It’s gotten so bad that I’ve hunted for and located the Halo 4 forums section on the waypoint site.
The CSR ranking system has effectively made halo 4 something I can only play with a full group, or rumble pit (and even rumble pit sometimes people travel in packs). Admittedly I use the legacy control style which I feel puts me at a small disadvantage to start, but I have been getting stomped in basically 7/10 games. This did not happen before the CSR system. I’ll admit I was winning more than half of my games, and was frequently posting 15-5 games (for example), but now I’m happy to win 3/10 of my games and break even. Just an example glancing back through the last 40 games I played (quickly) it appears as though I’ve amassed a 12-28 record…those “12 wins” include at least 1-2 rumble pit games where I finished 4th or better. I’m not aiming for perfection here…just mediocrity. (is this the new mediocre? It feels like the old bad). Another note, many of these games were swat/sniper (my friends like those gametypes…not as much me; we still got worked pretty hard). One of my friends flat refuses to play team slayer with us anymore because “at our level” he will only get 4 kills. While this is true we’re not likely to do all that much better, landing somewhere around 8-12 and still losing.
Maybe I’m bad? Drop my level! That’s fine…don’t really want to run into a bunch of people de-leveling but if that’s what it takes then start dropping my levels when I lose 5 in a row…or match me up against someone else who’s dropped 5 straight.
When I try to play team slayer (when I queue solo) I continually get stuck up against a solid team of 4 who are coordinated and used to working together. We get stomped. I know, I know; don’t queue for a team game by yourself. Fine. I’d rather not play rumble pit all the time when I don’t have 2-3 other friends on to join me…though I’ll admit bringing rumble pit back was nice.
My request: Bring back casual slayer. If I remember correctly in Halo 3 (I think?) there was a casual slayer playlist with BTB and TS (8v8 and 4v4) and it was the only playlist you could play with guests. Don’t rank it, throw a bunch of random people in together the best and the worst fine. Sure I’ll get stuck up against someone who doesn’t work an 8-4 job and sits in moms basement 23 hours a day honing their already superhuman DMR skills to 5 shot people anywhere from 1-1000 meters 100% of the time… But I’ll also get matched up against people who like to knock back a few while they sit down with old buddies and drive around on a mongoose trying for splatters. I understand that some people already consider BTB to be the most casual of slayers, and while I agree with this it’s gotten to the point where I will frequently run up against clans/large parties in BTB who coordinate to control the power weapons/vehicles in a game and will just crush my team.
Example; Exile, BTB. I’m red team. I make a run for the tank and manage to secure it. Blue team gets gauss hog and banshee. 5 of them charge at the tank wielding plasma pistols and sticky grenades. I kill 2-3 and am dead as they were using jet packs and…well it’s hard to fire the tank that fast. The guy on the gauss hog goes 30-0 before we kill him and the banshee somehow manages to get 20 kills before it goes down even though as someone put it earlier the banshee is basically a “paper airplane.” They held mid as well while the remainder of my “team” I can only assume was off in a corner cowering in fear. This sort of game has happened to me on multiple occasions. I don’t so much mind losing but over and over. When the game FINALLY isn’t on Settler or in progress I get stuck up against a coordinated clan/group of 4+.
Why not play custom games? I’m one person. Gets boring. Not going to message a bunch of randoms and ask them either; whenever I get a “message to all players” about a clan/custom game invite I tend to delete it so fast my Xbox can’t keep up.
Let the people that enjoy having a “I’M A CSR LEVEL 50, YOU CAN’T TOUCH MY DMR!” do their thing in ranked playlists while the rest of us who enjoy playing against the mixed batch do our thing.
Maybe I’ve just had bad luck? Maybe I just need to suck it up and lose a lot? That may adjust my rank accordingly? (I’m kinda tired of losing 7/10 games I play; I figured the ranking system would have noticed a pattern and acted appropriately…apparently I was wrong). Maybe it will level out? Who knows. Guess I’ll just be doing rumble pit for a while. (My friends (mostly local buddies) are super burnt out on losing repeatedly, and we’ve all been playing Halos together since 2002 if memory serves…early Xbox live).