: So, do you feel that Halo 4's unlock system is in any way unfair? Because as
: I was slowly leveling up to SR50 and beyond, I thought to myself on many
: occasions, "Well, it's really awesome that I'm getting slaughtered
: because that guy has abilities I don't have merely by virtue of having
: played more matches than me. His vehicle is more resilient/he's invisible
: to my Promethean Vision/he has a surplus of ammo for his power weapons/he
: knows when and where ordnance is coming in ahead of time/his reticle isn't
: affected by me shooting him/etc. and I don't have any of that because I
: don't play as much." The speed at which certain things are unlocked
: is largely irrelevant. It shouldn't happen at all. Any artificial
: asymmetry in player spawns in competitive gametypes is inherently
: undesirable. It's unbalanced and unfair. Whether it's COD or Halo 4, I
: cannot honestly say that every death was fair, not when some guy who's
: decked out to the nines with all sorts of advanced gear and abilities that
: I don't has a tactical advantage over me. IMO, the best way to maintain a
: fair and level playing field in competitive games is to have everyone
: start with identical gear and abilities, barring certain inherently
: asymmetrical gametypes (e.g., Infection), most of which aren't
: "competitive" anyway.

: Can you honestly defend Halo 4's custom loadouts and rank-based unlocks as
: something desirable and a net positive? And I don't mean "Well,
: here's how someone could defend those things." Do you personally like
: those things and think they make the game better? Because I sure don't.

I enjoy Halo 4. I never found the unlocking system to be unfair - I never felt like I was being beaten because my enemy had access to something I didn't, just that I got outplayed. I'm not going to get into a discussion of whether that particular mechanism made the game 'better' - because I don't look at game features in a binary way. For me, it's not 'better' (or 'worse'), it's 'different'. I will fully agree with you that playing Halo 4 is different than playing Halo 3, or Reach, or whatever. I like them all. I do not hold the fact that you do not against you in any way.