Agree with all of this. Launch Site isn’t even a 4v4 map, let alone a SWAT 4v4 map. It’s too big, with very long sightlines across the whole map. Very bad for SWAT. Similarly, Behemoth is also very much a bad SWAT map. Very little cover or walled off areas for movement, making leaving the base a suicidal venture.
I cannot put this in stronger words; PLEASE DO NOT ADD SWAT VARIANTS TO THE SWAT PLAYLIST. There are two fixable things that keep me from loving Halo 3 SWAT in MCC: Swatnums/Recon SWAT, and the three new maps(waterfall, edge, icebox). Getting a Swatnums game was pretty much writing off any chance of having fun, and i know exactly 0 of my SWAT friends that doesnt outright hate Recon SWAT. Please keep it BRs only. The only gun I can think of that would maybe make the experience better is possibly the mangler, due to it’s bullet drop and projectile nature, making it similar to H3 where because it’s not hitscan, aiming skill isn’t just trivial.
I would also like to make the case to add equipment back into SWAT matches. As of now, SWAT in Infinite significantly punishes any sort of aggression. It’s very much a gamemode of holding angles, which is jarring and not very fun, coming from Halo 3 SWAT where most of the maps supported aggressive pushes. If you added back in the grapple, thruster, repulsor, and drop wall, it would allow players to quickly cross gaps in cover and make those aggressive pushes that make SWAT as a whole more interesting. Almost none of the maps have lanes that are not, at some point or another, visible from angles across the map. In Slayer play, this is fine, because unless you have a Power weapon to kill them with, the most you’ll get from seeing an enemy across the map like that is just the information that they’re there. In SWAT, those gaps in walls that expose you to cross-map angles are death traps.
Some examples include long street on Streets. In order to get from A to C, you have to pass vending machine, which has a direct angle all the way to B window. This generates two crucial fatal funnels, both on B street and long street. The long street angle is actually stronger, since when you’re holding it, you can tuck in next to vending machine which covers you from angles from C, and you’re only vulnerable from A angles. Meanwhile around B window, you’re vulnerable from not only the vending machine angle, but also PD, PD jump-up, A, back A, and B. The only alternatives are going up mid, which is even worse, or taking long street.
Similarly, on Aquarius, to even leave your base at all, you have to walk out in the open one way or another. If you want to run down P side, either to P1 or P2, you have to expose yourself to Car 3. If you want to go to Utility 1 or 2 and up to Car 1/2/3, you have to expose yourself to P1 and P2. Forget running up mid. And if you do decide to run into bottom Utility, you expose yourself down the full length of Car 1 and 2, which is a popular angle to hold from back in your own utility.
If you had access to movement equipment, those gaps could be quickly covered by thruster or grapple, making it harder for your opponents to simply hold angles on movement lanes and pick you off as you try to rotate.
This is also a good time to discuss netcode, because even in Halo 3 on MCC, the issue is not as bad as it is here. Even on low ping, it feels like there is significant desync and latency issues, resulting in a lot of situations of getting 1-tapped by someone peeking an angle before they’ve even shown up on your screen. The netcode needs serious work, and there needs to be a server picker implemented as well.
And of course, you’ve got to fix the cheater problem. I played for a period of 2 hours the other day, and ran into 4 different cheaters blatantly using walls and aimbots. SWAT is a gametype that is most vulnerable to cheating, if you want to give it a chance to be healthy at all, stopping cheaters needs to be a massive priority.
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JK (but seriously - no)