It was bro slayer so the spawning was limited, and the poor guys had to spawn in those few areas because their whole team was either unsafe or dead due to the douchness of the other team
I have more sympathy for stuff like this than MLG guys raping in social because a BTB team have literally no alternative playlist to find a more competitive setting. I dislike this idea that players have a responsibility to deliberately play worse than they are because of poor matching. I've never really thought that socialism has much of a place in gaming in this sense.
Might not be true all the time, but c'mon, don't you agree with me? Reach is just a noob-friendly party of randomness.
No. No I do not. Halo 3 had awful netcode which screwed with many an online battle. Shot leading should be a skill mechanic, but in practicality it was inconsistent and combined with the poor netcode it just resulted in even worse shot registration. The BR spread was a deliberate skill cap mechanic, and was successful in that regard. The aim acceleration was also quite nasty imo. Reach has AA loadouts which, I agree, are detrimental in this sense, very much so. However, shot registration is fantastic in comparison, the DMR being single shot puts it above ANY burst fire weapon for me. The bloom is inconsistent, which I do dislike, but the TU did much to alleviate this and it's barely an issue on 85% bloom, much less so than spread+poor netode on the H3 BR. I'm not gonna talk like Reach is a godsend after Halo 3, it's really not and has a ton of issues of its own. But Halo 3 was so far from the competitive holy grail that people make it out to be, and the majority of people who say this started playing the series at 3. I'm not a huge fan of the whole "you weren't there, man" line in general, but I think having played CE and H2 does a lot to increase your perspective on competitive merit (though of course there are still plenty of people who've played Halo before 3 and still see it as the most balanced. I still disagree, but fair play in this sense).
lol I never started using AA's anyway. I used Sprint from the beginning. (Although I do appreciate AA's for minigames and more tactical games and such.) Edited by merge: I have to confess that I wasn't around until 3 (don't know why though, I would've had the age :S) so I can't tell if it was less competitive than 2 and CE, but for me, Reach really feels a lot more random than skillbased, other than what Halo 3 felt like - for me. In Halo 3, I could usually still out-BR someone when I deserved to, whilst in Halo Reach I highly depend on connection stability, which usually results in having me getting killed because Reach recently decided to put my Upstream Bandwidth status to "Warning". (Another reason why I quit Reach's matchmaking.) On top of that, we have the random grenade strength, stupid armor locking, easy-to-use-also-as-a-noob sniper and most of all extremely unbalanced maps (except for some of them), that make me say that Halo 3 is more skillbased than Halo Reach, or how other people would say it: "less CoD inspired". Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Halo Reach, otherwise I wouldn't be still playing it, but I just don't like its Matchmaking anymore. I rather play Halo 3 when I want to be competitive.
The most annoying thing on MM is generally when your whole team quits out on Invasion and you just get spawn killed the rest of the match because you refuse to quit. However, the most embarrassing thing to ever happen to me in MM was on Invasion Spire when the entire other team quit out and there was only one guy left. My team was so awful that he, by himself, managed to get to the third phase and was only stopped and killed by me ever. What's worse is my team TRIED to kill him. I had to congratulate the guy afterward, but the entire match was just one major facepalm after another.
Recently I had a game of invasion on spire where one person on each fireteam quit and the other team was quite good. How that game ended 3-3 I don't quite understand. On the first phase we just got incredibly lucky because they pushed too far forward. On the second we were getting destroyed then filled up the warthog and I parked it in the door of the objective and my teammates held them off just until I captured (plasma grenades flew in as I went up the lift). They were stuck a few steps behind as I got the core and got it almost to the landing pad. Those last few feet took so much effort. Now for why it belongs in this thread. The second round they were so pissed they just camped our spawns and captured in overtime. Same thing for the second and third phases. People can be such douches about losing.
