> 2533274825830455;640:
> > 2535444702990491;639:
> > “Stupid claims,” is a little harsh.
>
> - I think claims about events that are not backed by any data are stupid. They’re useless, they’re misleading, they don’t get us closer to the truth. All the do is create mutual distrust. Anyone can just say whether fits their agenda, whether or not it has any basis in reality. I’m not a fan of that.I’d understand “misleading,” but “stupid,” is a stereotypical and overused term that is devoid of much meaning, save for a derogatory label. Thanks for clarifying with the eleborated explanation so I can understand a little more behind your intent.
>
> > 2535444702990491;639:
> > Halo 3’s was taken from an entire day, so (aside from H3’s population counter producing inflated numbers) it’s difficult to have taken those raw, aggregate numbers and compared them side by side against other games that had real-time (or near real-time) population statistics. I never said Halo 3 was unpopular, but I figured it was common knowledge that Halo 3 lost a significant chunk of its population in the months after launch. I found this post on Waypoint which was from the post-Reach era discussing, comparing, and contrasting Reach’s population versus H3’s population and discussing the population drop in H3.
>
> - I created the graph (and others), and the whole process is carefully documented, motivated, analyzed, and criticized in the thread found in my signature. When it comes to the data, first of all, the Halo 3 in-game population counter used to be real-time. It was only changed to 24h UU counts well after the release of Halo Reach. The counter was broken after an Xbox 360 dashboard update in 2009. However, that’s all irrelevant to the data we’re discussing, because it did not come from the in-game counter, but from the Bungie.net counter, which did not have the same reliability issues as the in-game counter.That’s cool 
that probably took a lot of effort. I just wasn’t sure where the data came from. I’ve tried to search for H3 population charts but wasn’t really able to locate any. I just remember on the Bungie.net forums people used to compare H2’s popularity when they’d talk about how H3’s population dropped more after launch; albeit (as you demonstrated) it was still definitely very popular for many years after launch. I’m sure there are a lot of explanations as to why that is, such as increased competition due to other rising prominent FPS titles, generational divides, fans just getting franchise fatigue; among other things. I personally stopped playing MP on Halo 3 a few months after launch because of the movement mechanics (surely others departed for the same reasons, as other prominent FPS titles offered faster gameplay with sprint). The larger maps created an annoying over-dependency on vehicles (which spawned infrequently), teleporters, and lifts which was exasperated by the singular, slower BMS. Once sprint set me free on Reach then it just seemed like such a better alternative to one BMS (despite whether 1 BMS is increased or not). That said I still remember H3 fondly due to its absolutely fantastic campaign, and open, immersive maps. It was also the last AAA FPS Halo title which featured both the Brutes and the Flood, which made for better, more dynamic combat encounters with the AI. But I got way more MP enjoyment and replayability out of Reach, H4, and H5; largely in part due to their inclusion of sprint. - However, the data in the graphs is indeed 24h UU counts. And you’re within reason to doubt it, because as we all well know, there weren’t any 24h UU counts for Halo 4. Waypoint only had a real-time counter, and the data you see for Halo 4 in that graph is based on that counter, (though gathered through the API to HaloCharts, where I sourced it from). However, if you assume that the (peak) 24h UU count is in a constant ratio to the peak real-time population, and that this ratio isn’t hugely different between games (as turns out to be the case for Halo 3 and Reach), then you can find that ratio and extrapolate the 24h UU counts from the peak population. Again, the reliability of this approach and the issues with it are discussed in the thread in my signature.Well I don’t necessarily doubt the data itself, I just question the ability to draw direct comparisons to population counts when measured against games using real-time (or near real-time) population counters. It could indeed theretically be closer to accurate numbers if the other games’ population counts are taken at peak times during the exact same 24hr intervals, but when viewing a random chart of population comparisons it’s impossible for me to discern with any certainty that the data would reflect said potential accuracy. Thanks for providing more information with the thread, it’s an interesting read for sure! 
