That undesirable behavior such as farming kills to stat-pad and draw out match durations for more reward system points has been a thing in the series since at least Halo Reach yet developers continue to fail to find ways to better asshole-proof these games tells me it's either oversight and/or incompetence on the developer's part, or, even worse, apathy or even outright malice. Perhaps 343i, and Bungie before them in Reach, simply aren't aware of the shenanigans that go on in matchmaking. Playing games with small pools of players, and those players being people you know personally, is likely going to create an experience with less griefing. However, I honestly doubt that so many developers could remain blissfully unaware that many players can and will exploit whatever they can to grief the other players. When I started playing on Xbox Live after over three years of playing LANs with friends, I certainly didn't expect there would be so many assholes online who go out of their way to grief other players. But the existence of assholes online should be obvious to anyone who does anything gaming related. It should have been obvious that, unless great care was taken to prevent potential exploitation of the games mechanics and features, including investment systems, there would be armies of unscrupulous players willing and able to ruin the experience for other players for not only laughs, but also tangible benefits in the game.

Considering that investment systems remain commonplace in shooters tells me that the real decision-makers (the publishers) simply don't give a shit, and that they (wrongly) believe player investment systems, now often attached to microtransaction systems, are necessary to sell the game. But investment systems not only lend themselves to exploitation, they display a total lack of respect for the player's time, and are based on a flawed notion that they're needed to retain players over time. The fact that Halo 3 remained one of the top 3 most-played games on XBL for years without any investment system at all, even in the face of a surging Call of Duty franchise, shows that you don't need to subject players to literal days of playtime worth of grinding just to keep them engaged.

If investment systems are going to remain the norm, it is incumbent on developers to be fully aware of all the exploits, griefing, and other behaviors that can negatively impact the experience, and do a better job of asshole-proofing these games. It should have been painfully aware to 343i that Warzone as it currently functions was a griefer's dream come true, where all the "Gamesagers" of XBL can take advantage of the REQ system, level design, and rewards system to make other players miserable for fun and profit. A new and untested gametype like Warzone was also in great need of a beta of its own to attempt to catch these things before they happen.

Halo 5 had a lot of potential to be the best Halo game ever, but I feel that while 343i has a lot of great ideas, they still falter when it comes to execution. As I mentioned in my previous post, Warzone's greatest flaws could be easily remedied by better attention to map design, by doing better to encourage players to accomplish the actual primary objective (or make controlling capture points the main objective and do away with the "attack enemy base, destroy core" mechanic), and by making the REQ levels time-dependent, which is the only way to make it as balanced as possible. Halo 6 will probably still have an investment system, likely something like the REQ system, and 343i really needs to focus on doing everything in their power to cover every base in attempting to asshole-proof it as much as possible.