Guest Article: Improvements Needed for Halo 3
July 11, 2007 41 Comments
Have you ever heard of halo2.junk.ws, the site that compiles all your Halo 2 stats oh so efficiently? One of the administrators there, Excardon, recently had some thoughts about a few things that could improve your Halo 3 experience. Excardon has been a gamer for years, and Halo has not only been providing him with a passionate hobby since 2003, but it also introduced him to his wife, xATHENAx. Together they run the website’s official community team, the Halo 2 Junkies. Excardon, who is currently going for a degree in Computer Science at College of Southern Maryland, is my guest author for this article. His ideas are really quite unique (I haven’t heard anybody offer these suggestions yet) and so deceptively simple that you wonder why they haven’t been implemented already. Read on for Excardon’s thoughts on improving Halo 3.
Improvements Needed for Halo 3, written by Excardon
Halo 3 is only a couple of months away, and Bungie just announced that they are starting to put the finishing touches on what is undoubtedly going to be one of the best games of all time. After all the feedback and suggestions they received from the Beta (which in my mind was astounding) what could they possibly improve upon to make this game even better? Along with the new amazing additions already added to the game for the Beta release, the weapons and gameplay are balanced with minimal problems (i.e. hit detection for grenades on the warthog).
In my mind the only thing Bungie has left to improve upon is the social aspect involved in the game. Two major subjects come to mind for me personally : the jerks you find in matchmaking and the overall community. These issues are somewhat intermingled in terms of how to fix the problem of the online idiots and ways to improve the community, however I will separate and address each issue somewhat individually.
- Jerks
Jerks are the scum we all encounter at some point during our online gaming sessions. Bungie and the Xbox Live team has done an extraordinary job reducing these unpleasant experiences through methods such as voice muting, booting betraying players, leaving feedback, and dishing out bans for the hardcore offenders. However there is one area that has barely been touched that makes people not want to play in good ol’ matchmaking without a full party.
These people are known as “delevelers”. Delevelers are typically decent Halo players who go into matchmaking and purposely kill themselves or other teammates to ensure that their team loses. Many players do this because they wish to lower their level so they can beat up on less experienced players rather than stand the chance of possibly losing games against people that are as good or better than themselves or their team. Although Bungie did come up with an overall ranking system to help curb this trend, what happens to the people that unfortunately get stuck with people that just feel like being jerks?
With this in mind, KINGPINS BACK, a friend of mine and long time member of the Halo community I am in, came up with a great and surprisingly simple idea. Just as you are able to boot someone for too many betrayals, you and your team should have the option of booting someone with too many suicides. This way you and your team still have a fighting chance to win the game. Simple, isn’t it?
The other big issue that can easily be solved to stop jerks is within the clan system. One problem is that sometimes through social engineering a person may be granted into the highest clan position, which is Clan Overlord. From there they can sabotage the clan by either kicking everyone out or just canceling their account and leave it hanging in the clan with the issue that no one can remove it.
A simple way to solve this is to have a sole position available to the person who created the clan. The clan founder would have the power to remove anyone they see fit from their clan in case the conditions stated above arise. In the case that the founder leaves the clan, he should be given the option to pass his power on to one and only one person.
Not bad ideas huh? Well, let’s move on to the other subject I mentioned a while ago…
- Communities
Bungie has not yet confirmed whether or not the clan option we all enjoyed in Halo 2 will be available in Halo 3. I personally don’t see why they wouldn’t because the effects of not including it will be devastating on many Halo communities. I have heard from some that the clan option may not be possible due to the fact that everything goes through the 360 dashboard, however after talking to my co-workers they say that you can form a clan in other games like GRAW 2.
Anyway, on to the idea that can improve the Halo community through improving the clan system. Along with the clan founder idea, as stated above in the “Jerks” section of this article, my wife and I came up with an idea to strengthen bonds between clans and communities which we like to call the “Alliance list”.
The alliance list is comprised of five clans that your community wishes to be closer to and improve relationships with. Within your clan’s alliance list, you can view other clan members, their position in the clan, view online status, and send messages and party invites. Your clan overlords would be able to send out an alliance invite (much like a clan invite) to one of the other clan overlords. Upon them accepting, you can do all of these exciting things without sacrificing room on your friends list (which is currently a huge problem of others and mine in Halo 2).
