Judging something based on it's Community

 This is a follow up on the Call of Duty Hate/Hypocrisy post that I had planned since I wrote it. In that article I mentioned that as an overall judgement. I said Call of duty has a bad community and should that make it a bad game then? The way I see it that's a biased perspective. But it's simultaneously understandable. If you have a bad experience in a game you'll blame it on the game. Now not all games are perfect and those opinions may have merit sometimes, but if its the game how can so many people like it? Simple because it wasn't the game, it was the people. There's never going to be a perfectly balanced game because in a multiplayer setting you can only control the weapons and the maps, not the people. You can make great maps and weapons but how the community plays may differ from the designers intent.

 The best example I can provide is the introduction of "quickscoping" to the Call of duty community. Quickscoping is the result of a slight flaw with call of duty's aim assist that allows players to rapidly scope in and shoot a sniper rifle at and enemy with little to no skill involved, due to the 1 shot kill weapon being slightly pulled towards an enemy. The developers tried to stomp out the problem by altering snipers, but were thwarted by the communities incessant need to quickscope. It wasn't the Developers intent for how the community would use the sniper rifles or the aim assist, but its become a part of the game now.

  Moving off of the call of duty example to show that it's not just a isolated problem. A game that I used to love but can no longer play due to my developed hatred for the community, Halo 4. If you read my review of the game you should know that I don't hold the actions of the community against the judgement of the game. However I can't stand playing it due to the matchmaking forcing me into matches with the worst of the worst. Its not game mechanics, aside from the matchmaking system, that are to blame for ruining the game for me, but the community. I refuse to say outright that Halo 4 is bad because I can still enjoy custom games with my friends but I no longer like to play the game with the online community.

  So hearing that is it right to let my personal experience lead me to call a game bad regardless of if the game was well made? Everyone is entitled to whatever opinion they may have but I feel too many people dislike popular franchises because of the community and not because the quality of the games are bad. I just hate the thought of a game being called bad or being disliked for things other than inherently bad game design or balance.