RedStarRocket91

Banned for being an uppity colonial.

Banned because America is secretly communist utopia.

Banned because you ate them all, you greedy capitalists.

Banned because I honestly can't think of a response and so shut up you bloody peasant.

Banned because I am first among equals.

Banned because orange is better than blue.

Banned because I never said I wouldn't abuse power, just that you were.

Banned because hiding is lame.

Banned because I have just had a great idea for locking the dirty peasants out of this thread.

Go ahead and do it.

Banned because I am literally embarrassed to have you on the moderating team with a grasp of grammar as poor as that.

Banned because at least there's something I fit in, fatso.

Banned because that's cliqueist.

Banned because you're a textbook example of that.

Banned because I AM the powah.

Banned. I'm not giving a reason, I don't have to justify my power. #evil

At 1:18... what the heck is that? They don't look like Flood, so all I can think of is that they're unarmoured Lekgolo worms in terms of known Halo organisms. This looks like it's going to be a much darker, grittier exploration of the Halo universe compared to the games, and I have to say I really like that direction if that i indeed the one it's taking. Can't wait for November 11th!

I think the inclusion of the Hornet could have a pretty dramatic effect on the way the map is played - the ability to evac a flag runner or drop a bomb carrier by air, rather than having to get them out on the ground, can completely change the dynamic of a map, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the ability to do that affects tactics. There also appears to be some sort of EMP ability on the bases now and combined with the apparent removal of the Scorpion I think that's definitely going to give defenders a big advantage, as in previous iterations once a team got an advantage in vehicles it became almost impossible to turn things around barring serious mistakes on their own part. At a guess, I'd say what really drove 343i during development isn't so much which maps were the 'best', but which are the most iconic: the ones that everyone immediately thinks of when Halo 2 comes up in conversation. Sure, things like Burial Mounds, Headlong and Foundation are generally decent maps which could benefit from a remake, but Coagulation and Zanzibar were always the map that people associated with Halo 2's Big team playlist, and so it makes sense that those are the two which would be brought back, as it just wouldn't feel the same without them. It's the same story with Lockout and Miship, which both appeared in Halo 3 and were remade as official Forge variants in Reach, and yet those maps are still really highly anticipated. Whether they're the best choices for remaking is debatable... but they're certainly among the most iconic, and I'd say with such a small pool of maps, that's probably the most important thing in getting the correct 'feel'. What I will say is that I'm kind of disappointed that 343i chose to stick to just 6 maps. You can basically split them into Lockdown and Zenith for Slayer, Warlord and Shrine for Objective, and Bloodline and Stonetown for Big Team - and although you could then sort of mix and match a little bit (Warlord and Shrine both work for Slayer, and Zenith could work with asymmetrical Objective), that's a very small amount of variation. This will definitely be made up for by the fact that we can choose any Halo game we want to play, but as it's the newest engine and the most hotly anticipated, I would have liked to see a larger map pool. Here's hoping we'll have a few more maps released for it sometime in the future, and possibly even a few of the more popular maps from other games!

If you didn't like Halo 4, I guess you're not really a 'true' fan then, are you?

Unfortunately, this is a population thing rather than anything to do with the matchmaking system itself. When you've got 5,000 lobbies and 40,000 players in a single playlist, then it's fair to assume that there'll be at least several dozen matches where all players are at an appropriate skill level for you. Even as populations shrink, it's still often possible to get into a reasonably-balanced game: someone with a CSR of 30 probably doesn't play that differently from someone with a CSR of 28 or 33, for example, and so it's still possible to get into games where everyone is at least roughly even in skill. The problem with Halo 4 is that the populations for most playlists are just so low that there aren't enough players to allow lobbies to be divided by skill level to any meaningful degree. At around 2-4k populations, matches played in Big team and Team Slayer still tend to be reasonably balanced (though even then, it's becoming frustratingly common to get really imbalanced lobbies in team Slayer), but as most other playlists consistently have populations of fewer than 1k, there just aren't enough players to try and separate by skill in any meaningful way, especially as the skill level of the population isn't evenly distributed. Put another way - how do you set up a lobby with a skill of CSR 15, when there are only ten CSR 15s in the whole playlist - and half of those are already in other matches?

Well, I guess this is going to be a permanent ban now, isn't it?