Hello Forum. I’m pretty sure the majority read my previous post of the Halo 4 Wish List - Community Discussion. I would like to thank EVERY SINGLE PERSON for writing in that thread, negative or positive, because it has now over 35 pages! That blew my mind away because when I last check I saw 15 or so. I hope to get the same amount of feedback here from this thread, because I feel like our community is slowly dying, and I will explain further in detail below. Again, thank you all for taking your time for reading/posting/commenting, for if it wasn’t for you, people who post their idea’s would get tossed under the table.
THIS IS NOT A BASH THREAD (can you read this now POCKETS117?), this is a thread discussing about how Halo 4 can have the same community of players as Halo 2 had. There were regularly 1 million people online every night on Halo 2. Why was that? Would would over 1 million people come online to play a video game, stay online for countless hours, make Clans, do prank calls, lobby warrior for hours? Because there were ranks.
Rankings is the reason why Halo 2 had the most consistent online players. At 4AM, you would have 300,000 people online. When would you ever find 300,000 people online at a peak day on Halo Reach? I haven’t seen that many people on for a while. This is because playing to get to a Inheritor is useless. It’s an impossible task unless you play the system (boost, invasion boost, campaign boost, etc). To show that you are an Inheritor just means you play Halo: Reach way too much. Halo 2 had a system where a 50 was unattainable. This was the best system because you know who cheated by seeing if they were higher than a level 45. Finding cheaters in Halo 2 was not difficult. The main reason why they nerfed the Halo 2 system was because of people stand-by-ing and mod-ing. That was 2004, this will soon be 2012. Is 8 years of technology enough to stop console cheating? Yes. The answer; dedicated servers. (I know this will NEVER happen, but if it did, that would make the game the greatest online console game in the world.)
Now that we discussed Halo 2’s ranking system, I need to discuss Reach’s.
Halo: Reach, it is fully random.
I don’t care if anyone says there is a true skill system, there is none. MLG is my most played playlist in Halo: Reach. I have had teammates that have never even played a game in their life. In one specific scenario, this person had 0 kills, and 22 deaths. It was his very first game playing Halo, I checked, he created the gamertag that day. Is this fair to me? No. Is this fair to him? No. Regardless of what type of playlist he chose, he was put with someone who has played almost 10 days worth on just a specific playlist. Yes, I am a nerd, and proud of it. I don’t want to be playing with some player that have never played the game. I am not insulting their skill level, it isn’t their fault, they should also be playing with random players who have never played the game. I was a random scrub one day, everyone was. Would you like to play against level 30’s in Halo 2 your very first game online?
I believe the ranking system was the best for the community because it split us up in the best way possible. It had scrubs playing with scrubs and pro’s playing with pro’s. This would let people have more fun since they would be playing opponents at their same skill level. Let me break down each leveling group:
Levels 1 - 5: A player who rarely gets on, plays with friends for laughs. No one would be screaming “you suck” for not knowing how to play a game since you are a low level.
Levels 6 - 15: An once or twice a week player who likes to be competitive with friends. Winning isn’t the most important factor, but you don’t like to lose.
Levels 16 - 30: An occasion player who is competitive with online friends. They won’t be afraid to say you suck, so you should bring your A game, but don’t be too afraid, for they aren’t the best.
Levels 31 - 40: A 4-5 day a week player who treats this game like a small child. You love Halo from the beginning and you never plan on stopping anytime soon. These people are usually the ones who love Halo for the game, say good games after each game, and have a great time just hanging about with people. Talking trash in game is all fun, but in the end these guys just want to keep the community strong/keep Halo going.
Levels 41 - 45: Intense gamer who never plans on losing. You play to win, not play to have fun. If your teammate sucks, you’ll tell them, but they better take it as constructive criticism.
Levels 46 - 50: You’re a god. No seriously, why do you play this game? You must have magical powers. This is an unattainable level unless you literally are the best player in the game. You would have to win 25 games in a row without losing to rank higher, and every time you lose you reset. If you lose three games in a row, you derank.
You might say “what does ranking have to do with a community?”. Everything. If you have a rank that determines the level that shows their dedication towards the game, then you wouldn’t have people yelling “YOU **** SUCK WHY DO YOU PLAY THIS GAME”. Frankly, I’ve done that too my teammates out of frustration of playing MLG. The player who had 0 kills and died 22 times. Does he suck, yes. Is he at my level of skill, no. Should I be yelling at him for a Broken system? No. This is a very short form of what I was trying to say;
TL/DR
The reason why Halo: Reach’s online community is falling apart is because of no legitimate ranking/true skill system. Halo 2 had the best community because a ranking system divides the community into their respectable categories by the amount of passion they have for this game, being none to loving this game like their child. Halo 3 ruined that system by lowering the difficulty to getting a 50 making the groups clash. Reach destroyed the system by removing it completely. Fix Halo 4 by bringing back the exact same ranking system as Halo 2 had.
If you agree with my post, please copy and paste the bold in the top of your message when you give me your feedback so that 343 will be able to understand what we truly want, an amazing community with an amazing game.
maybe nostalgia is just taking over.