as posted at Halo Waypoint:
It’s been said that April showers bring May flowers. Considering the Matchmaking Systems Team was so busy this month they didn’t have time for daily body cleansing, they’d like to offer you a matchmaking playlist update in place of the more traditional botanical gift. The details of their aromatic bestowal are outlined below.
• Firefight updated.
The Firefight Arcade playlist was changed to Firefight, and new Firefight Arcade game types were added (with the original Firefight Arcade game types remaining intact). The new game types have been suffixed with NEP, which stands for “New Enemy Progression.” As indicated by the acronym, you will see a more diverse enemy offering in all three types of waves–initial, main, and boss. Making a triumphant return to the same playlist are Limited game types, in both their original form and with a new enemy progression.
Firefight Doubles was also updated, adding new enemy progressions alongside the original Firefight Doubles game types.
I believe there are only three things left to say. And that would be bip, bap, and bam!
• New 4v4 maps added to Arena, Super Slayer, and Team Slayer.
We know you’ve been waiting for new 4v4 playspaces, and with the help of the Community Cartographers, we were able to scour multiple submissions and implement a handful of the highlights. The new community-created maps added to Arena, Super Slayer, and Team Slayer were Ellul, Imago, Temple, Midas, Unconquered, and Pulse. All six were added to Super Slayer and Team Slayer, while Imago and Pulse were added to Arena (as we found them to be a good fit for the symmetrical, competitive spaces found in that particular playlist).
• Team Objective updated.
We’re always crunching numbers and looking at statistics to determine how we can improve your matchmaking experience. Reorganizing voting options is one of the results of that regular data mining. To ensure you get a diverse offering of map and game type selections, we updated the Team Objective voting options to have Capture the Flag in the first slot, Oddball or KOTH in the second slot, and one of the other available game types (Territories, Stockpile, Assault, etc.) in the third slot.
In addition to the voting reorganization, we’ve also implemented a credit stimulus based on win-scaling to spur the economy in this playlist. Basically, that’s a fancy way of saying victorious teams will receive double the normal win bonus. So cap those flags and arm those bombs already. Objective holders, I may or may not be looking at you….
• Speedflag updated to lower carrier speed.
In Speedflag, we noticed a trend of defending teams unable to catch up with flag carriers. While I suggested military physical training exercises as the fix, we opted to instead lower the carrier speed. Consider your Spartan officially off the hook. For now, anyway.
• ZB Slayer retired.
While the Zero Bloom Slayer playlist is being retired (gasp!), those game types are not disappearing from matchmaking (phew). Hop into the Super Slayer playlist to keep them in your regular rotation. Keep in mind the MLG playlist currently features Zero Bloom game types exclusively as well.
• Super Slayer voting options updated.
Super Slayer voting options were updated to have DMRs in the first voting slot, standard Slayer in the second slot, and the remaining game types (including the aforementioned Zero Bloom variants) in the third slot.
• User-created maps updated.
Updated versions of Select and Synapse were added to matchmaking, and updated Heavies variants Rasu, Delta Facility, Asphalt, and Cragmire were incorporated into the Big Team Battle playlist.
Look for these changes to go live on, near, or around next Tuesday.