Halo vs CoD was always strategy vs reaction timing skill. In halo you had to think about your weapons, and plan your attack. Do you want to shoot down an enemy sniper and risk them one shorting you? Or do you want to make your way slowly over to their location and overwhelm them with bullets so they can’t snipe you? Plasma pistol vs vehicles. Etc. Halo 4 gave you more strategy to your game plan. And resolved the time honored tradition of a team camping all the power weapons and another team doing jack shit all game against a rocket and a sniper. I played that thing non stop for months.
"Halo 4 gave you more strategy to your game plan." Halo 4 didn't, actually. Halo Reach & Halo 4 removed the capability of requiring strategy by including sprint and abilities as the permitted nesting egg for counter strategies -- otherwise known at that point was "noob tactics". Let me iterate with an example both with Halo 2 verses Reach/4: Halo 2: You find yourself on Beaver Creek, where your team didn't get rockets or snipe. Instead of appropriately using your BR to shoot long range, you decide to get on top of the base, grab the Plasma Pistol, and hope for a charge shot clear on the rockets or sniper guy to take theirs. (A good player can counter this, it's jiggle peaking and using geometry to block angles). Halo Reach/4: You find yourself on any map. You choose a loadout permitted to always being beneficial over the opponent in Halo 4, where in Halo Reach you simply choose jetpack. The enemy has a sniper, or rockets, or sticky denotator. In Halo reach you simply jetpack up and shoot them as they're shooting someone else, since they probably can't even see you. In Halo 4, you simply spawn with whatever weapon you need to attack someone with a power weapon. The problem with those two entries out of the series is that they tried the 'casual operator' approach that Call of Duty casualized. Both of which permit the player to not even have a strategy, or thought, or make an "in the moment" decision since the counter is not just obvious, it's given to the player as they spawn; Something that never existed in Halo. Halo use to have equal starts and equal chance to obtain power weapons and power ups (key here, just those two sandbox elements). You couldn't grab a needler and instantly get a kill, just like the Plasma Pistol, although very good at tracking in Halo 2, wasn't a sure victory. It wasn't guaranteed. In Halo Reach, Halo 4, and even in Halo Infinite (with this sandbox), it's entirely guaranteed because the entire concept was designed to make a "bad player" feel better at the game. It's part of why the "MLG Settings" removed bloom, sprint/loadouts, and the ultimate variation of Halo 4 turned into Halo 2 Anniversary (lol). At the end of the day, the problem that exists here is that Halo Reach & Halo 4 were never Halo, or trying to be -- they were trying to mirror Call of Duty, and Halo 4 did that copy 'better'. I'd argue, as I'm sure I did in the comment I left a week ago, that Halo Infinite's biggest downfall is that it listened to a community that 'defines' Halo by Halo Reach & Halo 4, rather than By Halo 1 - Halo 3. (And claims that Halo 1 - Halo 3 were casual, despite barely having any unranked playlists, and exclusively being made for player verses player in multiplayer).
Halo 4 multiplayer did fall off yes, reiterated parts of reach people didnt like, extended on them making people dislike. Campaign goated tho i will die on that hill gg weeknight good vid
To be entirely transparent: It's not even specifically "just" 343i. Almost half the ideas of Halo 4 came from the Communities "how to fix Halo reach" beliefs, just like how post Halo Infinite updates came directly from Halo Community members ideas of what to add into Halo Infinite, while ignoring the broader player base as a whole. Most of these failures are 343's particularly Josh Holmes (Creator of Halo Reach), but it doesn't really change that a lot of them were from the Halo Community on Waypoint at the time, just like today's are the same people, but now transitioned from Waypoint to RU-vid.
