Geran85

I'm not going to bite. You're still wrong, and this line of discussion is irrelevant. The only deciding factor should be what the majority of gamers who have bought the game want to play, not the preferences of a vocal minority. ...and you should. Team based games are about working in concert with other players, whether you know them or not. You can't win on any map against a moderately competent team by playing one-man-army. Not that it matters, again, because nothing you've said here justifies the crippling of the SWAT playlist by removing maps that were preferred by the majority of gamers who play there. Wrong. A competent team can win the initial shoot-out pretty handily and be the first to take the camping positions. The first team to take the camping positions, provided they are strong enough players to hold them, can win every time without the other team really having a shot at victory. You can't complain that a victory on Pinnacle hinges on the skill of your random partners, and then ignore that fact here. Also, again, this isn't relevant. The majority of gamers who indulge in this playlist frequently prefer Pinnacle and Uncaged over this map. In fact, it was often difficult (and still is) to get into a match on Countdown. You are making a series of incorrect assumptions here. It is unlikely that the average gamer who plays Halo has no idea that there was ever any kind of preferred position for forge world maps. Also, I very rarely, even before the removal of these highly preferred maps, ever saw a perfectly even split on voting. I've seen both maps preferred unanimously on several occasions. Seeing is believing. Everything my stance requires to be true can be observed by anyone remotely familiar with the settings we're talking about. The argument you are presenting here literally requires one to abandon all reasoning and simply assume that, because 343 didn't make an official statement specifically confirming my points, they must be untrue while this line of thought, equally unsupported by any statement from 343 and without any visible facts from which one may draw their own conclusions, must for the same reason be true. That doesn't add up. It is never pointless to argue for a position that one believes in, even if that position is as arguably trivial as the right-or-wrong of the handling of a multiplayer portion of a video game. I understand the points you were trying to make, but I disagree with them. That isn't me being angry, or calling you a liar. I don't have to personally attack you to consider your ideas wrong, and while I'm not very forgiving of those ideas when I speak against them, that in no way reflects any judgement I've made concerning you.

Good man. I'm the same way. Feel free to friend me on XBL under this same username. I'm thinking those of us who have been burned by this extremely bad decision should get together for some custom gaming or something.

I'm sorry, did I hurt your feelings? Grow up. I never called you a liar. I told you that you were wrong, and I'm still telling you that you are wrong. Every one of your following statements-- 'I've done it, my friends have done it, and it's been done to us' etc.-- are statements that I can apply to my argument as well. Pinnacle and Uncaged are completely playable from either side of the map, end of story. I've marked the relevant portion of your text here. Thank you for helping make my point for me. The game is Team Swat after all. And yet they left Sword Base, Asylum, Reflection and Countdown? There have been as many cumulative complaints concerning a certain yellow left room as there have for Pinnacle in it's entirety since the game's release, followed closely by Reflection's upper level and Countdown's corners. I'm going to stop here. The rest of your post consists of you repeating yourself on points that I've already debunked, and you making broad assumptions about my gameplay experience and ability. I'm not particularly interested in participating in the personal battle that you're trying to create. In point of fact, from the moment you outright admitted that everyone votes for these maps, there wasn't anything else to discuss. The majority of the gaming audience should rule on topics like this, not some vocal minority that wants to throw a fit until they get their way.

I'm sorry, I entirely missed this post earlier. As a matter of fat, you are entirely wrong. 343 is the game developer and has control of the game's serves. They are fully capable of asking every single player's opinion. Not only could they post a notice, much like Mikeyr has suggested, they can quite easily look at the voting tendencies of every player who participates online. They've done this before, publicly, with the TU and vanilla options in Team Slayer. Implying that 343 is doing what they can to garner actual player feedback is ludicrous. We know that they can accurately evaluate the maps' popularity, and anyone that plays SWAT, whether they love them or hate them, knows that these maps are frequently voted into play over the maps that were left in the playlist. There is no defendable reason for them to promote the demands of a vocal few on the internet over the habits of gamers who play day-in-and-day-out. As for your personal comments directed toward me, all I can tell you is that you do not know me and you do not know what frame of mind I am in when I post here.

