Ah, GameFAQS, you never cease to amaze me

What is this shit?

Okay, I get that this list is written from a competitive perspective, but that's no excuse. Not only do some of these things have no meaning on the competitive Halo experience, but some of them aren't even Bungie's doing. Plus, I believe the writer of this article has a fear of our friendly neighborhood comma.


Does CNET just post anything up on their "Top 10 lists"?

When the metagame becomes a matter of who can execute the glitches quickest, I can't help but wonder what's wrong with our "videogame competitive" community.

There are 2 reasons most (not all) MLG players couldn't adopt to ShadowRun and now seemingly Halo: Reach.

1) When the system is balanced, there is no one "elite" way to play.
2) When there's little to no glitches, there's nothing "elite" to learn.

Both are near similar but different enough to warrant the format.

For me, Halo:CE may have had a broken Pistol, but the physics and therefore pathfinding and therefore map construction and weapon placement made firefights, not just on a console, but for any FPS, just simply amazing. If the Pistol was a 6-shot, it would have been a truly simple and balanced system.

Halo2 took that and went "hey let's make it mainstream" and somehow, I still don't know how, the extreme amounts of glitches, aim-assist, swipe-scan and lack of physics became "more skilled" than CE.

Popularity skews a lot of realities.

"Simply by learning and mastering these glitch tricks then utilizing when and where to use them you could slice and dice the average player like Wonderbread."

This where I draw the line between being Neo and cheating. As much as I like being able to complete any action as quickly as my mind processes it, the computer and internet simply can't handle it.
Therefore, without changing what is skill, timing requirements are added into the system to prevent the "lucky twitch" shot that so many of these competitive minded types seem to despise.
When "defeating" these systems becomes a showing of skill, it's no longer about determining skill within said system. It is seeing who can "break the laws of physics" quickest.

It's MP script-breaking, if you will. It's knowing the rules ahead of time and circumventing them. As fun as it can be learning the trick itself in campaign (or MP), ultimately, script-breaking a game is avoidance of playing it, not a showing of domination of it.

That being said, it's great for someone to be MLG. But associating the MLG attitude with the entirety of Halo really boils my bloods. As much as any fandumb yet so-called Halo fan that feels Halo is only one thing (the thing to them).

Just to add, these so called Halo2 glitch lovers can't figure out how MW2 got so popular so fast... Ironically, if the author and others like him do have a valid point, it kinda proves the opposite of their intention. Halo2 took the least amount of skill in the Halo series. That's a hard position for one to have. Failure at either conclusion.

Honestly, I don't care what people like Halo for. Halo's multiplayer (and Halo 2's glitch fest multiplayer) are just as much part of the series as the single player that I dissect and analyze. Do I believe that Halo is a skill based shooter? No. Do I expect other people to agree with me? Definitely not. For what it's worth, I'm not a big fan of any of the Halo games' multiplayer at all (matchmaking in particular) and rarely play without friends when I do. If someone believes that glitches are what made Halo 2 great, that's perfectly fine. Hell, in a way, I kind of agree. My fondest memories of Halo 2 were figuring out how to get out of maps. I spent more time outside of Burial Mounds and Lockout than I did actually playing them.

However, this is simply a bad article. Not only is this half-assed forum rant a better example of writing, but the article betrays its main point by including things that Bungie did not do. If it had just been a list of things that made Halo great, that would've been fine. However, that is not what this list is. Bungie did not add glitches to Halo 2. To even assume that is ludicrous. Likewise, they are responsible for inventing Halo 3 Grifball about as much as they are for inventing Halo 2's infection or Halo 1's Sonic CTF. MLG is also a ludicrous example. Not only did he credit that to the wrong game (as Halo 1 had its own MLG league as well), but he also credited the MLG to the wrong people. While Bungie's contributions in Halo 2 may have made the game more competitive (judging by the outcry of fans before Halo 2 became nostalgic, I doubt that), that in no way gives the author of this article a reason to think that Bungie deserves credit any more than they deserve credit for making Halo 1 an idea console game for machinima purposes (which was, as with most good things, a happy accident).

I could go into more about how I disagree with his truly legitimate choices, but the article doesn't deserve any more examination than what I've already given it.

And then there's that on top of my rant.

I wouldn't have gone off on my tangent if perhaps the order of things were different.

Reading "intended glitches" as #1 quality comparison, a double-false, made me angry.

It's a rant that I'm sure a lot of people agree with, though.

I care about factual arguments/opinions, not popular ones. That being said, I believe mine to be based in facts.

Mine comes from that in a balanced system, strategy trumps improvisation. If there is no variety, there is no strategy.

All I have to say is it's shameful that game-simplifying glitches are considered "1337" skills and MLG is a Major League Disappointment.

My problem with MLG is that they aren't even competitive. There are two forms of competitive nature. You have form A where two or more players, no matter what Sex, Race, Belief, whatever... compete following the same pre-established Rules. You play regulation Football and Regulation Basketball. In the case of videogames, the rules are whatever Bungie has decreed. You use their spawn weapons on their maps with their objectives.

