Halo 4 was an experiment. A test. To see if the CoD crowd, who had been complaining for so long that Halo wasn’t just CoD with shields and suits, would dedicatedly stay with the game if it was made into Space CoD.
They didn’t. Mistake one.
-Yoink!- made the wrong decision here.
Sandbox Balancing
-Yoink!- requested 343 to make Space CoD. They had no say in this. So they did, as haloistic as was possible. They tried to keep ordnance away from the instant killstreaks of CoD (coughnukewtfcough), and make it at least a tiny bit skilful. But…
It didn’t work, and chance didn’t help. Mistake two.
There was an uproar after release, with the game missing barebones playlists, loadout balance, rank, and including a pocket shotty, as well as perks.
Mistake three.
-Yoink!- panicked as they watched the steady population from Reach (let’s forget armour lock here) drop below 60,000. They added some “moar playyylists, moar gimmicks, moar!”, breaking the maps further.
Mistake four.
Finally, 343 listened to the fans, and put:
-SWAT
-Throwdown
-Snipers
-Team Objective
In the right direction.
Correct.
However, I think for Halo 5, as starting playlists, we should have (Infinity here meaning “Halo 4”, all others are “pro” (BR, Magnum, Frags, Resupply, Explosives):
-Infinity Slayer 4v4
-Infinity BTB 8v8-12v12
-Dominion/Extraction/King of the Hill (Named “Team Domination”) 6v6
-CTF, Team Regicide, Team Oddball, Assault, One Bomb (Named “Team Objective”) 5v5
-Team Slayer 4v4
-BTB Pro 8v8-12v12
-Invasion 8v8-12v12
-Regicide, FFA slayer, FFA Oddball, FFA KoTH (Named “Free For All”) 8 players