Right. What about fiesta? FFA? Doubles? Firefight? Swat? Modes that were supposed to be in on launch and were only added after complaining. 343 didn’t launch the game with that stuff already in. And considering how they did the battlepass, I’m not sure how you’re actually defending them.
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You can’t play ranked if you don’t want to play ranked Hardcore. And without forge you can’t change the maps from besigned with eSports in mind. Add more ranked playlists and forge, and a lot of these eSports complaints would go away. But that’s not the current game.
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That right there. More variety and I would say less grinding for unlocking the stuff. That would get right of the esports centric vibe
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Alright I’m done. I can’t take it anymore. I need to get back to life.
So you’re upset that at launch 1/3 playlists catered to ranked players instead of 1/6?..
Can we all acknowledge that fiesta and SWAT have never been there at a Halo title’s launch? I don’t even think FFA has been there for all of Halo launches (including Bungie Halo’s).
It’s like people completely forget that comparing previous Halo games that also took 2 post launch years to reach ‘complete’ content for every halo game that’s ever existed besides 1 & 2 just didn’t make sense.
Infinite launched with a better gameplay sandbox than anything since CE (imo) . Why can’t we all be excited about what’s to come instead of being po’d that something doesn’t launch at another game’s finished state?.. 
Maybe I give extra leniency because I work in software development (not game development) and understand a lot of the troubles in the industry right now.
I’m just going to end on a high note here.
Most of the basic features that players take for granted were supported massively by the Esports/competitive scene in Halo.
Just off the top of my head: Even starts, Spectator mode/Theater, Forge, Ranking system, weapon balance, maps that don’t play like crap (looking at you Halo 4), variety in game modes (Oddball is one such example of this, I wanna say this was added post launch for Halo 5?) and looking forward Esports is looking like its the spearhead for changes like anticheat and PC optimization (speaking of Halo Infinite)
It is extremely stupid to trash Esports then turn around and praise basically everything that Esports has in some way impacted.
I would argue that Esports impact is felt at the seam of Halo. There are some things that one could argue competitive Halo has definitely impacted even if in a small way, but when you look at a lot of larger modes or sweeping changes it is apparent that Esports overall is pretty minor. Campaign, BTB, basically any playlist that isn’t HCS/comp settings are all unaffected by Esports. This would be like me starting a thread saying that Grifball has had a profoundly negative impact on Halo… Extremely stupid and honestly it kind of just overrates the very thing you are trying to bash. Prepping up any of the pros as developers in terms of impact is just nuts.
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Every Halo title after 2 designed maps based off the in house pro team… And they had a lot of pro team consultants on 2.
Why would you be upset by professionals designing and balancing the maps…
I don’t like the same three lane layout that almost every map in this game has. I would like more diversity in map design. I don’t care who they have working on the maps honestly, give us some diversity.
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Dude Infinite definitely needs more maps for pro play as well. I’ve said this before many times but they definitely need a really good CTF/Slayer map (like Narrows, for example) because most of the current lineup are just great asymmetrical maps for Oddball. Not to mention that gametypes like Extraction would be wonderful too, so that way a best of 5 series doesn’t need to have 2 maps with Slayer on them.
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I like 3 lane layouts because they’re very easy to balance. I just wish it wasn’t almost always 3 parallel lanes… I mean, give us some vertically with crossovers and intersections right?..
You realise I was complaining about H5 and not Infinite yes?
I haven’t said anything bad about Infinite’s gameplay in this post, period.
All I said was molding a game around Esports is generally a bad thing, and using H5 as an example, a game which heavily divorced itself from the OG Halo experience.
If anything, Infinite is a H3 vr.2.0 which is wonderful. It retains the core formula of Guns-Melee-Grenades while encouraging the use of advanced movement like Sliding and Sprint to get an edge over other players. It also does not enforce the player to the new mechanics to a drastic extent either, so an OG player can still have fun without needing to employ advanced movement all the time.
If I had to give other examples of games that became worse due to Esports, I’ll bring League of Legend to the front.