For the record, I hate Halo 4 too; I'm 42 and loved Halo 1 - Halo 3. 0:17 - Bloom & Armor Lock were not the only things people disliked, they disliked particularly Load Outs and all of the abilities present due to the "Load Out" mechanic. They also heavily hated that they removed 1-50 ranking (Which can be seen in numerous videos in 2010, 2011, 2012; One larger name is Ninja, but among him are various others such as iCURRazY, 7thSenseTV, MoreConsole, DrexyVids, AlphaFix, Dr Mongoose, etc etc etc. Contrary to the current "Halo Community", absolutely no one cared about Halo Reach, most hated it, and use to pinpoint Halo Reach as to why Halo's Multiplayer failed. 0:22 - Although just a phrase, it was P2P still, but I get the point here. 0:31 - I can find numerous reviews from 2012, however the sentiment was always "This is just Halo Reach 2.0 but with worse graphics". 0:47 - Ah yes, Ninja Vs Lethul discussion, where Lethal came to the conclusion that there's no real reason to be playing Halo 4 when he didn't even like Halo Reach, and how Call of Duty started cloning what Halo 2 and Halo 3 did (with ranking, progression and skill expression) while Halo tried to capture a "Casual" audience (the audience that never existed for Halo). 1:15 - Correct, Halo was unequivocally designed around balance, wherein the player's choice and skill is what determines their victory (hence why it's entirely crazy that there is a subset of people that claim it's "not competitive" when the entire notion of multiplayer in Halo was defined to be as such; Matchmaking wasn't designed to be a high stakes tournament, but it was designed to be low stakes tournament (Hence, Skill Rank). 2:00 - Correct entirely up to this point so far. 2:16 - Correct, Which is why it's puzzling a portion of the "community" thinks that Halo should move to an entirely new game engine, and should change all dynamics of gameplay so they can, and I quote "be less competitive and more popular in a causal setting" (Which, again, this is an FPS particularly a player verses player fps -- that audience is non-existent). 2:27 - That's because 'raids" are designed around RPG mechanics, particularly MMORPG wherein the point of doing this was to obtain loot and better gear by completion of dungeon. Most typically, "Destiny" is primarily a Player Verses Environment RPG with Shooter mechanics, where it does have a niche "player verses player" section, it definitively wasn't made to be taken seriously. Although you switch over to the Destiny community, and just because it's player verses player, it'll always be considered "competitive" (because that's determined by the players, not by the game - Which is why "chasing casual" is a horrible method of creating a game, that is a mindset and a players intention, not a developer intention. You cannot "make" a casual player verses player game, it has to be competitive first and the people who want to be casual, will make it casual. Making the opposite is why Halo Reach & Halo 4 exist, and it's why Halo Infinite failed so hard). 4:15 - Before you continue your thought, Vanilla Halo Reach had loadouts, and the loadouts were chosen particularly by the equipment piece affiliated with your armor. Halo 4's loadouts allowed customization of this, which you would think "sounds crazy" but this is where you think to think critically: What's the one thing the "Halo Community" says is crucial to Halo. You guessed it, customization. Something a small niche community has stated they wanted in Halo since 2008, something perpetually stated on Waypoint. Too bad 343 wiped old Waypoint threads, as you could find numerous ones claiming that Halo Reach's loadouts issues were not having sprint as default and not having the ability to customize them. 4:30 - One thing you forgot is "how" you start with them. In Halo 4, in order to unlock the weapons, you unlocked through playtime. 5:05 - For those reading this, the Mangler of Halo Infinite is much the same as the Bolt Shot in Halo 4; These are weapons wherein they have far too much power for the use-case on hand, and utilize far too much versatility, encompassing too many roles into one. The difference within Halo 4 is you spawn with it, but in Halo Infinite it spawns every 40 seconds, usually 2 on a map, with significantly more ammo. A reason why "The Mangler" isn't a Halo weapon is the same reason the Bolt Shot isn't one -- It's intention was to make the "power weapon" power usable by those without the capability (or skill) to obtain a power weapon. But that's not the end of it; You "spawned" power weapons in Halo 4 by going on streaks, which provided you an optional choice without any control (at all). By comparison, in Halo 1, Halo 2 and Halo 3 -- In order to obtain any power weapon, you and your team had to obtain control of a sectional area of the map and, as well, had to have a time interval for the spawning of the weapon regardless if it was a static or dynamic timer. This goes triple for all playlists that were MLG Branded, as this wasn't "exclusive to competitive players", this is just Halo. The only thing unique here was Forge in Halo 3 (and thus reach), you simply could modify these so that in your custom experience (ala "not Halo") you can change these elements to do as you want, and thus make an imbalanced experience entirely out of a heavily balanced competitive one. 5:19 - Halo 4 borrowed over (carried over) Armor Abilities from Halo Reach, with (again) the inclusion of Halo 4's "Sprint" being a default ability also came the selection, via customization, of the abilities in your loadout. In Halo Reach, you "chose" the loadout with the ability -- where in Halo 1 - 3, you didn't have either Loadout nor ability, nor any bit of customization at all. It was "equal" in every regard to gameplay.