All and all, Halo 3 will be a great game in my opinion and even without these ideas implemented, it will still be quite the amazing game. However with these simple additions, I believe that Halo 3 can climb one step higher and go from amazing and enter the world of all-around gaming perfection.
Great article….all those ideas would be great fixes to the nuisances of matchmaking and online play in general.
Even if these ideas are not implemented into Halo 3, I have no doubts it’s going to be a great game and take over many months of my life…lol
Thanks for citing my awesome idea! I don’t have a job right now, Bungie should hire me.
:-D
I love the idea of an Alliance List.
I know it’d be great to keep a list of clans that you’ve had fun with a create a EU of the Halo Nation.
I don’t have much to comment on the delevelers, because I usually go into Matchmaking with a party filled with clan members and allies.
great all around article. having the ability to vote someone out for too many suicides would be outstanding. community is a big issue with halo3 and you have the best idea to solve it that i’ve heard yet, hopefully bungie will take these into consideration.
sneak
All excellent ideas. You’ll never be able to fully eliminate jerks because the category is too broad. But this definitely helps the suicide portion of it.
Hi Angel, Excardon
I completely agree with everything you said, especially the ‘Clan Founder’ idea. I have even let accounts expire in Overlord status. Not wanting to spend the money just to part the tag the account remains there taking up a valuable spot in a limit of 100 members.
I realize that Bungie has been working hard to entrust the idea of one tag per player so what happened to me probably wont happen often now so I’ll let that go.
Another other idea which a Staff member of ours Defkism came up with was a ‘Surrender’ option. There are those moments in any given day where you don’t have a full party. You go in say by yourself for this case but it could be a 2 person party really. Your other 3 team makes quit out and your getting destroyed. With the new Military Rank system you don’t want to quit. Why not have an option there to surrender while not loosing rank. You could implement the Veto system odds, more than half the team has to agree in order for it to happen.
Again great write up and an even better idea. Can’t wait for Halo 3, see you all September 25th!
OcR Envy – Outcast Reborn
While I do like the idea of clan “founders” and think that’ll help prevent abuse of clan privileges and sabotage, that only addresses a small part of the issue of “jerks.” I don’t think there’s really much that anyone can do to prevent de-leveling, other than simply leaving feedback, thereby causing those gamers’ reputation to go down.
I can see how the alliance idea would help communities that have several clans (like Podtacular) and can help manage and unify those groups for community leaders. Interesting…
Nice Job Excardon…
I completely agree with you on the Clan suggestions. We have recently had a similar problem in one of our clans and that simple solution you proposed would have resolved our problem in a matter of seconds.
I have to say that now that you mentioned it does make sence that there could be possibly be no clan. I never stopped and thought about the guide button friends menu.. They would have to create another option in there or possibly another blade on that friends menu that could resemble a clan system.
But my favorite point is definately the alliance clan option you mentioned. That was great, i really hope they get to read all of that and maybe take some of those things into account.
Dialpex – Podtacular
All of the idea are great
I came up with an idea to dissuade delevelers from ruining everyone’s experience in April. My idea was originally posted here at bungie.net’s forums.
http://www.bungie.net/Forums/posts.aspx?postID=10529118&postRepeater1-p=1#10540628
All and all I loved your idea on the option to boot a suicider. I think almost anyone that has played halo 2 MM has come across one of those jerks.
The only problem I can see with “the alliance” is those five communities would have to be really careful when letting new members in to there community. I almost think a few bad apples could tarnish the experience and reputation of a community carrying the Bungie approval sticker.
My biggest complaint would be the S talking little kids. The beta addressed one of my problems of hearing the other team while playing. This took care of a lot of problems for me. Also, do you think bungie’s RP system is a way of detouring these “de-levelers”?
What I would love to see would be a way of getting matched with peers in MM, maybe with the b-day you placed when you made your g/t, but I know that is a far fetched idea and just a thought of mine.
Thanks for posting this here and that was a great story!!
Like the idea of an Alliance List, thought I would have it be a bit larger … say 10 allied clans.
There could also be a Preferred/Avoid Clan option, similar to the option for Players … though, which Overlord (if there will be any) gets to make THAT decision could be … sticky.
That is all.
