Playlists solution

Games Other Halo
1

So as many of you (including myself) believe, the playlists are a bit watered down, with sometimes less than 2k players in a given playlist at high population times. We need to condense some of these in order to make room for other UNIQUE playlists! My thoughts;

RANKED(all RANKED playlists feature a default 5 sec spawn delay for all game types.)
Infinity Slayer - 4v4 Slayer.
NEW Infinity Objective - 5v5, CTF, Oddball, and Extraction only.
NEWArena - Classic Lone Wolves, includes Slayer, KOTH, and Oddball, replaces Regicide as the FFA playlist.
SWAT - Leave it, but add SWAT Magnums as available variant and Frag grenades to the maps.
Team Snipers - 4v4 Slayer, preset Sniper loadout with no AA’s, Beam Rifles on map.
NEWInfinity Hardcore - 4v4 Slayer and CTF played with MLG settings found here Watch the best in esports live - MLG
NEWInfinity Doubles - 2v2 Slayer. Map rotation includes Haven, Adrift, Abandon, Relay(the Impact pre-forged map), and Settler (the Ravine pre-forged map).

SOCIAL
Social Slayer - 4v4 Slayer and Team Regicide.
NEWSocial Objective - 5v5, includes CTF, Dominion, KOTH, Oddball, Extraction.
Big Team Battle - 8v8, includes Slayer, CTF, Dominion, and Extraction.
NEWFree-for-All - Classic Lone Wolves, includes Slayer, KOTH, Oddball, and Regicide, replaces Regicide as FFA playlist.
NEWGrifball - GRIFBALL! :smiley:
NEWMulti-Team - 2v2v2v2 Slayer.
Rotational Playlist - Slot for 343i’s weekly playlist updates, if they even continue doing that, for things like DLC playlists etc.
NEWInfinity Blowout - 8 player random assortment of socially geared gametypes like Action Sack, all with preset loadouts, including but not limited to;

Team Rockets - 4v4, all players start with bottomless clip Rockets, no AA’s or perks.
Team Swords - 4v4, all players start with bottomless clip Energy Swords, no AA’s or perks.
Boxer - FFA, all players start with a Plasma Pistol, weapon damage set to 0%, melee damage set to 200% and player speed set to 150%. No radar and double points for Assassinations.
Fiesta - 4v4, all players spawn with random primary/secondary/grenades, random ordnance on map that cycles every 1 min, personal ordnance disabled.
Race - KOTH variant on community created and voted race track maps, first to successfully complete 3 laps wins. 0% player damage, played with Mongooses, players can melee opposing players to push them off the track.
Flood - Same as current settings.

Discuss! By condensing come playlists we have room for more. What would you like to see as a stand-alone playlist or variants in existing playlists? What would you add to these playlists? Show your support by thanking this post so I can present a numerical value to 343i.

2

Typically when I see playlist change suggestions they are idiotic, but I like your set. Main issue is that 343 doesn’t even have gametype voting yet (fixed by 2014 maybe?). One thing I would suggest is to remove Team Regicide from objective since I think it is a stretch to call that an objective gametype. I’m a huge race fan with Mario Kart 64 remakes I forged available on my fileshare, so I would love to see a race playlist but would be satisfied with simply the gametype. Good post guy.

3

Maybe hardcore could have different game types for different weapon starts, for example BR starts only, DMR starts only, or maybe keep all the other weapons but the DMR and have it spawn on the map, because if it’s in Loadouts it’s all anyone will use.

4

Keep Regicide
Add VIP
Add Assault
Bring back Invasion, I can live with it being Spartan vs Spartan

all the other ideas are perfect.

5

You had me at Grifball.

6

I like how you have slayer in BTB and not infinity slayer.

7

It doesn’t take genius to figure out how the playlists should be. Obviously 343 is just…Oh wait I don’t want to get banned

Ranked
Team Slayer
Lone Wolves
Team Snipers
Team Swat
Team Doubles
MLG
Team Skirmish

Social
BTB(slayer + objective)
Grifball
Multi Team
Action Sack
Flood
Etc…

I only included ranked and social playlists because supposedly 343 is introducing ranks that will be on Waypoint.

8

I agree with the majority of your playlist ideas, especially having an Objective playlist instead of seperate gametypes, the FFA playlist and Big Team Battle are also needed.

I WANT BIG TEAM FLAG GAMES!!

9

THIS is what the Halo 4 playlists should have: VARIETY. Which is EXACTLY what you nailed down in your post. Thank you soo much. Hopefully 343 can make changes like these soon!!

10

Thanks a lot guys, keep the suggestions coming! Will edit post to add other ideas after work (working on New Year’s Eve, fml…)

11

> Typically when I see playlist change suggestions they are idiotic, but I like your set. Main issue is that 343 doesn’t even have gametype voting yet (fixed by 2014 maybe?). One thing I would suggest is to remove Team Regicide from objective since I think it is a stretch to call that an objective gametype. I’m a huge race fan with Mario Kart 64 remakes I forged available on my fileshare, so I would love to see a race playlist but would be satisfied with simply the gametype. Good post guy.

Well with game variants I mean a system like the one for Crimson DLC, such as given the choices of Harvest with CTF, Shatter with Extraction, and Wreckage with Oddball, not a separate game type vote. Also concerning Team Regicide, I consider any game that isn’t based purely on killing as objective, although you technically win Team Regicide by getting kills the King thing kind of gives you an objective to go for and defend. Since it doesn’t have a high enough population to deserve its own playlist but is still a good game type I put it in the objective playlist.

12

> Maybe hardcore could have different game types for different weapon starts, for example BR starts only, DMR starts only, or maybe keep all the other weapons but the DMR and have it spawn on the map, because if it’s in Loadouts it’s all anyone will use.

