What if we could select three guys from our friends list and add them to a squad?Here’s how it could work.
First off, you’d need to pick players from your friends list to make a squad. This squad would consist of four people, yourself included so you’d need to select three others. Once this is done and the three have been selected, each player would recieve a message saying “Player A has added you to their squad, would you like us to automatically set this squad up for you?”
If yes, it would save the other three players time as they wouldn’t have to do it manually.
If no, it would not affect the squad of player A. Their squad would still consist of the three players they chose. By saying no, the other guys are not taking up a squad slots.
Squad slots allow you to have multiple squads. You’d have 5 in total meaning you can choose 20 friends (you take up a space in all squads so (25*5)-5=20). Depending on who’s online you can choose to run with different squads.
There’d be a system in place, much like the Arena system from Reach which would give us a Daily Squad Rating. This rating would help us to determine which players we play best with, or which squad is better. Naturally we’d want to play with the squad that we perform best on. But an alternative take is that we can realise how bad we are playing with a particular squad and start trying to improve our teamwork.
Many people complain about facing teams in MM when they’re searching as a random and so this is a way to alleviate some of that pain. If you’ve got a team together, which you’ve made in to a squad, you’ll be able to search in your own playlist called Team Squads.
Team Squads will allow a minimum party of 4 so that you can only search as a team
I know playing as a team can be frustrating too, so there could also be an FFA Squads playlist with the same minimum player cap. You’d search with your squad and play a 1v1v1v1 to determine who the best player is. It’d solve any dispute and show the real alpha dog of the pack.
[EDIT: BTB Squads]
BTB Squads would allow you to combine two of your squads and play a BTB game. This means that you’d play 7v7 (you’re in both squads and so would be counted twice. (4*2)-1=7) and there’d be a minimum party of 7 so that only members of your squads can play. You could combine any of the 5 Squads with eachother. For example, Squads from Slot 1 and Slot 5.
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Now, how will you know when everybody is online so that you can play?
There’d be a tab on the screen saying “Squads” and this tab would be colour coded. You have 5 slots, and each slot would have a different colour. Slot 1 is red. Slot 2 is Orange. Slot 3 is Yellow. Slot 4 is Green. And Slot 5 is Blue. These slots would be prioritised, so that slot 1 has preference over every slot above, slot 2 has preference over every slot above, etc. You’d be able to change which Squad is in what slot, either manually or automatically. Automatically would put the Squad with the best Daily Rating in slot 1.
When you are the only player on, the Squads tab would be a default neutral colour. As more members of a squad come on the Squad tab will gradually change to that colour. for example, the Squad in slot 1. If a second member comes online the tab will change to a light shade of red. If a third member comes online the tab will change to a darker shade of red. If the fourth and last member comes online the tab will change to the darkest shade of red and will be the most noticeable.
The order of preference factors in where there are the same amount of members in each squad online. For example, if the full Squads from both Slot 1 and Slot 2 are online, the Squads tab would show dark red (slot 1 colour)
[EDIT: Removing Squad Members]
As described earlier, when creating a Squad, only one player from the Squad needs to have the Squad saved to be able to track the stats. More than one player can have the Squad saved by choosing the automatic way or by entering the Squad manually.
If one member of a Squad wants to remove a member of a Squad they can do so. Once done, they’ll need to find a replacement. And this replacement will cause the stats of the Squad to be reset as it will be a new Squad.
If this one member is the only member of a Squad to have the Squad saved, then they should tell the two members they are keeping to save the Squad. Otherwise they will delete the stats of the old Squad when one of the members wants to keep the stats.
All in all, having only one member save the Squad will allow for more Squads (as there’s no need for overlaps in different players Squads) but will also run the risk of losing stats when that Squad changes.
Of course you can delete a Squad entirely by removing all members of a Squad. The same loss of stats applies in this case too.
But I should clarify that loss of stats means in game stats. Old Squad stats could be saved on Halo Waypoint for future reference. And even stored for if an Old Squad comes back together. How cool would that be if you could get all of your stats back in game?
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[EDIT: Changes to Squads cap]
Squads are meant to create a long lasting, teamwork based experience and allowing you to change your squads an unlimited amount of time totally destroys that.
In order to prevent “Squad hopping” there needs to be a cap in place to stop you making too many changes to your Squads.
As I’ve adopted the Daily Rating from the Arena system in Reach I could also adopt seasons. These seasons would be 3 months long like in Reach.
When starting a new season you will be informed that you will only be able to change your Squads a set amount of times. I’m not entirely sure on the number as I want you to have some leeway, but I don’t want to give you so much freedom you can go mental with it. I’m thinking 2 changes per Squad per season. Does that sound reasonable?
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An extension of this idea needs a clan system. You could pick members from your clans to add to your Squads and if you have a full Squad of clan members you’d be able to play a Clan Match.
I thought of all this last night when I was in bed trying to sleep and have only just got around to posting it (it’s mid afternoon now) so I may have missed stuff out. If that’s the case and you can’t understand something in particular, ask me a question so I can clarify what I mean for you 
