Alright so by now most of us are probably beating a dead horse, but as a competitive gamer for many years I feel entitled to sharing my opinion even if everyone thinks I'm a moron.
I have to say that the biggest issue in every matchmaking game in every playlist is the amount of lag. I swear it continues to lag more and more every day, and now the numbers of people in matchmaking playlists appear to be shrinking. (At least over the last few days.) No Halo game has every lagged so consistently, in fact I've never played any game that lagged like this. (It is as bad as the last 8 ranks of Halo 2 matchmaking, which was literally nothing but cheaters, however could be avoided by playing plenty of other playlists.) I get off every time I play, after a few games, frustrated that I can't escape it. I have a great connection, and I don't lag in any other games I play. I was blaming it on cheaters at first because it would only happen when I played against 'high ranks' (jk fake ranking system lol) but now it seems to be apparent constantly. 343 you guys are going to lose everyone if you don't get it together.
I would like to add in that I hated the DMR and I loved the BR. Halo 2 was what started me wanting to compete online in every game, the BR was super overpowered in it and so after years of killing nerds with it, I understand that I am biased, so I don't expect it to ever be THAT good again. However it really makes me sad that when someone starts shooting me with a BR, I know they are going to lose. It is supposed to compete with the DMR at close-medium range, but the only time I feel it has any chance is at extreme close range. (If my target's head is bigger than my reticle, I can usually kill someone with the BR if they are using the DMR and they fired first.) I also want to add in that I love the DMR now, I use it almost every loadout. This might be simply because of how good it is, but I really don't find it overpowered considering every single person starts with it. It might just be too good at long range.
Every thing else seems fine. The complaints about things like hardlight and sentry seem silly to me, some weapons and abilities do well in spartan ops, not everything has to be good in multiplayer. Carbine seems worse in this game than it ever has, but I still use it in my spartan ops loadout. While I would love to see more maps, more weapon drops, better playlists, maybe a firefight option, and more than anything a solid and meaningful ranking system, the game is young, it will get better. That said I have cancelled my xbox live account for now. The game isn't worth playing with the lag, I'll try again in like a month.
To qualify my opinion (not game complaints): I played Halo 2 like a religion, my team ran into and beat the 5th and 8th best teams in the world (according to the last MLG ranking done for H2). I never cheated so 43 was as high a rank as I could get . Played Halo 3, and Halo: Reach, both seemed worse than the last. They were so bad I sold my xbox and got a PC. Played Bloodline Champions at around 90% win ratio, sold 2200 carries in World of Warcraft, played Guild Wars with some of the best tourney guilds out there. (Paradigm and their alt guild and a few others.) Played Blacklight briefly since it looks like all the boring shooters (CoD/Battlefield/every other shooter out there) but didn't really have a team. I played Tribes but was working/volunteering like 65 hours a week so I had to stop playing it. You can see my vids on my youtube channel. Halo 4 looked so good that I went and got a box and xbox live, new headset, got the game, and I have to say it is super fun when it isn't lagging. The maps are designed very well. The sound is fantastic. It was nerdgasmic seeing other Spartans react to the king of Spartans. (Kinda lame that no one freaked out when they saw him.) While I didn't really agree with the plotline, I have to say that it was very enjoyable, it looked and felt fantastic despite having so few new additions. (Battling hunters in a tiny room with the thruster pack was probably one of the most brilliant fight concepts in any Halo campaign.) The game still could be amazing, just gotta wait for it to get smoothed out.
Sorry for the wall of text.
