: You must have been lucky. I never went a day without having multiple matches
: where I there were people exploiting glitches, including BXR. In fact,
: since it wasn't an intended part of gameplay, for a good while I had no
: idea how someone was able to insta-kill me up close even though I had full
: shields. I found out later that they were cheating bastards that were
: exploiting a glitch. I also never went a day without at least one or two
: matches having a modder or standby-er. Whether it was the guy who could
: run at Mach speed, jump 100 feet in the air, and was armed with a
: rapid-fire aimbot-assisted sniper rifle, or the matches where you just
: spawned far above the stage and were spawn killed repeatedly, or matches
: where you were constantly in blue screen while the other guys were walking
: around killing with impunity, cheaters absolutely ruined my Halo 2
: experience. There's a reason why I never went back to it after Halo 3 came
: out, and I'm honestly not looking forward to seeing an entirely as-is Halo
: 2 matchmaking experience again. I'm sure modders and standby-ers won't be
: an issue anymore, but there's still going to be the assholes who BXR, BXB,
: quad shot, and superbounce routinely. Halo 2's MP is fundamentally broken,
: and I won't be playing it in matchmaking. I'll stick to customs where I
: can have my own in-house honor rules preventing such dickish behavior.

I guess I was lucky. Standbying and modding was the biggest problem, by far. Again, I rarely saw BXR in matchmaking. Superbounces too, aside from Zanzibar and maybe an occasional one elsewhere. Granted, I played a heck of a lot of Team Slayer, and one thing I noticed was that Superbouncing was a great way to advertise yourself to the enemy and get shot.

BXB was common, but... eh, again, I guess I never viewed that as an issue. I did it myself when I could manage to, so, take that for what it's worth, I guess.

I guess my opinion doesn't seem to be the majority one here, but I'll just throw this out there: To me, button combos were a part of the skill divide you ran into once you hit the mid-30s in something like Team Slayer. Below it, hardly anyone knew how to do it, and you rarely ran into it. Once you got into the mid-30s, any legit matches that you found where the other team wasn't flying an auto-firing warthog around the map while you spawned above the center ring on Sanctuary usually had players who had gotten pretty good with the button combos. I'm not upset about this, since they actually took some skill to pull off. If these people wanted to change controller layouts so they could BXR better, that's impressive to me, since it took a lot of time and energy to train themselves on the new layout. Lord knows BXRing effectively on the normal button layout is next to impossible. Quad shotting took a ridiculous amount of practice and great timing to be able to pull off consistently, and while I could occasionally do it, in the heat of a matchmaking game, nope. Wasn't ever able to. So, again, I guess I don't view the people who were able to pull these things off as cheaters, rather, people who invested a lot more time and practice into the game than me. And, you know, God forbid somebody invest more time and energy into a video game than I do and get better at it than me. *shrug*

In regards to superbouncing... eh, in matchmaking, I could take it or leave it. If it was removed, I wouldn't be that upset. Aside from the Zanzibar base bounce, I can't recall using any other jumps in matchmaking. But my biggest fear is that 343 wouldn't leave it in for customs, or wouldn't work out a way to do so. And then there goes arguably the best part about Halo 2 - huge tricking parties where everyone gets on top of Headlong or gets out of Burial Mounds. If I can't do those things anymore, I'm gonna start tossing shit around the room.