The future of Forge

Because Forge doesn't sell Halo, Halo sells Halo. Forge is just sprinkles. If they cut it from the franchise it would take an extremely miniscule hit and be done with it. It doesn't matter how good or bad the forge itself is, if the base game blows then our community shrinks. End of story.

 

That has nothing to do with what he said.

 

I know the thread has gone a little off topic from the original post, but this is kind of relevant to the current discussion for me. For the first time in about 6 years, I have absolutely no motivation to forge. For a while I was thinking that I was feeling this way despite the improvements in forge. What I've realized is that it's partially because of the improvements in forge.

I've spent so much time in forge over the years because I didn't like playing the game. The time I would've used to play was spent in forge instead. This part hasn't changed in H5. What's changed is a combination of two things. First, The game plays in way that I like even less than the previous Halo games, leaving me largely annoyed with how my designs play. Second, the amount of time required to complete a map that's top notch in all facets is much greater than it was in previous games. The combination of needing to invest more time, and getting a poorer result (in gameplay terms) has left me with no interest in forging anymore.

If it was only one or the other I'd probably be fine. If the game had a simpler forge (more akin to the last few iterations), I'd probably still be happily forging away. And if the game was one that I really truly enjoyed playing, I'd probably be forging less and playing more, but I'd still have the motivation to complete forge projects. Right now I'm just totally disinterested in forge. It's a foreign feeling to me, and feels really odd.

So I guess to summarize my point I'll say that if Forge continues to become more complex, the game will have to become better for me to have any interest in using it. I'm not going to spend more time to make maps that play worse.

 

I'm no one special. I'm not famous for anything. My opinion is worth no more or less than the next person. I only offer a perspective that most of you here don't share. I make this post because I have read this one and others on this site and I see a prevailing wisdom here that is not new or even unique to Halo but nonetheless is not good for gaming and Halo in particular. I saw someone trying to do something here and I see the same thing happening to him that I have seen every time someone else does something like this.

I'm over 60 years old. Most of you would call me an old man. You might wonder why I would care about anything here. Well, I like video games. I was around when the only arcade video game was Pong. I used to drop quarters in that game for hours. It was all we had. We didn't care about graphics or frame rates. Pong had no story. No campaign. No contests. It never won any awards. Most people have forgotten about it or never heard about it. It did, however, change everything. There are a lot of video games out there now, but still very few that can make a claim like that. Halo is one of those games. When the only choices were PC, Nintendo, Playstation and maybe Dreamcast, Microsoft snatched Halo from the jaws of Apple, and because they did that there is no apple console and the Xbox makes all the rules. I played PC games until one day my best friend invited me over to play a game he found called Halo CE. My PC gaming days were over. I wasn't alone.

From the very beginning Microsoft saw Halo as a franchise, not just a game. To this day they treat it as as such. A lot of good things happened because they do, but there were some... unanticipated consequences. Most notable, MS's heavy-handed business practices were often in conflict with Bungie's, the original developers. Bungie was making historic decisions about combining storytelling with video gaming. Microsoft simply saw an opportunity to have us all playing their game on their machine and paying for the privilege. Can't blame them. What corporation wouldn't want that? They needed something better than Pong to do that and Halo fit the bill like no other. I'd like to say it was because the story was so compelling or the campaign had no comparison, but that's not true. The thing that got the most people to buy Halo: CE was the multiplayer. Back in those days multiplayer games were rare. Most of the console games available were single player. Back then we rented games before we bought them. I can remember combing the aisles of Blockbuster for games that would at least support two players so my son and I could play together. That was hard. Meanwhile, just before Halo: CE was released someone, probably someone from MS, suggested that CE should have a competitive multiplayer bonus. The Playstation had two controller ports and you needed to have an adapter for four players. The Xbox released with four controller ports, so you could invite three of your friends to your house and go head-to-head to see who was best. If one of them brought their own Xbox, well... it was full-scale ON. People bought the game and an Xbox to get good so that they could beat their friends. Being "good at Halo" was between you and your friends. But what if you could play other people in other places without having to pack up your Xbox? Microsoft had this question and they... encouraged... Bungie to find an answer. Mind you, Bungie had no interest whatsoever in online multiplayer, or even multiplayer in particular. CE's multiplayer was an afterthought. Halo 2's multiplayer was a back-burner low priority. The multiplayer they showcased at E3 was made up by essentially one person. Halo 2's release was not about the campaign. It was about Online Multiplayer and Xbox Live. Bungie cobbled together some games to play online and borrowed an old PC method to give players some incentive: Rank. Well, it worked. "Halo" went from being better than your friends to being better than anyone , and Bungie was good enough to provide all the proof one needed to say who was good and who wasn't.

