Threads about player counts are pointless

[Kuriishi]

First of all, they only discuss a very small sample size: Steam Charts. This isn't even indicative of all the players on PC, never-mind total player count . There are also Game Pass subs that will be playing through the Xbox App on PC.

Secondly, PC, was never the main platform for Halo anyway. The player counts are way higher on Xbox, as natural for a primarily console FPS. This also ties into my third point, which is the most important:

Arbitrary player count numbers prove nothing; the most important thing is Search Time per Match which is still short for casual modes in Infinite. It really doesn't matter how many people are playing if you are still finding matches in good time.

Addendum: The only point these player count threads quoting Steam Charts serve to prove is that the M+KB playerbase is dwindling. However, this point is completely irrelevant to casual modes and even ranked for the most part, unless you exclusively play the KB+M Input-locked playlist in ranked. That's totally your choice though and you could very easily play the crossplay playlist which will have more players.

[WarToad]

All your points are valid. Yet the larger issue seems to be that people posting those threads seem to have convinced themselves their doing something 'good' to help the game they 'love'. 'I'm a Halo fan and I just want to see it succeed' and such. When in reality all those poorly-researched and misinformed threads do is discourage people from playing the game, helping it to not be as successful. But they have blinders on to to overall picture and will just find the data they need to prove their point even if they have to make it up.

Newsflash: If you're posting negative threads about the game, you aren't really much of a fan anymore. That's like going to your 'favorite' sports team and telling everyone how much you think they suck the whole time.

The optimist in me is convinced those player count is dying threads all all posted by the same lonely troll with many, many accounts. Or maybe a bunch of EA interns trying to save Battlefield.

Also, this just in: casual-level game designed for controller with a mostly console playerbase isn't a runaway hit with M+KB players on PC. Who would have thought?

[🐠🍑]

Halo forums are for everyone so theycan post whatever they want halo related as long as rules aren't broken. If you want to see more positive posts, be the change you want to see. I always try to keep things positive and make sure to make this a more wholesome positive forums.

[Kuriishi]

Originally posted by ఆ:

Halo forums are for everyone so theycan post whatever they want halo related as long as rules aren't broken. If you want to see more positive posts, be the change you want to see. I always try to keep things positive and make sure to make this a more wholesome positive forums.

Didn't say they can't post these threads, I am just pointing out the basis of the arguments being posted is entirely disingenuous.

Moreover, there's a difference between constructive criticism and blind hate. Conversely, there's a difference between genuine praise and delusional optimism.

Not every thread has to be wholly positive or wholly negative. It is possible be balanced and constructive, even when criticising the game. The posts I am talking about are not though. They're disingenuous and purposely paint a false narrative

[An Irate Walrus]

The folks who only post them once and move on are, I think, mostly just venting.

The few forum stars who are in here multiple times a week with the same "numbar go down! Wut happun fanbois?!" bait are really only broadcasting two things:

1.) Someone at 343i wooed their girlfriend away from them.

2.) That girlfriend is an anime body pillow.

[Sandy]

You are delusional. If a game has x18 loss of it's player base in under 3 months on any platform then the game obviously has many issues and declining rapidly.
It's the same game on both platforms.
I don't see how xbox players can enjoy the game while ignoring the huge amount of cons that it has to offer, while steam players cannot.
The nostalgia factor can only get you so far.
It's also dropped from top 2 to top 6 on xbox. And will fall down even more.

[Perryn ペリン]

this is like how Battlefield 2042 fans that pre ordered the ultimate editions and have been playing since day 1 still pretend their game isn't dying

if you don't think this game is dying that's fine. it's dying because it's not supported enough. it launched with too little. it updated too little.

and when it has nothing left a year from now, we'll all think back to your silly little "steam charts show nothing" threads and laugh, just like we did with BF2042.

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by Perryn:

this is like how Battlefield 2042 fans that pre ordered the ultimate editions and have been playing since day 1 still pretend their game isn't dying

if you don't think this game is dying that's fine. it's dying because it's not supported enough. it launched with too little. it updated too little.

and when it has nothing left a year from now, we'll all think back to your silly little "steam charts show nothing" threads and laugh, just like we did with BF2042.

Honestly, it seems like the entire game industry is collapsing (at least from the AAA side of things), every major developer and publisher are trying to release "10 year live services", and 90% of them are failing straight from release day.

I mean CoD, BF2042, and Halo Infinite, the 3 largest FPS releases of last year, all had completely terrible launches for the exact same reasons

[R.A.T. Army *MST3K*]

I've always thought that threads about low player counts in any game, hurt the game. They make less players start playing, and/or more casual players leave. A low player count in any game is not something a forum post can really help. It just hurts of you ask me.

