343i, I know you guys are busy working on Halo 5, but this is a problem that has plagued the MCC since day 1. The one major thing that Bungie got right was optimizing playlists through the use of defining maps, and weapon placement. If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, let me give some examples of current problems in matchmaking. In matchmaking of H3, we have pre-patch narrows, which has rockets at top, radar jammer (was removed as far as I remember), snowbounds (pre-patch before it become boundless), which was changed due to the camping style of play with shield doors (not forgetting Epitaph either here), and various other small quirks that shouldn’t be in this game (having a map come up twice in the same vote screen). These are just a few examples of things that are wrong with a single playlist. Now, what does this have to do with all of matchmaking? It’s simple, we have these problems through out the playlists.
For one, we have H4 still pre-patched with the 5 shot BR (as far as I know, haven’t been able to get a H4 game for some time). We have Halo 2 anniversary, a playlist consisting of 5v5 matches down to 3v3, including maps that can vary from BTB maps to small tight arenas like Warlord or Lockdown (which, don’t play very well for 5v5 game-play, and neither does Bloodline or Stonetown for a 3v3). These are the things that frustrate me, but they can be fixed. How? Well, first, 343 needs to focus on the big picture of each playlist, and see how each map should work for delivering a great experience for the player. We need an honest look at every play-list, and a determination of whether a map makes sense for the play-list or not. 343i, I know you want to keep the player experience fluid, quick to jump in, and simple, so hopefully with hardcore, team doubles, or any other playlist addition you can focus on creating good map flow, and choose the maps that make the most sense. Now, I want to go into a few things that are currently irking me with the hoppers.
**Halo 2 Anniversary serves no purpose as a playlist (**and should be removed). It splits the population in a way that doesn’t help keep the experience consistent through out. There’s only 6 re-done maps, 2 of those are BTB (10-16 player specific maps), and 4 are made specifically for 2-8 player matches at max. In my opinion, Stonetown and Bloodline should be moved to BTB (should already be there) or objective only playlists in the future, while the rest can stay in HCS (Zenith going to team slayer or objective playlists only). These just make the most logical sense to me, in keeping with map flow, and removing the awkward decisions in voting of each playlist.
The Halo Championship Series is great, and should remain as is currently. (Added onto it in the future with community made maps as has been mentioned before by Bravo.)
What we need is you (343) to create playlists in which every group has something to be happy with. Whether it be Halo 4 only, objective 4v4 only, BTB mixed with objective, whatever. Anyway, I’ll try me best to give a list of hoppers, and what makes the most sense for a game collection of this scale (imo).
What I hope the hopper list looks like, and my reasoning for adding them…
-3 non ranked playlists (BTB variant, small scale slayer and separate objective variant). Gives casuals something to do, so they aren’t burdened with trash talk or anger over a silly rank. small scale objective should be tested to see if it’s worth keeping though (based on # of players).
-a playlist for each game (not including H2:A as it doesn’t hold enough value in map selection) Halo CE, H2:Classic, H3, and H4. Players want to play specific games, so why not let them?
-a ranked objective playlist for small scale maps. There are players who only want to play objective, so why not offer one that puts the best of all 4 games into 1 hopper?
-Team doubles and Team snipers ranked (non rotational) -These are almost staples to the halo experience, and ones that players like myself loved to do. Having a partner or friend to MM with, when you don’t feel like playing 4v4’s is great. Snipers is something that tested the skills of many, and now we have hundreds of maps to play on, this was almost a staple of matchmaking during the great days of Halo 2-3, but was given less attention in 4.
-Team slayer ranked. (with BR starts)- (Bungie realized that Halo smg starts was a bad design decision. Playlists like team hardcore as great as it sounds, aren’t necessary if you’re trying to refine the game to keep matchmaking flow working well, and keep each hopper populated).
-Halo Championship Series ranked to replace H2: anniversary entirely- (with the maps being moved to the respective changes mentioned earlier in my post).
**-Team Swat, Actionsack, Grifball (rotational) non-ranked -**constantly updating the game and introducing new playlists is a great way to keep the community alive, and introduce possible new fans of the series to fun playlists we all grew up and loved in the past). There’s only so many people playing these. Keeping them on a weekly rotation (non-ranked) just makes the most sense, without over saturating the game with too many choices.
That’s a total of 13-15 playlists max. This keeps the game somewhat organized, and every type of player can go do what they want, without being thrown into a game or game-type that they hate. It should hopefully keep the game from becoming overburdened, or any playlist from becoming under-populated, so Halo MCC can thrive for years to come, and hopefully this post shows what 343 can do to make Halo 5 as amazing as H2-H3 were online.
If anyone is up for discussing my suggestions, I’m all for it. Hopefully someone from 343 reads these forums (good god help them), and maybe we’ll see some solid changes to the MCC, so fans of all bases can be happy. Anyway, enough rambling, thanks for reading.