Dear 343i,
Today I want to discuss your game called Halo 4. I am making some criticisms not as a person who is absolutely displeased with your game but as someone who rather enjoys it but feels it needs tweaking to hit the sweet spot. I will break them down here by categories.
Map Voting: This is pretty minor but, I feel it should be mentioned in my opinion. I like that you get only 1 chance to vote, that alone is a huge improvement over Reach. I suggest that rather than have the left side weighted heavier for the votes in case of a tie, I say that in case of a tie vote we go to a random map/game type instead.
Maps: In this area I have 2 main complaints.
1: Launch day had only 10 maps. Granted the DLC is coming out rather quickly but it really feels like they should have been there to begin with. I would say a good solid 16 maps for launch would have been fantastic. I would suggest that you place those premade Forge maps into the rotation.
2: Very few small maps. Most of the small maps feel like would play just a bit better as 5v5 or 6v6 especially Complex. Complex is just too big for a 4v4 match. I believe we need more maps that pay tribute (not remakes) to Classic maps such as “The Pit, or Guardian, Epitaph, Cold Storage” to name a few.
Forge: I like the new features of Forge such as Magnets, Locking, and unique pieces for each Forge map. This is all well and good but, essentially they have the same Forerunner blandness from reach. I was hoping for pallets like Sandbox, or Foundry. Each of them had extremely unique pallets to their respective maps. I hope that you will do something similar with some DLC. Just a suggestion but I would like a sandy desert, ice & snow, and industrial themes. I am sure the rest of the community will have more ideas.
File Share: Ummmm…… Where is it? I understand that you are having difficulty with this feature, so when you finally do launch this I would like to see a monthly Forge contest. These community maps ( about 20 or so) would be placed in a hopper that appeared only on the first weekend of the month. The top 5 ones that get voted on the most get put in the other playlist for the month. The winners would automatically be in the contest for the next month to see if they can win out for another month. You can call it “Crash or Smash” or something like that.
Game Types: This is one of my biggest gripes for sure. I can see why you want to keep your active playlist condensed for matchmaking purposes but you purposely left out classics even in Forge that I was really looking forward to playing. Game types that should at the very minimum be in the options for Forge. The ones that I think should be added are: 1 flag, Assault, 1 bomb, infection (Spartan only, no flood) mainly for 1 v all games, race, rocket race, headhunter, stockpile, speedflag. I am sure that I am missing some but these should definitely be added to Forge at the very least.
Ranking: Uhg…. Now here is always a hot topic for sure. I have never had a level 50 and am well aware that it probably won’t ever happen, however it personally doesn’t matter all that much to me other than the pure fact of bragging rights to my friends. Not to mention that I would truly know that I was getting better at playing. I know if I had a buddy that was say level 30 in Team Swat, this would motivate me to really want to increase my skill so I can beat him and tell him that I did just that. So please bring a real skill ranking system back to Halo. One final thing is please make it playlist specific, Team swat, snipers, CTF etc…
Credits: This really needs to be tweaked a lot in my opinion. I would say first cut the amount of credits you get from Spartan Ops by half at least. Then I came up with this formula for War Games matches. First there would be absolutely NO GAME COMPLETION credits, none whatsoever. That means that if I am AFK and completely screw over my team I would get no credits at all as I would deserve.
If I Win: I get (Victory credits + my commendation credits) Victory credits should be around the amount of what you currently get for game completion + bonus victory credits.
If I Lose: ( No credits + my commendation credits) So if my team loses but I still have a good game I get some credits, just nowhere near what you get for actually winning the match.
If I quit: ( No credits, no commendation credits) – X quits per 2 weeks x (1,000) + X quits x (20 min ban)
This would help those people that really hate the Join in Progress feature, by really punishing people that are willing to abandon their team repeatedly over a 2 week period. It would have a small grace period of quits for things like loss of internet, storms, etc., then you receive a warning, then you get the full increasing effect every time you leave your team. Quitting would also affect your skill ranking for the playlist. You could easily go down ranks and re-lock some of your gear you worked so hard to earn.