Yeah... about that. Gonna be kinda disappointed there...
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Halo |OT14| They call it Halo
- Thread starter Overdoziz
- Start date
Yeah... about that. Gonna be kinda disappointed there...
Moa
Member
I wish we had actual unique users numbers in those Xbox Live activity rankings.
Bregmann Roche
Member
Welcome! You're just in time for the phoenix-like rebirth of the franchise you love!
At the very least there will be flames of some kind.
ThisIsShadEO9
Neo Member
ThisIsShadEO9
Neo Member
ThisIsShadEO9
Neo Member
Flames? I could use these flames you speak of, tis freezing here, And snowing =/
Moa
Member
LOL! AHAAAAR! So we meet again, Moa
How you doin mate?
Good good, quick tip, try not to double post, quote a post and edit it into your previous one
It's not like there's no talk at all, just not as much as you'd expect there to be in the thread.
definitely the lowest a halo game has ever been... 2 and a half months from launch!
Yeah. There really isn't a good way to get an apples to apples comparison. Sure Halo 4 is lower than other games in the series at this point. But I'm wondering if it's because of fewer Halo players, or because of the larger 360 install base and the rise of other games with are also very popular. Not sure how tell. The userbase trend is down, though, and the trend does seem to be down faster than the trend for the other games (setting aside the absolute numbers, which IIRC are not comparable.)
Hydranockz
Member
Then I'd point them to the HaloCharts graph. I could play Halo 4 for 23 hours straight and log on to Minecraft for a second and they'd be equal to the activity chart.
That graph would reflect if a million people turned on the game for the same hour in the day.
Using the activity chart is such a bad source.
They'll never do this to make the lower games look better for even being in the Top 20, and prevents comparing Live's population directly against PS3's or Wii/Wii U.
Corporate pride all up in that thing.
That works in reverse too. I can play Borderlands 2 for 100 hours this week, log into Halo 4 for 2 games, quit out, back to Borderlands 2 and they still only get one point each from my gamertag.
Farewell, Halo 2 PC. I never played ye.
No longer.
Timers are broken on drop ordnance. I assume a bug report was filed.
Hydranockz
Member
And there is zero evidence in that chart to assume either so it is silly both ways.
People are having a discussion about the data available to them. Halo charts, Live rankings, playlist populations. Obviously none of those are perfect, but people are discussing what we have.
And all things equal, the flaw you describe has been the same for every time the rankings have ever been published. So while you can describe it as a flawed measure, it's a been a consistent one that enables comparisons.
I think there are reasonable interpretations of the data, with appropriate caveats. Your wholesale rejection of any discussion around it is odd. Was this your reaction to Halo 3/ODST/Reach charts?
Hydranockz
Member
You surely know that the comparisons month by month are not equal. Moreso when you compare 4 with past titles. I never once supported that chart as a real discussion point. Minecraft and FIFA players really are of no interest to a discussion on Halo 4. You may as well throw pc titles in if that is the case.
Yup, now two ways about it and its a problem that needs to be fixed!
Return to the top? Xbox gamers don't usually go back to old games aside from a handful of hard core players. I'm willing to bet money we will never see Halo 4 above the number 4 spot again.
They advertise Spartan Ops on TV, if they do a big update I think they should advertise those. Look at Battlefield 3, it has a pretty sizable bump after a new expansion hits because of the changes they made and things they add and how they talk about it constantly. 343 COULD do the same.
EagleBurnn
Banned
Then how could you support that and get angry at 343 for not patching the game sooner (3 months)? Bungie's support for Reach was a joke. I don't understand how this can be justified? What I'm hearing is basically "I know Bungie never responded to our complaints or said they were going to fix them, even 6 months post launch, butttt they are better than evil 343 who is taking 3 months to try to fix the game. I can't believe it 343 right now, the 6 months cycle was much better." No, Bungie danced our the major issues with Reach with minor playlists update and hardly ever responded to us. I can't believe people are forgetting this. These Bulletins are admitting something is wrong with Halo 4 (Frankie's piece), and that's good enough for me to know we're getting it better than last time.
