: op_ivy asked if "...halo 4's population numbers have anything to do
: with infinity, gameplay unlocks, spawning pp's, or no visible ranks?"

: The Henery responded with a pretty lengthy and good post illustrating why
: he thinks Halo 4 failed to retain a high "concurrent"
: population.

:
: Oh yes, absolutely, 100 percent, without question. The other day I was going
: to make a quick post: "Every time I hop on Halo 4, I'm repeatedly
: astonished at the continuing success of Infinity Big Team Slayer".
: Once I thought about it however, I realised that iBTB's success makes
: complete sense. Its continued success, population-wise, is the residual
: effect of Halo 4's launch physique.

: There are vast, vast, numerous amounts of videogamers who enjoyed the
: original Halo trilogy. The PS2 dominated that console generation but had
: it not been for Halo CE's foundational pillar in the Xbox's lauch, and
: Xbox Live's perfect launch partner in Halo 2 then the Xbox would have gone
: the way of the Sega Saturn or Jaguar, forgotton and completely stomped
: into anonymity by the PS2. Halo 3's years at the top of the Live charts
: and respectable (for a years old game) subsequent tussle with COD releases
: bore out that there were still many, many gamers who enjoyed normal Halo
: gameplay.

: Then Halo Reach happened and a lot of gamers who had nine years worth of
: gameplay muscle memory invested in Halo are thrown by having to stop
: shooting in the middle of a battle in order for their shots to be
: accurate. They have moments of dizzying frustration when a player they
: would have killed in a given situation in the previous three titles
: suddenly activates an invincibility button. They are killed by players who
: can suddenly fly over their heads from spawn and the game doesn't offer
: them a Y axis sensitivity to accomodate these new features. They enter
: Team Slayer, a safe bet of a playlist in the previous two titles and half
: of the maps are a turgid, mono-grey eyesore that are all visually alike
: and don't play particularly well. They go to BTB, a favourite for so many
: in H2 and H3 and there is not a single, non-forge map custom built for the
: mode, instead playing on built-for-an-entirely-different-mode horror shows
: like Spire and Boneyard. They actually get put into BTB SWAT on Boneyard,
: spawn Red stairs, and are repeatedly spawn killed in the open by a 3x
: zoom, single shot precision rifle.

: These players think Halo Reach is not a very fun Halo game. They don't like
: the changes, they don't like the poor selection of maps, amongst other
: things. They look around for other places to put their gaming time; Black
: Op's releases on the back of three successful predecessors and, crucially,
: doesn't mess around with what made those games popular in the first place.
: It identify's a rivals strength of meta-features (Halo's theatre and
: social file sharing capabilities) and implements its own theatre which in
: many ways improves upon Halo's version and then offers players the social
: sharing side of it, not on a dev website or by jumping through hoops in
: game but through free rendered uploads to probably the most visited
: website on Earth in Youtube. Many of the gamers put off by Halo's strange
: new direction (no 1-50 wtf? Timing shots and no BR wtf? You can spawn with
: camo now wtf?) decide to go where a lot of their friends went, a safe, you
: know what you're getting deal in COD. Lots of them also get into
: Battlefield 3, a game that knows what it does best, very large scale
: military battles, is somewhat unique in the FPS landscape and sticks to
: it.

: Fast forward to October 2012 and these players who loved the original trilogy
: but checked out with Reach, they see the Halo 4 PR train in full swing.
: "Oh hey, look, the Master Chief's back" they say. They remember
: paying the same price for ODST as they did for Halo 3 but ODST didn't have
: proper multiplayer nor the Chief. They remember paying full price the
: following year for Reach, which again didn't have the Chief, and being put
: off by the weird, unexpected things in the multiplayer. So they see the
: Chief and they associate him with the last game he was in, Halo 3, that
: game that they and their friends had lots of awesome times with. So they
: look forward to Halo 4's release because hey, Chief's back, so Halo will
: be normal again right?

