I often hear, in response to matchmaking and playlist complaints, that as an adjunct to matchmaking there should be a custom games browser. In theory, players would search for and match into games hosted by others around the world, ameliorating most of the concerns of map and gametype voting that matchmaking can subject players to. Players get the play experience they want, and all that has to be done is a bit of UI and networking.

Sounds reasonable, but giving Halo players anonymity, an audience, and Forge are why it can never work.

Players expecting a competitive, fun experience on their favourite map will be instead joining a forged-to-hell playspace where they and their friends are immobile and unable to do damage; their hosts with infinite sniper spawns and free movement, racking up sweet kills and lulz.

Given the chance, Halo players will routinely be terribly exploitative of their fellow players (case in point: Space area in Zealot) and a custom game browser would only bring this exploitation to the forefront, with only small percentage of maps actually being legitimately fair and fun to play.

While gametype options (health, player speed, starting weapons) can easily be represented in the UI at the beginning of the match, it would be almost impossible to represent the entirety of a map's possible Forge changes at the start of a round. Even if that could be accomplished, it would most likely be cluttered, and wide open for exploitation and hidden tweaks that give the host an unfair advantage.

Reporting offending hosts/maps would quickly become unwieldy, and impossible to oversee and govern. In fact, some people would take the chance to be as grossly offensive as possible in their map layouts, further clogging the reporting system.

Players do have the option to not enter this browser, but it has to be considered that people who don't play games much may accidentally or on a whim try to match into a custom game. If their first experience is unfair and/or offensive, they may not play the game much again, and will tell their friends exactly why. This kind of player needs to be considered from a design standpoint.

Discuss :)

Give players the option to choose browser or matchmaking. Provide further options to block forge maps. Done.

No sweat off my sack one way or another really. But I think it's kind of lame that things may need to be gimped(for lack of a better word) simply because there's some people who won't know how to work it.

Worked fine for Counter Strike.

@Soapy86 said:

Give players the option to choose browser or matchmaking. Provide further options to block forge maps. Done.

Extra options tend to confuse new players, but fair enough. However, many MLG maps are made in forge, or are forge tweaked versions of existing maps, and those would probably be in high demand for the type of player who would use a custom browser. Simply removing forged maps is too broad a stroke

@cmblasko said:

Worked fine for Counter Strike.

I haven't played it much, but I would think that there's no way to influence weapon availability unfairly in a custom game?

I think it would work fine. If you make it clear that matchmaking is the mp you expect and custom maps is the wild west and you could run into anything people would figure it out. You implement a voting system of some kind so the good maps rise to the top and the crap ones sink. You make the custom maps searchable by type for somebody who wants to play new slayer maps or wants to play something crazy. All this stuff was done in Trials Evolution and for the most part worked great.

And honestly if somebody goes into the wrong area, has one bad game and quits, then they're not the type to stick with the game regardless. Plus it's Halo, it's a known quantity at this point.

@SushiNao said:

@cmblasko said:

Worked fine for Counter Strike.

I haven't played it much, but I would think that there's no way to influence weapon availability unfairly in a custom game?

You can modify pretty much everything about the weapons.

@TheSouthernDandy said:

I think it would work fine. If you make it clear that matchmaking is the mp you expect and custom maps is the wild west and you could run into anything people would figure it out. You implement a voting system of some kind so the good maps rise to the top and the crap ones sink. You make the custom maps searchable by type for somebody who wants to play new slayer maps or wants to play something crazy. All this stuff was done in Trials Evolution and for the most part worked great.

And honestly if somebody goes into the wrong area, has one bad game and quits, then they're not the type to stick with the game regardless. Plus it's Halo, it's a known quantity at this point.

These are some really good points, Little Big Planet also came to mind while reading your post. I wonder if maybe Bungie's insanely high experience quality bar is colouring my thinking on the possibilities here. Thanks for the fresh viewpoint

@SushiNao said:

@cmblasko said:

Worked fine for Counter Strike.

I haven't played it much, but I would think that there's no way to influence weapon availability unfairly in a custom game?

Counter Strike on PC. For that matter, it's worked quite well for PC games since the '90's. Console games have had server browsers before. Ratchet Deadlocked had a server browser and it was A-OK.

Should Halo 4 have a server browser? The answer to that should invariably be yes, but I seriously doubt that it will have one at all. Yes, your fears aren't completely unfounded because those sorts of things do happen, but the beauty of being able to choose which game you jump into is just that - you have that ability, and I can guarantee you that you can and will find a few servers that you enjoy, especially with the huge audience that Halo still has. Well, you would if Halo 4 had a server browser. It most likely won't.

