Some Insight from CursedLemon

Sigh. I don't think the word "utterly" has ever been utterly uttered so many utterin' times.

 

Just to address the first page of his intro rant:

Dude's conviction is matched only by how out of touch he is. He STILL fails to accept that Halo was never intended or designed as a competitive game in the sense that MLG wants to see, and so this "watering down," "pandering" and general moves towards "casual gaming" isn't in any way a betrayal of what Halo started out as. It is, in fact, Bungie getting better at what they were trying to do all along.

Also, 'glossing over the casual and competitive relationship' doesn't even begin to describe how selective his view is on that subject. MLG saw it's greatest success in 2007-2008? Maybe so, but that is NOT the furthest that settings ever got from default. 2007 was H2, where settings were almost exactly the same as vanilla because that's what H2 allowed. 2008 saw Halo 3 come in, and call it momentum or whatever you want, but if what he was saying held true then MLG should have kept increasing in popularity through 2009 and 2010 as settings solidified themselves, despite the fact that the game itself tailed off in the mainstream as CoD 4 and then MW2 made their place in the console shooter market. BUT WAIT, that's not what happened. H3's MLG success can be pretty precisely tied in to it's popularity within mainstream gaming.

Furthermore, if a game's merit within MLG (despite the fact that he STILL hasn't clarified why this is a worthwhile aim for Bungie, 343 or whoever in the first place, apart from that it's his priority) were related to its pure competitive value rather than tied heavily to mainstream exposure and acceptance of the title itself, why did MLG Halo get successively bigger as the games themselves got competitively less viable? MLG Halo saw its heyday in the height of H3, definitively the worst competitive Halo for MLG's purposes up to that point. I'd be happier if he at least tried to palm this off as coincidence or to do with other factors, rather than outright ignoring it.

To address this with direct quotes:

"So, for me, this becomes an issue of dignity. Halo is a game with a distinct identity in its multiplayer, its design philosophy is unlike anything else that exists out there."

-True, but that doesn't mean he has any idea what that design philosophy is. I think he's wilfully ignoring the repeated demonstration of the fact that what the competitive community found in CE does not directly correlate with the ethic with which it was designed, far from it in fact.

But this is my favourite one:

"However, not a single person in that entire spectrum will benefit from, much less appreciate, being funnelled in to a smaller scope of skill."

-The mind truly boggles. Sorry, if that were even close to true, would we have a problem like this at all? Would Halo 3 have outsold Halo 2? Would objectively less competitive shooters like CoD have eclipsed both?

He's so deadset on validating this competitive niche (of which I'm a part too, don't get me wrong) as what Halo both "is" at heart and even "should be" that he'll outright deny the facts, even the specific facts which are the root of why we're in this predicament he draws in the first place.

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I'm gonna watch through the rest, because once you get past his mind numbingly partisan and blind approach to what Halo should be, and what the competitive community is entitled to, his wider ideas on what make good competitive mechanics are generally very astute. I just wish he'd pull his head out his ass so he could voice these insights in anything close to a valuable context. A beautiful mind isn't so beautiful when it's encased in a layer of faecal matter double its own mass.

 

That about sums it up. He's clearly a smart and well-spoken guy, and he understands a lot of things about the game - and yet he has serious tunnel vision in such a way that he will warp any argument to fit inside the tunnel. Pity, that. But I did listen to the entire hour - I think it was his soothing, TED-style audio production.

I actually was not blown away with the part on map design either. He makes some good general points (including how long kill times can make a good map play badly), but he also is again afflicted with tunnel vision and biases so deep that I don't even know if he's aware he has them, or why. Case in point: Penance/Damnation, a map he touts as his favorite in all of Halodom. Ironically, I too loved Damnation - 1-flag on that map was perhaps the most fun I've ever had playing Halo. But it's far from a perfect design. The entire top level is separated from the bottom by two TINY chokepoints that are incredibly easy to camp - how is that a good idea, at all? And his case against Countdown is badly overstated.

 

It's worth considering Damnation as an imperfect map, but it is far superior to countdown.

Two chokepoints, I agree, isn't the best for 4v4, but Halo Reach is too damn easy for Damnation to work like in the old days. I haven't actually watched CE gameplay on Damnation, but when the utility gun is hard to use, and when you can nade the camo downward, it doesn't make the two chokepoints so bad. Plus, the segmentation on the map gave players time to think of ways to push for top control and execute them. Damnation wasn't perfect, but it was a great example of how maps can emphasize top control so strongly and play well at the same time (In a game as competitive as CE anyway).

As for Countdown, I completely disagree about his case as overstating. Barely anyone thinks about it, but there was almost no sense of top control or predictability in the game, compared to past maps on CE or H2.

Where's the emphasis on top control when players spawn on the very bottom of the map and take 1 of 4 lifts to the very top, let alone the extra lift going outside? What about when they spawn bottom base and crawl up the outer-most ramps because the 2nd floor is a largely segmented maze?

As for predictability, how can gameplay be good when Countdown's layout allows numerous ways to escape from fights? You pretty much have to be in melee range to be able to chase somebody around S2/S3 (5sk DMR, people try to escape).

Basically, when it comes to Countdown, it's a very noob-friendly map. If you lose top control, you can spawn bottom and be right back up there in 2 seconds. If you're at S2, you can get to virtually anywhere on the map from there. For being a 3-floored map, it's pretty poor map design.

Edit: Well this thread was enjoyable. I hope others decided to learn something.