Competitive/Hardcore isn't "competitive" Halo Reach MCC

[humble survivor]

What are the reasons why Competitive, on the hardcore playlist, isn't actually competitive.
1. The maps. The maps being the way they are being a mix of Reach maps and Halo 4 maps do not fit the play style for the playlist. For the Reach maps, they were designed for the loadout system. IE ( Sprint, Armor Lock, Hologram, and Jet Pack. For the Halo 4 maps, it shows why for Halo 4, the DMR is unbalanced. A lot of the Halo 4 based maps come down to controlling certain parts of the map through team sniping DMR play. That's not competitive, that's bad game design.

2. Why no bloom? Bloom as in recoil, Which was to every weapon in Reach, made the game balanced. Especially the DMR. For taking out bloom, makes the DMR Halo 4's DMR. This isn't good for Reach.

3. Loadouts. Why are the Loadouts gone? I get Armor Lock, It can be cheap if you don't know how to deal with it. Jet Pack yes, could get annoying, but even Jet Pack had it's weaknesses. Hologram had its uses. Then Sprint, well it counters grenade spam, it's easier to do assassinations, punishes campers and unlike Halo 4 and Halo 5, sprint is limited in Reach.

Solutions. I get having a "classic" Halo experience. However, for the balancing purposes of Reach, it would be great if at least either bloom was added back in or loadouts are added back. At the very least consider if none of the two options then make the DMR a pickup like it was in normal Team Slayer matches. This way, the DMR can go back to being a weapon that has limited use. By the way, Team Slayer in Reach, had Assault Rifle and magnum on spawn. Pro Slayer had DMR and Magnum. For Arena for the first 1-6 seasons it was DMR and Magnum. In later seasons, it was DMR and Assault Rifle.

[Winblows]

any thing is comeitive with the right spirate

[#CuteFaceJay]

They removed Bloom? The other night I was letting shots off that should have been hits and remembered this game had it. You telling me they actually removed it?

[humble survivor]

Originally posted by #CuteFaceJay:

They removed Bloom? The other night I was letting shots off that should have been hits and remembered this game had it. You telling me they actually removed it?

Yeah, for competitive they did. Its why you can quick fire the DMR now for competitive Reach MCC. In backwards compatibility Reach, you had to pace you're shots or else they wouldn't land at the head.

[dat_potatoe]

This is the stupidest, most ignorant of competitive design thing Ive read this week.

The remaining Halo community never ceases to disappoint.

Imagine actually wanting RNG causing missed shots in a serious environment. Which by the way was already removed from competitive settings all the way back in like 2011.

[humble survivor]

Originally posted by dat_potatoe:

This is the stupidest, most ignorant of competitive design thing Ive read this week.

The remaining Halo community never ceases to disappoint.

Imagine actually wanting RNG causing missed shots in a serious environment. Which by the way was already removed from competitive settings all the way back in like 2011.

You do realize, that was back in 2011 right? Back then, the population for Reach wasn't as big. Even then, the popular playlists were Team Slayers, Team Doubles, Infection, and something along the lines of Team Snipers.

The Hardcore equivalent based modes like Arena and MLG hardly had viable playerbases. At least back in 2011 nothing in comparison to the four game types above for player populations.

[dat_potatoe]

How the ♥♥♥♥ does population have ANYTHING to do with the competitive integrity of the settings?

Your complaint was that they werent competitive, not that they were unpopular. And saying that bloom, crutchy get out of jail spawn abilities, etc. Somehow make them MORE competitive than they are now is just flagrantly idiotic.

Play casual if you want a casual experience, but dont shove your garbage where it doesnt belong then claim its the opposite of garbage.

[humble survivor]

@Dat_potatoes

Competitive Halo Reach as in "Arena" was the competitive playlist for the launch version of Halo Reach. Arena had bloom and the loadouts what it didn't have was the radar. MLG came later.

MCC's Halo Reach isn't Halo Reach's competitive settings. It's MCC's. Which doesn't make sense, when Halo CE, Halo 2, and Halo 3 are coming out later which all will have the classic Halo experience. Why make MCC Reach a copy and paste to that of the classic Halo experiences. In short in the simplest way, I want to play Reach the way it was meant to be played on release the way it was intended to be played. If i want to play the classic Halo competitive format, I'll play Halo 3. Does that make sense now?

[Whisky]

You are wrong on literally every single point you can think of. For reference I bought Reach back when it first came out on the 360 and it was my main game so I've been through every update that both Bungie and 343 did to the original game and I was in touch with people who regularly competed so I know how the competitive community felt.