I'm rank above you (Noble), predominantly off of SWAT, and I simply don't have the problems you're claiming exist. There is not a camping point you've mentioned that I can't remove people from and I'm not particularly special in terms of gaming ability. I generally score first strike and one other kill regardless of which side I spawn on-- and that is not always from playing the immediate long-range shootout that is available at the beginning of Uncaged. The so-called starting advantages that you're talking about simply don't exist. That aside, it doesn't really matter if it does. As stated, it is never difficult to get SWAT players to vote for Uncaged, and that is the only fan feedback that should be taken into account when deciding whether or not the map should be kept in the playlist. A few squeaky wheels on the internet should not be afforded the power to drastically alter the gameplay for the majority of gamers who have been quite happily playing on those maps day-in-and-day-out since the game's release. I actually prefer to spawn blue on this map, and again, generally grab First Strike and another couple of kills before being taken down. Again, I am not special in terms of gamer skill. The only time this map gets particularly brutal is when you have a team that doesn't work well together and allows the other team to grab both towers. In that case, it isn't unbalanced gameplay (which does not exist on this map) that is causing it to be brutal, it is the fact that one team is outplaying the other. Again, this entire argument is rendered irrelevant because players frequently prefer this map over the maps remaining in the playlist. It is a popular map with the majority of SWAT players and, again, should not be condemned and removed simply because a vocal minority has made it their mission to complain about the map at every opportunity. I do agree with this. Prior to the removal of two of SWAT's most popular maps it already had a tendency to feel barren and repetitive in comparison to some of the others.

That word doesn't mean what you think it means.

Again, ignorant and arrogant statements. Nobody who buys this game should be obligated to be a part of any little elitest club. I won't reply further to this drivel.

I'm quoting you here because I want to add my voice to some of the points you've raised. On camping, it is a completely valid strategy. If staying out of sight and taking shots is what it takes to win a match, then that is what the player should be doing. Halo isn't about running head-to-head 100% of the time-- if it was, it wouldn't be possible to do it. The worst camping spots are the ones you mentioned (on Sword Base and Countdown), and in Asylum, the edges of the blue and red bases and the tunnels to the left of both bases. The only camping spot on Pinnacle that I have any difficulty countering is the bottom left of the big tower, and there isn't any camping location on Uncaged that I can't get somebody out of unless my team is simply getting overrun. I don't begrudge peple for using those spots. If playing aggressively isn't working for me, I will use any and all of the mentioned spots and a few others to try and turn the score around. You do what you've got to do. I personally have no spawning preference on either Pinnacle or Uncaged. The majority of the time, from whichever side I start on, I score the First Strike and at least one more kill before I am taken down. This proves false, for me, the 'one side has an advantage' argument. ^^ This. Asylum is incredibly brutal on spawns, and I think everyone who has ever played SWAT with any regularity has had an experience there similar to yours. The victor is quite often determined simply by who can take the middle and pin down the other team first. If I were going to ask for a map to be removed (which I won't, especially without new maps being added) it would be this one. Also, feel free to add me on XBL, mikeyr. My gamer tag is the same as my name here (Geran85).

That is an arrogant and ignorant assumption. It discounts the opinions of paying customers who are either unaware of this website or uninterested in making daily forum activity a part of their gameplay. I personally know xbox owners who play online, but do not even own a pc. However, these people are still paying customers and still deserve to have a voice. What they don't deserve is to have their gaming experience crippled by a video game company's pandering to a vocal minority in a backwater corner of the internet. The people who work at 343 should be smarter than that, and if they aren't then they should hand the franchise over to a company that knows what they're doing.

I don't see the balance issue that some people claim exists on these maps. I've won and lost against all manner of opponents coming from both red and blue-sides. What they should do is return the maps to the playlist, along with some extras, paying attention to the number of votes they receive in-game instead of pandering to a vocal minority on a little forum on the internet. As stated, it is never difficult to get players to vote these maps into play over the maps that are left in. That says more about the actual gamers' preferences than all of the complaints ever posted on this board.

There were some seriously bad decisions made here. The SWAT playlist, which was already short on playable maps, has been brutally crippled. Uncaged and Pinnacle, based on the fact that they were so often voted into play OVER the remaining two-or-three maps, were popular maps in this game type. If this is how 343 is going to handle the online features, I'll excuse myself and stick to custom games, and I will encourage everyone I encounter to do the same.

It is never hard to get votes to enter an Uncaged and Pinnacle match in Team Swat. In fact, sometimes I get stuck playing those maps a little too much because I often wind up playing with people who don't want to vote for anything else. This game type is pretty ridiculously short on map options anyway, so removing any, especially while not introducing more options, is foolish. Whoever is in charge of these decisions needs to learn what he / she is doing.