I think that's overly conspiratorial. Occam's razor is that they simply didn't have enough time to complete the game. Considering how much better the game is now than at launch, I don't doubt a lot of the features we are missing and things like Spartan Ops' mission design would have been greatly improved with 6-9 months of extra dev time. *That* timeframe might have something to do with Next Gen X1 though--MS was pissed that Halo 2 missed its original 2003 date because that meant no Halo 3 at launch for the 360 (and seeing how Halo 2 and 3 turned out I think what happened was for the better.)
Not finishing the game is very plausible, I agree. However when I look at all the previous games having a ranking system and TrueSkill implementations when they first start UI design etc they would have placeholders/decisions very early on about rank in or out of the game. It's this decision making process early on where I think rank was lost, not so much at the crunch tail end of development. Just a guess anyhow and I can see merit in your rush to complete comment too.
Are there even enough players for trueskill to work perfectly anymore?
Ding Ding Ding! International players experience the worst skewing of this balancing act. Less population and regional skill matching equals poor results for close skill matching or quality host selection. Now combine team matching and you're in a world of lopsided games.
I think that this game would be better if all the weapons shot a little slower in pace, you die so fast and if you have a slightly laggy host you will be 5 shot before you can do much or react, I never remember death being this fast even in halo 2 with the BR's there.
Nah Halo 2 was wicked fast kill times and with the netcode/state of broadband back then you could wipe out 2 or 3 enemies on your own with just a grenade and BR. When you had the sword secondary and that awesomely fast weapon switching you were a run-and-gun-and-swish death machine. I'm glad Halo 4 has returned to this, Halo 3/Reach weighted team shooting too much where Halo 4 seems to have that great balance between solo power and team shooting IMO.
I want one vote variant/playlist where it's ramped up mods wise. Add in base traits with 2-3 fixed loadouts and NO personal ordnance e.g. resupply+dexterity+stealth+stability+110% movement+wheelman+drop recon+recharge+resistor. Call me crazy but I think these sorts of mods/perks all turned on as base without the Infinity style play would make the game more visceral and keep mostly even starts while pushing Halo forward. Anyhow I'd like to test this out and see how it plays in slayer+CTF. Make two vote variants with AA's on and then AA's off. BAM!
Legendary Slayer feedback:
I played a few games last night and for the most part this was fun. A few games really deteriorated into being essentially killed off spawn or quickly after and just become lopsided with ranged weapons. I didn't so much mind the AR starts but once I spawned I rarely could pick up a spawn weapon off map e.g. no precision rifles close to player spawns. Perhaps this was the intention for this playlist but it just rapidly makes for lopsided games, I was on both sides of winning and losing unfairly. If you're going to do AR starts with only one loadout please put quality weapons on the map, not overloaded power weapons either. Overall I had fun though.
A silly graphic for maps I don't get to play but own:
I wonder if there are any sales or free giveaways planned for DLC? Also what happened to Ravine and Erosion maps? They're never in matchmaking and everyone has those maps already???
