These aren’t my thoughts, here’s a link to the original author.
I’m just gonna go ahead and say this as blunt as possible because it’s on most peoples minds. Downvote me to hell if you’d like, I don’t give a -Yoink-. Keep lying to yourself if you want to. Here’s the truth
Dear 343,
Thank you for creating the best playing halo game to date. The competitiveness and gameplay are par none and you have gone above and beyond in giving us a product that we can truly say is a quality multiplayer shooter.
However, you need to get your -Yoink- together.
You have, to the disappointment of most of us, slipped into the bowels of AAA game making marketing ploys and false promises. You promise us all these free maps and DLC yet fail to mention that we’re not really getting new maps, just re-tweaked versions of pre-existing maps or community made maps.
You’ve followed the new age cash cow scheme of in game transactions and have allowed the illusion of greed to shroud your integrity and commitment for the fans. This illusion that’s blinded you all has lead you to cash in on these in game transactions to fund the only part of Halo you seem to care about anymore and that’s e-sports. Most people don’t stop to think about how much advertising revenue you probably get off this. All the money you funnel into e-sports is because it’s more fiscally rewarding for you guys.
I grew up with Halo. When I was younger Halo meant jumping on with friends to enjoy a variety of different game types to satisfy our gaming mood on 15+ different maps that were created by a studio from scratch.
You have a community team member u/bravo who you pay to interact with us so that it seems like your listening to our concerns and you’ve done a damn good job with that illusion as well. The community won’t stop thanking you guys and bravo for interacting with us. They do this not realizing that the only feedback you listen to is the feedback you WANT to listen to.
When you got Halo from Bungie, you were given a product that was very sentimental to a lot of people. With that reception, you were given the responsibility of maintaining the integrity of the franchise. Needless to say you have not succeeded in handling that responsibility. I don’t even need to bring up Halo 4 because we all know what kind of a bombshell that was that almost single handedly destroyed the franchise.
Here’s what you have managed to do with Halo 5:
Launched the game with only a handful of maps
Eliminated CLASSIC game types that are just as integral to the game as slayer and CTF
You’ve received money from Microsoft to develop the game, money from sales and money from microtransaction. Instead of using this money to do your job and DEVELOP, you’ve taken the kick back route and delegated creating maps to members of the community. Instead of going to the drawing board and making a new map, you decided “Oh, let’s change some aesthetics, rename this map and call it new!” It’s incredibly lazy and makes you look like you don’t give a -Yoink-.
4 months after launch, you’re still feeding us full of false promises. Every update you mention the team working on new maps and game types. We still have yet to get playlists that should already be in there to begin with (snipers; double) but you have time to put “Rocket Party” in?!
When this game launched, the playlists should’ve looked like this
Team Arena
Breakout
Team Slayer
Team Objective
Doubles
Team Snipers
Big Team Battle
Social Arena
Social Slayer
Social Objective
Warzone
Warzone Assault
There’s really no excuses for this. You wanted a way to make it look like we were receiving a lot more game than previous halo titles, when in reality, you gave us a half game at launch and are trickling in the completed pieces under the false identity of DLC. The fact that, out of the 8 arena maps that launched, 2 of those were remixes of maps already included in that 8, is absurd. Including the January update, we’ll have received a total of 8 “DLC” maps. 6 of those are forged maps (in other words, you pawned off the hard work on the community and reaped the benefits) and 2 of those are “remixes”. 8 maps and not ONE original, studio made map. That is ridiculous.
In summary, here’s our main problems with how you’re handling H5 right now. Our problem is your inability or lack of responsibility to DO YOUR JOB and make the game yourself (every map should be original except for community playlists maps). Our problem is that you’re TOO LAZY to make an original map and instead, take a pre-existing map and tweak it to call it a new map and meet your “promise” to us. Our problem is that somewhere in that company, someone had the genius idea to remove critical game types that should NEVER be removed from a Halo game. Our problem is the lack of playlists available at launch and your INABILITY to remedy that situation even 4 months after launch.
If you’re truly committed to the community, these problems wouldn’t exist in the first place.
Now do your job and fix it.
EDIT: I didn’t even mention the campaign and how you spent all the time, effort, and money into building up a story that you just abandoned. Biggest upset of a campaign in video game history in my opinion. I spent hours listening to hunt the truth and reading all the Halo Escalation comics only to have none if it even tie into Halo 5’s story.
EDIT: Quick edit here just to apologize for a coming across as a salty -Yoink- in this post. I let my anger get the best of me. I stand by what I said but not necessarily the tone in which I said it. I’m not trying to misrepresent the Halo community and make us all look like -Yoinks!-. Unfortunately, you have to be a bit blunt sometimes for people to listen. I like and enjoy Halo 5. I play on a regular basis because the gameplay is fantastic. The big thing is that I spent $60 on a Halo title expecting what we’ve always got from a Halo title and that is the core game types and both ranked and social playlists.
EDIT: I’ve been getting a bunch of backlash for using the word “Lazy”. “Lazy” by definition means to show a lack of effort or care, which is exactly what I see from 343 right now.