: This is where one goes back to the point about Halo 4's launch 'physique'.
: The launch state of a game is arguably its most important. It is where the
: vast majority of players who don't read forums and gaming press etc get
: their idea of a games identity and the game developers intent for the
: series. Many of those players that Reach lost are back for Halo 4 in
: launch week, eager to give the franchise another shot.

: They load up the game and tentatively enter War Games ("I think this is
: the multi, guys"). The party lead and their buddies look for a
: playlist they remember loving, Team Slayer, but there is no sign of it.
: "Just pick the top one, come on party leader!". So they enter
: Infinity Slayer. They play five hypothetical games. The voting for these
: five games goes 'Adrift, Complex, Complex, Adrift, Abandon'. The maps
: quality don't seem very high and now it appears everyone has a power
: weapon at some point, and that guy they just killed pressed X to spawn
: without punishment and cleaned them up while they waited for their shields
: to recharge, completely unfairly. Weapons are confusingly spawning at
: random, with no explanation as to why that is happening (it didn't happen
: in the ten years they played Halo before). They play another bunch of
: Infinity Slayer and soon come to realise that there's only four 4v4 maps
: and two of them are objectively poor for Slayer. So they venture over to
: Infinity BTB and, while the gameplay problems remain from their 4v4
: experience, at least there are more maps on offer.

: So what happens to this hypothetical party of four a week after Halo 4's
: release? Three of them go to Black Op's 2 or back to Battlefield 3 (COD
: does weapon unlocks and instant respawn far better than Halo ever will and
: BF3 is built around large scale combat and, crucially, let's you drive a
: vehicle more than five meters without getting stunned by a spawn weapon).
: One stays (the opening populations were around 400, 000 and then dropped
: to a quarter of that). The one who stays motivation for doing so is as
: multitudinous as Halo's confused identities. It might be a love of heavy
: BTB gameplay, it might be because that player is one of those who is an
: absolute sucker for levelling systems no matter what the gameplay and
: wishes to reach SR 130. It might be that they fucking love the party
: gametype Regicide. But the question isn't why so few stayed it's why so
: many chose to leave...

: Halo 4 sold so many copies because it it had an 11 year established base of
: users and previous customers right? For 9 of those years Halo was about
: equal starts, checks, balances and largely reasonable design. I don't
: think it's unreasonable to think that many of that established user base
: came to Halo 4 expecting a direct, regular Master Chief sequel to Halo 3,
: Reach being the equivalent of an experimental off-shoot branch, not the
: foundation for Halo 4. Those players came to Halo, experienced instant
: respawn, random weapon drops, camo sniping, camo boltshotting, their
: favourite Warthog being stunned every three seconds by an unlocked spawn
: weapon, no ranked/social choice and realised they had to play for hours in
: order to unlock a perk so they didn't frequently run out of ammo (weapons
: vanishing every 12 seconds as they do). They probably realised at that
: point that all these things that were making Halo not feel like the game
: they'd enjoyed for a decade were being done better in other games in which
: they made sense. And so, they went to those other games.

: So, COD does unlock systems and fast, one shot kill, 60fps gameplay best.
: Battlefield 3 cornered the big battle market. What was always Halo's core
: strength? FOUR VERSUS FOUR, arena based slayer and objective gametypes.
: 343 launches with four smallish maps, and a shit load of BTB content. 6 of
: its subsequent 9 DLC maps are BTB. Halo no longer has a grip on
: thaepopular area of the 4v4 market. People who bought or rented Halo 4 to
: see if it was normal again have disappeared. They won't be back five
: months from launch when it's announced in a corner of an internet forum
: that Team Throwdown, a normal-ish Halo playlist is coming to Halo 4! After
: that opening week they've made their mind up and you've lost them forever.
: Well, at least until Halo 5 rolls around but even then they might not
: bother. See, next time, Halo won't have the 'Master Chief wasn't in those
: games so it doesn't count' excuse. Master Chief, along with the Halo name,
: is now tainted.
:

: Do I agree with everything he has to say? Nope. However, he does make some
: good points.

: What do you think?
It's so true. This needs to be the desktop background of every employee at 343i. Give The Henery my regards.