The Tides of Momentum in Halo 3

Halo 3, much like the NFL, is a game of momentum. When you have it, you win. When you don't, what happened to me last night happens. I was carrying the week, starting with a 22 in Team Doubles (the only "team" game I'm good at). Three nights later I had a 31, just 5 away from my record 36 in Lone Wolves. I had gotten 9 points in 4 days play, which for me is outstanding. The wins were piling up like spent shells, my Kill/death ration was averaging about +8 (no, really), and I could almost swear my SPARTAN was grinning in the replays.

Then last night I made a terrible, awful, disastrous mistake. I turned on the Xbox 360 and clicked on "Play Game," activating the insidious disc hidden within the bowels of my Split Pea Soup Green Xbox. The first game was a loss. A bad one. I might have been -11. Maybe it was -12. Either way, I had a boot print on my SPARTAN's butt that was destined to become more pronounced as the night went on.

The next game, I lost. Not too bad, though. Only -8. Then I lost again. And my score dropped to 30. Then I lost again, and again.

And again.

And my score dropped to 29.

This is when a sane person realizes he just "doesn't have it" and gives his blood pressure a break. This is when he (or she) realizes that the god of Halo 3, Bungiemalahara (ruler over the virtual realm Halo inhabits) has forsaken them, at least for that night. As punishment for my Halo 3 sin of gluttony and self-mutilation, I was cursed with a slow connection.

I know, lag gets blamed for poor performance more than any other reason, but in one night I got sent to the "Black Screen" room six or seven times, had a partner lag out, and lost 90% of my melees. And that's AFTER the Melee fix (which I'm a big fan of, despite everyone else's inexplicable complaints.) I should have stopped. After all, Rock Band was sitting there next to the Xbox 360, waiting for it's turn. "You have so much to do, Solstice!" it seemed to say. "You need to finish guitar on medium to unlock all the songs, and get that drum set rocking on medium as well!"

I lost again.

"...come on baby, don't fear the reaper..."

The Skill value seems to be a mystery to most people. I look at it like this: If you level up one skill point, you are considered -. If you do okay for 1-3 games, you are considered null, and if you win 1-3 games, you are considered +. This is how I interpret it, and it seems to work pretty well for me to predict where I'll be after a game. Of course, if the game's a disaster (like many yesterday were), sometimes you can drop without warning. Say you just move to Skill 30. I would consider you Skill 30-.You play two games, and have a k/d ratio over both games of +1. You would then be considered a Skill 30. Then you win two in a row, with the last game being a +4. Now you're a 30+, and only need one or two more solid games to move up to 31. This is in regards to Lone Wolves. Team games muddy the water due to teammate skills and performance beyond the understanding of all but Bungiemalahara and his chief demon, Algorhythmus. Also remember that really valuable medals help bump you up artificially. A killing frenzy, for example, is the freight elevator to the next point.

Back to my tale of woe. I backed out of Doubles, tired of the idiot "partner" I had been stuck with the last game complaining that I should have told him the other guys were behind him. Time for Lone Wolves, where I can block communications, and pretend like I'm playing bots. (Sometimes I wish Halo 3 DID have bots.)

I lost yet again. But did okay. Enough to only lose by 5 and have a K/d ration of -1. So I played again.

At this point in my story, the proverbial blood was gushing down my face from repeatedly bashing my head against the momentum wall, and it was getting hard to see the screen through the red haze. (The red haze might have been frustration as well.) So finally, at long last, I backed out of Halo and turned the Xbox off for the night.

So will the momentum shift back in my favor tonight, or will Bungiemalahara curse me again despite my offering of nightly abuse on his electric alter? Or will I just play Rock Band?

The moral of the story is this: when I am winning, I need to keep playing. If I am losing I need to stop. After one more game. Or two.

- Solstice01

Perfection!

What's the old saying? Even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in awhile. That cynical colloquialism sums it up tonight, where I had one of my best nights ever. Welcome to the Valentine's Day Massacre, and for once, I was on the giving end of said destruction.

This is the first "holiday lobby" Bungie has created since Halloween's Infection lobby. Valentine's Day is Team Doubles (what else?) and runs through the weekend. I did very well, winning all but one match. In the match prior to my "perfect" match, I went from Skill 1 to Skill 3 in one game, and ended with 5. That skill in 5 games in one night is impressive for someone of my questionable "skill".

So how did I do it? How did I manage to get a Perfection medal? First off, to get one you have to have 15 or more kills and no deaths in the game. I got the fifteenth kill with 30 seconds to spare.

There is more to the story, of course. We were Team Doubles on Epitaph, one of my better maps. Right at the beginning, one of the Blues dropped/lagged out. Now it was two on one. I know what you're thinking - "Oh I get it," you think, feeling the way you do when a magic trick's prestige is revealed to you, "you guys just stuck together and mowed the other guy down."

Actually, you'd be partly right. We did mow him down, but not for lack of his trying. Unfortunately for him Epitaph is the worst map to play if you don't control the key weapons (the shotgun and the rocket launcher). I spent the whole game cycling through the rocket launcher, getting the shotgun, and running for Active Camo every time it popped it.

The lone Blue got me a few times, but I managed to squeak out a kill before I died. I perched a lot. Perching (sitting atop a higher structure to hide and surprise attack opponents) doesn’t get any better than Epitaph, where you can sit on the flying buttresses and punish people for assuming they are allowed on the floating platform.

