Previous thread was deleted without warning and explanation, way to go! I made some small adjustments so that no rational person can take offense to it now.

I have never been this disillusioned with a game before. I have bought a 360 for Halo 3, because I thought it would be the best online mulitplayer game around. Why? Well, everyone seems to think so.

Now, I play a shitload of games on my 360, and I love it, so no worries there, but today I finally really started playing some Halo 3 online, and did a remarkable discovery:

In my experience, Halo 3's online is just as bad as Wii's Friend Codes, if not worse. Don't start foaming at the mouth right away and think about it.

Take for example The Conduit, touted as the Wii's Halo. Want to pick which map to play on? With The Conduit, you can. With Halo, you'll have to play with friends to do so. Want to choose which weapon sets to play with? With The Conduit, you can. With Halo, you'll have to play with friends to do so. With Halo 3, you can download custom maps, but not play them unless you're playing with friends!

Now, I realize Halo has splitscreen online, many more maps and game modes, less lag, etc. Halo 3 is clearly the superior game. But that's not my point.

My point is, Halo 3 is packed with features, but to enjoy most of them, you'll need to play with friends. Play with random people and you're only experiencing a small part of the game. This philosophy is absolutely ridiculous, and I'm shocked I've never heard anything about this.

There isn't that much difference between Halo 3 and Friend Codes, but people keep praising Halo 3's multiplayer and slamming Friend Codes.

Disolitude mentioned to me that this is what Halo's matchmaking system is all about, but I don't like it at all.

What do you think? Oh, and can we leave any knee-jerk fanboy reactions out of this discussion, PLEASE.

u dont have to like it

As I mentioned in the other thread...

Its called matchmaking for a reason. The halo matchmaking system takes rank, skill and record in to consideration when looking for people to play with. You can't choose a map to play on in matchmaking as 1 map doesn't represent your skill level hence matchmaking fails completely. There are clans who would all become level 50 generals if they could choose Snowbound and camp with shotgun/mauler over and over...

The thing is, there are 2 types of matchmaking styles. One involves dropping in and out of a game at any time, playing with unknown people, having different people finish the match as the ones that started the match. Games that use this are COD4, Left 4 Dead, Battlefield...

Then there is the Halo/ Gears of War syle system which focuses on smaller groups of people, individual stats and more luck of the draw.

It really depends on which style you prefer. I presonally like the Halo style much more beacuse:

1. The same people that start the match finish the match, or lose rank if they drop.
2. The people that I teabag at the end of the round are the same as the ones that I teabagged at the beginning of the round.
3. Its more fair to have maps selected at random, than have 1 person who knows a map really well constantly have the edge.

Thanks for the good reply, again.

And I understand the matchmaking, even agree with it to some extent. But why have a semi map-editor and lots of customization if you can't really utilize it without friends? The least they could do, is make the current matchmaking system optional, and give us the ability to play custom games with random people.

Now, Halo 3 has a shitload of features I will never get to experience because I don't have any friends that play Halo 3.

Halo 3's online system is freaking amazing and full of awesome features a lot of other online games do not have. That is all.

I agree with bolded...that would be nice to have. 

Infact I think Halo 3 ODSt should have had matchaking for Firefight mode. However its hard to fault Bungie as they update their game more than any other developer out there.

There are some custom maps that actually made it to the playlist on xbox live... so if you make a really good one :)

Yeah.. about this, I downloaded a map from the Bungie Favorites (or something), and it says it's available for custom matchmaking and Forge. However, when I select a map, the downloaded map isn't there. So how does that work?

How exactly would they incorporate Forge into Matchmaking? If it were to pick a map one player had created, well, that guy has a huge advantage over everyone else as he knows how he laid everything out. I don't want to get owned by someone when playing online because of something lame, like he knowing where he stuck the shotgun. At least with friends, you can play on that same map repeatedly (and they're less likely to get pissed off), but in matchmaking you'd get stuck on a brand new map likely getting owned by someone everytime (assuming you're playing free for all), unless the map it chose happened to be yours.

There has to be a standard selection of maps to play on when playing online, otherwise people will stop playing because they'll get irritated so much because it's unfair.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FFIGyOReNo

It may be in a different location in the menu. Hmm, I don't know. It should be there...just look for the name. 

Its been a while since I played Halo 3 on a daily basis to remember this.

But I remember I downloaded some insanely crazy maps and tried to pass them to friends as my own. lol