[quote][b]Posted by:[/b] A 3 Legged Goat Those things being bad for competitive gameplay can be disputed. [/quote] No they can't. Random elements induced by the game rather than the player in a vain effort to produce variety lower the game's competitive quality since it's no longer up to the player's skill to determine the degree and type of play that is done in a match and since people must now rely that much more on equipment rather than individual skill with such equipment. Some equipment will certainly be more useful simply because of the map that players are on, thus making some equipment preferable to others and directly ruining balance in an inherent fashion. To say that these new assets are completely useless is short minded, since a randomized weapon drop system (as far as the general weapon sandbox goes) could be useful to a degree and since these new AA's could create new possibilities for map design (like they could have done so in Reach and did so in Reach's MLG). I can even think of a way to use loadouts (not Custom loadouts) that would better compliment the amount of weapons put into the game by making the general format of preset loadouts to be utility/appropriate general sandbox weapon, which would induce variety while relying on the balance of the sandbox, which is that much easier to accomplish with the inclusion of the utility as a concept. The problem is that the implementation of these new elements are all done wrong from a competitive standpoint and leave a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully the settings are flexible enough to allow for what I am talking about to be achieved. [Edited on 09.03.2012 10:00 AM PDT]