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| Re: MLG and Halo: Is this the end of the road? | |
| Posted By: Schooly D <schoolyd@teamschoolyd.org> | Date: 12/2/11 9:50 p.m. |
In Response To: MLG and Halo: Is this the end of the road? (RVideo) : Over at another forum, we have been talking quite a lot about the future of : Halo in MLG. Many insiders including Gandhi and Neighbor (both household : names for H2 MLG) have their doubts as to the future of MLG Halo. : For the last venue that recently aired, the fan turnout was low compared to
Sad but not surprising. 1) Halo was the big draw for MLG back when it was the only name in the arena. Its popularity has dwindled as other games have done a better job of attracting the audience Halo once had a monopoly over (COD being the prime example) 2) Reach exacerbated a problem Halo 3 introduced regarding noncompetitive apathy toward competitive play. With Halo 2, the pros were playing basically the same game everyone else played, just at an extremely high level. The only differences were things like starting weapons, timers, etc. With Halo 3, increased customization (Forge primarily) led to competitive players tailoring the game to what they wanted. This was really the start of the manifest disconnect between competitive and noncompetitive play from the perspective of both groups: competitive players didn't want to play normal Halo 3, and noncompetitive players had no interest in watching or caring about what competitive players did because it was like they were playing a totally different game. Reach continued this trend. The customization options in Reach are even more robust than they were in Halo 3. Most MLG maps are made completely from scratch. And the disconnect was made even worse by the fact that "default" Reach had/has very noncompetitive settings (wacky/inappropriate Armor Abilities, slow movement speed, bloom on the basic weapon(s) of the game), making it necessary for competitive players to alter many fundamental aspects of the game. 3) Halo can't really hope to compete with Starcraft 2 at MLG events just by the nature of the games. Starcraft 2 is a slow-paced game that relies much more on strategy than execution, giving commentators ample time to break down exactly what's going on in the game at all times, with plenty of detail. Coupled with the fact that everything in the game can be captured from the same top-down perspective the players use means spectators in the audience and on streams can take in the whole game rather easily. This contrasts with Halo. The game has comparatively more reliance on execution than strategy, it's much more fast-paced, and the only perspective worth anything is the POV of one of the eight players in the game which can never give anyone the full picture. As far as competitive Halo is concerned, Reach was a failure. I'll be interested to see what route 343i takes with Halo 4. Will they continue to casualize the game and force competitive players to contort the game even further to render it marginally appropriate for competitive play? Or will they realize that the key for an inherently competitive game's long term health and success (any game where the object is to dominate other humans is inherently competitive) is its competitive fanbase?
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