Who cares About Game Population for Halo 5

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

So i know that title will come off a bit dumb. Here is the point though i find people saying that the population for H4 dropped a very dramatic amount… But heres the other thing. I was able to turn on my Xbox 360 at anytime of the day of night, go to Halo 4 matchmaking, pick big team battle, and boom withing no more then 5 minutes max i was placed into a game whether it was join in progress or a brand new match. I also was in Afghanistan for a majority of the year halo 4 came out and upon return i began to play halo 4 again and i noticed that i would find the same results and i got rid of my 360 because i was tired of it. then i got another one months down the road and played halo 4 and again this event of finding matches was the same.

My point is basically that yea maybe the population dropped for Halo 4 i never bothered to actually look into that but if no one had said anything i honestyl would have not ever known the population dropped because i was able to play the video game.

So here is the reason why I am posting this today, I saw a post where the OP asks if people think Halo 5 will lose 80 percent of its population, and people where throwing out predictions after predictions and comments as if they were statistical experts on how any why Halo 5 will drop in population or the counter off. But I am here to state that in my response i place myself in the who cares category. Not that i don’t care about halo 5 or halo in general though not as into a game as i am into life more then anything( A video Game is only like 1 percent of my Focus in life and probably should not take more the 4 percent of your life or attention unless you can easily, comfortably, and securely bring in a 6 figure salary or a 5 figure of 40 to 50k yearly income with it.) I just dont look at population stuff or any of that i look t the very simple things

1 Does the Game Work

2 Does it give me a few hours of mindless Entertainment

3 Can i get lost in the story of the game for the time frame that i so Choose

4 Will i be able to pick up the game a year later and still find a match within 5 minutes.

5 Does the game keep hackers at bay or at least punish them for interfering with my fun.

I keep to these Core fundamentals and i find pretty much any game to be entertaining

So again i noticed no change in the population in halo 4 so it did not bother me if it dropped so if the sme happens with halo 5 to me its more liek im playing against people who enjoy the game as much as me and id rather play against the ones who want to play and not the ones who quit mid match all the time because they do not get there way. Hopefully i dont egt some dumb feedback from this, this is just some random explanation for why i feel the population to me is not a concern. Nothing more nothing less

2

Everyone who isnt selfish.

Even if I loved h4 id be dissappointed with the game since so many others didn’t.

3

The thing I enjoy most in Halo is getting my friends together and celebrate our long hours spawn killing next-generation BTB trash. We need a lot of victims - I mean players- in order to begin our daily ritual. I don’t gain pleasure from tea-bagging the mindless AI in the story, and I can’t enjoy a good trash talk with any of the characters.
I need real, living, thinking, next-gen casuals.
If Halo 5 can’t entice me with the benefit of a healthy population, then I will have no choice but to move on to CoD.

4

Ya OP, sorry didn’t you know, population numbers are the only thing these gamers look at, it’s all that matters to them and think it’s the “end all, be all” summary of any 343 launched game. You’re not allowed to have a different opinion or liking here! It’s definitely implied in many responses.

5

I honestly don’t care about population either, it’s just a game.

6

Well… I definitely noticed when the DLC maps were never on any playlist and every Halo 4 game ended up on the same 4 maps. I noticed the population drop easy, but of course you wouldn’t if you didn’t play it much

7

I think people care because it shows how much people like the game. They use Halo 3 as an example of having kept the player base to show that it was popular and well liked, and they use Halo 4 to show that it was the opposite.

People will use the amount of people playing the game months after its release as a indicator of its success.

8

I made a thread a long time ago regarding the importance of population in the game.

Can’t link now for some reason as this site is acting up on me…

Short rundown:

-Short search times vs even matches:

The smaller the population are you’ve got to sacrifice one for the other depending on what you want. Short search times will most time end in uneven matches, even matches will often mean long search times. Is either of those very enjoyable? Either you get stomped on or get to stomp, or you sit several minutes waiting for other player. I’m sure some players can endure a multitude of games which are one sided, there are those who can’t. I’m sure there are those who can endure minutes of waiting, but there are many who can’t.

