Playlist discussion. Do you agree?

Games Other Halo
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I would post my suggestions in the matchmaking feedback thread however I have a lot to say and would rather have it all be in one place. Also I am not quite sure how much attention the feedback threads receive from 343 considering allot of good points have been repeated hundreds of times yet have not been addressed. I would like opinions, whether you agree or not and hopefully 343 will see these and maybe address these points in the near future because for me the playlists are starting to get incredibly stale.

So I would appreciate if this was not locked as I would like this to turn into more of a discussion.

Team Slayer
Team Slayer currently plays pretty well (I’m not going to bash on Infinity or suggest that it be removed considering how little it is played and the fact it does have its own fan base) however I feel that the maps and weapon placements on the maps let it down slightly. I will address my current problem with the maps. Feel free to disagree with any of my points.

The current maps are as followed: Haven, Adrift, Opus, Simplex, Scythe, Shutout, Abandon, Solace, Dispatch, Harvest, Landfall, Monolith, Skyline, Daybreak, Pitfall, Vertigo. Of these maps only Haven, Opus, Simplex, Shutout, Solace, Landfall, Monolith, Skyline, Pitfall and Vertigo. I don’t mind Dispatch but the majority of the community seem to just outright hate it in any playlist par doubles. Then we have to consider that 5 of 10 maps are DLC which rarely come up if ever. Personally i would love to see many more community maps added. Onyx is a brilliant map that plays nicely for 4v4 and APK’s Sanctuary and Countdown remakes also play incredibly well and would be a massive hit in the community.
Taiga and Confined also play really well.

Adrift is just a horrible map outside of CTF. With incredibly long sight lines the sniper just dominates. You have people camping at the sniper spawns the entire match. It plays even worse with Infinity settings when players use Camo.
Abandon doesn’t play terrible but it also just doesn’t play well. Scythe is just far to small and just doesn’t work with fast spawn timers. Harvest and Daybreak are just to big to play on.

BigTeamBattle
Big Team Battle is quite possibly my least favorite playlist in Halo 4 which is saying something considering I spent 33% of my time on Reach playing BTB. Its a shame also as it will likely never play well as long as loadouts are a thing. The map selection is the worst to date, the long range combat is boring, the vehicle gameplay is terrible which is the opposite to what BTB has been known for in past Halo titles.

Though a lot of people will disagree with removing loadouts entirely, I think it is needed. As long as Plasma Pistols and Plasma Nades are possible to start with, vehicle gameplay (One of BTB’s selling points) will continue to fail. With loadouts people also have access to broken items such as Active Camo and Ammo which just ruin gameplay. If the game kept the same settings but replaced custom loadouts with preset loadouts, the game would play much better and would be much more enjoyable. I mean it worked fine in past Halo games.

The vehicles need some slight tweaking, especially the Mantis. The Mantis can currently take far to much damage. The only thing keeping it from being broken is the ability to spawn with Plasma nades and the Plasma Pistol. So in order to keep the Mantis from not being overpowered all the other vehicle gameplay is just pushed to the side. The Spartan Laser needs to 1HK a Mantis (currently is 2HK) and the health of a Mantis needs to be reduced by 20-25%. Also if it had a slight reduction in aim assist it wouldn’t be so much of a problem to deal with.
The Mongoose needs a health reduction. It is next to impossible to kill a Mongoose before the driver which sucks for commendation whores. If custom loadouts were to continue being used in BTB the Warthog will need to be buffed so it can at least survive 2 Plasma Nades.

The map selection is pretty bad. In fact it is so bad I don’t want to even touch BTB until it is fixed. Longbow, Ragnarok, Vortex, Meltdown, Settler, Exile, Complex, Wreckage, Shatter, Longbow and Ragnarok are the current maps and of which all arguably play bad. Personally I like Meltdown, Complex and Exile which play OK. The other maps however just play horribly with the current vehicle/weapon spawns. It amazes me why a year in and we have no community maps in BTB apart from one on disk map especially considering the amount of good maps out there. Harvest will play OK as will Solace in CTF (they are used by BTB.net so must play pretty well). Lets not forget the many maps that have been featured on THFE that play extremely well. I feel BTB just gets no attention in comparison to the other playlists from 343.

