It would be cool if there was a CUSTOM GAMES Playlist that had two options: Join Custom/Host Custom. If you select 'HOST CUSTOM' than it would essentially take you to the Custom Games Lobby, where you could set your player count and 'Incoming Players' whom had previously selected 'Join Custom' would begin listing in. And boom, you'd have you're lobby and you'd be good to go and test. Granted, getting reliable players for competitive tests may not be the easiest, but there are so many more types of maps to be played beyond Competitive, which are usually tested behind closed doors in more personal lobbies anyways. Opinions? I personally don't see how a concept like this could go wrong, considering it would practically offer unlimited and immediate play test dummies to those whom wish to 'Host'. You think this is something that could happen if the community made enough noise about it?
So you would be willing to play any map you that anyone made regardless of their experience in forge? This seems like it would turn a lot of people off BC the quality of content would be non existent. If there was some sort of approval process your map had to go through it might work though. I just think playing on a bunch of crappy maps would most likely make people hate customs. If there was some sort of in game map rating system, that might work as well.
I would be all for a rating system that would hopefully filter out the maps. Farcry 3 had a system almost identical to the concept that I've proposed, and it did eventually fall to the mercy of the more poorly skilled map creators like how you have proposed. However, there is still benefit to be had. Let's say I choose to HOST a custom game. That means I would be in control of what maps are being played, while those whom have selected JOIN would be added to my game (along with the millions of others, but due to Halo's player base being much larger than Farcry's, hopefully getting the desired amount of players to join would not be a problem). One could finish forging a map, and then have an entire lobby together to test it in a matter of moments later. One would not HAVE to select join, as that would be up to you, considering you could get anything from a competitive match to a minigame, to a map made of kill ballz. You would not ever have to select JOIN, as for a majority of the maps would most likely eventually be supplemented by the kiddies, however one could still use to HOST option to an advantage.
I totally agree that the game needs this BC getting a large size Lobby together is way too hard. A weekly customs Lobby might be the only realistic solution for now which is a joke as well BC usually only half the people who sign up actually show up anyway. Maybe we need to get a more serious group of forgers together instead of just casual custom players. TCOJ reborn! Join.