I'm going to post a rough draft here tomorrow with my own thoughts. I want everyone to vent all of their frustration about the warzone update into this thread. I will take your thoughts and try to incorporate them cohesively into a single letter for us all to sign.

Major points I will make:

1. This update encourages farming instead of reducing it.
2. This update kills the competitive warzone community that has mostly stopped farming.
3. This game punishes people who have formed communities and continue to play regularly.
4. Reducing the party size does not provide data about how organized teams will manage the new mechanics.
5. Aggressive disruption of the community will hurt goodwill for paying for more DLC.

Mauro Fire wrote:

We have updated how we are collecting your signatures. Please use the following Google Form.

Thank you!

______________________________________

Here's the first draft:

Dear 343 Industries,

We, the Halo Wheelmen in conjunction with other undersigned Spartan Companies and Halo players, have addressed this letter to you to express our concerns with the recently released Monitor's Bounty update. Fundamentally, we believe this update will drastically harm the Warzone community and reduce player goodwill toward the game. Most importantly, we believe this update will harm the image of Halo as a competitive game.

Farming and Blowouts

Farming remains a persistent dynamic in online gaming, even as far back as Halo 3. In that game, players ignored or held the objective to continue slaying. Before Halo 5, farming or holding/ignoring the objective only served to benefit the farmers' egos. With the creation of the Achilles armor, the reward systems of the game tacitly encouraged farming to encourage players to unlock an armor piece sooner.

Players argued that establishing complete map control to lock enemy players into a set of predictable spawns was the most efficient way to complete the slays required for the armor. Unsurprisingly, the companies that utilized farming succeeded in completing the Achilles armor set, whereas the Halo Wheelmen have not as we do not allow farming. Additionally, the communities formed primarily to earn Achilles had little to hold them together after earning the armor piece and many broke apart.

However, the update encourages farming instead of reducing it. Before, teams could end games quickly when they matched a significantly overmatched opponent so they could move on to another game. Now, because they will have inconsistent means of coordinating the other six members of their team, they will continue to slay in extended games. Instead of solo-queue players and small parties taking ten or fewer deaths a game, they will take 30 or more deaths against players quickly gaining REQ and aggressively slaying them.

Reducing the party size maximum will definitely lead to longer games, but the same players that have been effectively slaying will continue to do so and extend the suffering of other players.

Competitive Halo

This update diminishes the competitive warzone community and essentially punishes players for trying to end games quickly to match stronger opponents.

After Achilles, players interested in continuing to play as part of groups or teams remained together and formed new companies around the members who enjoyed playing together. Those groups have formed what we think of as the competitive Warzone scene, where groups will actively search matchmaking to find another party to battle. Without the ability to create a lobby for the teams to play against each other, the only available way to match another team is by searching Matchmaking at the same time and hoping that the servers connect both groups. Both teams will attempt to end games where they don't match each other as quickly as possible to maximize their attempts to play a 12 vs. 12 game of Warzone.

On Friday, December 2, the Halo Wheelmen and the Spartan Dads spent almost two and a half hours playing trying to match each other. We only managed twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. In the between time, we quick-capped on the non-party games.

This dynamic means that small parties and solo players experience two extremes when they encounter full lobbies: either they get painfully farmed for an extended game, or they get overrun and lose their core in 4-10 minutes. Competitive Warzone players have adopted the mindset that the most worthwhile games pit teams against one another instead of blowouts against collections of solo players and small parties.

Moreover, this reduces the counter-strategies in the game. From launch, the most consistent strategy employed by parties was to mass-spawn whiplashes and continue to trap a team. This translated extremely well to Wasp spam since the enemy team couldn’t easily commandeer a downed Wasp. Now, instead of a team coordinating plasma pistols, Warthogs, and other anti-vehicle REQs, it will be up to randoms to figure out how to do that themselves.

Monitor's Bounty

Almost every change to Warzone in the update seems geared around making the game easier for individual players to find success.

