Bloody Initiate

That's why I said 2 or 0. Although I don't think 2 Gausses would be as bad as you think. That's half of the enemy team in vehicles fighting over the same kills. Even in Halo 3 BTB where vehicles were appropriately powerful you would usually regret trying to run 2 Gauss Hogs unless half the enemy team was AFK (Which was often the case sadly). Really though, 2 or 0. I love the Gauss Hog so much. I think I love it better than any other player, and a lot of them are better in it than I am and have more reasons to love it than I do, but I love that thing more. Even as much as I love it, I'd rather have 0 Gauss Hogs in Exile than 1. 1 doesn't work, it makes the Gauss and the map look bad. It just won't do.

I heard they toyed with a teleportation AA in development. I think the main thing the pulse grenade needs is for the player to start with 2 instead of 1. Why on earth they made you start with just 1 baffles me, add it to the long list of decisions that 343 made which were soooo stupid you actually don't believe them until you've tested it yourself multiple times.

You can't stop players from being ****s. It's impossible. No friendly fire on vehicles just means they'll destroy the vehicle on spawn. If they can still splatter you then it will mean you have a betrayer SLAUGHTERING his team while being completely invincible to them. This is the original reason I think they allowed friendly fire on vehicles, because it was harder to turn off the physics effect of object damage and they wanted you to at least be able to disarm the betrayer. If they can't splatter you prepare to find yourself shoved into the enemy's line of fire by a ghost or a hog. If they can't push you prepare to have a hog park in front of you and keep moving to block your line of sight. If they can't do any damage at all to you prepare to have the highly disruptive experience of a Scorpion shell or Rocket Volley hitting you over and over and over again while you try to aim at enemies.

DRIVE/MANTIS and MANTIS alternate: BTB Mid-Range

I think the people behind Halo: Reach and Halo 4 have more fun destroying vehicles than using them. It IS fun crushing a warthog with a laser, or armor locking and letting a ghost splatter itself, but it's not fun being that hog or that ghost. I seriously believe that we've been getting more quantity less quality out of vehicles since Reach, and I think it's because the branch of Bungie responsible for Reach and 343 just think it's way cooler to have a bunch of deathtraps on the field that players will keep trying to use instead of a few powerful vehicles that good players will use amazingly well. To be fair though, I suspect you get a lot fewer jerks betraying for vehicles when everyone can have one, and once again we have an example of a few members of a group of people ruining everything for the whole group.

Got a guy in my clan who is deaf. Doesn't seem so cool to make sure he keeps getting disorganized randoms. Also I hope you intend to distinguish between "has a mic and is ready to talk" and "has a mic and is in Xbox Live Paty Chat." Back in Reach I remember they let you set preferences. I remember setting mine to "chatty" players because I wanted people with mics. Don't recall feeling it worked much one way or another.

So WTF are you whining about MLG on a 343 community fan forum for? It's not the same as "Slayer Pro" and it never has been. "Slayer Pro" you may recall has ALSO been around "before we was even called MLG." I've been around since CE too, as have a lot of people, so you may find you get more results somewhere where MLG is the focus.

Voted for Halo 3's because it was a 5-shot kill and I got a kick out of out-BRing people when I didn't even have a BR, THEY did, and I just killed them with a magnum in a fair fight. Halo 2 and ODST's pistols were nothing like the magnums in 3, Reach, or 4, so I wouldn't have even included them in the polls. I loved ODST's pistol, but it didn't have the same place in the game at all. Halo 4's magnum mostly sucks, it's 6 shots to kill and has to reload way too often. Reach's magnum might have been more powerful than Halo 3's, but to use it you have to play Reach, so....

Do you understand what MLG is? Do you understand that it's a separate organization from 343 and it's not up to 343 to decide the settings for "MLG?" Do you also know that there WAS a "Pro" playlist and barely anyone played it? I imagine it will be back, but you might want to try different methods for making it happen faster.

I've gotten double kills against the same guy (killed him, he respawned, and I killed him again within 4.5 seconds) and on either side of a respawn (killed a guy, died, respawned, killed another guy within 4.5 seconds). It's a bit silly, but I don't think it will go away. The 6 seconds shield recharge delay is a much bigger problem than the instant respawns, though I don't think I'd shed any tears if instant respawns went away and we went back to 4ish seconds recharge delay.

No modern professional military trains people to dual wield guns. Your brain can handle dual-wielding melee weapons, but you don't have enough eyes to aim two guns at once. Why would a much more advanced professional military waste the time? Or to put it another way: I hated dual-wielding in Halo 2 and 3, I don't want to see it return. Dual-wielding guns makes less sense the more you think about it, so think about it a bit. It's an awful idea.

