When I had first heard that Halo 4 was coming out, I was very, very excited. I couldn't wait for the new campaign, and the online had me excited, but I was absolutely ecstatic for Forge mode. I wanted to know what 343i would do with Forge! I thought they might be able to do some cool stuff with Forge! It seems I was wrong. There are many, many problems with Forge now. It's broken. When saving and loading a map, the pieces become misaligned by a few degrees, and sometimes even a coordinate. The removal of Precise editing is absolutely ridiculous, and the lack of an ability to zoom in while in Monitor mode just makes it worse. 90% of the items are copied from Reach, badly. The few items that 343i actually added to the game are terrible to use. All of the items have way too many details. The maps are way too small, and none of them have any extremely good areas on them whatsoever.

Let me start with the broken saving/loading. If you Forge, you've probably already noticed that, when you load a map, it looks slightly weird. You probably found out that the pieces all are either off a few degrees, or are moved a coordinate or two. Now, I know that this doesn't sound very bad, but let me explain. When you've got a very large object, say, the Wall Coliseum, if it goes off by just one degree, it doesn't seem like much, but it moves a very large amount at the ends. Not only that, but it makes the map look slightly off if it's not fixed. But it's just a degree or so, I can just fix it, right? Well, yes. The problem gets very bad when you end up having somewhere around 200+ objects on the map, and about 80% of them do this, whether you lock them or not. When you have to fix around 160 objects, this process becomes a GIGANTIC waste of time.

Another waste of time is trying to align objects in the correct place when there are no magnets on the object at the right place, and it's off the coordinate grid. In Halo: Reach, this was easily fixed. You could just hold down the left thumbstick, and you would enter precise editing mode, where the object would move extremely slowly, and this would allow for very, well, precise editing. This feature has been removed. Completely. There is nothing to replace what many Forgers considered one of the absolute best additions to Halo: Reach's Forge mode.

Speaking of additions to Reach, why don't we talk about the lack of zoom in Monitor mode? Well, this mostly went along with precise editing, but could still be useful. If we had it. Zoom was mainly used when precise editing within Forge, but could also be used when editing the location or angle of a large object to a specific degree or coordinate. This feature is now gone, and makes it that much more difficult to edit quickly. I was very disappointed to see this feature removed.

Guess what wasn't removed! Most of the items from Reach. In fact, they were barely even touched, other than re-textures. There are a few items missing in different maps, though. 343i should have had the ingenuity to create more than just 15 or 20 new items for each of the Forge maps. They shouldn't have even had to include the items from Reach. Now, don't get me wrong here. Some of the items from Reach were very, very good, and definitely should be back. Specifically, the items from the "Blocks" section of "Structure" items. They were great.

Those items were great. Were. They are not anymore. Most of them, at least. In my own opinion, some of the most useful items in the game were the "Flat" items within the "Blocks" section of the Forge Items "Structure" Menu. These, 343i has decided, should now have part of it missing on the side. You may have noticed it. It's nothing major affecting the object, but if you have two of these objects in series, facing the same direction, then you will have a hole in what was often used as a wall. This is a gigantic annoyance, as many maps require the player to be unable to see outside the map. This hole allows them to. It may also allow the player to see to, and shoot at, parts of the map that the creator doesn't want them to. This is completely unwanted.

Also unwanted are most of the items with which 343i have provided us. I'm not saying they're terrible, but they suck. Most of the items they gave us that they added to the game (in terms of "Structure" items) are terrible. I say this because the objects only mix well with other objects 343i have made. They just don't work well at all with the objects imported from Reach. The best example would be those in the map "Impact". The objects they created for this map just don't mix with the other objects they got from Reach. None of them are even remotely close to the same size as any of the other objects.

Along with this comes the detailing. When you phase two objects together, the details always mix. This was very good in Halo 3 with Ghost Merging (Which is what eventually went on to become Phasing in Halo: Reach) because the objects lacked details. The reason this was good was that, because of the lack of details in objects, they would actually look nice when phased. When Reach hit, many Forgers were annoyed because the objects would almost always look terrible when phased together. Many Forgers wanted the objects to become less detailed. Instead of doing this, 343i has actually made objects more detailed. This only makes it more difficult to make maps actually look good. If a Forger becomes determined to make a map that looks good and plays well, it will take them hours longer, and probably still not look all too great.

And onto the Maps. The maps are much too small. Frankly, in my own opinion, I believed Forge World in Halo: Reach was too small, but that's because of how much of it was inaccessible due to water, death barriers, etc. Now the maps have even less land and space in them. For the little space the maps actually have, only one of the maps has any good area for Forge whatsoever. That map happens to be Erosion. The only part of the map that is actually good for Forging is in the very large sized building, and that happens to feel weird due to the positions of the doors and the area inside of it that is back, and higher than the rest. Of course, this is only my opinion.

So, in conclusion, Forge mode is broken. When saving and loading a map, the pieces become misaligned by a few degrees, and sometimes even a coordinate. The removal of Precise editing is absolutely ridiculous, and the lack of an ability to zoom in while in Monitor mode just makes it worse. 90% of the items are copied from Reach, badly. The few items that 343i actually added to the game are terrible to use. All of the items have way too many details. The maps are way too small, and none of them have any extremely good areas on them whatsoever.
____________________________

TL;DR Version:
Forge mode has been broken. Here's the reasons:

*When saving and loading a map, the pieces become misaligned by a few degrees, and sometimes even a coordinate.

*The removal of Precise editing is absolutely ridiculous, and the lack of an ability to zoom in while in Monitor mode just makes it worse.

*90% of the items are copied from Reach, badly.

*The few items that 343i actually added to the game are terrible to use.

*All of the items have way too many details.

*The maps are way too small, and none of them have any extremely good areas on them


Of course, these are all my own opinions. Feel free to share your opinion on Forge Mode!