Well I tried to write, like, an introduction and sweeping comparisons but it was awful. So here’s what I think would be good for everyone (devs, community, and individual players) in H4’s multiplayer map philosophy.
DLC
We already know DLC maps are in, which is good, as a stream of maps will keep multiplayer fresh. But there’s more to it than that:
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DLC should be released for free some time after release. Somewhere around 3-5 months is good, I think. This keeps the community strong (even your favorite maps start to get old after a while; variety keeps the game fun and players involved) and players happy - and honestly after that much time, most of the people who are gonna buy it, bought it.
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Create incentive for people to buy the DLC early (343i needs some income to sustain said map pack creation, after all). More than just one playlist for DLC, as we’re stuck with now (outside of Anniversary).
No Cross-Mapping
Maps should not be used in both campaign and multiplayer. It works slightly better from campaign to firefight, but even then it’s not optimal. It’s just frustrating to be doing the same thing in single player and multiplayer, and undoubtedly sacrificed some flow in one area or the other. I think most people, probably including Bungie, hoped that reusing maps would mean more+better content overall in Reach; but it didn’t work out that way. However, we already know that Halo 4’s maps are exclusively single- or multi-player, so that is not a problem. Thanks, 343!
Variety
Is there anyone who’s not sick of the silvery blue of Forge World objects by now? I doubt it. Halo 3 at least had two forge-centric maps, Foundry and Sandbox. With the promised improvements to Forge, I hope we see even more this time. Perhaps even a Forge-centric map pack, for the more creative players - or just those who want to do silly things.
Anyways, it sounded longer in my head, but yeah that’s about all I got I guess, I’ll edit if I remember things.