Oddball usually revolves around individuals or teams fighting for control of a ball in a keep away fashion. Standard games have players trying to control and hold the ball to gain points over time for holding onto the ball. Holding the ball generally handicaps the player in some way, almost always removing the ability to use any other weapon and only allowing beatdowns while sometimes slowing the player and removing the motion tracker. As a small consolation, sometimes the ball carrier gains the ability to instantly kill anybody with a single successful melee attack.
This is not always the case as sometimes the player is actually given benefits such as enhanced speed or larger range on the motion tracker (these frequently happen in Free for all games). The tweaks in this gametype usually revolve around a list of "ball traits" and "ball carrier traits" that effect the player, how the ball effects players around the ball carrier (sometimes tougher shields or infinite ammo for instance), and how they score points (sometimes you need to get kills but only kills count while holding the ball). There are even some traits that affect traits like gravity around the ball or drain health/shields from the ball carrier or players around them.
New to Halo 4 is the ability to pass the ball to friendly players. This makes it a lot easier to designate a certain player to hold the ball because of the team's skill or weapon configuration.