- I don’t know if it’s common knowledge that Halo 3 had a significant drop in population in the months following launch. But obviously I should know that such a drop exists, because it’s right there in the graphs I made. However, what you did not account for is that this might be a completely natural phenomenon that happens to a certain class of games (namely, huge, highly marketed triple-A games), because when the game launches, a lot more people end up buying the game on the hype than would be genuinely interested in playing it in the long term. It’s there for Halo 3, but it’s also there for Halo Reach, and Halo 4. I’ve always been curious whether it might be there also for CoD, Battlefield, and all these other seasonal games that make headlines at regular intervals. The fact that there is a significant drop in population following launch doesn’t by itself tells us much, because there are a billion reasons why it could happen, not all of which are preventable. Now, if that drop becomes larger with each sequel, and your sales are not growing, then you might have cause to worry, because you can’t explain it away with people who would never have had huge interest (or lots of time to spend) in the type of game you’re making in the first place.Understandable and pretty sound reasoning regarding population drops.
>
> > 2535444702990491;639:
> > There have been equally as many “wild,” baseless claims made from anti-sprinters and you don’t step in and try to debunk those or call any of them stupid.
>
> - Because frankly, sometimes I just can’t be bothered right now. I especially used to do that in the more silent days of the forums when there was no time and effort to dedicate on more interesting things. Heck, part of the motivation for creating the population database was to debunk some of the ridiculous misconceptions some fans of Halo 3 had about the popularity of the game. I’ve spent much more time and effort combating those misconceptions than I have on discussing with you in this thread. - At the moment, I’m only focusing on you because you’re the biggest outlet of these wild claims in this particular thread at the moment. If you want me to focus on other people, then the best you can do is not to grab my attention. If you stop making these claims, eventually I will find enough energy to be frustrated with someone else.I understand that you’re going to have an opinion on the issue and defend it. But if you see what you consider to be a “wild,” baseless claim but it supports your position then surely you’d be more likely to either accept it without any supporting evidence or just ignore it; versus being way easier to go after claims that are anterior to your stance on the issue.
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Holy crap did this thread blow up since I last read through it. From page 6 to page 33, my goodness.
Anyways, I sure hope that the movement mechanics from Halo 5 are built upon in Infinite. Altering the Spartan Charge and Ground Pound mechanics in a number of ways would be the two primary things I think they should work on; otherwise, I’m pretty much a big fan of everything else. Most of all, I love the Clamber and Smart-Link mechanics in Halo 5 plus I adore the Sprint, Slide, and Stabilize features too.
> 2535444702990491;641:
> I understand that you’re going to have an opinion on the issue and defend it. But if you see what you consider to be a “wild,” baseless claim but it supports your position then surely you’d be more likely to either accept it without any supporting evidence or just ignore it; versus being way easier to go after claims that are anterior to your stance on the issue.
I’d like to think I’ve learned to be pretty honest about that with myself. I have hard enough time accepting my own claims unless I can find some supporting argument, or some data to back it up. I’m pretty paranoid about just accepting things at faith.
However, I think it’s reasonable to say that I can, and will, ignore things people say that support my agenda more than those that go against it. That’s really a simple value calculation for me. After all, I do have an agenda, and so the motivation for countering claims against it comes easier. It’s mentally more taxing to go against people who think I’m supposed to be on their side and endorse everything they believe just because I agree with them on some things. Besides, as a moderator, people who don’t know me have some default expectations about whose side I’m on. It’s just not so fun.
> 2535464451695009;642:
> I’m not sure about DoTA 2 and CS:GO, though. The kind of success I was talking about was the long-term, high-population kind of success, meaning a sustained population of around a million unique users over at least several months, similarly to Halo 3. The last time I checked Steam’s population count over a week, which was admittedly a few years ago, both games were hovering at 700k users at most. That’s still a significant chunk of the PC market, and CSGO was second place on Steam to DoTA2, which had 600k users at a time, but yeah. I’m still searching for concrete numbers on Overwatch, since League is still pretty big if we take into account the monthly-daily population ratio from 2014 and modify the values to work in 2017’s counts, which showed an overall decrease in interest, meaning less players per day than the ratio calculated earlier tells us.
So, you do see that CS: GO and Dota 2 are significantly more popular than Halo 3 was in its prime? The largest actual number of concurrent players Halo 3 ever hit that is on record is about 400,000 at launch. That’s about the same as the peak of CS: GO today, many years after release. For most of its early life Halo 3 hovered around 200,000 peak concurrent players every day, which is significantly less than these two games get every day.
