Hello 343 I know a lot of people praise you for giving us the Title Update for Halo Reach but there are a very sizable portion of players that are not fans of it aside from the Active Camo and Armor Lock nerfs.
The bloom for all of the common precision weapons in the multiplayer (Needle Rifle, Magnum, DMR) was fine tuned for bringing players together in a match and to reward those who could control their impatience with more accurate projectiles. With more people pacing their shots this in turn made the “first person who gets a hit in a gunfight wins” factor much less important and emphasized Melee and grenade strategies more. This in turn lead to Bungie compounding their old faithful meta by introducing the setting where damage could not bleed through shields. Having this shield/health threshold area within the players own overall health was completely intentional to further disenfranchise the “first shot” factor and keep players with the upper hand in a gunfight still on their toes for a surprise reprisal of their adversary. By getting too close, Or providing in (general) an avenue of escape for the belligerent that has taken more more damage this threshold offered a calculated “comeback” scenario that is missing with the title update. All of these Factors in the game intern increased the TTK (time to kill) and in my and many many others opinion led to less mindless more enjoyable play than just another shooter
Over the course of a year + 7days everyone who played Halo Reach endured these games settings and those who did not enjoy the game settings had already stoped playing after maybe a month or so and those who did enjoy the game (aside from Armor Lock because everybody hated that) kept on playing. Everything was fine then Bungie sold Halo and August 2011 comes around and all of a sudden a patch is discussed for Halo Reach. What I’m getting at is that the title update for the game was too little too late and I don’t know who it was for at that point in the games life. A few months later and September 21 arrives and nothing is the same ever again. The Title Update goes live that day and the extremely fragile meta that the entire reach multiplayer had been built on was broken from its core and I just quit playing.
Everyone running around spamming the DMR with no consequence getting four shot spammed in the head with the pistol at close range and the needle rifle effectively becoming a precision machine gun. I couldn’t run from any engagement and could not get nearly as many reversals as I use to. I did not even know what game I was playing anymore. I put the game down for a month I tried to get excited for the remastered version of combat evolved coming soon but nothing really satiated that need for the old reach multiplayer, that’s how much I liked it (aside from the armor lock). Eventually I got back into it though, The old core Playlists did not have the title update so I was happy with that but still I wish the experience had never of happened in the first place. But now the nightmare has returned and I’m experiencing it all over again.
Thankfully Some of the core playlists were not title updated and from late 2011 to when reach released this year on MCC The overwhelming majority of players still preferred to play normal non title updated team slayer Along with others in the non-title updated category. Super slayer and other games that were title updated never received much popularity and if memory serves me right infection always had more than all of the title updated playlist population combined. The only downside was that big team battle was title updated But I didnt know what I was expecting at that point.
343 if you have any heart at all please give us the option to play reach nontitle updated on MCC. And if not that please perhaps re-think the title update and only keep the active camouflage and armor lock nerfs And if not that please at least send me a letter explaining to me why I will never be able to enjoy my favorite Halo game like I can the others ever again.