I just ask that you remember me Mick ),: Ive tried to be your friend on live for 3-4 yrs but your list was always too full for me... So you probably had no idea, but I was there bro. I was there... As sad as this is, it had me laughing my face off!:
While this may be true, I'd hardly pin it on Insane.. but I don't care to discuss it any further, as it's rather inappropriate. Just remember, community, as much of an asshole I may have become in the final year or so I was a part of the staff here (though you guys may not have even realized it lol), believe me that it was always in your favor Had the clique been more Insane-LIGHTS friendly, this thread might not have ever been created. I still believe in FH and think it can do well. You don't need thousands and thousands of people to be a great community. It can happen with 10, 20, 50 (see: Ghosts of Onyx)... and sometimes, it can grow into something much larger under the right direction (see: Halo Customs). The important thing to remember is that Forge Hub doesn't have to be king to be successful. It just needs the right attitude.
Just to be clear, I have no intention of pinning it on Insane. I wasn't even criticising him there, just saying that some people weren't as happy with the admin situation post TDF as they could have been. That left shock as the only consistent top level voice for a long time, so when his activity took a hit it was worse than it would have otherwise been. I think your closing statement is very well said, though.
Note: Units are members/day averaged over a week. The week when FH hit 9/day corresp I feel like your over analyzing. Objectively: -We are a Halo community, Halo is in a horrible place at the moment= less activity. -As to why where doing worse then other halo community's is where a forge driven community(in even in the name of the site) and Halo 4 forge is pretty bad. Sites like THC and 343i have other things going for them so that when people upload maps on there sites that is just a byproduct of people using there site. -So when you combine Halo 4 been a flop, Forging sucking in halo 4, Not to sound rude or anything but from a unbiased perspective what incentive does anyone have to come here? Subjectively: To be honest only reason I come here is for the people because I like the mindset/POV of "forgers"(which this site attracts), When Halo Reach was going strong I was here everyday looking up maps playing halo reading news immersed in the community (even though didn't play many TGIFs) but with Halo and forging as a hole this was my favorite place to come for Halo/forging news info maps etc. I don't care much about Halo 4 game feels like takeaway its ok to play a little bit but no lasting impressions or anything impressive or immersive about the game or the forge which directly puts all those negative traits onto the community's, If Halo sucks and halos forge sucks this niche community will suffer no matter how many admins or custom game lobby's or polish you use to keep it afloat it will sink eventually until there is a good Halo and forge imo.
Interesting, I honestly though Halo: Reach made Forge unappealing and would be the cause of it "dying." There was no reason to come to central place for custom maps anymore with the filesharing system they put in place, along with no desire to go to Forge Hub via any external site. I don't think there has a been a driving factor since Halo 3 which allowed maps and gametypes to go viral, along with Frank's and Lukems' community spotlight thing that he ran briefly. Does anybody remember waiting for the Weekly Update, when they actually mattered? There was DLC that people actually got excited for. I think it's just a general lack of interest, even before Halo 4. Maybe I'm just outgrowing it or something. Either way, it's disappointing but it's not too late.
If that was the case this site was destined to fail, This site was created in Halo 3 with the miniscule amounts of forge tools we had and painstaking effort it took to ghost merg and if Halo reach's forge that massively improved forge with tons more easy to use features large open ForgeWorld to make massive maps which was improved more then anyone expected or could reasonably want, that had everyone on Forgehub hyped like mad and is the best forge in a Halo game by a long shot(Halo 4 wasn't out then only Halo 3 and Reach had forge), If that is what the "cause of it "dying." is then well **** we got no hope. Imo its as simple as, there are 10000's of forums on net why would someone come here? For Halo and forge, (Halo 4 is bad so numbers are down) so out of the small group of people who would visit a Halo forum why would someone choose this one over anther Halo forum or 343i's forum? Because this is a forge forum. But forge is pretty bad in Halo 4 so no one is really interested in forge at the moment (not even regular forgers like it as much or to same extent as reach) so no ones coming here or been active or interested.
