My Consensus on Interlocking, Foundry, and how they changed the face of Forge

Before I get to the actual post, I am writing this in a response to a Conquest thread where AZN FTW, Asper49, Furious D 18 and others had a "lively" discussion to say the least. It was an interesting debate about how once interlocking was discovered, when Foundry was released, Forge itself, and the Forge community has changed. Be aware that a large amount of this post is purely opinion.

Way back when, before interlocking and before DLC, forge was a rarely-utilized aspect of Halo 3, where in order to succeed, you must be creative, original, and think of gameplay first. Minigame Maps prospered, and Forgehub's Guilders were considered by many to be the most creative Halo 3 Forgers on the planet.

It is the nature of technology to evolve: it's happening all around us every day. When Bungie released the Heroic DLC, specifically Foundry, and Forgers discovered interlocking, the world of Forge changed.

More maps were being produced, and techniques like geo-merging and the infinite money glitch further improved forge. It made it very possible for anyone to be a successful forger by taking the time to smoothly interlock items and come up with a creative map. However, a new generation of successful forgers come with the immature, foolish population that will soon try to use these tactics to achieve easy success.

After interlocking, forgers continued to raise the standard of a "perfect map," and a "perfect interlock." Eventually it got to the point where a large population of people saw Forge as an art form and purely critiqued maps by screenshots and the amount of interlocking.

So, would the worlds of Forge and Forgehub have been better off without these catalysts? Personally, I believe it would, but there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Gameplay should always be the most important thing in a map, and when these two catalysts came along, Forgers drifted away from this core value.

What do I propose? There really isn't much I can do, but imagine if Forgehub still featured maps, and offered the same services, but all you did was post a description and link without screenshots? It sounds crazy, and I can almost guarantee it won't happen, but maybe that would bring Forgers back to the core value of gameplay first.

Groups like the Ghosts of Onyx have a much lower population in an attempt to "filter out" the immature forgers who take interlocking and smoothness over gameplay. Maps will continue to evolve, with the help of Bungie updates.

I leave you on one final piece of advice: keep in mind that Halo 3 is a game. Games are meant to be played. If you want to design architecture for looks, go find a program like Google Sketchup. Please always take gameplay first, because if you do, then Foundry and Interlocking are two enormous bonuses, instead of two blows to the face of Forge.