The only problem with the Gauss Hog is the amount on the map. There should be two or zero, never just one. Also for those comparing it to other vehicles: it takes twice the amount of players to operate. The Gauss is probably the most dangerous and versatile vehicle in Halo 4's matchmaking, and as long as it's the only contender that takes TWO players to operate, that's fair (The rocket and chaingun hog are NOT contenders). It's not actually as versatile as a banshee, but it's much more dangerous, and it obviously doesn't have nearly the firepower of the Scorpion, but it's more versatile. Combine those facts with the fact that you need to sacrifice 25% of your team to run it, and you have a balanced - if very powerful - vehicle. They absolutely MUST fix the insanely stupid placement though, 1 on a 2-sided map is unacceptable, 2 is fair, 0 is acceptable. You can't balance things when you give everything to one team. I will never understand how whoever designed that map was allowed to EVER design maps. Don't blame the vehicles and weapons for your problems though, blame the fool who just gave them all to one side of the fight.

Did you jack anyone? Often the cause of death for beating a vehicle to death changes. In Halo 3 if you boarded a Wraith and beat it down in the DLC map "Avalanche" it would count as a gravity hammer kill (there was no gravity hammer on the map). Similarly if you splattered somebody with the Hornet on Avalanche you would get a collision kill (Pictured as a traffic cone). Likewise if you were to detonate a hog by shooting it with your DMR it would likely be the hog explosion which kills its occupants, not your DMR shot. The important thing is that they got dead and you made it happen, but it can be fun getting a weird tool of destruction.

My experience with using the Explosives perk exclusively on smaller maps for most of my games until recently gives me similar conclusions to the ones in the video. I think it HAS saved my life, and I think it HAS gotten me kills I might not have gotten normally, but only as often as any other perk (Like dexterity which might let me reload faster and get a shot in before someone else). MOST of the time it makes no difference because the way you play eliminates error margins. So for example you throw a grenade and try to get your enemy as close to its blast center as possible. Thus you use the extra radius less often the better you are with grenades. However some times you can get a kill that you wouldn't have normally due to a perk. In the case of Explosives I feel it gives only a slight edge, and it NEEDS the Resupply perk to be worth it. The only thing I feel can be noticed as being different with or without Explosives is the sticky detonator grenades. Those already have a larger radius and damage, so adding 2 meters feels more significant. It's a power weapon though, so it ought to be good. I know I enjoy that gun a LOT and I would almost say it felt less potent once I switched from Explosives to Stealth (Normally I don't think you will notice the difference). I think he goes by Short Bloke, which is what I think he says, not "Your Bloke"

