My only real major gripe with Halo 4 was the complete abandonment of gametypes that didn’t require completely equal teams teams and armament for said teams. Yes I’m talking about asymmetrical gametypes.
1-bomb. 1-flag. Invasion. VIP.
All of these were left out and the only gametype that can be relied on is rarely in the game anyway, extraction. People say Halo is always about fighting on the same footing with equal starts and opportunities. I completely disagree. Halo is about balance plain and simple. These gametypes and the maps that used them did balance in a way that provided strong variety without any ordinance or custom Loadouts.
For example on Zanzibar the defending team could easily get the rocket launcher/spartan laser in the middle. However, the attacking team got a gauss warthog/chain gun warthog AND ghosts to fight it while the defending team had a base and a few power weapons. Gametypes provided a good challenge and allowed people to make up new and interesting strategies to beat their opponents and score the bomb or push them back to the beachhead whence they came.
We got huge amounts of this type of play in Halo Reach and Halo 3, but Halo 4 abandoned it entirely and I can’t play Complex without thinking about how good a map it would be for these gametypes.
343, I and many others would love for the return of these gametypes. It would only benefit the game. It brings back and sorely missing element of social and competitive play in matchmaking. Most importantly it brings a lot of fun and variety with maps. Teams that normally start with a warthog on both sides now have to defend their base with a mongoose or storm the fortress with a tank.
Please bring these gametypes back and improve on them. It would definitely be welcome and personally it would make forging so much more meaningful to me because symmetrical maps are difficult to forge.
Some things that can be done are add a VIP stage of invasion or perhaps more complex assault variants where you plant 3 charges on a base. Maybe there could be a variant where the team holds their own flag and you have to kill the carrier to take the flag. The possibilities are endless for these gametypes. And none of them require specific kinds of maps for balance.