I am not suggesting we remove maps like Vortex as they just won’t be played in other playlists however if we had more of a selection to choose from it wouldn’t be so much of a problem.

KOTH and Regicide need to be removed. They just don’t play very well. CTF plays OK but the Mantis really doesn’t help gameplay, damages it if anything. With 10 second respawn there isn’t as much pressure on the Mantis as there is if it was instant or 5 sec respawn making it a very dominant vehicle. Big Team Slayer and CTF are the only gametypes that play well.

I probably forgot a whole lot.

SWAT
About 50% of my games on Halo 4 have probably been in SWAT so I know for sure what needs to be done. I rarely play SWAT anymore because it is incredibly stale. The biggest problem is the map selection is terrible.

Haven, Adrift, Complex, Abandon, Solace, Plaza, Black Site, Shutout, Harvest, Landfall, Monolith, Skyline, Daybreak, Pitfall and Vertigo is the current selection. Adrift, Complex, Abandon, Black Site and Daybreak all could not be worse choices to put in the playlist. Adrift especially. That leaves Haven, Solace and Plaza as the non DLC maps that play vaguely well. Solace and Plaza play OK but not like Haven and Shutout which both play just perfect. Personally I don’t like Plaza as it feels to much like a typical ugly forge map (not like other forge maps e.g. Onyx which is very clean and natural) that plays no better than average. 343 really need to add some maps in as this is yet another rather neglected playlist, similar to BTB yet has one of the biggest populations.

Forerunner and Covenant SWAT do not do the playlist any favours and though are not terrible gametypes they are again far from good and frustrating more than anything (especially when you get covie SWAT on Complex). I would much rather 343 add in gametypes like in past Halo’s e.g. SWATball. Also adding nades to the loadouts wouldn’t be the worst idea considering the amount of people who just camp on maps like Shutout especially (BR1, yellow landing and S1).

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Flood
Halo Reach Infection for me was a blast. It entertained me before they introduced the very lame excuse for spooky feeling maps and Zombie Ghosts which still play better than Halo 4’s standard Flood variant. Its quite honestly a horrible gametype that needs to be removed along with the default maps you can play it on.

343 really impressed me when they added Hivemind and the 4 great maps to go with it. I played it for days until the map selection got boring. If Hivemind was such a success why not continue to update it and bring back players that have recently left Flood due to it being dull and stale. personally I want more maps added (seen as I have seen plenty that play perfect for Hivemind) but it would also be nice to receive a new style of gameplay such as a defend the house style of map and gametype e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSu_fLHIvzE

Hivemind is great but does have its problems. Currently people have found plenty of camping spots on Temple which need to be patched because it plays terrible when you pair that with the ridicules last man standing damage boost. That boost needs to be removed and should probably be replaced with an over shield.

CTF
Well I actually don’t play CTF much so have little input here but I do know a few things that need to be changed.

Again we will start with maps: Adrift, Complex, Ragnarok, Abandon, Solace, Exile, Dispatch, Meltdown, Simplex, Settler, Harvest, Wreckage, Monolith, Skyline, Landfall, Daybreak, Outcast, Perdition and Pitfall. Some of these maps just shouldn’t be in the playlist. Complex, Abandon, Meltdown (to big), Ragnarok (again to big), Settler (just a horrible imbalanced map) and Landfall do not play well or end very quickly (usually last til time limit). The playlist could really do with some fresh new community maps such as Confined and possibly APK’s Countdown (if it plays well with 5v5 with 10 sec respawn).

Then the Mantis needs to be removed. I don’t really have much else to say.

Team Snipers
I have not really had chance to play the new maps much yet, in fact have only played Ark once and didn’t enjoy it. Nor do i believe they have had a brilliant reception from other. I think the new maps would be much better suited for 4v4 TS than Snipers.

Longbow desperately needs to be removed. It just doesn’t play well in Snipers. It is far to open and has to many vantage points which can be hard to take back with the massive sight lines.

