So I've been playing the Halo: Reach beta lately. While playing I was reminded me of a conversation I had with a Bungie employee a few months after the release of Modern Warfare.
He asked me what I thought of MW and after a few minutes of discussion I said something like "I feel like I am good when I play Modern Warfare but when I play Halo I often feel like I suck." He asked why I thought that was and I at the time I didn't have a good answer. Playing Halo: Reach reminded me of this and got me thinking about this again. Sorry that this isn't exactly topical but I seem to never let a question go until I have some kind of answer for it :)
Here are some facets to the games that made MW more of a general positive multiplayer experience to low-level player like me than Halo 3:
The Time it takes to kill enemies
Relative to MW, players in Halo 3 multiplayer can take a lot of damage from weapons before they die. I am told high-level players really enjoy this aspect as it leads to prolonged encounters. For low-level players however it often feels like good planning and positioning matter much less than your ability to keep your reticule on an opponent. I often come up with a good plan that allows me to flank my opponents rear, only to have them turn around and blow me away. This even happens when I join another teammate who is currently engaged with a high-level player.
Weapon and equipment acquisition
In MW, players choose the weapons and abilities they are going to use before they start the map. MW players can also change this loadout whenever they die. Players know what they are going to use while in the level and can change their strategy as they choose. It is easy to experiment with different weapons and abilities until you find a combination that works for your style.
In Halo 3, weapons are spawned at designer-specified locations on the map at specific intervals. This style of gameplay skews kills towards players with good map knowledge and familiarity of weapon behaviors. Learning the ins-and-outs of each map and weapon takes time investment and isn't necessarily transferable between maps.
The player leveling system
Halo 3 has a player skill system that is based on Trueskill. As you play games and win or lose, your ranking number can increase or decrease depending on the rank of who you are playing and how you do. There is also playlist specific experience values denoted visually by icons. The iconography, while a little vague, never goes down in rank.
MW has an experience number for players that only goes up. The better you do in a session, the faster it grows towards the next number. Each level brings with it new abilities or weapons that the player can choose to use. Underneath the hood, MW does have a system for smart matchmaking (Trueskill?) but this number is not outward facing. As a low-level player, I find this system of only positive rewards much more fulfilling.