Form B is the willingness, even in the instance of a personal game with modified rules, to play by the standards set by the challenger. Whatever he says are the rules, those are the rules to follow.

MLG does neither of these things. When somebody challenges them to a standard slayer match, they'll scoff. Why? Because it's an AR start. When they're challenged to a Fiesta Match, they back off and say it's noobish or unprofessional. Why? Because it's random weapon starts.

Rather than abide by the rules and standards that they're given in the game that they've chosen to compete with, they cast away what they don't like, adjust what they do like, and alter the game to suit their tastes and their tastes only. That's like me telling the terrorists they're only allowed to use pistols while I get to use an RPG. That's fine when a match is nothing but MLG players because they all agree on the rules, but to sit there and say you're a pro because you can use one weapon proficiently has no value in the gaming community. You cast away 95% of the game the developers slaved over to create for us and you have the nerve to accuse the rest of the community noobish because they're upholding the standard rules of play that were given to them through the ordain Matchmaking playlists?

It takes some skill to be able to 4-shot with the BR, yes, but it takes a helluva lot more skill to be able to adjust to your situation, be able to play on the strength of any weapon you're fortunate enough to obtain, and come out on top in the face of insurmountable odds. It's one thing to spawn everybody with the only weapon they need. It's another to actually be able to effectively navigate the level and hold off enemy fire long enough to obtain the necessary weapons to give you an edge on the competition. The only thing MLG can accurately convey is the players ability to dominate against various players that all have the same weapons and therefore pose an equal level of threat. But there's more to skill than just shooting. Knowing strenghts and weakness, being able to navigate the map, being able to manipulate your enemies into weakening each other so you can claim both kills, etc...

Given a standard 4v4 Team Slayer Match and a 4V4 MLG Team Slayer Match, I will always stand by my belief that standard will always involve more levels of skill and will always be the true determining factor. And until one of these smart-mouthing "MLG players" can beat me in a standard H3 AR Spawn match, I will continue to despise and disrespect the factitious gamimg league (I hold far more respect toward the lesser known League of Gamers. They know how to do these things right.)

In fairness, competitive players are suppose to play a "metagame" that removes all the excess fat. The ones that claim the glitches made Halo competitive don't fall into this spectrum at all.

The M6D and the 2 BRs are the main weapons of the first 3 Halo games because, when you get down to it, they were the most overall efficient weapons to use. The metagame from the first 3 Halo games revolved around the listed weapons (at the competitive level).

The problem with Reach in the so called competitive world is that Bungie has successfully removed the single weapon metagame and the so called MLG players are having a very hard time adjusting to a game that doesn't revolve around single weapon strategies.

And now we have so called skilled players telling Bungie how a game that requires skill should be made. Not realizing that skilled play comes from within the game, not without and if they ever played any other game then Halo, there are many, many ways to make a balanced and fair system.

As we both agree, the metagame comes from the in-game mechanics and is never apparent upon a game's release. But Halo2 and 3 were easy transitions for so called competitive players from Halo:CE as the single weapon metagame never left despite Bungie's efforts. We have dualing to thank for that.




Now to make all an even longer rant short, this all alludes to my point of these so called competitive players not actually being competitive. Competition arises from within a system. No one says "hey, let's compete. let's make a game to who is best." It works by saying "hey, this game is fun and we're good, lets compete to see how good."

And then there's the dislikes about Reach's lack of competitiveness or broken mechanics coming from players that have proven themselves unable to evolve or learn. They need someone else to tell them how a metagame is played and then they will play it as they are told.

As an example, they're told to pace their shots to get kills with the DMR, but when they loose to a "spammer" it's Bungie's fault for not telling them exactly at what pace to shoot when at X range from an enemy. They don't want to have to play upwards of 50 games or more to learn the ins and outs of one weapon, least alone all of them. And don't expect them to learn how to use the physics engine or weapons in any mode but MP (customs)...

But do remember, not every MLG pro or player fits our rage. It just happens to be the majority.

See what you did Devil? You passed it on you did. Not one of us is really talking about the same thing yet we are lol.

Just to sum myself up, if MLG is like the NHL or NFL in that they are spectator sports, then they need to define themselves better than simply saying "we are competitive" because their attitudes prove that they are not and they need to start holding these "kids" accountable for both their actions and attitudes.

Though I feel MLG itself is a scrub organization that makes money off of the ignorant, it is that they allow kids to trash talk and act without sportsmanship as a means to promote the "sport" that pisses me off. It is also why MLG is being held back from being a popular alternative to other sports.

By creating a "one way to play" system and promoting it through less than admirable players, MLG is will continue to be the opposite of what it wants to be, a sport everyone can love.

It's nice to see a few different viewpoints. It's about all an article like this is worth.