Surprised that Max is so far removed from the design decisions in H2A. These are all things that his team at CA are coming up with that are 'shown' to him. I guess leading a company has its own priorities that takes time away from focusing on the product and more time consuming on the production side of things. That said, I was hoping for an open side to Bloodline that would expose some water features similar to Halo Reach's 'Hemorrhage'. Would have been instrumental for forge diversity. Now I've come to the conclusion that there won't be any water to forge in unfortunately. We will see if water is a part of the 'terrain' pieces but I heavily doubt it.

Is it just me or is the announcement of "Classic CTF: Capture the enemy flag and bring it back to score!" overly long and annoying?

sooooo much change for the sake of change it's suicide worthy.

@WARHOLIC, it doesn't surprise me the max is so distant from the design decisions and its what i expect when he's busy managing all the business side of things but what does surprise me is that he doesn't know WHY the decisions are being made. it's almost as if he let a bunch of kids go off and change what they like with no oversight. IIRC he even said at one of the panels that people were coming to him for advice and reasons for why things were they way they were, even over simpler things as weapon placements which is pretty alarming because it signifies that the people in charge of the design don't understand what they're doing.

watching these videos i'm finding also pretty annoying, when he's asked on why changes are being made and things about the map he makes something up on the spot. there is never an explanation given for why the changes are being made, the cause and effects for why they think those things need to be there but just get "we felt" arguments every time. i do enjoy when he's talking about his times when actually creating the originals because then he does express the reasons for his decisions and thought process to it, even if i don't agree with some of it at least he does have some decent methodology to it.

for bloodline specifically, the new centre bunker along with the man cannon that sends you directly to it i think will cause issues for objective games. when you grab the flag you can launch with the flag straight into a significant spot of cover and wait for a team mate to come and pick you up with a warthog or mongoose for the rest of the trip back, of course this does rely on control over that central bunker or it to be vacant of enemies but i don't expect that to be much of a problem seeing as how open the map is and how vehicles dominate the central space so players will hang around the sides of the map. the change from the banshee to the hornet with the removal of tanks is worrisome, without the tank there is going to be a lack of ability to counter air vehicles so the hornet will just allow for easy flag runs. if it was only the man cannons to rocks on the side replacing the teleporters, kept the tanks and have the bunker appear as the dynamic event instead i think would've been a lot better.

i did like the change from trees to support cliff pillars since they provide a more adequate cover. before the trees were pretty awkward so the pillars smoothen it out.

That speedboost tho...