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> > The sandbox can be considered in terms of how the developers would want things to play out, like having a sniper rifle on the map and making obvious points on the map one can snipe from. But that doesn’t need as much weigh as players are complete equals once they spawn into a normal game (players can customize as much as they please after all). Things can be predictable with flow because of no sprint and then there are spots where tricky or creative maunvers can be executed. Do you think that jump on Lockout from top middle to the snipe tower was an accident people?
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> > Halo is not a true arena shooter though. It has some elements like even starts and weapon pick ups but it very much does it’s own thing, fill a niche that was undoubtedly popular. It’s still a unique game that hasn’t been done yet these days.
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> I should have clarified that I was thinking of the sandbox being more in line with everything else that isn’t weapons or grenades. Like I said, I know the basics of map design, and that everything that players do that doesn’t happen through glitches is almost 100% of the time designed to be like that.
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> Sure it’s not a “true” arena shooter, but it’s the only thing close to arena on consoles besides Gears of War, so I’ll just call it an arena shooter to simplify things. Classic Halo still emphasized movement, but in a different way than traditional arena shooters. Sure pre-Reach Halo’s a unique game too, but who’s to say it won’t fail with the new casual audience? The casual audience seems to like their gimmicks, judging from the most successful shooters of the current generation on both major consoles. Maybe a new classic-pure Halo will succeed, but as of right now? It’s completely unknown to me if it’ll actually succeed past Halo 5’s position on Xbox Live’s Most Played list.
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> The only thing close to being “pure” and being successful is Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and even then, it’s only gotten bigger on PC with the inclusion of microtransaction cosmetics. That’s not the only reason it got bigger, but it is one of the bigger parts of why it did. The other big one is heavy promotion of the 2013 DreamHack tournament by SteelSeries, who most likely began their partnership with DreamHack back then, and Valve, who crowdfunded the tournament through microtransactions and owns Steam obviously. If it didn’t have all those updates that fixed the game and introduced the game to the casual Steam user, the game would have sat around 50000-75000 concurrent users on average as of right now (judging from SteamSpy’s statistics on CSS and CS1.6) with very little tournament support. The console versions of CSGO failed after the first week or so because the developers couldn’t update as frequently as on PC, and left the game feeling very different from what CS originally was. I see classic Halo with a gimmick being more successful than Halo 5 in its current state.
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> I’m just basing everything I have on what’s available to the public, and what has worked before for other franchises that have been in somewhat similar states. Doom disappeared for a while, but it’s sitting near the bottom of Steam’s recent AAA catalog with 1000 concurrent players on average. Gears of War went back to its roots after Judgement’s disappointment, but it’s in the same situation as Halo 5. It’s stagnant for a niche game. This isn’t anything against classic Halo, since I stopped buying Halo products right after 4 came out and the multiplayer disappointed me, but the current market seems to favor gimmicks much more than “pure shooters.” Like I said, pure Halo can succeed, but it has to be down the line when the market begins to open up to “less gimmicky” games. Introduce them to multiplayer games with very few gimmicks, such as Quake Champions, then blow them away with the return-to-form of Halo multiplayer.
I don’t think it’s simply gimmicks that are enticing players, just pure quality. It’s easy to tell when a game is well crafted and attempts to be different from the others.
And classic Halo is simple, yet intricate. It has easy to understand game play but the various sandboxes and their elements make it all engaging. The series is almost modular so people can come up with nearly anything, especially with Forge mode getting better and better.
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> EDIT: I also have to mention the resurgence of Halo: Reach right after backwards compatibility was added, but it’s an outlier since the MCC is still supposedly broken.
Yes well, Reach also isn’t on the MCC as well, and it was Bungie’s last Halo game. The news would have sparked interest too.