KryptoCleric
Second Foundation
Those are some really good and simple aplication ideas. If theres one complete truth is that Bungie has evolutioned the way gameplay, community behavior and design are done and conducted. Bungie has a great deal of apptreciation to its loyal comunity and belive they are one of the many reasons they have won a gamedesign race. They will do whatever they must to keep those comunities close to them and each other.
Excellent write-up Excardon.
All around good points, and the Alliance list sounds like a great idea.
Clan founder huh? Sounds like someone has been playing too much Ogame… ;)
Having delevelers on a team is always a nasty situation. I like the idea of being able to boot someone who contunuously committs suicide.
Despite these changes, I wouldn’t put it past some players to go the extra mile and screw the game up for everyone.
Wow, thanks a lot guys for the all the postive comments so far. I’m glad people are liking these ideas. Keep those comments coming!
Also, many thanks again to bs angel for hosting my article here and the opporunity to be a guest author on this amazing blog.
@Locke
To be quite honest, I never played Ogame at all even though a lot of people in my clan do. That’s funny that is a term used in Ogame.
Nice writeup Excardon!
Great ideas on how Halo 3 will be a great experience without jerks ruining it and not make you play…
Unr3alChi3f – Podtacular
Excellent read.
Delevelers don’t have to just suicide themselves, they could just not play. There’s nothing you’ll be able to do if you get stuck with someone who isn’t playing. (Unless Bungie takes notes from other games, and allows voting where if 75% of your team votes someone out, they get booted). If you care about your rank that much, I would suggest only going in with a full team, that’s the only safe measure you can take.
The alliance list is a wonderful idea. To be honest, I’m really suprised I hadn’t heard more about it before now. Within the halo community, we love to allign ourselves with like minded gamers. My FL simply isn’t large enough to account for all these different clans that I would love to associate with more.
The only concern would be the length of the alliance list. With 4 alliances, you’d have a list of over 400 people. I would imagine this could cause some headaches to its users, not to mention the developers.
Some good ideas! Booting a suicider should be added in. I’m interested to see what kind of clan options they come up with. I hope they find a way that the clan can be accessed when playing another game besides halo. I don’t have all the members on my friends list and when playing other games I can’t see what their up to.
Hi! I’m the wife of Excardon that was mentioned. :)
I just wanted to add a small bit to “our” alliance idea since NightMr brought up a comment that pertained to it. We were dreaming of a separate “tab” for “Allied Communities” much like halo2 current has separate “tabs” for “Friends”, “Clan”, and “Recent Players” with a list of 5-10 allied clans/communities on it. Once you are viewing this tab, only the names of your allied clans would be present. You could then click on one of the allied clans to go into a secondary list of the clan’s members, rather then having all 300-400 members on one page. To view the members of another allied clan, one would simply go back to the main “Allied Communities” page and click on a different clan’s name.
I personally am not a programmer but I figured this multi-tiered system wouldn’t be too hard to implement. Hope this furthers any of your understanding on the idea!
I love the idea of being able to boot someone from the game if they have too much suicides. But i think it has to be like a veto system where at least 3/4 people on the team choose to boot him.
I also agree with the clan founder position and clan alliances sounds great.
Those are some great ideas that would I love to see implemented. I know I despise getting into a game with a deleveler. I wish I was able to get XBL when they still had all the big clan activities going on.
@NightMr
I definitely see your point about the delevelers simply only being able to sit there, however it is way easier to defeat the other team with an absent player or two then one who drops your score every few seconds.
Although I don’t care about my rank all that much, I know there are many out there who do and it would help save them from tons of frustration.
For me personally its more of the fact that the person is simply being an idiot that bugs me rather than losing a rank. I can get a rank back easily when playing with the right people.
That suicide kicker idea is pretty cool.
I’m certainly hoping for some more clan customization. With the depth that Bungie appears to have taken with gametype customizing, why not mirror that with clans?
I’m thinking along the lines of creating and naming your ranks, delegating powers, and maybe even a background for your clan-list via importing a saved picture from your 360.
It wouldn’t just be awesome, it would be encouraging for those lone-wolves out there get into the halo community scene.
All of the additions suggested here are vaild, but i can only hope that bungie makes decent additions to the game without changing it too much from the other halos.
What i would like to see is a clan able to make the ranks that are present within the clan rather than the simple peon, memeber, staff, and overlord.
Awesome article.
Excardon, those are some excellent ideas that you and some significant others in your life have come up with. Very excited to see if they pull through to actually be implemented in Halo 3. Good Luck!
