You guys are gathering information from statistics and pro players that represent less than .01 %of the population. Listen to the guys that are still playing your game, the ones that come on to your site to share their opinion becuase they love halo, The ones that love your game. You're going to wreck what is a pretty good mp in the franchise. Leave the magnum alone, I can't say it enough.
Your wording implies that the competitive/pro community completely supports the retuned BR. That’s completely false. If you read the TB forums, almost none of the pros who post there, nor do the competitive community members like this BR. They still play the game as much as others do, so their opinion is still as valid.
Please, do not unnecessarily shift blame at the community who clearly doesn’t have 343’s back in this balance update and the decision to remove the magnum from HCS settings. None of them asked for something like this.
The pro community is not the competitive community. Almost everyone who plays halo is a part of the competitive community. Competitive is a mindset, skill has nothing to do with it. I'm very competitive, not the most skilled.
"For those who are curious, we have collected our first round of Pro player feedback"
^Directly from OP.
This is isnt me shifting blame to competitive players. It's once again 343 using pro player feedback and ineffective stats like player quit rates to base their decisions on. There is a huge gap between what 343 is currently implementing or talking of implementing with what the community wants. There is something very wrong with the way theyre either gathering or interpreting data.
I simply do not agree with putting more emphasis on the opinions of a very small portion of the community than the majority. Regardless of what their opinion is and weather or not I agree with it (quite often I do) . I hear that term way to often "pro player feedback", when I should be hearing "community feedback".
Im not blaming the players for this one TryHardFan. I'm blaming 343 and their refusal to listen to the gamers who still play their game almost nightly.
Snakebite (considered the best H5 player by many pros) has said many times the past couple weeks on stream that he doesn't know of even
1 single example of a pro suggestion that 343 has listened to.
Spartan, Frosty & some other pros have been saying the same thing basically since the game came out.
Even something as obvious as the AR and Breakout removal came down to fan/player complaints rather than the pros.
The pros let 343 know about it since Beta. If 343 cared what they had to say, they would have dealt with it then.
But it wasn't until many months (or full year for AR) later that they finally realised that the fans weren't going to let it go, and it looked
really bad on 343 to have the entire chat openly mocking them for it from start to finish of every single pro league stream.
And even Stasis wasn't removed by feedback, only after pros forced 343's hand by agreeing to openly boycott it.
In the end, 343 only removed it because the situation looked bad on them.
Same thing there: the pros let 343 know very early that stasis didn't work in competitive play, but it wasn't until months later that 343 finally realised how bad it looked to have thousands of viewers openly mocking them for forcing the pros into such a ridiculous situation.
None of the changes have ever directly followed pro feedback, no matter how unanimous or not.
The metrics like the overwhelming agreement on sprint don't matter, the only numbers that matter are sales.
Look at radar: little pro agreement, but action was made because it's a popular talking point in the more mainstream communities.
Conversely, smaller details like spawn points have been the same since launch, because those things don't end up "trending."
Heck, even weapon tuning: 343 did not even contact a single pro to ask for input before just forcing it in.
It's only months later if/when 343 needs to save face that the changes finally get made, since face value is what drives sales.
If the feedback on a particular issue doesn't go mainstream enough to turn into trolling, no change is ever made.
Since the launch of H5, 343 has
literally listened to trolls on twitch & twitter more often than the pros.
They only say they are "collecting data" from pros in order to fool the people who don't actually follow the pro scene.
(And it has worked fantastically for them, the majority of waypoint users blame the current state of the game on pros).
343 only "cares" about pros when it comes to words, not actions.
Edit:
Btw, I agree with what you're saying about their language & listening to more than just pros -- I'm just elaborating on what others have pointed out in that the pros aren't actually listened to either, not even in their own playlist. There's no greater emphasis in reality, it's all lip service.