: 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.

Yes. For example, when someone has played long enough to get the Wheelman perk (takes well over 500 matches at minimum as you must finish the Operator specialization), they have a serious advantage on big maps. A competent Banshee pilot or other vehicle specialist can run roughshod on lower-ranked players even more so than normal as they can sustain more damage and don't suffer from the effects of a charged shot for more than a second or two. For players that are just starting and haven't even unlocked the plasma pistol yet, they're at an even bigger disadvantage. In addition, there's no way to counter the Wheelman perk as there's no other perk that helps when fighting against vehicles.

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

It would be better if everything was unlocked from the get-go, but even then a game with as many player variables as Halo 4 (primary & secondary weapons, grenades, AAs, and two classes of perks) is difficult to balance properly. The easiest way to balance things is to keep it as simple as possible, but no simpler. In other words, at spawn, players should be restricted to the classic "Golden Tripod" of guns, grenades, and melees, and all spawning weapons should be identical. Note that this applies for competitive matchmaking games only. I don't have a problem with loadouts, even custom ones, so long as they're restricted to customs and perhaps a few select gametypes in MM (mainly ones that are inherently asymmetrical or ones that are more "casual").

: My question is, how interesting is a perfectly level playing field, really?

"Interesting" is entirely subjective. "Balance" is largely objective. Giving Player A access to more and better gear and abilities than Player B just because they sunk more hours into a game than Player B did gives Player A an unfair advantage over Player B, hence it is unbalanced.

But I found Halo to be most "interesting" to me back when it was on a level playing field. I hardly touch Halo 4 anymore. I've played only 87 matches this year. Back in the Halo 2, 3, & Reach days, I was still doing at least that every month at this point after launch. We're almost two years after Halo 4's release, and I've only played a little over 1000 matches. Between Halo 2 & 3 I played almost 12,000 matches. In Reach, I've played almost 3700 matches, almost all of which were before Halo 4 came out. I'd still be playing Reach as frequently as I once did had it not been for everyone jumping ship to Halo 4 (I don't like going into MM alone). Halo 4 is the first Halo game I just didn't feel compelled to keep playing regularly well after launch.

: If everybody starts with Assault Rifles, but somebody spawns near a
: Needler and picks it up, isn't the game no longer perfectly level?

It's still on a level playing field because everyone starts equal and has equal access to all on-map resources. Picking up an on-map weapon that everyone has equal access to does not confer an unfair advantage. Now, if a map was designed to where only one team had access to power weapons at the start, or if said weapons only respawn on their side of the map for maps where you only spawn on one side, that would be unbalanced.

: 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.

Nobody's saying that Halo should be a one-gun game. That's reaching argumentum ad absurdum levels. This is why we don't take things to extremes. Besides, as I've already mentioned having weapons on the map does not necessarily result in an non-level playing field.

: 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've played several COD games (COD2, MW1, MW2, BlOps, and BlOps2) and the only one I ever really cared for was COD2, which incidentally has simple preset loadouts (you get to pick from like six primary weapons per faction, usually a semi-auto rifle, bolt-action rifle, shotgun, sniper rifle, and two different automatic weapons; your secondary weapon and grenade type is fixed and there are no perks or killstreaks). I'm just glad I borrowed the others. I kept thinking "Maybe this one will be better," and each time it fails to hold my interest longer than a few days. There's nothing fun about being rolled over by other players just because they had better gear and abilities that they "earned" simply by spending enough time in the Skinner box.