Natsu

And things like regicide and Flood need to be moved to social when/if they make it. I hate getting a bunch of losses on my record just because I came in 2nd or 3rd in regicide or came in 4th in flood. Either that or the top 3-4 players should get wins in FFA modes like how it was in other Halo games.

I used to be a diehard SC fanboy and wanted SC2 to be exactly the same as the first game, and I never actually bought or played SC2 because it pissed me off how different it was. I've matured a bit more but there is a logic to wanting the game to stay the same. You say you don't see the point in releasing a game that has already been made, but my mind back then was worried that SC 1 was dying and if SC 2 wasn't the same then my favorite game would die forever as there would be no one to play it. So as you can see, Halo CE and H2 are dead because you can't play them online with a large pool of players in a thriving community. That is why people want them to re-release the same games. On the other hand, I agree that the Halo community is so far divided that there really is no such thing as a Halo community. You're going to get a bunch of people who are like "I'm a die hard Halo player and have played since Halo CE and this is what I want out of Halo 4/5." And then you're going to get a few people who were also longstanding players who utterly disagree with that guy in a myriad of ways. I am a longstanding Halo player, not as competitive as the MLG players' background but a heck of a lot more than the people wanting AR starts. What I want in these games is quite different from what a lot of people seem to want, just going by forum gripes. So I head over to mlgpro.com and I also differ slightly from their views. I like armor abilities and sprint. I love sprint in fact, and think the stopping power that balances it is perfect. I also hate AR starts because I never liked that about Halo 3. When I played H2 it was always BR starts, when I played Halo CE it was always pistol starts. That was the idea behind the slayer pro gameplay of early Halo, that every player must have a utility weapon that has an out to every situation because otherwise the game's balance collapses into rock/paper/scissors and whoever wins the opening rush wins the game. I have firsthand experience of this in some of the AR start games of Halo 3 at level 50 in team doubles. Whoever won the opening rush accumulated the BR, sniper, and rockets while the two players spawning back just had AR's which they couldn't use to compete with those weapons and couldn't even move *anywhere* because map control was locked down by the power players who just won the first encounter. This happened so, SO many times where the team who gets the upper hand right off the bat goes on to win 25-0 or 50-3. Once you get people who really know how to play the game AR starts becomes the most hideous balance imaginable, it's a fake balance. But that's my little rant, and as you can see, it doesn't fit the general consensus of this forum, and my liking of the abilities and "Cod" styled things shuns me from MLG forums. I love the fast pace of Halo 4 right now, although I do have problems such as the lack of spawning power weapons on each map. So yeah, I feel like it's pointless when people say they represent the Halo community or what it wants. There's a ton of differences between all of our preferred playstyles. The best we can get is different playlists and custom options which allow us to play the modes we like. I wouldn't even be against a classic Halo mode, although I'm unsure how many people would actually play it. Last time I played Halo 3 every single team slayer match would get mass voted so that the next game type would be Slayer BR's. People would rather have a crappy map with BR starts on that game than to play a good map with AR's.

Am I missing something here? The weekly challenge wants me to get 18 regicides in a single game, which means to kill the king 18 times. Each king has a bounty of at least 15 points on their head. The game ends when you reach 300 score. That puts you at exactly 270 score if you get exactly 18 regicides. However, you are guaranteed to kill some kings worth 20-30, and not to even mention the points you will get from assists, king assists, and non-king kills. And besides all that, you have a time limit working against you which is a problem because every time you kill the king you become the king if you are the top scorer. This means you basically have to do nothing but run into the nearest person and die because you can't afford to get any points as the king. So I think that about covers it. This challenge is literally impossible unless you bring an entire party in to boost for it, and even then it would be quite challenging. I mean, did 343 even playtest this before deciding on a number? Or did they just slap an impossible number to achieve to weed out any boosters and subsequently ban anyone who does their challenge?

The current maps are terrible for 1v1. Only Haven could be used without forcing everyone to run P vision. I would love a playlist but only if 343 takes some of H3's maps like guardian and the mlg forged map Greenhouse. They wouldn't even have to be made, could just take a community member's remake through H4's forge

Trash Compactor was amazing. We need to have options to bring stuff like that back. Some of the most fun I had was a Halo 3 mode on Last Resort where everyone was in floating containers over the sea and the super zombie would knock sections of the tunnel out with a grav hammer.

