StalkerUKCG
Banned
It's a crime Reach doesn't work properly via BC.
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Halo 5 active players is the highest since Halo 3 (even before the free play period)
- Thread starter jbug617
- Start date
It is a crime that Reach will be the only Halo game to not run natively on Xbox One. I don't understand why they won't at least bring the campaign to MCC. Their obviously is a playerbase for it, and it is literally the only campaign left out of every single Halo game to bring to Xbox One.
Oh yeah, which is probably why they've never released CE:A digitally to the general public, because it would be impossible to play Reach if you bought that too due to how the 360 handles identical title IDs.
But focus on this:
I think this is one of those cases where if they couldn't smush the two games together, the solution is to not do what they did. They should have just included the digital code for the DLC. Why?
1. The CEA disc can only play the anniversary maps. It cannot load ANY other DLC, so it fails to even upsell people to the rest of the DLC.
2. They didn't even include Forge World, so CE:A is missing the most well known Halo 1 map, Blood Gulch, and also locked out CE:A MP from having any other Halo 1 Forge remakes.
3. Any playlist that allowed the CE disc to play could not even optionally use other maps.
4. The CEA MP mode never appeared in ANY other playlist, it remained restricted to the CE:A disc playlist, so the whole point of gluing Halo 1 functionality onto the pistol, which let it be used on any map, could have been avoided and they could have just thrown in the actual Halo 1 Pistol as a weap tag on the CEA remake maps.
5. These restrictions lead to the hilarious result that the Halo 1 Pistol mode and Blood Gulch are never in the same playlist in Reach. Both the pieces are there. It just can't happen.
Also, to add to the weirdness, CEA added new achievements for the Defiant maps (and i think Noble? Definitely Defiant) that required owning Anniversary to unlock them. For no particular reason.
So in short.. best options for CEA would have either been "Halo Reach: The MP Disc" second disc that had all DLC on it like Halo 3 Mythic. this would have injected DLC into more of the population of Reach, OR..
.. just include the code, make people redeem it for Reach, and now you can have any map in Anniversary playlists that you want, Blood Gulch in Halo 1 MP mode, Forge remakes of the missing Halo 1 maps, etc OR
just have the CE:A disc install the maps onto your 360. Halo 2 disc all over again! Yay! DLC for everyone!
but nope, we got a weird disc release that split up the Reach playerbase and negatively affected it.
shit. I'm starting to make Reach era length posts again. It's time for me to go to sleep and get over it.
BlazeBreak
Member
Haha, preach on though. CE:A was basically the straw that broke the camel's back as far as Reach's MP went, when it could have saved it.
As much as I love Reach, needed more support than it got to become great. And it goes all the way back to its launch, so I'm not putting all the blame on 343 here. But, at the end of the day, DLC ownership was a huge problem with the game, and they needed to get more people to own it (I think Halo 4 showed that their DLC matching algorithm actually sorta worked there, the problem was just not enough people owned the damn DLC with Reach for it to be effective).
CE:A only served to do the opposite and further divide the population (which 343 had further divided with their trying to please everyone approach of keeping a set of playlists with Vanilla settings and a set with the TU settings).
I'm not sure what the post-MCC landscape of Halo 3 is, but at least before then you could go boot it up, go into any playlist and have a great chance of DLC coming up. Reach DLC, on the other hand, is forever lost (Hell, half of the key shipped variants are just about effectively lost since the playlists, especially larger sized ones like BTB and Invasion, were left with community maps heavily weighted).
WhiteRabbitEXE
Member
Yeah, it's a real shame, especially since it's my favorite Halo campaign and favorite multiplayer (sue me). Plus, because the Halo CE Anniversary multiplayer is part of Reach, it not being included makes MCC HCEA incomplete.
And it sucks that neither ODST nor Reach Firefight is native on Xbox One (ODST isn't even emulated).
93xfan
Banned
Because any more attention to that game reminds people of all the things they have yet to fix. I still hate Microsoft for their handling of that game. That shit company is lucky halo 5 has a great MP, otherwise they would've killed the franchise.
Gabotron ES
Member
Firefight is so difficult but I keep coming back for it and Frge, Forge is the best it's been ever!
Welfare
Member
Games like Fifa and Madden are sure to have more smurfs than Halo 5. You can have like 10 additional accounts on an XB1, and with gold sharing you can increase the player count without a game being sold again. Like if I bought Halo 5 digitally, my brother on his box would then "own" the game too. 2 people can now play the game, but 2 copies weren't bought.
Halo 4 had over 11.6 million players/guests play Halo 4 War Games (multiplayer) ~20 weeks after launch. Halo 4 was no where near 11.6m sold through at that point. At most it would be 8m. This stat is ~35 weeks after Halo 5 launched.
Monocle
Member
Protip: use a Scout Hog to splatter things in the first round, a Ghost as soon as you can (bye bye Elites, lol), and for the last couple of rounds, tanks. Firefight is so much better with vehicles. The only times they don't really work are when you have to deal with a lot of flying enemies. Oh, and Knights don't splatter, which is a bother.
