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[bobs...onGaf]

"Default" Reach was playtested, and lauded, by MLG players long before it ever shipped, marking it as the first and only Halo title that was exposed to professional players and their feedback prior to launch. I distinctly recall players like Hysteria and Elamite Warrior noting that systems like bloom would be an incredible boon to skilled players. It's sort of en vogue now to trash it as a non-competitive, "casualized" game, even though it was vetted and influenced more significantly by MLG players than any other Halo title, ever. Part of me thinks that's sort of funny and ironic. Another part of me reads these posts and realizes that it's mostly sad. Live and learn.

Urk, we need more details, what stage was the game at when they where allowed to play?How long where they allowed to play? They where actually allowed to play 4v4 multiplayer right? How many pro's did you bring in to playtest? Did you playtest with competitive players who dont share the MLG mentality?

Too many variables and potential flaws, sure you guys might have given pro's early access and thats awesome, but if you only had two pro's in, it may have just been the two guys who actually still like bloom. I mean if you invited Tashi over he would have said the same thing, but its pretty clear his opinion is in the minority (sorry Tashi). If they didnt even get to play a good build of the game they may have got skewed idea's of what bloom even is.

 

[Trasher]

"Default" Reach was playtested, and lauded, by MLG players long before it ever shipped, marking it as the first and only Halo title that was exposed to professional players and their feedback prior to launch. I distinctly recall players like Hysteria and Elamite Warrior noting that systems like bloom would be an incredible boon to skilled players. It's sort of en vogue now to trash it as a non-competitive, "casualized" game, even though it was vetted and influenced more significantly by MLG players than any other Halo title, ever. Part of me thinks that's sort of funny and ironic. Another part of me reads these posts and realizes that it's mostly sad. Live and learn.

Am I the only one that thinks this post just oozes with narcissism? Urk really comes off as almost blaming MLG for being the reason that their multiplayer sucks. I feel bad for continuing to address this post, but I guess it just really disturbs me. I like Urk. I like Bungie. But really? Sack up and just accept that you guys created a flawed multiplayer experience. The population numbers don't lie. =/

I guess it's a good thing Bungie is moving on from Halo. I think they got a bit too full of themselves, which lead to them trying to do too much with Reach. I'm really pumped to find out what their new game is, but I'm also equally pumped about them moving away from Halo.

 

[FyreWulff]

The population numbers indicate that they converted 6 out of every 7 players from Halo 3 to Reach.

I think they did just fine, but we don't really know what they would have been doing at this point since any Bungie TU was scrubbed when the handover was done.

 

[Trasher]

The population numbers indicate that they converted 6 out of every 7 players from Halo 3 to Reach.

What exactly does that mean?

I'm talking about how the most popular playlist is Living Dead...

 

[KidA Seven]

They said that bloom can be good for competitive shooters. Which is true, but not the way it was implemented for Reach. The bloom in Shadowun is much much better than Reach's bloom. You actually are forced to pace your shots, and you get punished for spamming. So they didn't just have a change of heart like Urk is implying.

Should have gotten Ogre 2 to test it. He actually won a Shadowrun event, where as Elamite and Hysteria probably never even played a shooter with bloom before. He's like Tashi though. He actually had no problem with bloom, but he could have been influenced by the tournaments he was winning. I'm pretty sure he could have helped with many balancing issues. For instance, he understands the pistol is too powerful in Reach now because of the larger hitboxes Reach has.

Trasher's idea is actually great. Having like a week 4v4 lan session where they can develop strategies and learn what is broken, and what is not would be most beneficial.

And actually, sometimes the pros themselves don't know what makes a competitive game, competitive. They just play it and are good. There are a few individuals in the MLG community that understand Halo's individual mechanics more than every pro. They actually talk about things like aim acceleration, magnetism, etc... Cursed Lemon, although condescending, is an example.

 

[FyreWulff]

What exactly does that mean?

I'm talking about how the most popular playlist is Living Dead...

The most popular playlist in Halo 3 was also Living Dead. It regularly out-populated every single other playlist when it came around as DEXP.

What I mean is that let's assume 3's average population was around 900,000 unique players per week. After the dust has settled, Reach averages around 700-800k and 3 averages 100,00k. 3 did a similiar conversion population evisceration to Halo 2 as well.

It'll be interesting to see if Halo 4 converts the playerbase as well as 2 and 3 did, or if we end up with a CoD situation where the Infinity Ward CoD never seems to replace the previous Treyarch CoD. Currently out of the local people I play Halo with (family/friends), it's roughly 50/50 not buying Halo 4 / buying Halo 4. Before it was always 100% upgrade to the next version.

Of course though, 3 had the benefit of being the first new Halo title in 3 years and people were starving for a new one. Reach came out a year after Microsoft sold a Halo game that started as an expansion pack for 60$ and Halo Wars for 60$ a few months before that. I wonder why people thought Halo: Not a Number might have been construed as yet another expansion pack or sidestory instead of the mainline Halo title that it was.

Which is probably why we've ended up with the most dry and unimaginative title for a game in Halo 4, because Microsoft probably knows that even going with a clever title like Halo: Forerunner would have made people thing it was another sidestory again due to their publishing decisions.

 

[Shake Appeal]

Am I the only one that thinks this post just oozes with narcissism? Urk really comes off as almost blaming MLG for being the reason that their multiplayer sucks. I feel bad for continuing to address this post, but I guess it just really disturbs me. I like Urk. I like Bungie. But really? Sack up and just accept that you guys created a flawed multiplayer experience. The population numbers don't lie. =/

It's got to be pretty hurtful to read vitriol (and trolling) about something you worked on for years, especially if you feel the game is representative of your vision and it later turns out people just don't want that. And the Halo community, all of us, we are incredibly entitled about what we deserve, and how much 'ownership' we have over what the game should be.