I'm usually a driver in every Halo game and this is by far the hardest time I've had trying to get my gunner some sprees. I think the best I have so far is just barely getting them a killing frenzy off the skin of our nuts, and then blowing up. I used to be able to net them perfections once every few games in Halo 3. For one thing, everyone and their grandma switches into plasma pistols and plasma grenades for the vehicle maps. I don't have Operator yet so I'm not sure how much that affects the EMP, but unless it completely negates the plasma pistol it probably will still allow people to constantly keep you in place by just firing more and more out. The second thing is that most every map just has a preset road for you to drive on, with Ragnarok being the most open map. This makes your driving paths way too predictable and they can easily stop you. And finally, the turret gun just seems much weaker in this game. To adapt to the first two issues, I have been strafing the warthog in a circle, just doing donuts on my side of the map so my gunner can long range the enemies. Not even this works because their guns are just never good enough to get any kills. And a lot of times my gunner just gets flat-out DMR'd off the back of it when I do this because there will be a good 4-5 people that keep hiding behind rocks and popping back out to shoot him, so you are really forced to drive up on them to get an angle which puts you at risk to the plasmas and predictable roads. Any thoughts/advice?

Yes but the AR get damage increase up close. And even if you assume max skill, I'm still gonna say that it's close to impossible to nail all 5 shots against a Ghandi-hopping AR user that is right in your face. Saying the DMR wrecks an AR up close is like it wrecks the Saw up close. The AR basically is a Saw except instead of spraying them down in under a second you spray them down in 2 seconds and thus lose more health while doing so.

Or Starcraft Broodwar. I started playing that game when it was like 7-8 years in and it took me like 2-3 straight months of practice before I could win even one game, lmao. And yeah, I'm guessing the OP is new to the Halo series, which explains his difficulties. As much as people complain about the game changing so much here, the game has changed so little compared to how much change happens to other games. The basic gameplay and tactics are at a constant from game to game, so if it feels like you are playing against people who have been playing Halo 4 for several years, there's some truth to that.

One of the biggest complaints about sprint is that it helps people get out of situations they shouldn't get away with. It also allows for more "herp derp" with the sword rushes and beatdowns. The stopping power helps slow people down trying to rush into your face for cheap/easy kills.

I strongly prefer everything about Halo 4 except for the one thing you happened to mention. There definitely needs to be something promoting map movement. The game runs fine in the objective modes though, but in slayer it is a real pain because the whole team can just camp right where they spawn and have the game in their hands if they camp organized enough. I think a good compromise between ordnance drops and weapon spawns would be if you could earn your ordnances but would be able to call them in just anywhere. There would be certain terminals scattered on the map that would let you call them in or something. Meh, just a thought but it clearly couldn't be integrated. Also, it's not just a matter of putting rockets and shotguns on the maps now, then there would be too many power weapons between the spawned weapons and the ordnance.

Also, about the whole forcing range thing. I kind of agree with you, but it also is dependent on maps and player abilities. For instance, in Call of Duty games, it was impossible to force a long range battle when you had the sniper rifle. Close quarters people could move fast enough and use enough cover and grenade distractions to always force the engagement range in CQB, making snipers inherently disadvantaged in Cod games unless they were really fast and powerful. One of the reasons why snipers sucked horribly in the Treyarch Cod games, because the developers stubbornly thought that a sniper could just force the range to be at long range. In this game though, It is kind of the other way around because Halo maps tend to be wide open fields. But I do believe there is potential for AR users to stick to cover and use certain armor abilities and infinite sprint to force their range all the time in CQB. Is that gonna happen on Ragnarok and Meltdown? No, but I have been using the AR as my primary for a bit and on the smaller 4-4 maps I have been having extreme success using things like Camo or thruster packs to get in close and then start Ghandi-hopping all over the DMR users and spraying them down. What's really funny is when they think they can punch me, jump back and headshot me real quick except I just mow them down with pure AR power. I like using the AR as a primary mainly because everyone uses DMR starts, so oftentimes I can just pick a DMR up as soon as I spawn and have the firepower perk for free. But anyways, I do think there is potential for an AR user to use its niche range on certain maps and with certain abilities. Again, like you said, assume perfect skill of all players and a good AR user should be able to force their engagement range in CQB on 80% of the maps in the game, and the DMR isn't so deadly that it shreds AR users in 10-15 ft range either, even if they hit all shots.

That's exactly what Halo has always been about though. In competitive Halo CE and Halo 2, everyone started with the utility weapon that had an out to everything at all ranges. Then there were *niche* weapons that were mildly advantageous in select instances like rocket launcher in a hallway, sniper for longer ranges, shotgun for CQB. The way Halo 3 had it, it dictated who won each encounter by the weapon in and of itself. In Halo CE, 2 MLG settings, and Halo 4, the fights can always be salvaged with the utility weapon unless you are caught in the niche weapons range (AR/Shotgun up close in CE, rockets in a cramped space in H2, Saw up close in H4. The weapons have their niches but the utility weapon should still be bread and butter, not just another selection on even footing with other weapons: a mid-range niche weapon basically. That turns the entire weapon pool into a bunch of niche guns, which leads to randomness and rock, paper, scissors gameplay. I agree with you about how skill level should have no place in balancing guns though. It's best to assume maximum skill and balance guns around that. The only problem I'm having with H4 now is that there isn't enough incentive on all maps to move towards the middle and get map control. If more maps had pre-set rockets and snipers spawning in the middle then the fights would move forward a little more.

