What's Wrong With Halo:Reach's Arena?

Let me say up front, I am a huge Halo fan. I spent countless hours playing Halo:CE with some of my best friends from high school right after the first Xbox was released. When I got to college I bonded with my new roommate and hallmates over hours of Halo after classes each night. I have logged thousands of hours matchmaking in Halo 2 and 3 and even Halo Wars, so it pains me to say I that find Halo:Reach’s Arena mode a huge disappointment. It didn’t need to be this way since Arean’s flaws are self-inflicted and easily remedied. Let me explain.

Halo 2 was the true “killer app” for Xbox Live, proving that consoles could be as compelling as PCs for internet gaming. When I first hooked up Halo 2 I spent almost eighteen-hours strait playing matchmaking. The ability to call up a match against millions of people from all around the world was a thrilling experience, especially since I never really gamed on my PC. But what was the most addicting were the ranked modes. Each ranked playlist gave you a skill rating from 1-50 based on performance. I admit, I thought I was a great Halo player, routinely beating my friends with ease, but as soon as I hopped online I found I was more of a big fish in a little pond. After a week of playing I could barely crack level 20 on any playlist. Despite this I pressed on. I spent my 2004 winter break honing my skills enough that I was soon able to shoot up the ranks. This challenge to rank up kept me coming back. It gave players something to work towards, adding pressure to each match. Admittedly, this system did result in some abuse. Modding and modem stand-by were commonly used to try and boost people’s ranks by cheating. But taken as a whole the ranking system gave the multiplayer increased replay value. Think of it like the extra challenge achievements and trophies give you to go back and keep playing some games.

Which brings me to Reach. When I logged on I was disappointed to find that the ranked offerings had been limited to a single playlist marked Arena. What’s more the playlist was and continues to be poorly designed for the average competitive player. The way I see it the playlist suffers from three big problems; it lacks any sense of variety forcing all players to use quasi-MLG settings, its division based ranks are not well explained and practically hidden from view, and as a result the playlist has a middling population causing frequent skill mismatches and limited map selection. I want to cover each of these points in more depth.

Lack of Variety: My number one complaint with Arena is that is lacks the variety that made ranked Team Slayer compelling. Arena is played on quasi-MLG settings. Each player spawns with a DMR, assault rifle and one grenade. Always. What’s more, many power weapons are limited or removed from maps and vehicles are nonexistent. I assume this was done to level the playing field as DRMs are considered to be more “skilled” based and lack of power weapons and vehicles prevent n00bs from dominating with a Wraith or rocket launcher. To a degree this is true; using a precision weapon does require a certain degree of skill. The problem is that this immediately changes the tempo of the match. Almost every game becomes a long range rifling match and rifling isn’t the only it is not the only way to play Halo. There are many different weapons and armor abilities from which different play styles develop. It does take skill to be able to gun down your opponent with an AR or be able to anticipate movement on the radar. It’s just a different type of skill. What made ranked Team Slayer great in Halo 2 and 3 is that is allowed for many play styles. Some matches were battle rifle starts and some were assault rifles. Playing only with DMRs discourages those with different styles from trying Arena. Many of my friends from college don’t want to touch Arena because the games only use DMRs. They enjoy playing with more weapon types and vehicles. They quickly tire of Arena before we get more than two or three game in as they find it boring. Bungie has commonly described Halo as a “sandbox” allowing players to employ different play styles to find success. Arena’s takes away that sandbox feel and replaces it with a more rigid play structure.

Maybe this was the intent of Arena, to have only more “hardcore” players engage in the playlist, and this wouldn’t be a problem if it wasn’t the only ranked playlist. There are no ranked objective, sniper, BTB playlists or so forth as there were with Halo 2 and 3. Thus anyone who wants to play competitively is forced to use the Arena’s settings. I think this is a huge mistake. I believe there are many gamers out there, who like me, want to play competitively but also like their games to have a little more variety. Most of these players, or so I think, are avoiding Arena because they aren’t interested in playing with DMRs every single game. Don’t believe me? Take a look at the Arena’s population. At peak times there are maybe 3,300 players out of a population of 125,000-150,000. That is just 2.6% of the population playing Arena. At best. People, like my friends from college, would play more often if Arena offered more variety. If either Arena was adjusted or more ranked playlists were added I think it would attract more competitive plays who don’t want to play on the hardcore level but still like to have a ranking. I would go so far as to say this lack of other ranked playlists hurts the incentive to keep playing for some players and reduces the overall population for the game.

Ranking Poorly Explained and Displayed: Arena’s other major problem is that its ranking system is poorly explained and even worse it’s hard to see the rankings once you earn them. Arena uses a division-based system where gamers need to play four games over five days to earn a division medal. Ranks of steel, bronze, silver, gold and onyx are awarded based on the player’s performance against the rest of the population. Each medal is subsequently broken down into percentiles, for example an onyx 5^% means the player is in the top .1% of all players. Players can fight to increase the medal and percentile rankings through the course of the season. At the conclusion of each season the ratings are recorded and everything starts over. It’s an interesting take on ranking. While there might be those opposed to changing the 1-50 level system, I find division rankings an interesting twist. The problem is that the system and how it works isn’t clearly stated anywhere. It took me some time to find out exactly how the new ranking system worked. There are few prompts that come up in the lobbies, but to understand how to actually get ranked and the percentiles system you need to go through the Optimatch forums on Bungie.net. This leaves the average player confused at what Arena is and as a result I bet many haven’t spent the time to even get a division rank.

What’s worse is that once you figure out how the system works and receive a rank your rating is hard to see. The only place where your medal appears is if you are sitting in the Arena hopper. If you happen to play firefight, invasion or regular old Team Slayer you rank won’t be displayed. What’s more, even when the medal is displayed in the Arena lobby you cannot see the percentile the player is in. To find that, you have to go through five separate screens to access that data. The time it takes to look at the percentiles for all the players in the lobby is longer than it takes for the game to load. Even worse is that the ranks you earn disappear after three seasons. That’s right, you earn a medal each season but the game does not save your progress over the long term. Despite all the problems with the ranking system things might not have been so bad if you had a medal crest to display your medals but at this point the division ranking I had earned last fall are long gone.

Low Population: In the end these flaws cause the biggest problem of all, low playlist population. Arena has, at best, 3,300 players at any given time. It’s enough to run the list but once you rank up to the gold or onyx levels finding a balanced match can be hard if you are not playing at peak times since so few players make it that high. The low population also prevents new maps from being added to the playlist. Two map packs have been released since last fall but since the population is so small in Arena you can’t force people to download the map packs to play as you might reduce the population even further. I have played a grand total of two matches on the new maps out of hundreds of games. I’d love to play some more maps but I don’t think that’s likely while Arena’s population is so low.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Halo:Reach is a great game and I still do have fun playing Arena. What kills me is that there are simple easy fixes to make Reach so much more fun. Adding more ranked playlists that encourage for different play styles would allow people who want to be ranked competitively but not play on hardcore setting to enjoy the game more. More clearly explaining the ranking system and creating a medal crest or way to see your medal in all playlists would also encourage more people to try Arena. In turn this would increase the population for the hopper and allow for more balanced matches and use of newer maps. Fixing these flaws are pretty simple. I wish Bungie had made some of these changes while they were in charge. Hopefully once 343 Industries takes over matchmaking duties they can make some of these changes. Until then I guess I’ll keep enjoying a fun but flawed game.