There was one thing about those online games that was true then and true today. They sucked. Some of those maps were truly awful. The "good" ones were only tolerable. However, the gameplay was more engaging than any other game out there, and every other developer was gunning for Halo. There was just something about the way you played Halo that was different from other games. You knew it in your heart when you played but it eluded a definition. When Halo 2 got picked up by MLG many thought they had finally pinned it down. It was that heart-thumping intensity that comes from pitting yourself against a worthy opponent. That was surely what Halo was all about. Fans demanded more. They wanted games and maps worthy of "true Halo gameplay". Every map Bungie produced was panned as pure **** seconds after release. Everyone, especially everyone with a high rank, had nothing good to say about Bungie's maps. Frankly, Bungie found it annoying. They weren't into matchmaking. They were telling a story. In fact, they got SO annoyed by everyone telling them they sucked at making maps they said, "You know what? If you guys think this is easy; if you guys think you can do better, here you go. Here's Forge. Make your own ****ing maps." THAT'S how we got Forge. THAT'S how we got Custom Games. THAT'S how we got Rocket Race and Griffball and Red vs Blue.

THAT'S how we got Forgehub.

We had people saying they were better at Halo than Bungie, and some of them put their money where their mouths were. Forge turned out to be better for Halo than MLG, but only Forgers know that. Bungie knew it. That's why Reach Forge was better than Halo 3 Forge. Unfortunately there were no Fifties in Reach so competitive players hated it and made it their business to make everyone else hate it. They blamed "gameplay" but, as I said, Halo gameplay always sucked. It was never perfect. At best it was usually better than the other guys, but not always by much. What kept Halo going was the fact that it's a franchise that doesn't depend solely on online multiplayer being good. Microsoft could sell the Xbox at a loss because they were making their money primarily off of Halo and Xbox Live, and they raked in so much more from books and toys. Frustration over "gameplay" was magnified when Microsoft created 343i and THAT group had the same attitude as the "MLG-I-Got-A-Fifty-and-you-don't" crowd and they were going to FIX REACH.

(note: Halo: REACH is my favorite Halo game).

Remember how that went? It drove a firm wedge between those that cared for "competitive" gaming and those that didn't. Generally 343i tried to make one specific feature of Halo the only thing that mattered. They took what they believed was enticing people to play and shoved it down our throats. With Reach we got endless balance tweaks that never seemed to satisfy anyone. Firefight got Firefight Arcade. They soon realized nothing they did was going to change any opinions about Reach, so they gave up, took all the worst features of Reach and gave us Halo 4: The Game We Would All Like To Forget.

I was mostly a campaign player until Halo 4. Not really into matchmaking. Never had much to show for rank. I tried Forging in Halo 3 but it was... trying. As I said I really liked Reach but circumstances kept me from trying Reach's Forge. That, and my experience with Halo 3 Forge. By the time I did try it Halo 4 was out. I didn't care much for Halo 4 matchmaking but Spartan OPs, that was different. I loved SpOps and the idea that we would get something new on a regular basis and I was prepared to pay for the privilege. The story sucked but showed promise, so 343i dropped it, and now all I had was Forge. So, I started Forging.

It was so different from Halo 3 Forge. It was not unlike Reach Forge but I didn't Forge in Reach so I had no idea. I found it compelling. I could actually make a Halo map more like how I wanted it to be. How ---> I <---- wanted it to be. For the most part, I didn't need to resort to using some sort of "trick" to make the map behave the way I wanted. It wasn't perfect. It was harder to use than Halo 3 Forge, but it was easier to get the results I wanted, so I didn't care if it was harder. Any map I ever tried to make in Halo 3 was accomplished in seconds in Halo 4. Forge didn't get harder. It got more sophisticated. You can make a map in Halo 5 Forge the same way you made it in Halo 3, but that would be like riding your bike while everyone else is driving a car. Sure, you might be healthier and saving a few bucks, but if you really want to go somewhere far and you have a car you will probably leave the bike at home.

