What is your favorite Halo 4 Multiplayer Map?

yeah, line of sights are pretty weird on abandon. I can lend a few shots on a guy, but he usually runs away before I can finish him.

I don't get the complain about adrift, because haven is very corridor-y too. except the corridors are larger and offer better cover.

 

The difference is, there are lots of open and crossing lines of sight into most of those corridors. There aren't many places you can be on Haven where you know with certainty you can only be shot by a guy directly in front of or directly behind you. The larger corridors are part of that, but also the openings in the sides of them, the way the main paths cross in the middle, the drop holes, lifts, etc.

 

I do not understand why Vortex is so rarely voted for in MM. Besides the kind of obviously lopsided Wraith it's a very good BTB map. For Dominion it's a little wonky because the center base seems to be very hard to break, but overall it's a fun map. They should seriously get an Extraction playlist going too, I played a custom game of that on Vortex and it was the bomb.

 

Framerate is bad, same with Meltdown. I dunno about other people, but that's a big part of the reason I don't really vote for either, though I generally play BTB on splitscreen so obviously it's more of an issue for me than most people. But still, Vortex has distractingly bad framerate at times even on a single screen.

 

I'm so ready for next-gen hardware. Hopefully developers won't immediately push it past its breaking point so we can enjoy a few years of games that actually perform tolerably well.

In retrospect, 4-player split in CE was a work of genius on Bungie's part. We played that non-stop and I don't ever remember frame drops of any significance. With H4, I get the feeling that 343 didn't do one bit of splitscreen testing, or even much fullscreen performance testing. Forge is plagued by it (again) and too many of the default maps have issues also.

 

Very true. I have no recollection of it happening. Whilst there's a strong possibility I wouldn't have noticed back then, I've played it recently on 4 player split and didn't notice anything on Dammy or HeH. I've also seen a fair few MLG gameplay videos with 4 player split and they didn't seem to have any framerate issues. Halo 3 was largely fine, too, though some forge maps weren't amazing.

 

Abandon.

Maybe it's because the map is tailored for my sneaky beaverness.

You guys just haven't unlocked its secrets.

 

Longbow; it's pretty much the most arena-style BTB map in the game. For smaller games, definitely Haven.

I don't have a problem with any maps aside from Abandon.

 

cheaty cheater much?

I see a lot more potential in Abandon in terms of learning tac jumps and advantageous areas than maps like Adrift.. symmetrical =

 

I'd have to say that my favourite map is Vortex, closely followed by Haven and Meltdown. Almost every game I have played on Vortex has been brilliant, despite thinking it would be terrible when I first saw it revealed in one of the Halo Bulletins. It's just a shame it isn't voted for more often. I play a lot of Dominion and Regicide (For lack of a superior FFA Playlist), and Vortex and Meltdown have provided some truly intense games of Dominion for me. An organised team can end up taking all three bases at the same time on both maps, and so when two organised teams face off, the game can become a tense skirmish of taking and defending bases, being dropped into Last Stand and fighting your way back to put the enemy into Last Stand. Far better than Longbow or the horribly over-rated Exile, IMO.

As for Haven, it's a simple, balanced and clean design that's almost impossible to go wrong with. Halo 4 may not have many Arena-style maps, but Haven must be one of the best Arena designs we could hope for. The layout constantly promotes movement around the sides and into the middle, there's an emphasis on control of the top level, and yet it is possible for a team to hold their own entirely on the bottom level. It's a map that really brings out a player's skill. I also think it's incredibly fun for Flood.

As for maps that I dislike... well, I can barely look at Solace. I absolutely hate it's design. The central Gravity Lift is terrible, the Sniper towers feel disjointed from the rest of the map, and all anyone ever does is camp at the bases or run out into top-mid like a moron. The nail in the coffin is the fact that almost all of the cover in the top level of the map can be easily jumped over, which IMO makes it almost redundant, especially when you can sit in one of the Sniper towers and pick people off with a DMR easily.

 

I need not add more to this.

Though I often enjoy myself on it mainly because I tend to go on killing rampages, Meltdown has to be my least favorite map, followed closely by Abandon. Meltdown always seems to have way too much going on at once, and IMO feels more like a collection of parts rather than a true BTB map. Between the plethora of vehicles, ordinance drops, and occasional confusion after spawning, it functions as one gigantic mess. Abandon is simply a disaster on anything other than Flood. From the moment I stepped onto that forsaken jungle, I knew it was going to be trouble. It's middle structure is plagued by what I'd like to call the "Sword Base Effect" (referring to its lift room). AKA, most of the action takes place in one specific area and the maps promote little to nothing else.

Longbow and Vortex are two under appreciated maps that I can't understand why are not voted for more often. Though I enjoy Exile and Ragnarok as well, they aren't head and shoulders above them by any means. I haven't played enough on either to get a true sense of how they would hold up over the long term, but the couple of matches I've had were quite enjoyable.

What hurts most of the BTB maps for me is the lack of objective based gametypes and the familiarity of their designs. When you have maps like Exile, Meltdown and to lesser extents Vortex and Longbow following the same type of circular approach, it can tend to feel a bit redundant. Then again, these maps weren't designed with objective gametypes in mind, so I can't really complain about the layouts based upon what they were originally designed to do. This is another issue entirely, so I'll leave it at that.

 

Now that they fixed the weapon spawns I think Haven is my favorite map. It has a very Halo 3 feel to it imo. My least favorite would have to be Solace just because of the bases, I don't like how they can only be accessed from the back and, as a result, everyone ends up camping in them.

 

Harvest, from the crimson map pack, it's a design mix of headlong and rats nest and I ****ing love it. in fact, the crimson map pack is really great overall, I would recommend buying it

 

Since my favorite gametype is Big Team Infinity Slayer, my favorite maps tend to be Ragnarok and Exile, for their open terrain which I think is best for BTB maps. I do also like Longbow and Vortex though. The Crimson Map Pack I think I would like to play BTB best on Harvest if it was big enough but Wreckage and Solace feel kind of cluttered for 16 people. Wreckage looks like it could be forged into an awesome Flood map too (if there is pieces). I haven't had any fun on Meltdown which I think is due to how 343 or Certain Affinity make their maps all cluttered with a lot of hills and cover... it feels kind of claustrophobic to me.

I like all the other maps too like Haven. I love the look of Solace but can't say about the camping in bases since I only played 10 times on it, might be a good map for a Jetpack for easy-base access? I love the look of Abandon and I love how it plays as a Flood map, not sure about other gametypes. Impact and Raven are pretty amazing Forge maps... Erosion is great too, however much more difficult to Forge on to make something aesthetically pleasing as well as balanced for team gameplay, since the terrain outside gives one team an advantage. Whoever is on the top by the grifball court building can probably just rain death on the team spawning at the lighthouse.

 

Really? Oh, I'd have to reconsider my decision not to buy it then. Because it looked like they were just ripped off other maps from Halo 4, but with different environmental designs. I'll probably just wait until they either lower the price or release another DLC so I can decide by then.

 

I'll have to change my vote to Harvest as well.