GringoSuave89
Banned
I keep seeing the same three charts/infographics, yet they are far from actual concrete numbers.
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Halo |OT 23| Thruster is Love, Thruster is Life
- Thread starter VisceralBowl
- Start date
Actually, probably a comparable amount of bitching but from different sources.
From modern gamers:
"Halo's so lame, they just keep making the same game each time"
From gaming press:
"Halo really is a series stuck in the past--343I continues the tradition of Halo, but at the expense of modernizing the franchise"
Ad nauseum
SaganIsGOAT
Junior Member
Thinking back to 2007 and the years that followed, so many games took my time away from Halo...
Mirrors Edge
Mass Effect
Bioshock
GTA IV
BF Bad Company
Call of Duty
Killzone 2
The Orange Box
Gears of War
Dead Space
Left 4 Dead
Uncharted
Thats just a few off the top of my head. My point is that the gaming landscape became relentlessly competitive at the time of Halo 3 (not saying it wasn't before Halo 3, but damn just look at the incredible games last gen brought to the table). I barely touched other games besides Halo when I was younger, but it felt like after 2007 there was an incredible boom of games to take me away. Halo 3 stood its ground by looking at the charts, but to say Halo is less popular simply because of the changes is not taking into account the fact that other games have been stealing and will continue to steal Halo's population. A game doesn't have to be in the same genre to pick away at another's population.
Mirrors Edge
Mass Effect
Bioshock
GTA IV
BF Bad Company
Call of Duty
Killzone 2
The Orange Box
Gears of War
Dead Space
Left 4 Dead
Uncharted
Thats just a few off the top of my head. My point is that the gaming landscape became relentlessly competitive at the time of Halo 3 (not saying it wasn't before Halo 3, but damn just look at the incredible games last gen brought to the table). I barely touched other games besides Halo when I was younger, but it felt like after 2007 there was an incredible boom of games to take me away. Halo 3 stood its ground by looking at the charts, but to say Halo is less popular simply because of the changes is not taking into account the fact that other games have been stealing and will continue to steal Halo's population. A game doesn't have to be in the same genre to pick away at another's population.
That's the thing though, in the Halo 2/3 era, Gears was really the only other legitimate multiplayer shooter on the Xbox ecosystem. Modern Warfare changed that forever.
Welfare
Member
Halo 3 battled against CoD 4, WaW, and MW2 before falling out of the top 3 of XBL, and that was thanks to Reach coming out
CoD changed nothing. Halo changed.
Leyasu
Banned
This love for halo 3!! I am gutted to get it on BTB. I think that reach is better! Even with those shitty armour abilities.
Halo 3 battled against CoD 4, WaW, and MW2 before falling out of the top 3 of XBL, and that was thanks to Reach coming out
CoD changed nothing. Halo changed.
I mean it's fine to live in dreamland, but as for us in reality, the gaming landscape has changed significantly on consoles since the Halo 2/3 glory days.
They could give MCC away for free when it gets fixed, and it probably still wouldn't compete with the next CoD.
SaganIsGOAT
Junior Member
Halo 3 battled against CoD 4, WaW, and MW2 before falling out of the top 3 of XBL, and that was thanks to Reach coming out
CoD changed nothing. Halo changed.
CoD changed nothing? Felt like MW2 was a pretty different game from CoD 4... But hey, anything to support your argument.
Welfare
Member
I meant CoD didn't really do anything for "Halo" to change. It was already competitive with 3 CoD titles back to back.
This isn't reality?
Halo 3 didn't drop out of the top 3 until Halo Reach came out, not when a Call of Duty came out.
Obviously MCC wouldn't do ultra well, rereleases never hit as hard as the originals just on account of not being a new product.
Also, I agree that Halo probably can't compete with CoD any more, but that's a pretty high bar; having half-okay momentum would be nice. It's not like all games crash like that, you can look at something like BF3 that started way less popular than Halo 4 in a comparable era but took a lot longer to fall off in XBL ranking:
(And BF3 only falls off on the end because BF4 launched, otherwise its trend would easily have carried it ahead of Halo 4.)
2 rite m8
It didn't happen over night, no, but it definitely started Halo's downward spiral.
Halo Reach & 4 were absolute shit games, but 343 could release a H2 like game and it still would probably struggle to maintain a population that could compete with CoD & BF. That's the reality of the situation.