Wow….That was an amazing write up, with equally amazing ideas included. I really like the idea about booting delevers… it makes so much sense. Also, i think it would be a good idea to turn friendly fire off (a surly hobos idea). This, to me would make the experience a whole lot better.
The Alliance plan is really an amazing idea!! kudos to you and your wife Excardon. It would be so much easier to view and play with people from your community. Also, if your clan is not very active, but others are on the site (as it is in podtacular) you can always find a good match that matches your communities morals.
I also really like the idea of the clan founder position. This would help improve the clan system very much. This way, jerks can’t screw up a clan by becoming overlord and booting everybody.
Anyways, great ideas…i really really hope bungie impliments (sp?) them into the game.
Awesome job~
TheIronicPear
Great ideas, i like the clan allience idea, but i think the # of clans allowed to be allied with will be an issue since if its to high, the loading time for the clan list will be too long, but if its low, it may cause trouble or communities that have many clans (Podtacular has Pros, Rec A, B, C, D, E and F). Also, dont remember what button was used in the H3B but i think it was X. Any i think that when you have the option to boot som1, you have to press and hold the button for mabye 3-seconds, that or use a less often used button, because what if i blast a full warthog while a teammate boards it, but i didnt see him. I`d get boated because when i killed him he was holdin X.
Or…
A new moderator based system could be implemented in which idiots on X-Box Live could be tracked, hunted down, and destroyed without mercy…
or we could go with your ideas.
^_^
Great stuff, I hope someone at Bungies reads this. My favorite idea, while all of them are excellent, would have to be the clan alliance idea. Especially now that TTL has 100 awesome members… and there is limited space on people’s FLs. (100 was never enough)
Awesome write-up.
The de-leveler booting thing is great, just because those kids think they are being funny and “having fun” while doing it. And once we get the option to boot them, their fun will be over.
The clan allies would have to be a bit bigger like Kryto said. But the idea is very creative and I’m sure everyone will like it.
Excardon ive been playing halo 2 since it was first released and im glad that you, Kingpins Back,and xATHENAx came up with these great ideas. But with these ideas in mind say you go into a party and get stuck with a deleveler or someone who talks a lot of junk. I think that there should be an option where if you dont like someone you can just chose the option to prevent you from ever playing with that person again in matchmaking, what do you think?
excardon-
all of these are great ideas! is there a more formal way for us to support these suggestions? a petition or a thread at bungie.net perhaps?
i really do hope bungie is listening to excellent ideas like this from their loyal fans and they incorporate them as much as possible.
PS, it was fun playing with you and athena the other night in angel’s room. hope to run into you guys again soon.
-tornado
I definitely agree with the booting of a suicider, but what would the stipulations be? How many suicides etc. ? I only ask this because a group of 3 could go into team slayer MM and when they get matched with their 4th boot him because they have the majority vote. Great ideas, just needs some clarification.
I liked the ideas, especially the suicide and alliance thoughts.
I would like to add to the delevelors. Bungie has ranks for different game types. They even have hidden ranks for non-ranked games like team training and swat. So why not have a hidden rank for deleveling?
Let’s say the highest rank is a 15 and the lowest is a 0. Everyone starts at 10 in the deleveling rank. After 20 played games they move to a level 15. Any gamer who has more suicides than deaths goes down one rank in the secret deleveling rank.
If match making the deleveling rank would be factored into who they get teamed up with, delevelers would get matched with other delevelers.
That is OK, but let’s accelerate it. If they go down one rank the first game they go down 2 the next, 4 the following until they hit 0 on their deleveling rank. Anybody below 8 in their deleveling rank requires 10 games to level up their deleveling rank.
So now when someone delevels it affects how they are paired. Lower the deleveling rank the more likely they will play with delevelors. Furthermore, by making it more difficult to rank back up it will mean they play with delevelors longer to get their delevelor rank back.
After re-reading it sounds complicated but in actually it helps delevelors go down faster, shortens frustration by non-deleveling players, and helps them play through the frustration they’ve caused by deleveling.
It may not completely work out this way, but using the system(s) that are already in place should be doable and make the game fun for everyone. :)
Hello everyone, and Excardon, Athena, and bs angel!! ^_^
I loved this article!
So nice to see articles on things that relate to me a bit more!
