Quote from: Plotmaster on May 15, 2015, 01:04:45 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 12:50:01 AM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 14, 2015, 10:32:37 PM

Quote from: PSU on May 14, 2015, 11:39:40 AM

I will never understand the unreasonable hate that the competitive community gets.

It's not the competitive players, it's the idiots who insist that the game has to be played their way and sneer at the other, probably less skilled players who may not agree with them. The kind that claim that those unskilled players don't know what is 'best' for the game and shouldn't have their opinions considered.

Reference the Reach subforum, shortly after the game came out.

To be fair, 90% of the mouthbreathing idiots who used the Reach forum really didn't have valid opinions due to being retarded.

Well, yeah, but the bunch of jerks making multiple threads a day detailing what Halo 'should' be (and back it up with their twelve-digit k/d ratio) are the ones I'm focused on.

Has it occurred to you that maybe they were right? The gloating was a bit much, but the devs didn't listen to the competitive community in Reach and H4 and look how that turned out.

That has little to do with the community and more to do with 343 attempting to add new gameplay features popular in other games.

So they pandered to the casual market that doesn't care about working mechanics and will buy anything new and shiny.

Or apparently not, since the older CoD games are still doing fairly well. In some cases better than the new Halo games. I hear MW2 and Black Ops still have a sizable userbase. This is because they're easy to get into and play and don't require a steep learning curve before you can go from kid level play to serious screaming-into-the mic-life-or-death-the-world-hangs-in-the-balance level play. The playing field is meant to be as even as possible so that you don't have a bunch of morons telling the players that suck to stop playing the game.

Exactly like Reach. After years of the best players telling them why that shit doesn't work. They brought it upon themselves for not listening to us. I realize Bungie didn't care about Reach one bit, but 343 had all the information they needed to rectify the problems with Reach and they just made the problems worse in pursuit of the casual market

And they made more money in doing so than they would have otherwise. That's the thing - the competitive community? Yeah, they're the minority. They don't matter, at least not as much as the casual community, the main demographic that would be buying the game. The ones that would be playing the game. The ones that would rather hate it if they got curbstomped again and again and could never win, while getting told to quit the game.

The bottom line is: how you want the game to be played means nothing. Your insistence as to what the game 'needs' means nothing. Your k/d? Your ability to exploit the game mechanics to reach advantageous areas? Your understanding of the weapons and how they work? Nothing. Bungie and 343 try to appeal to as many people as possible, and if that means making the game unbalanced so fewer people are getting shit on, then that's what they'll do. They can't appeal to everyone. Some will be disappointed by their decisions. That's unfortunate but unavoidable, and ultimately it doesn't matter as long as they can get as many people as possible to buy their product.

You don't like it. That's irrelevant. And having a circlejerk involving the same half dozen or so people making thread after thread detailing what they want the game to be will never work. That's the exact worst way to handle the situation. The game doesn't cater to you, so what do you do? You find a different game. If you don't like any of the games currently out, well, I guess you're out of luck.

I think the current Halo games suck too, but apparently people still like and play them. They enjoy the changes, and good for them. It'd be retarded for me to try to change it to suit my own preferences at their expense, and it'd be equally retarded to assume everyone would appreciate, or at least be apathetic to, whatever changes I have in mind.

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 15, 2015, 09:26:01 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 01:10:13 AM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 15, 2015, 01:04:45 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 12:50:01 AM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 14, 2015, 10:32:37 PM

Quote from: PSU on May 14, 2015, 11:39:40 AM

I will never understand the unreasonable hate that the competitive community gets.

It's not the competitive players, it's the idiots who insist that the game has to be played their way and sneer at the other, probably less skilled players who may not agree with them. The kind that claim that those unskilled players don't know what is 'best' for the game and shouldn't have their opinions considered.

Reference the Reach subforum, shortly after the game came out.

To be fair, 90% of the mouthbreathing idiots who used the Reach forum really didn't have valid opinions due to being retarded.

Well, yeah, but the bunch of jerks making multiple threads a day detailing what Halo 'should' be (and back it up with their twelve-digit k/d ratio) are the ones I'm focused on.

Has it occurred to you that maybe they were right? The gloating was a bit much, but the devs didn't listen to the competitive community in Reach and H4 and look how that turned out.

That has little to do with the community and more to do with 343 attempting to add new gameplay features popular in other games.