-Playlist removal or merging

The smaller the population in a playlist, the more redundant the playlist gets. However, the mode is still desired. Either the playlist gets removed altogether and some players are then dissapointed with it’s removal and may be put off from playing. Or the playlist will be put into another playlist along with other low population playlists. Then you’ve got a mixed bag of game modes some may not want to play at all. Then you’ve got the problem of the mentality I do not wish to play KotH as I want CTF, so I’m going to quit.

-Enjoying the game

So now that we’ve gone through some things about the effects of low population, it comes down to if you enjoy the game or not in its state.

Kudos to you if you can play whatever game mode is served to you and you can endure minutes of searching for the proper players or are just thrown into whatever game the system can find. Then in Halo 4’s case, throw you into already started games where more than often, you’ll be on the losing team.

It’s safe to assume not all players are like that, they can like the game a lot, but if their multiplayer experience suffers because matches are loopsided, there are long search times, they’re in mood for a specific game mode and it just won’t happen, then chances are quite high they’ll play less and less then eventually quit.

That’s about it.

Now, I’ve seen answers to population drops like:

“Good, then only the truly dedicated players will remain and I can enjoy the game without all the un-dedicated players”.

Great for you, only thing is that your dedication to a game doesn’t show when you play the game, at all. Meaning that you can’t tell a dedicated Halo player from an un-dedicated Halo player, and I do need to question the difference it makes when you interact with this person as you’re in the game trying to win it.

“Well then the noobs will be weeded out and I don’t have to match with them”.

First off, if the game had a decent population and you got matched with noobs, then either the system isn’t working properly, or you actually belong in that skill range. Not only that, but whatever you deem a noob will still be present, or what you deem as a noob will change so that you will be matched with noobs regardless.

“Other games have come out that draw population”

True, however, how many return? Is Halo the only series which suffer from players buying it and then jumping ship to the next big game to never return? Wouldn’t that mean Halo has started to lack the quality needed for players to return? I mean, if Halo 4 dropped behind several CoDs, some sports games a year old and possibly even Minecraft, what does that tell about the replayability of Halo 4? Doesn’t those games’ players jump on the new games as they come out? Do those players not buy new games? I’d say those players jump between games they deem worthy, and Halo 4 wasn’t one of them. Or we can assume Halo’s competition is of better quality, then what?

9

I can’t believe this thread exists. If a game loses 90% of its population, then thats because 90% of its population didn’t enjoy it, regardless of any other game releases

I mean, various games (like MW2 and BF) were released and Halo 3 still enjoyed being at the top charts of XBL. Seriously, is the fact that a game franchise enjoyed by millions was reduced to like 10 thousand after its latest addition not odd to you at all?

10

I suppose you don’t have to care about population if you don’t want to.

Just don’t come on here complaining you can’t find a match because the game’s population is under 20,000 a day.

11

I really don’t care either. Titanfall on the One has a population counter, and I can find a match in under a minute when the population is 300 people. As long as I can find a match in happy.

12

It’s important for;

Matchmaking times

Effective ranking and thus even matches

Playlist availability

Interesting and varied player pool

Avoid hosts across the other side of the world

DLC sales and DLC playlist populations (i.e. the likelihood of you finding a game of that brand new $10 map pack you bought, or $25 Season pass you paid for)

In short for Halo MP to work properly. You can find games with population, but at this point you find that the skill of your team and the enemy team vary drastically. Finding teammates who ruin games, opposing teams who destroy you and then you get matched with them again for the next few games. In order to have fair, fun, varied games that are different and challenging each time without running over games full of players far below your skill. A decent population is needed. It doesn’t need to be millions, it doesn’t need to be hundreds of thousands. Though 100,000 and above would be preferred.

Millions of gamers buy the Halo games. Halo 4 dropped to about 0.2% of those actually playing online. 0.2% of Halo 5 will be about 5,000 to 10,000. Of those only so many will be playing when you are playing, effectively cutting the population further.

It’s not the be all end all, but it’s an important factor to consider when talking about a games success and the value that game offered, and how that value was received and felt by the consumers of it.

13

People are very pessimistic more so radical halo fans. They just can’t enjoy any thing or find something, any thing to hate about the game such as population, they are so knee deep in bashing halo 4 and halo 5 to. It’s clear what there agenda is. I played halo 4 yesterday day on my friends 360 found a game in seconds haven’t even started yet. Halo fans are the only ones that do this, I don’t see battle field fans complaining about population or cod fans or any other fans like halo fans complain it’s because there cynical and pessimistic. Ignore those types of ppl enjoy halo 4 they will do any thing they can to try and say and stop you from enjoying it.

