There is no doubt that Halo 3 for the Xbox 360 is a masterpiece.  Bungie really really really put in a lot of time and effort.  90% of this effort was put into the Forge system, and the Theater, where you can view the complete battle for the last 25 games you've played, in real-time, from any angle you want.  Awesome.  You can take screenshots, create movie clips, create your own levels, and share all of these with your friends.  Every stat from every game is tracked and viewable at Bungie's website.  This is nothing short of amazing.  No other studio has put this much thought into prolonging the life of one of its products.  Bravo Bungie, you are the best.

So why do I find myself getting bored playing Halo?  This shouldn't happen, should it?  Maybe it's just me?  It could be...  So I took a hard look at Halo 3, and decided to find out what was wrong.  Here are my findings:

1.  If I want to play Big Team Slayer on Sand Trap all day, I can't.

Unless I am hosting this specific game, and coincidentally I'm lucky enough to have 15 of my close friends on-line, there is simply no way to accomplish this.  If you want to play one specific game mode (let alone one specific map), you have to suffer through 3 or 4 random other game modes and levels until you come back to the one you actually enjoy playing.

This sucks.  It is something that seems so simple amongst all the complexities that Halo 3 offers, yet it doesn't exist.  I know in the past Bungie has stated that they dropped specific game searches because there are too many variables to account for, such as low-gravity, or no grenades, etc.  I think this is a bullshit argument.  There is no excuse for not putting in a multiplayer game search that supports 2 things:  What game type do you want, and what map.

That's it.  Let me choose a map and a mode.  I don't care about anything else.  If I could search for a low gravity oddball game with 10 people playing rockets only, that would be great - but it's not by any means something I expect.  I do expect the bare minimum, which is to be able to play with my buddies on a specific game mode or map of our choosing.

You could argue that this would upset the balance for ranked games, and you'd be right.  If you are playing a ranked match, it should be a random rotation of maps and game modes.  This keeps teams from just memorizing and mastering one map and demolishing everybody who comes their way.  But for unranked matches, having this simple search is a no-brainer.  Fix it Bungie.  Now.

2.  The mute system needs work.

There is an option in the game that allows you to just hear your party, rather than everybody in the whole game.  This is a godsend feature, especially when playing unranked games.  You don't have to be tortured by hearing every childish asshole on Xbox Live.  The problem is, if your party gets larger than 4 people, you have to hit the D-pad to talk.  I understand why this feature is there, it discourages annoyance in larger battles.  But if you have the party-only talk feature turned on, this press-to-talk requirement should simply go away.

Hitting a button to talk doesn't seem like a big deal, but it can get annoying, and lead to some disconnected team play.  Depending on how many of my friends are in my party, we may switch back and forth between ranked and social team slayer.  In ranked, we have a max party size of 4, so talking is all done naturally, with no need to push the D-pad.  Add one more person to the party, and you can't play ranked anymore (which is another thing I'll address below), however when you switch to social slayer, your party size of 5 now requires that you push a button to talk to your teammates.  I cannot tell you how much this negatively affects communication and team coordination.  It is night and day.  Thus, I present my solution:

Bungie, if I have my voice chat settings set to only talk and listen to the people of my party, then I can only potentially annoy the people in my party.  As such, when in this voice chat mode, please turn push-to-talk OFF.  Let me speak freely if I am only talking to my party!  If I have my voice chat settings so that the entire server can here my rants, then yes, I agree push-to-talk is a good feature, but please disable it if I am in party-only chat mode.  It just makes sense, and will help put the social back into social slayer.

3.  Increase ranked team slayer party size to 5 players

We have ranked 4 on 4, we have ranked big team 8 on 8, but I really think supporting 5 on 5 would be really cool.  I can't tell you how many times one extra friend has forced us to play on social instead of ranked.  Increase ranked team slayer to a max party size of 5, and please, no push-to-talk nonsense either.  I want to play ranked 5 on 5 with free speech.  Make it happen Bungie!

4.  There is no real way of discovering anything new and exciting going on in the Halo 3 community.  Please let us host public custom games!

The greatest strength of the Forge system is that it lets you create zany and wacky maps and game types.  Unfortunately, there is a choke-hold on the system.  If you want to play somebody else's creation, you better know their gamertag, and they better have shared the map on their fileshare.  If they didn't, there is no way you'll ever play their creation, nor discover anything new that anybody else has created.

If I want random strangers to be able to join my crazy Forge-created map, let me have that option!  There should be a special gaming mode (or even just a simple search feature) that allows me to join custom public maps and matches.  Maybe it will throw me into an empty room where everybody is forced to melee each other, or maybe I'll find myself playing a match with a giant soccer ball... who knows?  Well, we never will because there is no way to host a public custom game.  This keeps the Forge system exactly where it is... as an underused novelty, used only by those who make YouTube videos of crazy explosions.  Bungie spent a lot of time making this system, and what an incredible system it is!  Too bad it will never be mainstream, and as such, the potential longevity of Halo 3 is also cut off at the knees.

In conclusion, when going back and looking at all of the things that annoy me with Halo 3, these are the ones that were the most re-occurring.  I'm sure there are plenty of bugs and other annoyances the crop up from time to time, but those are mere blips on the radar compared to these problems that seem to come up much more frequently.

I'm sure the things on this list don't bother many people, and I realize that I may be alone in my wanting of these features, but hey, I figured I'd voice my opinion.

Thank you to those who listen.