343’s maps are big and pretty. That being said, the majority of them don’t play well.
The two biggest problems I see are the size and the accessibility of weapons, vehicles, high points, etc.
As far as size, the maps are unnecessarily big. There are whole sections of some of the maps that people never really touch. There is no need for 10 different passage ways on one side of a map, a massive middle section, and another 10 passageways. And yeah, 343 will throw in a vehicle or spawn points on either side to draw a little bit of attention there, but once the vehicle is taken, that side of the map is useless. It doesn’t really effectively redirect focus. The maps are pointlessly big. It just leads to frustration in finding someone on the enemy team and having to trott across the map.
The other problem is that of accessibility. No Halo game has had all symmetrical maps, but they at least had some. And even when the maps were not symmetric, if one side was basically handed sword, the other side was handed a shotgun. Or if one team was handed overshield, the other was given invisibility, and so on. Not on Halo 4, not even Haven. Halo 4 does not have a single balanced map on the disc or in dlc. One team may be given a man cannon, but the other team has to walk. One team is always given an easier, faster route to the height advantage, or to weapons, or even a better route to capping objectives (think complex). For example, a clear height advantage on Abandon is given to one team, along with the scattershot b/c it sits behind the elevator. Same on Haven. It’s easier for one team to get both the scattershot (because it sits on one side of the pillar) and the sticky detonator (b/c one team has a clear path in cover to get to it, while the other team has to run through the middle and take shots, then bounce a grenade off a wall to even have a chance at contesting).
These aren’t necessarily map ruining, but they create clear advantages for one team over another. I’m a proponent of fairness in gameplay, where everyone is on an at least somewhat equal playing field independent of spawn (lets not even get into ordinances and loadouts). Basically I just want more balanced, small, and dare I say plain, maps.