I want to give players the choice of their precision weapon (although I do agree DMR would dominate), so I’m relying on 343i to fix the weapon balance.

13

> Keep Regicide
> Add VIP
> Add Assault
> Bring back Invasion, I can live with it being Spartan vs Spartan
>
> all the other ideas are perfect.

I see many more complaints about FFA Regicide than I do compliments and its population is very low, I think people would be more than content with its removal and classic FFA put in its place, it could always be a weekly playlist. Team Regicide is essentially VIP so that would kind of be redundant. Assault is awesome and I’d love to see it return, we would put that in the objective playlists obviously. Invasion…I’m not so sure about. All the Invasion maps were SPECIFICALLY tailored to Invasion, so I don’t know how 343i would be able to implement that, although I was quite fond of it in Reach.

14

Why not a ranked grifball in addition to social?

You know how much fun competitive grif would be!

15

There’s a math problem. 18 playlists is not less than 10 and is in fact more. More is more, not less is more or we’d be back out our current position.

Looking at the playlist populations, remembering Slayer Pro, listening/reading on how hardcore players want H2/H3 mechanics and therefore 0 sprint is mandatory and taking into account how 7 of these new lists are aimed at the more hardcore, I fail to see how the population sizes will increase in the individual playlists…
Would the overall population increase? Perhaps in the very short term, but with low population playlists, TS levels need to be tweaked. Keep them strict and you have Reach’s Arena Onyx search times (for the top 5%, that’s a long time). Keep them too loose and the hardcore players get just as bored as waiting for a good match, maybe more so. So the end result would be players simply showing up to say “Hey! This sucks. It’s not the result I wanted.”

16

Playlists are hyper-condensed and would be disastrous for certain gametypes, given the voting system.

I’d rather see them more spread out than they are now, though as they are now isn’t disastrous. I see no problem with doing so: if I want to play Oddball, I am happy to wait to find a game.

17

> Why not a ranked grifball in addition to social?
>
> You know how much fun competitive grif would be!

Eh, Grifball is kind of a wacky game type, although passing did give it a really cool team dynamic. There’s many independent Grifball leagues if that’s your thing :smiley:

18

This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not flame or attack other members.

*Original post. Click at your own discretion.

Ive always thought the playlists were either too narrow or too broad. This actually makes a ton of sense and actually makes me intrigued. But, were still dealing 343idiots, so I doubt itll happen…

19

> There’s a math problem. 18 playlists is not less than 10 and is in fact more. More is more, not less is more or we’d be back out our current position.
>
> Looking at the playlist populations, remembering Slayer Pro, listening/reading on how hardcore players want H2/H3 mechanics and therefore 0 sprint is mandatory and taking into account how 7 of these new lists are aimed at the more hardcore, I fail to see how the population sizes will increase in the individual playlists…
> Would the overall population increase? Perhaps in the very short term, but with low population playlists, TS levels need to be tweaked. Keep them strict and you have Reach’s Arena Onyx search times (for the top 5%, that’s a long time). Keep them too loose and the hardcore players get just as bored as waiting for a good match, maybe more so. So the end result would be players simply showing up to say “Hey! This sucks. It’s not the result I wanted.”

Let me tell you why you’re wrong.

Halo has always had a good variety of playlists from Halo 2 to Reach.
Eventually some players even dedicated themselves to their favorite playlist.
In time each playlist had a small community going whether it was flood or doubles.
In my experience I’ve never had trouble finding a game in any playlist in Reach or 3 especially in their prime. Playlists became a part of Halo to the point where it doesn’t feel the same with out certain playlists. One of the reasons I don’t play Halo 4 any more is because they don’t have doubles or multi-team.

Now if we look at Halo 4, they removed half of the classic playlists Halo was known for. They turned there back on those small community of players. You see Halo already has a big fan base that is accustomed to certain playlists so population for playlists isn’t a problem.

Playlists right now play a huge roll in Halo 4’s downfall.

20

> There’s a math problem. 18 playlists is not less than 10 and is in fact more. More is more, not less is more or we’d be back out our current position.
>
> Looking at the playlist populations, remembering Slayer Pro, listening/reading on how hardcore players want H2/H3 mechanics and therefore 0 sprint is mandatory and taking into account how 7 of these new lists are aimed at the more hardcore, I fail to see how the population sizes will increase in the individual playlists…
> Would the overall population increase? Perhaps in the very short term, but with low population playlists, TS levels need to be tweaked. Keep them strict and you have Reach’s Arena Onyx search times (for the top 5%, that’s a long time). Keep them too loose and the hardcore players get just as bored as waiting for a good match, maybe more so. So the end result would be players simply showing up to say “Hey! This sucks. It’s not the result I wanted.”

At the time of this post’s creation, I only had 8 so less is more doesn’t apply anymore, although if you look at the playlists and don’t just count them, 5 of the Social playlists are simply derivatives of their Ranked counterpart, leaving us with only 12 unique playlists. Sure, there are 18 total playlists, but with the amount of people this would satisfy I’m sure they would fill quickly, and I wasn’t intending for things like Infinity Blowout to have 50k populations.

As far as catering to hardcore players, I don’t see your point here. There is one playlist that has Sprint disabled, and of the 18 playlists, 7 are Ranked and 11 are Social, meaning more Social playlists than Ranked. If anything I catered to casuals.

Population would increase drastically if this were implemented. Infinity Doubles and Infinity Hardcore alone would bring back a massive chunk of the competitive community. TS would not even be needed in this system, as Ranked playlists would pit you against similarly ranked opponents and Social playlists are for fun or warming up for Ranked, meaning even if you face a full coordinated team they’re likely just warming up for Ranked and will move on shortly.

The end result would be “Finally!”