Should have done an assault rifle joke really...

Played some 3 at the weekend and it was GOOD.  I would share a nice base-to-base sticky I got on Boundless but y'know, Bungie Pro   Wish I'd rendered those 3 games of teh awesum we played before Reach came out.  Rumble Pit was also full of killers which was odd, showed up how rusty I was too, especially with CQC.
I find this more amusing than I think it should be:

Well, when Bungie are cranking out annualised updates for the Activision sausage machine I'm sure there'll be lots of lovely Bungieesque marketing to enjoy.

Yeah. The issue so far is that the ideas and mechanics apparently being introduced to Halo MP can / probably will substantially change the experience, in ways that most posters in this thread fear is for the worse.

It's speculation, sure, but you can surely understand the concerns, whatever your opinion of previous Halo MP experiences.

When the studio in charge seems to lack intelligence, subtlety and good execution in one area (viral marketing), it does not do much to reassure us of their intelligence, subtlety and good execution in others (implementing new mechanics in Halo 4 MP).

Does that make sense?

Well from my point of view. And this is just my point of view as a gamer not a Halo die hard so please don't go all "you just don't know wah"

343 are in a monumentally difficult situation. They've been handed to premier Xbox franchise and told to make a game with it.

They need to balance keeping old fans on side with attracting new players and for the sake of their own sanity put their own stamp (stamp is a bit strong, flourish maybe) on the game.

You can understand that they'd want to try and capture some of the COD pie. It's a 3rd party game that utterly dominates the Live usage. That's their system, their game should be top.

As a gamer I think Halo should be incorporating some of those elements, it's what gamers like and are drawn towards. The franchise seems locked in the past unable to incorporate modern touches because of the resistance involved. Like it or loathe it COD is immensely popular because there's a lot of stuff they do extremely well.

I'll fully admit I've not played anything like the amount of H3 and Reach as you lot but from a mostly outsider it does seem it's rather stagnated. Bungie seemed to have been caught in the same dilemma as 343 are, pleasing fans but trying to innovate. They were probably quite sick to death of the franchise because of that.

I'm open minded. In the same way I was open minded towards Treyarch's games.

Different does not equal better, but by the same token it doesn't equal worse either.

(and wigging out when someone says they like something new isn't going to help expand the player base, natch)

I'm not denying the Halo player base is large, and I'm sorry if I gave that impression.

However there was a time when it was number one, then COD game along and ate its lunch.

Yes, the player base is large, but you have to look at the relatively.

"Keep customer base roughly what it is now" rarely appears on a list of project objectives.

Yup - although I think "make sure existing base doesn't abandon us" should be on those objectives more often. I'm sure 343 are very conscious of that, tbf, and I harbour hopes that they will not move too far from the current template - introducing changes that make sense and enhance, rather than slavishly looking at COD-type mechanics and adding it to the bucket list labelled: "shit COD does".

We shall see indeed. I'm hinging my hopes on the idea that 343 are spectacularly bad at PR, and what they've cribbed from COD has been recast to make it feel like Halo, and not chucked in there for a bullet point.

Attempting to rip off COD is not a recipe for success. The only thing that has worked for is COD. It's like all the MMO's marching in a big long line wearing a 'Lets all be like Warcraft tshirt. COD took on Halo by not being Halo. Halo should fight back by not being COD.

Well apparently because 343s marketing isn't up to Bungie's standards their game won't be either, so, um, yep?

all i saw was this: 

why is everyone whispering?

Funkstain wrote:

I still think that's a fair statement, but more likely to be the one that Mod was performing a reductio ad absurdum on.

Um, you made you statement after mine. I didn't comment on yours.

Djorn was doing a bit of the old reducto.

is that a word? i don't get it. i'm going to assume it was a lovely compliment.

I'm currently watching Ninja (aka Tyler Blevins, MLG Halo pro) stream some Halo 3 games. He said something that I thought was quite interesting; MLG should have treated Reach the same way they treated CoD World At War. Basically, MLG switched between 3 and Reach simply because Reach was Halo and it was the newest one. However, with CoD, they keep playing the old one until the new one demonstrates how well it handles competitive play. Going back to CoD, there were very few if any WaW tournaments, people just played WaW for fun. MLG still (IIRC) uses Black Ops as its CoD game, they've yet to switch to MW3.

I know it's not an exact parallel, as CoD has a much more frequent release schedule, so it doesn't matter as much if they don't always switch to the latest version. Also, the CoDs tend to be much closer to each other than the Halos are; despite sharing a similar ethos, few would claim that Halo 2 plays similarly to Reach. Someone who's really good at BlOps, though, will probably be good at MW3, while a lot of Halo pros have struggled to switch between the games.

There's not really a point here, just thought what he said was interesting. Is it possible that Reach was switched to too quickly?

Sometimes I think about the fact that I haven't played Halo for what feels like years and I get a sad. I look forward to hopefully returning to active noob duty as long as 343 don't fuck it up.

Please change the thread title to: 'Halo is it me you're looking four?' so that I can get rid of the sad through the magic of puns.

Yeah, it's funny, it's actually been bashed into some very good shape. Still, the numbers, as mod mentions above, aren't quite there. Certainly enough numbers to be getting a game whenever you want, but not amaze, by any stretch.