Honestly I really don't understand the hate for Spartan abilities. In the Beta your character felt fluid instead of like a walking tiger tank. When I go back and replay Halo Anniversary on MCC I get frustrated. It was great in its day but having used more fluid characters and controls I feel like no sprint is going back to 56k after having fiber optic service. It works but it just feels like a step back.
This. In Halo 3 you felt like a floating gun camera, not a supersoldier. IMO Spartan abilities make the gameplay so much more fluid and exciting.
I remember Halo combat evolved pushing forward shooter gameplay with lots of new features that weren't common at the time. Two weapons, regening shields, separate grenade button. Now it seems like people don't want gameplay to advance and just want it to be the same with better graphics. And then people complain that CoD never changes while complaining that Halo changed.
People complain COD never changes because a "new" one comes out every year, sometimes even more than that. And even campaign-wise, they don't follow each other. If COD came out every 3-4 years with one developer, and consistent campaign sequels, then barely anyone would complain.
Halo 3 pushed forward by adding theater, forge, file share, etc.
With that logic, what you're saying is sprint and clambering is a new feature that isn't common. And the point is: It IS common, and NOT sprinting or anything is actually really uncommon. Making it unique and different. That's why Halo 3 was addicting for most.
Common doesn't mean bad. The reason those features are in so many games is that they are seen as an improvement compared to being without them.
Halo 3 was addictive because it was the only thing. Its easy to sell cocaine for 100/gram when you're the only dealer
Quote:
Halo 3 maintained a near constant population from September 2007 - (conservatively) 2009, a period in which it would have (conservatively) competed with AAA multiplayer titles such as:
- Team Fortress 2
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare
- Unreal Tournament 3
- Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6: Vegas 2
- Battlefield: Bad Company
- Left 4 Dead
- Call of Duty: World at War
- Borderlands
- Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2
- Left 4 Dead 2
This is not counting Singleplayer FPS' that released during this interval, games that were released briefly before Halo 3 but retained online population, games that were released on a different system, a whole slew of AA FPS games that could have whittled at Halo 3's population the way they did at Halo Reach/4, or the better part of the year 2010, where Halo 3 saw a drop off but still maintained steady population until the release of Halo: Reach.
By more elastic parameters, Reach (Sept 2010 - 2012) would have had to compete with:
- Medal of Honor
- Call of Duty: Black Ops
- Crysis 2
- Dead Island
- Battlefield 3
- Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3
- Syndicate
- Call of Duty Black Ops 2
- Medal of Honor Warfighter
This list is made in spite of the account that Reach's population was lower than 3's for the duration of it's life, and that, during the holiday 2011 season, it's population dipped extensively, never to recover it's former (below-Halo 3) glory.
By similarly liberal guidelines, Halo 4:
- Syndicate
- Call of Duty Black Ops 2
- Medal of Honor Warfighter
- Mass Effect 3
- Far Cry 3
- Borderlands 2
- Max Payne 3
- Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
Then it's population basically died that same year in comparison to the other two.
And how does this take into account that Halo 3 was the defacto FPS game for the beginning of the 360 life cycle, and came bundled with half of the 360's? For the first couple of years on Xbox 360, Halo was the main shooter. CoD only dethroned that with MW2, which coincides with when CoD gained most of its mass market appeal. Holiday 2012, when Reach's numbers dropped, also happens to coincide with when Black Ops 1 was released. A game which broke CoD sales records, and also happened to feature the first (of many) Xbox 360 exclusive deals. Notice how Halo 3 does not actually have much competition? It really doesnt, as a majority of those games are not big enough to be competitors, in terms of sales (which equals game population). Halo 4 actually had the worst amount of competition. And the worst part of that is, all that competition occured at the same time as Halo 4. Not after as is the case with Halo 3 and some of the Reach games.
I
italicized games which are too niche on the Xbox 360 because A) They are bigger on PC or meant for PC or B) They didnt sell well enough to be a huge competitor. I only left Left4 Dead not italicized because it was an exclusive, but even then, its largely a PC game
I dont think you guys understand that Halo has, never been, and will never be again, the king of shooters.
Gamers dont play games because of gameplay. We all argue about it here, but we didnt pick up the first Halo game because it had a hotkey grenade and shields. We picked it up because it was fun to be a Space Marine, killing Covies and Flood, and being a general badass. We may have picked up the sequels because we liked how the game plays, but its still also because we liked being a kick -Yoink- space marine. Gameplay wise, for the general gamer, doesnt add up for sports games, racing games, or even puzzle games. The general gamer plays games to get experiences they could otherwise never get. Playing 2K13 against friends was fun, but not nearly as fun as playing outside. Playing MyCareer is a different story, as I got to go from Rookie to All Star in a few seasons. I could go drive a car in real life. Or I can pay $400 for a new console, and $60 for a new game, and drive a McLaren P1 around the city of Prague. People played Halo because it was
the defacto shooter for about a decade. When a new game, one with more realism, more immersion, and many more things to relate to, its obvious that Halo started losing population. Once other games came out, sequels to all the other games that were released the same year that Halo 3 came out, its a testament to the series that it has survived this long.
Its a Space Marine game where you cant sprint, aim half your weapons, and you cant jump onto a ledge if your pinky toe is below the ledge.
That game doesnt sell to the general masses. The reason Halo has survived is because it is THAT good. And it remains that good. But MS only has room for one niche shooter in its portfolio of AAA games, and that game is Gears. Halo needs to be something that is accessible to the entire gamer community, something that is seriously lacking in Halo for a long time. Its terrible to try and break into online. If you have no idea what you are doing, doesnt matter if its social or ranked, you get wrecked. Halo started losing popularity due to a number of things. Copying some of the trends of popular games is a decent place to start to try and bring your game back to form. For all the Halo fans on here that hated sprint, there must have been 12 per fan of a general consumer who said "Finally!".
What we need to ask ourselves is if we would rather see Halo be a stylized modern Halo, or fade away for the select few. Because that is the impasse we are at.
