Hate brews passion just the same as love. The benefit to having the flipside of that coin is criticism, something "fanboys" have a hard time with.
I hear you, but even then, they should just hire the fanboys who are capable of objective criticism. You can find plenty of Halo fanboys in this thread alone who feel passionately about their criticisms, particularly those regarding the last two Halo titles (Reach and 4). I find it hard to believe that there aren't capable workers in the developer community who can be a fanboy and still offer level-headed criticism. I'm not saying they should only hire people you would consider "fanboys," but it doesn't help to hire people who hate your game, because chances are they haven't played it much and don't really understand the franchise's core mechanics in the first place.
I disagree. Dissenting voices can bring in important new perspectives. You're probably (and I understand why) applying specific aspects of the game to those people in your mind, but that's not the way it works. And they're not even necessarily designers we're talking about - animators, engineers etc sometimes fit into that category.
In fact we've hired people who dislike aspects of the game that YOU dislike and would want to change, evolve or revert. Make sense?
See above. You don't need to hire people who hate Halo in order to hire people who will bring fresh and sensible criticisms to the table. You don't need to bring in people who hate Halo in order to find important new perspectives. It would appear that the many deviations from "classic" Halo gameplay mechanics have indeed contributed to the game's tragically low online population. Sure, you sold a lot of copies of the title, but people aren't sticking with it. People who bought the game expecting characteristics commonly associated with the Halo marker set it aside and moved on to other titles. That must indicate to people at 343 that many of these changes have in fact had the opposite effect of what was intended when they were first decided upon. It would also appear that those of you at 343 may have known about this, as we never received a multiplayer Beta that would have provided you with the best possible criticism. I understand wanting to focus your resources on developing the game's final build, but after having made so much many off the game's sales, it looks like 343 could have spared the funds to develop and release a capable Beta. The fans would have found all of the balance changes that still plague the game to this day and would have let you know early on that fundamental changes to the movement system, weapon sandbox, and shooting mechanics actually made the game "worse"/inconsistent/unbalanced.
You're right that I don't know who is specifically responsible for certain changes. So, for the sake of discussion, assume I'm speaking about designers - or at least those with the influence to sign off on the inclusion or exclusion of features I've mentioned.
For the record, I don't hate Halo 4 or Halo: Reach in the grand scheme of things. With CE, 2, and even 3, though, I guess you could say I "hate" them by comparison. Reach and 4 are actually well-made games, no doubt, I just don't like them nearly as much as the previous titles. In fact, if 343 released Halo: CEA with online multiplayer (*), I would still be playing that to this day.
* That's another decision I don't understand. If 343 was worried that it would take players away from Halo: Reach, why is that so bad? At least those players would still be playing a
Halo title instead of moving on to Call of Duty or Battlefield or what have you.
they made the mistake of thinking that halo was defined by the cast and crew, when in reality it was defined by the gameplay.
This, pretty much. Halo's gameplay was so unlike anything else I'd experienced in the console space and it re-introduced me to the shooter genre on the strength of its mechanics.