5:27 - Correct, although it's incredibly important to point out that "people who say halo 4 was made for esports and pros" literally don't understand that "people who play at tournaments don't ask for wall hacks, its usually the people that think games aren't even suppose to be played for anything more than passing time that want this". That being said, this was one of the biggest turn-offs of Halo 4's abilities, next to sprint, this definitively ruined gameplay for most of the audience, as it provided a level of 'ease of use', next to the removal of descope -- That is, in specific, you would be pushed "out of scope" when getting shot in Halo 1 - 3, in Halo 4 they removed this. You use to not have to go far to find out why, however a subset community on Halo waypoint use to complain that "Halo Reach is too serious because its hard to scope when someone is shooting at you". 343's answer: Remove the descope and it'll be less serious. Or, better positioned as: "Halo is too competitive because it has this function, remove it so it is less competitive and itll be balanced". This was still the "Is Call of Duty popular because it appeals to casual gamers, or is call of duty popular because a subset of playlists require skill" era, where the latter ended up being correct and the Halo Community, and 343, believed it was the former. 5:38 - Ah yes, I remember this a little bit. The problem here is dividing the players; It's the issue with Halo Infinite as of today, too. Separating the factions creates divisions, which usually creates starch contrasts in gameplay function. A solution for a lot of that is to only provide a couple areas for this "unique gameplay" and the majority of playlists all abide by the same rules and principles. Halo 2 - Halo 3 did this perfectly, as it only divided it's "social" by a few selected playlists, had mostly Ranked playlists with predominantly BR starts, and it's esport had the same principle gameplay as the primary ranked subset, with minor changes to abide by current rulesets (Minor, as in, it was the same game being played but without radar, increased movement and damage, etc). 6:06 - I believe this was Halo 4's "Prestige". Also agreed at 6:14, it does and it's not specifically to us here, it's just how the gameplay of the first three was designed. Halo's gameplay was designed around learning, adapting and improving to overcome the issue in order to win, be it individually or as a team (I can quote Bungie on this directly). 7:14 - Although personal opinion, Haven was still pretty bad. A large part of this was the same reason Halo Infinite's maps (and the casual communities renditions of maps) are bad - They try to bridge a divide that never existed, and assume that "readability and ease of access" is crucial in a map, instead of simply making a map that is defined by the layout. You didn't need to understand how to play Ivory Tower or Epitaph in Halo 2 or Halo 3 because these maps simply had a flow. Meanwhile, in Halo 4 (and especially Infinite's community maps), they're designed to provide advantages for players who otherwise may not be good at the game, and thus circle back to the problem of accessibility/ease of access. I'd argue if 343 were to simply re-release exact clones, but in appropriate scale, Halo 1 - Halo 3 maps, the vast majority of people would not complain, but a chunk of the "casual halo community" would claim that the maps aren't "as good as community maps" (because the community maps added advantages you would see in like a Halo 4 map). 7:27 - Descope, I mentioned that earlier. 8:24 - This answer is actually simple, but it's going to sound repetitive, so I'll not add this one. I'd say the reason why Halo has failed over and over again is due to the same mindset you have at the end. But I'll save that for another time. Halo 4 is a "better" version of Halo Reach, and both of which failed miserably in numbers, Halo 4 proved that the formula for a "Casual Halo Game" was a failure, yet 343 continued to push out primarily this sort of content after it's launch. Halo Infinite marked a stride at the start of it's life as being "a return to traditional matchmaking", while failing to actually provide anything to the wave that it started. To this day, there's 18 social playlists, 1 ranked playlists and one rotational ranked playlist with absolute joke weapons and maps. Over 75% of it's unique player base primarily plays these two playlists, and it shows a bit more plausible problems with the series as a whole -- there's a collective community that will just vehemently disagree, but they do so as people who do not even play Halo; To them, "it's the principle of the matter". The principle that gaming is viewed as a way to spend a duration of time wisely by improving individually at something via "hobby", while to them it should be viewed as "a non-serious casual time without any regard for anything besides filler of time". They never really liked Halo, outside of the lore, and they only have a slice of the cake so they can feel more internally fulfilled by not being able to actually play a video game at a competent average level. Meanwhile, the tens of millions (hundreds at this point) who enjoy basic competitive games care so little about it, that they do not give it the time of day and utilize their time playing other games with fulfilling matchmaking systems.
