Forgo Forge
I started watching some old Bungie viDocs and I can't tell you how tiresome it was listening to the guys brag about Forge and Forgeworld. Please don't bog down the game with a bunch of Forge crap. It's like the rap stars that tell the audience to say 'Ho!'. I didn't pay money to say Ho, you're the entertainer, not me. Say Ho your damned self. Build the worlds, dude. Or just open source the whole damned engine, because we don't want amateur hour, we want professional design. If you don't want to design the world, give up all your tools to another studio.
That said, if you build a map that sucks, nuke it. We're talking a 10 year game lifespan. Nukes happen.
If you do a top ten of all the greatest Halo maps, you will get 20 consistent answers. So there was a time that I hoped to see a best of map pack. I'd love to play The Pit or Zanzibar or any number of the old school maps in Halo. It's kind of what I expected when the Anniversary Edition came out and Bungie showed they could repupose old content. Based on that theory alone, Destiny could be astounding.
Right now however, on any given day all the great maps on Halo 4 are getting play only during Big Team Battles. On a hot weekend, you see maybe 7500-11000 players. I know there's competition with Gears of War right now, but that's the best maps. New DLC is getting no play, and those are great maps too. So please don't bog down the new Sol System with bootleg factories for crowdsourcing maps. You'll rue the day. Halo isn't a god game, it's a shooter. Destiny had better not be a god game.
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I have to agree with you to an extent. Grey and Green Syndrome was the worst. But you have to admit, some of the greatest games/gametypes, some of the greatest times had were because of forge. I know I had a blast in Halo 3 customs. All the cool maps and gametypes people would make, that wouldn't be possible without forge. Bungie saw our creativity and they gave us a tool to help us achieve what we were trying to do, to help us explore our creativity. And with Reach, they expanded what we could do with Forge. Phasing, fixed objects, those things were made because of things the community did. We wanted bigger, we wanted better. We wanted several different types of maps, for big team, small arena maps, etc. Bungie combined all our wishes into one map, forgeworld. We thought this was great (at the beginning). Some great maps were even made in it. But the flaws of it started to be seen. That is, Grey and Green Syndrome. It's not that community maps weren't at times good. It's just we could never tell. Each map felt the same. They felt lifeless. They had no soul. Oh, it's the same sky, oh it's the same green grassy hill... or worse, grey EVERYTHING. The theme died quick. Good maps could never flourish because we could never tell which map was which. [quote]"Oh, it's <insert stupid mysterious unknowable word without a dictionary map name>, is that the community map we hate? Oh no.. it's that one with the bridge? Are you sure? Wait I think this is one of the good ones... or no, that's <insert generic map name here> I'm thinking of. I CAN'T TELL BECAUSE EVERY COMMUNITY MAP IS A SCREENSHOT OF FORGEWORLD!"[/quote]It would be better if we could differentiate the maps. Make them unique. Change the palette up. Take a screenshot to showcase in the matchmaking lobby, so players know what map they're about to play. [quote]"Okay, I know for sure this is the one with the bridge, because the screenshot shows that bridge.. sweet, let's play it"[/quote]Let us change the skybox, the time of day, what palette we use, what type of terrain there is. I hope Bungie doesn't get rid of Forge all together, because great innovation comes from giving the community these great tools. I would like to see it expanded though. Maybe give grognok to the community. I've been saying for a while I think Bungie PRO is going to come back. A great way to incentivize people to subscribe to Bungie PRO is to give them access to grognok. Not only will we get great unique maps from this, Bungie will make a pretty penny. Not only that, grognok would have to be used on your PC. You build maps from your PC. That way, all players across every platform can enjoy your work. Bungie will still have a vetting process of which maps get into multi-player, and maybe not to drown out their own maps or over-saturate the pool of maps, only add the best of the best, the really quality maps, explore and go in-depth with these maps in a weekly update. And I've been saying this for a while, make DLC required in some/most playlists. Reach and Halo 4 died or dropped in population due to not having enough variety. Bungie tried to fix this with community maps but were met with Grey and Green Syndrome. Hell, maybe don't even do a one off paid DLC, perhaps do the Subscription type deal. Subscribed to Bungie PRO and get access to new maps every couple of months. I don't know what would work best to get the most people to get the map DLC, but variety makes the game fun. Not being able to play what you paid for unless you're in a very specific shitty playlist you don't even actually like is unacceptable. Make most playlists DLC required, give us grognok, only allow the best of the best community maps into matchmaking, don't over saturate the playlists. Variety is great, too much is over-whelming. Those are my thoughts.