I just never want to see the support we got in Reach ever again in the series and I will never justify it. 343 isn't doing the best, but it is better than what we had in Reach (TU wise). The playlists management are easy fixes, unlike the problems we had in Reach.
king picollo
Member
How can you fix it?
If the game isn't good enough then people aren't going to play it.
They need to stop adding features no one wants and return the game to how it played in in it's prime, Halo2/Halo3.
If the game isn't good enough then people aren't going to play it.
They need to stop adding features no one wants and return the game to how it played in in it's prime, Halo2/Halo3.
If they were smart they'd rebrand the Title Update as a "new game add on" introducing new maps, classic Halo settings, a revamped UI, player ranks, and new match making system.
That's the only way I see activity being boosted up past the number 4 spot.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
? from 2010?
and a spectator mode and clan support!
Seriously that would get a lot of people back if advertised like BF3 updates.
It has a chance to be #2 but it is not touching #1, period. Minecraft has grown substantially since hitting XBL and Fifa's growth over the past few years has also been pretty impressive. Halo 4 still has good numbers, but it should be something much higher being the flagship title of the Xbox.
It's not all that bad, though, they've won some gaming awards!
It's not all that bad, though, they've won some gaming awards!
The TU was still half-assed and while they did go about improving bloom, they still blew up so many playlists and made them worse, somehow.
I understand your need to constantly sugarcoat everything. That's fine. This news isn't terrible, because y'know what? It could be 5th, it could be 10th, it could be 46th. It is not terrible.
But it is the worst performance Halo has ever known (so soon after release) and overtaken by a game that came out months before Halo and has seen no significant update to merit this boost in performance. You sound as though Halo is small time and being the 4th best is something to be proud of.
Honestly the competitive community has forgot about spectator mode, there are greater things that NEED to be done to help the overall community.
----
Thursday Throwback "Why Halo Shouldn't Cater Solely to the Competitive Community"
Reagan's BR
Banned
My thoughts on Reach:
-Bungie was fully prepared to support the game post launch. They began by removing armor lock. They were planning a large patch. They also had plans for Forge maps in MM.
- 343, before the transition, says we want to do our own patch because they were planning for CEA. Bungie says ok and drops their plans.
-343 takes over Halo and drops the community cartographers. They introduce a TU but only implement it across half of the game so as not to make anyone angry. Bungie would have patched the whole game and not looked back. Furthermore, 343 broke lan support with their patch but only changed the bloom on three weapons along with a slight nerf to AL. If you are going to break LAN you might as well go all out with the patch.
Huh... I read your recap of that story, and thought "that doesn't really fit my recollection of what she said..." so I went back and found the original.
No mention of ordnance drops, no mention of anyone laughing at the ownage. In fact... the only thing people laughed at was the typo in the explanation email (which is, actually, sort of funny). Basically, it was a description of a playtest where one team totally dominated the other - and given that feedback was received at the end, you might even think, from reading it (if you weren't predisposed to think of 343 as a bunch of incompetent assholes who LIKE ruining your day), that they used this info to tweak the gameplay on the map. Since I rarely see a total domination by Red Team on Abandon, in fact, I'd hazard a guess that that's exactly what they did.BS Angel's recounting of a playtest said:
It's pretty interesting how your current mindset affects your memory...
Just saying, add it on to those list of changes and you got an update you can really advertise.
His account recently got approved on GAF according to RIP heckfu.
I can't wait.
Yea it would be cool, but killcams don't even work and they are polished so I can't imagine how it's going to end up if true.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
I still want to note the fact that you can't compare population trends to past games straight up. The market is different, tastes are different, etc. It could be entirely possible that people just don't prefer Halo anymore. I'd guess if they made Halo 4 as close to Halo 2 as possible we'd still be seeing these numbers.