Maybe not the worst thing, but still pretty bad. A game of team slayer that may as well have been doubles. Adrien and I whooped some ass though. :3
It really doesn't, that's fair. I guess, for my own part, it's just general irritation at the system that allows this to occur. There's no skill-matching whatsoever (which is on Bungie and 343); there's no alternative MLG or competitive-oriented BTB playlist, and there's no longer even a ranked vs. social split like there was in H3; there are plentiful maps with broken or at least highly exploitable spawn systems (which is of course on the people who made the maps), that teams like these go out of their way to learn how to exploit (which is on them). And then there's general bad sportsmanship, like objective-holding - which wasn't depicted in this particular video, but it's obvious these guys are the type to do it. The cumulative effect is to make it not fun to play, which causes people to quit - and the players who don't quit get raped and have no fun at all for ten minutes. What it brings me back to again is, why bother? I guarantee a team like this faces multiple quit-outs and has to play hide-and-seek with the remaining players in like 80% of their games. So is your 5.0 k/d and insane banshee bomb stat really more important than, y'know, having fun? Guess it is to them, but it sure isn't to me. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I had a game like this on Boneyard where I was the last person on my team. The beauty part was since I was an elite, I spawned with a plasma grenade each time and the other team was all congregated around me trying to be the one to get the spawn kill. I basically traded kills with them for four minutes, including getting a triple kill with a single plasma 'nade because the idiots jumped into a little cluster in their panic to get away from me. I think I went slightly positive.
Yeah definitely. I've done my best to stick up for the non arena matching (arena matching is much better, but still not as good as I used to think) but honestly I don't know why, I was straight up wrong. The host of exploitables (Banshee + Bro Slayer raises two questions: 1. Did they even test that? 2. If so, why did the testers get that job?) are indeed a problem. I definitely think that's an important distinction too. Exploiting the hell of out Slayer is one thing, not fun at all, but at least it's a form of achieving the objective and thus ending the game, and in fact doing so in the quickest way possible. People who triple cap and end a CTF game in two minutes aren't hated on. Whilst the essential basis of what they're doing is exactly the same in terms of both actions and approach to winning, it isn't as painful to endure as a spawn trap to 100 kills so people don't criticise it in nearly the same way. People who deliberately put off the objective to farm kills are doing something totally different in principle, but since it feels the same from the perspective of those subject to it, it's perceived in the same light. To a certain extent, I wonder what else you can do. I agree that after a while it can't even be that fun for someone who's OK with it in sportsmanship terms, just nothing close to challenging. But if you're a team of 8 and BTB is your thing in the same way that plenty of MLG players only really enjoy that, it must be pretty crap trying to have fun matches outside of specifically organising scrims. I know my favourite way to play Halo is somewhere between the two: the pickup and play value of MM, but still being challenged. I know that's pretty obvious when stated, but it's sadly quite rare for the reasons you outlined above, and that problem must be exacerbated in the context of BTB. For my part I'm not sure I could stomach that much Banshee use even if I was any good with it, it's just horrible. Perhaps that's just proof that I can't escape my own perspective though, I really hate that thing.
Man the maps aren't new anymore but I remember my first game on the "new" BTB maps The ones that included asphalt ,rasu,etc... Well my first game on asphalt I spawned right in front of the wraith in the very beginning of the game.there was a bunch of people in front and we were all clustered because well..we just spawned together. I get in the wraith and go spiriting forward at sonic speed splattering 3 of my teammates then slammed into a wall,commiting suicide. First 5 seconds and I'm already -4 I eventually worked my way to the top though. I recorded it and am going to submit it to ANOJ from machinima for episode 49 which is WTF moments.
I'm posting this on behalf of the enemy team. BTB Heavies on Graveyard I love being able to consistently steal the enemy tank at the start of the game on that map.
IamLuke, I've come to accept games like that as a staple of Matchmaking. It's games like that and the simple lack of entertainment that I get from playing alone that caused me to only go into matchmaking with at least one other friend now. It's a shame really, all they needed to do was fix the damn skill system.
Also (and I'm still incredibly surprised how seldom this point is raised) parties need to be matched with parties. Skill matching is indeed important, and people are right to complain about it as much as they do, but matching party numbers (even roughly) is so much easier to implement and doesn't require complicated algorithms and skill values, it's just basic numbers. Coordinated teams are such a huge factor in Halo, obviously not to the point of outweighing skill (hence me still loving the game so much), and it staggers me how much this factor is overlooked by devs and fans alike. I seriously doubt that those BTB.net kids were matched against another team of 8. 8 coordinated players vs. randoms, probably parties of 3 or 4 at best? That's not worth faster search times to me, sorry, I fail to see Bungie/343's logic on this one. EDIT: Just remembered how much I miss Squad. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU.