I really don’t mind Covenant snipers or Snapshot however do not see the need for the two which pretty much are the same gametype. Due to Snapshot being much more interesting and different, I would much rather see Snapshot stay. Forerunner snipers however is terrible and takes all the skill and fun out of playing Team Snipers. We already have Binary slayer which plays 100x better.

The other maps play pretty well (apart from Abandon which I personally dislike) but could do with some more maps. This is going to sound very cliche but APK’s Countdown remake would work perfectly which is a great map for Team Snipers.

Ricochet
Ricochet was brilliant when the playlist first debuted.

Haven played excellent and its only real problem was the fact that blue team spawned with the Sticky det which completely outclasses the red team’s Needler. It was a simple fix: replace Sticky Det with Needler. But instead 343 replaced the weapons with the current slayer version which was enough to drive me away from the playlist all together and I know others that felt the same way. The sniper plays horrible on the map and turned Ricochet into the go to playlist for stat padding. The Scattershot worked surprisingly well but instead was replaced with the Energy Sword which again just doesn’t work on Haven. The spawn system was also changed from the classic style spawns to the random unpredictable spawns in Halo 4. The classic spawns played fine in my opinion and if your team was spawn killed it was because you allowed the opponent into that position.

Adrift played terrible and still does. It just needs to be removed,

Solace had to many power weapons that also were pretty overpowered e.g. Binary Rifle and Incin Cannon. Again simple fix, replace and remove some weapons for weapons that take more of a skill curve. Replacing the Incin Cannon with a Sticky Det for an example would have worked as would replacing the Binary Rifle with the Railgun. But instead they removed the weapons and instead placed 2 Gravity hammers at each base? No, just no.

Its a shame also because they added 3 forge maps being Onyx, Simplex and Dispatch, of which Simplex and Onyx play just perfect. Thankfully we have the Ricochet contest/forge playlist (whatever it is) coming very soon. In the mean time however I would appreciate it if Dispatch + Adrift were removed and Haven and Solace had their weapon/spawns revised.

Griftball
Griftball is Griftball. What can I suggest? The hammer could do with a buff and the maps could be revised. I mean if we are going to be limited to 5 maps, at least make them look nice. Personally I hate Griftball Pro however can see its uses for when spawn killing occurs.

Team Doubles
The map selection is actually pretty great however Graphite is nothing better than a good map, same goes for Abandon. Dispatch played pretty well for Team Doubles so I’m amazed why it was removed.

Do we really need 3 variants of slayer? Infinity needs to go. In a competitive playlist the last thing I want is my opponents throwing sticky grenades, calling down Ordnance and disappearing from sight thanks to camo. Legendary BRs play perfect (I can’t remember but if it has radar, but if so that needs to be turned off). CTF just needs to be removed as it never really played well.

Rumble Pit
8 players is far to many and needs to be reduced to 6. This is one of the reasons why I wonder if 343 ever check the feedback threads considering this is one of the only things to be suggested (countless times).

The map selection is actually OK and has a lot to offer compared to other playlists however Dispatch and Simplex needs to be removed. Another problem stated thousands of times. They are just to small and often you will find players spawning right behind you. We only need one pro gametype and I don’t see why we should have rumble BRs.

JIP needs to be turned off!

Action Sack
I have played this playlist a lot recently. Sticky Ball is great fun and needs to replace Rock’n Rail which is really boring (Railgun and Rocket Launchers are already easy weapons to master). Mini Slayer is fun the first time. First time only. If it must stay at least remove the Complex and Lonbow maps which play terrible. Lightning Flag plays well on Simplex but horribly on everything else. Also there is a camping spot up on top purple that needs to be patched.

Agree?

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Some of it…

There must be a careful check on most playlists.
For example, Flood. I freaking love Hivemind and I had more fun with Hivemand than Reach’s infection. I think it is pretty balanced compared to Reach’s infection.

But most people like Reach infection more than Flood and that’s a couple things I don’t understand the community. One headshot = 1 Kill + 90% of the players camping in the highest or deepest place in the map, and after 300 minutes now the infected get a couple kills. Is just my opinion tho, I like Hivemind over Living Dead, but also must be cvhecked to work even better, like patches in the map or a more variety of maps.

Is just my opinion.