I was first introduced to forge in Halo 3. I had absolutely no interest until they released Sandbox. Unfortunately, the tools to build things were not user friendly, and I couldn’t even figure out how to get two items to line up or stack with each other. However, I actually started to prefer custom games that other more skilled players made. Dodgeball being my favorite (oh, the amazing memories from my Middle School days so long ago), was just one of the many unique game types that really made custom gaming fun.
Then, Reach enhanced the Forge building experience tenfold. It was even easier to get other players to play on your maps. However, this was still difficult as players wanted you to play their maps, but not play yours. They would leave parties if they had to wait their turn more than 2 or 3 games. I have to say one of the best times I had playing Reach was a custom race map that was like a big bowl with huge death balls randomly rolling around.
What I expected from Halo 4:
- At least one map similar to Sandbox, or one similar to Forge World. This was a huge disappointment to realize the advertised three turned out to be duds.
- MORE game options, especially as related to vehicles. Again, disappointed that game options were actually reduced.
- A custom games development and testing game lobby. It’s the next logical step up from the Reach searches for file share games and maps.
More on the idea of custom game matchmaking:
It’s a simple idea. I’ll first cover the issues that have to be overcome. First, everyone wants to play their own map. Second, Players don’t always have hours to wait in line to get their map played before having to quit for the night. To get past these issues is actually easy. Custom game points, earn one for each game you play from start to finish. Earn a fraction for each game you enter midway or leave midway (at least x amount of minutes of game play and not idle of course). The player in the matchmade group with the most points spends one point per player (yes this can go negative or else this system would never work at the beginning). So for example if you wanted to play a big team custom map, you’d play approximately 16 games to earn enough points to get your map played. All the while you’d be helping about 15 other players get their game or map tested.
If the next Halo game doesn’t have something like this, my tone will change from “ok I get that you had a lot on your plate for Halo 4” to “Seriously, do you not understand how important custom games are for the longevity of a game?”
Realize that you can only complete the campaign so many times (for me, cone on normal for story, once on solo legendary for credit and once co-op legendary for credit) before you don’t want to play it again. Though Spartan Ops are better in some ways to Firefight, it’s also the same thing over and over again. Even matchmaking gets old, when you’ve been doing it for over a decade. Custom content generates unique games that are not repetitive like all the other game content.