The Neglected Minority - Competitive

Games Other Halo
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Good afternoon everyone,

Based on the conversations I see on this forum it is apparent to me that many of you dislike the competitive community. Many of you hold stereotypes against this community. Well, for the sake of this thread I kindly ask you to leave such misconceptions out of the discussion.

The premise of this thread is simple: The competitive community is a vastly neglected community in the Halo Universe and I would like to point out a few double standards that this community (and even 343 themselves) hold.

First and foremost, it is important that we define ‘competitive.’ A competitive Halo player is one who plays to winbecause they find winning to be fun. Everyone plays to have fun so please do not think of competitive players as killjoys who do not know how to have fun - it is their version of fun. Preferably in an environment where there are two teams of equal or similar skill. That is the cornerstone of competition.

Notice that in the definition there is no mention of MLG. All MLG players are competitive players but not all competitive players are MLG. Let me repeat that because it is perhaps the most common misconception this forum has about the competitive community: All MLG players are competitive players but not all competitive players are MLG.

There are competitive Rumble Pit players.
There are competitive Super Slayer players.
There are competitive Living Dead players.
There are competitive Big Team Battle players.
There are competitive SWAT players.
There are competitive Invasion players.

You get the point.

Now to the meat of this thread…

How is the competitive community neglected and what are some of these double standards mentioned earlier?

Well, many people argue against a skill-based ranking system (such as Halo 2 and Halo 3’s systems) because it caters to a minority of players. Most players do not care for rank and it only serves to stress these “casuals” out.

I was thinking about this earlier today. Competitive players are in fact a minority and there is no arguing against that. But does the fact they are few in number mean they should be set aside? The obvious answer would be no.

And 343 has demonstrated they do care about minority groups. Campaign players are getting a brand new campaign, Firefight fans are getting a new “addiction” through Spartan Ops, Grifball players are getting what I assume to be an upgrade, and Living Dead players are getting a massive overhaul.

The minority group that gets the most attention, however, is the Forge Community. These individuals get an entire section of the game to themselves. How many people actually use Forge? A lot. But how many complete maps? Not many.

Of those who complete these maps, how many test and play them in custom games? A VAST minority. Customs in Reach are non-existent - at least outside of the competitive community because it is really their only outlet.

I digress. The point is that Forge gets a TON of attention in the development cycle but it really is not even that popular. Am I arguing that it should be removed? Hell no. Forge is great and that community churns out some amazing work for ALL players.

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We are weeks away from launch (woo!) and there is still no word on any outlet for the competitive players. Am I a competitive player? Not anymore. I don’t even find competitive play fun anymore.

But I want to make one thing very clear… If the Grifball community, or the Living Dead community, or the Campaign community, took a hit in any respect I would fight for and side with them as well.

This has nothing to do with wanting a rank for myself to prove my worth. This has everything to do with a group of players being shoved under the rug while other minority players get what they want. It is injustice.

You need not respect the competitive community to see their plight. On a daily basis they come to this forum and on a daily basis they are ridiculed (and yes, they do ridicule as well) and are essentially not allowed to have an opinion because this community does not understand or let them. They are told to adapt or to go back and play Halo 3.

I want to make another thing clear: We are all Halo fans. We are obviously going to a forum for a game we are very excited about. Many of us may be upset about the Limited Edition (which I’m getting) and we may disagree over canon and storyline, we may disagree over the overpowered-ness of Promethean Vision but at the end of the day we all love Halo.

Since we all love Halo and have that in common is it not right to want one another to have options and to have the gaming experience that we each want? Halo 2 and 3 offered side-by-side casual and competitive play and it would be nice to see Halo 4 bring that back.

Thank you for reading this if you have read this far. I realize it was a relatively lengthy thread but feel free to discuss. I simply ask that we keep it civil.

Have a nice Sunday, everyone.

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This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

For only a dollar a day, you can help feed starving competitives. Please donate today.

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Reads title

Sucks teeth

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Can someone summarize his post for me, im feeling lazy

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This post has been edited by a moderator. Please refrain from making non-constructive posts.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

> For only a dollar a day, you can help feed starving competitives. Please donate today.

cue Sarah McLachlan music

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Frankie has mentioned that there are playlists geared towards “competitive play.”

That being said, a simple question to you OP; is there a First Place in Halo 4 Matchmaking? Is therr a definitive Winning Team and Losing Team?