You started out with the BR in Halo 2 every single time, unless you were a scrub and played Bungie slayer. That is precisely how it should be, a capable starter weapon that has an answer to everything. That was what Halo CE had in mind, it's what other similar competitive games like Shadowrun attempted. I absolutely hate AR starts with a passion. It takes zero skill to play that mode, it's all rock, paper, scissors based on which guns you happened to pick up and go up against. Real skill in shooters takes away all extraneous variables and stratifies everything. Edit: And WOW. Have you never played Halo 2??? The BR in that game insta killed you in 4 shots regardless of range. There is absolutely no difference between the DMR and Halo 2 BR. The burst did not decrease your potential range unless you were on some BTB map.

I can't take anyone seriously who thinks the DMR is the problem but says they have played Halo since its dawn. Halo at its core has always been about super powerful utility weapons that would give players more than a chance to beat even power weapons in head on combat. That is what Halo was about in every game except 3 and Reach. All you people who have a problem with the DMR must have jumped on board with Halo 3. That game and Reach were the worst in the series. The BR in Halo 2 COULD 4 shot people across the map just as quick as this game's DMR can. Halo CE had a 3 shot kill pistol across the entire map, and is regarded as the best Halo game among competitive players. Halo 3's BR ruined absolutely everything and made the game into a rock, paper, scissors game, which is the stupidest kind of balance. It was just "this gun wins at this range." That is fake balance. Real balance is when everyone starts with a capable gun at all ranges and is the go-to gun at all times, but there are mild alt weapons that you can use which have slight niches at other things. That is the very definition of how Halo CE and Halo 2 played, and it is also how Halo 4 is turning out to be. Halo 3 and Reach ruined Halo utterly by limiting the strength of the main utility weapons.

I played one game of regicide and quit, lol. I had more kills and less deaths than everyone in the room but came in 4th place. That's not how an FFA game should work at all.

I've been using the Air Assault too. But I think the default recruit helmet looks remarkably similar to ODST.

You must have never played any Halo games to be complaining about this. The grenade usage is a thousand times less in Halo 4 than it has been in all the others, except for CE. Since Halo 2, the primary strategy for close-mid range fights has always been to drop grenades and just get the headshot. It's really what Halo is all about. I don't find it much of a problem because the grenades are much less accurate than the ones from H3, much less powerful than the ones from H2 (even with the explosives perk), and you could always just use a myriad of armor abilities or perks to avoid the problem altogether, like: regen field behind cover to waste their grenades as you keep health, thruster pack to dodge grenades at your feet, explosives perk to decrease damage received, jet pack to hover over the blast, or you could even time a sprint around a corner to get in their face and run past the grenade. Overall I'm finding grenades to be about as useful as they were in CE, which is quite bad considering how dominant they were in all the others.

I agree with the OP, but I don't want to see the DMR removed, just want to see the BR getting better. I have tested a lot and the BR is obscenely underpowered at every range compared to the DMR. I hit all 5 of my shots every time so the BR is just weak for me. It always feels like on one of the 3 bullets hits when I use it. The DMR to me is like the Halo 1 pistol, which I love, but the BR should be more deadly up close. I just can't ever fathom myself using the BR in this game. I have never seen a kill cam with a BR in it when I got into an even fight. I have been in several 1v1 fights where I had half shields or less and ended up turning on the guy and beating him in 10 meter range, only to walk over to him and see "hold __ to pick up BR," Lol.

Well I completely disagree. CTF on ragnarok has been some of the most fun I've had so far. Just last night I commented while playing to friends that despite how many vehicles there were, there was still a balance of infantry and vehicles at all times. The vehicle players typically end up going one for one with each other, leaving the remaining infantry able to just DMR them to death. People underestimate the primary weapons' ability to kill vehicles all the time. It only takes 4 clips/magazines. And the sniper rifle is an anti-vehicle weapon that spawns in the base. The sniper should rarely be used against infantry on this map. This map and gametype just require a lot of teamwork. Lots of team shooting vehicles and lots of vehicle teamwork. I was able to consistently do well by using the banshee while a friend was in a mantis. I would swoop in and kill the laser, he would handle their banshee, then I would distract their mantis for him to kill, then we teamshot the warthog. It took a lot of cautious play to get it right, but we were able to consistently set up a spawn camp. To me, that is good for the game. Both teams start equal so if one team gets pushed so far back that they are getting camped by 2 mantis, a warthog, and a banshee, then they really deserved it. It won't happen against evenly skilled teams to begin with so it's not a problem.