It seems like I am the most optimistic person ever. I ****ing love Halo 4's forge. I think what we need to take away from the downfall of staff and Halo 4 in general is this; this community doesn't have to be big to be fun. The small amount of loyal members left may need to make more of an effort for it to be fun, but it still can be. Once the staff problem is sorted (I hope it will be soon), we can still thrive. I attended a great TCOJ lobby last night, it highlighted the reason we are all here; to play custom games. We're here to have fun playing Halo, so lets make that happen. If you want Forge Hub to stay around, make an extra effort to get involved and attend custom lobbies.
This. To be honest, I was far from mature at the time, but I feel like we all cared for the site more than the current administration, and that matters so, so much.
Never gonna happen until the staff is composed 100% of mature, objectively minded individuals and this place breaks away from the "Good 'ol Boy" system of running things. True criticism of maps has never been well looked upon here, and there's been a culture of elitism in regards to the feature system for far too long. You ask me, I'd say the only forge community worth a damn is the micro community at THC as the two staffers that manage is are leaps and bounds more mature and objective minded than those that run FH or Halo Customs. There are some rowdy members, but the staff keeps them well in check without going over board like FH does with their infraction system. Simply enough, it's the only forge community where the staff isn't involved in some form of a circle jerk with their buddies.
Forge could be so much more, but it's not impressive, not in the very least bit. It's an old generation style map editor that is a world behind the map editors of today. It's simplistic which is good but very limited at the same time. I think they should make forge a seperate disc (map editor disc) and have it install on a PC. You could make maps for single and multiplayer on the pc then just upload the map to your filshare through waypoint and then download it on your xbox when finished. They should get rid of the lego blocks and allow the user to design their own geometry like in sketchup. The only reason anyone would like forge for the way it is now is b/c it's so simple to learn, use, and easily accessible. In my eyes, that's less important than the overall quality of the map editor and the the lack of quality in forge is the main reason it is so far behind other map editors.
This is nonsense. The staff we just lost half of was pretty much entirely "mature, objectively minded individuals." It was a good group - but they wanted to feel the site was headed in the right direction and like their efforts meant something in the larger scheme of things, and there were no such assurances to be had. I think anybody who has been posting here actively in the last six months can attest to a different, friendlier, more helpful attitude across the entire staff; it was a decided-upon change in mindset, driven from the top down (well, almost the top - RightSide was really the leader on it). We were giving out far less infractions, and basically none for "spam" which used to be one of the worst thing about the site rules, and instead giving people gentle verbal warnings a lot more when they stepped out of line. But all of that only goes so far when the site has other problems that literally can't be addressed due to uncaring ownership and a tech admin who is MIA. As for the feature system, here's how it works, from an insider's perspective (I'll use present tense for clarity, though I'm currently ex-staff): 1) We scan the community suggestions thread for new maps people think should be featured. 2) We download those maps and play them. 3) If they're good, we feature them. 4) If there are no good suggestions, or no suggestions at all, we look at any and all suggestions from within the staff, talk about them internally, and playtest them to see if they're featurable; then we feature those. It's exactly what you would think it is, given all of our time and resource constraints. We don't play every map that ever exists because nobody can or would do that; we have to rely on people to suggest good maps to us. But there's no "good ol' boy" bullshit going on. It's been a long time since anyone on staff had a map featured. I released a half-dozen generally well-liked maps while I was staff - you know how many of them were featured? Zero. You know how many staff-made maps in general were featured while I was a journo, even though we had multiple active forgers on staff? Zero. It's been a long time, and a complete turnover of site staff, since the kind of shenanigans you're talking about even might have been going on, yet you're still grinding this axe. The only thing that is still probably true is that yes, it helps a little to know a staff member. You know why? We have to come up with ideas of maps to feature - for a while we were trying to have one a week. If no good suggestions are coming in, we have to think of some. It is perhaps not the biggest scandal ever that we first think of maps we've actually played, which includes a lot by friends of ours. For instance, Audience and I were running TCOJ once a week ever since Halo 4 shipped, and most of the guys that came through the lobby are friends. If someone asks us to suggest a feature, it's pretty damn likely to be one made by a friend of ours, because we can't quit our damn jobs and/or school just to play maps by random strangers around the clock. And still out of all those guys (over a dozen regulars) we featured only one map by one guy.
