Love a good fail posted, cheers for the laugh mate.
Every other game like this didn't previously include playlists like Fiesta, SWAT, and Infection as base content that was available all the time. It appears 343i are trying to use Halo's legendary, two decade history of custom mode playlists as their monetised "special events". Given that 343i also removed 'Random Weapon Spawns' as an option for custom games, preventing you from running Fiesta as a custom game mode yourself, it appears that this is actually their intention. If they remove SWAT after the Tactical OPs event, the community will fucking riot.
Most other games, such as battle royale, have limited maps/playlists to condense populations for fast matching and population search recycling. I agree it's a kick to the teeth somewhat but if it launched with infection, ranked, social, swat, dubs, BTB, and all the historic modes we'd likely see shit search times and player/skill/fireteam matching out the window.
It's not ideal but the overarching experience of fast games is likely paramount as well as content ebb and flow to keep different segments of the playerbase revisiting the game. Apex does such things. Few games have as many modes/playlists to support as Halo does, 343 is never going to make everyone happy all the time.
Sword bounce anyone? Gotta love a little latency skip at the worst possible time -