No way to prove that, but it's my hunch that gamers are not into Halo as much as they were in the Halo 2/3 days, regardless of the perceived quality of Halo 4 and game changes.
No way to prove that, but it's my hunch that gamers are not into Halo as much as they were in the Halo 2/3 days, regardless of the perceived quality of Halo 4 and game changes.
Yea it would be cool, but killcams don't even work and they are polished so I can't imagine how it's going to end up if true.
Still think Far Cry 3 kill cams would fit perfectly into Halo, gives you A LOT of info about what just happened.
Latvian Hitman
Member
I could really care less where Halo 4 is ranked on a list, but the continually shrinking population is a concern as it directly relates to the quality of the overall matchmaking experience.
It also speaks volumes about how the community feels about the game: this is not the MP Halo game that people wanted. I hope 343 is getting the message. If they don't correct course on this thing, there will be next to no one playing this game by summer/fall 2013.
It also speaks volumes about how the community feels about the game: this is not the MP Halo game that people wanted. I hope 343 is getting the message. If they don't correct course on this thing, there will be next to no one playing this game by summer/fall 2013.
YourExWife
Member
Dude, I enjoy playing the game too (gasp!) but come on now. The color might not always be red, but a competent team that gets ring control is quite difficult to remove from that position, especially with a combo of jetpacks and camo. The vast majority of opponents' spawns are going to be cliff side or in the forests and you have perfect sightlines to all of them. I wouldn't even have such an issue with this if both teams had an equal chance to establish this position from the start of the game, but that's not the case. Spawning each team in opposing forest areas would be much better. Symmetrical spawns on Haven need to be implemented as well, while we're at it.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
See my above post. It is impossible to say that the population is exclusively the result of people not liking the game or style. It could be that, it could be Halo in general, it could be other games.
They need a HaloGAF playlist.
Starting spawn points on Haven have been bad since day 1. This is literally a 5 minute fix, even for someone who is picking up Forge in Halo 4 for the first time. Why this hasn't been fixed to date makes no sense. At all. No amount of white knights will ever be able to explain this away.
but the fact remains that people aren't playing this new interpretation either. so back to the drawing board on these new changes, they didnt hook anyone
Latvian Hitman
Member
I agree that you can't compare these numbers to previous games in the series: that introduces too many variables.
What you can do, however, is look at Halo 4's numbers over time and see the trend. The population's been declining rapidly since launch. It appears to me that the interest level at launch was high, and upon playing the game and discovering the amount of issues present, people are jumping ship to other games.
Deadly Cyclone
Pride of Iowa State
This is a better reply. The main question is could any Halo keep population anymore? That's what I'm curious of. Is there anything anyone could make that would bring back the population Halo enjoyed years ago?
I'm not so sure.
See above. Also I wouldn't even 100% agree with your last sentence. Maybe people were like myself and have been playing the myriad of games that came out last fall. Maybe they didn't hate Halo 4, they just moved on to another game and have not gotten back? That is also an issue, yes, but there are many different reasons people may have quit playing. It does need to be looked into though.
EagleBurnn
Banned
Saying Bungie was probably going to fix the game is something impossible to argue. They even had six months and it wasn't like they were hyping us up for a TU
they weren't
Putting all the blame on 343 for how Bungie treated Reach is completely unfair. Back then, people were praising 343 for them doing an update. Yes, it could have been better, but it saved Reach MLG for a limited time. There was no talk on how Bungie may have held back because it was obvious they never were going to fix it. Six months wasn't a short time frame on being ignored.
This "Bungie tried, but 343 came in" talk just started because everyone's bitter. It makes no sense. It's perfectly fine to say 343 is doing horrible and Bungie treated Reach slightly worst. But putting all the blame on them isn't really fair.
Or maybe not even noticing issues, maybe the experience just isn't addictive and rewarding like it used to be. A product of the randomization nature of the gameplay.
RIP Somethingawful. Why did we go from there to here again?
Reagan's BR
Banned
I'm fairly certain Bungie was working on an update.