I loved Forging, but it was difficult to get a map that wasn't designed specifically for 4v4 slayer to get any notice. From the Beginning I always loved Big Team Battle, and when Dominion came out I wanted to Forge maps for that gametype. In fact, every map I ever made was intended for as many players as multiplayer could handle. All the maps I worked on the most were made on Forge Island, and the goal was to use all three islands. I made some pretty good maps but they needed playtesting and it was hard to get people for that. The only reason I got any attention at all was because I quickly got a high rank by playing SpOps and some people took that to mean I was "good at Halo" and wanted to be my friend. Realizing THAT shook my resolve. Then my 360 gave up the ghost and I stopped playing. It wasn't the bad "gameplay". It was the communities' growing myopia. This insistence that there is only one thing that matters in Halo, and any other pursuit is pointless. Because the "gameplay" sucks. Even though it always has.

With no 360 I went looking for a PC game. I found one intriguing title called Space Engineers. It's not a game like Halo in that it has no story or campaign. It's what Steam calls an "Early Access" game because you can buy it even though they're still working on it. There might be a campaign some day, no one knows yet. In the meantime, what they do have is very much like Forge. You can make "maps", you can make things to go on the maps, and you can invite your friends. The game engine is so flexible that a lot of people make maps and things from other games and even TV shows and movies. Popular themes are StarGate, Star Trek, Star Wars, ok practically any game or movie with "star" in the title and, of course, Halo. You can make spacecraft in Space Engineers, and probably one of the most copied spacecraft in SE is the Pillar of Autumn. The assets you have to work with don't lend themselves to the curved surfaces of Covenant craft or the angularity of Forerunner style, but the UNSC has a firm encampment in the SE community.

However, what I have been astonished by, and what has led me to invest nearly 5000 hours in the game over the course of a bit less that three years, is the one thing I have seen fostered in the Space Engineers community that seems to be the most severe taboo in Halo.

Collaborative Effort

With Halo, despite all effort to the contrary, everything is about the individual. It's this Highlander "There-Can-Only-Be-One" mentality. You are either "The Best", one of "The Best", or nobody. Halo 3 was the worst. If you didn't have a Fifty your credibility was zero. That's why people bought accounts, and that's why Bungie removed rank from matchmaking in Reach. In any match, the guy with the highest score on the winning team would always insist that HE won the game and the other players on the team were just there. The most popular boast was "I carried my team to victory" when most likely that wasn't the reason at all. In a ranked game, you did NOT want to be the guy with the lowest score on the losing team. That loss was YOUR responsibility and had nothing to do with how poorly the rest of the team played. To this day any match you see is four individuals against four other individuals. A "team" means nothing more than "those are the other guys that are on my side". They have learned nothing from Halo itself. About how Halo has always been about teamwork. Blue Team. Gray Team. Noble. Reach was specifically about teamwork, and that's why competitive players hated it. I mean, how the hell do you stand out if you work in a team? How can I claim I won the game if all these other people are around claiming that they had a hand in it? How can I say I'm the best if I had help? So with Halo we glorify individual achievement. We put "The Best" on pedestals.

Then, we let "the best" tell us what we like and don't like.


Wait... there's more

 

Space Engineers, when it comes to Forging, is completely different. We share stuff. I mean, we really, really share stuff. Anything you make in SE can be uploaded to Steam Workshop for use by anyone else that has the game. SE has more content by far than any other game available on Steam. Everyone eventually puts something on the Workshop, no matter how incredible or how shitty it is. Why? because somewhere out there is someone that would rather download what you made than make it themselves. SE is.. more sophisticated than Forge, although Forge has some aspects I wish SE had. The fact that you can just download other people's stuff and modify it to suit your purposes makes learning how to make stuff much less intimidating. When you download someone else's stuff you can see what they did and now you can do it too and all of a sudden it's not as hard as you thought and now YOU"RE the guy that "knows stuff".

The other thing is that you can do some incredible stuff on your own, but if you have just one other person to help you your thing ends up not being twice as good, it ends up ten times better. The more people you have working on your map, the greater the map becomes exponentially. After three years there is no one that considers them self or anyone else "The Best". Everyone is either "good" or "getting there". There are some occasional player-sponsored "contests" out there, but they are usually sponsored by a small segment of the community that is looking for something they can use for their own purposes, and the winners are not universally hailed as "The Best" or even "better than anyone else." No one really cares because everyone believes that whatever they made is the "best ever" and if you don't believe that then you just suck. People make and do what pleases THEM, not you or me.

