MATCHMAKING FEEDBACK UPDATE – November 5

Games Other Halo
1

Playlist Update

We have been monitoring playlist health constantly over the past year and have a noticed a few trends worth pointing out.

First, our very minimum bar is that, at the very least, a solo queuing player can find a match within a reasonable amount of time in any playlists at any time of the day. We consider playlists that don’t meet that minimum bar as better fits for rotational lists because while on rotation, they get plenty of players for a brief window. To be clear, most rotationals lose that player base towards they end of their rotations, but for the first 1-1.5 weeks they lists do quite well.

There are some exceptions within Ranked. We are not as strict with FFA because it is still being played competitively, even if the format we use isn’t exactly the same. Also, we keep Elimination up because it’s the only way to finish the Breakout Commendations.

Outside of that, there are a few playlists that are falling below our minimum bar.

Warzone Assault

Warzone Assault has long been behaving more like a rotational than like a permanent playlist. It has also gone several days at a time without any matches played at all because the number of players we see trying to play at peak times is not enough to form a complete match. To make it easier to get matches in Warzone Assault, as I mentioned before the weekend, we are going to start running it as a rotational the first weekend of each month. We have noticed in our data that when we take less popular lists and run them periodically instead of permanently, they receive orders of magnitude more players.

Big Team Battle

For a long period of time BTB was a solid social playlist and in fact the minimum popularity bar we used to judge whether a list should stay permanent. Lately, however, it has become near impossible to find matches for around half the day. It appears the bulk of players needed to maintain a healthy list now prefer the Super Fiesta variant, leaving only classic BTB enthusiasts still engaged in the original BTB playlist. We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.

Our current plans with BTB are as follows:

  • Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January - Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational - If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.

Playlist Ranks

Here are how they rank in popularity over the last week since we haven’t done this in a while. You may notice BTB is Ranked above Doubles, but keep in mind that Doubles only requires 4 players to start a match. So while BTB is getting more playtime overall, Doubles doesn’t have the same issues with failures to find a match:

Super Fiesta
Slayer
Castle Wars
Big Team Super Fiesta
Heroic Warzone Firefight
Warzone
Quick Play
Infection
Team Arena
SWAT
Legendary Warzone Firefight
Big Team Battle
Ranked Doubles
Mythic Warzone Firefight
Grifball
Free-for-All
Elimination
Warzone Assault
Warzone Warlords

2

> 2533274839818445;1:
> we keep Elimination up because it’s the only way to finish the Breakout Commendations.

Please remove extermination it requires a completely different game style and therefore doesn’t suit the playlist. It also can be very frustrating in a competitive game because of the spawns.

3

What would be your estimate as a length of time for a BtB refresh? New Maps/fixed spawn traps would bring a lot of people back I think. Perhaps making it ranked for a season would bring people back as well.

4

Can’t <3 your post because it’s unimaginable to think of BTB becoming a rotational. A refresh has been needed for some time, so hopefully that helps it a ton. BTB is a major core experience of Halo and turning it into a rotational would be a very sad state of affairs.

5

Thanks for addressing the trends in WZA.

Bummer FFA’s population has struggled, hopefully it picks up around the holidays.

Still cracks me up that Super Fiesta is consistently the most popular playlist.

6

> 2775209234672000;4:
> It’s unimaginable to think of BTB becoming a rotational. A refresh has been needed for some time, so hopefully that helps it a ton. BTB is a major core experience of Halo and turning it into a rotational would be a very sad state of affairs.

I think it WAS a core part in the past, but it hasn’t been for the lifetime of H5. In H4, for example, it was where the bulk of the less tryhard folks went, resulting in a pretty active list of a long period of time.

But in H5, that bulk of players moved on to Warzone at first, and now the Super Fiestas. Without that bulk, the non-competitive lists can’t really sustain themselves.

The core of H5 is Super Fiesta and BTB SF, which accounts for 1 in 4 of all playtime in the entire game at this point. The large bulk of players that would usually support lists like BTB because of the more casual chaos fun have moved on to different gametypes now.

It’s just not a core experience for our current active audience.

So any refresh type stuff needs to address getting that bulk back into BTB and having them stay there. If we make changes in the direction of the enthusiasts that alienate the casual bulk, it won’t work.

