This week, we’ve updated Matchmaking with a new Oddball playlist, updates to Team Throwdown, and more. Read below for all the details!

Oddball

The Oddball playlist is centered on two game modes: Oddball and Legendary Oddball. The first is the original game type that shipped with Halo 4, with personal Loadouts and random ball spawning enabled. Much like Legendary King of the Hill, Legendary Oddball offers an experience with BR-start Loadouts and static ball spawning, meaning that if the ball is played (thrown off the map), the ball will return to the same central location each time. These two experiences are available in the first and second voting slots of the playlist, respectively. One of the game types in the third voting slot is brand new to Halo, and contain lots of explosions and sticky things. Stickyball is here!

Stickyball

In Stickyball, players are equipped with the Sticky Detonator and Plasma Grenades. With projectiles and grenades sticking to people, walls and balls, teams fight over the Oddball while trying to avoid getting blown up. We hope you enjoy the game type and we’ll be monitoring feedback for possible inclusion into the Action Sack playlist after the Oddball playlist is replaced with Community Forge Ricochet on October 28th.

Team Throwdown Update

Team Throwdown, our premiere competitive playlist, have been updated to GH057ayame’s “v5” settings. Extensive testing went into the updated maps and game types, and the list of 11 map / game type combinations now looks like this:

Team Slayer on Abandon
Team Slayer on Haven
Extraction on Haven
Team Slayer on Onyx
Team Slayer on Pitfall
Ricochet on Pitfall
CTF on Simplex
Ricochet on Simplex
CTF on Skyline
Extraction on Station 9
Team Slayer on Vertigo

As of today, no DLC will be required to play in the Team Slayer playlist. After reviewing the last month of feedback and data from the playlist, we’ve decided to remove the Majestic DLC requirement. One of the primary goals of this experiment was to determine the feasibility of required DLC in Matchmaking, and while we knew the population of the playlist would drop, we found that the resulting numbers did not allow for the optimal Matchmaking experience for this playlist. Moving forward, we’ll continue to investigate the best ways to make DLC content available in Matchmaking. If you’d like to see where all of the DLC maps have been integrated into Matchmaking, this information is always available on the Halo 4 Playlists page. We thank you for your feedback, and encourage you to hop in and enjoy!

In Spartan Ops, we are continuing with an encore of episode 5 with Grunt Birthday Party, IWHBYD and Mythic Skulls enabled. Additionally, weekends in October feature big XP rewards, with increased values on weekend Challenges. If you’re looking for some extra XP, be sure to hop into Matchmaking over the next few weekends!