- swvjdirector
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- Honorable Heroic Member
"What are we holding on to, Sam?"
"That there's some good in this world, and it's worth fighting for."
Before we get into the actual topic, disclaimer: I exclusively play Halo 3 and am absolutely biased. I have spent far, far more time on H3 than Reach, and didn't spend much time in the Arena. (I played on a few different tags, though, so don't judge only by this one.) This isn't a topic of "D00d I hates dis gaem cuz dis ain't a gaem I g0od at 1337!!1!!"
So, now to buisiness: For those of you that play Reach competitively, do you think that its competitive play is as good as or better than Halo 3 and 2? If so, what contributed to make the competitive play better? I had a few specific reasons for disliking the competitive play:
Bloom: (A random factor. The more radom factors there are, the less skill is involved in a game, because there are more things beyond the players' control.) Most of the time, pacing your shots worked. However, as I'm sure everyone has experienced, you'll occasionally be killed by some kid who just spams the heck out of his DMR/pistol and still kills you, despite you pacing your shots perfectly. This doesn't usually happen, but since you can't control the actual spread, sometimes even spamming makes shots connect, which made me feel cheated when I was doing what I was supposed to and still got killed.
Armor Abilities: On paper, this actually sounded awesome to me. In gameplay, it kind of eliminated a lot of the need for map control, since equipment was part of the map before. Also, it's another random factor: When you stick someone, you don't know if they're just going to armor lock and survive it. Obnoxious. Other things like the Sprint/Sword combo were also frustrating.
The lack of a 1-50 ranking system: I just couldn't stay interested in the game as much; partially because if you play anything other than Arena, you aren't getting matched up with people at your skill every time, which can be frustrating. I often felt bad for some of the less skilled players I was paired against; how was it fair for us to play each other? (That's not arrogance on my part; they were just terrible.)
I'm aware that the MLG playlist finally updated to remove AAs and bloom completely, which is great; however, it's kind of late now, and I've already gone to a different game. So anyway, I'm just interested in hearing your opinions on whether or not you enjoyed Reach's competitive play more or less than the other Halo games, and why.