: I feel like you're deluding yourself here. Throw/catch and even the ball
: object itself are lifted from the new Oddball gametype. They were
: developed as features for that gametype - not Grifball - and were revealed
: and demoed as such.

Oddball probably came first, true. Grifball is derivative of Oddball in Halo 4, kinda like it was derived from Assault in Halo 3 and Reach. But when we demoed it at PAX, we showed off auto-catch and the throw as integrals parts of the new game.

Not to mention the fact that the hammer was included in Halo 4 specifically for Grifball.

Like I said, the Grifball community is immensely grateful to 343 for including Grifball in Halo 4 and giving it a solid promotion. There's a reason why we call Kevin Franklin the Patron Saint of Grifball and named a move after him.

: Bungie provided the tools and let it be it's own thing. They didn't try to
: impose their own vision on it.

Personally, I'd rather have 343 giving Grifball its full support and fully integrating it into the game with heavy community involvement, than Bungie giving a half effort. Then again, Grifball was even bigger in 2012 than it was in 2010, so I don't really hold that against Bungie. I am thankful for the support they did give the sport.

: Grifball's core design is (surprisingly, given it's amateur origins) very
: good. If 343i were really serious about developing it properly they'd
: drop these silly pretenses of 'making it faster' and follow the sport
: analogy closer. Or give more tools so others could.

"Make it faster" could have been the subtitle of Halo 4, so I'm not surprised that mindset was in place when Halo 4 Grifball was developed. 343 was aware enough to listen to the community and give us the option to turn those things (auto-catch, continuous round) off. But both sets of settings have their fans.

I would love to see a compromise set of settings where everyone on the court dies and respawns when a point is scored, instead of waiting through the 20 second "Round over" screen. Best of both worlds.