Refreshing to see this thread on Waypoint… let’s keep them coming. Arena is great on the surface, it plays well for what we have, but beyond that, it’s such a shallow experience as a whole… or lacking functionality in critical areas.
The ranking system seems to be working BETTER as of late, but it wasn’t always working well… lots of maps feel very similar and/or are nearly the same basic layouts as their remixed counterparts… some promote cheap/campy tactics that de-emphasize skill… there are only 3 game modes. DLC maps left much more to be desired.
There’s just a huge lack of variety… unless I’m playing with friends, I can hardly bring myself to play any more than 3 games, just because of how stale the game has gotten… playing the same 3 game modes, on the same maps (still w/ skewed MM weighting/ratios)…
Some more OG maps would be nice, with some added character, promoting unique gameplay experiences relative to the rest of the map pool. Maybe there’s a map with an emphasis on grav-lifts or man-cannon transportation, and it’s inspired by Derelict, and there’s a lot of potential for high-flying gameplay. Maybe another map has routes that complement knowledge of the expanded “meta” game. You take a man-cannon and mid-flight you can scope/stabilize and your momentum can carry you up to a higher ledge/window of a structure and you can clamber up to another area/route.
A little more than half of the maps are solid in H5, but too many offer the same kinds of gameplay. Or repetitive gameplay, remix-to-remix. It’s all the same cubic layout, cut up and pathed a little bit differently. Honestly, I thought The Rig and Plaza were remixes of each other at first… cubic, asymmetric maps… similar gameplay. They’re both among my favorite maps in the game, The Rig has plenty of character… Plaza has a great visual aesthetic and some good sight-lines, but then you compare Plaza in particular with Overgrowth and the maps are TOO similar, where like HALF of the map is essentially the same?
The remixes just add more redundancies to an already, somewhat uninspired map pool. There’s just a lot more that could be done to spice up the gameplay here, not so much now in H5, but in H6… map designers have a lot of potential in how they can expand on the movement abilities and provide a more traditionally diverse pool of maps. Favyn’s recent video that some of you guys are mentioning was absolutely spot on, about the splitting of resources and efforts in development and dumbing down each sub-component of the game in the process.
There’s just a perception of less value there because of the fact that the game was structured in such a divisive manner. If someone prefers one experience to another and doesn’t care to play other components of the game, what good is all of that other content for them? Content should benefit all players in some way, no matter the way they choose to define their Halo experience.
