Good for him, after watching the CoD event you wonder what the hell happened. Have to imagine after the Fall season I hope the Halo players give WWII a shot.
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Halo 5: Guardians |OT5| Is HaloGAF irrelevant now?
- Thread starter sir_dany12
- Start date
Good for him, after watching the CoD event you wonder what the hell happened. Have to imagine after the Fall season I hope the Halo players give WWII a shot.
blue_phazon
Member
There's a HCS event the same weekend as Twitchcon? Are they nuts?
Its at Dreamhack Austin, not just the HCS decision.
Sorry for the late reply. I use halodatahive.com for scrim stats. You can see all of the scrims TL played with Ace there.
Time for Ninja to move on
Edit: this might be read wrong, he deserves to not be put through ESLs and 343 incompetence
Fahzgoolin
Banned
It's sad to see that from Ninja, but it's not surprising and I'm glad he's taking a stand.
You'd definately need some sort of auto aim, but I'd get rid of the lock on, meaning you'd have to lead your target, and players could have a chance to outmaneuver you, even if you are in range.
But yeah, my goal would be to tie mobility to skilled use of the weapon. This would go along with an overall theme of removing enhanced mobility as a base trait, and tying it to map pickups and the maps themselves.
This would prevent the issues created when trying balance the sandbox around base mechanics.
Needed to be said. I'm sure the people working HCS actually DO care. But the constant inadequacy suggests otherwise. I just don't understand the reluctance to adopt a format that is proven to foster growth and participation, nor why we keep settling on arbitrary qualifications
For example: why are we 2EU teams into champ bracket instead of having pool play? This is the same arbitrary sillyness that cost top AM they spots they surely would have beat EU for at DH Atlanta. This is the same arbitrary sillyness that screwed up the bracket leading up to Worlds 2017.
Seriously, just let the NA and EU Pro teams play in groups, let the top 8 Open teams join the groups, then let group play determine who makes champ bracket. It's fair, it gets EU more exposure and chances to play top talent AND it makes for a better Friday stream. It's a no brainer.
As Halo5 nears its EOL, 2 years after launch, we are almost, back to something that makes sense. But it's like pulling teeth to get it across the finish line.
As he rightfully should - 343 has been handling Halo and Halo esports in the worst possible fashion, ESL is absolute trash tier.
blue_phazon
Member
Oh if its dreamhack that's not a big deal then, because isn't that also a big event?
Dreamhack is a big win for Halo, there's no reason HCS should miss that in order to avoid twitchcon.
His other points are valid though.
User 73706
Banned
/r/nocontext
Good for him.
More people should do the same so maybe, maybe they learn something, oh #we learned.
10 years and still going with #We learned.
Fucking joke.
After AGL went under in 2013, a fair amount of Halo players gave CoD: Ghosts a shot. Some succeeded like Formal and Enable. With Pro League ending a few weeks before CoD WWII coming out and players like Huke switching back (most likely), you could see a lot of other Halo players try and make the switch there.
We are now the laughing stock of esports, this is the norm now
I'm hoping players have more opinions to fall back on for the future, The HCS can't just rely on prize money to hide away their issues over and over again. This league been around for almost 3 years and it's still making Day 1 mistakes.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
If more pros leave vocally due to poorly handled events and tone deafness regarding balances and design, then maybe that will be a motivator.
Pros outside of Huke aren't going to leave Halo imo. The competition in COD is at an all time high. Doing well requires a lot things to go right unless your a genius like Formal. Why leave Halo when the prize money is still there and the competition is much less.
Snakebite said in his stream that the COD optic team finally passed them in prize earnings. Gives perspective to see how well some Halo pros are doing.
Snakebite said in his stream that the COD optic team finally passed them in prize earnings. Gives perspective to see how well some Halo pros are doing.
BizzyBum
Member
Ninja saying what every pro should say or has said and everyone in the community has been saying for years.