This post is stupidly long. I suspect as it gets late in the evening I lose any desire to control my own rants. Halo 3 had much better multiplayer, but I don't think it was due to visible trueskill like many people claim. I don't see ANY evidence in the market that visible Trueskill = Success. Good gameplay = success, always has. Halo 3's multiplayer DID benefit from a competitive attitude, but not on the part of "PrO" players, on the part of the developers. Bungie made that game and did things to try and keep fights varied and generally fair. You had many more symmetrical maps, weapons performing very similarly in their certain range categories, vehicles that WORKED, and and the developer's energy spent on making it all work. In Halo 3 you could enter a game, walk forward and fight the enemy team. They could FLANK you, but it was because they were TRYING to flank you, not because the maps just flowed around behind you. Generally if you paid attention you could keep them in front of you and have a FIGHT, not 1 kill and then 1 death. Reach switched things back to Halo 2's idiotic massacre mode, where whoever wins the opening push wins the game. Bungie had largely moved on to other projects at this point, and delegated the development of Reach. Halo 4 definitely went for CoD-copy. I haven't played MUCH call of duty, but I remember feeling like there wasn't a lot to do other than run around a lot and shoot things. Since you can kill people instantly in that game and you CAN'T see through walls, there is also some benefit to camping. I don't remember seeing it as being quite as well-developed as Halo though, things like kill streaks made your life feel insignificant. Someone's AI-controlled helicopter could spawn kill you for awhile without the player ever lifting a finger. It's the attitude that counts. Bungie wanted to make awesome multiplayer when they made Halo 3. 343 wanted to make a specific kind of multiplayer, which is NEVER a good idea. It doesn't matter what direction you go with it, the important thing is you can't try to control player behavior. If you do they end up with less game to play. If you don't they end up being able to play the game the way they want. 343 wants you to sprint around a lot, get one kill, die, and then start over. That's what they wanted and that's the game they made. There is less game here than there was in Halo 3. I DO think they can salvage it, I don't think they will. One reason they won't: They have to reverse a lot of the crap they did. You can't have someone work on something for a year or two and then tell them to erase it, not unless you're their boss. I hate even suggesting stuff like this because the really horrible thing about REVERSING work is that you're so much farther down the timeline and you just wipe all your progress. For that reason I also know it will never be done. Examples: They made all weapons require reloads more often. This was stupid and pointless and harms the game. Will they fix it? Never, because they talked about it and decided it was better this way, baffling as that is. The same minds that make a mistake will make the same mistake given another opportunity. They didn't learn anything because whatever idiot made the call in the first place is probably still making calls, and people don't like to admit they're wrong even when they know they have been. People especially don't like to admit they're wrong when they're still too dumb to actually believe they're wrong. Maps designed "like race tracks" to quote another forum member. Stupid. Pointless. Harms the game. Will they learn? NO, because they did it on purpose and they don't think it's pointless. They had a point to it, they wanted players to have zero reasons to slow down and defend any location, that way they keep moving. The map designers probably also think they're pretty smart, since not only do the maps work as they intended but the players love the simplest map they made: Haven. Yet it WAS stupid because it's not how Halo works and it's not fun to have to run around constantly and it WAS pointless because their intention WAS to copy CoD which isn't designed to play at all like Halo. Why would you want to copy the guy who doesn't want to copy you? It's a weird human failing I see constantly. What can you admire in someone who admires nothing about you? Certainly you can admire SOME things, but generally when someone wants to make themselves as different from me as possible I suspect there are better people to study. What could 343 want to copy? The sales numbers? Of course that's to be admired, but that doesn't have anything to do with the product, it has everything to do with the consumers. I watch some CoD players on Youtube, they don't have near as much praise for CoD as 343 probably does. I bet it's some kind of personal information bubble thing, because WE aren't over here talking about how Halo 4 is the best game ever, but I bet they think we are. Similarly we're over here saying "People just love CoD so much 343 couldn't resist copying CoD" but the CoD players have complaints with their game too. I just wish people would get comfortable doing their own thing, so we wouldn't have everyone trying to look like everyone else, and we could get back to playing a game that looks like no other in the market.

I don't agree with you often Cortar, but I actually really like this idea. It sort of takes the wisdom of the original perfection medal (which could only be acquired in a slayer game) and magnifies it. K/D only counting in slayer makes a lot of sense, because it's the only time it's actually the terms of victory. I know I see objective games as really good for K/D (if you're NOT playing the objective) or really bad (If you ARE playing the objective), and the truth is I shouldn't even consider it. I should go in for the win no matter what. If K/D from objective games weren't factored in I think we'd see much better objective games. People wouldn't go in to pad their stats and they would instead play for the win.

The variation in covenant weaponry is due to the multiple races which make up the Covenant. They did find forerunner artifacts and such, but they also have their own technology. There is plenty of information about this stuff available, it's mostly for people who are interested in the background of the Halo universe. I can break down some of it though. Fuel Rod: Cannon Carbine Supercombine: Needler Needle Rifle Plasma: Rifle Pistol Hardlight: Energy Sword Portable shield cover things I think the Beam Rifle I don't remember which technologies each race brought to the table (Jackals, Grunts, Elites, Hunters, and Drones are all separate species), and I imagine there is some disagreement between the novels and the games, just like there are inconsistencies in comic books and star wars stuff. Popular franchises tend to grow a lot of background information which frequently ends up contradictory because all of it is basically fan fiction.

The DMR and the lightrifle have identical magnification, equip both, pick an object and some reference points, zoom in with one and then the other.

