Bloody Initiate

Only if you play SWAT. Shields take the same damage no matter where the spartan takes the hit. If the shot pierces shields (Like a sniper rifle) obviously headshots are better. Against a shielded spartan on normal settings the BR kills in 5 shots, as long as the last shot is a headshot, no matter what. I was horrified when I tested it in forge, because I very vocally prefer it should be 4 shots to kill, but when I tested it they were all straight to the face, no variation from 5 shots.

This doesn't work as an idea. You're failing to account for the fact that 343 wanted automatic loadout weapons to lose EVERY fight against something other than an automatic loadout weapon. You included a gravity hammer, sword, shotguns, etc. Those weapons are designed to kill AR/Storm Rifle/Suppressor users. Do you know how much MORE powerful those weapons become when people can't kill at mid-range anymore? You're also failing to understand the thing that Bungie failed to understand when they made Halo: CE. If the pistol hadn't been insanely powerful people STILL would have used it a lot because it filled the void of a mid-range gun (There were no others in Halo: CE). A weapon that can defend itself at mid-range is just as essential as a weapon that drops people fast in CQB. All the way through Halo's history the range you find yourself at most often from an opponent is that middle range. Unless you design maps that are nothing but blind corners and tight hallways that's how it will always be. The point is you're not seeing this for what it is: The removal of Halo's backbone. People want that mid-range weapon they want that thing that can strike at whatever range they spot their enemies. So you might get a few people in the playlist to start out because it's something new, but it'll end up as the playlist where you start with the worst weapons possible and then spend every game getting owned by the first people who get a solid ordinance drop. I just don't think there's the audience for it, which I believe is what you were trying to learn with this thread. If whoever is making Halo ever wants to give automatic weapons some killing power ever does, then there will be a place for this playlist, but as it is the automatic starting weapon has always been the first weapon you throw away. First Bungie and now 343 wanted it that way. No playlist will fix that.

You're not stretching it. I hated how the chief couldn't control the recoil on the SMGs in Halo 2. I thought it was pathetic. Halo did not begin as a game with significant recoil on weapons. Why they decided to go that way I'll never know, it's just one of many many tons of things that they changed drastically even though it always worked before and no one complained. To be fair though that isn't a Halo 4 change, it's a Halo 2 and later a Reach change. It was also one of the best things about Halo. Everything stayed smooth, you were a super soldier, you didn't slow down to fire your weapon and you didn't have to take breaks to keep it under control. You could flip a tank, so why would you struggle to control a couple crappy submachine guns?

People play them the same way. As for which I prefer? I dunno, the only difference is how the winner is picked, and since much of FFA is luck (regicide FFA is still FFA) I don't end up FEELING the difference as much. I enjoy being king and getting bonuses, but really people play like lunatics no matter what in FFA. I don't know how many morons I see jet packing straight up in haven top mid, but there's one in every game. The king just dives into the fray like he isn't special. Regicide ends up playing just like FFA slayer, just different way of picking a winner, which never bothers me because players have always won a variety of ways in FFA. You could play an awesome FFA slayer game and go 23-0 with precision weapons and the winner would have gone 25-27 with an assault rifle. FFA players make all FFA game types look and feel about the same. The type of people who want to play FFA don't compromise their preferences, that's often why they're in the playlist. So FFA regicide = FFA slayer = FFA grifball. People just want to charge with the trigger down no matter what the objective is. That's why you can't make it to the king, the oddball, or the hill a lot of the time, because someone spawned behind you and wants to shoot something. Then someone wins because nobody attacked them. That's FFA, no matter the variant.

I hate the automatic weapon challenges, but for different reasons. First off, they don't work. I got the 13-in-a-game one from a game where I only got 9 kills with the designated weapon. My 15-in-a-game one then froze at 13/15 kills and I couldn't get it, even though I had multiple games with more than 15 AR kills. When they DO work, they work wrong. I have never received one of these challenges when I actually earned it. It always gives me the challenge after a game where I failed to meet its requirements. Finally, I feel like these challenges have the "in a single match" much more often than the headshot challenge. That bothers me because frankly I've become paranoid about Halo 4 because they designed it with so many traps (I've complained plenty about those elsewhere). I see these automatic weapon challenges and I suspect 343 is trying to get players to play worse. I had a good time in some of my games going for these challenges, but damn were there a lot of times where my weapon got me killed. The waypoint challenge (200 kills) worked fine for me btw, took awhile but it worked. The "in a single match" ones are the ones that I have literally NEVER earned them when I've received them. I would have earned eventually today because I did some nice work withy AR, but I gained the one and froze the other well before I actually earned either.

