Reach didn't have filesharing at launch though, so it didn't even matter if the forge mechanics were superior. Halo 3's community (on b.net) was just better, and there's no denying that, regardless of what you think of each individual game. I remember being registered on Bungie.net before I even got an Xbox 360 looking at custom maps.
Halo 3's Forge community was "better" for many reasons, and I'd argue not just one in particular. Reason 1: As Schnitzel mentioned, there was a larger population. Larger population = larger feeding pool for niche communities, like Forge. Generally a larger pool of people has a larger proportion of skilled ones, hence a lot of the standout maps from that era. Reason 2: Better online, non-console interactions. Bungie.net doesn't get enough credit - ads and text hyping the site were plastered all over the in-game text, so the readership of the Bungie News Feed was pretty damn high. That very Bungie News Feed happened to mention a lot of off-site communities, FH being one of them of course. So there was a 2-link chain from inside the game to the belly of the beast when it came to niche groups - game gets you to read Bnet, Bnet links you to cool community you're interested in. This was brilliant, because it bolstered the communities with new blood, and that new blood made the game better with good maps, gametypes, and all manner of custom content. That better content convinced more people to visit Bnet, and lo and behold you have a virtuous circle of player interaction and developer curation. Reason 3: Forge was ****ing abysmally difficult to do anything cool with. Interlocking, geomerging, and all of that were awful and time-consuming to perform. This was actually a positive in a couple of ways - the higher barrier to entry caused Forge newbies to seek out communities for Forging advice, so instead of just Forging on their own and tossing a map on their File Share, they would instead find places like FH, jump into a TGIF party or the forums, and become immediately exposed to Forge maps of way higher quality than they had initially produced. A guild-esque ethic grew in this community, where newbies would "work their way up" the Forging skill ladder by learning from those who created seemingly mind-blowing stuff. Students became masters, masters became moderators, and so on. Additionally, since it was more difficult to make maps, only the most dedicated players would persevere through the whole process of making a "good" map, and that would have a filtering effect on the overall quality of maps produced here. Community support encouraged a lot of maps to get done that wouldn't have gotten done otherwise, and map testing parties functioned like a crowdsourced QA department, which undoubtedly had positive effects on the quality of maps overall. I would also love to see site discovery stats from the H3 era, because I have a hunch a lot of people came here from YouTube Forge tutorials, Google searches for "how to merge objects in Forge," etc. and hopped on the train that way. Reason 4: Bungie Favorites. I think the importance of BFaves gets way understated around here. We had a direct, developer-to-player portal where "elite" content was showcased every week. When I saw that maps were featured on BFaves, I instantly wanted to find out how I could get mine included, and that started my Bungie.net group days - I literally made a group to bump good maps on the Community Files Forums, which in retrospect is hilarious. But every single player of Halo 3 had two-button access to five maps every week, and I don't doubt that the attention-craving side of many of us salivated over the prospect of getting to BFaves. Communities like ForgeHub were showered with love and attention by Bungie, so odds are quite a few people did the math and realized getting in with FH would be a direct path to having a shot at BFaves. Reason 5: ForgeHub's Featuring System. For all its flaws, ForgeHub did a hell of a job recognizing great maps and gametypes in the Halo 3 days. Getting front-paged on FH was something to brag about in the wider community, and it was an instant ticket to several thousand downloads. The point of this is that ForgeHub incentivized people to stick around, going so far as to give a "Premium" title to those with 2+ front page honors. Those who succeeded were given more incentive to continue to succeed, and while that may have been true of a lot of other places since then, in my opinion it was the final piece of a puzzle which made ForgeHub the pinnacle of Halo 3 Forge communities - FH attracted the dedicated, who then honed their skills, got better, and stuck around. Lastly, the novelty of being able to make maps for Halo in general helped, especially for those of us who played CE or H2 religiously. So, I don't think the H3 era is looked upon with "rose-colored glasses" for no reason - there sure were a lot of good things working together to make FH awesome in that time period - but nostalgia has an element of relativity as well. Given how average Reach's Forge community was and how Halo 4's screwing the pooch all but killed the Forge ethic, relatively speaking, Halo 3's Forge era was objectively the best time to be a Forger from a community standpoint, even though the tools weren't up to par with what we see now. Maps got 2 or 3 pages of comments in the forums, weekly events had wait lists, YouTubers vlogged about the community, and in general the "buzz" was sustained for all 3 years of H3's time in the spotlight. When the social aspect died down, a lot of the exhibitionist-type creative people bailed, leaving the quieter and more engineery people the mantle of the community, which they have borne ever since in relative silence.
That was pretty crazy. Pointed out a low of things I didn't think of, props. Still most of this applies to H3's time as the game of choice, and latter titles sadly have no similar levels of support. Any of y'all play the beta yet? I'm enjoying the hell out of it. Only game I actually enjoy more than it currently is CE.
Miss ya too Furry, hope you're doing good as well. I'm mostly playing Destiny on PS4 - PSN tag is D-bo37 if you perchance switched ecosystems as well. Been playing the H5 beta on my roommate's Xbone as well, so if you see me online playing it feel free to shoot me an invite.
Three Good things First good thing http://www.avclub.com/article/warner-bros-making-adventure-time-movie-215904 Takes ~30 seconds to appreciate Second good thing http://40.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_medmgclP021qejls2o1_500.jpg Takes ~3 mins to "appreciate" Third good thing Takes ~50 mins to appreciate
I'd be a lot more active if I had an xbone & MCC, do people still play custom reach maps? because H4 forge is just really bad