A self fulfilling prophecy of sorts.

[Kuriishi]

Originally posted by SandVision:

You are delusional. If a game has x18 loss of it's player base in under 3 months on any platform then the game obviously has many issues and declining rapidly.
It's the same game on both platforms.
I don't see how xbox players can enjoy the game while ignoring the huge amount of cons that it has to offer, while steam players cannot.
The nostalgia factor can only get you so far.
It's also dropped from top 2 to top 6 on xbox. And will fall down even more.

This is the only forum I've seen people try and paint being in the top 10 most played games on a given platform as a negative thing...

And you call me delusional lol

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by Kuriishi:

Originally posted by SandVision:

You are delusional. If a game has x18 loss of it's player base in under 3 months on any platform then the game obviously has many issues and declining rapidly.
It's the same game on both platforms.
I don't see how xbox players can enjoy the game while ignoring the huge amount of cons that it has to offer, while steam players cannot.
The nostalgia factor can only get you so far.
It's also dropped from top 2 to top 6 on xbox. And will fall down even more.

This is the only forum I've seen people try and paint being in the top 10 most played games on a given platform as a negative thing...

And you call me delusional lol

For a (console) exclusive, and supposedly the largest game Microsoft has on their own platform, number 6 and falling isn't exactly a great look. It's about to fall behind Siege, a 7 year old multiplatform release that's been on life support for years.

[Kuriishi]

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

For a (console) exclusive, and supposedly the largest game Microsoft has on their own platform, number 6 and falling isn't exactly a great look. It's about to fall behind Siege, a 7 year old multiplatform release that's been on life support for years.

The OP already outlines the main point: the "look" doesn't matter if the you are still able to find matches, which, for the vast majority of players, is the case.

All this doom-saying does nothing positive, and it's quite tiresome tbh

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by Kuriishi:

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

For a (console) exclusive, and supposedly the largest game Microsoft has on their own platform, number 6 and falling isn't exactly a great look. It's about to fall behind Siege, a 7 year old multiplatform release that's been on life support for years.

The OP already outlines the main point: the "look" doesn't matter if the you are still able to find matches, which, for the vast majority of players, is the case.

All this doom-saying does nothing positive, and it's quite tiresome tbh

The rapid population decline has already affected the game outside the US though, and with their recent matchmaking changes, certain regions (Asia) can't play at all anymore due to long matchmaking times and 300+ ping games if they do find one at all, while others have consistently very high ping but can still somewhat regularly find games (Australia).

Also there are other directly related things to the game's population, less players means less microtransaction money, less microtransaction money means less support from 343.

And as the population declines further, Ranked will become basically unplayable everywhere, and the strict hidden SBMM in Social will eventually lead to long matchmaking times, or certain playlists dying (This happened at high level/high skill Halo 5)

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

They'll still keep making them even though no one cares about just the Steam Player base counts at all. So whatcha gonna do?

Most are probably just losers trying to get free steam points most likely anyway. Which is why the Jester award shouldn't even give steam points IMO.

[IvanTheRexouium]

Originally posted by Kitt 🌟 Stargazer:

They'll still keep making them even though no one cares about just the Steam Player base counts at all. So whatcha gonna do? :rat_thinking:

Mostly just losers trying to get free steam points most likely anyway. Which is why the Jester award shouldn't even give steam points IMO.

I'm not a "Steam point farming loser" for wanting a functional game, with standards that were set over 15 years ago.

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

Halo Infinite may be good at it's core with the gameplay, but it has so many problems from minor issues to actually gamebreaking level things that pushed me away:

• Horrible monetization and being lied to by the Community Manager about playlists early on ("Servers cost money" while being a part of Microsoft who own Azure, "Limited by our UI"...releases server side playlist update within 2 days without touching the UI after, also causing basically a riot in the r/halo subreddit and in Waypoint)
  
• Terrible PC optimization and performance no matter what hardware (See Kitguru, Hardware Unboxed, or Digital Foundry's benchmark and analysis videos)
  
• Aimbots/wallhackers going rampant in multiplayer with no ingame report option, and literally no anticheat at all other than disabling the red crosshair on PC, Unyshek responding by basically saying it's not their problem and there will "always be hackers" because of the decision to make the game F2P...which no one asked for.
  
• Less maps than the rest of the series, even Halo: Combat Evolved, the 20 year old beginning of the series, had more maps.
  
• Realignment of Cyber Showdown visor effects will take FOUR MONTHS.
  
• Jorge's shoulder armor is still missing it's textures SINCE BETA RELEASE, this is a premium armor part that people are paying money for.
  
• All Mark V B shoulder armor parts are not aligned either.
  
• Less playlist variety than even Halo 2, still an ongoing issue but at least we have Slayer I guess?
  
