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[mo60]

I hear they're removing AR from The Arena? Thank god!

AR as loadout weapon or AR variants on some maps?

Edit: It looks like it will be pistol only loadouts in the summer pro season.That will be fun when other players try to kill people that have smg's or storm rifleswith their pistols.

 

[Trup1aya]

For the exact opposite reason actually. It's pretty much entirely cross mapping from people you can't see and spawn killing. Plays like shit.


Nerf autos and you get the entire casual community raging. The competitive fans aren't the only ones which matter.

I dont think that's true. Well, it's only true if you do a bad job balancing.

The problem with autos is that no matter how skilled you are you can't counter them. As mentioned in this article, there's no difference in how effectively are used by scrubs and by top players.

Dig deeper and you find that you cant out maneuver an auto user because the aim assist and magnetism are so high and the spread is so tight. Also the perfect kill time is too fast. If you tone these things down it will have little effect on lower skilled players (because their movement is trash anyway), but it would allow high skilled players with precision weapons to turn the tide.

They can keep autos as powerful as they are, but make it harder to effectively use that power against a skilled opponent. That's balance.


Not only that but the req system provides an avenue to tweak weapons without having them massively impact every game mode. For example they could add an AR variant that is competitively viable and use it in Team Arena, while other modes could start with the current AR.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I hate the term, "balance," if it simply means making every single weapon equal to each other. I know I've griped about it in the past, but when all the weapons are equal to each other it just makes everything bland. And I certainly don't care about realism. Just because an automatic weapon in real life should be able to mow someone down at close range doesn't mean that it makes a game play better by automatics being "realistic." If you want to have automatics kill fast at super close range, as in almost being in melee range? Fine. But none of this mid-range bullshit just because that's "fair" or "realistic."

I like it when balance means making the weapons that are harder to use, more powerful. That's what made Halo CE great. I think it's what made Halo 2 and even Halo 3 (to a lesser extent) great. At some point all the weapons in Halo started to be more equal to each other with the exception of power weapons, and I don't believe the change has made the game any better or more attractive from a competitive standpoint. And that's all i have to say about that.

 

[User 73706]

SWAT is a good place to practice your headshots.

 

[jem0208]

SWAT is a good place to practice your headshots.

I pretty much play it to warm up.


It's also quite fun just to mess around in.

 

[BizzyBum]

So they are removing ARs as pick up weapons, too? That's a pretty crazy change. IMO, they should keep 1 (maybe 2 depending on the map) as pickups, remove silencer so they are just regular ARs, and increase the spawn rates on them. Perhaps adjust ammo as well. This along with no AR as a starting weapon would seem better. Though if I had to choose I would pick no AR over starting AR.

The sword removal seems like an easy out. Why not just remove the speed boost and keep it in? Removal of all splinters is awesome though embarrassing it took them nearly 2 years to make these competitive adjustments.

 

[op_ivy]

Some details on the upcoming Pro League settings

https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/news/summer-2017-feedback-updates-more

Sounds like welcomed and good changes. Good shit.

 

[mo60]

Barely won this strongholds match yesterday. Someone on my team got nearly 50 kills in that match.

The guy who got 47 kills in that match was on the opposite team in the next match and proceeded to crush my team.

 

[Feel the Swift]

Thank god they got rid of AR.

Plasma Rifle is seen as a problem but not SR? Really?

 

[Trup1aya]

I hate the term, "balance," if it simply means making every single weapon equal to each other. I know I've griped about it in the past, but when all the weapons are equal to each other it just makes everything bland. And I certainly don't care about realism. Just because an automatic weapon in real life should be able to mow someone down at close range doesn't mean that it makes a game play better by automatics being "realistic." If you want to have automatics kill fast at super close range, as in almost being in melee range? Fine. But none of this mid-range bullshit just because that's "fair" or "realistic."

I like it when balance means making the weapons that are harder to use, more powerful. That's what made Halo CE great. I think it's what made Halo 2 and even Halo 3 (to a lesser extent) great. At some point all the weapons in Halo started to be more equal to each other with the exception of power weapons, and I don't believe the change has made the game any better or more attractive from a competitive standpoint. And that's all i have to say about that.