GringoSuave89
Banned
Why are so many people hung up on the ranking of the game? We have no idea how close 8th place was to 9th, and so on. There are ZERO hard numbers to compare, so why is that chart still the go to tool to argue with?
GringoSuave89
Banned
Welfare
Member
I do not disagree with any of this.
I don't think Halo is top dog or anything like that, and would be below CoD (BF is debatable), but this "necessity" to change Halo to fit in with the "modern" crowd of shooters is unnecessary IMO.
It just leaves a sour impression with me when Halo 3 held top spots back in 2007-2010 and then "evolved" Halo experiences start dropping places faster and faster.
I mean there was a time when regenerating health was foreign to most franchises, and then when Halo 2 introduced it, it became a industry standard in almost every shooter. Similar to the 2 weapon limit, prior to Halo, you carried a ton of guns in games, lol. I see stuff like sprint & ADS in the same light for *most* people. These things are what most people expect in a FPS today.
Because basic consideration of sales figures and locations of various titles suggests that the differences aren't that negligible, and because relative population numbers we do have show positions on the chart corresponding to some not-crazy degree with UU ranking positions. i.e. it's not completely random nonsense.
It's not a perfect gauge of population, but when a title plummets off a cliff when other games are holding showing steadier patterns, it's a huge stretch to say that that doesn't mean something.
ProvenDeadly
Member
Okay. But you don't see these games completely changing features after the game has already been established do you??????????? This idea that "well newer trends suggest this should be so sprint should be added" is backwards thinking. What other game besides Halo has had an identity crisis because of adding stupid features.
Does CSGO have sprint because modern games have sprint? No
Does Gears of War have dual wielding and thruster packs because Titanfall did it???? No
In the new Battlefield game, can I hop around because Advanced Warfare did it????? No
Halo is LITERALLY the only well established FPS franchise that copies the features of other shooters because the develeopers have no idea how to grow the game without copying.
The argument isn't even that sprint itself is bad. It's that sprint with Halo gameplay is bad.
Please, find me a well established franchise that changed core fundamental features nearly a decade in.
Advanced Warfare is a huge change in direction for the CoD franchise. You think MW purists are happy about all of the jetpacking movement abilities? lol
I wouldn't call sprint being in the game copying...? Like I said, these things have become industry standards. Games took some of Halo's ideas and implemented them, and now Halo has taken a couple from other games and put their own spin on it. There's nothing wrong with that, if it upsets you that badly, then move on, it ain't changing. I hated Halo 4, so I didn't play it, it's not that hard of a concept.
You're tasked as a AAA dev to bring something new to the table in every sequel. I would love to know what you would bring to the table other than "lol reskin Halo 2 and ship it". Because I personally felt thruster, ground pound, and clamber were great additions to the game. So much better than the absolute dogshit that was armor abilities.
AnonomissX
Banned
You sir, are 100% correct. I watched it happen.
Well he did say they were looking at ways to change it for high level play. Like I told Funknown, I'm betting they saw A LOT of games at the higher levels not reach the score limit.
Do you mean roughly ~2600 shots/hour?
This is a really bad graph. All it tells us is the relative position of the title. We aren't told what titles are above and below it, how high the numbers are for each spot etc. Comparing the games this way really isn't very good.
Yeah the games not reaching the score limit definitely seemed to happen more as the beta went on for longer. Interesting to note they already have plans for how they're going to adjust sprint, but didn't go into these details just yet. Maybe the solution isn't as simple, or it's not something they saw happen internally. I'd definitely start with the height indicator going.
Big difference between #NoMotionTracker and modifying it to encourage more movement at high levels. I don't think they're going to waste tons of resources/time to develop an elaborate second motion tracker system for such a small group of players. Semi-Pro and above are 1% of all players. Plus, what happens if you have Silver tier players, and they get matched up with Semi-Pro etc. Will be interesting to see what they're thinking about though.
Imagine if it's team radar only for Semi-Pro ranked players.
I can imagine some really wacky stuff with the Forerunner weapons at least.
A fan should appear from off-screen to blow away the plasma from overheated Covie weapons though.
Tha Robbertster
Member
There's this really fun principal in statistics, called correlation does not equate causation.
So just because the population in Halo games started to drop around the time Halo Reach and Halo 4 came out, does not mean those games actually caused the drop. You'd have to account for other factors.
So just because the population in Halo games started to drop around the time Halo Reach and Halo 4 came out, does not mean those games actually caused the drop. You'd have to account for other factors.