Reducing the party size maximum is supposed to allow for "fairer" matches as an easy solution. If the problem has been large parties blowing out non-parties, why not instead create a ranked playlist for competitive Warzone players to search?

Reverting the spawn system back to the similar dynamics at launch and reducing the difficulty of boss slaying also speaks to making it easier for single players to make impactful plays on the game. Halo has always been a team game, and the weekend of this update coincides with the playoffs of the HCS Pro League. Why then are the changes to Warzone designed around reducing the importance of teamwork and cooperation?

Providing constant waypoints for players will let them see the direction of their teammates, but previously players knew that visible waypoints only appeared within a certain range, indicating who was close to them. Anyone they couldn't see was too far away to offer assistance. This again reduces the importance of communication and coordination.

Back in Halo: Reach when the Wheelmen helped the forge community with map design and testing for Invasion, we did not design maps around the nebulous concept of fun. We designed maps around balance, ensuring that there were effective means to counter plays made by both sides. All of these changes speak to limiting the impact of teamwork on a team-based shooter.

Halo Communities

This update punishes people who have formed communities and continue to play regularly.

The Halo Wheelmen have been playing Halo since 2008, founded around our shared love of the Warthog. We followed that love into Halo 3 Big Team Battle, Invasion in Halo: Reach, back to Big Team Battle in Halo 4, and now into Warzone in Halo 5. We developed an entire system of play around the Warthog and have freely shared that knowledge with the wider Halo community.

That community spirit led the Wheelmen to the Spartan Dads, who tried to follow and emulate that system on their own, before reaching out to the Wheelmen for help. Now, the Dads run their own approach to Warzone based around those principles. This allows for both communities to play together regularly because they can easily run the same playbook.

In general, Halo communities that have organized themselves around Warzone team play now feel punished for enjoying the premier game mode of Halo 5, and this does not encourage them to gift REQ packs to their friends and community members, nor spend money on further cosmetic upgrades to Warzone.

Communication

Reducing the party size does not provide data about how organized teams will manage the new mechanics, and the timing of the announcement does not lend itself to trust.

With all of the changes that this update brings, you will not be able to consider how large parties like the Halo Wheelmen, a Warthog-oriented community, will respond in an organized way to the new REQs and boss changes, or how other groups will utilize those REQs. This trial only tests the behavior of players willing to play six-player fireteam Warzone.

Moreover, knowing that teams and communities that play large lobby Warzone would not respond positively to this announcement, you waited until the day before the update to tell us about this change. Many of us are either considering not playing anymore due to our frustration with partial party Warzone and playing tedious 20+ minute games, or we would respond aggressively and slay in partial party games.

The same language used to declare 6-player Warzone Assault a trial is being used here. Warzone Assault still only allows 6-player fireteams.

Recommendations

We strongly encourage you not to follow-through on the fireteam size changes. Instead, we ask that you find other solutions to resolve farming and blowout games of Warzone for players who are unwilling or unable to find or join a community to play Warzone with like-minded players.

Repeating suggestions made over the year, the core could degrade over time while triple-capped, players could utilize a surrender button when the score differential grows too large, social playlists could be created for 6 or fewer fireteams, ranked Warzone playlists could be created for everyone who wants to play tough games.

Most notably, the competitive scene has wanted a way to control matching each other (read: custom games Warzone).

If the concern is for the well-being of players unhappy about matching teams, please implement solutions that allow teams to play each other directly. Otherwise, the intent of this update implies that anyone with friends, a community, or a competitive mindset is harming Halo and should be punished.

Sincerely,

The Halo Wheelmen
HWM Sarge - Staff
HWM il Duce - Staff
HWM BrickFungus - Staff




___________________________________________________
Here's our outreach info for those members helping out.

il Duce wrote:

alright fellas. here's the spartan company messaging list. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1W9GdPWYa3Z38ye2Cg7Gtx0Q85SBU9cafPVj4nYj3ug8/edit?usp=sharing

This covers the first 80 teams in the spartan companies list. If anyone else wants to participate I'll draw up a column for you. Use the letter in the code box posted above with the subject line "Stopping the Warzone Fireteam Change"

il Duce wrote:

Here's the source code needed to paste directly into waypoint PMs. Make sure you click the "source code" button in the upper right before pasting.

