Ozzy Onya A2Z
Member
To me the loop of competitive level arena style games gets stale very fast, within the same game even. Run, shoot, grenade, die, respawn and cycle that quickly over and over. The real charm of Halo was the light vehicles or interesting maps or varied weapon sandbox, not the hardcore one gun + shoot + dodge and repeat. It's great to have the e-sports/competitive scene tinker the balance of the weapon and movement sandbox but their maps and "fun" factor derails long term population. It's a shrinking game of skill at that point, who wants to grind out the exact same game with a regular squad every day for months on end? It's boring and it's why things like MLG or HCS never overtake the populaton of more default playlists or maps or modes. The "fun" factor has been removed to be ultra competitive, it's by design then you'll shrink the population to the ultra skilled.
Games like Fortnite, PUBG, Apex thrive because there is so much more to do and imbalance that "fairness of the hardcore" all the time e.g. random weapon pickups, which shield level you are, what attachments you've got etc. Halo has been trying to essentially build this out into a 50/50 divide since 343 took over e.g. Warzone vs Arena. It has never achieved the all in one balance that Halo 2/3 was so close to. Splitgate suffers the same fate, it's built for hardcore play, it achieves that quite well but I stopped playing it within a few days because I had seen everything it had to offer. There is some interesting map designs with the portals but overall there's a randomness to that which tips the balance of fun vs competitive a bit too far IMO. Give me classic Halo crazy shit during a fun competitive game over the reductive hardcore modes all day everyday. Same goes for every Halo buddy I've ever had, with the exception of 2 esports dudes who went to MLG.
As for the media? Well they're just chasing the latest thing and news worthy article headlines for clicks. They'll never keep blogging about a single game for months or years on end. It would be a nice change for a gaming website to foster such community growth and insight/reporting over headline chasing.
TL;DR if you don't Mario Kart your less performing players and introduce randomness with the trade off for fun over competitiveness, some of the time, then you'll dwindle the population over time.
Games like Fortnite, PUBG, Apex thrive because there is so much more to do and imbalance that "fairness of the hardcore" all the time e.g. random weapon pickups, which shield level you are, what attachments you've got etc. Halo has been trying to essentially build this out into a 50/50 divide since 343 took over e.g. Warzone vs Arena. It has never achieved the all in one balance that Halo 2/3 was so close to. Splitgate suffers the same fate, it's built for hardcore play, it achieves that quite well but I stopped playing it within a few days because I had seen everything it had to offer. There is some interesting map designs with the portals but overall there's a randomness to that which tips the balance of fun vs competitive a bit too far IMO. Give me classic Halo crazy shit during a fun competitive game over the reductive hardcore modes all day everyday. Same goes for every Halo buddy I've ever had, with the exception of 2 esports dudes who went to MLG.
As for the media? Well they're just chasing the latest thing and news worthy article headlines for clicks. They'll never keep blogging about a single game for months or years on end. It would be a nice change for a gaming website to foster such community growth and insight/reporting over headline chasing.
TL;DR if you don't Mario Kart your less performing players and introduce randomness with the trade off for fun over competitiveness, some of the time, then you'll dwindle the population over time.
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