> 2533274795123910;638:
> > 2533275013370605;637:
> > > 2533274795123910;636:
> > > > 2533274825830455;635:
> > > > > 2535464451695009;634:
> > > > >
> > >
> > > Sprint is akin to a Holy relic.
> > > Games lacking sprint and do bad, it’s because they lack sprint.
> > > Games do bad despite having sprint, it’s other factors.
> > > Games do good without sprint, they’d do far better with sprint, no backing up needed, and they do not count either way.
> >
> > There’s definitely other factors other the inclusion of sprint that caused the latest Halo games to drop in popularity.
> > In Halo 5’s case people complained about: Sprint/SA, artstyle, campaign, Locke hogging the spotlight, REQs, no split screen, incomplete game at launch, buggy theatre etc…
> > While I agree that Gameplay is definitely important, to say that other factors did not contribute would be a tremendous fallacy.
> >
> > I think perhaps another reason people are arguing so is because some people are talking about campaign while others multiplayer.
> > In my case I like sprint in campaign, but in multiplayer I’m less enthusiastic
>
> What I said is basically how I’ve come to see what happens when it comes to naming games, on the pro-sprint side. ( No the anti-sprint isn’t perfect, there are bad things happening on that side as well )
>
> See, it usually start with someone mentioning “increased game pace” in a vague manner. A Doom 2016 video is linked showing fast gameplay with no sprint. Counter to that is Doom 2016 not being that popular. CS:GO and OW gets dropped, but they’re dismissed as different games. Battlefield, CoD and whatever else has sprint is mentioned to show plenty of popular series with sprint.
>
> I mean, that has pretty much happened in this thread once.
> Look at the quotes in the chain even. There’s a slight hint of it.
Don’t worry I perfectly understand what you mean.
I think a big problem is that people on both sides simplify the issue; if a game with no sprint is popular they take it to mean that no sprint is better/sprint is unnecessary, and on the flipside if a game with sprint is popular they will say that’s proof that sprint is a good mechanic.
It’s a flawed logic that completely ignores any and all other factors and context regarding the games.
Generally if a game is well made and plays well it will be well received. For example if Halo 5 had fixed all of its problems and fine tuned some of the Spartan Abilities (ie: Spartan Charge) I believe the game would have been better received and perhaps even quite liked by the community. Then again that’s so easy to say.
Sprint as a mechanic isn’t necessary. Its a gimmick that attempts to add more immersion in a game but utilising a real world capability as a gameplay feature. Clambering is similarly another said immersion feature in order to give the player more manoeuvrability, but just like sprint its not necessary.
Someone on this thread made the point that even reloading is unnecessary to gameplay, and while this argument has merit there comes a point where too much fluidity translates into nonsensical gameplay. Perhaps if Halo was just some simple multiplayer arena game the idea would be fine, but this franchise is so much more. It has a very rich universe and story which some would argue is the most important part of Halo.
Gameplay is very important as a game has to be fun, however it also needs to maintain a level of realism/immersion for its campaign to feel satisfying especially nowadays where the push towards greater levels of detail and immersion and constantly being developed.
Anyways I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this debate will never reach a conclusion and won’t change anyone’s minds. Everyone believes that their version of Halo is the best one because that is what they prefer. At the end of the day its a preference.
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> 2535464451695009;646:
> OK, so I just skimmed through the population analysis study in the thread in your description, and your replies make a lot more sense. I was doubting myself because I couldn’t remember a time when Halo 3 had close to a million players online, but posted it because the sources I linked suggested otherwise, and we always put facts first over intuition.
Well, the article you linked is correct. Halo 3 had close to a million unique users per day when the article would’ve been written, but not a million concurrent users.
> 2535464451695009;646:
> I do wonder, though, why you didn’t include outlier playtimes, such as one hour and twelve hours of playtime, in the graph, or a separate graph, for approximating concurrent users in a given day.
What, you’re referring to figure 1? I was just demonstrating how playing habits affect the observed number of concurrent players, even if the population remains the same. There should be some outliers there, because I picked the players randomly from a distribution. Doesn’t really matter for the end result, though. It was just a small thing anyway.