Code: Select all

Greetings,

The [url=http://www.halowheelmen.com/]Halo Wheelmen[/url] request your support in signing an [url=https://goo.gl/forms/SfTtVNbsCL7ZbaJL2]open letter[/url] to 343 regarding the reduction of fireteam max to six players in Warzone. If your company and leadership are interested in formally supporting the petition, please have your leaders reach out to [url=https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/players/hwm%20sarge]HWM Sarge[/url] and we will include your company's leadership at the bottom of the letter. Everyone interested, leadership included, should also add their gamertag on the form so we can maximize the support. We plan to gather as many companies and players this weekend and formally send the letter to 343 on Monday.

**NOTE** Please do not share the link to the letter on Waypoint. It is against their forum rules to draw attention to a petition and you will be banned.

Fundamentally, the Monitor's Bounty update wants to make Warzone easier for individuals by punishing teamwork and coordination. We assembled our communities to play with people that shared our goals, and now 343's update says that we, the community, are ruining the game for solo-queue players and small parties. We hope our shared voice will allow large Warzone parties either a ranked playlist or a custom means of matching each other, rather than completely eliminating the option to search with 12 players in the premier advertised mode of this game.

Thank you for your time, and we hope to have your support. We cannot passively allow 343 to punish players dedicated to their game because they use teamwork.

Sincerely,

The Wheelmen

Our community has been playing large team halo together for 8 years and you may have just killed it.

I'll let everyone else make the good points - I just want to say that playing with a full group of people that you know and can depend on is just plain fun. 343 is ruining my fun.

I'll just quote what someone in the Witney's waypoint thread said:

Ok, 6 man teams is a horrible idea. I quick core every match, yeah the other team loses but they lose quickly. Guess what I'm going to do now though? Me and 5 other people are going to absolutely Savage every player on that map for 30 minutes straight. You want the games to be longer? That's cool. But they way 343 is doing it means people are going to get absolutely slayed for half an hour.

343 is in essence promoting farming (even more so than they did with the announcement of Achilles armor). Games will not end quickly. Now we will have 6 man fireteams sitting back, getting 50 kills per game while holding 2 bases because they can not get that quick core kill to win the game and move on their merry way. All the good communities and squads out there that do their damnedest to end a party of randoms suffering quickly just got slapped in the face.

I still have bs_angel's email from back in the day, if you think it would help to make a more personal appeal as well as an open letter on Waypoint. Biggles probably has some contacts worth pursuing as well.

Without typing up a huge essay for this, my thought is for people who A) came back to halo 5 after a break from halo and B) people with many ties and not much time.

It hurts A) because warzone was a huge part of what made halo appealing again, and this brought many people back to the series to try one last time. This new party minimalization kills organized teams, communities, and the desire to play. A dwindling population ever since H2-H3, H5 brought some of those players back, and this could ruin it and turn people off from future titles (Much like H4 did as a whole).

It hurts B) because If I am a busy individual, I want to game with everyone that I can in one setting, that isnt possible anymore. This further turns people off from the game etc. I could fully explain these two positions, but the main points are fairly clear.

This is update is not conducive to helping out any players. This was a big shortcut, an incorrect shortcut, to dealing with warzone issues.

Quick games are not the only symptom of a negative experience on Halo 5. Limiting a fireteam as a cure all for the bad experience of being quick capped is not how you help a player experience. These are team games.

If you wanted to guage player response to running into teams, a seperate playlist would have been a better test. You still wouldnt have had to change search algorithims with this method, and you would have been able to directly view the population that prefers low fireteam numbers.

Alas, this test was ill conceived and could have been implemented differently and I suspect more efficiently with my mentioned test method.

Furthermore, I ask a question. If people who were consitently losing team slayer matches complained of being defeated too deftly, would you cut the fireteam limit to 2?

44 days.

