- Cadillac Ferd
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- Exalted Heroic Member
Wow, now that was a meaty update.
The second I saw that the new map's name was "Assembly" I had nightmarish visions of Colossus and it's stupid exploding barrel assembly line things running through my head, definitely looking forward to some new maps. Cold Storage managed to be both amazing to look at and amazing to play so I have high hopes for Assembly. I also hold similarly high hopes for Epilogue, Boundless and Sand Tarp. Personally I never really minded the shield doors, when Halo 3 first came out I thought "maulers everywhere+shield doors = :(" but with maulers wrangled in to control I don't think the shield doors really have been that much of a problem. It's great that new things are being tried though, I'm interested to see just how much impact the shield door removals will have on gameplay. My guess is that the impact will be negligible (especially on Epilogue) and the real differences will come from the changes in weapon spawns.
Can't say I'm surprised to see RBTB, as much as I loved the idea behind it Ol' Yeller really needed to be taken behind the shed and put out of it's misery so to speak. I'm kind of shocked that Big Team Social got cut too, I'm not sure exactly why it was cut (except for the whole 'it needs heavies, please' comments being made by certain people). Is there a replacement in the pipe for Big Team Social? I see that the DLC playlist has been revamped to step up and fill the gap but a couple levels (Valhalla, Standoff) that have been with us since the beginning made solid Big Team arenas. Just seems silly to get rid of something that wasn't broken to replace it with essentially the same thing minus a couple maps. All I ask from the new Big Team replacement hoppers is Heavies. That's it. Just throw me some Heavies and I'm happy (of course I'd love to see Big Team Social not get cut buy hey... I pick my battles).
I really was never a huge fan of Head-to-Head but again pretty shocking that it's being removed so quickly. My guess is that it's become full of people trying to lose EXP just so they can roll in to a game and have people say "z0mg! He's a 39 but only an Apprentice! WTF!!!1". That's my guess at least, about a third of the Head-to-Head games I played involved my opponent quiting before the match even began.
In closing I'd really really really really love to see a better explanation for the elimination of Rocket Race. I know it had a low population and I know there's a small but certain percentage of that population consisting of griefers just trying to wreck that experience for everyone but the low population numbers were justified by the uniqueness of the gameplay. Nothing else is like Rocket Race! Adding Rocket Race to Multi-Team makes about just as much sense as adding Griffball to Team Slayer (actually Griffball makes more sense in a Team Slayer environment than Rocket Race in Multi-Team)... the number of players and the team set up is the same but other than that...? It's just going to piss the people who want to play Multi-Team games (Slayer, KotH, Oddball) off and disappoint the players that are after Racing games. Great Rocket Race games play like a highlight real of what makes Halo awesome (I've got a couple things in my file share alone that make me lol quite a bit just thinking about the game).
I've played a ton of Halo (4000 games and counting!) and pretty much every playlist and Rocket Race has always been the most fun. Definitely the playlist that I always go to when I'm just looking relax and Halo for a bit. I know this post won't receive a response (much less than any post made out of vitriol, poor grammar and fail I'm guessing) and I know its far too late to sway anyone who is anyone's opinion on the subject but it's a really disappointing move. Quite frankly this is the most disappointed I've ever felt ever since I picked up that gigantic 'Duke' Xbox control back in 2001 and tried Halo for the first time.