I agree with this definition of balance. That's why I said

They can keep autos as powerful as they are, but make it harder to effectively use that power against a skilled opponent. That's balance.

I think of it like tipping a scale, the lower the weapon grades in power, the easier it should be to use. The higher a weapon grades in power, the harder it should be to use.

ARs are too powerful for how easy they are. I don't think nerfing their damage to match their ease is a good solution, because that would make them useless.

A good solution would be to increase their difficulty to match their power.

Beyond that the auto sandbox is messed up, because everything is just an upgrade to the AR. Its like they think damage output is the only way to differentiate. The SMG is totally redundant. What happened to the plasma rifle- slow moving projectiles that were strong against shields, and slowed the target down. Now we have a storm rifle that might as well be hitscan with a crazy low TTK.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

I wonder if 343 is considering a change from everything-is-hitscan* to using more projectile-based designs for the human weapons. I think that could help balance the autos a bit, at least for Halo 6.

And yeah, netcode etc., but there already are projectile weapons in Halo 5 that feel fine, so I don't think it'd be a problem going forward. A 4sk projectile Pistol with 2x zoom could be just what this game needs ;]

 

[TCKaos]

AR as loadout weapon or AR variants on some maps?

Edit: It looks like it will be pistol only loadouts in the summer pro season.That will be fun when other players try to kill people that have smg's or storm rifleswith their pistols.

Were you going to outshoot them with your AR? You could kill them with your pistol if you're quick enough on the draw, but you're not gonna' out auto an SMG or Storm Rifle with an AR unless the other guy fuckin' blows, in which case you should be able to out shoot them with a pistol anyway.

 

[jem0208]

Thank god they got rid of AR.

Plasma Rifle is seen as a problem but not SR? Really?

SR is now a tier 2 weapon (shotgun level) so it's not really a problem anymore.

The plasma rifle was a tier 1weapon.

 

[mo60]

Were you going to outshoot them with your AR? You could kill them with your pistol if you're quick enough on the draw, but you're not gonna' out auto an SMG or Storm Rifle with an AR unless the other guy fuckin' blows, in which case you should be able to out shoot them with a pistol anyway.

Usually I use an ar in close range and a pistol,carbine or br if I can find one on the map in close to mid range. I tried killing someone with a smg or storm rifle with an ar before but I got destroyed.

 

[YourExWife]

Usually I use an ar in close range

Which you can still do if you pick one up.

and a pistol,carbine or br if I can find one on the map in close to mid range.

Which you can still do if you pick one up.

I tried killing someone with a smg or storm rifle with an ar before but I got destroyed.

Which you can still do if you pick one up...

...making me wonder what your original point was in the first place...

 

[Haruko]

Barely won this strongholds match yesterday. Someone on my team got nearly 50 kills in that match.

The guy who got 47 kills in that match was on the opposite team in the next match and proceeded to crush my team.

That guy is also a true smurf; didn't even bother to change his gamertag from the one assigned on account creation, lol.

 

[Cranster]

I wonder if 343 is considering a change from everything-is-hitscan* to using more projectile-based designs for the human weapons. I think that could help balance the autos a bit, at least for Halo 6.

And yeah, netcode etc., but there already are projectile weapons in Halo 5 that feel fine, so I don't think it'd be a problem going forward. A 4sk projectile Pistol with 2x zoom could be just what this game needs ;]

Screw that. That is one of the reasons why Halo 3's gameplay has aged poorly compared to Halo 2, Halo Reach and Halo 4.

 

[Deputy Moonman]

I agree with this definition of balance. That's why I said



I think of it like tipping a scale, the lower the weapon grades in power, the easier it should be to use. The higher a weapon grades in power, the harder it should be to use.

ARs are too powerful for how easy they are. I don't think nerfing their damage to match their ease is a good solution, because that would make them useless.

A good solution would be to increase their difficulty to match their power.