I know Frankie, Tashi, ske7ch (for like a day) post here or mostly lurk nowadays and I hate to call people out but 343 and the Esports management has been abysmal. I feel like a lot of the pros don't even care about the game anymore and that's sad to see.
Halo 6 could be great, but you guys better step your game up for Halo 6 Esports. Halo 5 and ESL / UMG has been a fucking trainwreck that's been chugging along for 2 painful years now. I pray to whatever higher power is out there you guys somehow secure MLG again for Halo 6. It's the only way to get back on track.
I know Frankie, Tashi, ske7ch (for like a day) post here or mostly lurk nowadays and I hate to call people out but 343 and the Esports management has been abysmal. I feel like a lot of the pros don't even care about the game anymore and that's sad to see.
Halo 6 could be great, but you guys better step your game up for Halo 6 Esports. Halo 5 and ESL / UMG has been a fucking trainwreck that's been chugging along for 2 painful years now. I pray to whatever higher power is out there you guys somehow secure MLG again for Halo 6. It's the only way to get back on track.
Focusing Halo 5 on the competitive/esport side have been the downfall for Halo, imo, so I hope they will lean more toward the casual side while leaving in options to made some modes viable for esport, and let an external company handle the Halo esport, somehow like Bungie was "working" with the MLG.
Agreed.
Halo 5 had a huge focus on Esports right from the beggining when that wasn't even a consideration for Bungie withe the first two games at the very least. Yet it worked for them.
Explain
chaosmaster(1)
Member
I give mad props to Ninja for airing his grievances, more pros should express their thoughts. out of all the pros though I feel that Ninja's comments strike the hardest because this guy used to love the shit out of Halo and was the most optimistic about Halo 4 after it came out in regards to changes. He also has a following that would see his comments, it sucks his heart wasn't in it anymore.
Samurai G0SU
Member
well, i hope and cross my fingers they re-vamp and push hard overall with Halo 6. From Campaign, co-op,playlists, multiplayer, balance, sandbox, forge, PC and e-sports.
Which part? Esport focus being Halo's downfall? Bungie "working" with the MLG? What having a more casual focus means?
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
Esports being the downfall. Just doesn't make any sense.
Fuck sakes.
Autocorrect has not been my friend recently.
I think the argument is that attempting to unify competitive and casual settings is what caused the issues. The casual crowd thought it was too competitive and the competitive crowd thought it was too casual...
Personally I think the idea to unify settings is actually quite a good one, unfortunately with how the Halo community is so split it was never going to work.
Fahzgoolin
Banned
The only thing good about Tyrant is jumping out of the map to troll.
I said competitive/esport focus (for Halo 5), focus being the important word here. Esport is fine, but Halo never put esport above everything else. Halo 5 did, in a lot of manner, from its gameplay to its balance (I would say AR and automatic weapons may be the counter-balance from this argument ofc), and the communication around the game from 343 or Microsoft didn't help in that regard.
We already talk about this a lot, and I made posts in the past to explain my thought, so I won't go deep into details here, but I'm sure we can all agree Halo 5 MP found its premise from the many complain competitive players made about Halo 4 since this crowd may have been the most affected by Halo 4 MP approach.
Oh not by doing much to be honest. Actually, the things that keep me away from Halo 5 are, most of the time:
- low AIM assist while having high bullets magnetism
- Sprint and its impact on map design (while it was more of a bonus on Halo 4)
- Thruster (I do like the Thruster, but I would rather having it on 3rd person view, making it useless during combat scenario)
- somehow bad playlist management
- wider matchmaking skill rating for social playlist
- convulsed mapping on controller (it's crazy to see all the buttons I have to use on Halo 5 to stay competitive during a duel)
- no fun/social playlist available at launch
- no good PvE experience like Firefight or even Spartan Ops was
- not allowing player to crouch while strafing
I know most of the thing I mentioned actually are making the gap bigger between good and bad players on Halo, like crouching on move, Thruster, low AIM assist, and I'm sure skilled players really enjoy this. For them, I'm quite happy Halo 5 is there.