At the same time, I think if you see many of the people who have been devoted to you for years, who really, really want to love these games and play them to death -- and you could name plenty such people from HaloGAF alone -- complain about what you've made, and be largely consistent in those complaints... some things aren't working.

 

[The Librarian]

CEA has been out for almost a month now, and I still haven't touched the new Firefight map.

 

[Trasher]

The most popular playlist in Halo 3 was also Living Dead. It regularly out-populated every single other playlist when it came around as DEXP.

What I mean is that let's assume 3's average population was around 900,000 unique players per week. After the dust has settled, Reach averages around 700-800k and 3 averages 100,00k. 3 did a similiar conversion population evisceration to Halo 2 as well.

It'll be interesting to see if Halo 4 converts the playerbase as well as 2 and 3 did, or if we end up with a CoD situation where the Infinity Ward CoD never seems to replace the previous Treyarch CoD.

Of course though, 3 had the benefit of being the first new Halo title in 3 years and people were starving for a new one. Reach came out a year after Microsoft sold a Halo game that started as an expansion pack for 60$. I wonder why people though Halo: Not a Number might have been construed as yet another expansion pack instead of the mainline Halo title that it was.

At least Halo 3 handled Living Dead correctly by making it a DEXP weekend. That's another discussion though.

Alright, I understand that, but I'm curious as to what the average number of games played by each unique user are. That must be down. I know a lot of us, who used to be hardcore in the Halo 3 days, still may jump on for a couple games a week and knock out a challenge or whatever. But we by no means play as many games as we would in Halo 3's prime. I understand we might not be the majority, but I feel like there's a substantial amount of people out there that are in the same boat. Most of my friends (TJ crew, Thermight, Domino, Eazy, etc) would have marathon days of Halo 3. That happened early on for Reach, but it didn't last long at all (and those sessions also didn't ever last very long due to haggardness). We were still playing tons of Halo 3 at this point in Reach's lifetime though. That's for sure.

 

[FyreWulff]

At least Halo 3 handled Living Dead correctly by making it a DEXP weekend. That's another discussion though.

Alright, I understand that, but I'm curious as to what the average number of games played by each unique user are. That must be down. I know a lot of us, who used to be hardcore in the Halo 3 days, still may jump on for a couple games a week and knock out a challenge or whatever. But we by no means play as many games as we would in Halo 3's prime. I understand we might not be the majority, but I feel like there's a substantial amount of people out there that are in the same boat. Most of my friends (TJ crew, Thermight, Domino, Eazy, etc) would have marathon days of Halo 3. That happened early on for Reach, but it didn't last long at all (and those sessions also didn't ever last very long due to haggardness). We were still playing tons of Halo 3 at this point in Reach's lifetime though. That's for sure.



Seems to be pretty hurtful from both sides then.

On the stats pages they list the 24 hour unique games along with the 24 hour unique users.

http://www.bungie.net/online/default.aspx

Generally Halo 3's game count per day has been player count times 1.5-2. Note that I believe this only counts matchmaking. The Halo 3 population counter has been broken for the past week or two though. Keep in mind the majority of Halo 3 matchmaking is 12-15 minute games at minimum, so accounting for search times which are really long and game length, you can spend about an hour playing Halo 3 for those two games, which sounds about right for 'normal' players.

http://www.bungie.net/stats/reach/online.aspx

Reach's game count is generally population x 2 to 2.5 on bad days and x4-x5 on good days.

ODST has a ridiculously good gamelayer ratio lately though. Of course, Bungie or 343 are going to have the better numbers, so all we can do from this side is look at them a long time and guess.

 

[Tunavi]

CEA has been out for almost a month now, and I still haven't touched the new Firefight map.

And I don't plan to. Firefight isn't very fun after the first 5 times, the horrible netcode makes it unbearable. Very shortlasted

holy shit its 7 in the morning

 

[bobs...onGaf]

On the stats pages they list the 24 hour unique games along with the 24 hour unique users.

http://www.bungie.net/online/default.aspx

Generally Halo 3's game count per day has been player count times 1.5-2. Note that I believe this only counts matchmaking. The Halo 3 population counter has been broken for the past week or two though. Keep in mind the majority of Halo 3 matchmaking is 12-15 minute games at minimum, so accounting for search times which are really long and game length, you can spend about an hour playing Halo 3 for those two games, which sounds about right for 'normal' players.

http://www.bungie.net/stats/reach/online.aspx

Reach's game count is generally population x 2 to 2.5 on bad days and x4-x5 on good days.

ODST has a ridiculously good gamelayer ratio lately though.

You cant really compare Reach today to Halo 3 today though can you? Using something like Wayback machine to compare the Halo 3 stats from 3rd December 2008, to todays Reach stats would give a more accurate view.

As much as I think Halo 3 would have more unique users per day, that still doesnt really help get a view on player involvement in terms of how many hours of the game a day they play.

 

[The Xtortionist]

urk's post

Bloom is most certainly a skillful addition...in theory. Perhaps the MLG players didn't have enough time with the game to realize spamming was too effective.

 

[FyreWulff]

You cant really compare Reach today to Halo 3 today though can you? Using something like Wayback machine to compare the Halo 3 stats from 3rd December 2008, to todays Reach stats would give a more accurate view.

As much as I think Halo 3 would have more unique users per day, that still doesnt really help get a view on player involvement in terms of how many hours of the game a day they play.