Beyond that the auto sandbox is messed up, because everything is just an upgrade to the AR. Its like they think damage output is the only way to differentiate. The SMG is totally redundant. What happened to the plasma rifle- slow moving projectiles that were strong against shields, and slowed the target down. Now we have a storm rifle that might as well be hitscan with a crazy low TTK.

I saw your post and totally agreed, which made me want to write something too lol. I should have quoted your post, but didn't.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

Screw that. That is one of the reasons why Halo 3's gameplay has aged poorly compared to Halo 2, Halo Reach and Halo 4.

Halo CE has projectile weapons and going back to that feels fine. Tons of other games on the market also have projectile weapons and they're loved by people, such as Battlefield and Overwatch, not to mention a majority of the non UNSC weapons are projectile-based in Halo 5.

Halo 3's sandbox not holding up (degrees of which are arguable anyway) is not a strong reason to be against projectile weapons imo.

 

[Cranster]

Halo CE has projectile weapons and going back to that feels fine. Tons of other games on the market also have projectile weapons and they're loved by people, such as Battlefield and Overwatch, not to mention a majority of the non UNSC weapons are projectile-based in Halo 5.

Halo 3's sandbox not holding up (degrees of which are arguable anyway) is not a strong reason to be against projectile weapons imo.

It is a valid argument because they literally had to increase hitboxes in Halo 1 to make the game playable online in the MCC. That and Halo 3's projectile based weapons were inconsistent/random at best.

 

[clav]

Halo 3 is terrible online.

You can never really tell when you need to stop aiming until you see the message pop up in the lower left hand corner.

Can only play Halo 2A online as even Halo 2 is not the way I remember.

Halo CE plays similar to how it was on PC.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

I really wonder if people saying Halo 3 online is terrible is a result of them not leading shots at certain ranges and trying to take shields away with heads hots exclusively (it was wiser to shoot the chest 3 times and follow up with a headshot).

Once I got in the habit of doing that the game itself wasn't bad, it was just the typical peer to peer host connection woes.

FUNKNOWN's suggestion of autos being projectile sounds really cool. Even making the pistol projectile to increase the effective distance would be interesting imo.

 

[YourExWife]

I really wonder if people saying Halo 3 online is terrible is a result of them not leading shots at certain ranges and trying to take shields away with heads hots exclusively (it was wiser to shoot the chest 3 times and follow up with a headshot).

Once I got in the habit of doing that the game itself wasn't bad, it was just the typical peer to peer host connection woes.

FUNKNOWN's suggestion of autos being projectile sounds really cool. Even making the pistol projectile to increase the effective distance would be interesting imo.

No. I know how to play Halo 3 properly. Halo 3 online was just always a struggle. And then, even on the best of connections, you could lose a fight due to random spread.

It was especially terrible for those of us who don't happen to live in a metropolitan area or on the coasts. You think people have connection issues now sometimes? It was much worse with og h3.

 

[Unfriendly TimeTraveler]

Tried playing halo 5 but fats keep hacking my game and not letting me load in warzone games. He's a meanie.

Don't know how I feel about removing the AR from starting load out but seems like something a little thought out and leads to people needing more skill than luck in some one on one firefights.

 

[Cranster]

I really wonder if people saying Halo 3 online is terrible is a result of them not leading shots at certain ranges and trying to take shields away with heads hots exclusively (it was wiser to shoot the chest 3 times and follow up with a headshot).

Once I got in the habit of doing that the game itself wasn't bad, it was just the typical peer to peer host connection woes.

FUNKNOWN's suggestion of autos being projectile sounds really cool. Even making the pistol projectile to increase the effective distance would be interesting imo.

It is random and inconsistent. Say what you want about hitscan, but it helps ensure that the gunplay stay's as consistent as much as possible.

 

[FUNKNOWN iXi]

It is a valid argument because they literally had to increase hitboxes in Halo 1 to make the game playable online in the MCC. That and Halo 3's projectile based weapons were inconsistent/random at best.

But Halo 5 already has projectile weapons, just not with the UNSC rifles (AR, Pistol, BR, DMR, Sniper). The Carbine and Light Rifle are both projectile weapons, and they work fine.

