The thread title is a rhetorical question; I already know that the only way of playing 4v4 objective is by voting the right option in Team Throwdown. The next closest thing is 5v5 Capture the Flag.
Slayer bores me immensely as it is the same mindless thing over and over again. I love objective because it adds more strategy than just taking cover when your shields are down to stay alive. But I can’t play my favorite playlist.
I can’t play team throwdown either as I am quite simply not good enough to compete with the players that go there, and even then slayer is still 50% of what is played there. I can’t play capture the flag because I fear for Ragnarok and Exile, two maps that are only suited for 8v8 gameplay. I dislike 8v8 gameplay, which is why i can’t go to big team skirmish either (i’ve tried… yuck.)
As a suggestion to catering to the needs of 4v4 objective players, bringing back the old objective playlist that had 5v5 or 4v4 objective is also a bad idea, as those were unpopular playlists inhabited by the biggest noobs and tryhard teams of 4. I can come up with two reasons for that impopularity: First is because it had infinity settings abroad, and two is because the gametypes themselves were, in my honest opinion, poorly tuned.
That is why i plea for a 4v4 objective playlist with optimised gametypes and maps to ensure the quality is the same of that of Team Throwdown right now.
Suggestions for optimising each included gametype:
- Extraction would use the same amount of extraction points active at a time and the same maps as throwdown (this means including Station 9 to the mix). Also include the previous extraction versions to add more variety (2 site extraction on adrift for example would be fun to play at a casual level)
- King of the Hill would have the hills move every minute, not when the time has been milked from the hill. Just like in previous Halos. Hills must be easy to capture and difficult to be camped. Small maps!
- Oddball would feature a slowed movement speed for the ball carrier so that he can’t throw as far. Preferrably use maps that make it difficult to throw the ball off the map (playing the ball). This means using forged maps such as Lockdown(used in AGL) or relatively closed off maps like Skyline. Small maps!
- Regicide would not give any random overshield or other boosts.
- Ricochet would be carefully optimised to fit the map it is played on. If necessary, it would have a different Ricochet version for each map in order to guarantee quality. A larger map would feature a longer ball respawn time, for instance. And a map where it is very easy to throw the ball into the goal would reduce the score for throwing from 20 to 10.
Whatever happens, I really wish to see a more competitive version of the 4v4 objective playlist making a return. Personal loadouts are fine (preferrably no AA’s but whatever), as long as it doesn’t feature infinity settings everywhere.
Thoughts?