No, I’m not kidding. All the bottomless pits are pointless hazards, there’s so many narrow can’t-move-away-from-fire paths, so many weirdly cut off sightlines, yeah it LOOKS cool but the actual engagement zones feel like Halo 3’s worst.
I sincerely hope this map does not stay in rotation. It is by far the worst arena map this game has.
I’d rather play Behemoth.
I disagree heavily, I love the new map as it is really good for map control and learning it, if you know what you are doing it becomes a breeze to use the map to your advantage.
The bottomless pit in the center doesn’t really play into the game unless you are dumb and jump into it, or are thrown into it via a repulser like any other death pit.
It’s ok, but there are some definite changes I feel needed to it. Some of which are more mode specific. One easy one I can think is disabling or removing the upper route between each bases in CTF. It’s by far the fastest way between bases:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2809496494
It’s literally makes the travel between each base like 20-30 seconds tops… Both ways…
Feel that it’s too small for KotH as well, where the hill can pop right on top of the new hill after a cap.
For generic matches like Slayer, odd ball, ect. It’s fine though.
The bottomless pits on the edges of the maps means you can get farmed for CSR in ranked, by the enemy team just, camping your flag spawn and chucking it off.
Trust me, it comes into play and it’s awful.
(3v4 with one guy, AFKing, but like. That just should not be a thing you can do.)
That route super sucks. It’s not even a risky one to take, there’s a ton of cover on the side lanes looking at it.
Visually, the better of the two maps.
My issue is that there’s a lot of verticality here, and it’s super easy for enemies to just appear behind you because of Clamber. Anywhere higher than ground level isn’t safe because you can be fighting someone else across the map, and then you’re being shot at by the enemy that just appeared from below you. It’s not great.
I strongly dislike Objective modes on this map too. Oddball is super easy to cheese by camping with the Ball near any of the Cliffs and then throwing it off when in trouble. CTF is either so easy you can play it blindfolded or a stalemate at the best of times.
Maybe Forge mode will produce a slightly more tuned up variant that fixes some issues with the current iteration.
My initial thoughts on Catalyst are honestly that it’s way too complex for me to judge yet. The volume of advanced vertical routes on the map is absolutely nuts.
I haven’t even touched the repulser and grapple to specifically start figuring out what sorts of movement around the map you can do with those either.
All in all my games have been pretty fun, and I think the map has a huge skill ceiling. Good initial impressions, but maps as complex as I think Catalyst may be often get broken by the community after a while and exploited consistently in some way
I really like the map, the hazards make it more challenging and fun
I really like the map. It’s great for SWAT.
Have you seen any of the clips of people grappling from one platform to the other but on the outside of the map?
It kinda reminds me of old halo maps in the way that it was designed to be fun not in a competitive setting, which if you relax and play it kinda is however once it comes to ranked i encountered pretty much all those problems except falling to my death.
This. This infact, is a small problem for a majority of Halo Infinite’s maps. Advanced movement will forever be a mistake.
I’ve really enjoyed it so far.
Loving the verticality.
Feels very different to the other maps. Which is good. Only played Slayer and CTF on it so far. And a custom LSS.
Appreciate that I’m not playing at high level here. But it’s been fun so far.
Wrong, it’s an amazing map
i dont like catalyst because its too symmetrical and i often get confused where i am. Now that i think of it, ive never liked completely symmetrical maps that much. i prefer semi symmetrical maps. i think completely symmetrical maps are hardest to design and make interesting but there are some good ones like narrows but even that is not completely symmetrical. the communities favvourite symetrical map is midship. I played a lot of heretic and if thats supposed to be a remake then then im not a fan of that either. its not terrible but i just enjoy other maps more.
Weird. I think I prefer symmetrical maps.
But I’ve never liked Midship.
Go figure.
maps like the pit, sandtrap, valhalla, bazzar, aquarius, high power, fragmentation are semi symmetrical maps. maybe you just dont liike full symmetrical maps but you like catalyst so idk
I like it alot its fun. The doors are a quirk im undecided on but the base level geometry is more the direction i want the maps to go.
the middle area kind of reminds me of that new h3 map they ripped from halo online
I disagree. This is all subjective, so I won’t bring things like map design elements into my take, but the few matches I’ve played on this map were fun— directly in contrast to Launch Site and Behemoth, which I think are too open and too distant to work for Arena modes that aren’t CTF.
I dread to think what abomination of a map 343i would have to produce for me to ever say that haha!
I have and that’s pretty dope if you have the grapple.