Halo 3's online experience in 2007 and in TMCC is much different than where we are today, both in terms of game design and netcode reliability*.

*

Spoiler

Unless of course you're from Australia etc.

EDIT:

The Carbine and the Light Rifle both work fine because they're hitscan. Projectile weapons are a terrible idea for the franchise, especially given the variable quality of Halo 5's servers that are middling at best and absurdly inconsistent at worst.

They're hitscan? Did not know that.

Either way, are we assuming Halo 6's netcode won't be reliable enough to justify projectile weapons? If your answer is "Hell no it won't.." then there's no discussion to be had lol, and I guess I couldn't blame you considering the issues people are still facing today.

 

[TCKaos]

But Halo 5 already has projectile weapons, just not with the UNSC rifles (AR, Pistol, BR, DMR, Sniper). The Carbine and Light Rifle are both projectile weapons, and they work fine.

Halo 3's online experience in 2007 and in TMCC is much different than where we are today, both in terms of game design and netcode reliability*.

*

Spoiler

Unless of course you're from Australia etc.

The Carbine and the Light Rifle both work fine because they're hitscan. Projectile weapons are a terrible idea for the franchise, especially given the variable quality of Halo 5's servers that are middling at best and absurdly inconsistent at worst.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

No. I know how to play Halo 3 properly. Halo 3 online was just always a struggle. And then, even on the best of connections, you could lose a fight due to random spread.

It was especially terrible for those of us who don't happen to live in a metropolitan area or on the coasts. You think people have connection issues now sometimes? It was much worse with og h3.

Well besides host issues the game was pretty great for me still (I'm in Missouri). There was a BR spread issue, but the 110% damage MLG settings largely mitigated that issue.

*shrug*

 

[Cranster]

Well besides host issues the game was pretty great for me still (I'm in Missouri). There was a BR spread issue, but the 110% damage MLG settings largely mitigated that issue.

*shrug*

Those were MLG settings though. I never cared much for MLG or their gametypes. Especially as they seemed to want to limit the game to BR's and Sniper Rifle's only going by how the avarage Halo 3 MLG fan presented themselves when you took them out with another weapon type.

 

[YourExWife]

Well besides host issues the game was pretty great for me still (I'm in Missouri). There was a BR spread issue, but the 110% damage MLG settings largely mitigated that issue.

*shrug*

This is the problem with nostalgia goggles. Your memory is derived from a specific playlist with settings that aren't shared anywhere else. The vast majority of players and experience was not the MLG playlist. By this logic we can claim that people with complaints about Reach don't know how to shoot properly because Super Slayer was fun. Nevermind the complaints about Countdown being a huge steaming pile of garbage anywhere outside of MLG.

Or like saying zero bloom was great when that was being played, so naysayers just didn't get it.

EDIT: Beaten, sort of.

On another note, UP UP AND AWAY!

 

[Fahzgoolin]

Those were MLG settings though. I never cared much for MLG or their gametypes. Especially as they seemed to want to limit the game to BR's and Sniper Rifle's only going by how the avarage Halo 3 MLG fan presented themselves when you took them out with another weapon type.

Yeah, that's just how I love to play Halo multiplayer. Really fine tuned and simplified sandbox like old school MLG. So yeah, I understand why people would have less fond memories of Halo 3.

This is the problem with nostalgia goggles. Your memory is derived from a specific playlist with settings that aren't shared anywhere else. The vast majority of players and experience was not the MLG playlist. By this logic we can claim that people with complaints about Reach don't know how to shoot properly because Super Slayer was fun. Nevermind the complaints about Countdown being a huge steaming pile of garbage anywhere outside of MLG.

Or like saying zero bloom was great when that was being played, so naysayers just didn't get it.

EDIT: Beaten, sort of.

It's not nostalgia goggles. It's what I enjoyed and still enjoy--nothing more. I have gone back to play the same settings in the MCC and it's just as awesome as it was back in the day (if not better). A huge bulk of players played in that playlist and were invested in the competitive scene. It was huge in Halo 3.