Honestly I say in order for Halo to survive it's going to have to have common things that other games use. Things like custom load outs doesn't have to be one but when it comes to controls being able to jump from one game to another easily is a good thing to have. Most FPS games now have sprint, true ADS and maybe climbing over shit is common. Having that stuff in Halo is not going to destroy it. It's going to help keep a population that is used to that stuff so they're not going to have like you said a steep learning curve. Going form a group of FPS games that play simlar to each other to one this is completely different is going to be annoying. You have to get used to playing one way to a completely different way. Having a universal controls or gameplay helps make that easier.

Exactly. Well said.

Of course, the population will most likely continue to dwindle regardless of any changes made, because Halo isn't the pinnacle of FPS gameplay anymore. It's been eight years since it could keep a high population over a long period of time; people have moved on to other, newer games like CoD. Altering gameplay to be more like those recently popular games will keep Halo afloat much longer than leaving it as it was years ago, but it won't bring the series back to its former glory. Nothing barring a really, truly innovative idea that nobody else has ever thought of will. It's a matter of age as much as its a matter of stagnation.

That's funny because the very nature of the CoD games puts players on an uneven playing field from step 1. The idea of progressing to unlock guns/loadouts/perks actually creates a massive schism between players' capabilities based purely on how much they've played.

Which has nothing to do with skill, which is the point. Anyone can get any weapon regardless of how well they play, and given each gun kills in about a tenth of a second, it's still fairly even anyway. It's a reward system that doesn't revolve around being good at the game. A terrible idea? I agree, but most gamers play for fun, and being rewarded is fun, and it sucks when you can't get rewarded because somebody better than you keeps killing you.

The original Halo trilogy, on the other hand, had no such system in place. In each session, every player started out on equal footing (action sack/fiesta gametypes notwithstanding). That reality, along with other mechanics that define arena shooters (weapons/powerups as pickups on the map, small symmetric maps) created a massive skillcap. That doesn't put the new players at a disadvantage by virtue of being new, because the trueskill system matched veterans against veterans and noobs against noobs (in ranked anyway).

Apparently not, since there used to be loads of threads regarding low-skilled players getting matched with high-skilled players, usually on the same team with the latter whining about how the former kept them from winning.

The new players had equal capabilities in theory as players with 5k games under their belt. That was still /somewhat/ true in Reach and completely thrown out by the time H4 rolled around.

Yet the players with five thousand games' worth of experience had an obvious skill advantage over the new players, which sucks for the new players. Reach and 4 tried getting around this by altering the gameplay to suit what was more common nowadays, to make the game more accessible to new players.

Which equals more sales because the new players can have fun without getting killed repeatedly.

Which is the point.

TIL no one makes video games to make a good video game, they do it for money. Lovely.

Yeah, why would they put out their products for money? That's just absurd.

Listen, you can have the greatest, most well-designed FPS ever made, and it won't mean shit if it isn't like modern games on the market, because nobody likes change. That's the simple truth. You prefer Halo's old gameplay? Good for you, but Halo's old gameplay won't cut it today. Nobody feels like playing that anymore, save the minority whining about the new gameplay. It won't sell. They won't make money from it, and they need money to continue making games. If they can't continue making games, then they go out of business, and they don't want that.

The casuals will play whatever is placed in front of them. History has established plenty of precedent for that. Look at CoD, Mario, Pokemon, Zelda, FIFA, Madden, Assassin's Creed- they will play it, no matter what, because they quite literally don't give two shits about balance.

Mario and Zelda aren't competitive games, though, and neither they nor Pokemon are nearly as popular as they used to be. Neither is AC. I don't have knowledge on FIFA or Madden, I'm afraid.

You can have the best of both worlds when you design a game to appeal to hardcore gamers, because the casuals will play no matter what.

No, they'll play until they start losing, and then they'll quit, likely going over to CoD where they won't get shit on. And then Bungie, or 343, or whoever realizes that a huge chunk of the population is leaving to other games that don't have such a huge learning curve, and they'll change their gameplay accordingly to try to win back the majority.

And then people like you start bitching and crying about how the game is 'ruined'. As though it was made for you and those of your mindset and not the gaming community as a whole.

Halo 2 is a good example- huge skill cap, competitive community loved (and still loves) it, and the casuals ate that shit up.

Of course it was considered superlative - it was the only game in that particular field. Halo 2 was a glitchy mess, but it was all anyone had at the time, so it's rather obvious why everyone played it.

Another example? League of Legends. Absolutely fucking awful and poorly balanced, but it's designed to be highly competitive and there are still 30 million players.

I...don't have knowledge of LoL, so I can't comment on this either.

