Halo fanbase is too flakey

I agree with Massacre for the most part, but not in regards to H5 so we will get to that in a minute.

Ok so please don't hate on me for my opinion, but here is my .02. I am just as biased as everyone else here, and I started multiplayer with H3. I am a competitive player and montage-fan, so I don't care about the casual gameplay tbh. In terms of competitive settings, H3 was a very good game with a skill gap that I believe a bunch of the H2 players don't recognize. For example, H2 aiming with sniper (and sniper rate of fire) and Br is INSANELY easy. Power weapons are too easy. This makes this aspect of the core gameplay very, very easy to master.

Button glitches are the saving grace of H2 both competitively and in the montage scene imo. However, the only button glitch that is actually difficult to master IMO is double shot. Back when you could play h2 on 360 I used to play on weekends in the morning because I always wanted to get some sort of H2 experience. H2 wasn't my main game at all, and by the end I had the double shot down fairly well. If you claw literally all it is is timing and execution, which obviously takes skill don't get me wrong, but I know if any player like me puts the time in they will be able to do this with fairly decent consistency. The BXR takes skill as well, but in my experience isn't too difficult to atleast use effectively, and if you play H2 FFA all day you should be the best at it. H2 also had some interesting/nerdy aspects like wall glitches and whatnot but if you played competitively you already understood how to exploit or avoid them, so it mostly benefited better players playing worse/less knowledgeable players. H2 also had 2 slayer gametypes where if you get the other teams sniper, and especially the sniper and sword/rockets, and you have the lead, you literally win unless you royally fuck up. That is not what competitive Halo is about in my eyes.

H3 the 2 gametypes that are similar were Amplified and Pit TS. Amp 97.4% ended in under 8 minutes, but if you were in a tournament it could come down to the wire, but even then the team with the lead has a lead advantage and can sit back, but no power weapon advantage, so it comes down to organizing a push, throwing sick nades, or clutching up in some way. Pit would often go to time in tournament settings, something like 33%, but both teams would get snipers, battle for rockets, or setup for custom, which forced map movement. So if you had the sniper and the lead and sat back, the other team could still easily clutch up. In general both games had solid gametypes, and although I prefer H3's, I also really like H2s with the exception of Lockout/Sanctuary TS.

H3 you had to lead your shots, and in a game with less auto-aim, that takes more skill shooting wise than H2 by far. H3 the power weapons were more difficult to use. Sniper, Sword, and Rockets. H3 camo is harder to see. H3 took more skill in positioning around your teammates. If you turned a corner you can't just BXR/double shot the guy, you depended on your teammate closest to you to be looking your area to help, and got kills by being aware of your teammates positioning. Awareness is individual skill IMO.

I am not in any way trying to say that H2 wasn't skillful, because anyone who has played it seriously can see what it has to offer as a competitive game. H1, 2, and 3 all deserve a certain amount of respect, and all take a massive amount of skill to master in their own way, but I do not believe any one of them were objectively clearly superior than the other. I can understand why some people don't like H3. But I would like to point out that a bunch of OG H1 players felt the same way towards H2.

I just wanted to give a differing opinion on the argument that H2 had a higher skill gap, so if you disagree I would love to know why exactly H2 takes more overall skill.

I highly disagree with your statement on how "insanely" easy it is to snipe in H2.  Yes, I think it's easier than sniping in H1 and H3 but having a sniper rifle in a competitive game isn't a guaranteed Killing Spree because your opponents are still powerful with just the starting weapon.  What I mean by that is since you can actually cross map people with the H2 BR, people can challenge you more often.  For example, let's say two teams are setup on opposite sides on the map that has one sniper, like Guardian, Beaver Creek,  or Lockout.  I feel like in H2 you are powerful enough to out-skill and outplay the opposing sniper.  But in H3 the BR is so weak and underwhelming useless, it's almost impossible to make those same kind of skillful plays.

Power weapons are too easy?  That's kind of the point is it not?  You obtain a powerful item and you get to use it to more easily take the lead in a game.   Are you saying that using the rockets and shotgun (I'll exclude the sword because it is indeed OP), takes less skill in H2, than H3?

I do think I can agree with your statement on button glitches being H2's saving grace.  So you think the Double Shot is the only difficult button combo to master?  What about Quad Shotting?  What about Double Melee?  What about an Excessive Shot?  What about an RRBX?  What about YY?  What about Nade Reloading?   These are techniques you never mentioned but most players consider them to take a lot of skill to use effectively and a lot of time to master.   I'm not even sure how I feel like the rest of your opinions regarding H2, the best way to convey the message would be if you actually played high level 4v4 matches in H2 or at least watched how the meta progressed since 2005.  That's not what I'd like to talk about in this post.

"...and in a game with less auto-aim, that takes more skill shooting wise than H2 by far."  H3's shooting isn't difficult, it's random.  Were you not a part of any Halo community from 2008-2009?  The discussions on how H3's netcode, spread,  and bullet magnetism ruined the BR were everywhere.  Why do you think the developers have never gone back to that design?  It was atrocious, random, and made you as a player weak, unless you had a teammate next to you.   See the above paragraph as to why the H2 BR in it entirely is an extremely skillful weapon.  But yes the auto aim in H2 and H2A is malice.  The camo being harder to see is an subjective opinion, depends on which player you ask.

"H3 took more skill in positioning around your teammates. If you turned a corner you can't just BXR/double shot the guy, you depended on your teammate closest to you to be looking your area to help, and got kills by being aware of your teammates positioning. "  That statement right there just proves to me how ignorant you are on the topics you're discussing.  I don't mean this personally or offensively, but Joey it is painfully oblivious to see based on your posts that you simply don't know what you're talking about when it relates to H2.  You never played or watched it at the competitive level so you are just unaware of the concepts, mechanics, and gameplay that was H2 hardcore.  If you would like to know about the game on a deep level, I would recommend you check out the link in my sig.  

I disagree with your final points; many players have objectively been breaking down why one Halo takes more skill over another Halo for years.  Halo 2 takes more skill than Halo 3.  That's a fact.

I think H2 did require teamwork but you were able to make individual plays by yourself more often.  In h3 that's much harder to do because the BR takes longer too long to kill so you need at least one teammate to make a push.  And H3 was more popular so I think that's why there were "more great players".

Why H1 so low?

I think that anyone who says the old FB (Ogres, Walshy, & Saiyan) won all of those event, specifically from 2005 to mid 2006 because of the lack of compeition just didn't pay attention to competitive Halo back then.  Click the link in my sig and scroll to those years, then click on the results links.  You'll see trends of players climbing the ranks and then dropping in the ranks as time goes.  You'll see the opposite as well, certain teams that were at the top begin to decline as time goes on.  I don't have the numbers for this right now, but I want to say that there were always at least 50-100 teams per event.  Also consider that at the time the organizations were always switching settings.  I believe they started with pre-patch Halo 2 and then switched to post-patch when all the pros complained.  Gametypes and maps were changing often as well.  Winning for that long with so many changes says a lot to me.

3D/FB didn't get dethroned because of a new team that got exposed to the competitive scene late.  They got beat by Phreaks.  The members of Carbon had been placing top 3 in tournaments since the begining of the season prior and they all played Halo CE at a respectable level before that.  Remember that Karma, Shockwave, Ghost, & Gandhi were all like 16 in 2006, they were young kids going to LANs in a non "esports" era. 

Halo was on TV, the show was on USA too.  I think that the hype H2 generated carried over and flooded H3.  But the competition wasn't lacking in my opinion, that FB squad was just really that dominant.