I only mentioned the leading shots and 3 shot chest 1 shot head because a lot of people to this day that I talk to never realized it. If I didn't know that then I would perceive the game completely differently.

edit: would have been sick if you landed that ground pound lol

 

[JoeLT]

Can't believe 343 are actually removing the AR from the game. I swear the game is still broken in so many ways, but they have the time to listen to the Competitive community whining about their "skill" being challenged by weapons like the assault rifle. The game is fine as it is, majority of my friends have already stopped playing this game because of stuff like this, why do they insist on continuing to screw with the game to appease vocal minorities. I know if they go through with these changes in Arena me and the few friends I still party with will stop playing. The game is dead enough as it is, I can't find a balanced game in almost any playlist in Australia, and this will just make that worse.

 

[YourExWife]

Can't believe 343 are actually removing the AR from the game. I swear the game is still broken in so many ways, but they have the time to listen to the Competitive community whining about their "skill" being challenged by weapons like the assault rifle. The game is fine as it is, majority of my friends have already stopped playing this game because of stuff like this, why do they insist on continuing to screw with the game to appease vocal minorities. I know if they go through with these changes in Arena me and the few friends I still party with will stop playing. The game is dead enough as it is, I can't find a balanced game in almost any playlist in Australia, and this will just make that worse.

It's literally in only one playlist. Why is this so difficult to grasp for folks?

If you think "their skill being challenged" was the issue, you don't have a clue what the issues were in the first place.

 

[Fahzgoolin]

It's literally in only one playlist. Why is this so difficult to grasp for folks?

If you think "their skill being challenged" was the issue, you don't have a clue what the issues were in the first place.

Your condescending tone is not only consistent, but Ragnarok levels of tiring.

 

[bobs...onGaf]

Without following the full discussion the AR was one of my big pet peeve's with the game. WIll almost certainly give it another go now that theres a playlist without it.

The precision game was sooo good but precision 1v1's happened so rarely because most people would rather get the easy spam kills

 

[Masterz1337]

I also noticed Halo 1 is missing all the rumble features that made the OG Xbox version superior.

Other GAFers have posted about graphic assets missing as well since this is a PC port.



I've heard his work for Killer Instinct Season 3 which initially sounded OK, but like you said, his arrangements don't really work in-game. Reminds me when Mick Gordon did Riptor music for KI, and that felt really off. It's fine to listen as a music track.

I guess for what he had, that is impressive since he didn't even contact Marty as Marty was working for Bungie.

Choir feels flat or out of tune. Something might be wrong with my ears, but it didn't sound in key like some people didn't get enough sleep or something. Still very disappointed to this day how this collection turned out.

Yeah... He has spoken to Marty before, which makes me wonder why he wasn't able to get the original sheet music for both games. The whole thing sounds odd to me (the situation, not the music haha) as I don't understand why 343 would have access and use every other resource at their disposal from the original games.. but not the original sheet music or audio source files. .

Maybe it has something to do with rights to the soundtracks? There was that whole thing with the Breaking Benjamin and Incubus tracks not being able to be re-licenced but I am not sure how that would differ from Halo/Marty/Bungie's own music. I am not an expert on these things and hopefully someone here that is could provide some clarification.

I really wonder if people saying Halo 3 online is terrible is a result of them not leading shots at certain ranges and trying to take shields away with heads hots exclusively (it was wiser to shoot the chest 3 times and follow up with a headshot).

Once I got in the habit of doing that the game itself wasn't bad, it was just the typical peer to peer host connection woes.

FUNKNOWN's suggestion of autos being projectile sounds really cool. Even making the pistol projectile to increase the effective distance would be interesting imo.

No. I know how to play Halo 3 properly. Halo 3 online was just always a struggle. And then, even on the best of connections, you could lose a fight due to random spread.

It was especially terrible for those of us who don't happen to live in a metropolitan area or on the coasts. You think people have connection issues now sometimes? It was much worse with og h3.

Technically, there is no such thing as "random" spread as the spread is still set to fall between a specific degree of deviation from the center of the screen.

I credit H3's issues to..

