I have noticed a lot of people have been very worried about the changes coming to Halo 4, particularly fans of competitive Halo. They are concerned with issues such as the loadout system, sprint, AAs, etc. I would like to point out a snippet from a Halo 4 interview in which Frankie discusses the changes to multiplayer.
Q: On that note, you spoke earlier about changing the multiplayer and creating a new experience, that must be one of the trickiest things to get right in terms of the community?
A: (Frankie) It’s something that Halo enables and something that Bungee knew was important to the soul of Halo. You’ll still do it but it’s like Halo the way you play it now. That will be an option, you just go and find how you do that within a very nice UI, you can just go and find the exact same thing that you are addicted to doing.
What we want to do is get people on board with the new experience and we’ll do it in a way that’s very smooth and natural and organic. It sounds more mysterious than it will feel and it is a big change for Halo: I don’t want to diminish that and make it seem smaller than it is. We’ll present it in a way that will feel very fluid and natural, and hopefully people will love it.
I think what he is trying to say is that basically he knows the changes to gameplay and all that may be drastic…too drastic for some. So if you want to play old fashioned Halo, you will be able to do so… “you just go and find how you do that within a very nice UI, you can just go and find the exact same thing that you are addicted to doing.”
Halo has always had a plethora of customization options, and I guarantee this will be no different. If all you want is a few balanced guns, grenades and 8 people then it will be there. What competitive gamers really need to worry about are issues such as strafing, movement, hitscan…just the overall feel of the game. I HIGHLY doubt there will be any new gameplay features that will 100% implemented and mandatory.
I believe 343 has acknowledged the gaming community just as much, if not more than Bungie ever did. And who knows…some of the new gameplay elements that have yet to be shown may actually be great for MLG style Halo. We don’t know yet.
TLDR-343 knows what they are doing. They have listened to competitve gamers and came through on request. I almost guarantee you will be able to customize Halo 4 in a way that removes any unwanted changes. Some changes might even be perfect for competitive Halo, we’ll have to wait and see.