Protip #2: Promethean weapons are secretly super effective. The special Boltshots melt shields and even the regular one makes Crawlers a breeze. Suppressor are good for Knights, Soldiers, and sometimes Phaetons, if you can get right under them. Nothing works incredibly well on Phaetons from what I've seen though.
Fata1moose
Banned
I bet there are a lot of smurf accounts though. We have no social slayer/social arena playlist to warm up in. People are bound to make alternate accounts to practice.
Want proof of smurfs? Look no further than the moose.
He uses his smurf account all the time and still gets shit on.
Is it called Goose?
And this is why social playlists are dead
How many people actually do this? I'd never bother, lol.
RagingAvatar
Member
Halo 5, imo, is the best Halo MP to date. Been playing since CE.
Vigilant Walrus
Member
I would love to play this game on PC (along with the Master Chief Collection for the single player).
Enough for 343i to put safeguards against smurfing. One pro player wanted to do a series 'bronze to champion FFA' and got a week long ban.
We would need the Halo 5 sale numbers to know this. But according to Frankie, Halo 5 sold 5 million copies after 3 months. Last week, they also said that 16.5 Million people played a match in Custom Games. As you can see, there's a difference of 11.5 Million players. Would be interesting to see the sale numbers. Maybe we will get those soon, since Microsoft will also wrap up the Fiscal Year soon.
Enough for 343i to put safeguards against smurfing. One pro player wanted to do a series 'bronze to champion FFA' and got a week long ban.
Lol damn.
The Antitype
Banned
If it's true, then there's nothing stopping them from displaying playlist populations to players.
Right?
This has the stink of Microsoft's 'we don't publish sales numbers, because we want engagement' nonsense.
I have no doubt Halo 5 is doing quite well on the backs of idiots spending money on REQ packs however.
Right?
This has the stink of Microsoft's 'we don't publish sales numbers, because we want engagement' nonsense.
I have no doubt Halo 5 is doing quite well on the backs of idiots spending money on REQ packs however.
Because I'm sure every purchase you make is out of necessity. Get off your soapbox.
And there are very very valid reasons for not publishing population numbers of playlists. They kill certain playlists.
Not really as displaying those numbers could manipulate player behavior on playlist engagement which would result in the least popular playlists populations falling even more.
What?! This information is from a 343 Industries employee's Reddit post, Let alone Halo fans have been using low population numbers as an argument against 343i being a bad developer for years now. So now that it's improving the numbers don't matter now?
Because over 5 million in sales isn't doing well anymore?!
SenjutsuSage
Banned
And to think people were suggesting Halo was somehow dead. I always knew that was bs on the campaign side, and now we know beyond a shadow of doubt it's bs on the mp side as well.
The Antitype
Banned
No, not everything I buy is a necessity, but the things I do buy are generally not single-use items in a videogame.
Low population numbers that were made public and corroborated by third part trackers.
It's very easy to say 'hey, this game we made is doing FANTASTIC!' and offer zero actual evidence beyond your word to back it up. If it's doing so fantastic, why not provide numbers?
And yes, 5 million in sales is fairly successful. But the specific claim was about population numbers compared to Halo 3...which, for the record, had public numbers.
And for the record, I like a lot about Halo 5. The matchmaking is garbage and the arena maps lack the intelligence and soul of Bungie's best, but the underlying shooting mechanics, movement mechanics, and weapon balance are all great.
I'd just like to see actual stats.
Low population numbers that were made public and corroborated by third part trackers.
It's very easy to say 'hey, this game we made is doing FANTASTIC!' and offer zero actual evidence beyond your word to back it up. If it's doing so fantastic, why not provide numbers?
And yes, 5 million in sales is fairly successful. But the specific claim was about population numbers compared to Halo 3...which, for the record, had public numbers.
And for the record, I like a lot about Halo 5. The matchmaking is garbage and the arena maps lack the intelligence and soul of Bungie's best, but the underlying shooting mechanics, movement mechanics, and weapon balance are all great.
I'd just like to see actual stats.
Skins != Single use.
And people like me and all of my friends intentionally avoided low population playlists in Halo 3 and many other shooters.
The Antitype
Banned
So you avoided playlists that would likely have long wait times and relatively uneven matchmaking.
IE, you ensured your experience with the game you paid $60 for was as efficient and enjoyable as possible.
And you feel the ability for others to do so in Halo 5 is wrong because.....?
since no one knows which playlist to avoid... (if they needed to ) the rift won't grow even worse.
However, que times for any playlist in this game are extremely fast and i never find myself waiting too long for matches.
Honestly you saying this is a lie w/o solid proof that it is smells of you hating 343
Because it killed any chance a playlist had of success. Why are you pretending like you need playlist numbers to determine matchmaking time is taking too long?
And comparing modern dedicated server matchmaking to Halo 3 P2P matchmaking is silly.
The Antitype
Banned
Well, nobody should be surprised que times are strong in Halo 5, given they've significantly cut down on the number of pots available compared to Halo 2 and Halo 3, and even Halo Reach. Particularly outside of ranked matches.
I'd still prefer to know how many people are playing in each.
