Brace yourself, updates are coming! In the Halo Bulletin posted last night Wednesday, Jan. 30th, 2013, Andy "Bravo" Dudynsky, part of 343 Industries Matchmaking Team, went into more details about the Team Doubles playlist being added this coming Monday along with some other playlists that he is excited to talk about.
Starting Monday, Feb. 4th, 2013 Team Doubles will be part of the regular matchmaking playlist options and they will feature three game types to choose from in the initial weeks which are Infinity Doubles, Doubles Pro, and CTF Doubles.
Infinity Doubles offers the Infinity Slayer experience in 2 vs 2 form. In this variant, players have the option to choose their custom loadout, and instant respawn and radar are enabled. Personal ordnance will kick in at the traditional 70 point mark, but the options are tweaked specifically for Team Doubles. Games are played up to 300 points.
Doubles Pro offers an experience that features preset game loadouts. The score limit is the same as above, but radar, personal ordnance and instant respawn are disabled.
CTF Doubles offers the ever-popular Capture the Flag game type, customized for 2 vs 2 play. Custom loadouts and radar are enabled, and respawn time is set to 10 seconds. Flag settings provide an optimal experience for small maps and teams: 5 flags to win, 3 second return, and 15 second reset. Lastly, your flag does not have to be home to score.
For map selection, Bravo said that they will be using slightly modified Haven, Abandon, Solace, and "several" community forge maps. He goes on to say that they "will continue to update the map pool on a regular basis to keep everything fresh." More details will be posted on the matchmaking forums before the playlist goes live.
Speaking of CTF [Capture The Flag], 343i will also be updating the CTF playlist to include two new maps to the gametype Relay and Exile. They will also be tweaking some of the settings on already existing maps such as, "the flag reset time on Adrift, Abandon, Solace and Relay will be dropped to 15 seconds to account for the smaller map size. " Last but not least a new option will be available when choosing the CTF playlist which is Infinity CTF and it is the same as regular CTF but with ordinances to add a touch of surprise to the gametype.
One more update that Bravo snuck into the bulletin this week was a name for the recently announced competitive playlist that will be coming out in the near future, and it's going to be called Team Throwdown. The playlist will feature multiple game types all tailored around the competitive gametypes ( aka MLG Customs) like Slayer, CTF, Extraction, and King of the Hill. Some details about this play list were posted on the forums:
- 4 vs 4
- Pre-set game loadouts
- Forced respawn timers
- No instant respawn
- Ordnance on re-supply timers
- Join-in-progress off
- No split-screen play
- Friendly fire on
- Max party size 4 with big party matching enforced
- No guests allowed
Bravo mentioned that this playlist would be released before the CSR [Competitive Skill Rank] does to ensure the playlist works smoothly for players. No time frame yet on how soon that will be.
The updates keep coming and as Bravo said in the update will also apply to me, If there are no articles from me next week "it’s because I’m playing Team Doubles and forgot to come to work." Happy Hunting.
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