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but it was competitive players that ruined halo 3, they complained to the point of making the BR broken. Competitive players have no place complaining that they don’t have a say in the game because they ruined the previous games when they had a say in things. (again the BR, and the DMR)

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> Frankie has mentioned that there are playlists geared towards “competitive play.”
>
> That being said, a simple question to you OP; is there a First Place in Halo 4 Matchmaking? Is therr a definitive Winning Team and Losing Team?

That is not enough for competitive play. And no, it is not because they need a number next to their name.

Reach has winning and losing but is terrible for competitive play because competitive players want balanced games. MLG teams want to go into matchmaking and play people of similar skill. They don’t want to go into MLG and spawn kill KronicKushling and his three guests for 10 minutes.

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> Can someone summarize his post for me, im feeling lazy

343 needs to focus more on competitive players. Same as all the other Competitive vs. Casual threads.

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No. You’re wrong. Competitive players are not ignored. The fact that the game isn’t 100% how they want, they feel like they’re being ignored. Stop feeling so entilted.

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> but it was competitive players that ruined halo 3, they complained to the point of making the BR broken. Competitive players have no place complaining that they don’t have a say in the game because they ruined the previous games when they had a say in things. (again the BR, and the DMR)

I hear this “competitive players are the boogyman” argument all the time. Can you please elaborate? How did competitive players ruin any game?

They may “ruin” your experience by spawn killing you but that is more of a reflection on the inadequate ranking system than anything.

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Competitive? Neglected Minority?

Uhh…

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Great post dude. Being semi-competitive, I do hope for this “ranking system” Frank spoke of that was being worked on does get put in as a launch day patch or something. If not, it doesn’t mean that I’m not gonna play because I am regardless, but not all semi-competitive or competitive players think like me. If this rumored ranking system does get put it on launch day, I do hope it gets put into the classic playlist, but there is starting out, just one hopper for every playlist. I’ve stated this before and I’ll state it again, that the Halo 3 1-50 was flawed becasue of how easily exploitable it was, Reach’s was just as easy, and I didn’t see a problem with Halo 2’s. In my opinion it’s not proper for a flawed ranking system to be intergrated unless it is 1. fixed or 2. improved or overhauled, which I think is what 343 is working on doing but we shall see the results on launch day.

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> No. You’re wrong. Competitive players are not ignored. The fact that the game isn’t 100% how they want, they feel like they’re being ignored. Stop feeling so entilted.

No community has the whole game to themselves and the competitive community is not asking for it to be that way. You may blow their arguments out of proportion by thinking that but it’s not the case.

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Oh god, this threads are getting old.

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> Oh god, this threads are getting old.

Almost as old as people speculating what the Ancient Evil is but it doesn’t mean I crash their threads letting them know that.

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good post OP. Sadly many are going to skip over your content and still make fun of you with ignorant posts and biased hatred.

In the end though casuals are going to be the ones crying when we beat them so badly in matches because the game will not offer a ranking system to separate us from them. If they want another reach then so be it. We’ll go in and destroy as usual and they can complain they get unbalanced matches. They should have been for a ranking system and it will prevent them from the grief that is to come.

Then can call us derogatory things like tryhards for wanting to play well and win but they have nothing on us when all we want is balanced gameplay, skilled matching, and a place we too can go to get our style of Halo played. A few playlists may be ‘competitive’ but with no ranking system it’ll still be ‘casual’ since anyone and everyone could match up against eachother.

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thats alot of text…moving on

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> > but it was competitive players that ruined halo 3, they complained to the point of making the BR broken. Competitive players have no place complaining that they don’t have a say in the game because they ruined the previous games when they had a say in things. (again the BR, and the DMR)
>
> I hear this “competitive players are the boogyman” argument all the time. Can you please elaborate? How did competitive players ruin any game?
>
> They may “ruin” your experience by spawn killing you but that is more of a reflection on the inadequate ranking system than anything.

the reason they ruined it was because of the fact that all the competitive players use the marksman weapons, and when the developer makes a weapon that can beat that, the players complain. thus Bungie/343 make the gun more powerful (BR/DMR)/ the one that beat it weaker (see reach AR) thus ruining the balance the game had, and I can see this in halo 4 already, frankie flat out said the DMR is the most powerful gun in the game. (except power weapons.)

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> > Oh god, this threads are getting old.
>
> Almost as old as people speculating what the Ancient Evil is but it doesn’t mean I crash their threads letting them know that.

Considering those threads end up in discussion and not flame wars…