And if you don't like any of the games that are there, then either start your own or go to matchmaking.

umm it could work fine if you had some filtering implementations but who needs a server browser for halo? the matchmaking is fine for what it is

I don't have a hell of a lot of faith in the community. I can only imagine how much junk there would be out there to sift through to make this happen. I prefer 343 just concentrate on traditional matchmaking and not waste resources on this.

As a person who spent many hours meticulously crafting my own custom forge maps, I thought it was atrocious that Bungie never implemented any custom game searches into the game. The major thing that Halo was known for was being able to play crazy games with friends. Halo 1 you'd get a little lan party together, drink a few beers, and decide "Hey guys, guess what? Just rockets with infinite ammo." Now Halo gives you more options then ever to tweak everything - load outs, game types, even making the maps yourself. Having no way to find new players to utilize these features just makes it a waste of time.

It's not fucking hard either, you just have matchmaking, and then you have a server browser - or even a random matchmaking-esque feature for custom rooms. Want to see some crazy shit? click "Join random Custom Room" and get greeted with what truly makes Halo an exceptional experience. All this MLG format bullshit is the downfall of the entire series if you ask me, let's get back to the core - doing stupid shit with friends and acquaintances while reasonably inebriated.

Who cares if you jump into an unfair match when you're searching for custom maps? Limit the actual 'ranked' play to the same maps that there always has been, don't change that, just add the custom map search capabilities and you're golden. Halo has already had tons of various playlists that give or don't give ranked stuffs, I loved the 2v2 playlist and for a long time it wasn't included in the ranked matches I believe.

@allworkandlowpay said:

As a person who spent many hours meticulously crafting my own custom forge maps, I thought it was atrocious that Bungie never implemented any custom game searches into the game. The major thing that Halo was known for was being able to play crazy games with friends. Halo 1 you'd get a little lan party together, drink a few beers, and decide "Hey guys, guess what? Just rockets with infinite ammo." Now Halo gives you more options then ever to tweak everything - load outs, game types, even making the maps yourself. Having no way to find new players to utilize these features just makes it a waste of time.

It's not fucking hard either, you just have matchmaking, and then you have a server browser - or even a random matchmaking-esque feature for custom rooms. Want to see some crazy shit? click "Join random Custom Room" and get greeted with what truly makes Halo an exceptional experience. All this MLG format bullshit is the downfall of the entire series if you ask me, let's get back to the core - doing stupid shit with friends and acquaintances while reasonably inebriated.

Although I love playing MLG games in Halo, I do agree that more often than not people just want to have fun playing the game and aren't so concerned with competition or balance. I am often in the mood to try out some crazy game types or maps; a custom game browser would go a long way towards scratching that itch.

Being able to join random custom games is something that should have been done after Halo 2. It doesn't matter if the game you join is riddled with fools, simply back out and try again. If that's too much trouble just host your own for others to join. It would be nice to have something like this if we wanted to take a break from the competitive side of multiplayer. Forge and Custom Game Matchmaking is a really good idea and I'm sure many others agree.

@Druminator: I totally agree. People huff and puff because they joined a bad game... if you hate it make your own- Problem Solved.

Hey guys, I've just caught up on the thread, and I appreciate that I was able to stimulate some solid discussion about the nature of custom gaming in Halo. I'm thinking that I may have still been approaching this in terms of Bungie's extremely rigid 'experience quality control', which informed everything from the necessity for clean UI, to making a new users' first matchmaking experience enjoyable, to a veteran user knowing *exactly* why they're not performing well or having a good time. I still stand by the fact that there's far too many possible variables, inserted via extremely subtle forging, to maintain a perfect user experience, but maybe perfection isn't what's necessary.

I tend to take my Halo pretty seriously. I want competitive customs on creative, balanced maps, forged by people that have the same dedication to the user experience as myself. I'm realizing that this was influenced by Bungie's strict design, but it's also affected by my experiences in the last years of Halo 3's popularity, in which every custom game was a shitty Infection variant, often with power weapons wielded by the host/map creators, and the zombies scrambling with no cover. Yes, I can leave and see what else I can find, but there was no sure way to know that I would find a better play experience somewhere else.

Upon further thought, I'm realizing that the vast ocean of possible custom games being run would mean that there would be serious, competitive play, and it would be much more easily found. I still think that strict quality control governing map and gametype design is by far the best approach. Even though some feel they want more openness, they may not realize how much their fun can be affected by small changes; however, I definitely concede there are ways to go with this, with enough engineering creativity. Perhaps for Halo 5!

Thanks for the thoughtful discussion, guys. I hope you'll have more to add.

Give enough info in the menus and have an enforceable ability to flag exploitable maps. The community seemed to do a good job of letting the cream rise to the top with the forge maps anyways in the past it is perfectly within reason to suggest given an actual space to use such content outside of private games with friends they would go hog wild and curate it if the proper tools are available.