: Fair enough, but how much did that really matter on the ground? When playing
: Halo 4, did you (or anyone here) ever feel like you were in an unfair game
: because you didn't have access to things other players did? I'm genuinely
: curious, because I certainly didn't. My experience was that the game did a
: decent job doing what 343 promised, which was to make it possible to tweak
: the game to fit my preferred play-style. I never felt like I was grinding
: for some elusive perk that would put me on a level playing field with my
: opponents. I had everything I wanted very, very quickly. Perhaps that
: means that many of the perks were useless and/or interchangeable, which is
: an entirely different problem.

Yes. They largely fixed the unbalanced aspects in this regard, though.

: So it sounds like if all of the choices in Halo 4 were unlocked from the
: start, you'd still be unhappy.

Because a lot of Halo 4's "choices" were garbage.

: My question is, how interesting is a perfectly level playing field, really?
: If everybody starts with Assault Rifles, but somebody spawns near a
: Needler and picks it up, isn't the game no longer perfectly level? Taken
: to it's extreme, an evenly matched game would have one gun. Everybody
: starts with DMRs, and the only way to interact with opponents is to shoot
: them five times in the head. I have no interest in playing a game like
: that, so my thinking is that perfect balance isn't the be-all-and-end-all
: of multiplayer design.

My answer to your question at the start of this paragraph is, "Did you ever play Halo 1, 2, or 3?"

My more thorough answer is that, yes, this did sometimes lead to really lopsided and unfair games. I can think of many times on Ascension (in the SMG start days) and many times on unfortunate Forged maps in Halo 3 (usually involving Foundry) where limited BR placements on the map would lead to the team that gets the BRs to outright dominate. Bungie did a good job of failing at a lot of things, so it wasn't just 343. Unfortunately, Halo 4 just plain sucks and is unable to be redeemed, unlike H2 or H3.

: Again, this is coming from somebody who has never tried the COD alternative.
: All I know is that as a player that likes variety, the customization in
: Halo 4 was a welcome change for me. Not perfect by any means - I didn't
: like how there was no way to tell which perks other players were using,
: for example - but it was probably the most fun I've had with matchmaking
: since Halo 2.

I'm not even taking CoD into account here. Alternative. And people who have issues with loadouts and AAs honestly need to get their BR up. All this crying about sprinting and jetpacks and whatnot. Just sad, especially among our better players here. Plain flat out sad. H4 handled loadouts wrong, sure, but Reach was a pretty good example of how they could be handled correctly (give or take some dumb options with some whack AAs).