You can compare the 24hr UU directly.

The time machine method doesn't quite work since in December 2008, Halo 3 was only competing with one popular CoD that wasn't getting regular DLC updates, and Gears of War 2. Reach today has 4 popular Call of Duties (MW3, MW2, Black Ops, MW), a signficant previous Halo title (3), Gears of War 3, and a fully revived Battlefield. Two of those CoDs are getting/have gotten regular DLC support by the tonload, same with Battlefield and Gears.

I can tell you right now the pissant strategy of two early packs then taking forever to get a third one out then stopping isn't doing Halo much favors, especially when that later content is entirely remakes of content players have already seen.

 

[Trasher]

It's got to be pretty hurtful to read vitriol (and trolling) about something you worked on for years, especially if you feel the game is representative of your vision and it later turns out people just don't want that. And the Halo community, all of us, we are incredibly entitled about what we deserve, and how much 'ownership' we have over what the game should be.

At the same time, I think if you see many of the people who have been devoted to you for years, who really, really want to love these games and play them to death -- and you could name plenty such people from HaloGAF alone -- complain about what you've made, and be largely consistent in those complaints... some things aren't working.

Seems to be pretty hurtful from both sides then.

It's not like any of us enjoy wasting our time by writing nasty things about something that's been a part of our lives for over ten years now (well there probably are some people out there like that...). As nerdy as that sounds, Halo has been a big part of probably everyone's life in this thread in at least some way. I remember reading the CEA thread back a week or two ago, and some guy was talking about how the original CE helped him through some really rough times in his life. It enabled him to take his mind off of some horrible things, and it actually got him through a really rough patch in his life. So yeah, people are going to get a bit upset and might talk some smack, but it's because they love this universe and the experience that Bungie created. They care about it, and they care about its success even if their salary isn't affected by it. And yeah, it's really sad to see so many people in this thread complain so much. I mean, we have always complained ever since Halo 2, but I think most of us, if not all of us, can agree that the complaining has never been quite as high as it has been with Reach. In the end we all speak for ourselves, but I personally believe that on a scale based on how much fun I have had in a Halo game, Reach is definitely last in the rankings.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

You can compare the 24hr UU directly.

So you want to compare a game in its heyday to its prequel which is 4 years old? I think its pretty easy to see the flaws in that approach?

The time machine method doesn't quite work since in December 2008, Halo 3 was only competing with one popular CoD that wasn't getting regular DLC updates, and Gears of War 2.

Halo 3 competed against, and was more popular than Gears of war 2, CoD 4 and World at War (and later was pretty much on par with Modern Warfare 2). It also faced down a bunch of other games, I would argue that Reach is only facing those games sequels.

Reach today has 4 popular Call of Duties (MW3, MW2, Black Ops, MW), a signficant previous Halo title (3), Gears of War 3, and a fully revived Battlefield. Two of those CoDs are getting/have gotten regular DLC support by the tonload, same with Battlefield and Gears.

Those games are taking population away from eachother aswell though. Gears is hardly doing well.

I can tell you right now the pissant strategy of two early packs then taking forever to get a third one out then stopping isn't doing Halo much favors.

Agreed.


Ultimatly though, the only way to compare Reach to Halo 3, is to take a snapshot of each game at the same stage of its life. Anyone living under a rock who looks at the Halo 3 player count now would never get an idea for how popular it was. The casual, and even hardcore crowd have unfortunately moved on. I do think that if Reach was as fun as Halo 3 it would have been doing well against the CoD's, Halo 3 was pretty much on par with even Mw2, and that came out pretty late in Halo 3's life. If Halo Reach wasnt a direct sequel to Halo 3 and people didnt auto migrate over, im willing to bet that Halo 3 would still be doing well.

 

[FyreWulff]

So you want to compare a game in its heyday to its prequel which is 4 years old? I think its pretty easy to see the flaws in that approach?

Well now it might be. But the 6 or 7:1 population ratio was within the first week to month of Reach's life. Halo 3 never recovered from Reach coming out. Now imagine how fun it is going to be to find matches in 3 when 4 comes out.

As shitty as Perfect Dark Zero is and being 6 years old, you can at least still get matches full of humans because Perfect Dark Zero only has two playlists: Deathmatch and Objective (which deathmatch shows up in aswell, never been able to quite figure that out)

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Well now it might be. But the 6 or 7:1 population ratio was within the first week to month of Reach's life. Halo 3 never recovered from Reach coming out. Now imagine how fun it is going to be to find matches in 3 when 4 comes out.

Of course all the players moved on near enough straightaway. Thats what you would normally expect when a sequel comes out. Even with the CoD games, Modern Warfare 2 is just a shell of what it once was, despite still having a decent population.

You cant expect a game to hold its population against a sequel, the mass market will move on near enough straight away. Its only the hardcore who maybe are more involved and know that they prefer the older game who might stick around.

This is true in any medium, I cant believe you honestly think comparing Reach now to Halo 3 at this point makes sense.

 

[Trasher]

Well now it might be. But the 6 or 7:1 population ratio was within the first week to month of Reach's life. Halo 3 never recovered from Reach coming out. Now imagine how fun it is going to be to find matches in 3 when 4 comes out.

Did anyone think it would? Sequels always demolish the populations of their predecessors. It's pretty much human nature to move on to whatever is new and fresh. I call it the Gamer Herd Effect. The older games just go out of style. There are of course exceptions, but I can only think of ones on the PC.

 

[FyreWulff]

Did anyone think it would? Sequels always demolish the populations of their predecessors.