Head nodding. Lots and lots of head nodding. A big party that is even semi-coordinated and used to playing together has a huge leg up over a group of randoms, even one that is superficially more skilled. For instance, I have a group I play super slayer and objective (and formerly squad... sniffle) with once in a while. When we play objective, we vote a lot for oddball on Sword Base - not that it's a good game, but we have a plan and usually control the ball from wire to wire. I almost feel bad for the randoms we play against, because they have NO plan and straggle into our traps alone or in little groups of two, and get slaughtered every time. It doesn't really matter how good they are individually, they just get squished. On the flip side, I've played games where it looked like my team was much better, but the party or clan on the other side had a much better plan that we couldn't disrupt enough to win. Some pretty mediocre teams have whupped me on Countdown just by holding top health pack and balcony, Reflection just by holding top hall (ugh), and Boardwalk by holding - of all things - downstairs mid, all the area around the plasma launcher. Coordination and lots of team shooting triumphs over skilled guys lone-wolfing it every time. God, I know. Super slayer is OK but squad had better maps overall (or fewer bad maps) and no armor lock. Plus I loved playing to 75.
Precisely. I've even been playing with my regular MM buddy, we've gotten cocky against people who look worse than us in lobby (and are in skill terms) and let them take an early lead in something like Oddball, then we completely fail to recover because even when we're coordinating it's 2v5. Now I know that a big part of that is that we shouldn't get cocky, we have it coming a lot of the time, but it just highlights how much of a difference coordination can make even with a significant skill gap. Agreed, playing to 75 in particular is something I really miss, but more than that I miss being able to go in on my own and enjoy it pretty consistently. Super Slayer on my own is just a stream of parties stomping me in to the ground.
Ahh, forgot about the party v. party thing...my bad. I don't see why they don't do that. That was my favorite feature of Squad...next to no Armor Lock, 5v5 Slayer, less shitty maps... Honestly, I'd rather wait even an extra 5 more minutes to get a good game than get a bad match within a minute and spend 7-8 minutes in a terrible game. Mind if I compare with Starcraft again? In Starcraft, players get matched against equally skilled players within a somewhat long waiting time (in comparison to FPS games) even though most matches are just 1v1. Sometimes the wait can get annoying, but it's far superior to getting stomped without question by someone leagues ahead. They have a good skill system set up, and instead of party v party matches on the ladder they simply rank each group separately (there is a 4v4 random ladder and 4v4 team ladder) and generally match a 4v4 team with an equally skilled 4v4 team or higher rated 4v4 randoms. It isn't always team v team, but it keeps waiting times from getting out of control in smaller playlists while stilling factoring in the organized team bonus while finding a match. It's a good compromise that I wish was found in playlists where strict party v party isn't feasible (like Super Slayer now, with only 600 pop. average. Everything else should totally abide by the party v. party rule. Though I think it should be worth noting that Squad did allow for a party of 1 to play with a party of 4 against a full team of 5. Most of the time, it kinda sucked to be the one.
Yeah I know, I was often the 1, and when you're a 1 teamed up with a 4, more often than not it's 1 guy with 3 guests. I don't particularly like generalising, but rarely are those 3 guests very good (hell, I get noticeably worse when playing 4 to a screen). But still, I think it's better than getting 4 randoms vs that same team of 5. There has to be some leeway, otherwise wait times would start getting so high as to be counter productive. But essentially I agree with your larger point. Playing 3 crappy games before you get 1 balanced one is worse than waiting a game's worth of time to consistently get better matched games, at least in my opinion.
This is the crux of it, but unfortunately I think the average Halo player - and the developer who is catering to them - disagrees. Getting a game quickly is how they satisfy the easily-bored. And the quicker you can get a match, the less it matters (to that type of player) how badly they were just getting stomped; the sour taste goes away quickly when the next game is right around the corner, or when you can even quit out and then get another game immediately. Now with mid-game joining (they're still doing that in H4, right?) it sounds like they may go to the extreme I most fear: no longer bothering to penalize quitting at all, and prioritizing instant gratification above all. As long as the games start quickly and are always full of players, the majority will be happy.