Wow I hate Slayer Pro so much.
It's not the fact that it's DMR, Sprint only. That's my favourite setup in the game - If I can keep a wealth of DMR ammo and manage my sprint bar well, I am nearly always extremely happy with my performance. It's not even really the fact that there's no motion sensor - in many gametypes I quite like no motion sensor - and it was definitely my favourite way to play the previous Halo games.
It's the fact that people somehow turn into complete and utter fuckwits when Slayer Pro comes up. I'm not sure whether it's incompetence with the DMR for the vast majority of players, or the ease of the double melee/pummel, or maybe even the manic laughter you here from proximity chat while being assassinated - that indicates that people enjoy the assassination animations far too much. But for some reason, Slayer Pro turns the game into something resembling COD Hardcore mode. Numerous times on Reflection tonight I encountered enemy players crouching behind blocks/fountains/corners waiting for the next unsuspecting victim for their melee kills. I got wise to it of course, and altered my route and/or stuck with team mates to ensure no camper would go unpunished. This of course did nothing - as the enemy team resorted to camping with shotguns, sniper rifles and one player in particular - a rocket launcher. Let's ignore the fact that holding a wealth of power weapons is a quick and easy road to victory, and instead - hide in corners for a melee kill... if they see you, fire your power weapons for an easy kill and run off to a new spot to restart the process. The biggest offender were the plasma grenades... god forbid you put up a fight when noticing a corner camper, a total of 4 grenades headed in your direction and they ran to hide, waiting for the next easy encounter.
Ultimately, it's not the games fault - nor is it really the enemy team's fault - the strategy worked, something like 50-39. However it ended an otherwise amazing night of Halo on a sour note, and made everything seem thoroughly unenjoyable. I figure that it's a combination of two realizations that got me frustrated enough to post a rant on GAF. One, the motion sensor deserves to be in nearly all gametypes that involve power weapons. Some might not agree, given that it can assist campers/hiders/assassination-jockeys greatly. However it nearly always forces them to move dreadfully slow around the map to do so. The fact that they have to crouch walk to get the jump on someone 90% of the time, or reveal themselves on the motion sensor to move to a new position at any respectable speed, means that your average Halo player - that is, the Halo player who doesn't want to play COD hide and seek, can enjoy themselves and get revenge on douchebags.
The second realization is that there seems to be some revitalization of the userbase (some 50,000 users on tonight, normally it's 30-35k). This is great news for Reach - but the 'new' users that I seem to be getting matched with are exceedingly terrible and/or griefers. The level of 'point blank plasma grenade into armour lock', or 'realize I'm getting outgunned and spam every grenade I have before I die', or 'I can't DMR so I'll sprint double melee everyone I find' - are reaching new heights. I can deal with the vast majority of it, but it was starting to feel that either trueskill/matchmaking had weeded out these players, or started matching me against good/great players 99% of the time... the players who can use a sniper rifle, or have a good DMR battle, or best of all - use the handgun the way it was meant to be used, that is, pacing shots and outgunning an AR sprayer. Now since the spike in players, I'm seeing post-game screens where the tool of destruction for some players is the Assault Rifle at 10+ kills and no headshots the entire match, or a massive amount of players who are unloading entire clips of the handgun in 2 seconds flat, relying on luck to get them an accidental kill.
It's not all bad, these players are ultimately boosting my KDR/BPR/KD-Spread - and even moreso for my not-always-good-but-not-bad friend who is crawling from 0.99 KDR upto 1.04 much to his delight. It's just incredibly frustrating watching a small number of douchebags making many games slightly less enjoyable then it should be.