To the point, the next playlist update is currently in the works, testing will begin next week and we have a bit of information to share with you regarding what changes will take place. First and foremost, I'll cover the removal of Rumble Hardcore. For the vast majority of players this will not make you crawl into a corner and cry a thousand tears. While Rumble Hardcore does provide some intense gameplay which is popular amongst a small group of our fans, it's simply not popular enough to hold its weight as a matchmaking playlist. Perhaps you're asking 'Why do you remove playlists, why not just leave them all and add more?' which is a question we find ourselves answering on a fairly regular basis, so here's the short and sweet version.
Matchmaking is all about numbers. Who is playing in which playlists and how often they play. The purpose of matchmaking in Halo 2 is to enable users to find matches quickly and easily in a variety of popular categories of gameplay. The primary reason that matchmaking is reserved for popular categories of gameplay, is that for the service to function correctly there has to be a significant number of users active in each playlist at any given time. When a playlist drops in usage and users have a hard time finding a match, matchmaking isn't really serving its intended purpose any longer. That is the point in which we examine usage and start considering changing or removing playlists. We love our fans and we're excited about the fact that matchmaking has remained a very successful method of assisting players in enjoying the game even more than they can by only playing with their close friends, but the times do come when we have to remove something that people enjoy, it's unfortunate but it is necessary.
Now on to the happy stuff, new hotness! We'll be adding a new playlist in the next update which is the first iteration of a new program we're trying, in which we allow organizations from the fan community to design their own short term playlist. The lifetime of these playlists will vary depending on popularity, so if people really enjoy them we'll keep them around a little longer. The playlist we're adding was designed by a well known and established organization within the Halo fan community, we're not going to announce who they are quite yet, but we hope you'll enjoy the 'eccentric' twist that it adds to matchmaking playlists.
In addition to this new playlist, we'll be revising a few of our pre-existing lists. Double Team will undergo a much desired revision in which we're addressing some starting weapon and weapon set concerns. Notably, we're removing the sole 2v2 Pistols game on Lockout and we're also removing Gemini from the playlist entirely. SMG starts are being added to Midship games in Double Team and we're changing the weapon set to Human for Midship and Warlock on slayer gametypes only. There are a few other changes to Double Team that we'll address when we're closer to releasing the playlist, so keep an eye on the Optimatch forum for more information.
The Team SWAT playlist is holding strong at #2 just below Team Slayer. There has been a lot of discussion regarding the rank status of Team SWAT, many good points have been made to change the playlist to be ranked but just as many have been made to keep it unranked. We're still considering the future of this playlist and we're not making any changes to the rank status of it at this time, if you wish to discuss this issue you may do so in the Optimatch forum where there is a dedicated discussion thread for that specific topic. As for changes to the Team SWAT lineup, we're removing objective games from Lockout to address some negative gameplay issues; we're also removing Gemini from the Team SWAT playlist entirely. Gemini is an enjoyable map, but with the absence of grenades and the excess of teleporter camping on the map, gameplay is shifted from what SWAT is meant to be about, accuracy and awareness, not camping teleporters.
Not many other playlists are being affected in this update, as we're working on various other things at this time. It's also worth mentioning that Team SWAT gametypes in the Team Training playlist will now use SWAT Classic settings from the Team SWAT playlist, which means no more grenades in those gametypes. As always, since we're not yet finished with testing this is all subject to change, so we'll keep you informed of our progress when testing is completed!
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