7

> 2533274839818445;1:
> Big Team BattleFor a long period of time BTB was a solid social playlist and in fact the minimum popularity bar we used to judge whether a list should stay permanent. Lately, however, it has become near impossible to find matches for around half the day. It appears the bulk of players needed to maintain a healthy list now prefer the Super Fiesta variant, leaving only classic BTB enthusiasts still engaged in the original BTB playlist. We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.
>
> Our current plans with BTB are as follows:
> - Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January - Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational - If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.

The population of BTB is low because of a couple of factors which all stem from changes that you guys (343) made starting last year including

  1. MMR based matching in a social playlist.
  • Pre-game lobbies - For some reason, during the pre-game loading screen, if there is only 15/16 players queued up - THE GAME WONT START and the game rarely finds a 16th player. The result is a 5 minute wait session, crossing our fingers hoping someone gets matched up. I’ve gone 20 minutes searching and sitting in 15/16 queued lobbies just to play one game. I’ve actually given up even trying to play solo a few nights because of it. - If the game does actually start, and someone quits, a new player immediately gets spawned into the game. No waiting, its almost instantaneous. Why? How can the pregame lobby time out completely, but in game puts someone in?2. Changes to the BR which butchered it. It’s not even enjoyable to shoot anymore.
  • Do I even need to say more? do competitive players even pick it up in HCS?3. Lack of variation in game types and maps. When is the last time a refresh was made? For god sake, a refresh bringing back maps that were previously in the playlist would be all it would take. I’m certainly bored to death of waiting 20 minutes to find a game, yet when I do its Dispelled Slayer for the 247th time in a row.

I would really hate to see a playlist that has been so ingrained into the fabric of Halo matchmaking over the last 2 decades, be tossed aside, because of mistakes made by the developer when they were trying to help. Fix the issues that have caused players to abandon BTB, dont just simply get complacent.

On the other hand, if you just dont have the staff, I get it.

Might give Bo4 or RDR2 a try

8

> 2535417897791132;7:
> > 2533274839818445;1:
> > Big Team BattleFor a long period of time BTB was a solid social playlist and in fact the minimum popularity bar we used to judge whether a list should stay permanent. Lately, however, it has become near impossible to find matches for around half the day. It appears the bulk of players needed to maintain a healthy list now prefer the Super Fiesta variant, leaving only classic BTB enthusiasts still engaged in the original BTB playlist. We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.
> >
> > Our current plans with BTB are as follows:
> > - Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January - Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational - If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.
>
> The population of BTB is low because of a couple of factors which all stem from changes that you guys (343) made starting last year including
>
> 1. MMR based matching in a social playlist.
> - Pre-game lobbies - For some reason, during the pre-game loading screen, if there is only 15/16 players queued up - THE GAME WONT START and the game rarely finds a 16th player. The result is a 5 minute wait session, crossing our fingers hoping someone gets matched up. I’ve gone 20 minutes searching and sitting in 15/16 queued lobbies just to play one game. I’ve actually given up even trying to play solo a few nights because of it. - If the game does actually start, and someone quits, a new player immediately gets spawned into the game. No waiting, its almost instantaneous. Why? How can the pregame lobby time out completely, but in game puts someone in?2. Changes to the BR which butchered it. It’s not even enjoyable to shoot anymore.
> - Do I even need to say more? do competitive players even pick it up in HCS?3. Lack of variation in game types and maps. When is the last time a refresh was made? For god sake, a refresh bringing back maps that were previously in the playlist would be all it would take. I’m certainly bored to death of waiting 20 minutes to find a game, yet when I do its Dispelled Slayer for the 247th time in a row.
>
> I would really hate to see a playlist that has been so ingrained into the fabric of Halo matchmaking over the last 2 decades, be tossed aside, because of mistakes made by the developer when they were trying to help. Fix the issues that have caused players to abandon BTB, dont just simply get complacent.
>
> On the other hand, if you just dont have the staff, I get it.
>
> Might give Bo4 or RDR2 a try

I disagree. Read my last comment.

BTB has never been strong in H5, regardless of its place in past Halos. We have to look at the audience it has now vs. the past. The average bulk H5 player isn’t that interested in BTB and never has been. Not in the presence of Warzone and now BTB SF.

