I'm seeing it more and more, this second account bollocks. I'm sick of mismatched games where the opposition teabag all the time and, instead of capturing the damn flag, just camp out running down the timer killing lesser skilled players. I am not great at Halo 3. I don't really want to be as I can't justify spending the time getting the practice in. Games shouldn't be about practice, they should be about chilling out. No one should ever tell me to get better at the game; the matchmaking should take care of that.
I take issue is with the Halo matchmaking system. I'm constantly getting matched with players of comparable skill in that playlist who have a highest skill of 3 times mine. The system seems to think that if you haven't played a playlist/gametype you will act as if you haven't ever played the game before. This is stupid and is pushing me towards quitting Halo 3 entirely. It's a shame, because it is a great game ruined by twats and poor matchmaking.
I've been really enjoying firefight though. It's always rewarding and never ruined by arseholes. My experience with it, however, has led to a depressing realisation: gaming for me is being ruined by the inclusion of human beings. Populate a game solely with AI (at least as opposition) and I actually have fun again. Left 4 Dead showed me the light and I may just follow it, leaving the darkness of competition behind.
Perhaps this is obvious, but I just concluded a night of the above experiences. The second night in a row, in fact.
I remember the days when expansion packs were greeted with joy and excitement. Sure, all DLC could be put in the retail package but the game would never be released. They will have finished working on the main retail release a while back. Production of discs and boxes takes time, as does distribution. During that time, these guys have been working to make the game experience longer lived. Like all of us, they have food to buy, you want them to work for free? Grow. The fuck. Up.
The release is 'later this year'. Now, bearing in mind that DLC takes little or no disc-pressing or distribution shipping time, that gives them about 2 more months to work on the DLC from where it is now. This will mainly be art and mission development as well as extensive testing.
Announcing it early is not an indication that they are trying to suck you dry, but confirmation of their commitment to the game and community in the long run. We all hate it when support for a game is dropped. The retail package looks pretty good value to me.
Developers (good ones anyway) ALWAYS have more cool ideas than they can realistically fit into a realistic development cycle and a retail package. Remember that a longer development cycle means longer paying your staff and overheads without any company income to rebalance the books. A line has to be drawn, a deadline must be set.
DLC is an efficient way to release additional content developed at an appropriate speed rather than rushed to meet a deadline and left flawed. I'd rather get extra content later than loads of buggy content sooner with a hasty patch to fix it. Sometimes DLC is abused, but maybe you guys could all just wait until the release (or a review anyway) and then make an informed and rational decision on the value on offer and whether or not to buy. But hey, this is the internet, I guess I shouldn't expect informed and rational opinions.
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