Halo 4 is designed for Circular Movement

Well, with player ordnance it's now less important to control power weapon spawn locations. Instead, players can merely go to the most powerful position on the map, rack up kills from there, and then spawn their own power weapons. It doesn't encourage movement in slayer at all, and of course movement in objective modes are based around the objectives themselves. If circular movement was supposed to happen, they didn't do it very well.

 

I think the additions of instant respawn and personal ordnance are fundamentally aimed at upping basic movement inherent in successful play. Instant respawn serves to decrease emphasis on position dominance by removing the respite period involved in outslaying in an attempt to take a power position. This time allows the more successful team in that engagement to consolidate on the position they were fighting for, and creates a more solid aim/reward framework within which a map's power positions can work for team play. This is also true in free for all situations, but the concept of position control is much more dynamic and, frankly, fleeting in this context.

Personal ordnance erodes the position control focus of power weapons. Not only does it do away with the basic idea of area control yielding power weapon control by providing pickups in a non location specific way, but this approach was implemented to significantly replace conventional power weapon provision (on map) rather than just supplement it. This is evident from the focus on initial drops in map design, after which the power weapon provision is largely left up to personal ordnance. There are occasional drops on maps without repeating drops (the majority), but the largely random nature means they don't contribute to the position control principle in any real way. The final aspect of personal ordnance as it relates to player movement and position control is a more basic one: demand of action. With power weapons dependant on player action (ordnance meter) rather than time, gameplay defines the power weapons rather than the power weapons defining gameplay. This is obviously self perpetuating to a degree, just as position based power weapon provision is. But the initial move from utility weapon only to power weapon possession now places onus on the player, rather than acting as a point around which they structure their play. This all but removes their role as tools by which to structure progression of the game, demanding player action. Players no longer have to plan and act around these milestones.

As I said, I maintain that these two key changes aim to increase the effective level of map usage by significantly reducing emphasis on the two aspects of basic area control: Control for positioning advantage, and control for power weapon advantage. It doesn't necessarily make people move in itself, but it significantly reduces the emphasis on creating and balancing power positions in design terms.

However, I'm not convinced that's quite the same as having people move in circles. It's definitely possible that their use of "moving in circles" is just a way of combining this emphasis on increased movement with a vague gesture towards good map flow, but I wonder if there's something more to it since it seems like a somewhat specific way of framing it.

Bang on. Just as one could argue that it stops people staying in areas to control weapons, it also stops them going to those places in the first place since there's no reason to move if you've got a steady stream of kills filling up your ordnance meter. I think the idea of encouraging movement by undermining the emphasis on positions people stay at is overly simplistic, and ignores the fact that these are also inherently positions that people go to.

 

Well it seems like most of the maps are designed for circular movement. Like you guys said, though, there's not much incentive to move, generally speaking.
I personally despise camping just because it bores me to death, but even I camp on Adrift. That map actually would have been my top choice to demonstrate how lack of on map pickups destroys map flow. In my experience, people don't even move on that map in CTF. Many CTF matches on Adrift end up 1-0. A team scores, then camps their base. The other team can't punish them because Rockets, Snipers, etc. don't spawn on the map.

Also, a map like Haven can have circular movement, yet still not create confrontations between teams because there's no clear power position. Both teams can move around the map and not encounter each other. A map like Midship has circular flow to it, and creates confrontations because there is a clear power point that players will naturally gravitate towards.
The other thing that Midship does well, is it allows the team that controls the power positions to control the map. On the other hand, maps like Abandon and Adrift have pretty clear power points, but the designs of those maps make it possible for the opposing team to completely avoid those positions, and therefore render them largely ineffective.

So while the intent seems to be to create circular flow, the execution is pretty poor.

 

all of the BTB maps are basically a giant circle or outer rim area with some stuff in the middle, to one degree or another, so yea I'd say circular is what they were going for.

I think there's room for forgers to create something less circular and do it skillfully though.