1. Poor hit detection. You can have people standing still and blood spray out of their heads even in ideal network settings without them dying. It's crazy

2. Poor visual feedback. The particle effects of impacts are so tiny it is hard to see exactly where shots are hitting. This is worse in MCC with the higher levels of detail visible in the environments creating more "noise" that makes the particles less noticeable. I also find this hurts the visibility of the contrails, especially given that H3 is overall brighter in MCC.

3. Inconsistent projectile speeds. This is never talked about. While I did just say earlier the BR spread isn't really inconsistent due to it being set to fixed error cone, the bullet speeds differ vastly weapon to weapon. I made a little spreadsheet of this a while back. While not listed here, the H1 PR travels from 50-25 world units per second, while the PP goes from 25-15.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/w1e94ogov7021ia/Untitled.jpg?dl=0

What you'll notice is that compared to H1, bullets travel across the screen roughly half as fast in some cases, and up to 4x slower in other cases. Meanwhile, weapons like the SMG fire at near the same velocity as the H1 AR or Pistol. But when you have the human AR fire bullets at near the same speed as the H1 Plasma Rifle.. and then switch to the BR which travels more than 2x the speed of the AR.... I frankly don't understand why anyone thought having them be so widely different was a good idea. I fully get why they chose the speeds in H1 and can go into it if people care enough to know. I find H3 is a terrible terrible terrible example as an argument against projectile based weapons rather than hitscan in Halo, considering the results per weapon in H3 are so widely different from one another.

I'm kind of annoyed that 1.5 years of data and the best they can do is cut weapons from a playlist instead of giving them the balancing tweaks they deserve.

This sandbox team / mp team split seems to cause a bottleneck for progress that other competitive games dont deal with. The mp team can see that weapons are broken, but are powerless to make the actual changes necessary, so they just cut them.

Meanwhile, outside of a minor improvement to the sniper, the sandbox team hasn't done shit to improve Arena weapons balancing since launch. Infact plasma caster and hydra tweaks have made those weapons WORSE for competitive. Compare this to any other game with a esports scene and 343 looks downright unresponsive.

More concerning to me is that they let the game go on for a year and a half just now to find out that

"Players have been providing feedback that the current gameplay around the Assault Rifle has become unfit for competition. After extensive review, we have determined that the data supports this feedback. The Assault Rifle's effectiveness is similar across a wide range of skill levels, which is not intended."

So basically one of the most commonly used weapon in the game, the weapon which all other automatics are compared against, the weapon that is central to players in the campaign, is only just now found to not be "behaving as intended"? HCS aside, having a core weapon not behaving the way it should should be highly concerning, especially when it's so common across a multitude of game modes.

 

[Masterz1337]

[double post]

 

[Zoso Achilles]

Technically, there is no such thing as "random" spread as the spread is still set to fall between a specific degree of deviation from the center of the screen.

Are you trying to say a process can't be random because the outcome must be within a certain set? That's not now randomness works. Just because the bullet is not permitted to go literally anywhere does not mean the spread is not random.

 

[FyreWulff]

hitscan -> bullet travel time cycle continues

 

[YourExWife]

Your condescending tone is not only consistent, but Ragnarok levels of tiring.

Gfto.

Offering/explaining a differing opinion or experience isn't condescension nor is correcting hyberbole being used for the sake of complaint (as above), or pointing out flaws in argumentation (like with mo). Ragnarok's just there for the thrill of the shitpost.

 

[TCKaos]

I fully get why they chose the speeds in H1 and can go into it if people care enough to know.

/raises hand

More concerning to me is that they let the game go on for a year and a half just now to find out that

"Players have been providing feedback that the current gameplay around the Assault Rifle has become unfit for competition. After extensive review, we have determined that the data supports this feedback. The Assault Rifle’s effectiveness is similar across a wide range of skill levels, which is not intended."

So basically one of the most commonly used weapon in the game, the weapon which all other automatics are compared against, the weapon that is central to players in the campaign, is only just now found to not be "behaving as intended"? HCS aside, having a core weapon not behaving the way it should should be highly concerning, especially when it's so common across a multitude of game modes.

