On Halo forums players seem to be either in favor of DMR starts or AR starts- if you prefer one, you despise the other, according to posts I've seen seen frequently. This was as true for H3 as it is for Reach. Team slayer (social slayer in H3) has always had one of the largest populations; over twice that of surviving playlists, such as Grifball and Team Snipers. Why didn't they ever have a utility rifle starts only playlist and an AR start only playlist? Now the TU, which actually includes very slight changes, the most notable one being the complete uselessness of the AR (which was weak in the first place- I happen to not mind that) caused by the faster kill time of decreased bloom, along with the boost to the damage of other weapons, is spreading slowly, forcing players to play with different amounts of bloom. If the two seperate playstyles were accomodated in the first place, the TU could have been used for the DMR playlist. Does anyone know what problems with this simple solution keep it from entering matchmaking? Any other thoughts?
I agree, I don't like it either, its effective range encourages shotgun-like tactics and beatdowns, and it blooms so much so fast that it is uncontrollably random at ranges at which it does damage (any encounter in a medium-length corridor is going to come down to chance), but some people like it, and we've heard opinions from both sides before. If they find that people choose non TU settings even a quarter of the time, they would piss off more people than they have to by switching it to TU. I wouldn't be surprised if they created a non-TU and TU team slayer- maybe then players would choose DMR starts almost exclusively in the TU playlist. I don't even play team slayer, I only play BTB and ZB now, but this problem seems so easy to solve that I wondered if anyone was thinking the same thing.