In addition, it's WAY EASIER to get people to see what you have done and appreciate it There is no Panel of People Better Than YOU that is going to decide what you will see and what you will NOT see. There are PLENTY of people out there that will gladly showcase what YOU have done even if it's not necessarily their own personal cup of tea. It all matters to everyone. That's the kind of community people actually want to be a part of. It's a community that is not trying its level best to keep you out of it. I don't know how long it will last, but I'm enjoying the ride.

But my favorite game is still Halo. I love the game, the story, the books, everything. Ok, I don't like Sarah Palmer. She was just... I just didn't... just... no. I am not worried about Halo as a franchise. I am concerned about a segment of the community that wants to claim responsibility for the success of the franchise and believes they matter more than anyone else, up to and including the developers. This post was about the future of Forge and what needs to happen in order for more people to pick it up and use it. Things were going fine until

Certain types of individuals have been saying that since the release of Halo 2. They want the current game to fail because that would validate their glory from the last game. Well, if you were a legit Fifty in Halo 3 no one cares today, and no one is going to dust off a copy of that old game to prove now that they are better at it than you were then. Nothing that matters now about Halo 5 is going to matter when Halo 6 comes out, or any of the myriad other Halo games 343i is likely to produce. It's all about moving on. Getting better. 343i made some mistakes and they have learned from them (not fast enough, in my opinion, but then, I'm an old man

There are a lot better answers to the question than "don't bother because the game sucks." For many of us the game does NOT suck. Those of us that like Forge are getting pretty darn sick and tired of people telling us the only kind of map worth Forging is some kind of tiny 2v2 map crammed with decorations so that it looks good but cant hold your interest more than 15 minutes. Despite everything now possible with Forge the "Best Forgers" only want to see (and only want YOU to see) maps that can barely fit 4 players and only have two weapons. We have been led to believe those are the only kinds of maps worth making, then we are told don't even bother with that because THEY don't like the way the game plays, and THAT'S because the game no longer plays the way it did ten years ago.

Just forget that ****. The game is not going to go backwards. Going forward means no longer being the same. There is no single feature that is going to "save" Halo because there never was and Halo does not need "saving". Better technology means we will not be playing Halo the way we did on the original Xbox. These days we have 3D and Virtual Reality to look forward to. Soon, instead of using a mouse to place an object on your screen, you'll be using your hand to place objects in a space that appears to be right in front of you in the room with you. Your maps will look more the way you intend and not obviously contrived by using things in a way not intended. You will be able to create maps that rival anything 343i makes.

What would help is if 343i made a MUCH BETTER EFFORT to SHOWCASE THE WORK OF PEOPLE THAT DO MORE WITH FORGE THAN MAKE PRETTY 4V4 SLAYER MAPS. That sort of gameplay was the result of the LIMITATIONS of the original Xbox. Those 2v2 games people loved during CE was the best that could be had on one Xbox, and there were quite a few of us that were annoyed when the 360 took that from us, and then the Xbox one doesn't even let you play Halo in your house with even one friend unless they bring their own machine. No, what was so great about Halo CE-3 had more to do with who was in the same room playing with you than how great the "gameplay" was, because the "gameplay" always disappointed one way or another but it was always still better than the competition so we just played the game warts and all and hoped the problems got fixed in the next game. Despite what you might hear from some people, doubling down on 1v1, 2v2 and 4v4 arena games has NOT done anything to bring the throngs back to Halo. It's not that people don't like it. It's just that most people just can't maintain the level of intensity required for any appreciable amount of time. That's why the most popular playlists continues to be Big Team Battle. It's not necessarily less intense, but it definitely does not wear you out as fast. I would love to see 343i ask for more BTB stuff from the Forge community. I would love to see more people working together to make more epic maps and gametypes that would spark interest in even more people.

Forge is really the best way to spark that interest because Forgers will do or try to do what 343i will not. Forge is the best way for the players to explain to 343i what they're not getting right or what's missing. Those of us that bought CE when it came out never dreamed there would ever be such a thing as Griffball or Infection or Rocket Race or really anything other than a game where four people went in and whoever was still alive 15 minutes later was "The Best". There needs to be a place in Halo where what is "best" is not dictated by others. A person needs to be able to decide for themselves what is good and satisfactory. There needs to be a place in Halo where not having won does not thereby make you a loser and thus irrelevant. There needs to be a place in Halo where there is at least SOME potential that something you did might actually have an impact on the game or even the franchise.