• Less gamemodes than Halo 2
  
• No forge
  
• No co-op
  
• No PC splitscreen
  
• (Almost) no free customization of any kind
  
• Theater mode rarely works (side effect of hackers disabling films)
  
• Custom games doesn't work with more than 2 people, and rarely starts properly, changing maps or gamemodes after people join doesn't work at all, more than 2 people joining breaks the custom games system entirely
  
• No PvE content of any kind
  
• Worsening desync that hasn't been addressed or improved since November
  
• 4v4 doesn't work for a large amount of people post-BTB "hotfix"
  
• Extremely strict SBMM ruining social multiplayer with friends
  
• "Geofiltering" patch has caused the Australian playerbase to be unable to play the game at all at a competitive level, forcing them into 220ms ping servers, and caused false positives for many others on various regions
  
• Campaign mode for many people, including myself, will randomly corrupt your entire save file with no warning, for no reason at all at any point during the game, I had it happen way too many times and have lost actual days of progress at this point. This is both on Xbox and on Steam.

Things that have been improved since November 15th, Beta launch day:

• BTB doesn't work - Half fixed in the SECOND BTB update, over 2 months after it stopped working
  
• FFA stat tracking doesn't work - Fixed a month after FFA was added

[Kitt 🌟 Stargazer]

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

Originally posted by Kitt 🌟 Stargazer:

They'll still keep making them even though no one cares about just the Steam Player base counts at all. So whatcha gonna do?

Mostly just losers trying to get free steam points most likely anyway. Which is why the Jester award shouldn't even give steam points IMO.

I'm not a "Steam point farming loser" for wanting a functional game, with standards that were set over 15 years ago.

Originally posted by IvanTheWolf:

Halo Infinite may be good at it's core with the gameplay, but it has so many problems from minor issues to actually gamebreaking level things that pushed me away:

• Horrible monetization and being lied to by the Community Manager about playlists early on ("Servers cost money" while being a part of Microsoft who own Azure, "Limited by our UI"...releases server side playlist update within 2 days without touching the UI after, also causing basically a riot in the r/halo subreddit and in Waypoint)
  
• Terrible PC optimization and performance no matter what hardware (See Kitguru, Hardware Unboxed, or Digital Foundry's benchmark and analysis videos)
  
• Aimbots/wallhackers going rampant in multiplayer with no ingame report option, and literally no anticheat at all other than disabling the red crosshair on PC, Unyshek responding by basically saying it's not their problem and there will "always be hackers" because of the decision to make the game F2P...which no one asked for.
  
• Less maps than the rest of the series, even Halo: Combat Evolved, the 20 year old beginning of the series, had more maps.
  
• Realignment of Cyber Showdown visor effects will take FOUR MONTHS.
  
• Jorge's shoulder armor is still missing it's textures SINCE BETA RELEASE, this is a premium armor part that people are paying money for.
  
• All Mark V B shoulder armor parts are not aligned either.
  
• Less playlist variety than even Halo 2, still an ongoing issue but at least we have Slayer I guess?
  
• Less gamemodes than Halo 2
  
• No forge
  
• No co-op
  
• No PC splitscreen
  
• (Almost) no free customization of any kind
  
• Theater mode rarely works (side effect of hackers disabling films)
  
• Custom games doesn't work with more than 2 people, and rarely starts properly, changing maps or gamemodes after people join doesn't work at all, more than 2 people joining breaks the custom games system entirely
  
• No PvE content of any kind
  
• Worsening desync that hasn't been addressed or improved since November
  
• 4v4 doesn't work for a large amount of people post-BTB "hotfix"
  
• Extremely strict SBMM ruining social multiplayer with friends
  
• "Geofiltering" patch has caused the Australian playerbase to be unable to play the game at all at a competitive level, forcing them into 220ms ping servers, and caused false positives for many others on various regions
  
• Campaign mode for many people, including myself, will randomly corrupt your entire save file with no warning, for no reason at all at any point during the game, I had it happen way too many times and have lost actual days of progress at this point. This is both on Xbox and on Steam.

Things that have been improved since November 15th, Beta launch day:

• BTB doesn't work - Half fixed in the SECOND BTB update, over 2 months after it stopped working
  
• FFA stat tracking doesn't work - Fixed a month after FFA was added

I never said wanting a better functioning game were people were losers though. I said people making steam player count threads who would never include xbox game pass or console players, you know the people that take up the vast majority of the Halo Community over Steam players were the ones that were more or less just losers. Since if those accounts were including the people playing would be significantly larger then what's just listed on steam.

Most of those people are just doing it because they can, and more then likely just doing it for steam points since people are dumb enough to reward those idiots for it so it's worth doing. Obviously not everyone is though.