That's how much game time I've put into halo 5. About half of that is warzone. This playlist update just killed the game for me. That's very sad that after 44 days 343i would even try this.

I used to get stomped in warzone constantly by full teams of 12. I thought there was better ways to matchmake. Maybe prioritize teams vs other teams. Or have a challenge mode where teams of 12 could have matched each other when they wanted so that fire teams could challenge the big boys. This would have occupied many of the competitive teams so random teams were not being destroyed. But that never happened. Still to this day 2 competitive warzone teams have no way of matching each other than rolling the dice at the same time in matchmaking and hoping to get lucky.

I joined a Spartan company to try to find guys to play with. And we started going into warzone with full squads. You know what? We still got stomped, who knew? Running a 12 man team didn't mean an automatic victory all the time. There was a whole lot more to this game than just lobbying up.

When we were trying to figure this game out we found one of these super teams that was destroying most of the competition in warzone. We started to research what they did. Turned out to be very easy as they just put up their system for the whole world to see right on their website.

So we tried running these strats. We still got stomped, repeatedly. By mostly random lobbies. So we decided to reach out to these guys and see how they do what they do. When we reached out they sent 4 of their senior members to coach us in game for one night of warzone. This didn't happen only once. They opened their lobbies up to our team and we slowly started to improve and can now do fairly well for ourselves in this fun game mode.

I have made well over 100 friends because of halo. Warzone is a big part of that. Running competitive warzone is a big part of that. The strat talk the websites, chat apps, all a part of that and exists due to this aspect of halo. Getting rid of 12 person fire teams in halo changes everything and eliminated many of the fundamentals my company was built on.

I paid for the game knowing that I could run 12 man fireteams. I have friends who have spent 100$ on packs knowing that they could run 12 person fireteams. I feel like if this happens 342 owes some of my friends who bought those packs some money.

It's not right. 343 has just ended an era with this news.

il Duce wrote:

I still have bs_angel's email from back in the day, if you think it would help to make a more personal appeal as well as an open letter on Waypoint. Biggles probably has some contacts worth pursuing as well.

Only person I could remotely get in contact with would be Unishek, but it would be the same avenue as any other person on social media would have.. meaning it would probably get lost.

We used to have contacts when bungie was in charge, but once 343 took over, they cut off most community relations until H5 came along. Shit, they pretty much did everything they could to prevent HaloTracker from being a thing... like literally coded their site so we couldnt even screenscrape effectively.

Edit @ 343:

I know a 343 employee personally, I spoke with him today and he stated that he can pass the open letter to the right people.

Cool. We'll go with Mauro's plan.

Dang, Mauro coming in with the pull.

"Halo multiplayer has never been bigger!"/2

First off, I fully support this community. Although I have not been a very active member with regards to joining halowheelmen lobbies, I still frequent these forums. I also fully support this open letter, it is the best, most professional way to reach out to 343.

I share @nofunnyideas' post, I literally have the same opinion and thought. I would also like to add that the open letter include several practical and alternative solutions. I believe 343 will find the letter to be most useful if it contains alternative solutions that balance the interests of both casual/solo players and big fireteams. I am sure you already have this in mind but I thought I would share it just in case.

I encourage everyone here to not let this update stand in the way of enjoying the game with fellow wheelmen/members. I really do think this community is strong and can survive these limitations.

The biggest points I'd like included:

Better solutions
1. This is a fix that was a shortcut that would be much easier fixed by separating the playlist into team fire teams of less than and and 6 or more.
2. You could create better balanced maps that help prevent req snowballing
3. You could add rubber banding so players with lower req would increase req cap at a faster rate that those with higher cap
4. Prevent triple cap farming by adding a 2 minute core trickle down
5. Fix the matching algorithm to match similar sized teams on similar skill

Bad for the community
1. we have a thriving community of player that practice for 12v12 and this ruins it
2. We have hundreds if not thousands of combined hours practicing for 12v12 and this ruins it
3. Longer games do not mean better games, this will delay core capping 100% of the time in one sided games leading to a less fun gaming experience.

Moved to announcements.