Okay I've heard horror stories about some of the later Halo games after the original trilogy but at least with 5 from what I understood and infinite the online was great so what I wanted was what the hell happened with 4..... Oh wait a minute this was during the Call of Duty online craze so that's probably the problem. Also it blows my mind that a game from several years ago you can drop a flag but a future game you can't drop a flag like how does that even make any sense lol.
So let's actually touch on a few things here. 1) What happened with Halo 4. Outside of what was addressed in this video, a large determining failure point of Halo 4, just like Halo Reach, was the lack of Halo Playlists. Halo Reach copied Call of Duty's Matchmaking, which almost no one liked. There's so much disinformation now surrounding this, however let's keep it strictly simple - Halo 2 and Halo 3 mostly had Ranked playlists, and all progression was tied strictly to your skill rank (This was not just pioneered but nearly invented by Halo). - Halo Reach & Halo 4 removed skill rank from the matching process, and in addition -- removed it entirely from matchmaking. - Both the two entries tailored to a "non competitive" player more than a typical FPS player, focusing heavily around forge, custom games, and social party games (sound familiar?) - Halo 4's primary draw for newcomers was it's unique aspiration of "earn as you play", a Call of Duty staple tried in Halo Reach. They wanted to provide you "better" gear as you play, and not just in armor, but also in weapons, making Halo 4 unequivocally designed around "playtime" rather than skill. (Something entirely opposite of Halo). 2) Why couldn't you drop the flag in Halo 4? To make this as straight forward as possible, it was trying to drop the entry level of objective game types. In Halo, you move slower when carrying the flag. To move faster, you simply use physics to throw the flag. Sounds simple, right? Except that the 'community' that really dislikes that "This is done in matchmaking" hated the idea of MLG existing, and disliked the idea that you weren't always at an advantage. So to make #2 less complicated and wordy: It's because the wanted to "casualize" Halo and make it more digestible, easier to understand and less complicated for bad players to learn. I know I know, "what's so complicated about dropping a flag and picking it up" -- Have you ever played Social Halo Infinite? It's impossible to not go 50 and 2, most of the people have no idea how to even play the shoot straight and have 10,000 games played lol. 3) "Why was it added back in Halo 5, then Halo Infinite" For starters, Halo 5 was the first "Return to roots" of a Halo entry; Back to even starts, back to individual driven gameplay, and back to equal player traits. The problems with Halo 5 are large and not limited to the sandbox (all weapons are equal or significantly more lethal than the precision weapon), obscure movement speed compounded by accidental combination of abilities, a spawn system that couldn't keep up, and assistance that added to that. In Halo 5, they kept the "flagnum" but allowed you to juggle. That was to provide both the "ease of access" of shooting while carrying the flag, but they didn't want to cripple the player by not allowing them to drop the flag (despite it being only removed to make it easier to carry the flag). In Halo Infinite, it's original plan was to move back to Halo 2 and Halo 3 classic matchmaking design, and within doing that, to focus on mostly the competitive side of the game (ala ranked matchmaking, because Halo 2 and Halo 3 mostly only had ranked playlists and br starts), but the 'community' got their way again, ruined the game, and now they're onto trying to ruin another new game lol.