Hardcore/MLG is the most competitive version of the game and closest to classic Halo and only idiots think that there's more skill in other playlists. Let's go over your points

1) The maps

Almost every single map in Hardcore/MLG is symmetrical (I think only 1 or 2 are asymmetrical and 1 of them was dlc - the purple ship map from Halo 1, NOT ZEALOT from reach). Default reach has a lot of maps that are ASYMMETRICAL meaning that because it's not a mirror map, one team inevitably spawns closer to a power weapon (rockets/sniper/etc.) than the other or has high ground/viewpoint advantage, meaning that instead of teams starting off equal, one team gets an immediate advantage. MLG/Hardcore fixed this.

2) Bloom

RNG in shooters means that the skill gap is reduced because someone can get lucky and kill an opponent instead of dying. This is the exact problem that came with Halo 3's BR bullet spread and it was hated back then too by the Halo 3 competitive community. Only stupid people who come from Counter-Strike think RNG has any place in Halo.

3) Loadouts.

Again, this is a problem that Reach and 4 brought in. Game becomes more like Call of Duty/Overwatch/TF2 with every player starting with gimmicky special abilities. It was never part of Halo to begin with and Reach introduced this abomination. Getting rid of it is going back to the roots but if you're interested I can do another write up on why each and every ability is bad for the game, INCLUDING Sprint. Sprint has been discussed to death by the competitive community for years and experimented with before being abandoned, and only casual players still defend it. In fact the early versions of MLG/Hardcore had everyone start with Sprint, but it was later removed as playtesting found it was bad for the game flow.

4) DMR Starts

Competitive Halo has always had utility starts, aka everyone starting with a single shot/burst weapon that can kill people fast and across the map. In CE this was the pistol. In 2 the BR. In 3 the BR, in Reach the DMR. The problem with starting everyone with Assault Rifles and placing the DMR on the map is that the first skilled team to get the DMR or the Sniper gets like a 10 kill lead immediately because they cannot be contested by an Assault Rifle that has an effective range of 0.5m. This is why MLG and competitive Halo starts everyone off with a long range weapon that can kill fast, because not only does it nerf the Sniper into a less dominant power weapon, but it means that everyone can effectively compete starting from spawn.

And there's more I didn't mention. Grenades are nukes in Default Reach; MLG changed gravity so they were less damaging. Rader is in Default Reach, MLG removed it. The melee system is insanely bad in Default Reach because a shield always absorbs 1 melee even when it's at 0.001% shields, so MLG brought back bleedthrough melee from Halo 2 and 3 so the damage can go through to health if the shield is weak enough. Literally everything MLG did was for the greater good of the competitive community. Edit: Apparently MCC runs on Title Update instead of Default Reach so they fixed the melee system but it took them a YEAR of complaining before they finally did it and TU Reach is still hot garbage because all it did was put bandages on gunshot wounds.

tl;dr You are a casual player who has no idea why the competitive community took so many design decisions throughout the Halo series and you are incapable of understanding the long thought out process that led to the current MLG settings. By the way, many of the competitive people who played MLG back on the 360 were ranked Onyx in Arena. They still chose to play MLG because EVERYONE in the competitive community knew that Bungie's Arena ranked settings were stupid as hell and only MLG could be trusted to create a balanced game.

[Whisky]

Also, to prove my point even further because I want to emphasize how wrong you are:

http://halo.bungie.net/Stats/Reach/default.aspx?player=Zomechin

This guy (one of the few I remember from 360 Reach days) is Zomechin. I haven't messaged him in years but he was a top Arena player ranked in Onyx even though he played mostly custom games with MLG/Hardcore settings.

Look at his stats on Bungie.net. From these old stats he had a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 67% win rate in Arena, Bungie's "official" competitive playlist.

Arena was a JOKE to him and all the old pros who were used to classic Halo. His lowest K/D across all playlists is in MLG at 1.36 and it would probably drop even more if he played more than 50 games because the competition was that much harder. Why? Because Hardcore/MLG TAKES SKILL which Default Reach and TU Reach DO NOT.

Zomechin's winrate in Team Slayer - 68%
Winrate in Team Objective - 79%
Winrate in Big Team Battle - 87%
Winrate in SWAT - 67%
Winrate in Snipers - 68%
Winrate in Title Update Beta Playlist - 95%
Winrate in Squad Slayer - 88%


Face the facts - if you are ANY good at Reach at ALL you will eventually find yourself in the MLG/Hardcore playlist because those are the only settings that will put everyone on a fair footing and force people to be skilled to win.

[shroom]

Halo multiplayer has never been competitive.

[Elgerino]

Halo MCC must have the record for amount of steam discussions where OP has a horrendously bad take.

[Whisky]

Originally posted by T-Cell24:

Halo multiplayer has never been competitive.

It has had a competitive scene since Combat Evolved wtf are you even smoking. Right now it doesn't because Bungie screwed up Reach and 343 screwed up 4 and 5.

I would say though that competitive settings were not nailed down and standardized until Halo 2 and 3, and 3 had its RNG problem with bullet spread which was never fully fixed although MLG tried increasing damage to 110% to make 4shot kills more consistent.