Quit switching your stuff around (controller settings, sensitivity, loadouts) for starters. It's good to try new things, but you eventually have to settle on something and get used to it, more importantly you have to get good with it. You also need to pick things that work together. Start from either your controller settings or your loadouts, it doesn't matter which, and then work your way over to the one you didn't pick. Make sure everything works together. Don't take bumper jumper + jet pack, hardlight shield, or probably even thruster pack. If you have an AA that affects your mobility or that you use while looking around, use a controller setting that lets you do that. Make your decisions with two things in mind: What kind of gametypes/maps you like to play AND How you like to play them. So if you're a BTB guy your primary weapon is a DMR or lightrifle, no question about it. If you like smaller maps and you still want to use something like the lightrifle, then you need to pick settings that compliment it (Like fishstick). Make sure everything you have fits together. THEN play with it. Don't switch your loadouts often and switch your controller settings even less often. I have only about 2 loadouts I use often, the other 3 are situational (One of the 3 is for vehicles, one is for sniping, one is for experimentation). Next in DMR fights I suggest hopping around a lot less. It can really help, but Reach taught me to just let the other guy get the workout while I shot him. Also bloom forced you to sort of wait to put your final headshot in. If you can't land your shots quickly and accurately, it really doesn't matter how many you avoid. You have to get your killing ability perfect, because surviving is only as good as the damage you do while you're alive. Try focusing on your own aiming and shots for awhile. Keep in mind that in Reach and Halo 4 people move very slowly, so even a really good strafe is a lot easier to shoot. That's why you need to get good at landing those shots first. Also ask yourself which is more useful to a team? The guy who is hard to hit is only helpful when the enemy is shooting at him, but the guy who can land his shots is useful against any opponent he can see. Finally, play with your mic in and try to run with a party. You may find that you just don't have the potential to be an exceptional individual killer, but the players I admire most are the ones who can make a team work. I played in a tournament awhile back with members of my clan, I was unquestionably the best individual killer on the team, but I was the weakest link on the team once we went up against anyone but randoms. It was only through the guidance of a better team player that I ended up being useful at all. Some players won't develop the reflexes and coordination to be some kind of god on the battlefield, but if you learn to communicate and work with a team you can become much more valuable. If you're searching alone in a team playlist, STILL keep your mic in and try to stick with other people who do. I played a game awhile back where I was the only one doing callout, but it was a small map and so my callouts ended up being invaluable. A buddy of mine who was playing w/me got his first perfection, I didn't die at all (failed to get the 15 kills), and we won soundly because we always knew where the enemy was. The best players pick their settings and loadouts and then stick with them. They specialize because trying everything makes you good at everything, but not great at anything. They also work with their teams, play for their teams, and play for the win. I am not one of the best players and I never have been, but I know what they do because they don't keep it a secret. They make videos and write guides and share what they know. They also practice a lot and search for any edge they can get.

Frag grenades have always completely removed shields. That's supposed to happen. If 343 hadn't designed Halo 4 to kill players so often then you wouldn't see nearly as many grenades being thrown about. However 343 DID design Halo 4 in such a way that you are much more likely to die much more often, continually refreshing your supply of grenades.

First off I'd like them to make the vehicles they have work better. That's what is most important to me in terms of Halo vehicles. As for new ones? I'd like a faster strike aircraft of some kind, the banshee has changed so much I don't even know what I want for it anymore. The aircraft I have in mind would be much more hit-and-run though. I liked the idea of the Spectre, it sucked though and never returned. The "moving fortress" idea of the Halo 3 Elephants and the Halo 4 Mammoth HAS potential, they just keep screwing it up! They made them too slow and open in Halo 3, and they just made it a glorified cab in the Halo 4 mission. I want a moving FORTRESS that people can swarm, attack, and defend. Take a complex room from a current map, like the bases on Adrift, give it some propulsion and some armaments and then let us fight with them! I also like VTOL aerial vehicles a lot. I love the Mantis, something with its firepower, less armor, and helicopter maneverability could be fun. That's basically the idea behind the Hornet from Halo 3, but the original Hornet was insanely strong (Its guns were sniper rifle accurate across the map) and the later Avalanche Hornet was nerfed into a support vehicle (Could be used very effectively by skilled players, but Halo hasn't been interested in skilled players for awhile now). I miss the Brute Chopper. That thing was badass, but with very real weaknesses. It was a well-designed vehicle.

HaloTracker.com and other stat tracking sites have long been able to show Trueskill. I remember there was one in Halo 3 which showed your Trueskill in Social playlists.