> 2535464451695009;646:
> Looking at an old video’s description from 2008, your numbers do appear to line up, though they don’t seem to take into account weekends and holidays and generalizes it to weekday numbers.
I’m just relaying whatever data I have. The truth is that there are huge gaps for which no data is found, and the data is often from suboptimal times (times when Americans are not online), so I don’t have too many of the peaks. That’s why I mostly shy away from the concurrent players data. It’s not very useful when you have one day at 17,000, and the very next at 140,000. Mind you, I wouldn’t entirely trust the in-game counter, even before 2009. If it says 300,000? Eh, maybe. If it says 400,000? Starting to sound odd if I wouldn’t find anything from my data to corraborate such instances (because that should show up as 300,000 even a bit outside the peak times). If it says 900,000? Definitely broken.
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Implement a beta as early as possible. Only two gametypes: A and B.
One with modern Halo movement, map scaling, etc, one with classic design. Whatever has a better population and more play time continue with.
Personally I enjoy Halo 5’s movement. It adds complexity in my opinion. Halo 3 had crouch jumps and grenade jumps. Halo 5 has crouch jumps, thruster jumps, thruster slide jumps, spring jumps, and a variety of combinations that I like and would be sad to see go.
That being said after some getting used to I would be fine with classic halo design. I’m buying Infinite regardless.
It boggles my mind that there’s still people who think sprint and abilities are good for Halo. Apparently two dying games released by 343 isn’t enough proof that the majority of people don’t want them in the franchise.
> 2533274826802205;650:
> It boggles my mind that there’s still people who think sprint and abilities are good for Halo. Apparently two dying games released by 343 isn’t enough proof that the majority of people don’t want them in the franchise.
I personally don’t care about what’s “good for halo”. People claim that Halo 5 is dead but I still find games fairly quickly and I have a blast playing it. People want what they want. How is that mind-boggling?
like all the sprint threads, all these opinions and preferences are just opinions and preferences
My opinion is that CoD mostly killed Halo, it wasn’t including Sprint in Halo which only agitated Halo 2 &3 kids who didn’t live through the drastic shock of going from HCE to H2, also there has always been some people who have hated everything 343i has done since the moment Bungie handed off Halo to them.
> 2533274839169051;652:
> it wasn’t including Sprint in Halo which only agitated Halo 2 &3 kids who didn’t live through the drastic shock of going from HCE to H2
Could we please just not make these baseless generalizations? You gain nothing from deluding yourself with the idea that only people who hadn’t experienced significant change in Halo didn’t like sprint. It contributes nothing to the discussion and is just demeaning.
I have no problem with the movements as they are. The only one I don’t care for is spartan charge. It’s kind of a cheap shot. It’s no deal breaker for me whichever way it goes. I’ll pre-order it just like all the other Halo’s.
> 2533274819051113;651:
> > 2533274826802205;650:
> > It boggles my mind that there’s still people who think sprint and abilities are good for Halo. Apparently two dying games released by 343 isn’t enough proof that the majority of people don’t want them in the franchise.
>
> I personally don’t care about what’s “good for halo”. People claim that Halo 5 is dead but I still find games fairly quickly and I have a blast playing it. People want what they want. How is that mind-boggling?
When people say that Halo 5 is dead they mean it’s dead by Halo standards. Obviously the game still has an active playerbase, but it’s shrunk significantly faster than what you might expect from Xbox’s flagship series.
Guardians was an “o.k” game but it’s not an halo…
That sentence is heavily packed in meaning please read it,and read it again and again.
Also bring back all vehicles from the past halo’s --brute chopper,prowler,all brute weopons too.
Falcon,hornet is a must,wasp was good but ruined communicative gameplay like reach and h3.
Also I miss the Elephant from h3
Add vehicles and weapons not remove them…where’s the spectre??!
Halo infinite bring back everything from past halo’s and add 5-10 new things,BOOM SUCCESS!!!
> 2533274889489936;2:
> As in we all have to walk around really slowly and such?