One type of behavior players are rarely prepared for from bad guys: retreat. Once I got used to their warping I tended to use it against them. They usually appear in a location predictably located in relation to their last location (Tends to be back 30ish feet within their previous 4 to 8 o'clock cone), all you have to do is spot the light signature of their reappearance and dump some heat on that location. Furthermore, get them to warp-charge you when you have a hard-hitting CQB weapon like a scattershot or shotgun by engaging them mid-range with your precision weapon, make sure they have a clean line of sight/path to you, they warp for the melee and you switch weapons to greet them with a face full of pain. Hasn't failed to kill them yet, and I only played on Legendary. You lose your shields though, so don't use this tactic if there are too many things shooting at you. Against better armed knights who don't need to charge to kill you the best thing is just to hit them incredibly hard all at once, it was for those guys that I tended to hang on to my heavy weapons. Since I actually played Spartan Ops before I played campaign I got a headstart on fighting knights, when they first appeared in the campaign is also when they first make autosentries available. Knowing they were a bit clumsy about who they target, I grabbed autosentry and would put it up on one side of an obstacle. The knight would engage the autosentry and I would run around behind to assassinate them. It didn't work every time, but it saved ammo. Also noob combos work on them, though they tend to need a few more headshots. Don't waste precision ammo hammering a knight's shields down, it's really is just a waste. It always was with the big foes in campaign btw: You didn't spend your BR ammo knocking a big Elite's shields down in previous games, you found another way to drop their shields and then headshotted them. You'd use a melee + grenade or something, never would you just try to take them down like you would a player because they'd dive for cover and going around to get them meant exposing yourself, and they just dodged grenades too. K nights are the same way, if you don't drop their shields in 1-2 seconds you're going to be working at them awhile. Any grenades near them they dodge or teleport away from, and they always teleport back toward reinforcements. You have to use combos, bait them, power weapons, or supercombine explosions. Campaign weapon selection is a lot more about paper/rock/scissors and combos than it is anywhere else. Enemies get stunned in campaign, so a lot of times you'd snipe a brute's helmet off, which would knock his head backward and it'd snap back forward just in time to catch the next bullet. Players don't stun (at least not much, this is the first game with "flinch," who knows what 343 will cook up for Halo 5), so different methods work against them.

I am making Stalker my last specialization because only half of it works.

Sums up what I was saying pretty neatly. Two sides, meet in the middle and fight, that feels so much better than every other Halo 4 map.

There's a lot of different factors at play in FFA, making it hard to declare someone the best of the bunch. I think in Halo 3 they treated something like the top 33% as victors, I don't know the number for sure, but I remember people could rank up after finishing 2nd or something. I remember at first feeling sort of cheated actually that I could level up without winning, but the better you understand FFA the more you forgive stuff like that. There's more luck involved in FFA than there is in a team game, not everyone can spawn equally close to a power weapon, and often you run around the map looking for kills but the main fighting just keeps escaping you. I've had many experiences in FFA where I was playing very well and didn't finish close to 1st because the match just didn't end up playing my way. Other times I felt like I was playing like an idiot and would get 1st. It's not an easy balance to strike, but I think over enough games Trueskill sorts people out pretty well. Eventually in Halo 3 Lone Wolves I faced people who were good at getting kills one way or another. You'd see tools of destruction ranging from AR to melee to BR to a random power weapon, the lesson was you do what you have to to win and accept that sometimes the win wasn't yours to have anyway. In a 6-player FFA each player makes up something like 16.16% of the total players on the field. Anyone who thinks an individual who is THAT small a portion of the total players deserves to win consistently is mistaken. You play many games and even the absolute best players lose some. That's how it should be. So finishing 2nd usually isn't the same as finishing 6th, and it's not the same level of "you lose."

Your "low-sound" test could take place in SWAT. SWAT is a seriously quiet gametype because people don't have motion trackers so they don't find each other as fast and they only need to fire once when they do. It's eery at first, but you get used to it and start relying on it.

If you want to talk like you know something, show me what you know. Where did YOU get YOUR information? So far I see someone who can't back up a damn thing he claims. I would LOVE to be proven wrong, but you're just making claims without supporting them. I like knowing how the game works, I want to know in detail what each perk does, forgive me for wanting better information than just someone making **** up.

I think you're approaching this from a very strange and I'm afraid incorrect angle. First off, PV is a general-use AA that helps you in all kinds of situations, not just those where you fight a boltshot user. Second, it DOES frequently save your hide against a boltshot user in seeing they have one, but I don't see any reason why a person with one particular weapon or AA or perk should just ALWAYS own someone with another specific thing. I may feel like certain things should give you winning odds (Like if I have a shotgun and you have a DMR, I'd like that encounter to depend a lot on the range we're at), but not the win. PV counters the boltshot-CAMPER because you can see the guy, it also counters every other camper you catch with it, but it doesn't keep you from then walking around the corner and getting owned anyway. It's an AA that provides you with information, and what you do with that information is your job. It shouldn't highlight one particular weapon, because it's just a detection AA. Should your motion tracker ping people as bright violet when they have a boltshot? I don't think so. There are plenty of kills that still happen with a boltshot that AREN'T camping believe it or not. I know I get into plenty of fights where we both grab some cover, switch to boltshots, and then it's on. It's an excellent sidearm, and by that I mean it can get kills on people who CAN see you and who DO know you're there. I don't know why they should get an extra alert when using PV because if you're in boltshot range you can actually see the boltshot in their hands. Should the PV guy also get an alert when there's a sword around the corner? Even though he can see by the way the spartan's hands are that he has one? This idea just doesn't make any sense.