So far every Big Team Battle map has been forged, and I kind of want to see a 343 made one with the normal art style and not the blocky forge one? Anybody else agree or are y’all just fine with Forge maps?
In a perfect world where the developer has unlimited resources? Sure I’d like to see them make a raft of BTB maps. But resources are not unlimited, and the budget that would have made BTB maps made WZ maps instead. And while the forge creations are a mixed bag at best, I still think it’s a really great idea to give the forge community their own playlist. Could the forgers build maps that offer up more flexibility in gameplay? Yes, but then they might offend the Halo Gods who demand conformity above all else. Could the forgers build better looking maps? Yes, but the better they look the more frames they drop, and I can understand the reluctance to have that be a problem. Could 343 come up with a better system for choosing, vetting, and playtesting community made maps? Yes, they could. But again, limited resources are a thing.
They said that this wouldn’t happen again in the future so that’s good to know because most of the btb were pretty terrible except for a few gems
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> In a perfect world where the developer has unlimited resources? Sure I’d like to see them make a raft of BTB maps. But resources are not unlimited, and the budget that would have made BTB maps made WZ maps instead.
You’re talking about resources and budget, but what they really lacked was time. Halo 5 was released in such an unfinished state, and it seems to me like they were rushing to get it out. I’m sure they wouldn’t have had to choose between making maps for Warzone and making maps for BTB if they had another year or so to develop Halo 5. And if you ask me, that’s not a choice they should ever have to make.
Big Team Battle is one of Halo’s most important and popular playlists, and it has been for a long time. You could say it’s a staple of the series. So how ridiculous is it when it gets to a point where 343 chooses to neglect creating maps for such a beloved playlist and actually including it in the game at launch in order to make way for some new game mode designed to make microtransaction money by doing away with equal starts?
Look, I don’t really care whether the maps are forged or not (I care more about “vehicle-friendly and open vs. cramped and restrictive” than I do about “developer-made vs. forged”), and I’m with you when it comes to giving the forge community some control over maps that get put into matchmaking, but I can’t just be ok with 343 rushing their Halo games and neglecting such an important, popular playlist in favor of their unfair, intrusive new thing. I just don’t think that’s ok at all. And if they rush Halo 6 to the point where they need to choose between BTB (and a completed game at launch) and Warzone, I can only hope they don’t make the wrong choice again.
And here’s another thing to consider: why didn’t they give us BTB on Warzone maps? Oh, some people are saying those maps are too big for BTB? Then give us a variant of BTB that has a team size increased from 8v8 to 12v12 or something. Stick some heavy vehicles and power weapons on the map and you’ve got the perfect BTB Heavies, which was also very popular in Halo Reach and 4. Why not do that? The only reason I can think of is because they didn’t want to make a game mode that would cannibalize Warzone’s population, because they would lose money if that happened. It’s a sad state of affairs when they won’t make a BTB gametype on those same maps that used up all of the time and resources and budget that should have gone to making BTB maps in the first place, even though they could have easily done at least that much to make up for it.
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> > 2533274873843883;2:
> > In a perfect world where the developer has unlimited resources? Sure I’d like to see them make a raft of BTB maps. But resources are not unlimited, and the budget that would have made BTB maps made WZ maps instead.
>
> You’re talking about resources and budget, but what they really lacked was time. Halo 5 was released in such an unfinished state, and it seems to me like they were rushing to get it out. I’m sure they wouldn’t have had to choose between making maps for Warzone and making maps for BTB if they had another year or so to develop Halo 5. And if you ask me, that’s not a choice they should ever have to make.
>
> Big Team Battle is one of Halo’s most important and popular playlists, and it has been for a long time. You could say it’s a staple of the series. So how ridiculous is it when it gets to a point where 343 chooses to neglect creating maps for such a beloved playlist and actually including it in the game at launch in order to make way for some new game mode designed to make microtransaction money by doing away with equal starts?
>
> Look, I don’t really care whether the maps are forged or not (I care more about “vehicle-friendly and open vs. cramped and restrictive” than I do about “developer-made vs. forged”), and I’m with you when it comes to giving the forge community some control over maps that get put into matchmaking, but I can’t just be ok with 343 rushing their Halo games and neglecting such an important, popular playlist in favor of their unfair, intrusive new thing. I just don’t think that’s ok at all. And if they rush Halo 6 to the point where they need to choose between BTB (and a completed game at launch) and Warzone, I can only hope they don’t make the wrong choice again.
>
> And here’s another thing to consider: why didn’t they give us BTB on Warzone maps? Oh, some people are saying those maps are too big for BTB? Then give us a variant of BTB that has a team size increased from 8v8 to 12v12 or something. Stick some heavy vehicles and power weapons on the map and you’ve got the perfect BTB Heavies, which was also very popular in Halo Reach and 4. Why not do that? The only reason I can think of is because they didn’t want to make a game mode that would cannibalize Warzone’s population, because they would lose money if that happened. It’s a sad state of affairs when they won’t make a BTB gametype on those same maps that used up all of the time and resources and budget that should have gone to making BTB maps in the first place, even though they could have easily done at least that much to make up for it.