Not necessarily. A good example is the map Truth. It comes from halo 2. In halo 2 and halo 5 you can traverse the map from point 8 to point b at the same speed, and that is because the halo 2 walking speed is much faster than halo 5 walking speed and the map in halo 5 was expanded to a larger proportion in order to accommodate the spartan abilities. So, technically, sprint slowed the game down, because if you are ever not sprinting, which is a lot, you are not traversing the map as fast as you could in halo 2.
While I most definitely agree that the old movement mechanics would be great, we have to look at this logically. The classic movement style does not work in the modern gaming industry. Most of the gaming population is under 18, and most of those people are going to want extra armor abilities. You can’t deny that when you first picked up the game you have fun experimenting with all the new toys your armor had. To keep the series alive they need to innovate, not devolve.
And from a lore perspective, how would S-IVs go from having all pf these abilities to none? It makes no sense. You can explain it by saying we wont be playing as S-IVs in multiplayer, but if we do that how do we explain the REQ system that will be implemented, how do we explain armor customization on a large level, and how do we explain the lore of matchmaking? The REQ system (or some other microtransaction) without a doubt will be there, so we need to get lots of items from each “pack”. If we have downgraded so much, how do we explain getting huge amounts of armor and weapons? And if we do downgrade to off-brand master chiefs (like in halo 3), how do we explain armor customization? We only had a few options to pick from. We are going to have a lot, so if we have all this armor, why do none of them have any abilities? And currently, matchmaking is a simulation inside of the UNSC Infinity, just like in halo 4. If we don’t have sprint, that means we don’t have the Infinity to test matchmaking, which wouldn’t make sense, as the Infinity is the flagship of the Reclaimer trilogy.
All-in-all, I would love some classic movement, but it isn’t as fun, does not draw in new players, does not keep players in (aside from the older part of the community, which is much smaller than the newer part), and does not work with the lore in more basic fashion.
> 2535460567076971;658:
> While I most definitely agree that the old movement mechanics would be great, we have to look at this logically. The classic movement style does not work in the modern gaming industry. Most of the gaming population is under 18, and most of those people are going to want extra armor abilities. You can’t deny that when you first picked up the game you have fun experimenting with all the new toys your armor had. To keep the series alive they need to innovate, not devolve.
>
> And from a lore perspective, how would S-IVs go from having all pf these abilities to none? It makes no sense. You can explain it by saying we wont be playing as S-IVs in multiplayer, but if we do that how do we explain the REQ system that will be implemented, how do we explain armor customization on a large level, and how do we explain the lore of matchmaking? The REQ system (or some other microtransaction) without a doubt will be there, so we need to get lots of items from each “pack”. If we have downgraded so much, how do we explain getting huge amounts of armor and weapons? And if we do downgrade to off-brand master chiefs (like in halo 3), how do we explain armor customization? We only had a few options to pick from. We are going to have a lot, so if we have all this armor, why do none of them have any abilities? And currently, matchmaking is a simulation inside of the UNSC Infinity, just like in halo 4. If we don’t have sprint, that means we don’t have the Infinity to test matchmaking, which wouldn’t make sense, as the Infinity is the flagship of the Reclaimer trilogy.
>
> All-in-all, I would love some classic movement, but it isn’t as fun, does not draw in new players, does not keep players in (aside from the older part of the community, which is much smaller than the newer part), and does not work with the lore in more basic fashion.
From a gameplay perspective, we kinda already did that just going to Halo 5. That’s why Loadouts were removed, Jetpack is missing, and we can’t call down guns in front of us. People probably spent more time messing around with the REQs than Halo 5’s Spartan Abilities.
By your logic, we’ve already been devolving.
From a lore perspective, nothing changes. It’s not like Chief never had the ability to climb a ledge before Halo 5. I mean, this is the same franchise where lore wise, Spartans are able to swim, but gameplay wise Spartans die as soon as they step foot underwater. Things can just be for gameplay purposes. Kinda shows the huge fault for trying to rationalize multiplayer into canon.
That would make Halo great again!No more mindless sprinting around.Nice and easy movement mechanic that lets you absorb the beatiful scenery and fight strategic like a game of Chess!That is Halo dear developers!Don’t try to fix something that ain’t broken!