Furthermore, it would help support the argument being made by this 343i employee, rather than simply taking the word of the source.
If somebody from the Battleborn team claimed their numbers were great in comparison to previous gearbox successes, would you immediately believe them too?
Well it doesn't help anything when they are not releasing numbers and the time they did it wasnt actual numbers but just halo 5 made this much in profit. It's good Frankie confirmed that it sold 5 million but I'd like to see current actual sale numbers.
I'd also like to see numbers of players playing as well.
Edit: I'm not a big fan of halo 5 and have very big issues regarding it but the game doing well is a good thing just I'd like to see actual numbers like we had for all previous halo games.
The thing is
A. They don't have to provide or reinforce their argument because you wanna call them out
B. You have to remember. Halo 4 had horrible drop off and Reach had some negative reception as well and neither did anything as remotely positive as halo 5 to keep and grow populace.
As well as selling pretty good ( not uber halo sales) but really damn good. Plus game sharing.
Its mounting in their favor that even though the game didn't sell As much, but instead put lots of effort into keeping the populace up.
Battle born doesn't really have any positive bonus that I know of that helps it compared to previous games (plus this is a weird example)
The Antitype
Banned
No, they don't have to support their argument. Nobody does.
I could argue that mayonnaise is the tangible, earthly manifestation of the souls lost to the afterlife since the beginning of civilization.
I have nothing to back that up, and indeed, there are fairly clear facts to contradict it, but if nobody needs to support an argument, then any argument is as good as another.
Halo 4 did have a dramatic drop off. It was made by the same people, you'll recall. The same people that followed it up with the trainwreck that was MCC.
So forgive me for being a little skeptical that after releasing two towering tire infernos, that the populace was happy to jump right back on board and provide them with population numbers better than the most successful entry in the franchise to date, all on a platform that is still trying to recoup the mindshare it managed to lose between generations.
When companies as large as Microsoft and the Xbox division have successes to share, they blast them, with the confidence that if media outlets call them on it, they can support the position.
They don't let it seep out on Reddit, like a silent fart and hope nobody with the wherewithal and authority to ask for numbers will find it.
Halo Reach was a divisive game, but they actually published numbers, and they were strong and fairly long-tailed. Not as strong or long-tailed as Halo 3, but still strong.
DontBeThatGuy
Member
Halo Reach and Halo 4 were not good, and H5 is addicting as fuck, so it's as it should be. (also much better than H3 online if you ask me)
Hypertrooper
Member
I think Spartan Laser is super effective against Phaetons.
Fata1moose
Banned
I don't know, when we were playing Squared, people were only saying you sucked in the stream.
Fata1goose is a real account, but it's my friend.
My actual smurf account is FATstronaut, 343 pls ban.
Not sure, I do run into GTs with Smurf in their name though.
Fata1goose is a real account, but it's my friend.
My actual smurf account is FATstronaut, 343 pls ban.
lol
Green Mamba
Member
Halo 5's slayer is so good, so this is good to hear.
Monocle
Member
Hmm, I'd try this but the Phaetons usually show up way before any power weapons are available.
ShutterMunster
Junior Member
I desperately want to play but have no people to play with. My friends who I've been playing Halo online with since 2 just abandoned it. I went back on to play recently and was so rusty. Happy it's doing well though, I think the MP in the game is PHENOMENAL.
3's public numbers weren't accurate, though.
That is also true from what I heard.
Tyraniboah
Member
This is funnier to me than it should be
The multiplayer is still utterly fantastic so I'd say it's well deserved. I keep trying to get old friends into it but they just lost interest in Halo. Their loss I suppose
It didn't actually count the people online searching or playing at any moment. It was actually the total amount of UUs (unique users, you'll see it typed as UU in articles from around then) processed through game records in a certain window of time backwards, I think it was an hour.
So say 70,000 people jump on for a quick game after work into Team Actionsack, but then shut their 360 off and go to the bar. 20,000 more people show up and keep playing. The Halo 3 playlist counter would show 90,000 people in Team Actionsack even though 20,000 were actually in it.
Reach changed this to where it'd actively count everyone every few minutes.
It wasn't intentional to hide numbers, it was just a limitation of their infrastructure and they kept upgrading it as their tech went along.
This is also why sometimes when you sign onto Halo 3 360 you'll see the population be some absurd number like 13930951 because it's glitched out and counting everyone that played Halo 3 ever :V
This is pretty much how I feel. 14 day buy and play left me feeling like 343i doesn't want to give their consumers accurate information, just that they don't want to appear like they fucked up. That's even before MCC happened.
I like Halo 5 and I think it's a really good game, but I'm not a huge fan of 343i's PR.
While this is true, there was the guy in optimatch that gathered Halo 3 numbers for a few months. Yes, it used those hourly numbers, but it didn't vary that much, even when he would gather in the morning versus the afternoon.
AgentOtaku
Member
I was one of those that contributed to finding those numbers. The even more fun part is you would also get a different population if you viewed a playlist's TS graph in More Details. In general, they could only be used as a rough indicator of population movement and popularity, but the raw number itself wasn't very useful.