- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
I couldn't find any Bungie/MS contacts to send my thoughts to, so I figured this was probably the next best place.
Having been a Bungie fan since Minotaur in '92, and a competitive/professional gamer since '97 - I have a very large interest in Halo 2 as a competitive and professional platform. After playing Halo with my clan last week we got to discussing possible things that Halo 2 could/should have in order to facilitate competitive gaming for those of us that are nerdy enough to take it seriously enough :P.
While I have the utmost respect for Bungie and realize that there is no more capable company of creating a game I will undoubtly be playing for the next 3 years - I realized that our (my clan and I) concerns were of a very small group of players. Those who play for hours and hours on end just to become the best. Playing "for fun" stopped years ago and it becomes more of a job than a past-time.
With these things in mind, what sort of measures is Bungie taking (if any) to ensure that Halo 2 will be a viable game to use in tournaments? Halo, while an AWESOME game, is marred by a few bugs/balance issues that really detracts from its ability to be taken seriously as a tournament game. Now, I am not saying that Halo isn't a great game and that it hasn't had tons of really awesome tournaments - its just not the best. There's a few quibbles that by themselves are small issues, but combine to create a much larger problem. Nor am I saying that I know all the ins and outs of Halo, or am some kind of all knowing pro Halo player. I've merely played Halo with my buds every weekend for the last 2.5 years and occasionally have played in some tournaments. My clan and I are from the best - we're probably only mediocre compared to some of the best clans. I'm hoping to change this for Halo 2, since it will have Xbox Live and will thus be easier to get practice/scrimmages in, as well as matches with other clans.
Does Bungie have any known clans doing balance/gameplay testing? What sort of things would any of you fellow competitive gamers like to see done in Halo 2? If anything, lets get a discussion going about Halo 2's competitive future!
-sYn-DeeK