Everyone wants to be part of something big. Some people just want it all for themselves, and if they can't have that then they don't want anyone to have anything. This thread is not about whether Halo 5 sucks. That doesn't matter. This thread is about FORGE and what will get more people to use it. If you are a "follower" you don't understand Forge. If you are the type that just does what everyone else does you might find Forge frustrating because right now everyone seems to be doing the same thing i.e. remaking old maps that have been remade a million times or trying to make a 4v4 map that is somehow different from all the other 4v4 maps that have been made. Forge is literally the response from the makers of the game to those who claimed they could do better. That is what Forge is and that is what Forge needs to be.

Stop with the beauty contests already. Let's see some REAL maps that will challenge 343i to get off their ass and other people off their high horse.



My 2.5 cents

 

Ok I just skimmed through this and all I took from it was "343 learned from their mistakes." Literally nothing significantly supports this claim.

People in this thread are really taking Xandrith's opinion either A, really out of context. Or B, they don't get his really strieght forward point. Let's break it down to an atomic level.

- 343 have not made a single capable Halo game, it seems this will never change. Even when they rehash the good ones they always find a way to screw it up.

- Since 343 games have to follow trends and implement brain dead mechanics that have been proven multiple times to be game breaking, the game is not fun to play in a casual or competitive aspect.

- As seen with H5, the Forge is great and can only get better. But, there is no insentive to make levels for it if the sandbox is awful. This statement will most likely apply to the next new game as well.

And just to really make sure you people understand these points throughly, let me just ensure this stays in context.

- I don't care if you like to Forge, that's great, but has nothing to do with what I'm talking about.

- 75 to 85% I'd say of a healthy Halo population play for its gameplay and base features. Since the gameplay is awful, kind of explains why Halo is in the 20s and not the top 5 for most played Xbox games.

There are really only 2 options for 343 at this point. One, make a good HALO game. Or two, give us a polished H3A and market it correctly to the masses COMPLETE with all base features, a great Forge, and an art style that dosen't make us want to throw up. (This could also apply to a new game too, now that I'm thinking about it)

 

I disagree with everything you just said but I love and appreciate the post. Super cool hearing your perspective.

That being said if I'm answering this question in context of the future forge "community", I'll repeat myself. If the base game isn't good, the community will continue to shrink. End of discussion.


Also people love 2s because it's genuinely the better player count. 2s and btb have always been Halos strongest.

--- Double Post Merged, May 1, 2017 ---

That is absolutely correct.

 

3v3 is underrated tbh.

 

I agree

 

Nah, I think I will mom. I'm a rebel.

 

Yeah as much as I love to follow the soap opera that is a forgehub thread, when you guys write a dissertation as a reply I generally scroll to the next comment.

Let's keep it fresh and stick to one liner insults please.

 

I've also been around since the days of Pong. I have an entirely different view than you do. That's to be expected though. What one person likes, another is going to dislike. Just because you perceive there to have been a change in focus towards the competitive side of Halo doesn't mean that's accurate, much less 'bad' (as you seem to be suggesting). It's simply your perception. I haven't seen it that way at all. In fact, I see it just the opposite. The primary focus of both H4 and H5 has been on the casual aspect of the game. H4 focused primarily on BTB, and H5 focuses primarily on Warzone. That's not even taking into account the way gameplay has shifted (in my opinion) to make the game more casual friendly. Overall though, my feeling is that the game has gone downhill in almost every possible way (aside from forge), so it's not at all surprising that everyone feels like the part they love most has gotten worse, and been ignored.

I pretty much agree with your take on being the best though. I put very little stock in contests for this reason, and generally avoid participating in them. I'm fiercely competitive, but I've always felt that I'm competing against myself, trying to constantly push myself to do better than I've done on previous projects. I'm not concerned in the least about whether I'm better or worse than anyone else, because it's all just someones opinion. At the same time, competition between people can most definitely make everyone better, so it's not the source of evil that people sometimes make it out to be.

Anywhoooo, I appreciate the time you took to write all of that up. I always enjoy hearing from people that have different opinions than I do.

 

i appreciate your short and to the point response.

 

The only solution is to hold another forge contest where I'm the only judge. Then everyone will be happy

 

Just lemme know the guidelines and I'll have a sewer map for you pronto