So I need some help. I think what many people were looking for in CEA multiplayer was CE, graphics updated and live enabled. 343i said that was not really possible due to time/cost constraints, and I don't know much about programming, so I am sure that what they said is true. I understand that they also did not want to fracture the reach fanbase (though it could be argued that they are totally different sets anyways) but the best part about CE was that you had to do lan parties to play...you actually knew they people you were playing with.
What I was hoping for was that they would allow us to make custom games that had a set of options that replicated the original CE engine to the best of reach's ability. If anyone has figured out what to set the base player traits to for this let me know, I have the following now and its not quite right. This was done with two tvs next to each other, one with a copy of CE and one with a copy of CEA. I know not everything was ported perfectly to the specs of CE, but we tried to take that into account.
speed: 100%
jump: 90%
gravity: 75%
(You cannot make single percentile changes either, or I would be able to get it spot on.)
Also, in a custom game you cannot have access to the 'CE pistol,' there is not an option to put it in the game. I might have missed it, but I looked pretty hard. This is silly. There should be a setting for putting the CE physics (to feel as close to CE as reach can get) and the reach 3-shot CE pistol into custom games. I am not asking you to rewrite the world, just make a quick option set. Maybe there is a good reason for this, but the people who bought CEA for multiplayer with their old college buddies who live all over the place sure would appreciate it