The state of Halo as a community: Faltering or growing?

[Shandykidinkent]

Hello everyone I wanted to make a post on the state of the overall community of Halo. While it seems to have in the past to have grown and blossomed, it also seems to have caused division and animosity. Looking at the state of discord, do you believe this will be a continuation as the next Halo reaches our consoles or monitors? 

[Harry Cramb]

To be honest. This can be an opinion as well as giving facts as it depends where you operate within the community. But if you are talking in general i would say halo has been on a decline since Bungie left and 343 took over. I'm not saying its the companies specific fault as they had some big ass shoes to fill but from Halo 4 not being the best multiplayer (but in my opinion a fantastic campaign) and then for halo 5 to do vise versa they've proved very unreliable which i feel has pushed alot of people away from the game. As well as this compared to how it used to be the tolerance for 'toxic' people and clans is basically none existent in my opinion compared to how it was on reach but i do feel that some of the older clans and 'community leaders' may need to hand the mantel over to some younger heads and let them stir trouble as that is what allows a clan community to thrive. Conflict and drama. For years i hear people saying otherwise but to be quite frank its a load of shit. Nobody wants to sit and do training's everyday. People want to fight for their clan and have sense of pride and show what they're capable of.

Anyway ill stop my little rant and get back on topic. Yes it is on a decline. 

[Gregor Adrik]

Definitely on the decline and I have little hope for Halo Infinite as the title that will reassert Halo's dominance over console shooters. To me, Halo Reach was the beginning of the end for the Halo Franchise. Things really seemed to be ramping up until it was released.

That said, the Clan Community as we know it today experienced its height on that game as the popularity of roleplay factions rose to its position of dominance over the other paradigms for the first time resulting in narrative driven conflicts involving many clans fighting across lines drawn by superpowers. Pre-Halo 4 Reach was truly awesome to those who weren't pushed away by the changes made to Halo's sandbox causing it to be commonly regarded as Halo's "golden age." (I would disagree) After the launch of 4 in November 2012 though, the Community was splayed across two games harming activity on both. However, the community was large enough in 2013 not to completely crippled by this split. The same could not be said for the following year though. I remember the end of 2014 and most of 2015 as a real dark time for Halo's population in general and the community as a result. By the time Halo 5 launched almost every contact I had from the pre-Halo 4 era had stopped playing Halo entirely.

I was a late adopter of Halo 5 as I really disagreed with the gameplay but Halo Reach had nearly dried up completely eventually forcing me off of it mid 2016. Upon joining a few new Discord servers run by the Halo 5 Clan Community in a search for The Office of Naval Intelligence I realized that the new game had attracted its own crowd that was mostly comprised of ex-Halo 4 and Reach kids who were fairly new blood in the grand scheme of things. They did know what roleplay clans were supposed to look like though and projected that image everywhere you looked in this generation of the clan community.

These people were running a fairly functional show and a major community event: Vast vs Exodus was kicking off around this time. Activity had actually been revitalized by the new launch and it lasted pretty well for me until my de-facto departure from active involvement in 2017 when I started my first semester of college.

However, today I hear from everyone around me that Halo 5's community is dead so it seems about 5 years from a game's launch is when rot starts to really set in. Comparatively though, I'd say the degree of "dead" that was Halo Reach in 2015 was far less than the slowdown currently being experienced by the community on Halo 5. I do believe that if Halo Infinite sells well it can do at least as much good as Halo 5 did for the community in the first three years of its life. However, if the current trend continues, we might see rot set in at the four-year mark and to a worse degree than what we are currently experiencing as the state of Halo's community today is far worse than even what I remember as the low point in 2015.

I truly hope I am wrong about this, but I see Halo Infinite being only as good or worse than Halo 5 so that obviously doesn't spell out good things for The HCC in 2025. I know I'll still be around to see as long as I don't die before then.

Sorry for the rambling post, it's 4:04 AM and I haven't slept because I working on my final project for my Data Structures class. Well, supposed to be working on it... so pardon my dust.

[Jason L Lewis]

I played very briefly on reach and was involved in some very minor clan wars. Like no record kinds. Back then things definitely seemed a lot more action oriented. I dropped off with four as i had slowly transitioned to mw3 and bo2. Over their i was in reborn, a semi competitive clan. Where i got a feel for the competition halo had to deal with. My name price actually came from clan policy which was a gt change to a cod character-clan name-3 number code format. That was probably one of my best clan experiences till advanced warfare killed the cod vibe off. Made some good friends in the real world from reborn. I think that's a key aspect of clans, you gotta be able to make friends inside and out. Halo 5 i noticed when i rejoined the community starting in some small generic style quick rise and fall clans. And when I'd bounce between them friends would cut ties. In regards to how i think this all ties to the community. The "xenophobia" is killing it alongside no new recruits in the pool. Clans isolating themselves and being toxic alongside the community outside not being able to look at it and see the good side because of the toxic clans has dried of manpower and killed relations. Now as we slowly crawl towards infinite I see little change community wise. However the hope that in a year or so infinite will have revived a dying community gives me some hope. But like gregor said its not likely and harry made a great point on 343 being unreliable and inconsistent. Who knows maybe we will all be wrong and infinite will be the game to knock COD, BF, and other triple A fps games down a few pegs. Times are changing this decade who knows what's next. All we can do is stay on 343's wild ride.