They usually do, but CoD doesn't do that:

http://majornelson.com/2011/11/30/live-activity-for-week-of-november-21st/

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops
Skyrim
Battlefield 3
FIFA 12
Modern Warfare 2
Halo: Reach
Gears of War 3
Madden NFL 12
Saints Row: The Third
Assassin’s Creed Revelations
GTA IV
Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary
Forza Motorsport 4
Batman: Arkham City
NBA 2K12
Halo 3
FIFA Soccer 11
NHL12
Call of Duty 4

It took MW3 and Blackops together to finally push World at War past the 20th rank horizon.

Of course all the players moved on near enough straightaway. Thats what you would normally expect when a sequel comes out. Even with the CoD games, Modern Warfare 2 is just a shell of what it once was, despite still having a decent population.

You cant expect a game to hold its population against a sequel, the mass market will move on near enough straight away. Its only the hardcore who maybe are more involved and know that they prefer the older game who might stick around.

This is true in any medium, I cant believe you honestly think comparing Reach now to Halo 3 at this point makes sense.

Then why even compare Reach to CoD in terms of UU? What I'm saying here is that you don't see the CoD "new game comes out, a lot of people move on to it but a bunch go back to / stay on the previous one". You see a bunch of people switch to Reach and they don't go back to 3. If Reach was really the giant misstep and uncompetitive game that some say it is, then we should have seen a significant portion of the playerbase go back to 3 or stop playing Halo completely.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Essentially what your saying is, the market has changed, and so you need to compare the 2 games as they stand now.

What im saying is, the newer game is clearly going to take population away, so you need to compare the two games at the same snapshot of they're respective lifespan.

The only analogy I can think of is when you compare athletes. If I was arguing that a footballer today is better than his counterpart from 30 years ago I would look at theyre stats from the same snapshot in theyre career. If footballer X who played 30 years ago, scores 15 goals in his first season of play and footballer Y who plays in 2011 scores 10 goals in his first season of play I would argue that footballer X is better.

Your essentially saying that because the landscape has changed, you cant compare the two players in that way. You need to analyse them in a game today, never mind that footballer X is now 50 years old and isnt quite what he once was. Shove him in a match with player Y who is only 20 years old and see who does better. Science. I know games don't exactly age like athletes, but time is still a pretty important factor.

I mean in terms of gaming, even though the market has changed, I would argue that more people own Xbox's now, so ratio wise there's also more gamers. Sure Halo Reach may face competition from a higher volume of games, but there are also more gamers to go around. I would also argue that Halo Reach is only competing with sequels to games that older Halo games where more popular than.

Ultimately if you compare Halo 3 and Reach to Modern Warfare 2, its clear to see what happened. Halo 3 pretty much went toe to toe with that game. Reach came out and couldn't compete with it. That has to prove something right?

Then why even compare Reach to CoD in terms of UU? What I'm saying here is that you don't see the CoD "new game comes out, a lot of people move on to it but a bunch go back to / stay on the previous one". You see a bunch of people switch to Reach and they don't go back to 3. If Reach was really the giant misstep and uncompetitive game that some say it is, then we should have seen a significant portion of the playerbase go back to 3 or stop playing Halo completely.

Even with CoD, only the hardcore stayed behind, the lack of a mass exodus is to to do with the dynamic between the two developers. I do agree, to an extent CoD games have had a higher rate of success at holding people when sequels come out, but all the same jump on MW2 and you will see that the population is not what it once was. When Black Ops came out, there was a lot of Treyarch hate, and so not everyone moved forward to the sequel. Its been the same state back and forth with the CoD games, its less to do with the sequel, and more to do with the developer. MW2 still has a strong population compared to other live enabled games, but compared to Modern Warfare 3 it literally is just the hardcore fans who didn't want to move forward. Black Ops will continue to do well until the next Treyarch sequel, there's a divide between the developers there, which is why its more like every 2 years when the sequel exodus happens.

People just dont go back, en mass I mean, if anything with the giant missteps that Reach took I would argue that a lot of the competitive crowd did stop playing Halo almost completely. Some went back to Halo 3, but with newer options out there, its harder to go back to a older technically inferior game. I know I started playing a lot more CoD because of Reach.

 

[Blinding]

Not sure if this has been posted, but it looks like someone is trying to take the Anniversary updates over to Halo PC, and a bit more.

 

[Gabotron ES]

Had great gun last night, thanks for the games guys!

Also, fuck Spire and Boneyard, Invasion needs more maps and Breakpoint won't ever show up.

 

[MrBig]

Not sure if this has been posted, but it looks like someone is trying to take the Anniversary updates over to Halo PC, and a bit more.

Uh, no. CMT has been doing this since around 2005-6, and have been re-designing elements and introducing new elements the game, taking it in their own direction, and is in no way related to CEA.

In some ways they have put more work into these mods than I feel that 343 or Saber put into CEA.

 

[CyReN]

It was an interesting idea to bring to the Halo scene and people got hyped because Sage was on it. People thought it would have a similar skill gap to Shadowrun but it was a "knock off" version of what Shadowrun had. It's a flawed mechanic doesn't always rewards the better player.

 

[Blinding]

Uh, no. CMT has been doing this since around 2005-6, and have been re-designing elements and introducing new elements the game, taking it in their own direction, and is in no way related to CEA.

Yeah, I know this, I was being sarcastic. lol

 

[HiredN00bs]

Reach is fun. CoD is much more accessible, and largely unchanged between series entries. Winning back the classic Halo fans with 4 will only shrink its popularity in the face of such a mass-market juggernaut, but at least it will be fun for those that enjoy it. I'm just starting to come to terms with the fact that Halo will not be the most popular console FPS anymore. I'm okay with that, as long as I can still play decent matches.

