I have been playing the new invasion maps for a few months now, and can conclusively say that they need a lot of work. I appreciate new maps for the playlist, but for me they have only brought frustrations and no elation.
Over all lay out for the Broadcast, Floodgate, and Refinery maps are within acceptable playing parameters, but there are so many areas in each level that are just bogged down with poor choices of terrain and cover. I was not aware of any future updates to these maps(and as it that Halo 4 is on its way out it is understandable if there are not), but per chance there are I hope that there will be refinement of the levels primary battle areas.
On a side note, I would like to take the time to say that these maps irk me in the fact that I have wonderful maps that I have downloaded (i.e. Break point), but have not seen these practically applied to matchmaking, and instead I find myself consistently playing these more troubling maps.
can’t edit the terrain on forge world, you have to build around it, you also have to somewhat build around the objects given as well, so really, the forgers made the best choices they could with what they had available.
Forge World is insanely malleable and there are many minor changes that could be made to help enhance the enjoyment of these new-ish maps. Some of these changes are as simple as moving spawn points, while others require reworkings of entire areas.
Your point that Forge World can only do so much is valid, but naive. Maps require testing (that is part of the intent of a beta), in part to determine where kills are occurring and with what weapons. Many of the areas of these maps have no purpose as players do not traverse there. They should be removed to improve rendering and load times or at least reworked to be incorporated into the grand scheme of the map.
Since these maps have been out for a short while, I postulate that enough data has been acquired for them, and that reworking them would be nothing more than a qualitative improvement.
Invasion used to be the only thing i played in Halo Reach…until these maps came in them!!!
IT RUINED THE PLAYLIST FOR ME…seriously community maps shouldn’t be in invasion, maybe one or two tops but the maps they put in SO biased towards the defenders (cough floodgate)that its not fun and you need a full party to win most of the time.
Another problem with these new maps is the frequency with which they appear as an option to be voted upon. Quite commonly one of the a fore mentioned maps is the first option for invasion, and when “none of the above” is selected, due to the lack of interest in the map another one of these Forge World maps replaces it. While there are other options, such as invasion slayer or invasion skirmish, I personally enjoy the regular, objective oriented invasion.
Here’s a list of the official feedback threads for all maps in Matchmaking.
I’d recommend posting specific concerns and suggestions in the threads for these maps. If you can find the authors, you could also try PMing them or sending them an XBL message, to make sure they see your posts.
One, in particular, is too easy for the Spartans to defend. Alpha and Bravo are too close to one another. I forget the name of it, but usually it takes an outstanding team, bad defending team or somebody to quit to get past the first tier.
How about some maps that spartans are attacking.
Floodgate has a few problems, to start with, in tier one, one of the Spartan spawn points is almost directly behind one of the key control points for flanking from the mountain route, along with the middle team spawn ridiculously close.
There’s also that Sniper, but I won’t talk about it too much because I always hated the Sniper on large maps in BTB because you can never find them (Maybe that’s why so many people betray in BTB) so I may come off as a bit biased…
Then of course there’s the fact that the Elite vehicles are close to areas the Spartans want to control, making stealing them easy after Tier 1. Finally, whenever the Banshee is taken on Tier 3, it is near impossible for the Elites to shoot the damn thing down, although that is mostly Bungie’s fault for designing the weapons the way they did. At least it’s a bit harder to get to than on Spire, but it still needs to be behind a shield door, which would be easier considering the Elite Vehicles are on a platform made of Colosseum Walls, so throwing down another 3 and a shield door won’t cause too many problems.
I did have a problem with the incredibly annoying Shotgun (and camping in general) with Tier 3 and 2. Defending these phases should be about pushing up and holding the middle ground (AA Gun Pipes), rather than camping in and around the building. This is one of the reasons why I always hated maps where the core is in a base like Boneyard.
I did find it easy to pick off ELites in Tier 1, although that’s mainly because they are scared of moving into cover and instead attempt to Plasma Repeater me from long range. As an Elite, I never had this problem.
Some people say Tier 2 is unbreachable, but I have to disagree as all it takes is a decent Reverent driver to wipe out any annoying Spartans or at least force them into their spawns. I’m not sure if any Spartan power weapons spawn in Tier 2 other than a Sniper, so no huge worries for the Reverent or at least the Sniper will use a ton of ammo.
Some say the Tank is too hard to counter, but there are so many nooks and crannies to charge up a Plasma Launcher in and fire it off. Besides, even if it is randoms, a universal hatred for the tank will be formed and every ELite will just use the Evade Loadout and stick it over and over again until it’s gone (That’s exactly what I’ve been doing).
Well, I’ve made several comments in the Invasion feedback that nobody seems to worry about either.