In a way, though, it is 343's problem. Small arena style maps that promote fast and frenetic game play is one area where Halo has always excelled. And while not everyone is in to super competitive MLG, the core game play that makes MLG fun is universal across the board for everyone. I seriously don't understand the reasoning for taking out smaller maps, even with the addition of sprint being a base attribute. While sprint was limited in Reach, it was still there on small maps like reflection and never a problem.
It's 343's responsibility to design maps that work well with the sandbox they've created, including their design ideas for what kind of maps will create the style of play they want in their game, not one from a past game that they didn't even make. Nothing else.
It's not just sprint in H4 that makes larger maps play so much smaller, it's a sprint that lasts a LONG time, has a very short recharge, it's more powerful weapons across the board than the past two games including tremendous range of combat on some of the core weapons, it's a global and personal ordnance drop that is designed to spread powerups and weapons across different areas of the map keeping the gameplay more dynamic than in the past, it's a set of armor abilities that require space to deploy and use alongside global sprint, it's instant respawns in Slayer, and it's a spawning system that has been design to spawn you closer to teammates and the action than in the past few games.
343 has made a significantly faster paced Halo game than 3 or Reach with much larger maps. Old maps to not apply with the exact same design principles. It took me all of 5 minutes with the game to know that maps like Midship, Lockout, and Guardian would be a clusterfuck of a disaster.
I stopped watching when he claimed Halo 1's multiplayer was "so well balanced".
Fun? Yes
Balanced? Hardly.