You're looking at it from the standpoint of a map designer. Forge is only accidentally made for guys like you. Its intentions were clear from its original state in Halo 3: a way to place scenery objects, weapons and spawn points on default maps, or secondarily a way for players to goof off and have some fun in custom games. Those are the people Bungie was mainly targeting with the tool, and also the people 343i is still interested in (which is why Halo 4 forge was basically a clone of Reach forge; they've already got something that's "good enough," essentially). That this community and others sprung up around forge, and that it can be used to make actual maps, is cool - but it was an accident and a by-product. And we're still a tiny, tiny pocket of the larger Halo community, which is why they're not in a rush to give us a Far Cry-style editor. They are content with it being easy and therefore limited; it meets the needs of 95% of the people who use it. Still though, I'd love a real map editor in a Halo game. The problem is how to justify it. I think the most innovative thing they could do is sell the map editor (for PC, as you suggest) - don't sell DLC maps anymore, but just sell the editor and let the community generate DLC content, then cherry-pick the best of it and give it away for free (then make having it mandatory for playlists that use those maps). That model obviously won't offset the lost DLC revenue, so they could sell some armor permutations and weapon skins and junk too. This scenario seems win-win to me - they get to keep their basic DLC revenue, we get a real map editor, and the matchmaking experience improves in multiple ways.
Boy you've changed since you joined the in-group here dude. Shameful to see you actually lie through your teeth in support of the self-serving ass clowns that used to run the place.
I used to have hopes that one of these days you would going to grow the hell up and realize not everyone is out to get you. But I can see those hopes were misplaced. Every word I said above is the absolute truth. I have nothing to hide. I am not currently a member of staff, and have no serious designs on getting back in. I am not XBL friends with at least half of the people I just worked with - only ever talked to them on the staff forum and on Skype when decisions needed to be made. There's no shadowy back room of guys lighting cigars with hundred dollar bills and conspiring against Halo Council, or you personally. This is all a product of your fevered, juvenile imagination. And the sick irony of course is that you'd be happy to be part of a true good ol' boy circle jerk, if you could stop pissing everyone off long enough to get into one. After all, you're the guy that invented a fake prox account on this forum just so you could talk up your own maps and talk down your competition. Not to mention, bagging on the maps of people you were allegedly friends with when they got featured, oh so undeservedly in your eyes. So if you'd like to start discussing who among us is a LIAR, I'm ready and willing to jump into that sewer.
Yeah I understand the original idea behind forge but is is slowly developing into a more advanced editor. If they added an advanced editor they would attract many map designers to halo, many great maps would be made that would probably put official maps in the shadows and it would keep the community happy with so much great content added all the time and never ending. The maps would only grow better and better, more mini-games would be made. Look at games made over 10 years ago, the only reason they still have a community is b/c of stuff like an advanced editor and they're still selling copies of their games. Because Forge is a dull boy, after the first month or two much of the community grew bored with the game. There's no award for reaching 130 in rank, it's only a matter of time and once you get it you're nothing special. Before everyone strived to better their Skill ranking on the road of trying to get a 50. Even if you were in the 40's it still stood for something and gave you a sense of pride. Back to Forge, the idea that was so great about Forge is b/c everyone loved Halo. So actually modifying maps and being able to play custom designed maps were so cool b/c it was fresh and new top Halo and added a lot more immersive experience for the player. Now, it's no longer new and fresh and they actually took away from the immersive experience with many changes and deductions in Halo 4. I think if they added a editor like I spoke about before it would make the game much more immersive, even more than when forge was first introduced.