for everybody.

Instead of saying “Why you cater to the casuals” or “stop catering to the competitives” say “What is the problem, why is it a problem, how big a problem is it, and how can we fix it in a way that appeals to the largest spectrum of people possible.”

That is what we should be doing as a community. Not this constant back and forth bickering and blaming the other guy.

/rant (and not the first time I’ve posted this rant.)

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> game theory is a mathematical system, the economic system. whilst there is no objective way to determine how someone enjoys someting, there is a way to monitor it and find a general equilibrium that will satisfy a broad audience ( what halo 4 tried to do).

As did Halo Reach, Halo 3, Halo 2, and Halo CE. They each tried to find the broadest possible audience within the FPS genre since that’s the point of this whole endeavor (and certainly one of the early aspects where the game did best, finding that broad audience and the huge sales that go along with that.)

And yet though you have room to interpret some games as being more competitive or no despite a consistent drivebetween all games to do the most economically sensible thing. This is possible because with a carefully selected set of hairs to split you can make whatever specific interpretation you like out of this broad product. On the one hand each Halo game has been deficient for the needs of competitive gameplay because each sacrifices its original arena heritage in favor of a much more approachable gameplay model (see. power weapons and badly flowing maps.) But on the other hand you have so called “casual” aspects cropping up again and again to spoil what would otherwise be pure competive grounds.

It’s subjective. Though you can certainly represent certain mechanics mathematically the casual/competitive split is entirely a value judgement as it essentially a line between supposedly distinct social groups.