But for another part of the base player population, including me, this just make the game way more complicated to handle and kill all the fun.
For example, I do enjoy DOOM 2016 MP a lot because it's just moving at top speed, strafing and jumping. A really easy formula Halo used to have, adding on top map control and picking up weapons on map. And all the important action are just a finger away when I hold my controller.
So how I would handle this? Well, it won't please everyone, but I would:
- increase AIM assist while lowering bullet magnetism (making easier to track a target)
- get rid of sprint and thruster (aka not having a free-of-jail card)
- make controls for Forge easier to use (again, I feel like Forge on Halo 5 is in a pro mode when I just want to put move things around)
- create a simple but yet effective PvE formula (scoring on arena-based maps and having solo mission replayable with modifiers and scoring)
Actually, just making Halo easier to access, like it was in the past, but still allowing for a gap between skilled and casual players to exist.
What does this even mean? What is the evidence of the esports "focus" and how did it impact the casual game?
If anything halo is focused its target on the mid-tier player, leaving casuals and esports players frustrated. The convoluted movement mechanics and controls raised the skill floor. The the grenade hitmarkers, heightened aim assists, magnetism, and compressed kill times lowered the skill ceiling.
If anything, the game needs to go back to being easily to get into, but hard to master.
To be fair at gamescom 2015 H5 was showed off with an exports match.
So? That's marketing.
What does that have to do with how the game was developed? So many things about this game are non-esports-friendly, from the way the weapon sandbox is balanced, to the lack of LAN support. There's no indication that the needs of the esports scene was a primary concern at all.
I mean, not disrespect here, but if you can't see it after all this time, then explaining it won't help since you would clearly not agree with the point.
I just read your list, but those things you listed as being pro-esports are mostly things the esports scene doesn't want and has expressed not wanting since Reach, so I'm not sure it supports the argument you made.
I agree with your conclusion, that halo needs to be easy to get into, hard to master- a game designed that way would be esports focused. Making a game that's hard to get into, but has a bunch of mechanics that lower the skill ceiling leads to a stagnant scene... that's not how you "focus" on esports.
Skilled players don't want/need convoluted controls to separate themselves from bad players. That happens naturally. They want simplied mechanics with less handholding so that they can separate themselves from other skilled players through nuance.
Perhaps not esports in particular but you surely can't deny that there was a heavy focus on the competitive crowd in Arena.
Look at the map design for one thing. Entirely smallscale 4v4 maps designed for competitive gameplay.
Focusing on esport, from a developer standpoint like 343, and what the esport scene wants can be two different things.
You can focus on being a esport-viable game by your own view while making mistakes from what the esport crowd could be waiting from this same game.
I think the devil lies in the details. I would say, and this is ofc my opinion, 343 wanted to regain the esport audience after Halo 4, and so did they on getting lot of feedbacks from the pro-team they have in-house while developing Halo 5. But they certainly not gave what the esport scene could be waiting from this same game.
That's why I said "focusing on the competitive/esport side" and not just "focusing on esport" in my first post. 343 may have tried to find a middle ground, and that's why Halo 5 can feel awkward for both audiences.
Yes let's loot at the map design. Halo ALWAYS launched with smallscale competitive 4v4 maps. H5 didn't change that, and it didn't do any MORE of that than any other game.
But why are we missing the mid sized maps with vehicles? The same reason we were missing BTB, KOTH, Assault, Extraction, etc.
WARZONE
That's what got dev priority, not esports.
I'm just saying the evidence, much of what you mentioned, doesn't suggest that an esports focus is what cause the game to be developed this way. In chatting with pro team meme era online, I've learned that much of what they ended up doing was reigning in more outlandish ideas, rather than enacting their own agenda.
With halo4, 343 didn't just lose the competitive audience, they lost nearly their entire audience very quickly. They'd have had a vested interest in making the game as broadly appealing as possible, rather than "focusing" on a niche group. Hence the all of the movement mechanics that esports hates, the magnetism heavy aiming that esports hates, and the sandbox balancing that nerfs skill in favor of "making everything feel useful".