That doesn’t mean there isn’t a group of folks playing H5 who love it, but that group isn’t a core part of H5.

I feel more like the core pop has moved on, and the leftover BTB enthusiast community isn’t large enough to sustain the list without changes that invite folks currently happy in other playlists back, as well as the enthusiasts.

Also, I disgrew on the BR. The original BR scared off more of that original pop than it did invite them. Weakening the BR actually resulted in an increase in BTB’s pop a year ago that was sustained up until BTB SF.

9

Also, again, suggesting “switch to HCS settings” has never been helpful. It goes to show there’s a gap between a small group of enthusiasts and the core. Every list we’ve introduced HCS settings into has shrunk significantly.

10

The search times for btb are not because of lack of interest in the playlist lmao. It has everything to do with the mmr parameters you guys set in place to make it “fair”. I don’t get how you guys don’t see that.

11

With all due respect, Big Team Battle was dead on arrival. It arrived a month late and to this day has no developer made maps. It launched with barebones gametypes as well. This is a slap in the face for BTB, as it has been a staple of Halo for well over a decade now. Ranked BTB was great but only lasted a month. All of these issues lay squarely on 343’s shoulders, NOT the Big Team community. We tried our best to keep the community alive through tournaments and weekly scrims. I’ve been playing almost exclusively BTB since Halo 2. What was given to us in Halo 5 was an utter embaressment. ExO (The most ACTIVE BTB team since Halo 3), plays big team daily and hasn’t been able to find matches with a full party for months, Even when the population was still healthy. That is a direct effect of Menkes broken Ranking system.

I dont say all of this to be mean. I say all of this to hope that 343 learns from their mistakes and will launch Halo Infinite with a proper Big Team Battle playlist with dev made maps and round based gametypes as well as the current ones.

12

> 2533274839818445;1:
> Our current plans with BTB are as follows:
> - Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January - Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational - If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the vast majority of players prefer more of an abundance of powerful weapons/vehicles in their BTB experience. I’m willing to bet BTB Heavies was one of Halo 4’s most populated playlists during its time.

On top of that, Halo 5’s regular BTB sometimes feels kind of cramped and confined, doesn’t it? Think about how maps like Port Authority compare to Blood Gulch, or even Halo 4’s Vortex. When I played Halo 5’s normal BTB, I found myself using my battle rifle much more than I was used to, and many of the maps don’t have anything besides a Ghost+Warthog for vehicles. Considering that, is it any wonder that Big Team Super Fiesta sucked away most of regular BTB’s population? To be frank, I don’t think it would be happening to such an extent if Halo 5 had started with BTB Heavies.

So ZaedynFel/Josh, my request to you is: please at least take that into consideration if you decide to refresh BTB. Of course regular BTB isn’t going to do very well when many of its maps feel like normal slayer maps with a Ghost+Warthog slapped onto them, and then you go and add a version of BTB where players can actually use fun weapons and vehicles. I think making BTB a little “heavier” (or just adding Heavies) would help it stay more competitive with the Super Fiesta variant.

> 2533274839818445;8:
> BTB has never been strong in H5, regardless of its place in past Halos. We have to look at the audience it has now vs. the past. The average bulk H5 player isn’t that interested in BTB and never has been. Not in the presence of Warzone and now BTB SF.

I think this supports my point in favor of Heavies. Halo 5’s BTB never did as well because it had cramped, tiny maps like Antifreeze. Therefore, people who wanted to experience powerful weapons/vehicles on big maps had to move to Warzone. But Warzone doesn’t play anything like BTB. So where could people who miss BTB Heavies go?

13

I have a question. Actually more of a suggestion.

If btb in its its current state is being beaten out by warzone and the fiestas as the goto playlists for the casual halo player base why not use this upcoming refresh to try and get some of the competitive large fireteam enthusiasts back into the game?

Speak to the competative groups and have them give some input on the changes and make btb ranked. A ranked btb might make it more appealing to a lot of players and you wouldn’t be alienating anyone as the casuals seem to prefer other modes, as you said.

I think a big big reason for the drop in popularity for btb is that big teams have gotten the short end of the stick more than once in h5. My group was all but kicked out of warzone with the fireteam restrictions. By the time you guys had that figured out 75% of my teammates were gone. They had no interest in halo.