Reach, 4, and 5 are where the series truly went off the rails and stopped being competitive out of the box but MLG fixed Reach after a long struggle.

I'd say in order of competitiveness it would probably be MLG Halo 2>MLG/Hardcore Reach>MLG Halo 3> everything else. Not sure where CE would fit it's been too long.

[humble survivor]

Originally posted by Whisky:

You are wrong on literally every single point you can think of. For reference I bought Reach back when it first came out on the 360 and it was my main game so I've been through every update that both Bungie and 343 did to the original game and I was in touch with people who regularly competed so I know how the competitive community felt.

Hardcore/MLG is the most competitive version of the game and closest to classic Halo and only idiots think that there's more skill in other playlists. Let's go over your points

1) The maps

Almost every single map in Hardcore/MLG is symmetrical (I think only 1 or 2 are asymmetrical and 1 of them was dlc - the purple ship map from Halo 1, NOT ZEALOT from reach). Default reach has a lot of maps that are ASYMMETRICAL meaning that because it's not a mirror map, one team inevitably spawns closer to a power weapon (rockets/sniper/etc.) than the other or has high ground/viewpoint advantage, meaning that instead of teams starting off equal, one team gets an immediate advantage. MLG/Hardcore fixed this.

2) Bloom

RNG in shooters means that the skill gap is reduced because someone can get lucky and kill an opponent instead of dying. This is the exact problem that came with Halo 3's BR bullet spread and it was hated back then too by the Halo 3 competitive community. Only stupid people who come from Counter-Strike think RNG has any place in Halo.

3) Loadouts.

Again, this is a problem that Reach and 4 brought in. Game becomes more like Call of Duty/Overwatch/TF2 with every player starting with gimmicky special abilities. It was never part of Halo to begin with and Reach introduced this abomination. Getting rid of it is going back to the roots but if you're interested I can do another write up on why each and every ability is bad for the game, INCLUDING Sprint. Sprint has been discussed to death by the competitive community for years and experimented with before being abandoned, and only casual players still defend it. In fact the early versions of MLG/Hardcore had everyone start with Sprint, but it was later removed as playtesting found it was bad for the game flow.

4) DMR Starts

Competitive Halo has always had utility starts, aka everyone starting with a single shot/burst weapon that can kill people fast and across the map. In CE this was the pistol. In 2 the BR. In 3 the BR, in Reach the DMR. The problem with starting everyone with Assault Rifles and placing the DMR on the map is that the first skilled team to get the DMR or the Sniper gets like a 10 kill lead immediately because they cannot be contested by an Assault Rifle that has an effective range of 0.5m. This is why MLG and competitive Halo starts everyone off with a long range weapon that can kill fast, because not only does it nerf the Sniper into a less dominant power weapon, but it means that everyone can effectively compete starting from spawn.

And there's more I didn't mention. Grenades are nukes in Default Reach; MLG changed gravity so they were less damaging. Rader is in Default Reach, MLG removed it. The melee system is insanely bad in Default Reach because a shield always absorbs 1 melee even when it's at 0.001% shields, so MLG brought back bleedthrough melee from Halo 2 and 3 so the damage can go through to health if the shield is weak enough. Literally everything MLG did was for the greater good of the competitive community. Edit: Apparently MCC runs on Title Update instead of Default Reach so they fixed the melee system but it took them a YEAR of complaining before they finally did it and TU Reach is still hot garbage because all it did was put bandages on gunshot wounds.

tl;dr You are a casual player who has no idea why the competitive community took so many design decisions throughout the Halo series and you are incapable of understanding the long thought out process that led to the current MLG settings. By the way, many of the competitive people who played MLG back on the 360 were ranked Onyx in Arena. They still chose to play MLG because EVERYONE in the competitive community knew that Bungie's Arena ranked settings were stupid as hell and only MLG could be trusted to create a balanced game.

Dude, no one played MLG playlist. That is what i told the first guy. Did you know of Arena? Arena was first before MLG was a playlist. Population counts do matter because it shows what most players actually play.
The same event happened to Arena eventually. No one played it. it died and everyone only played the social match making Playlist..

This thread is based upon the Arena playlist not the MLG. Like I said Arena came first not MLG. For classic Halo competitive i'll wait for Halo 2 and Halo 3 so that i don't have to deal with the DMR. BR is king and those games had the maps to play those game types properly. Plus three had those utility pick ups like the bubble shield and the health shield recharge.

[blakee]

Originally posted by humble survivor:

What are the reasons why Competitive, on the hardcore playlist, isn't actually competitive.


2. Why no bloom? Bloom as in recoil, Which was to every weapon in Reach, made the game balanced. Especially the DMR. For taking out bloom, makes the DMR Halo 4's DMR. This isn't good for Reach.

Because bloom never worked. People just spammed shots anyways and it was less skillful gunplay. It just made combat RNG based. Anyone who considered timing shots in most encounters just got outgunned. 4v4 you don't worry about long range shot timing.