Having gone back to Halo 4 a few weeks ago one thing that struck me almost instantly (and judging by the forums, many others) is that the online population for this game has nose-dived to an almost minute number. Compared to Halo 3, I’d say there are around 10x less players.
That being said, I feel its time for 343 to bite the bullet and reduce the number of playlists in order to funnel people towards the more popular gametypes. This would both speed up matchmaking and improve the accuracy of CSR matching.
The following I think could go:
CTF
Regicide
Dominion
Snipers
Team Throwdown has also been showing a low population, but probably needs to stay since its the only playlist with competitive settings.
This is all just an IMO, are there any playlists out there that people feel could or should be cut?
Agreed, the playlist count needs to be reduced in order to bring the masses back, I get tired of seeing the same opponent list over and over. And not many people like jumping into a new list with only a couple hundred in it just to get wiped out by those who have been playing the gametype from the start…hence why I have yet to play Dominion.
There is nothing stopping the people who play the less popular playlists from playing the more popular playlists, they will play them as much as they want to, taking away options won’t funnel people towards what’s left. (As halo 4’s population can attest to.)
I think it would be better to maintain about the same number of playlists, maybe slightly fewer, but offer better options. Here is my suggestion on how the playlists could be better organized to improve the populations without limiting the number of options. The key in variety.
Dominion is another one of my favorites. They only way I would agree to taking it out would be if they had regular rotating playlist schedule that I could check out on the main page.
Rotate 2 or 3 playlists a week and you might see population spike in the objective playlists. I would rather play a lot of Oddball or KotH for a week than play Team Objective all month long.
> They should never take out 5v5 CTF.
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> Dominion is another one of my favorites. They only way I would agree to taking it out would be if they had regular rotating playlist schedule that I could check out on the main page.
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> Rotate 2 or 3 playlists a week and you might see population spike in the objective playlists. I would rather play a lot of Oddball or KotH for a week than play Team Objective all month long.
Exactly, and that’s what I thought 343 was originally going to do, that way you get your chance to play them when they show and you don’t get time to get tired of them.
Necropost - this is still a massive problem. Just been on and the only playlist with serviceable numbers(1000+) is big team yet there’s a few people on. I shouldnt be getting matched up to parties of 50’s when I’m playing solo on IS. I don’t care what but we need to reduce the playlists by 50% to have CSR do its job
> I would say:
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> merge regicide and rumble pit down to 1 playlist
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> merge infinity slayer and big team infinity slayer into (5v5 - 8v8)
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> merge dominion into big team skirmish…add extraction back in…make it so there’s more than 5 maps for god sake
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> merge legendary slayer and team throwdown
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> multi-team is terrible last i knew in this game, just remove it or fix it (terrible terrible terrible spawns, weapon balance on maps)
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> and i know many wouldnt like it, but merge action sack, grifball and flood
How about:
Merge Regicide into Big Team Battle and rumble pit
Merge Legendary slayer, Throwdown, and IS into Slayer
Merge Dominion, extraction and BTS into Big team Battle
Multi team should stay with team doubles in one playlist.
The problem with all the “merging” is that each gametype has a different player counts and rules.
You can’t merge a 4v4 playlist with a 6v6 one. The objective gametypes aren’t all the same. Action Sack and Flood aren’t the same.
Only a few things can actually be moved, otherwise you get a mess of playlistsgetting deleted and player sizes not meant for the gametype. And with commendations and possible hiccups in choice weighting, it could ruin the commendation parts of it if you never see Dominion again.
Player preferences is another issue. People play Infinity Slayer because they want to play Infinity Slayer. Likewise, people play Legendary because they want to play Legendary. They don’t want to play the playlist with a 50% chance of one or the other. You’ll probably see a lot of quitting and people leaving the game because they aren’t playing what they want to play.
Objective gametypes with similar player counts are the only ones you can/should merge into an overall objective playlist.