The Real Napsta
Member
The other factors are other games and the halo player base aging.
RowdyReverb
Member
Is it possible that MP games in general drop faster in population than they used to now that there are so many more things to play online nowadays?
I would imagine that #1 games get bumped with every major new release. I haven't studied XBL charts though, so what do I know.
I would imagine that #1 games get bumped with every major new release. I haven't studied XBL charts though, so what do I know.
Tha Robbertster
Member
Yep. Those, among possibly some others. It's too easy to say that because of 2 bad Halo games, people left the franchise.
The rise in popularity of modern shooter games like CoD and battlefield play such an integral role in Halo's decline, and some people in here play it of like it barely matters.
It definitely matters. There's no way Halo 2 would have kept it's population these days with how buggy it was, but on the original Xbox it was the easiest game to use online and actually became the "Xbox Dashboard" for a lot of people (including me) because it was much easier to check your FL and manage messages/etc. We even used Halo 2 lobbies as meetups before going into other games with terrible lobby systems.
These days if your game is buggy like that, people don't wait around anymore and jump to other games. Halo 2 was basically all you had on the original Xbox.. trip up these days and you'll get punished by players
Poodlestrike
Banned
I checked that like 3 times. How did I miss the third row of digits?
You mean shipped. 10 million consoles were not in gamers' hands at the end of 2014.
Its around 10-11 million. They sold well this holiday. However, the larger issue is that MCC didn't sell very well, probably not much better than Crackdown did on 360. The 1 million player count therefore seems dubious to me.
Exploratory
Banned
I like how I watched what seemed like 10 minutes of footage before it happened but he didn't get the full killtastrophy announcement.
The MCC sold about 2 million. That's what seems to be going around at least.
So what are the worries around these parts about Halo 5? General population concerns? Community split between esports and vanilla?
If the general pop dies off like it did with 4...then hopefully that's not just a sign of the times but a sign of what the general Halo community wants out of a Halo game?
If there's a great divide between esports and vanilla...I guess there's fear that esports Halo will be in decline and not prosper?
My personal concerns are the vanilla...I want fair balanced starting weapons...if the starting weapons aren't utility-focused...I'm totally passing up on this game.
If the general pop dies off like it did with 4...then hopefully that's not just a sign of the times but a sign of what the general Halo community wants out of a Halo game?
If there's a great divide between esports and vanilla...I guess there's fear that esports Halo will be in decline and not prosper?
My personal concerns are the vanilla...I want fair balanced starting weapons...if the starting weapons aren't utility-focused...I'm totally passing up on this game.
User 73706
Banned
Saw this on Beyond
lmao, this is precious. For one:
- Halo's demographic is constantly aging despite all the five-year-olds, and people mature enough to stick through it and keep trying out new titles have actual shit to do these days
- Even if other 360 titles exist, there are only going to be more titles competing with potential Halo time from here on out
- the Bone hasn't even dropped in as many countries as the 360 did. My point's not really about population so much as it is time zones, though.
- There were also dedicated maintenance periods and times when it became impossible to find matches. While matchmaking bugs aren't acceptable, there's still plenty of reasons why people didn't play as much of H5G as they did H3. I personally prefer H5G's gameplay even with sprint and ADS compared to everything but CE.
CreateNowSleepLater
Member
QFT
What changed to make CoD trump Halo.
Simple, Halo changed. Would CoD cut in? Sure, but Bungie and 343 have been chasing that game since Reach. What playlist and update made Reach playable? The anniversary update. Any core series is going to have its fanbase. Those people are not really looking for "change" Reach and 4 should have concentrated on better graphic and better performance built around competitive play. Thats what Halo is. You can't keep changing the base formula responding to the things that didn't work in the last changes your made in the last Halo.
CoD fans might complain but they keep buying and playing basically the same game year after year. Halo can't keep people playing 2 weeks after a mainline release.
This kinda hilarious. Halo 4 disc is scratched and only plays death sounds and the respawn timer:
https://vid.me/NJ5M
Personally, every Halo game was easily FPS of their respective year. Then again I have a somewhat controversial opinion.
I literally just noticed your avatar actually says "I have ice"
Huh.
https://vid.me/NJ5M
Personally, every Halo game was easily FPS of their respective year. Then again I have a somewhat controversial opinion.
I literally just noticed your avatar actually says "I have ice"
Huh.