In Response To: Re: MLG and Halo: Is this the end of the road? (Schooly D)
: 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?
:
Your post presumes 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", which I think is frankly ridiculous... MLG =/= a game's competitive fanbase.
I'm a competitive person, and I think MLG's approach of "I want to make every game play like *this*" is stupid and sucks the fun and enjoyment out of everything. As you pointed out, FPS games simply aren't as fun to watch as a spectator sport. That's not Reach's fault. There's no way to improve that in Halo 4 or beyond.
If MLG drops Halo, I cannot see how this impacts the wider world beyond the few people who care about MLG.
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