For this thread I plan to whip out my trusty time machine…
Let me take you back to a time many of you might regard as awesome, the Halo 2 era. It’s in Halo 2 that we see the apex of Halo map design. These maps played exactly as players needed them to and had an element rare to find in today’s maps.
They were Alive.
They had motion… they had lore. Zanzibar is heavily remembered in this sense. They used scenery from Campaign but only in a metaphorical sense. Like Turf’s perfect view of Mombasa’s bridge and that downed scarab. The blasphemous repeating playspaces of Reach are no where to be found in the Halo 2 era
I could go on thru time with this rant of why Halo’s maps have de-evolved in such drastic ways. But im going to compare to you Halo 4’s maps to some of the best multiplayer maps of all time.
This is for fun and to show you what we play now versus what we would be playing in Halo 2. These maps do NOT equal each other in anyway. Im not going to speak of the DLC maps of Halo 4 because they are terrible and I did not purchase them. This theory of mine that Halo maps are getting hilariously worse throughout time did not begin in Halo 4 but in Reach.
I made this thread to point out to 343ers in hopes that I could awaken their past Halo gamer. I strongly believe 343 does not deserve payment for the maps they have created and hope you will be a bit more hesitant when the next batch of DLC arrives.
Uh, the problem is that there is no solid form of map control. Yeah, you can sit on top of Complex all day, but there really is no advantage because nothing but personal ordnance drops up there.
Sure, they weren’t directly ripped out of the campaign in the past. I guess that was a good thing. You don’t have to rip scenery directly out of the campaign in order to link a map to the game story.
Some of the comparisons you make really don’t make sense to me though.
You didn’t really dissect why the maps aren’t as good anymore. You just said that the maps used to be more memorable, Zanzibar might not have been as iconic without the wheel, but it still would have been a good map. On the other hand, Lockout was amazing without any moving parts etc.
I can’t comment on H2 unfortunately, but I’ll tell you what was good about H3 maps, you visited all parts of them, there was action almost everywhere and you knew each weapon spawn and it was great fun going for those weapons.
In H3, when playing the pit, guardian, construct, narrows, heck even large maps like sandtrap, you actually visited all parts of the map during a game. Either because there were weapons there, or because you were trying to flank, or simply because not everyone on the opposing team had a sniper (DMR).
In H4, I could barely even tell you what parts of the larger maps look like, there’s no incentive to ever go there.
During a game on that big purple map (I forget what it’s called), does anyone really go anywhere else but to get to the action in the main base. On Ragnarok, prob one of the best H4 maps, do you ever run out in the open. Playing slayer on Longbow, are you either on or around the central base, or shooting people that are up there from the flanks?
There’s just no incentive to use the full map space, because there are no regular weapon spawns in dangerous areas, and if you do pop your head out from behind a rock for more than a second you get DMR’d to death.
So I don’t believe the issue lies solely with the map design, it’s also down to the play mechanics IMO.