In the past few months, I've really come to notice a generalization generated from a lot of posters on FH maps (sick alliteration). They all seem to have some terrible disposition to those things we refer to as "power weapons." A map and its creator are immediately stupid for having more than one sniper or rockets and a sniper according to these people. It seems they only consider a map to be worthy if its weapons list is subdued to a pair of BR's, a carbine and a mauler or a sniper with no spare clips and 180 second respawn. They throw around the term "well-balanced" like there's no tomorrow when the weapons list is only 5 lines long. Well, I really don't understand this. I thought the point of video games was to enjoy outlandish worlds where almost anything can happen, not to reduce the level of fun you could be having just because you want to seem spr srs and pro. Now of course, I understand that there is a need to keep a balance of power between forces in a map and that deciding what weapons to use and where to place them contributes to this a great deal. But this doesn't mean you have to scratch off snipers, rockets, and lasers to make it even. Just look at The Pit, a favorite of Halo 3's new maps. It's a medium-sized Team Slayer map and it has two snipers, rockets, active camoflauge, two shotguns, rockets, and a sword. I know if the weapons set from The Pit were to be placed on a similar custom map that people would judge it as having too many power weapons. Does anyone else feel this way? tl;dr: People think maps need to have a minimalist weapons set to be "balanced."
Construct has a Sword, Flamethrower, Laser, Sniper and Maulers. Most of them are in the same areas and I find that map in its default state fun as hell to play. People just assume that a balanced weapon set has to be restricted to the weapons that all the best maps have. Basically, If you have a fun weapon like a Sentinel Beam or the Fuel Rod, your weapon is automatically imbalanced according to a wide majority of FH. In fact, default Sandbox has two Rockets, an Overshield, two Choppers, two Warthogs, two Missle Pods, two Needlers and two Regens (I consider them a power weapon) and I feel that it plays perfectly fine and I enjoy playing it a lot more than most of the maps I've seen here on FH. Even at this very moment, I'm tweaking the weapon set on my latest map to have balanced gameplay with two Ghosts, two Sentinel Beams, two Rockets with a Regen next to each Rocket Launcher, a Beam Rifle, Active Camo and a Laser. Not only that, a majority of the power weapons aren't all placed in the center off the map, the opposite of most competitive big team maps (considering each map map goes by the generic Base > Power Weapon < Base layout.) tl;dr: I completely agree with you.