- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I love the stats system, but it seems to make me look worse than I am. When Halo 3 came out it was virtually the first time I had played on my 360 in 4 or 5 months and my past experience with halo 2 was very little as I had just switched to the Xbox 360 platform from ps2. Because of availability I started playing halo 1 on pc instead of Xbox and consequently my first real experience with the 360 and live was with halo 3. Being the noob I was back last September I racked up a pretty low k/d and managed to lose many games. Even when I started to play more I didn't get much better, and my stats were pretty bad to see. I started to spend much more time playing customs with high levels (brigs and generals) and got much much better, able to compete with 50s in things like FFA and MLG game types. Now when I enter matches I am jokingly ridiculed about my "bar of shame" on my colonel rank because I have won a lot more games but really haven't concentrated on getting a high skill. My .91 k/d remains despite my much better performance and only recently has the BR replaced the AR as my "tool of destruction" for all matches. When I enter matches in doubles and slayer with people I don't know I always remind my team-mates that, yes, I am good at halo even though my highest is skill is only 40. When I join customs games some people are surprised that a colonel grade 2 is doing on the same level as them. People who play with me (most are over skill 45) are surprised how low my ranks are in the hoppers. It seems that though I have become a much, much better halo player, it is not reflected in the stats on bungie net. People who look at my stats and achievements often think I am a lesser player for it. Even people on my friends list constantly berate me about why my skill is so low even though they know I am better than my stats show. This is a constant annoyance, and I wonder if others feel the same way.
On a different note, I have had very weird luck in matchmaking. Once I played I doubles match against a player named xMensyx, a name I faintly recognized. I realized after the game that his name was in the motto of one of my good friends, but I had not known at the time who mensy was. The odds I would play someone I did not know at all except through a name in a motto seems extremely large. I have also played a team slayer match with 3 of my friends against 2 of my friends without co-ordination. Somehow we matched up together when there were about 80,000 other gamers also looking for a game in that hopper. Another large coincidence occurred when I faced Niper in a doubles match. It took me a second to realize that though we did not have each other on a friends list, we had played many customs together as we shared some friends. I also met 5 members of the same clan (a relatively small one names Team Virus) separately through matchmaking and only later noticed they were all on each others friend lists. I have also played a team 3 times in a row (and beat them all three times) though I did not know any nor had I preferred them. All this happened before the auto-update came out and changed matchmaking (one notice I found was that quickest really was the fastest and the previous quick match finder [Good Connection] did not work the same way anymore). This update may have changed a few key things and this luck may not persist.
On the subject of lag: Lag seems to cause some pretty awesome kills you didn't intend and some deaths which you just want to scream at. It seems that on theater that you should be able to see it as the host saw it so you can see the real turn of events instead of the ones you saw, as if you see the laggy view you still won't understand how you killed him or why you died. This may not be possible in game, but maybe some feature on bungie-net which allows you to retrive the game from another's perspective to be downloaded on to your 360 (kinda like file-share moveis for only the last game you played).
The first time I tried to post this I got an error but thanks to my OCD I did a ctrl-a; ctrl-c on the whole post allowing me to keep all of this text without my open weeping on my computer because bungie deleted all of that text I had just wrote. Sometimes saving every two seconds comes in handy.
It seems that this wall of text will come to a close and any thoughts on any of these subjects (including to point out any of my faults) are welcome.
-More to come-
Avatarowoe
To you, who skipped over most of the post to the end to see what it was all about, I say:
"I can sum up this post in one word for you so you don't have to waste your small brain reading or trying to understand anything I say: Masterpiece. (*sigh*)"
Thanks for reading...
[Edited on 02.29.2008 8:24 AM PST]