Sir, I honestly thought the same exact things when Halo 4 was coming to light throughout the year. I honestly believed they were absolutely throwing this game down the toilet. Right down the -blam!-er. But have you played the game? Playing it entirely tossed my ideas about it out the window. Unlocks are near negligible, and I realize I must expand upon this quite deeply now. So here it goes: When it comes to the weapons, I cannot stress this enough, the weapon unlocks are the furthest thing from Call of Duty, you don't need to worry. You unlock them all within the first few levels, with exception to the suppressor and light rifle. But you get just about all the weapons in an hour or less of play, even as a less than average player. If you still find yourself blaming the disadvantage and gap after the first hour, you'll still be feeling the same way in a few days when you're entirely caught up. Because it can't possibly be the difference that's keeping you down at that point. I'm not just being an ass who's saying you should be superior enough to overcome it, but I'm really saying that objectively it must be the case. The gap is so infinitesimally small, I can use limits to prove that it actually equals zero. The loadouts themselves are so damn well balanced now, you only get further options by unlocking more, not stronger weapons. You don't see anybody dropping the assualt rifle just because it's a starting weapon and you've unlocked better stuff. You don't unlock better stuff, you just unlock more options. The specializations also seemed to be a different story. When I learned about the perks, I felt the game get even sketchier. I had accepted the weapons, but these late game perks seemed way too unbalanced. But they don't feel like it. They can be subtle and I can adapt really easily, most of the times without a death involved in discovering their perk. It's easy to identify who is possessing what perk, whether it be the stealth upgrade that reduces your visibility on radar, or the mounted turret upgrade that prevents it from overheating and allows people to -blam!- run quick with it. Frankly, if you can't adjust to that immediately, you were probably dead already because it suggests you ran at some guy with a machine gun turret in the first place without thinking; the perk isn't much of a factor at that point lol. Even Promethian vision is really well balanced. You can see that someone is spotting you with it on the radar and their eyes glow red as hell (It's a sweet visual effect to see) and they emit a weird growl. So if you're being sneaky you're immediately aware you've been spotted, and so you adapt. "Because that's what Spartans do. We adapt or we die." ~John 117. The unlock driven multiplayer isn't a factor anymore than it was in Reach, or even Halo 3, or even Halo 2. Hell, there hasn't been a game that didn't have some kind of ranking system in years. It just shows how much you've played. Tells you that that guy knows his -blam!-. The unlocks are not so game determining as in CoD. I never found myself going "Damn I really need to rank up to unlock that ____. Everyone is killing me with that, and I need it just to survive out there." Where in CoD your beginning unlocks suck, and you're only on par equipment wise with guys that just prestiged, and you're still down on the experience. Believe me, 3 out of 5 of my loadouts still use the Assault Rifle or the DMR, and one of the two first AAs I unlocked. All things that were given to me or I got in just a match or two of play. And even though I got the game over a week late, I didn't feel overly disadvantaged even though people had access to most of the games weapons and I still only had the DMR and Assault Rifle. But does the unlocks drive players? Does it quit playing for fun? I don't think so, I think plenty of people that are so driven by the unlocks, that they never just played for fun in the first place. They probably weren't that driven to play games before because there was no rewards, the rewards didn't change them. Furthermore, is it you who has stopped playing for fun? I gave the game a chance so I could have fun playing online, giving it my shot to kick the asses of others, and have tons of fun just playing with my friends. But you're refusing to play because you're afraid of feeling disenfranchised by a perceived gap that you think could cause you to lose sometimes. That doesn't sound like someone motivated by fun. And the story, that was the reason I bought the game. A lot of people on here challenged it. But it feels so much more Halo than Reach did. Also, it didn't dismantle established canon in the sake of a small and under-explained character exposition change that has no effect on the rest of the lore. Remember the game was directed with Frank O'Connor as the project lead. Just like he was on Halo 2 and 3. Halo is just as much his baby as everyone at Bungie too, and there are plenty of Bungie people there influencing the game, and working hard to establish external lore that still meshes with and enhances the game's canon. They're treating it quite well I believe. I entered that campaign with my skeptical face on, but I couldn't keep it up. I felt myself being swept away into a classic feeling Halo story in the same way that all of us long standing Seventh Column family members did oh-so-long ago. It's the same immersion into a story that we all got that dove us into this universe, the same feelings that lead each of us to be on this forum right now, our love of that game. It's a new direction, but one that is very well deserved. It doesn't abandon the Halo universe, but simply opens more doors within it, and I find myself excited for future development into the universe. Even in the form of the surprisingly well developed story that is happening in Spartan Ops, that is exciting. My real point here guys, is give it a chance and let yourself be immersed. With the changes in the combat system, it feels like Halo 3 again. I know we loved the health of Halo 1, but the way the shield health and physical health interacted in Reach just felt off, and even though I liked it, I didn't get that Halo feeling from playing it. Halo 4 brings that back full force, and the loadouts don't bother the gameplay that much. When you see those ordinance drops fall in at the start of the match, you're reminded that you're playing Halo, you're calling out to your teammates for what power weapon you're heading for, and where you see the enemies going. It becomes about that territory control again, and not a face-paced spaztic reaction, unlock the best weapons, skilless shoot-um-up. I entered that game really skeptical, prepared to be fully disappointed. But I was wonderfully surprised at how Halo the game felt. Don't let it divide us you guys. You're all like my family <3