Blame Microsoft.
I believe that Microsoft is manipulating it’s biggest franchises to get more sales. Why, you ask? It’s not only Halo that’s been CoD’d, Microsoft’s other huge franchise, Gears of War, is too.
The newest game in GoW, Judgment, also removed many features of the traditional Gears to appeal to more players. The biggest change is the ability to spawn with only a single weapon. If you have never played GoW, one of the things that makes it GoW was that everyone spawned with a rifle and a shotgun. In Judgment, you can only spawn with one of these in a new, customizable loadout. Also, you had to find live grenades on the map in the past Gears games, but now everyone spawns with them. A couple of old favourite game modes, like Horde, Beast, Warzone and Execution are being removed. You also die immediately in Judgment instead of going into “DBNO” mode which was similar to the Last Stand system in Call of Duty (Gears had it first, btw)
What does this have to do with Halo, though? The process that Judgment is going through is very similar to the process Halo 4 went through. Both added custom loadouts, like CoD. Both took away things that were extremely important to the series (DBNO in Gears, weapons on map in Halo) and also removed classic game modes. Any by doing these things, the companies are totally screwing over old school fans. A ton of my old Halo friends hate Halo 4, and I don’t know anyone who is excited for Judgment.
What these new games are doing is too similar for the individual companies to be doing. Unlike Halo, the original developer of Gears is still with the series. I find it hard to believe that the “super Halo fans” of 343i and the people that know how to make Gears games would implement these CoD features without Microsoft influencing them.
That being said, it is inexcusable how 343i have not updated the game or at least attempted to get the old fans back. I just hope Judgement doesn’t go down the drain as fast as Halo did.
TL;DR Microsoft was the one that wanted the CoD features in Halo 4 not 343i