Two of my favorite games are Free-for-All and Recon Slayer. Today I wanted to play Halo, went to Free-for-All… Only to realize Recon Slayer isn’t included.
While it’s dangerous to spread gametypes thin when it comes to online services, weekly playlists are to keep current players playing and give absent players a purpose to log in and try something new. However the playlists are fairly restrictive and defy this philosophy.
Additionally, this feeds into a problem of certain games having a smaller population when they don’t need to, something that’s already problematic enough. For example, Halo 3 is the only game with a recon playlist, when Halo 2: Anniversary has the weapon pool to support it. Smaller game populations need every opportunity they can get so players with gametype preferences can cross over to players with game title preferences, benefitting everyone. This problem extends beyond weekly playlists and even to games such has Halo: CE with Big Team Battle maps while not supporting the Big Team Battle playlist selection.
While changes such as mid-game join, multiple player size queues, and team changing to balance teams will benefit matchmaking experiences, they’re also larger scale and more difficult to develop. Until that point is more realistic, I think expanding weekly playlists to every game and every size would be healthy for games and sizes whose population aren’t as healthy. MCC’s greatest strength is variety, something that’s not being capitalized on.
And, for the sake of being selfish, Firefight too. I’d love to see Shotty Sniper Firefight games, or Combat Evolved-themed Firefight durian Reach’s CE Anniversary playlists.