 

[Striker]

Halo 3 competed against, and was more popular than Gears of war 2, CoD 4 and World at War (and later was pretty much on par with Modern Warfare 2). It also faced down a bunch of other games, I would argue that Reach is only facing those games sequels.

Gears 2 was not active in the Live chart very long, if I remember correctly (in the top 10). Its longevity was not like Gears 1.

CoD4 and WaW were both high in the charts, but the sales are dwarfed by what Black Ops and MW3 brought. You're simply comparing two wildly different scenarios. And Battlefield is another big shooter that's weighed in, and has grown substantially these past several years.

Your best hope is Halo 4 getting the mainstream marketing it deserves, and quite frankly needs. A shame we have hardly seen squat for marketing on Halo: CEA.

 

[TheOddOne]

Reach is fun. CoD is much more accessible, and largely unchanged between series entries. Winning back the classic Halo fans with 4 will only shrink its popularity in the face of such a mass-market juggernaut, but at least it will be fun for those that enjoy it. I'm just starting to come to terms with the fact that Halo will not be the most popular console FPS anymore. I'm okay with that, as long as I can still play decent matches.

Co-sign.

 

[FyreWulff]

Ultimately if you compare Halo 3 and Reach to Modern Warfare 2, its clear to see what happened. Halo 3 pretty much went toe to toe with that game. Reach came out and couldn't compete with it. That has to prove something right?

CoD4 was also a new kid on the block. If you remember, CoD didn't really explode until 4. 3 also had heavier advertisement and hype train placement (MNF ad, Burger King tie-in, etc).

It should also be noted and not ignored that Call of Duty has IMMENSE playerbase inertia right now. They've recieved yearly full-fledged games at a steady pace. They're also comfort food, since players also know they're getting a familiar sandbox with each title (not really much room to rework things when you've only got about a year and a half to make each one - versus Halo's usual 3 year cycle). I guess a term you could use is that Call of Duty has successfully Maddenized itself.


2007: 3 / CoD4
2008: World at War
2009: Halo Wars , Halo ODST / MW2
2010: Halo Reach / BLOPS
2011: Anniversary / MW3
2012: 4 / BLOPS2

Microsoft spent the entirety of 2009 training people that if a Halo doesn't have a number after it, it's a sidestory. Activision spent the entirety of 2005, 2006 2007, 08, and 09 training people that every Call of Duty was a full length title. They've succesfully erased the memory of CoD titles like Big Red One from the collective gamer memory.

Bungie's not really a company that's sees fit to repackage a Halo and put it out as a new title. They even said in multiple vidocs that they were told by their publisher that Microsoft wouldn't care if they were just handed a polished and slightly updated Halo 3, as long as they got a new Halo title by their release date. So in a sense Halo is the opposite of comfort food in that Bungie changed the game each time it came out. They don't really see the point of making a new Halo without looking back at the previous one, tearing it down and putting it back together to try to get closer to what they want. The whole confusion and marketing clusterfuck over ODST and later Reach (I still get people asking me if Reach is just an ODST style short sidestory game), Reach not getting the full advertising might of Halo 3 behind it (it got roughly the effort put into ODST)... I can see why they've gone with the safe name of Halo 4 now and the safe and comfort of using the Master Chief again.

Halo 4 is going to be a solid game for sure, but any sales woes Reach even comes close to having, I'm going to assign majority of responsibility on Microsoft as the publisher. Maybe some people were feeling bitter about the divorce and didn't want to fully back up a parting developer (it's happened before). Maybe they're cutting costs and don't want to pay for MNF spots and full blown restaurant/soda tie-ins. Currently as a gamer, I'm witnessing Microsoft putting more money and marketing and DLC financing support behind Gears of War 3. As a developer who has worked with Microsoft before, I see some corporate cattiness from the omission of Bungie from the startup of Anniversary.

We saw the preview of a fully Microsoft controlled Halo title with the Halo Wars DLC support and pricing. I'm already seeing an indicator again with MS fully controlling Reach - we've gone from monthly free new gametypes for the playerbase to new gametypes only being playable in matchmaking (CE Magnum mode) if you pay up for the new maps.

Microsoft never really seems to get how to support any software line they've put out on their own, especially games. They're a multi-business corporation that could close their console division overnight and not even blink. In fact if they did that their shareholders would probably mass mail them roses. They're vengeful to any affiliate or company that they percieved as wronging them or leaving them, they have a reactionary culture instead of a proactive culture, and they hire people who are good at cutting corners and value-adding instead of people that have designed games to run their console division. They almost have as bad of a inter-department rivalry culture as Sony (at least MS can get all the kids to sit down once a year)

Peter Moore got video games, having been the president of Sega of America before. Under his rule was probably one of the better times for Halo fans, even though not everything went Bungie's way under him. Since Mattrick has replaced him, it's been (in my opinion) a slow downhill. Maps going free have stopped , maps reducing in price has slowed down, we haven't even gotten an outright free map release like Cold Storage for Reach at this point (even with all the crazy requirements attached to Cold Storage's appearance in matchmaking). Call of Duty has gotten more and more stage time at the E3 conferences, and Halo has gotten less and less. At the last E3 Microsoft practically had the game demonstrations on a conveyor belt, they were switching so fast.

