I have been paying attention to all the prerelease stuff, I got pretty hyped up myself, and I really do respect what you are saying. Maybe my first comment came off wrong. I am a ranked competitive player. Halo 4 obviously is very competitive but there is no end goal in mind. Ya winning games is fun, but it gets monotonous if losing causes nothing, thus making the replayability a little weak. The story is great and everything but playing through the first 3 games of campaigns and then going to this... it was a little bit of a let down. The gameplay in campaign just didnt live up to past games.
You are also right about the doing knew things makes a game better, however, don't fix something that isn't broke. People would honestly still be playing Halo 2 or 3 if there was still viable amounts of people in the matchmaking. We are obviously very different gamers, as in you are more for the social slayer gametype as I am an MLG/doubles (ranked) player. That is why you think 343 did better than bungie, which they did at making their own thing their own way, but it isn't an upgrade to the old halo, it's an alternate version geared towards different players