So that update. It did some nice things that I think I like. Making the boltshot a little weaker, that’s fair. But there’s one part that completely failed. And it didn’t even really fail to fix the problem, it took the problem, destroyed it really hard, then made a bigger one.
> • Fixed an issue that did not allow players to create respawn timers or disable instant respawn in custom games.
You know, that’s a good idea. Having super quick (although it wasn’t actually “instant”) respawns in some objective gametypes is pretty silly. Fixing that is a good intention at the least. But instead of just putting an option like “Instant Spawning”, where you can toggle it on or off, you completely disabled the instant respawn option. And that’s bad.
For some gametypes in custom games disabling instant spawning is good. But not all. Grifball, for example. Before the update, you would die, then respawn one second after you press X. This was usually ~1.5 seconds, and it worked quite well. But now, that’s all changed. The absolute minimum time you can set spawning to is 3 seconds. Grifball is very close-quarters and you can kill people and move about quite quickly. Forcing the respawn time to double has a large impact on the balance of the game.
And the fix doesn’t even work right. Now, what Halo 4 does in custom games is it takes whatever you set the respawn time to, then it adds 5 seconds to it. This is your respawn time. Then, if you press X while you’re dead, it will subtract 5 seconds from the countdown. It’s weird and annoying. And there’s literally no way to go back to what we had, the change broke everything from pre-update gametypes to matchamking gametypes.