This post is kind of getting long at this point, but what I really want to see from all this is for Microsoft to actually start backing their own franchise over IPs they don't own, regardless of with inhouse or second party made them. Halo is their Mario, but they keep treating it like their Metroid. I didn't see a single damn ad for Anniverary on TV. I've seen CoD hundreds of times and Skyward Sword about as many.

 

[GhaleonEB]

I think the only way to get an apples-apples comparison is to compare games at the same time in its lifcycle. Especially when you have statements like, "The population numbers indicate that they converted 6 out of every 7 players from Halo 3 to Reach."

The only way to compare that is to compare apples-apples. I'm going by memory, but it looks to me like Reach converted those players, but did not retain them. Reach is at 414k unique players right now, on a weekend. I don't recall Halo 3 having that kind of drop off a year later. It didn't ever get that low until GTA IV hit, and then it was brief and recovered to 600k after a few weeks. Much less on a weekend.

Reach has not retained its player base the way Halo 3 did.

 

[FyreWulff]

The only way to compare that is to compare apples-apples. I'm going by memory, but it looks to me like Reach converted those players, but did not retain them. Reach is at 414k unique players right now, on a weekend. I don't recall Halo 3 having that kind of drop off a year later.

Unless you have the actual 24 hour UUs from that time period, people that added up the playlist populations in Halo 3 were adding up a slight lie. Halo 3 overreported the true count of players actually in a game or searching at any moment. It was possible for a playlist to say it had 10,000 people in it but only actually have 3,500 playing, as it was very easily influenced by population spikes. It would not un-count the now disappeared players until the update cycle hit every hour. Reach updates the player count every minute.

 

[DcLevartho]

Here's the crazy stuff I want to see for the next time, a list of various improvements instead recreating the gameplay from halo 2 which seems to be an underlining desire from some. When I play halo, I want to feel like a spartan, so that's what this will be based around.



-Refined bloom, punish those spammers.

-I think it would be interesting for sprint to be an infinite but less intense feature, though without playing through it I wouldn't know if diminishing accuracy while sprinting, or not allowing you to shoot, would be better. I see no reason why a spartan should be so easily tired.

-Shield profiles, in Fall of Reach it seemed as though the spartans had control over where their shields were more distributed. For example you can describe parameters such as, If falling from so and so height, distribute brunt of the shields to the feet. That way higher falls can be survived but at the lost of shields popping when you hit the ground. Whereas the alternative is taking the risk and potentially dieing or losing health but having shields sooner if they are lost.

It's a give and take kind of thing that an individual could choose. Another one is too distribute the shields to the front or the back of a spartan while they sprint, depending on where they think they would take the most fire. Uniform distribution would always be the default for all profiles. It allows for a lot of customization in play style and wouldn't be as much of a pest as armor lock considering shield power would remain the same, but could be concentrated for specific goals beforehand.


-Enchanced melee combat, I think games should mature from the days of throwing punches like the war started before they could finish learning how to fight. I think a variance of moves depending on where you aim on the enemy could be implemented, along with being able to block if you anticipate where the other person is going to aim. It would be fast paced by nature and add another level of skill to the game, although I think any engineer or animator would have my head for suggesting the complexity that would entail.

-More fighting positions, it would be nice to have prone in a halo game, just to be able to reduce your profile as needed beyond the awkward looking crouch.

-For the more visual side of things I'd like to see damage decals on a spartan, or any enemy for that matter, it would be an interesting feature to see that kind of damage. It would also allow you to see who has survived a lot of beatings in one life, making more visual damage a sign of pride and accomplishment. However I doubt that could be handled on current hardware.

-For the vehicle side of things it would be interesting to see performance changes that are relative to the damage, it would make those drawn out warthog sprees even more impressive.


Like I said, crazy , and I'm sure 343 will put out an amazing game, even if I haven't yet warmed up to their take on mjolnir armor just yet.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Unless you have the actual 24 hour UUs from that time period, people that added up the playlist populations in Halo 3 were adding up a slight lie. Halo 3 overreported the true count of players actually in a game or searching at any moment. It was possible for a playlist to say it had 10,000 people in it but only actually have 3,500 playing, as it was very easily influenced by population spikes. It would not un-count the now disappeared players until the update cycle hit every hour. Reach updates the player count every minute.

Someone on HBO has been posting the numbers, I haven't seen it for a while, but 24 hour numbers where pretty much always in Halo 3's favour.

EDIT: Found the most recent one, it has links for the older reports in there aswell. This isnt exactly super scientific, but still worth looking at.

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=1114365

Not sure if the population numbers are always higher by a significant amount according to some of the months.

 

[FyreWulff]

Someone on HBO has been posting the numbers, I haven't seen it for a while, but 24 hour numbers where pretty much always in Halo 3's favour by a significant amount.

I had a quick search but couldnt find it. :/

You're thinking of DEEP NNN. I don't remember at the moment if his numbers came from adding up the playlists or if it was from Bungie.net at the time. To be more specific, Halo 2 and Halo 3 counted population by iterating through all games recorded in the last X amount of time then counting the unique players out of those recorded games.

Reach counts the people currently searching and current actually playing a game. If you had 10,000 people sign on for the first half hour and play a game, then sign off, and a second 10,000 people sign on play a game and sign off, Halo 3 would report the current population of that playlist as 20,000 people. Reach would report 10,000 continously.

I'm getting dangerously close to Stalker and Tashi in postcount here so I'm going to get back to work on Invasion: Headlong :lol

 

[bobs...onGaf]

You're thinking of DEEP NNN. I don't remember at the moment if his numbers came from adding up the playlists or if it was from Bungie.net at the time. To be more specific, Halo 2 and Halo 3 counted population by iterating through all games recorded in the last X amount of time then counting the unique players out of those recorded games.