Yeah, this is something that we've been concerned about for a bit - things that are either balancing issues they only now finally care about or bugs that they couldn't have known didn't exist unless they just didn't play the game. Things like Mantis and Wraith boarding balancing changes being considered bug fixes implies that they launched not having the intended behavior and remained that way for nearly 6+ months without anyone realizing.

It was really evident with the Warzone REQ rebalancing because the second batch of changes came immediately after 343i got destroyed in Warzone Warlords. Presumably they don't play the game enough in a post-launch testing environment to understand their own meta, and that's frustrating. I understand development on Halo 6 is underway and they've got maybe 20 guys, 17 of which are Tom French, working on the sustain team but if they're going to bill their product as a service then they need better service.

Like, hell, you can still get under red base on Coliseum. They've tried to patch it three times and they've done everything except just putting a kill zone in the little hidey-hole where people fall through the collision. Same for the 6+ months of people getting out of Antifreeze when all you had to do is use invisible blocks, and same for people getting out of Scavanger now. Whoever tried to fix it in Forge didn't realize that safe zones override kill zones - so the halfpipe you thrust up to launch yourself out of the map is clearly not supposed to be playable, but they just didn't know their own game well enough (or the Forger didn't know forge well enough) to properly fix it.

Also, good to have you here finally.

 

[MouldyK]

Halo 5 & Halo MCC fixed and assets updated for 4k and Scorpio.

You think they'll even bother updating MCC and Halo 5?

I would love them to really as they need to show us what Halo can do at 4K/60.

Win us back with that for free...then drop Halo 3A to make their money back.

 

[jem0208]

I think they'll update H5.

I still think we're going to get an H3 themed update for 5 for 3's anniversary. Maybe they'll include a Scorpio patch with that.

 

[Trup1aya]

Technically, there is no such thing as "random" spread as the spread is still set to fall between a specific degree of deviation from the center of the screen.

Pick a number between 1-10

Pick a number between 1-100

Pick a random number

All of these options are random, the degrees of deviation are just different

 

[YourExWife]

/raises hand


Like, hell, you can still get under red base on Coliseum. They've tried to patch it three times and they've done everything except just putting a kill zone in the little hidey-hole where people fall through the collision.

And blue base, too! Yay!

 

[Ricky Ricardo]

I'm ready for some Halo 6 on PC Scorpio tho

.

 

[Samurai G0SU]

.

Oh shit!!!!

 

[TCKaos]

Huh. Dicking around in Forge and I picked up this tidbit:

From full shields and health you cannot kill yourself with a single rocket from a SPNKr Prime. You will always rebound off of the blast and have exactly one pixel of health left.

 

[Mabef]

I've gathered my old Halo captures and collated them into one mess of a video. I would describe the video as "tonally confusing", because I decided to put sad music behind it. Hope one of you enjoys it.

Youtube link

 

[Masterz1337]

Are you trying to say a process can't be random because the outcome must be within a certain set? That's not now randomness works. Just because the bullet is not permitted to go literally anywhere does not mean the spread is not random.

What I am trying to say is the phrase "random spread" can be misleading. The levels of max deviation are consistent, as in it won't randomly decide to have a max error angle of .1 with one burst and then .2 with the next, and then to .05 and then to .3. It does have spread constraints, just sometimes the bullets can fall closer to the center of the reticule.

I think it's important to distinguish this, as a player can always predict the maximum spread and know their bullets will fall somewhere in between. I don't think it is a good system as it is unpredictable, and yeah the results are random. But the max spread is consistent.

/raises hand


Yeah, this is something that we've been concerned about for a bit - things that are either balancing issues they only now finally care about or bugs that they couldn't have known didn't exist unless they just didn't play the game. Things like Mantis and Wraith boarding balancing changes being considered bug fixes implies that they launched not having the intended behavior and remained that way for nearly 6+ months without anyone realizing.

It was really evident with the Warzone REQ rebalancing because the second batch of changes came immediately after 343i got destroyed in Warzone Warlords. Presumably they don't play the game enough in a post-launch testing environment to understand their own meta, and that's frustrating. I understand development on Halo 6 is underway and they've got maybe 20 guys, 17 of which are Tom French, working on the sustain team but if they're going to bill their product as a service then they need better service.

