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> > It never fails to make me laugh when people complain about 343 focusing on “competitive” gameplay, because Halo 5 is not what you would get if you were to focus on grassroots competitive Halo gameplay
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> You’ll excuse me if I find this a bit weak. Based on all the changes aimed at starting each player on equal footings in H5, it comes off as far more competitive-natured than Halo 4 and Reach. Obviously not as competitive as 2 or 3, but when you remove loadouts, Armor Abilities, perks, and all the other random COD junk that made 4 and Reach so intolerable to the competitive scene, doesn’t that translate to Halo 5 automatically being a more competitive experience than those two? Have I been mistaken if I thought equal starts was the largest pillar in what defines competitive halo multiplayer?
Being more competitively oriented than Halo 4 and Reach is a low bar to clear. It also does not make Halo 5 the game grassroots competitive players would make if given the reigns. Its not as if unbalanced Halo 4 style multiplayer was even abandoned, it was just segregated from the rest of the experience and given a huge portion of the budget to the detriment of Arena. A lot of Halo 5’s issues are just trading one thing competitive players don’t like for something else they don’t like that still undermines the experience for them. How can Halo 5 be “too competitive” if by your own admission doesn’t even reach the levels of CE, H2, or H3 which all had thriving competitive and casual scenes?
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> > It is what you get when you try to funnel all your “casual” players into a P2W, lootbox filled, grindfest Warzone mode while at the same time chasing after the nebulous idea of “Esports TM” at the expense of your existing competitive community. No one(in the broad sense) is really getting what they want.
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> Warzone was specifically designed to be independent of arena. I don’t see how that diminished Arena when nothing material such as stats crossed over between the two. Halo 3 had grifball and action sack (not to mention BTB modes where the idea of perfect balance was not necessarily maintained)- were those inclusions also stealing attention and resources from the competitive foundation of Halo 3? Also what is the significance of putting quotations around the word casual? To imply that the majority of the Warzone population had adopted the mindset that Warzone was where competition thrived, despite being fully aware of the random req packs and microtransactions you mentioned above? And please inform me how catering to Esports, as it relates specifically to Halo, is not conceptually the same thing as leaning towards being competitive.
Are you really going to try and tell me Warzone didn’t have any affect on the Arena experience? Warzone isn’t some cute little mode utilizing mostly existing game settings and mechanics, it was clearly a huge investment. You can’t design and balance these experiences in a vacuum. If you don’t think it affected player movement, sandbox balance, aim assist, etc, etc, I don’t know what to tell you. The lack of developer BTB, lack of core gamemodes, forge, etc, should make this pretty clear I put casual in quotes to imply that the Publishers/Devs thought there is only one type of casual player who just wants Halo4/Warzone type random experiences and that Arena was really only for sweaty ranked matches.
There is a world of difference between catering to the idea of Esports and catering to the Halo competitive community specifically. Case in point being the inclusion of the motion tracker in competitive tournament settings, despite being disabled for good reason in every other Halo game’s competitive settings. It is the first thing the players who are interested in that sort of competition would disable, yet it was included so as to not confuse and alienate the “casual” players who might be tuning in or trying out the playlist. It is a move that is catered towards the popular idea of “Esports” to the detriment of the actual community who would be participating. That is why I take issue with people calling Halo 5 “too competitive” because the game is certainly not catering to the our competitive community to any serious degree.
> Maybe, maybe not. Of course if you conceded towards giving 343 just an ounce of credit for the improvements to multiplayer between 4 and 5, I think most people would acknowledge that they understand that Halo being a predominantly competitive experience is sacred. I don’t see things as getting worse since the time they took over, I see things improving, albeit very slowly, to a point where they can reasonably achieve a Halo experience that truly feels Halo
I see absolutely no reason to give them any credit for bringing back bog basic things like equal starts or removing armor abilities to replace them with Spartan abilities(which have their own set of problems). The idea that the dev team specifically built to make Halo games would need to take this long to “achieve a Halo experience that truly feels Halo” is absurd. They took over a franchise that had been going for 10 years, they had successful examples right in front of their face and somehow they still managed to get it wrong. Bungie had their fair share of mistakes, but it they also didn’t have access to the same level of hindsight to avoid those pitfalls. Going from a dev who made mistakes while mapping out a new world as they went to one who drove off a cliff 3 times with a complete map is an example of things “getting worse.”
With their history it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if 343 managed to take “Halo 5 was too competitive” to heart without examining how ridiculous that claim is in context.