Reach counts the people currently searching and current actually playing a game. If you had 10,000 people sign on for the first half hour and play a game, then sign off, and a second 10,000 people sign on play a game and sign off, Halo 3 would report the current population of that playlist as 20,000 people. Reach would report 10,000 continously.

I'm getting dangerously close to Stalker and Tashi in postcount here so I'm going to get back to work on Invasion: Headlong :lol

His numbers are taken from Bungie.net, so im guessing they are pretty accurate? (Well as accurate as they can be given how unscientific this all is!)

 

[Striker]

-I think it would be interesting for sprint to be an infinite but less intense feature, though without playing through it I wouldn't know if diminishing accuracy while sprinting, or not allowing you to shoot, would be better. I see no reason why a spartan should be so easily.

Sprint kind of kills objective based games. I'm okay to an extent with partially slowing down a player who's carrying a flag, bomb, or oddball, but when there's sprint (and currently evade) in the wheel it makes carrying the objective a bigger importance. Of course, they dumped flag juggling so it's bound to be different.

I'm perfectly set with a fixed base speed that isn't Halo 3/Reach, aka a turtle, and no movement based powerups. It's an even playing field in regards to map movement and strategy to traverse the landscape in every game, rather than simply a flag or assault game. Key: stop making Spartans so slow.

 

[Kuroyume]

Did the guys get to play the game often? I and several others here liked Reach initially. It had that new game feeling. Hell, I liked Halo 3 at first too. It takes a while before the novelty of it being a new Halo game wears out and you notice all the flaws glaring at you. If those MLG didn't get to play for a long time I wouldn't be too critical at them for how it turned out. Btw, there are several problems with Reach not limited to bloom that I don't think MLG likely had any input on.

 

[DcLevartho]

Sprint kind of kills objective based games. I'm okay to an extent with partially slowing down a player who's carrying a flag, bomb, or oddball, but when there's sprint (and currently evade) in the wheel it makes carrying the objective a bigger importance. Of course, they dumped flag juggling so it's bound to be different.

I'm perfectly set with a fixed base speed that isn't Halo 3/Reach, aka a turtle, and no movement based powerups. It's an even playing field in regards to map movement and strategy to traverse the landscape in every game, rather than simply a flag or assault game. Key: stop making Spartans so slow.

Maybe they could create a reason as to why the objective slows down a player, why would a flag slow down a spartan that flips tanks? Maybe the objective could be some nuclear core or something with emp pulses, anything of the sort that would slow them down or sap their armors abilities, and make it proximity based. So after the objective is removed from wherever it originally was anyone within so and so feet is also limited in abilities. Creating a better pace for those in capable range of taking out the objective holder with the exception of snipers who wouldn't benefit from sprint at a far range.

I'm not sure how that would play out, it would need some serious testing, but I do agree that sprinting does not seem fair with the turtle like speeds of objective carrying.

 

[FyreWulff]

Flags, bombs, and oddballs are made out of Objectivite, the 2nd most heaviest element in the universe.

 

[DcLevartho]

Flags, bombs, and oddballs are made out of Objectivite, the 2nd most heaviest element in the universe.

Haha that's just cheap, but I like the cut of your jib. What I mean to say is, once an objective is in play they could alter the flow of gameplay as a whole in a reasonable way.

 

[ElRenoRaven]

Man Halo PC mods are getting crazy.

They've always shown good work however they've never really been able to actually get it done. CMT V2 was supposed to do what CMT V3 is doing but was never fully finished. A couple of levels were released and there was a pretty big bug with one of them if I remember correctly.

Halo CE is open sorce now?

Nope. I remember Sawnose being asked if they'd ever make it open source and he said flat out that Microsoft will not allow that. Course this was before Anniversary came out and now we know why.

That looks amazing. Gotta get me some of that if it's released.

Fixed that for you based on thier past history.

Beat CE. Worst halo campaign ever. Bored the shit out of me.

Well now we officially know you have absolutely no taste when it comes to Halo. It's ok though we forgive you.

http://carnage.bungie.org/haloforum/halo.forum.pl?read=1114817

Very interesting. I do remember reading back in the days about MLG getting to put input into the game. That's one reason their complaining about things has always irked me.

343 don't let MLG touch Halo 4, they will ruin it for themselves lol

LMAO

Urk, we need more details, what stage was the game at when they where allowed to play?How long where they allowed to play? They where actually allowed to play 4v4 multiplayer right? How many pro's did you bring in to playtest? Did you playtest with competitive players who dont share the MLG mentality?

I agree I'd love you hear more of the details. Mainly because I have an addiction to behind the scenes details of the making of games. Especially Halo games.

 

[FyreWulff]

Haha that's just cheap, but I like the cut of your jib. What I mean to say is, once an objective is in play they could alter the flow of gameplay as a whole in a reasonable way.

To be serious, I believe the idea is that the team must come together and protect the flag carrier as he makes his way back across the map. Lowered speed means the other team has a chance to catch up to the player (even without sprint). The tradeoff for being slow is that your melee hits with the flag are one hit kills to punish those that come close to you.

This is why I dislike flag throwing, as it completely defeats the point of the flag carrier being slower. Since flag throwing was really easy to do anyway, I never got why MLG just didn't cut out the middle man of going through the motions and just make the flag carrier 100% speed with indicator always on. 1 it was easy to do because of the sphere-based bouncy physics. 2 was because you had a massive grab radius. 3 was slightly possible, but if you missed any throw you pretty much undid all your gains and it only really gave you a time bonus on big maps. On Midship or Foundry the gain is like 2 seconds at most with 100% perfect cadence, at the cost of the other team knowing where you are. I could write a whole book on why I think flag throwing hurts more than it helps. Bungie intentionally made the flag heavy to discourage throwing it and subverting the slower-carrier design.