With a minute left, I had fourteen kills, and the Blue had just been killed by my teammate (a guy I didn’t know. I’d have played with a Geezer or Possum, but everyone I knew decided Halo wasn’t fun tonight.) I saw Blue down on the bottom level interior, trying to run sideways to the safety of the door. I fired a rocket and jumped down. The rocket splashed his shields just as he started to shoot me. My second rocket hit the wall behind him, but the explosion ended the stream of bullets that were taking my own shields down to nothing. I landed by his corpse and ran outside. I had a Killing Frenzy. Not my first ever, but I was excited nonetheless. My teammate said "spend the rest of the time hiding.” In my nievety, I assumed it was so he could get the last kill. I didn’t realize he was trying to protect my Perfection, because before tonight, I didn’t even know the medal existed!

So despite the disparity between my 2 man team and the lone opponent, I still managed 15-0 in 11 minutes in a ranked game against an enemy that didn't stop trying to kill us the whole time. My partner ended the game at 10-0.

I'll probably never see another Perfection in ranked, so I'll be sure to enjoy this one, because after all, even a blind squirrel will sometimes find a nut fifteen times in a row without being run over by a car.

- Solstice01

Let the Bodies Hit the Floor

I think I might have mentioned this before... I start slow when I play Halo 3 online. While it's embarrassing in Team Slayer to spend the first four minutes dying 52 times without a kill, it's worse in Lone Wolves where no one can carry me to victory. Almost without fail, I start a game by dying at least 4 or 5 times before getting a kill. Invariably by this time the guy in the lead has 4 or 5 kills, which means not only am I already -5 in my kill/death ratio, I'm also a whopping 10 kills behind the leader. So if I want to win, I need to get moving.

Come on get down with the sickness

As a result I am playing from behind. Sometimes I win in dramatic fashion (see Cal vs. Stanford.) Most of the time I get close enough to have a shot and then fall short.

One reason might be my strategy on every map. If I’m on Sandtrap, for example, I go straight for a Warthog gun. This will maximize my kills early on and hopefully give me some momentum going into the later part of the match. The problem with this strategy is that I usually go after the coveted weapons. On the pit, while I am going for the sword or rocket launcher, so is some guy who is plotting my demise. Often I am on the losing end of these duels.

I consider every meeting with a single other enemy a duel. My goal is always to kill the enemy during these duels, even if I have to die to do it. If I know I’m hosed, I try to stick them with a grenade. If I have a rocket launcher and he is right next to me, I shoot at our feet. I know it’s not the best strategy, but if I know I’m going to Respawn Land, I want to at least have some company.

At the end of the day, however, I don’t know why I start off cold and get hot. This is true no matter how many times I’ve played for the night or whether or not I’m in the zone. Ultimately it makes my matches more suspenseful, because I can't just jump to a huge lead and try to hold it.

And yes, I finally hit Skill 35, so I'm a Commander. What match got me the rank? You guessed it: Crazy King.

A Top Down Perspective

In case you're wondering, no, I haven't engaged Active Camo. And no, I'm not just taking a long time to respawn. I haven't posted since Christmas. Why? Acute Bronchitis. I missed a lot of work and I slept a lot. But I have managed to play some Halo 3. And I've noticed as the matches, days, weeks, and months speed by, I tend to look at the game from high above.

Now if I could just figure out how to blast that blog entry down there!

First of all, I now believe I will see the rank of Commander afterall. I've made it to skill 34. One more and I get my second star. However, I made Major on November 17th. That was eight weeks ago. To put it in perspective, it took me just six weeks to get from skill 1 to skill 30. It's so easy to drop, and so tough to climb, it might be another few weeks, but I know I'll get there.

Will I get any higher?

Time will tell. I seem to have peaked in my abilities, and more and more often I'm running into General Headshot every where I look. How these people can get 20+ head shots in a game is beyond me. I'd really like that Brigadier bird. It's a nice looking rank. However you do face the eventuality of ranking yourself out of competition, so that the only people you get set up against can kill you so easily your corpses just pile up one on top of another like some weird SPARTAN pile.

I've also learned I really do prefer ranked matches over social matches. It's unfortunate, that. Because I prefer to play a few Lone Wolves matches (ranked), and then join up with my clan for the rest of the night, playing whatever they're playing. Which is usually Big Team Battle (social) or Team Objective (again, social.) Nothing wrong with it, I just like that ranked matches count more. But playing with your friends is what it's all about, I'm coming to appreciate.

Another thing I've learned is that there is a misconception that rank = ability. Sure you have to be skilled enough to make it, and you do have to win matches, but it is kind of like carpet bombing - play enough matches and you rank up. A better indicator of true ability is what their skill is versus how many matches they have played. If you're skill 25 but you've played 1400 matches, you probably aren't as good overall as someone who is skill 20 whose played 105 matches. The only thing that throws this off is people who sign up as a new account and plays through again. Even I can say with some confidence that if I created a new gamertag and started Lone Wolves ranked 1 I would clean people's clocks until about skill 15 or so. Unless they were starting over too. I wouldn't do that, by the way.

Finally, I've learned that spending a Lone Wolves match trying to run someone over with a Mongoose or laser two Spartans at once is an exercise in frustration. Sure I lasered two opponents at once in a Big Team Battle, where there were 8 bad guys in my way to begin with. Trying it against only 4-5 other adversaries is harder than it sounds. I really want the Mongoose Mowdown Achievement unlocked because the shoulder pads you get are the best ones in the game.