LoL used to be sheer dumb fun back in S1-3 where everything was up for experimentation, and you could have so much fun without adhering to builds and just playing the game. As the seasons go by, LoL dropped deeper and deeper into the pit of Meta, balancing, introducing, or removing gameplay aspects to respect the meta. You were essentially forced to play a certain way to even enjoy the game, if that could be considered enjoying it.
Bringing it back to Halo, H5 was just that. You had to get used to all these new Spartan abilities and they altered gameplay so much so that it just split apart from the same feeling original Halos had.
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“3lanes” never had to be lanes at all, in fact.
Take H3’s The Pit for example.
If you strip it down, it’s more or less a 3lane format, with 3 major populated areas of conflict. But it all changes based on how people play around these areas of conflict if you factor in things like equipment or even pick ups that draw players away from the 3lanes.
Halo is less about lanes and more about point of interests, which I feel 343 has missed the point of.
You want to get players to fight in places they would normally never visit, and you use power weapon spawns or pick ups to do this.
Recharge is a great example :
Like who on earth would wanna fight at the chasm where the Grav Hammer spawns? No one, unless people were fighting over possession of the Hammer of course.
An example of a bad map in Infinite is Aquarius.
The 2 side lanes are more protected, while the center with the pick up is open and naked and holds no significant advantage because it’s entirely devoid of cover, so much so that even a power item spawning there isn’t enough to make people wanna visit it.
Yes but you can use Grapplehook or Plasma nades (Combat Evolve it to you) to circumvent this.
its basically just Midship… Yes the spawns are more protected but the middle gives you Camo and its superior position wise because you can basically spawn trap.
Edit: it works better for CTF, but objective overall works better for Halo anyways.
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Yes, because Objectives are also PoIs or things which attract the attention and gives the player reason to fight over it!
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Yeah Slayer/Elimination gametypes across basically every game ever made are arguably the worst for this reason alone. Although it may be fun viewership wise (49-49 game with 30 seconds on the clock) the reality is that it plays like crap because playing passive and just running away can be effective towards winning. There was one match in particular with eUnited (#2 team at Raleigh btw) vs another (forgot their name lol) on a Slayer on Live Fire and it didn’t even get past 30 kills IIRC. Why? Because they were up by like 15 kills, and just decided to camp and hide the rest of the match… Absolutely moronic crap that only works because the gametype supports that kind of play.
I think a lot of pros would love to see another gametype ala Extraction or something in Infinite, Slayer matches don’t really test team skill and can just be really wonky whereas Objective modes are more strategic.
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Regarding viewership, I wanna see some BTB exhibitions.
Skill? Whatever. Just chaotic gameplay for exhibition? Heck yea. Would promote the game better too.
Remember the reveal for MP where they just showed a whole lot of BTB Chaos? Yea, that’s the kind of stuff people will watch.
Could even do it like a post comp where all the teams can sign up for the BTB exhibition.
12 v 12.
3 teams vs 3 teams.
A little chaotic fun and see if you can get some payback.
I mean 
They did have a BTB Bonanza event. It was pretty staged but a lot of folks enjoyed it.
BTB will never be a real Esports thing because forming a team of 12 players is damn near impossible. Doesn’t mean they can’t have fun little events though of course.
Edit: I’d like to see some Grifball action, and they could pit pro teams against one another lol.
Absolutely agree with you.
All I hear is whining because you’re dog and not as good as players who put in more hours… imagine?
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Yeaaaaaaaaa that’s not the esports crowd lol. That’s the addicted to free item drip crowd.
The multiplayer was released for all the halo fans who have been waiting half a decade since the debacle known as halo 5. And of course -Yoink!- with those sweet not so micro micro transactions.
Honestly does the esports even matter for infinite? Other than me and one other, my other 8 active friends didn’t even know there was an event. The twitch event hit 200k and dropped back to 50k or less after an hour or so to get those free skins - how many of those 200k were like me where I opened the stream and put it in a tab and muted it for 8+ hours? A metric crap ton I’d wager