Custom games are absolutely broken. It is frustrating to me that all the attention is on the awful progression and monetization, when enormous parts of the game are not even functional. Why do I say that custom games are not functional? If you manage to successfully start a game with the settings you chose in the menus and all the players on the correct teams, you have just witnessed a miracle in real time. For those saying I should submit a bug report instead of complaining here, I don’t even know where to start. It is so abundantly clear that nothing related to custom games works that anyone who tries to use the features will run into obvious issues. Every time I try to play a custom game I run into so many new bugs that I haven’t encountered before that reporting all of them would constitute a full time job, and is not worth my time.
Functionality:
- The vast majority of the time, your settings will be randomly scrambled by the time the match starts
- The teams will be randomly scrambled by the time the match starts
- The game crashes often in menus, while loading in to custom games, and during custom games. I’ve never played a custom game with other people in which one person did not crash at some part of the process.
- Sometimes the game will not let you switch the gamemode
- Sometimes the game will not let you switch the map
- Sometimes the game will not let you change any settings
- “Overrides” visible in the lobby are randomly scrambled for each player
- When loading a mode you have created, 1 of 3 things will happen:1) the game will crash. This happens the majority of the time. 2) the mode will be loaded but the settings you chose will be randomly scrambled. 3) you might get lucky. This has never happened to me thus far.
- If you are lucky enough to get into a game, be prepared for wacky bugs! One I ran into is where the flag would be instantly returned the moment a player stopped carrying it,regardless of the flag return settings.
Quality of Life:
- Number of bots is strangely limited to 8. Why can’t I fill a BTB lobby with bots?
- Bots can’t drive vehicles. Please add this in!
- We are unable to select random weapons in the settings. (Fiesta is hardcoded!?!?!?!)
- We are unable to select a starting equipment
- We can edit settings for some objective holders but not others (flag holders, ball holders)
- We are missing the flag and ball carrier traits from past games… why am I unable to up the melee damage of a flag or ball carrier, for example?
- The game modes are split up in an unintuitive way. Instead of one “Slayer” base game mode, like all past games, Slayer is divided into 5 (!) base game modes (Arena 4v4 Slayer, BTB Slayer, Arena FFA Slayer, Arena 4v4 Fiesta Slayer, Competitive Arena 4v4 Slayer)… So if I want to change my custom slayer mode to FFA, I have to start from scratch. Also, Fiesta is hardcoded (in the Fiesta settings, the primary weapon is listed as the BR, the secondary as None, and there is no option for equipment), so there is no option for random starting weapons or equipment in any game mode.
- We are missing features from past games like changing the weapons on the map from the menu. Even in CE you could make a map have snipers only, or covenant weapons only, etc.
Why did custom games release in this state? I just don’t understand; we have a great blueprint for how to do custom games right in MCC; I’m not sure how that was totally ignored.
343 delayed co-op and forge because they wanted them to be at a high bar when they were released. If the state of custom games is any indication of 343’s high bar, then I wouldn’t expect much from either of those features.