Don't agree at all, especially with the long-standing stupidity of arguing a rocket launcher is somehow an effective melee weapon. "Yes, the very long awkward tube containing explosives should be swung at people, and it should hit really hard!" Halo 2 had a dynamic melee system with multiple factors. I never liked it, but to be fair I didn't even know different melees worked differently until long after I stopped playing the game. I actually wouldn't mind if certain power weapons got more dynamic melees or other things to make them feel unique, but in my experience the same kind of person who thinks these ideas are worth putting into the game is also TERRIBLE at making them work in the game. It's one of those personality things, like how a person who is good at making a lot of money is often also good at wasting a lot of money.

It's still in the game you know... I've booted people a few times. One time I happily doomed our team to losing a game because a guy and his 2 guests were 3/5ths of our team. His guest kept betraying me, so I booted all three of them (Can't boot just 1, but I actually think it would be awesome if you could just freeze the one guest's screen with a boot). I'd rather lose than play a game with betrayers.

I understand where the OP is coming from even if I don't agree with the suggestion. Played a game on Ragnarok the other day where the enemy team had 3-4 invisible snipers. They weren't doing a lot of damage because we knew they were out there and we didn't peak out much, but their remaining teammates WITHOUT sniper rifles got sick of getting slaughtered every time they pushed. The result was the entire team hiding on their side of the map, positioned well enough that we couldn't push, but unwilling push for themselves either. Nobody even peaked out for DMR fights that often, because both sides had bored snipers just waiting for something to shoot. It was an incredibly annoying game, I think the only people who got into fights were recent respawns who spawned visible and had to defend themselves. I kept attacking with different methods but it was fruitless, even though I went positive I certainly didn't have fun doing it. Camping, when the primary strategy of the entire team, makes games unbearably slow and boring. Camo makes it easier. So I understand the OP's problem, I don't know that removing camo is the solution, but I understand the complaint. Typically I can kill those guys, but you get enough of them and it's not worth trying because taking out one shows you to another. It's how you kill them, they fire, which in Reach and Halo 4 means they get a kill because sniper rifles have been made so much easier to use, and then you get a kill. Boring cycle continues. Camo snipers aren't difficult to deal with, they're just LAME to deal with, which is frequently worse. I don't back its removal though, because in addition to questioning the logic behind it I also occasionally like taking camo and just hiding from Halo 4 for awhile.

I think that's part of it. I also think we're just seeing more of this in games, every damn game has a website that tracks stats and has special offers and stuff anymore. Some companies are much worse about it than others, but I think we're seeing an emerging trend in the industry. After all, why just make a game when you can put up a free website and shave some advertising dollars as well? Instead of it being optional though it becomes more and more of the experience. Instead of just stat tracking you get something from the website that isn't available in the game (Like your Trueskill rank). EA is the worst about it. They put up a site for their games (EA Gun Club) that apparently has never worked, but people joined it because doing so actually unocked stuff in game. Seeing as 343 already made a game very much like Call of Duty, I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft is just copying a lot of marketing methods and such that we see elsewhere in the gaming industry. Ripping off other people's ideas is cheaper than developing your own after all, look at the Chinese.

I like having the option to respawn instantly, I don't like the longer multikill timer though. It's one of the many things that changed and I couldn't think of a single good reason why it should have. Giving someone another half-second while everything else is sped up (kill times are faster, people come back to life and return to combat faster) just felt like them making things much easier on us. It doesn't feel right when someone tells me I don't need to work so hard anymore; it feels like a trap. That being said I'm glad you got your multikills and had a good time doing it (I assume). I just don't get multikills that often. I might get a double kill every other game. I just keep failing to "get it" in Halo anymore. I didn't really ever get a good feel for Reach, and in Halo 4 people are excelling all around me and I have no idea how. I don't mind being average at something, but I do wish I understood why.

I'm clearly playing this game wrong; I rarely get multikills. You know how people talk about "adapt or die?" I haven't adapted to anything since Halo 3. Not an adaptable player over here.

Here's my problem with dual-wielding pistols: I would rather dual-wield assault rifles. I don't understand why you would downgrade your single gun into two crappy guns when you're already a super soldier who can apparently dual-wield anyway. Every time I try to step into the perspective of a dual-wielding fan I find myself going "Well why wouldn't I just __________?" Two pistols = CQB advantage? I'd rather have a shotgun. Two pistols = better than a shotgun in CQB? In addition to thinking that's BS, I'd rather have two shotguns. "Well of course two pistols wouldn't be better than a shotgun in CQB!" Well then why would I bother with the two pistols? "Because you don't have a shotgun!" So why am I in CQB? It's an annoying game children play, but when you're talking about expending the finite time available to design a game you should occasionally play it, because you have to spend a lot of time making little things happen in video games. I never run out of "Why?" questions with dual-wielding, because the game is based on shooting people with guns, and shooting people with guns is something people do IRL too. Even as a fantasy game, that gives it some real life basis, and there isn't any real life basis for successfully dual-wielding guns. It would certainly beat a single pistol in CQB, but in CQB you want something bigger than pistols.

