God do we need Bungie back more than ever

[.50Æ Ghost]

Social matchmaking (on the rare occasion that I do instead of CGB) is so atrociously broken and unfinished it's ridiculous.

EVERY TIME, if you include CE and 2 and 2 Anniv in the 8v8, you will be staring at Searching for players.

But include Reach, and you find a Reach game nearly instantly, and it's pretty much always the same couple of maps, either Boardwalk or the Timberland one, (it's like always Boardwalk, Ridgeline, or Breakpoint, I never see the other maps) DMR's, and every. single. time without fail the teams are the most unbalanced thing I have ever seen.

I know those who have been bequeathed with this IP do not care.
But it's almost like the matchmaker only works for Reach, and/or intentionally pits m&Kb (that can't even properly be what it is due to bloom) against the aim assist controller team, and yes it's what made the player count drop from 120k so fast when this game launched back in December of whatever that year was. (because Halo has not only strong aim assist but that plus bullet magnetism) Or it's a mix but one team is always vastly outpowering the other team. I don't mean like, by a little. I mean like every time there's 3-4 people (or the entire team) with double digit kills in seconds on one team, and the ENTIRE other team has like 3 kills each at most, unable to do much at all. I've seen it again and again and again, not a one off by any stretch.

This isn't just affecting Halo, and I know the people that actually care about integrity & authenticity in games will know, that ever since these ideas of 'making matchmaking perfectly balanced for every game for everyone all the time' has come out and started plaguing our games, it literally does the opposite of that most of the time at worst, and at best, just makes it an unfun 1:1 ratio experience for the entire scoreboard (looking at you CS:2).
For those that will make hand waving excuses and dismissals or feign not knowing what I'm talking about, this post is not for yall and there is no need to reply, it won't be entertained.
I'm well aware posting this won't do anything, just saying what we all already know.

I will also take this opportunity to ONCE AGAIN remind any 343 devs that may be reading this that hosting a cgb of classic halo 2 CTF is STILL broken and everyone leaves because teammate icons are mixed amongst your team and enemy team and radar is reversed showing allies as reds and enemies as yellow on radar.

And also that the team change glitch that shown up since summer 2023 (not alllowing host to move ppl in teams to balance teams if ppl leave and the teams get unbalanced) STILL has not been fixed despite reporting it numerous times.

SHOW us you care by fixing these things.

[angstlicht]

it's one of the things i enjoyed a lot about this MCC that you get maps that weren't really in circulation originally. it's a double-edged sword though because you also don't get the good maps that were in circulation originally. as for CGB, hope you like jenga on standoff!

it's almost like the matchmaker only works for Reach

the reason for this is very obvious: cosmetic integration. halo 3 had a few unlockable permutations, but not nearly enough to satisfy the steam hunger for tf2 hats and counter strike skins. reach was built with this kind of XP-gated cosmetic progression unlock with an ingame store that you use an ingame currency to buy tons of cosmetics in, though.

it's also probably why halo 5 and infinite are 95% a cosmetics shop and infinite had ~2 maps for its whole single player, and why halo 2 anniversary multiplayer module was even created so halo 2 could also have 3d-modelled-in multiplayer cosmetics to collect for it.

in this regard, bungie wouldn't help at all. and actually, they'd probably make it even worse. if they ran the MCC, it'd probably entirely uninstall halo 2 every now and then and put it into a disney style content vault.

the MCC absolutely plays favorites, as does the halo fanbase itself. reach is obviously what they've settled on to support the most or best, with halo 3 being a close second.

This isn't just affecting Halo

also correct. it's just what the multiplayer marketing paradigm... thing... is doing at the moment. compare this MP-module-favoritism halo's going through to unreal tournament. but you can't, because epic entirely de-listed that franchise to funnel people into fortnite.

to me the simple fact that you can get the map isolation in halo 3 matchmaking and not be able to veto it, makes this all into some kind of clockwork orange forced conditioning situation. i would actually probably have paid a premium for a version of halo 3 that had no isolation in it at all.

[.50Æ Ghost]

As for CGB, I host my own, and people love it, so no, standoff can go *** off.

'cosmetic integration' what? disagree. The reason is obvious; Reach is the game that came out first in the collection, therefore being out the longest had the most forge maps (which could be transferred over from console) and is also the game 343 worked on. (they did a much better job of the lighting in h2a campaign compared to ce:a,
so why the neglecting mmaking for the other games, idk. as I said CTF h2 classic cgb remains bugged to hell, despite being reported numerous times by myself and others, team change glitch remains unfixed since its debut appearance in summer 2023 despite reporting it numerous times to msoft)

The numbers would not have dropped so dramatically from 120k if they had released CE first instead of Reach, there are many reasons why, I won't go into right now.

& Also not just out the longest in terms of forge but also in a sense of, those players that DIDN'T leave after the launch, were probably folks who never stopped playing reach on console and are playing it on pc with controller (which, like, why, but I will digress from going into all of that)

Since these first two 'points' u made make no sense and my post has nothing to do with cosmetics and cosmetics has nothing to do with this and you went on to say Bungie wouldn't help at all or handle things worse, I stopped reading. good day. ah i see you mean the unlock system, but most people ought be done with that already by now it didn't exactly take long to finish the reach unlocks and the collections been out for years now.

It's not a paradigm there are patents and no shortage of videos exposing/discussing it.
the same maps over and over favoritism or no is monotonous and there's no reason to exclude most of the maps which would be more variety. matchmaking shouldn't play map favoritism especially if it means excluding 75% of the maps 75% of the time.

[Gabthelazy]

2000s Bungie is dead, OP.
Destiny Bungie is a whole different beast.

[.50Æ Ghost]

I'm aware.

Just saying, though.