I think most will agree with me when say the current state of Team Objective is less than satisfactory. We, as a community, have clamoured about getting a BTB Objective playlist alongside the 4v4 version we already have. 343 appears to have met us in the middle on this idea. We now have a 6v6 Team Objective playlist that rests uncomfortably between these two ideals. And it is simply not working.
Before I begin speaking about what’s wrong, let me discuss what’s right; Forge Maps. Thankfully the saving grace of this playlist are the likes of Edifice and Plaza. These maps are perfect for 6v6 King of the Hill, and are honestly a couple of my favorite maps in matchmaking. Station 9 for Extraction also works very, very well. You’ve got good taste in Forge maps 343. Keep up the good work.
But now here’s where the bad comes. I’ll be focusing on Oddball and King of the Hill, since they were here from the beginning and I don’t much care for Extraction.
First, Oddball. Let’s look at the maps that we have available for this gametype:
Solace
Adrift
Complex
Exile
Settler
At lauch, Oddball was undoubtedly my favorite gametype (up until SWAT arrived 2 weeks later). Once upon a time, when 4v4 Team Objective was around, you needed considerable skill to be the ball carrier. I remember having so much fun running around Haven with the Oddball faking out the enemy team. Now that it’s become a 6v6, being able to move around the map and even “perform” as a ball carrier has been destroyed. It’s all about getting to a safe area and holding it down until you win. If you’re on Settler, you have to grab the ball and race to get back in or behind your base or you will lose.
On Exile, you have to make a race to hide at the top of the ramp at Blue base or you will lose. The big maps are too open, and the small maps mean that you will always have at least one enemy on you at any given time. And you can’t move with that kind of constant suppressing fire. The only map that remotely works in a 6v6 setting is Complex. But it still suffers the same “hold down the safe area” issue. You can move around the map if you want, but there’s no point in it. Hiding in the building next to Red spawn is just too inviting. Solace has always suffered this issue, with the enemy team always hiding out at blue spawn, and I used to avoid it whenever I could. Now it plagues all of them. If ever we have 8v8 Objective, please leave Exile and Settler out of it. 8 people will be able to root out some of these hiding places, yes, but the ball carrier will be a sitting duck out there in the open. And that won’t solve the problem either. Ball carriers need to be able to get out there, get a few kills too, and bring some map movement into play too.
King of the Hill fairs a bit better with the current setting, but still has faults. As we did with Oddball, let’s look at the maps available:
Edifice
Plaza
Exile
Settler
Longbow
Ragnarok
The first three I have no issue with. Leave them as is. However, the later 3 are simply too big. And I find this problem to be the worst on Longbow. Whichever team is closer to the hill will undoubtedly keep the hill. There have been plenty of times where I would spawn across the map from an enemy-owned hill on Ragnarok with 15 seconds left, and think to myself “Oh well, might as well wait for the next hill.” The team that owns the hill will have his teammates spawn close to retain the hill, while the other team is spawned opposite of the map. King of the Kill should not be this way. It should be a (non-pointless) fight for the hill, not a game of hoping you or your teammates are close to the next hill. I think having one static hill, with equal respawn distance for either team, would easily fix this problem regardless of team sizes.
It’s disappointing. Oddball needs a return to it’s glory days. King of the Hill could do with improvement. And where’s Team Regicide? One of your more popular gametypes has disappeared without a trace. In the past few weeks I’ve been playing Team Objective, I think the population has been consistently between 200-500. Seeing as I’m stuck with a strict NAT, it sometimes takes me 15 minutes to find a match. This 6v6 style isn’t working and the low population proves that. Team Objective needs fixing 343, and it needs it fast.