We started over in btb. Had an absolute blast figuring out the playlist then mmr restrictions were put in place and we couldn’t find a game even searching for 20 mins. But solo was instant matches. Once again. I lost a lot of teammates.

Btb isn’t the problem. The way large competative fireteams have been treated in the lifespan of halo 5 is. Just throw us a bone for once. Please.

14

BTB is struggling for the following reasons:

1: While searching, you can not find a match.
2: When you do find a match, there’s a only 15 people in the lobby, so a game never actually starts up.
3: Frustration is built up in the lobby after not finding a game even though you’ve been searching for 20 plus minutes. You decide your fed up and go to another playlist or start playing a completely different game.
4: You decide to play BTB Fiesta or Warzone because it’s the only playlist that can handle your lobby size.
5: While searching BTB Fiesta you immediately find a match. You play a few games, get annoyed with the playlist, then repeat all these steps from the beginning.

15

Seriously? Sigh, I guess I’m done with H5 then if BTB goes rotational since that’s basically the only thing I play and I’m not subjecting myself to mindless power weapon battles of Slayer 24/7. What a sad state of affairs if that’s what most people want instead of a normal BTB playlist, and I feel sorry for the future of Halo if that’s what the main attraction to it is going to be.

What I think would help for BTB:

1) Fix the search lobby bug where someone can’t join and it starts booting people after they’ve already been searching for several minutes. It’s been going on for over A YEAR.

2) Replace the BR with the long barrel or stabilization jets BR. Unyshek suggested doing that last month. The carbine pretty much destroys everything now and I think it needs a small change although unlikely so hopefully this would help.

3) New maps obviously, but gametype and weapon layout/vehicle changes to the existing maps in the rotation are also needed and could help.

4) A heavies variant. One thing that people complain about is a lack of vehicles on a lot of maps and the smallness of the maps themselves. Bigger maps with a heavies variant could be something that attracts people back to the playlist.

5) More variety of gametypes. Roaming Hill/Strongholds, Territories, 1 objective stuff and/or Team Regicide? (saw it in H4).

6) Unnerf the Banshee. I think it needs a cool down between flips, but 3 seconds is too much. I think 2 seconds would be better.

16

> 2533274839818445;8:
> > 2535417897791132;7:
> > > 2533274839818445;1:
> > > Big Team BattleFor a long period of time BTB was a solid social playlist and in fact the minimum popularity bar we used to judge whether a list should stay permanent. Lately, however, it has become near impossible to find matches for around half the day. It appears the bulk of players needed to maintain a healthy list now prefer the Super Fiesta variant, leaving only classic BTB enthusiasts still engaged in the original BTB playlist. We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.
> > >
> > > Our current plans with BTB are as follows:
> > > - Monitor it as we enter the holiday season. If holiday traffic is enough to keep it alive, we’ll leave it up and reconsider its future in January - Begin work on a refresh. If BTB can hang on long enough, we will see how well it does after a refresh before moving it to a rotational - If these both fail, then BTB shouldn’t be an exception given how much better every other list has done as a rotational when it starts behaving this way.
> >
> > The population of BTB is low because of a couple of factors which all stem from changes that you guys (343) made starting last year including
> >
> > 1. MMR based matching in a social playlist.
> > - Pre-game lobbies - For some reason, during the pre-game loading screen, if there is only 15/16 players queued up - THE GAME WONT START and the game rarely finds a 16th player. The result is a 5 minute wait session, crossing our fingers hoping someone gets matched up. I’ve gone 20 minutes searching and sitting in 15/16 queued lobbies just to play one game. I’ve actually given up even trying to play solo a few nights because of it. - If the game does actually start, and someone quits, a new player immediately gets spawned into the game. No waiting, its almost instantaneous. Why? How can the pregame lobby time out completely, but in game puts someone in?2. Changes to the BR which butchered it. It’s not even enjoyable to shoot anymore.
> > - Do I even need to say more? do competitive players even pick it up in HCS?3. Lack of variation in game types and maps. When is the last time a refresh was made? For god sake, a refresh bringing back maps that were previously in the playlist would be all it would take. I’m certainly bored to death of waiting 20 minutes to find a game, yet when I do its Dispelled Slayer for the 247th time in a row.
> >
> > I would really hate to see a playlist that has been so ingrained into the fabric of Halo matchmaking over the last 2 decades, be tossed aside, because of mistakes made by the developer when they were trying to help. Fix the issues that have caused players to abandon BTB, dont just simply get complacent.
> >
> > On the other hand, if you just dont have the staff, I get it.
> >
> > Might give Bo4 or RDR2 a try
>
> I disagree. Read my last comment.
>
> BTB has never been strong in H5, regardless of its place in past Halos. We have to look at the audience it has now vs. the past. The average bulk H5 player isn’t that interested in BTB and never has been. Not in the presence of Warzone and now BTB SF.
>
> That doesn’t mean there isn’t a group of folks playing H5 who love it, but that group isn’t a core part of H5.
>
> I feel more like the core pop has moved on, and the leftover BTB enthusiast community isn’t large enough to sustain the list without changes that invite folks currently happy in other playlists back, as well as the enthusiasts.
>
> Also, I disgrew on the BR. The original BR scared off more of that original pop than it did invite them. Weakening the BR actually resulted in an increase in BTB’s pop a year ago that was sustained up until BTB SF.

