It’s 7PM PST. There are 84,185 players on. There are 2,283 playing Firefight of some type and caliber. Despite how much the people have clamored about their love for Firefight here in the forums, it’s apparent it’s a failure.
Was it that Reach’s noob friendlier version turned players away from it? Were the settings the problem? That mixing the mindless shooting gallery versions in with the more challenging fare turned people off? Or that even FF Limited was ironically limited itself and couldn’t truly recreate the ODST feel which turned people off? Was it the horrible, horrible input lag? Perhaps, but I do not recall it ever having even a significant portion of the population compared to default MP. I think the majority of players that stopped playing it stopped because they stopped getting the easy Commendations done with or simply got bored either with FF or the game overall.
The problem as I see it is that there’s no real compelling reason to play it. Sure ODST scratched the itch of those wanting to see how far they could go and with it’s limitations on ammo and skull settings, it was a challenge to actually keep playing to the 5 million point mark which earned you the flaming, glowing eye skull icon on your ODST stat profile. But those people are a minority. For everyone else? It’s a novel experience. But there’s nothing to really engage the player. Heck, if I wasn’t playing it for the challenges to reach Inheritor, I wouldn’t be playing it either. The default versions are boring and the custom versions, while novel, are just that. Once you’ve played it, that’s it. Could Leaderboards save it? Maybe. But I doubt it.
In the end, from any viewpoint, it seems silly to just keep pouring money, time and resources into something that’s a failure.
Instead I have to begrudgingly approve of Spartan Ops replacing FF since it gives the same net effect: Shooting more AI enemies in the face with buddies but it also gives me a more compelling reason beyond that: Because it’s telling me a story in the process.
Just for the love of all that is good, sweet and holy.
> …of Spartan Ops replacing Firefight.
>
> Why?
>
> It’s 7PM PST. There are 84,185 players on. There are 2,283 playing Firefight of some type and caliber. Despite how much the people have clamored about their love for Firefight here in the forums, it’s apparent it’s a failure.
>
> Was it that Reach’s noob friendlier version turned players away from it? Were the settings the problem? That mixing the mindless shooting gallery versions in with the more challenging fare turned people off? Or that even FF Limited was ironically limited itself and couldn’t truly recreate the ODST feel which turned people off? Was it the horrible, horrible input lag? Perhaps, but I do not recall it ever having even a significant portion of the population compared to default MP. I think the majority of players that stopped playing it stopped because they stopped getting the easy Commendations done with or simply got bored either with FF or the game overall.
>
> The problem as I see it is that there’s no real compelling reason to play it. Sure ODST scratched the itch of those wanting to see how far they could go and with it’s limitations on ammo and skull settings, it was a challenge to actually keep playing to the 5 million point mark which earned you the flaming, glowing eye skull icon on your ODST stat profile. But those people are a minority. For everyone else? It’s a novel experience. But there’s nothing to really engage the player. Heck, if I wasn’t playing it for the challenges to reach Inheritor, I wouldn’t be playing it either. The default versions are boring and the custom versions, while novel, are just that. Once you’ve played it, that’s it. Could Leaderboards save it? Maybe. But I doubt it.
>
> In the end, from any viewpoint, it seems silly to just keep pouring money, time and resources into something that’s a failure.
>
> Instead I have to begrudgingly approve of Spartan Ops replacing FF since it gives the same net effect: Shooting more AI enemies in the face with buddies but it also gives me a more compelling reason beyond that: Because it’s telling me a story in the process.
>
> Just for the love of all that is good, sweet and holy.
>
> CHANGE THE FRAKKING NAME.**
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FF has no stamina because bots has no brainz, its just wave after wave of bots no goals, no directions. Just boring.
And the majority of people who vouch for ODST Firefight haven’t even played more than 100 games of ODST Firefight. It was a fun gimmick, but it got old quick. Killing Covenant without a reason gets old quick. Even the biggest Firefight enthusiasts don’t have that many games played of it.
Agreed, i love firefight but don’t play it that much. If SOPS plays how it sounds (dont have mch indo) then i will play that a lot more than i do firefight.
People aren’t playing it in Reach because it just isn’t as fun as ODST’s and the experience just doesn’t translate to Matchmaking very well, at least the way they did it. Besides if over 2,000 players meant it was a failure then most of the Reach play lists are failures, as were Halo 3’s in it’s prime.
With FF, you can see who (Spartans vs Covy), where, when, with what (usually FRG), but the only why provided was they don’t like each other. There was no more depth than that and it becomes boring quickly to just be splashing around in the kiddie pool all day.
SpOps (or Mjonlir Missions :P) definitely has the opportunity to give a lot more purpose to the shooting gallery aspect of shooting AI while providing enough new content to keep it fresh over a long period of time.
> Because, the Offline Community.
>
> Unless Spartan Ops has real replay value and customization like Reach FireFight has, I won’t be happy with this new deal.
FF had no replay value for me and the customization was a bum deal since it was available only for Custom Games and since it was limited to making variations of the same basic premise.
SO shows at least more replay value in that it’s an continuing and ongoing story.
I thought that after getting commendations and playing the different gametypes in FF that it got boring pretty fast. ODST’s firefight was a much more rewarding experience.
Agreed. Firefight had become nothing but a cR grind, and making it ODST-style wouldn’t increase the population. It had lost it’s purpose to put it bluntly. There was no context, or survival aspect. Just “Pick Fuel Rod Gun, fly up, rain hell and get cR”. And repeat. And repeat. Endlessly. And it only managed a small population doing that.
> People aren’t playing it in Reach because it just isn’t as fun as ODST’s
Find me 5 people who have played more than 100 ODST Firefight games. It wasn’t played extensively in ODST either.
> Besides if over 2,000 players meant it was a failure then most of the Reach play lists are failures, as were Halo 3’s in it’s prime.
Firstly, it’s 2,000 for all Firefight playlists (at least that’s what I inferred from his post) and secondly, all other Reach playlists are built off the same core, so it’d be logical to combine the population of all the other playlists and pit that against all of the Firefight population. Let me tell you that the ratio wouldn’t be even close to even.
One of the main reasons I got CEA was for Installation 04 firefight. While the customization might be old to some people, it never gets old for me. Having ODSTs, even though the first 4 suck and there’s so few of them, really liven the experience up.
I think you touched on it best: There really isn’t a reason to play Firefight. We all loved ODST’s FF, but I highly doubt that even if Reach’s FF was the same difficulty as ODST it would produce higher numbers. Playing AI is only fun in limited quantities.