The casuals will quite literally play anything set before them, so pandering to them is pointless. Developers should pay attention to the concerns of their hardcore fans, the ones who know the game even better than the devs themselves, in order to constantly improve the experience of the entire fanbase.

You mean improve the experience of the hardcore fans. The casuals will move away from the game when they realize the game caters to the skilled, and thus we're right back at the problem of dwindling population and dwindling sales, thus necessitating change in gameplay.

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on May 15, 2015, 02:28:34 PM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 15, 2015, 09:26:01 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 01:10:13 AM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 15, 2015, 01:04:45 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 12:50:01 AM

Quote from: Plotmaster on May 14, 2015, 10:32:37 PM

Quote from: PSU on May 14, 2015, 11:39:40 AM

I will never understand the unreasonable hate that the competitive community gets.

It's not the competitive players, it's the idiots who insist that the game has to be played their way and sneer at the other, probably less skilled players who may not agree with them. The kind that claim that those unskilled players don't know what is 'best' for the game and shouldn't have their opinions considered.

Reference the Reach subforum, shortly after the game came out.

To be fair, 90% of the mouthbreathing idiots who used the Reach forum really didn't have valid opinions due to being retarded.

Well, yeah, but the bunch of jerks making multiple threads a day detailing what Halo 'should' be (and back it up with their twelve-digit k/d ratio) are the ones I'm focused on.

Has it occurred to you that maybe they were right? The gloating was a bit much, but the devs didn't listen to the competitive community in Reach and H4 and look how that turned out.

That has little to do with the community and more to do with 343 attempting to add new gameplay features popular in other games.

Honestly I say in order for Halo to survive it's going to have to have common things that other games use. Things like custom load outs doesn't have to be one but when it comes to controls being able to jump from one game to another easily is a good thing to have. Most FPS games now have sprint, true ADS and maybe climbing over shit is common. Having that stuff in Halo is not going to destroy it. It's going to help keep a population that is used to that stuff so they're not going to have like you said a steep learning curve. Going form a group of FPS games that play simlar to each other to one this is completely different is going to be annoying. You have to get used to playing one way to a completely different way. Having a universal controls or gameplay helps make that easier.

Exactly. Well said.

Of course, the population will most likely continue to dwindle regardless of any changes made, because Halo isn't the pinnacle of FPS gameplay anymore. It's been eight years since it could keep a high population over a long period of time; people have moved on to other, newer games like CoD. Altering gameplay to be more like those recently popular games will keep Halo afloat much longer than leaving it as it was years ago, but it won't bring the series back to its former glory. Nothing barring a really, truly innovative idea that nobody else has ever thought of will. It's a matter of age as much as its a matter of stagnation.

For the controls thing when I first played Gears Judgement I had one hell of a time playing the game at first because the controls were completely different from the other three games. Then when I got used to that game I went back to Gears 3 to replay the campaign. I once again had to get used to completely different controls. Like I said in that post having universal controls/gameplay for FPS games is going to make switching games a lot easier and a better experiences.

For Halo to me the only way it's going to survive is if the series stops being the same thing since 2001. Lets face it. The most change Halo has gotten since it went to the 360 was Forge. Other than that it might as well be playing on the Xbox. The player count is still the same and the levels are still the same size with the same amount of AI on them. For Halo 5 to me in order for it to sell well it's going to have to have at least 32 players and a remotely open large scale campaign. There needs to be changes that amkes the game feel like it's an 8th gen game and not a OG Xbox game.

The other thing that would get Halo sales is simply by making spinoff games that are different from the main games. ODST is a spinoff but you're basically playing as the Master Chief because the game play is still closely simlar. You really don't feel like a normal human when you can still do the same things as the MC. For Halo Wars that is the most different Halo game but it's a console RTS which targets a small group on console gamers. Then there's those retarded overhead games. For spinoff games MS should get other developers to make something like a Halo version of Star Wars Battlefront and a large scale MMO. They should have spin off games that focus on large scale vehicle gameplay just for MP and the main games for the story and the original MP.

It's a sad fucking day when no one plays games to challenge themselves anymore.

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on May 15, 2015, 06:08:43 PM

Quote from: Sly Instinct on May 15, 2015, 06:04:01 AM

Quote from: BerzerkCommando on May 15, 2015, 05:27:31 AM

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 01:10:13 AM

but the devs didn't listen to the competitive community in Reach and H4 and look how that turned out.but the devs didn't listen to the competitive community in Reach and H4 and look how that turned out.