I’d argue that you can’t say BTB has never been “strong” in Halo 5 when it was immediately undermined from the very beginning. Some facts are being overlooked when you suggest that it hasn’t been strong. I mean how could it have been “strong” when…

  • The Warzone environment was setup and primarily supported to be a next level type of BTB right from the get-go. Yet, it’s a dramatically different experience. I didn’t mind the fact that 343i wanted to introduce us to a new type of truly Big Team mode. I was happy to give it a go, but why did it have to come at the expense of the traditional Big Team experience? - I ask this because Warzone was definitely being marketed as a next level big team mode and 343i were certainly pushing it over the traditional BTB experience which was not available at launch. - Worse yet a traditional BTB mode/playlist was delayed because it was going to lack developer created maps. Instead, it was left to rely on Forged maps only and Forge wasn’t ready at launch. Personally, I don’t have a huge issue with Forge being used to create BTB maps, but Forge wasn’t exactly polished when it finally became available and thus the maps weren’t all that great or pleasing to the eye early on. It would have been great to have some developer maps initially. - It seemed like most BTB forged maps were being thoroughly tested within matchmaking instead of receiving that optimal testing prior to inclusion because of the scramble to get a BTB playlist out to the public which was upset it wasn’t there initially. And later on when the BTB playlist would receive a refresh any map related issues that would pop-up wouldn’t get addressed immediately or sometimes ever until the next refresh came along – if it came along (see current situation). - A playlist that’s been left to be entirely dependent on forged maps should be receiving more refreshes than playlists supported by developer maps. That should be pretty obvious I would think. - There was the issue with the original pre-tuned Recon H5BR being a cross-map laser and now with the final tuned H5BR being overshadowed by just about every other precision weapon in just about every way. Don’t get me wrong, I personally think the tuning was good for the sandbox and the final tuning for the H5BR did a lot of good for the weapon; especially, within the BTB environment, but not giving the Recon H5BR much of any niche or small area of strength over other weapons wasn’t a very good decision IMO. Some people of course hate it simply because it’s not the overpowered weapon it use to be. - As mentioned by Heavies above. The one player short of what’s needed bug that pops its ugly head up during searches has been around for some time and seems to plague BTB more so than any other playlist. While we’ve been told it was being looked into for the longest time it seems like it has been decided that Halo 5 will simply suffer from that issue (rest-of-life) because resources have moved on.Perhaps, some thought should have been given to using the Warzone maps within a traditional Big Team setting; meaning, use them absent the REQ system, the AI enemies, and Base Cores. And instead provide Red & Blue bases with preset re-spawning vehicles and scatter map pick-ups related to weapons and power-ups throughout the maps. I think it would have been very interesting to see how “popular” a BTB playlist would have been at launch using those maps under those types of traditional settings. Oh and gauging BTB interest in light of no refresh for an extended period of time while running it alongside a brand new Big Team Super Fiesta playlist and following it up with Castle Wars is pretty weak.
17

> 2775209234672000;16:
> Oh and gauging BTB interest in light of no refresh for an extended period of time while running it alongside a brand new Big Team Super Fiesta playlist and following it up with Castle Wars is pretty weak.