Never forgetting though that time and money are, at least in business, two sides of a single coin. I agree that BTB is Halo’s staple playlist and I’ve argued with people before that it has historically pulled in a population that consistently rivals that of team slayer. But you can’t underestimate the importance of Warzone (and reqs, and the income that reqs provide) to the Halo 5 formula. That’s why Warzone was priority number one for this game, and I’d be willing to bet you that there were many voices inside 343 who were arguing for the exclusion of BTB as an existential threat to WZ.
But where does that leave us for Halo 6? I have to say that my best guess still puts BTB exclusively in the hands of forgers. My hope is, as you have said before and here again, that they relax the restrictions on the use of Warzone maps and allow access in both forge and customs. But who really knows?
I have said many times since H5 release that the BTB maps were a disgrace for a AAA game. My main gripe is that you expect to get at least the same, if not more than the last time MCC or Halo4 and both of these packages came crammed full of content all looking amazing.
WZ is basically 343 taking Spartan Ops and rehashing it. Lots of folks hated ordinance in H4 so they called those REQ’s, changed the deliver system and started charging for items. At least 343i gave us all the DLC for free as time went in.
I am sure they won’t make the same mistakes with Halo 6 and I really hope Halo 6 puts Halo back into the ground breaking area of games.
Are we really supposed to believe that the reason Halo 5 doesn’t have any developer made maps is because 343/Microsoft didn’t/doesn’t have enough time and resources?
They pushed Warzone mode for more REQ sales in 2015 and 2016. That is it.
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> They pushed Warzone mode for more REQ sales in 2015. That is it.
Yep.
BTB wasn’t even available at launch because they wanted to people to focus on WZ. 343 had forgers make the maps since the very beginning so I think it would be very unlikely that they would start to make the maps now especially when their focus is on H6.
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> I agree that BTB is Halo’s staple playlist and I’ve argued with people before that it has historically pulled in a population that consistently rivals that of team slayer. But you can’t underestimate the importance of Warzone (and reqs, and the income that reqs provide) to the Halo 5 formula. That’s why Warzone was priority number one for this game, and I’d be willing to bet you that there were many voices inside 343 who were arguing for the exclusion of BTB as an existential threat to WZ.
ok but I really don’t think Warzone and reqs are as important as BTB, as you seem to be saying. Warzone is important to the corporate bigwigs who want to make more profit, but I think Halo 5 would have been perfectly fine in terms of population and critical reception if they had tilted the balance a little bit away from Warzone and more towards BTB during development. It would have been more fun that way, if less profitable. It’s fine for 343 to want to make profit as a business, but in an ideal world, that shouldn’t be more of a priority than their job of making a fun video game. You’re right that people in 343 were probably arguing for the exclusion of BTB which I find completely outrageous and sets me off on these rants 
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> > 2533274873843883;5:
> >
>
> ok but I really don’t think Warzone and reqs are as important as BTB, as you seem to be saying. Warzone is important to the corporate bigwigs who want to make more profit, but I think Halo 5 would have been perfectly fine in terms of population and critical reception if they had tilted the balance a little bit away from Warzone and more towards BTB during development. It would have been more fun that way, if less profitable. It’s fine for 343 to want to make profit as a business, but in an ideal world, that shouldn’t be more of a priority than their job of making a fun video game. You’re right that people in 343 were probably arguing for the exclusion of BTB which I find completely outrageous and sets me off on these rants
I feel your pain, and believe you me, I’m not here to say that I think Warzone is better or more important than BTB. Only more lucrative and therefore more important to the developer. Although I do have to admit that for the first year of this game I really thought that Warzone represented the next evolution of Halo gameplay. I still think it has the skeleton of greatness, but unfortunately that skeleton is fleshed out with a highly suspect microtransaction system, and the whole thing is crippled (imo) by the exact same motion mechanics and weapon mechanics that make the rest of this game unplayable to me. Since shooters are all about moving and shooting, and I can’t seem to do either one in this game, then I’m pretty much on the outside looking in no matter what playlist or gametype we’re talking about. But we’ve talked before about a future version of Warzone where there is at least a variant that uses WZ physical assets with a BTB- or heavies-style gametype. I would love to see that happen, but I have to admit that I’m not hopeful. Money is money afterall, and heavies doesn’t help pay the bills unless you can prove to 343 that people would rather quit the game than accept WZ as a substitute for something else they’d rather be playing.
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> I feel your pain, and believe you me, I’m not here to say that I think Warzone is better or more important than BTB. Only more lucrative and therefore more important to the developer.
I see. Sorry for misunderstanding. You are certainly right about that
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> But we’ve talked before about a future version of Warzone where there is at least a variant that uses WZ physical assets with a BTB- or heavies-style gametype. I would love to see that happen, but I have to admit that I’m not hopeful. Money is money afterall, and heavies doesn’t help pay the bills unless you can prove to 343 that people would rather quit the game than accept WZ as a substitute for something else they’d rather be playing.
Ironically, I was almost one of those people. I was about to quit Halo 5 entirely, but then Warzone Firefight became a thing, so I stuck around. If it wasn’t for that, I’d still be rank 20-something and not posting on this forum. My point is that if 343 continues to think of Warzone as BTB’s replacement, it will drive off more people than they might realize, especially if they are blinded by greed. I’m about as pessimistic as you are, though 
I agree. It was always fun to get new real designed maps like in H3. H3 had some really good BTB maps