With only a mere 52 days remaining in Reach's lifespan as the most recent Halo Multiplayer game, I decided to make this thread to explain how Bungie turned a game with so much potential into a game that is unbearable to play at with Vanilla settings. You may be wondering how did Halo Reach ever have potential; it has always been a frustrating game that implemented several random mechanics such as bloom and armor lock. As we count down the days until MLG Dallas, where Halo 4 will make a huge appearance on the showfloor, I want to explain how Reach failed casually and competitively even with the strong potential it once held.
As we start to discuss random mechanics, I think we should start out with the mechanic that killed competitive Halo - bloom. The general idea of bloom appears great on paper, but the way Bungie implemented it into the final build made the mechanic unbearable and broken. After the horrible netcode in Halo 3 due to the large amount of spread and non-hitscan weapons, I jumped with glee about the idea of Bungie implementing hitscan weapons and a feature that allows us where our shots will directly hit. Spread made cross-mapping almost impossible, but did not alter close-mid range combat. When Bungie released Halo Reach's beta, I soon realized that bloom will not only cause severe frustrations, but it will also slow down gameplay from all distances. Halo has always been a game about fast killtimes that require skill, but Bungie decided to stray away from that general idea and implement a broken mechanic into a game that would later go on to severely break gameplay and end the competitive scene for Halo Reach. It was bloom that destroyed Halo Reach's competitive atmosphere. It was armor lock and jetpack which destroyed Halo Reach's general atmosphere.
Let's start out with armor lock, shall we. As we all know, armor lock will cause severe frustration and allows for inexperienced players to carry a crutch like bloom. Also like bloom, it completely STOPPED gameplay and extremely broke the overall flow of the game. As a Bungie employee once said "It's super powerful!", we know now he was not joking. Instead of balancing all of the armor abilties, Bungie decided to add an armor ability that will, above all, cause the most frustrations for the enemy side. Jetpack was another game-changing armor ability. We seem to have the general conception that jetpack broke map flow, but that is not correct. Jetpack completely IGNORED map flow, causing map control to be completely pointless. Power positions were now an ease to control with the usage of jetpack. Jetpack allowed for the exploitations of maps, especially forge maps that were created due to the lack of unique maps Bungie offered.
Do not even get me started on maps. Reach had only two competitive maps right out of the box, and both were inspired by previous Halo games, Asylum and Zealot. Instead of creating new playspaces, Bungie exemplified a company that was ready to get rid of a franchise. It recycled map after map after map from the campaign, and the maps that were recycled were not even close to be considered competitive. Reflection was dominated by jetpack, Sword Base (Please don't let me explain), Uncaged (ARE YOU KIDDING ME BUNGIE), etc. etc. etc.
Strafing in Reach was almost non-existant in Reach due to the slow movement speed and the short jump height. Strafing has always been an important aspect in Halo that was absolutely necessary to win a BR battle. Now in Reach, strafing hardly plays any effect on throwing off shots from the opponent. Why Bungie decided to slow down movement speed is way beyond me.
If Bungie were to balance bloom, make better maps, balance armor abilities, and keep the original movement speed and jump height, Reach would easily be one of the best Halo games. It's netcode and shot registration is by far the best out of any Halo game.
Happy 2 year birthday Reach
[Edited on 09.14.2012 7:32 PM PDT]