It’s like giving someone a brand new bike from the most popular brand and then asking if they still want to ride their beaten down old one. I think it’s pretty obvious what the answer is gonna be.

> 2533274839818445;1:
> We feel it would be more beneficial to those who love BTB to be able to have a good experience with it rather than waiting 5 minutes without a match.

I should also point out that making it rotational where I can only play it maybe once a month or once every couple months will NOT make it a good experience for me and I love BTB. I’ve already been waiting 5 plus minutes on numerous occasions for more than a year or two which I’ve mentioned before in these threads so waiting 5 minutes isn’t an issue for me.

18

> 2533274839818445;9:
> Also, again, suggesting “switch to HCS settings” has never been helpful. It goes to show there’s a gap between a small group of enthusiasts and the core. Every list we’ve introduced HCS settings into has shrunk significantly.

I agree.

H5 does have a problem with less sweaty game modes. I prefer the competitive side of halo over the “casual” but there’s no “chill” or relax playlist in h5 with pistol, fast movement, thrust etc it’s incredibly stressful to play, it feels you like need to be amped up on energy drinks to compete. When you try and get some resbite by searching social the gameplay is the same and you’re still paired with people your same skill it leads to burnout very quick.

i often thought why does social not feel like social? I think it’s because selfishly in every other halo I would search social and take it easy and get lots of kills on bad players. Obviously not fun for those players but I enjoyed it. It would be good if halo 6 tried to have some game modes that lower the skill ceiling so it’s less stressful, sweaty and brought the skill gap closer (no autos! :slightly_smiling_face:)

19

> 2533274839818445;8:
> > 2535417897791132;7:
> > > 2533274839818445;1:
> > >
>
> I disagree. Read my last comment.
>
> BTB has never been strong in H5, regardless of its place in past Halos. We have to look at the audience it has now vs. the past. The average bulk H5 player isn’t that interested in BTB and never has been. Not in the presence of Warzone and now BTB SF.
>
> That doesn’t mean there isn’t a group of folks playing H5 who love it, but that group isn’t a core part of H5.
>
> I feel more like the core pop has moved on, and the leftover BTB enthusiast community isn’t large enough to sustain the list without changes that invite folks currently happy in other playlists back, as well as the enthusiasts.
>
> Also, I disgrew on the BR. The original BR scared off more of that original pop than it did invite them. Weakening the BR actually resulted in an increase in BTB’s pop a year ago that was sustained up until BTB SF.

This just keeps getting better!

BTB has never been strong in H5? That’s a product of decisions that 343 made. Not the community. You guys didn’t even have developed BTB maps for the launch of H5. Despite how much people LOVED BTB in the previous Halos, you guys didn’t even have it as a playlist for H5. It’s obvious that your team at 343 assumed that the Warzone playlist would just take its place and people would be okay with it. Given the fact that you gave us a warzone gametype that was specifically designed for REQ packs, insane amount of DLC, 12-man teams, skins, commendations, company commendations,etc… Warzone was designed to be a stacked advantage vs. ANY other playlist in H5. So of course an overwhelming amount of people would play that playlist.

But when a large portion of the community wanted BTB, you provided us with Forge maps. These were wonderfully made maps by community members, but these maps were complete with frame-rate issues, flawed mechanics, and overall quality < developer made warzone and arena maps. You can’t deny that a professionally developed map is much preferred over a community-made forge map.

AND HELLO TO 343…PSA… YOU STILL HAVENT ADDRESSED THE 15/16 PREGAME LOBBY GLITCH THAT CAUSES US AN ENDLESS WAIT TO GET A GAME…AT A:: SKILL LEVELS. At this point, it feels like a kick in the nuts when trying to search. People legitimately will get bored if they are sitting in the pre-game lobby for 5 minutes, only to have to research and cross their fingers that they’ll be able to get a match the next time they search.

And if you truly believe that the BTB population before the August 2017 tuning update was lower or less sustained than the population right before BTB SF was released, why weren’t we talking about making BTB a rotational playlist a year ago?

20

> 2533274853708097;10:
> The search times for btb are not because of lack of interest in the playlist lmao. It has everything to do with the mmr parameters you guys set in place to make it “fair”. I don’t get how you guys don’t see that.

BTB hasn’t been using MMR for awhile. It hasn’t helped.