FUNKNOWN iXi
Member
While I agree with the point of Warzone as it's something I've brought up before too, the focus on symmetrical maps designed for symmetrical gametypes was more than likely brought on due to a competitive focus.
Halo 6 needs to combine Warzone with BTB so they can design maps for both modes, and have more asymmetrical maps/gametypes in Halo 6. The decision to only offer multi flag or neutral bomb has to change. People enjoyed one-sided objectives on asymmetrical maps, so they need to return.
Again, you are confusing focusing on competitive and focusing on esport only. While I will maintain that Halo 5 was mostly marketed as esport friendly at first when talking about the MP Arena (I'm not discussing Warzone here), It would be misleading to not see how competitive was a main focus on this game, and how competitive is related to esport from MS/343 point of view.
And +1 for FUNKNOWN iXi regarding the combined Warzone/BTB. While I would imagine Warzone Invasion would be a blast to play, and I would love to see this happen in the future.
I just don't understand this line of thinking. Asymmetrical maps and gametypes are important components of competitive halo. So how could not having them be a sign of competitive focus?
only CTF is requires a symmetrical map. The split was 5-3 in favor of symmetrical maps at launch, which is just one off from being an even split.
What really happened, Is they blew their load on Warzone, and Arena got stuck with 3 gametypes as a result of prioritization (CTF, Slayer, and Strongholds).
The existence of Warzone doesn't mean that Arena had to be ranked only with purely competitive focused map/mode combos at launch.
It's pretty obvious that 343 wanted/expected the casual audience to mostly play Warzone so they focused entirely on the competitive crowd with Arena.
It's pretty obvious that 343 wanted/expected the casual audience to mostly play Warzone so they focused entirely on the competitive crowd with Arena.
With Arena, their 'focus' was to return fair starts, and map pickups. That's the extent of it. That wasn't aimed at competitive. That's something halo fans wanted in general- because it's a defining characteristic of halo multiplayer.
It's misleading to say that complaints from competitive players guided these decisions, when halo4 took the same beating from players across the board.
This game isn't any more competitively focused than H1- Reach. It's less so in many ways.
That said, the game launched lacking content. And yes, much of that content would have been appealing to less competitive players- but much of that would have been appealing to competitive as well. A competitive focus is not to blame for this lack of content. That content was lost because a new casual experience got the lionshare of the development focus.
So what your saying is Warzone is to blame for the lack of casual experience in Arena... I gotcha.
Mind you, Arena got 3 gametypes, missing favorites like oddball, KOTH, assault, and extraction. so dispite this alleged focus, 343's attention was obviously elsewhere.
Yes, in making a campaign with a brand new engine and tools that aren't quite as good as what artists/designers/etc could have been waiting from a modern-day engine (I encourage you to read glassdoor review from 343 employees to get more about this).
Warzone didn't strip 80% of 343 Industries' employees.
I mean, I think I can't go any further with you if that's what you really think. Again, no disrespect here, I accept your opinion, but saying Halo 5 wasn't developed with a very competitive mindset is somehow being blind.
Breakout was a good example of what 343 was waiting from this game and the direction they wanted to take (before it was updated ofc).
Fahzgoolin
Banned
343 just sucks guys.
_/¯I mean if you want to ignore that Warzone- the most populated an inherently casual game mode took the lions share of 343s MP dev time AND the fact that The sandbox has NEVER been more prone to handholding, then yeah, it's H5's competitive focus that hurt the game.
In reality, beyond moving back to fair starts, and weapon pickups (which every halo game has had except H4) is the only evidence of a "competitive focus". Which is really evidence of trying to recapture some of the identity that most halo fans appreciated, not just competitive. Arena is thin because of Warzone, not because of esports. There's no way around it.
P.S. Breakout was made entirely in Forge- maps made by people who aren't even map designers. And the mode was rejected by pro-players DURING development. If shoehorning that in is a sign of esports focus, I don't know what to say.