Which is why in Reach they added the functionality of objective-cooldown, which any of us can turn off, where it just blanket disabled your ability to pick up objectives for 1 second.

 

[Spawnling]

What exactly does that mean?

I'm talking about how the most popular playlist is Living Dead...

This is the problem. It's somehow Halo went to a complete social game from being the number 1 competitive game back in the Halo 2 era. :/

 

[Blinding]

Did the guys get to play the game often? I and several others here liked Reach initially. It had that new game feeling. Hell, I liked Halo 3 at first too. It takes a while before the novelty of it being a new Halo game wears out and you notice all the flaws glaring at you. If those MLG didn't get to play for a long time I wouldn't be too critical at them for how it turned out. Btw, there are several problems with Reach not limited to bloom that I don't think MLG likely had any input on.

That and I'm pretty sure the pros that did provide input said that they were discouraged from giving negative feedback and that when they attempted to do so it fell upon deaf ears. That alongside the fact that you can't judge if a mechanic like bloom is going to be better or worse for the game in a couple hours kinda makes me feel that even pointing that out was irrelevant and just an attempt to throw somebody under the bus.

 

[urk]

Am I the only one that thinks this post just oozes with narcissism? Urk really comes off as almost blaming MLG for being the reason that their multiplayer sucks. I feel bad for continuing to address this post, but I guess it just really disturbs me. I like Urk. I like Bungie. But really? Sack up and just accept that you guys created a flawed multiplayer experience. The population numbers don't lie. =/

Nah, it just oozes with fail. It was intended to be a response to Schooly's thoughts that we went to great lengths to "casualize" the game. I'd talked to him in person briefly about the subject at Claude's earlier in the year, but we both sort of danced around the subject. Didn't seem like the right venue.

And I'm definitely not blaming, or intending to blame, MLG for any of Reach's faults. We brought them out because we believed they would bring something valuable to the development process. Which they did. But it certainly didn't have anything to do with being casual.

Nobody at Bungie believes the studio has made a perfect game.

 

[DcLevartho]

To be serious, I believe the idea is that the team must come together and protect the flag carrier as he makes his way back across the map. Lowered speed means the other team has a chance to catch up to the player (even without sprint). The tradeoff for being slow is that your melee hits with the flag are one hit kills to punish those that come close to you.

This is why I dislike flag throwing, as it completely defeats the point of the flag carrier being slower. Since flag throwing was really easy to do anyway, I never got why MLG just didn't cut out the middle man of going through the motions and just make the flag carrier 100% speed with indicator always on. 1 it was easy to do because of the sphere-based bouncy physics. 2 was because you had a massive grab radius. 3 was slightly possible, but if you missed any throw you pretty much undid all your gains and it only really gave you a time bonus on big maps. On Midship or Foundry the gain is like 2 seconds at most with 100% perfect cadence, at the cost of the other team knowing where you are. I could write a whole book on why I think flag throwing hurts more than it helps. Bungie intentionally made the flag heavy to discourage throwing it and subverting the slower-carrier design.

Which is why in Reach they added the functionality of objective-cooldown, which any of us can turn off, where it just blanket disabled your ability to pick up objectives for 1 second.

I agree, and I think a lot of features should be optional so people tailor their gamestyle to their liking.


A proximity speed gradient, albeit a soft one, would help that very much. Where objective slowdown speeds increase as you get closer, and decrease as you get further from the objective carrier, but in a subtle way so it isn't like going in slow motion if you get too close and end up having a slow motion stand off. That would be horrible.

 

[op_ivy]

Am I the only one that thinks this post just oozes with narcissism? Urk really comes off as almost blaming MLG for being the reason that their multiplayer sucks. I feel bad for continuing to address this post, but I guess it just really disturbs me. I like Urk. I like Bungie. But really? Sack up and just accept that you guys created a flawed multiplayer experience. The population numbers don't lie. =/

I guess it's a good thing Bungie is moving on from Halo. I think they got a bit too full of themselves, which lead to them trying to do too much with Reach. I'm really pumped to find out what their new game is, but I'm also equally pumped about them moving away from Halo.

reach mp = suck. fact.
to reach mass market you need to fix things like bloom, movement speed, armor bleed through, and countless othershit a casual would never even think about. fact.

this post has so much win!
what. and lol.
congrats is you.

seriously, if halo gaf hates halo reach so much, why are you on OT7? why not take a break until halo 4? why not play and bump halo 3's OT?

"Another part of me reads these posts and realizes that it's mostly sad." urk

 

[FyreWulff]

I agree, and I think a lot of features should be optional so people tailor their gamestyle to their liking.


A proximity speed gradient, albeit a soft one, would help that very much. Where objective slowdown speeds increase as you get closer, and decrease as you get further from the objective carrier, but in a subtle way so it isn't like going in slow motion if you get too close and end up having a slow motion stand off. That would be horrible.

Proximity traits like that should be possible in Megalo, but it'd be up to whoever has the Megalo keys at 343 to do it.

 

[MrBig]

seriously, if halo gaf hates halo reach so much, why are you on OT7? why not take a break until halo 4? why not play and bump halo 3's OT?

Because criticisms and discussions take up more room than "this game is fun!," and H3 isn't exactly a shining part of the Halo mp palette.