Halo: Reach the beginning of an end of an era Reach was the first halo to recede in community size rather then grow (halo 5 is doing the same now but could change come december, christmas and new year). The game had not even half of the halo 3 player-base when it was 2 years into its life. The most obvious and only reason it seems that most people like reach on THIS FORUM is a huge portion of players and community members quit halo completely when that game came out and ruined the way halo played for years to come. Now i’m not saying its not a bad game, because under the right light it is great, however under the ever glowing red giant star that was the first halo trilogy it was a joke.
Now to be fair 343 has actually started to redeem its own and Bungie’s mistakes in the former 3 games (MCC, Halo 4, Reach) by increasing diversity in game modes, continuing to give great content, free to us on a monthly basis, and returning back to the roots of halo multiplayer in many aspects. The game-play to me anyway feels a lot more like halo 3 than it does halo 4, or reach. Which is a good thing as the ways in which it goes back to the game-play roots promotes skill gap and competitive play which are two things halo has thrived on and MLG thrived off of in halo 2 and 3. The aiming isn’t as ridiculously easy as it was in halo 4 and reach and the maps, power weapons and trick jumps promote map control and communication which have always been apart of halo and what was required to win a match. Halo Reach is the reason we have the req based Armour ‘earning’ system, due to the fact that they weren’t achievement or challenge Armour unlocks which meant you didn’t have to do something good or funny or lucky to get it, just grind and grind then a piece of Armour that shows how much you play not how much skill you have. Now in my honest opinion i believe halo 5 is actually a better system when it comes to the Armour ‘earning’ as it still promotes something to show off, not ‘ive played this much halo so heres my Armour that is hardly distinguishable from that Armour piece that you unlock 20 games in’ but 'im this lucky check it!' However both are backwards from halo 3 in my opinion where Armour was earned upon completing certain achievements, groups of achievements, multiplayer feats and campaign missions. The Armour actually meant something, i mean when someone had recon you know the hardships they went through to get that armour and it actually is worth showing off in that aspect. I do agree with the lack of content and social content specifically at launch but the simple fact of the matter is that with too much content comes too much spread player base which for MOST countries means it is harder and in some cases impossible to find games, and the blame can be put on 343 and Microsoft themselves for ruining the reputation of Halo and the Xbox one console itself for creating the quite obviously fair and receding community.
Because contrary to popular belief Reach is generally liked. It has kept a steady population longer than any other Halo, maybe besides Halo 2… I’m not 100% sure on this, I wasn’t around Halo 2 much.
(Ps, there is literally no need for your entire post to be bolded.)
Games from an evolving franchise are not controversial in and of themselves. They are only controversial viewed in comparison to their predecessors. This is the reason that each Halo is more contentious than the last, excluding MCC which is an entirely different can of worms. Even though Halo 2 was (imo) a better game than CE, it still had its share of critics. There were even more people who vocally criticized certain features of Halo 3, although its overall popularity wasn’t affected. By the time Reach arrived you had a player base who had spent three games educating themselves as to what they liked and didn’t like in a game, who had educated themselves on how to make their discontent known, and who were growing less and less tolerant of anything that varied from the “ideal Halo” they had in their head. Halo 4 was victimized even more by this phenomena. It’s a little early to tell how all this will play out with Guardians, but I’m betting the pattern holds true. This is how multi-title properties lose players, and they have a hard time bringing in new players because barrier-to-entry is a real thing. It doesn’t affect franchises like CoD because those games don’t depend on one and other to form a coherent whole, but it definitely affects Halo.
I’m not trying to say that declining populations have nothing to do with legitimate criticism - I’m just saying that we become more critical over time.
I’ve been playing since '05, Halo 2 is my favorite because of the deep multiplayer meta (button glitches, hidden jumps, yy reloads and such) and the map selection. Halo Reach is my 2nd favorite mainly because it went back to hitscan and host advantage wasn’t as important anymore. The maps weren’t as good as H3’s but the advances in forge made up for it. Halo 2 had more aim assist than Reach. I only used sprint and the other abilities are annoying, but in H3 I could tell after my first BR battle if I had host or not, and it really made a difference when you weren’t host. I also like the jump height in Reach. Reach had a file browser, which was definitely a step in the right direction and a big reason the customs community thrived. Post title update Reach is IMO more fun than Halo 3. Also you can headshot snipe in the back of the head in Reach. And the most important reason I still play Reach, is that it’s the only viable way to play Halo without being reminded of 343’s failure every 30 minutes.