Like, hell, you can still get under red base on Coliseum. They've tried to patch it three times and they've done everything except just putting a kill zone in the little hidey-hole where people fall through the collision. Same for the 6+ months of people getting out of Antifreeze when all you had to do is use invisible blocks, and same for people getting out of Scavanger now. Whoever tried to fix it in Forge didn't realize that safe zones override kill zones - so the halfpipe you thrust up to launch yourself out of the map is clearly not supposed to be playable, but they just didn't know their own game well enough (or the Forger didn't know forge well enough) to properly fix it.

Also, good to have you here finally.

Glad to have finally been approved .

I have often had similar concerns, and it carries over to HW2 where things like Anders sentinel's are so OP do to a bug, it raises questions as to how much it got played in house and if it did become a problem shortly before ship why it happened and how many other things could have "broke". I've pretty much decided to not play HW2 until they are done with all the patches and leaders as I don't have much interest in playing a strategy game where my strategies end up having to change because they are changing the rules of the game, rather than having to out think my opponents. Which is disappointing to me as I probably played HW1 more than any other Xbox title.

I'd say the AR is a bigger issue than anything else we've seen, as it's arguably the most prominent weapon in the entire game, as well as the poster child for ADS being added onto traditional weapons. Does this reversal on the AR mean an admittance on their part that ADS for automatics is an inherently flawed idea for Halo's combat? What does the admittance that the guns ADS doesn't result in the gameplay they intended mean for other guns like the SAW and SMG?

I personally think it had a devastating effect on the campaign gameplay as I end up using the AR as a poor mans BR for landing headshot damage and stripping shields at range. It ends up being more effective than most plasma weapons for shield stripping and while an adjustment to it's ADS to prevent that should be welcomed, we then have to deal with the fact much of the combat in the campaign expects you to be able to use it for that purpose. I might be in the minority here as I generally buy Halo for the campaigns and stay for the multiplayer, but a recurring pattern I see in H5's campaign is a lack of attention of how certain things send ripples through the game. Let it be ADS extending the range of each encounter (and the AR being the worst offender of this), not being able to fine tune AI aiming effectively to compensate for all the changes in player movement and base speed, or simply not recognizing problems with the revive and respawn system. To me it's far more disappointing than the story.


As far as H1 speeds go, projectiles such as the PP, PR, are obviously designed to be more easily dodged at range as they slow down. But it's also applied to the warthog so you can actually weave to avoid the tracers when it tries to shoot you at range. H1 is pretty brilliant in that all it's vehicles are designed to pull you in close to the players so that grenades can flip the hogs and ghosts, while the tank is then left open to be vulnerable to headshots as it tries to advance on players.

The pistol and AR speeds are a little more obscure, but I am fairly confident they wanted the AR to be able to knock pistol players out of scope if they fire at the same time so the pistol users can't see if their first shot impacted or not. This doesn't happen with high levels of play given how pistols are incredibly dominant, but it's the only conclusion I can really draw. While the AR's accuracy makes this not a highly likely scenario, the AR did at one point have a variable fire rate and accuracy depending on how hard you pulled in the trigger on the controller, but this never made it to the final build. So this system could have been more apparently earlier on in development.

The shotgun is a little more obscure but it seems to be similar to the warthog gun to decrease it's effective range... although I am not sure how much of an impact the projectile speed matters given it's spread. It does eventually only travel at 2x the initial speed of the plasma rifle though just for perspective.

Sniper doesn't need much explaining, they wanted it to feel instantaneous except at the most extreme ranges. While it's been a long time since I played H1 MP on the original xbox, I believe the only map that saw this come into play was Bloodgulch as sidewinder doesn't have as long sight lines. Curious enough, the sniper combat on the Gearbox maps would have benefited from this the most but the broken netcode in the PC port and subsequent changes to the game on MCC make this a moot point anyway. But it's nice to think they factored in that behavior of the gun for the PC maps anyway.