14

> 2533274859281060;13:
> People are very pessimistic more so radical halo fans. They just can’t enjoy any thing or find something, any thing to hate about the game such as population, they are so knee deep in bashing halo 4 and halo 5 to. It’s clear what there agenda is. I played halo 4 yesterday day on my friends 360 found a game in seconds haven’t even started yet. Halo fans are the only ones that do this, I don’t see battle field fans complaining about population or cod fans or any other fans like halo fans complain it’s because there cynical and pessimistic. Ignore those types of ppl enjoy halo 4 they will do any thing they can to try and say and stop you from enjoying it.

Yea it seems very much so in todays world it seems less and less of the fans are actually trying to enjoy the game and just complain about every detail even when the game seems flawless they find something like how the number on the Spartans armor is not to there liking or something of the sort. i feel as though this is also a reflection of who that person can be in real life perhaps they are those who are never happy with what they have and desire either what other have and if others have better things they try to downfall them through negativity, this is a very sad way to live because it only means they will be forever miserable. What gets me through it is my mentality of when i play a video game. i allow tme for a game once it releases. maybe 3 days later i have to give less time due to life priorities such as work school and my family. so at that point my mentality goes to what can i d right now to be productive to my life my work my school and my family then if all else is completed then i may have time for a few rounds. but i have noticed i have trouble playing games because in the back of my head i hear that little voice going you could be studying right now or you could be spending time with your family or perhaps seeing new ways to improve production at work. so maybe since i do not play so much i may not noticee the change in population but again if the game plays fine the game plays fine and im happy with that.

15

> 2535458654857735;2:
> Everyone who isnt selfish.
>
> Even if I loved h4 id be dissappointed with the game since so many others didn’t.

I don’t know if you know this, but you are entitled to have an opinion of your own about whether or not a game is good. If you ever get married, I pity your wife. Will you divorce her if you overhear someone else say, “I don’t get what he sees in her?”

16

> 2533275012271742;9:
> I can’t believe this thread exists. If a game loses 90% of its population, then thats because 90% of its population didn’t enjoy it, regardless of any other game releases
>
> I mean, various games (like MW2 and BF) were released and Halo 3 still enjoyed being at the top charts of XBL. Seriously, is the fact that a game franchise enjoyed by millions was reduced to like 10 thousand after its latest addition not odd to you at all?

Well that’s blatantly wrong. I don’t play evolve anymore, but I loved that game.

17

OP: there is only one benefit to a high population, and that is faster and more accurate matchmaking.

Assuming that declining populations don’t translate to lower sales for the subsequent installment of the game. True, Halo 4 did not outsell Halo 3, but it still sold a lot of copies. So will Halo 5. So did the declining Halo 4 population really impact the franchise all the negatively? Not from a sales perspective. And I doubt whether Microsoft cares about too much else. Witness MCC.

18

i’m from New Zealand, low pop numbers mean i’m going to get consistent foreign games, going by H5 that will be laggy.

if halo 5 locks servers by region so that i can only play people from NZ or AUS, then much like halo 4 or MCC, it’ll become a waiting game.

19

Amennnn!!! Some ppl on this site only sound like they make commission on the population count. No one here cares more about the population than the guys actually gettig paid to make the game OR the ones paying to have it made.

if you can’t find a match who cares what the population is at. And I get we all love halo so we want as much ppl playing it but again doesn’t change my experience

20

> 2533275012271742;9:
> I can’t believe this thread exists. If a game loses 90% of its population, then thats because 90% of its population didn’t enjoy it, regardless of any other game releases
>
> I mean, various games (like MW2 and BF) were released and Halo 3 still enjoyed being at the top charts of XBL. Seriously, is the fact that a game franchise enjoyed by millions was reduced to like 10 thousand after its latest addition not odd to you at all?

Odd yes but but again I don’t get paid by how many ppl stick around lol. As long as my wait times to find a match are decent I couldn’t get less how much ppl are still playing. It’s like arguing sales how much effect does your favourite game selling really have on you? Other than more DLC and a sequel which were gonna get regardless because it’s halo lol