- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Posted by: Recon Number 54
Posted by: necare
Here's a question for you Recon: do you think it would have been better for the MM system and playlists therein if the optimatch forum had not existed since Halo 2's release?
The fact is our discussion [as you wish to call it] or our input [as Death v2 wishes to call it] has been beneficial to MM over the years. A whole bunch of people [including me] have spent a great deal of time in Optimatch trying to make posts for the betterment of MM. I've seen ideas in there that were so insightful and brilliant that it shocked me - you just have to sift through all the crap first.
Common courtesy for the people who've been trying to help out their favourite game by discussing / having input into the playlist ideas would be nice. Give us some solid reasons - there's a lot of people hacked off out there. "Oh yeh so um population is decreasing so BTB as you know it wont exist anymore" just doesn't cut it - I'm sorry if you think it does. They [in the know] must have better reasons than that [or at least I hope they do]. What's a little CTRL+C anyway?
I believe that the Optimatch forum has been immensely beneficial to the community. That the topics there have allowed people to voice their concerns, satisfaction, dissatisfaction, issues, ideas, complaints, suggestions, criticisms, but the discussion that followed (between members) were what was important and valuable. The fact that someone could say something from "I want a Zombies playlist!" to those "insightful and brilliant ideas" and then the members would discuss it. That (to me) is the benefit and the purpose of the forum. The fact that the community can discuss and exchange views. So if it isnt too much trouble why not give the optimatch forum the information to allow and enhance these discusions and make them more realistic in their nature.
The "influence" that it has on actual decisions on MatchMaking is unknown (to me and to the rest of the membership). We can all have opinions on whether those discussions have a direct impact, an indirect impact, or little influence at all, but the only people who know for certain are those who actually make the decisions regarding MM. In some cases, especially playlists that were stated to be developed (or inspired) by community input there is a connection, I don't deny that. I also didn't miss the fact that even those lists were not 100% copy-paste of the proposed settings from those selected communities. Bungie tweaked and altered the settings based on information and perspective that was theirs alone.This is correct, but it has been said numerous times that NoF has his eye on a thread, or that some of the changes first brought to light here are going into effect. If they didnt take the ideas into consideration, there would be no need for them to post there instead of moderation.
So to answer your question, I think that the benefit of Optimatch has been primarily to the members of the community having the discussion. Anyone from the person with the Zombies suggestion learning/realizing that "honor rules" are unable to work in a MM gametype to the brilliant and insightful ideas that were refined and only got better BECAUSE they were seen, considered and refined by the membership. I think that the exchange of ideas and the raising of awareness and understanding is the main benefit of the forum.And without an explination of why honors rules wouldnt work they wouldnt know this, it is the same with reasons behind playlist changes. Once again, all that I am asking is for these users to post some information and explinations to enhance the exchange of ideas that you say is the main benefit of this forum.
A side benefit, (but difficult to quantify) is that those discussions have also been a window into the opinion and desires of a sample of the MM community. A sample, because the members of this site who post in Optimatch, the people with the good ideas, the not so good, the ones with personal crusades who make multiple accounts to have circle-discussions with themselves and keep their pet-playlist a hot topic, all of those people are a small sample(and not a statistically accurate sample) of the hundreds of thousands who play MM.I agree with this, which is why ive said that changes are usually based on a general concensus, or after a lot of debate. Thus, these people who negativly effect optimatch have very little, if any, effcect on the changes and the end conclusion of a thread.
There are people who I am sure participate in those discussions because they "want to help make a difference". And they do. But if they thought that their words were suggestions for Bungie primarily and for their fellow members to discuss secondarily, I believe that they have their intended and actual audiences reversed.But, it is clear that changes have come forward from this, NoF has said a few times that ideas from a thread will be implimented.
Posting an idea or opinion on an online forum can never be anything more than a drop in the data-bucket for those who make and are responsible for the real decisions. It certainly isn't a round-table discussion with the decision makers where the participants of the Optimatch forum are granted a vote in what actually happens.But the posting of a reasonable and well explained though process with a solution, points, etc. if kept towards the top of the forums, will eventually get noticed and even effect the thoughts of those incharge of of MM.