I am happy bs angel had a guest contribute, wonderful!
The article was great!
All of the ideas were very nice.
While looking at the comments, someone mentioned the option to avoid players forever. This option is already implemented on xbox live, (providing you have an Xbox360). All you do is go to your recent player’s list and open up jerk’s gamercard and there you can have the option to prefer or avoid said player. I believe I am correct.
However, this option is not 100% avoidance free obviously,
I have actually encountered a few people that I have put on avoidance (no, not anyone of your friends, trust me, these were jerks I met on Uno… and I do not think anyone here would do what they did). However, Halo 3 has many more players than Uno (respectively) so its quite doubtful you will run into the same jerk again. The gamercard, in my opinion helped out a bit in making a person seem not to anonymous anymore( as compared to the original xbox setup- which all you pretty much had was a gamertag)
Moving on,
The Alliance list is an AWESOME idea.
I associate with many other clans, (besides The Caveboys and Girls) That would be really cool if I could have TTL Gunslingers, Team Awesomness, Podtacular, Loading Reality, and of course The Cavegirls all in one alliance list. That would rock!! (However the people above me do have a point- not everyone in said clan are people that you want in your alliance list- maybe give an option to have them in or out of it- but if people are nt in the alliance list- THEY REALLY SHOULD NOT BE IN ANY CLAN, RESPECTIVELY-(Unless the clan name is Tea Baggers R Us, or whatever, you get my point lol)
Anyways,
Congratulations to TTL on amassing over 100 people in their clan, that is awesome!
I would hope Bungie implements a clan system, because if they don’t if would really be a bummer.
I really hope that Bungie does take the time to read this article and the comments. There is still time!!! At least, have an xbox live marketplace download to implement some of these features…
As another person mentioned above, I am not into ranks myself. I am just here to have some fun, play some games, chill, lol whatever. The real issue for me is not whether I lose my rank(I would not even care if I was a level 1 the entire time- lol that just may be where I am holding in my halo skills) But its just the fact of getting paired up with the jerk in the first place.
YOU WOULD THINK THAT OUR GAMERZONES WOULD HELP, BUT WHAT IS THE POINT TO THEM, IF THEY CAN NOT SEPERATE FAMILY FROM UNDERGROUND?? Why do I have to suffer hearing trashtalk when I am in Family, I thought these “gamerzones” were created so everyone could have their own group. I am sure there are plenty of people that are Recreational and Family (even Pro would be fine) I do not understand why I have to get matched up w/ Underground people. Yes, I understand not everyone is a jerk in Underground(I have a few nice friends that are in that zone, but I am just making a point here…)
Anyways,
I loved reading the article, and everyone’s comments!!
~Silvercube/CB Firefly
Caveboy Staff
Pingback: Second Foundation » The Riot #056
I’d like to thank everyone for their support of this article.
Upon speaking to Bothari from Bungie, it was explained to me that these ideas should have been submitted about three months ago due to the fact that the game is almost upon completion and changes like these most likely will not be added. However, he did appreciate the ideas and suggestions which was cool.
I did bring up the suggestion of a possible XBL update after the release to possibly add any of these features mentioned in my article to the game. Hopefully this is possible and taken into consideration.
Excardon, you’re obviously not hipped to the ways of the intarwebz- I’f you’re going to come up with all of these really good ideas you need to throw a really bad idea in too, that way blog trolls have something to pick apart endlessly and call you names for. Duhz. Cerealsly. ;)
LOL … Nice L askan. (I almost called you Asscan but realized not everybody would realize it is a petname for you. Didn’t want it to come across the wrong way. ASSCAN.)
This article is very well written and the suggestions are very valuable. I don’t think it matters too much that it may be too late in the process to add these improvements. I think the biggest thing is that you know the company who makes the game read the article, and now your ideas are planted in the back of their heads. That is so awesome.
The community really came together and supported this as well. How amazing to be a part of it. Thanks to everybody who cared enough to read it and comment! You guys rock.
Great article…and love the ideas…keep them coming guys..hope some of these are used in halo 3…good job
I want the Alliance list like now.. that is awesome. Also, the idea of getting rid of people who delevel or quit out. Overall I agree with these simple ideas would be a better experience in the comunity and ranked matchmaking aspects of Halo 3.
Suicidalthought
The Caveboys/ Member
Needs more Sand.