343 did make stupid decisions in that game that should have been left in their heads but they did have a problem that Bungie didn't have. Due to Halo 2 and 3 being different than Reach you're going to have fans from both of those different games. So you're going to have to make a game that plays similar to both types to please both groups.

Or they could have just accepted reach as a shitty prequel and not base their game off it's shitty features.  Including those features in more games just further in-grains them in the series.

Like I said you have fans of two different games that you're going to have to carter to. If 343 made Halo 4 basically Halo 3 you're going to have the Reach fans bitching about it which is going to affect sales. They probably could have done a better job at the game but alienating the Reach fans is not a good developer move.

Hmmm cater to the decade long successful fundamental crowd or the farewell/destiny prealpha alpha game that was heavily criticized for leaving said 10 year fundamental gameplay, dethroned Halo, and had the biggest population drop off until that point...?  hmnnmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

this so much

Quote from: Azumarill on May 15, 2015, 07:00:40 PM

Oh woe is me, I'm bad at video games, plz developer make your game more simple and hold my hand so talented players don't crush me!

This mentality is exactly why nobody takes competitive players seriously. Bungie tried to appeal to as many players as possible. You and the other competitives are not the majority. There's little to gain from appealing to what you think the game should be, and quite a bit to gain by making it as easy to play as possible.

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You can thank boosting for that. Bungie never even attempted to crack down on boosters. That's just smart people taking advantage of a broken system.

Wasn't always boosters. I never did anything of the sort, and I occasionally got matched up with people with double my k/d (who could back it up and weren't boosters themselves).

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It always comes back to money with you, doesn't it? Pathetic.

This is not an argumentative point. I'll take it as a concession, then.

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> nobody likes change
> YOU HAVE TO CHANGE HALO BECAUSE NO ONE WILL PLAY THE SAME THING OVER AND OVER AGAIN!
make a decision, fool.

The players don't want to change to suit the game, so the game will have to change in order to suit the players. This is not complicated, fool.

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Pokemon is still wildly popular and has a thriving competitive community.

Undoubtedly. It just isn't as popular as it used to be.

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Mario and Zelda games are still Nintendo's bread and butter.

That's because Mario, Zelda, and Pokemon are all Nintendo has these days.

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Except the Halo games didn't start hemorrhaging populations until Bungie and 343 ruined the formula. You are coming at this from a position of fundamental ignorance.

That's why everyone went back to Halo 3 and its superior gameplay soon after Reach came out, right?

OH WAIT.

The reality is that there were fewer alternatives back in 2007, which meant higher population. You either had Halo 3, or you had CoD 4. Then Infinity Ward/Treyarch/Sledgehammer/whoever started producing CoD games like sweatshops produce watches, which further took players away from Halo. Every other developer and their pet monkey was imitating CoD's gameplay, since that was the new big thing.

So Halo did the same.

And guess what? The changes in Halo's gameplay are familiar to the current gaming community, because it's a distorted Frankenstein's Monster of shit taken from other games. That's still better market-wise than leaving Halo sitting alone in its own kiddy pool surrounded by years of collected dust so it can die even faster.

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No it wasn't. There were plenty of other good shooters in 2004. Quake, Team Fortress, Goldeneye, Rainbow Six, Unreal Tournament... the list goes on.

Every one of those games were years old at the time. Halo 2 was new and exciting, so that's what everyone played. Sad, I know, given its abysmal gameplay, but it was either that or playing shit from half a decade ago.

And do you really think the majority wants to play shit from half a decade ago, when they could be playing the latest in gaming progress?

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No one left Halo 2 or Halo 3 because they were "too hard."

Quite a few players did leave Halo for CoD 4. That's how it became the standard for FPS gameplay: because its gameplay was easier, more accessible, and more rewarding, and still is. I'm sure Halo had some kids who stayed out of series loyalty, or a dislike of CoD for whatever reason, but the fact of the matter is easier games tend to gather more players. They always have.

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Those games had thriving populations until the very end of their natural lifespans.

Halo 3 is still going. It had less than 1,000 online last time I played. See above, regarding Quake and those other fossils.

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Reach lost a massive amount of players just months after release. Halo 4 hemorrhaged its population in much the same way.

Other games came out. People lost interest. It happens literally every time a major shooter is released. You're acting as though it's the fault of Reach and 4 that there's more competition now than there was back in '07 and '04.

This isn't dynamic or substantive anymore, so I'm leaving this conversation. You can call yourself a "winner" if you'd like, but it's quite clear that we're coming from two entirely different perspectives and neither of us will ever change our opinions. So I'm done. Enjoy your shitty watered-down game market.