It always bothers me when I see people complaining about a non-issue or getting a problem all wrong. First off, what's this about no map movement or halo 4 promoting camping? I've never seen a more anti-camper game, the only people who get away with it are camo snipers on large maps and they ALWAYS got away with it. That's the extreme. Halo 4 maps lack almost any defensible positions, your primary source of new ammo is dead enemies, and people can see through walls. That's not "promotes camping." Argue all you like, you're the crazy one. There ARE weapons on the map, you get nav points to them, it's just that everyone sprints and there's nowhere good to defend yourself with your newly acquired power weapons, so you die and lose them to enemies or despawn. The same weapons don't keep spawning in the same places on the map, BETTER ones start spawning. You get sticky detonator + scattershot + needler in the beginning, then you get incineration cannon and binary rifle. Halo 4 has lots of problems, please learn what they are so we can make some coherent complaints some time in the future.

Infection/Flood has always been a very difficult gametype to balance. It's very hard to balance something when you're making the two sides of the conflict use such different weapons. I tend not to play it for this reason. It will never be balanced, because you either have zombies slaughtering humans OR you have humans holding up in unassailable locations. There is no middle ground, no room for players to actually shine, just a zombie game. I hate zombies, I hate the Flood, and I only play this gametype when I need a challenge or when a friend wants to play it.

The trouble with that is you never punish the player you're aiming for, and instead hit all your other teammates with your griefing. A griefer who isn't getting what he wants in terms of satisfaction will just quit a game and now his team is being punished in his place. You say you'll stop as soon as he quits? But what if you've already destroyed a key vehicle or two? You can't control other players, you can't "punish" anyone, the world and this game aren't fair. Stop, because it all just makes everything worse.

I didn't care for the Falcon. I think putting two gunners on opposite sides of the vehicle while also limiting their turn radius to prohibit them from ever aiming at the same target just doesn't work. You end up with one gunner and one pilot and that's it. I know real helicopters follow this design, but those are transport helicopters whose only purpose is to move troops (The guns are for covering fire). Halo doesn't play like the real world, and so copying reality too much is lazy and ineffective for any Halo designer.

1.6ish, but usually I feel like it's closer to 0.61. I hate how bad I am at this game. I find it incredibly difficult to turn in a consistent performance in Halo 4.

Last night while I was playing the game I lost the ability to select my loadout at the beginning of the game or before respawning. The only way I could choose my loadout is by hitting "Start" and selecting "Select next Loadout." This meant thtat I could never start a game with any loadout but the top one, and therefore I could not begin a game with with the loadout I tailored for that map/gametype unless the map/gametype was ideal for my uppermost loadout. I haven't tested it today, but I'm a bit worried. Anyone ever have this problem?

Probably the Sticky Detonator, Incin. Cannon is a close runner up. I get the Fuel Rod gun so rarely I don't know that I have any idea how much I like it in this game. I think I've gotten to use it 1-2 times max. I didn't even realize how rarely I was getting it because I get it SO rarely I actually forgot it was a potential ordinance.

I have killed with and have been killed by Pulse grenades, they are definitely a more specialized weapon. The biggest advantages to them is they don't bounce or fall at all and they have a very fast fuse time. The result is you can place them almost anywhere within throwing distance and their initial detonation will occur immediately and knock off the shields of anyone within their blast area. The problem is they are plainly visible, you have to risk the time of the throw animation to throw one (They're a quick-attack kind of grenade, but simply using a grenade requires a moment without firing your weapon), and they are really ONLY good for knocking shields off. The split-second advantage you gain you almost completely lose, AND you only start with 1. 343 crippled these grenades with that call, hopefully they'll fix it in an update because presently selecting pulse grenades in your loadout is just a bad idea.

You have to think about it more, like I said. What does it mean when you use two guns? Twice the power? That's not balanced. The same amount of power? That means the guns are terrible and should only be dual-wielded. 1.5 times the power? Now you have the game developers changing the code just to make a bad idea work. I would rather my game developers spent some more time getting better at other things instead of making dual-wielding happen.