What you post is literally just a means to your own end with little to no positive input, it's all negative to prove a point. Which is a waste of time to read for myself and I'm guessing the developers too.
I understand what low population does, I understand what it's like to have your beloved settings changed and have to play what you consider a lesser or more random game. I have lived with all the cheaters/grief from Halo 2, the community decline of objective since mid-life Halo 3, a further decline in objective to almost nil with Reach but now I'm actually happy to play 343i version of CTF or Infinity etc because it actually restored population from the community and got them wanting to plat CTF over say KOTH or oddball or even slayer for example. It also got me playing slayer which was never my preferred playlist at all either. So they are doing some things right, just not by you it seems.
I just read you making statements to suit your outcome mate. Sure there are consumers unhappy but they are far outweighed by happy consumers. If your logic was correct that no one wants AA's or specialisations then the sales wouldn't have topped Reach and Halo 3 in the first week by selling literally millions of copies. The reviews for the most part wouldn't have been 80-95 on average. Reach would have scared everyone away and no one would have bought or returned for Halo 4, that clearly is not the case.
Further look at the history of matchmaking percentages of what playlists were/are popular. Grifball and Infection/Flood/Living Dead have consistently equalled or exceeded MLG or hardcore playlists every time for many years and even since the late days of Halo 3 I might add. Take a look in the Halo 4 playlists and you'll see infinity slayer is more popular than slayer pro by a large margin, same for BTB infinity, same for Flood. What does that tell you? The majority don't care for your classic settings. Now combine all playlists that aren't classic and you'll see it's a landslide for casual players over hardcore with respect to Halo settings.
Most hardcore even write off the Waypoint forums as "noobs or tryhards" simply because they like the default game. Again just your means to an end.
Granted settings are to be tweaked and bugs to be fixed but then look at the Reach TU and all those anniversary map packs or Halo 2 or Halo 3 they've all had their share of changes and TU's. The same splintered from within hardcore crowd can't even decide on a universal setting let alone actually like what a series of Halo developers put in front of them across Halo 3, Reach & Halo 4 as well. Look at MLG H3, look at MLG Reach, look at TU Anniversary & maps and now look towards more 343i managing more frequent playlists, cycling and confirmation of reworking slayer pro to be more competitive. The fact is the developers are trying to please a part of the population that loves classic but literally that crowd doesn't have a consensus setting and are notoriously a very difficult crowd to please. They are also a minority when looking at the larger scope of Halo.
Also the population started to leave en masse in the late life of Halo 3, it's more to do with the FPS competition landscape and player fatigue on the franchise. Further statistics are calculated differently and once again Halo 4 is still #2 on the XBL charts. Fuck me what more do you want? Everyone to love your exact Halo multiplayer single setting, play nothing else and always be #1 by a landslide. Seriously it's not as bad as you make out at all.
Further you can always hop on Halo 3 for your fix or a modded custom game, again those numbers are not as high as you claim. None of the statistics you ever post include customs, SPOPS, campaign, coop etc either so perhaps you're missing a large gap of player numbers and choose to ignore the XBL charts of #2 when these other game modes are taken into account.
Sure the studio had its hands full and the game came to a crunch period. Do you not realise this happens on just about all games? The designers and developers love to push, advance and bite off more than they can chew in the interest of ground breaking or feature rich games. Smaller studios have the same issues too. Look at Bungie with CE nearly losing multiplayer all together or Halo 2 where they literally split the game off with a cliff-hanger and then made Halo 3 or Halo 3 and all the cheaters and bugs etc. Clearly you do not work in a developer/designer capacity or just choose to ignore such commonality in the game development industry and game release results. Just look at your beloved speed runs and the amount of glitches/game faults that get exploited. It's code and it's going to have bugs that require iterative approaches as well as consumer patches for player satisfaction.
Honestly you need to chill the fuck out with your personal agenda for Halo. 343i already acknowledged a reworking of Slayer Pro and I'm sure they'll support a MLG playlist. Most likely part of the waiting for the new classic playlist is to allow time for the MLG playlist/settings to mature so 343i can decide which or both playlists to go with and with what settings.
For the postitive side; what did I do throughout those years that my loved objective declined? I got vocal and constructive on the B.net & Waypoint forums. Personally I contributed to the Halo 3 objective playlist thread as much as I could and even helped with the return of Team Throwback in Halo 3, then what happened? The community just didn't want to play objective no matter how many settings got tweaked or playlists got rotated.
It's a harsh reality when the community doesn't want to play your preferred map or your settings etc but that's why I champion my filters and toggles version of matchmaking so the minority don't get outvoted or cut from development process as much.
For the record I do holistically support the hardcode/classic ideal that the developer should allow customisation to drop flags, no waypoints, toggle instant spawn, tweak spawns etc etc. Those lacking features or old classic settings are dropping the ball but after the change in the FPS landscape and declining population of Halo multiplayer in general since late Halo 3 plus the clusterfuck that was Reach pre/post TU it was time for drastic moves by the Halo developers. 343i had the courage to do what was required, they also have the business sense to support what they built. It's XMAS for fuck sake and they're on holiday, expect more early next year. Take that as you will.
343i have done great work in reducing the playlists and creating more uniform game settings between playlists. Now they just need to bug fix, bring in some custom settings or Forge tweaks, get some smaller/cleaner maps for competitives and fix up incomplete features. I fully expect with a full "practised studio" and Halo 5 the level of AI, features and game engine abilities in general are going to far exceed what Halo 4 or Reach ever could with the old xbox 360 hardware.
As for outsourcing you're missing the point, all of you. They outsource to the best and most experienced for each field. Take a look at the CGI quality, the right company and skills got hired. Take a look at the map pack and the same company and personnel that have been working at Bungie or outsourced by Bungie have been hired. Take a look at the engine. Take a look at the physics, take a look at the BINK video. I actually congratulate them for realising they are a new studio and certain parts of the game or engine should be handled by those who are the experts.
