Bloody Initiate

Haven't had much of a problem with this. Although now that people can spawn with plasmas I definitely get stuck and stick people a lot more, it bothers me how people go for a suicide stick, just because I tend to think usually they could have fought me and had a chance of killing me AND surviving. I don't understand those people, but I also don't understand most of the behaviors which don't involve simply playing the game as well as you can. I remember how the frags took awhile to explode back in Halo: CE, you'd be fighting with someone for a bit and then you'd finally kill them only to hear *clink*clink*clink*. Lol, that was always worth a laugh at LAN parties. Maybe he likes his food extra hot?

Halo 2 was the hardest. There were the Legendary jackal snipers and you had that fight against Regret. I think my brother and I spent like 6 hours on that friggen thing. At least with the snipers you could memorize their locations. Plus the flood in Halo 2 were so nasty you often just camo'd through and avoided them entirely when you had the option. I think maybe Halo: CE's was the hardest beneath that, but to be honest it's difficult to tell because I haven't played it in so many years, and I will have gotten better since then. I need to play through that thing again, I've barely touched my copy of Anniversary that I will have had for a year this Christmas (I was angry when I found out it was just re-skinned Reach, including the slug-like movement speed). Halo 4 had some respectably difficult moments, like when you have to destroy those three power cores guarded by covenant. You're surrounded by covenant and they give you a banshee but for some reason the covenant NEVER miss that thing with teamshot. I remember Halo 3's campaign being relatively easy, but very fun. I thought Reach's campaign was excellent story-wise (They made a fight you knew was hopeless seem meaningful, that's a bit of a feat from a narrative perspective), it was technically impossible to survive the last level , and I remember struggling with the drones. With Halo 3 and Reach though I just played them as much as I had to and spent all my time on Matchmaking. Same with Halo 4, although I think it's by far the weakest campaign of all of them. It had some tough parts, but the rewards for that work were terrible - you just got more campaign! The final fight was despicable. The level with the mammoth was actually extremely stupid if you took a moment to see how scripted the enemy behavior was. It was all just stupid. I kinda hated the campaign in Halo 4, and not because it was hard. I don't remember how hard ODST was, but I remember liking the campaign. The ODSTs weren't that much weaker than spartans really, and in some ways they were much stronger (Yank out a turret and run if you want to make the chief cry). They got two weapons which have never appeared in a Halo game since then, and both of the weapons were very strong. Bit of a shame really. It was also designed for Co-op, and I think that made the campaigns progressively easier. I'm not sure I beat Halo 3: ODST solo on Legendary, I think I might have but I'm not sure. If it's an achievement I got it though. I loved the Firefight, too bad they've brought back the Brute Chopper, that thing was badass. The real trouble with judging their difficulty compared to each other is that Halo 2 is sort of obviously the hardest, but after that you know you got better from game to game and you can't know how difficult the campaigns are now without replaying them all. Thankfully Halo 4's was the more recent campaign, so I won't have to play that piece of crap again to remember. Just need to run it co-op to get my achievements and then I'll never have to (L) to crawl again.

Neither one of them is a close quarters weapon. They're both mid-range weapons designed to forgive different mistakes. The BR is designed to forgive a poorly placed shot, the carbine is designed to forgive a completely missed shot. If you miss more you want a carbine, if you have a hard time landing that headshot you want a BR. If you have a hard time with both then you might want to consider a different weapon and playstyle. Most people end up preferring the BR between the two because any weapon that takes more shots to kill is just a bit harder to use because you have to perform the same action more times without making a mistake. There's some law of the universe that if you perform the same action ENOUGH times then you inevitably make a mistake. So fewer shots ends up being easier to handle, and you have to adjust less as well. With both you tend to pull the trigger and fire the weapon as fast as possible and then make adjustments for your enemy's movements when you aim. Fewer shots to kill means fewer adjustments. That's also why you see clips of people in mid-range marksman fights and even when their reticule is way off they keep firing, because their index finger is on auto-pilot while their thumb tries to keep up. Someone in a video I was watching said that the automatic weapons are basically designed to make you make a mistake. You don't keep your cool and your auto-pilot index finger wastes a shot before your thumb is ready. I thought it was a pretty accurate assessment. I still think automatic weapons need a buff so even a perfect marksman loses a CQB fight against one, just because I think playing to your weapon's strengths and avoiding its weaknesses is part of being good. That was a lot of text to just say that neither the carbine or the BR is a close quarters weapon, they're realy designed to engage enemies at roughly the same range. The BR DOES seem to have a slightly closer "mid-range" than the carbine, but really the carbine's strength is its rate of fire, which is also a sort of "closer" feature.

I think we agree on the problem but disagree on the solution, since you don't seem to deny that the BR sucks. I don't think it's supposed to be redundant though, even though at the moment it's both redundant and terrible. My problem is that even after you nerf the DMR the BR will STILL suck. The reason I talk about kills per clip isn't because everyone is going to run around getting into consecutive fights needing perfect accuracy without a reload, but because it's a good measure of how much heat you have when you spawn with a weapon. The amount of grenades won't change, and you'll use those to augment your damage and such, and your teammates will damage people too, so you'll often get more or less kills out of a clip depending on other factors, but those factors are independent of the weapon. The weapon can change. If you switch to a DMR from a BR then you just become a better more useful player, not because you get good suddenly, but because you brought the better gun. Furthermore, my issue with the DMR nerf is that nothing gets better. You might think you'll "balance" things, but "balance" can mean a lot of things. In SWAT everyone is one-shot, so they die instantly but they also kill instantly. That's "balanced" but it's not the way the rest of the game should play. Also I don't really want the weapons to be "balanced" against each other when they're not supposed to be engaging enemies at the same range. Why should the DMR have the same kill time as a BR? It shouldn't, because then the DMR STILL wins because it's a more accurate gun and it doesn't need to reload as often. THAT'S not balanced. The BR should have an edge in mid-range fights against the DMR, as should the carbine. Speaking of the carbine, I also advocate boosting its damage and keeping it on par with the BR, I just mention it less in this thread because this thread is about the DMR being better than the BR. There is in fact another active thread about the carbine, I talk about it there. I don't have answers for every problem, but the BR DOES suck, the DMR IS fine, and to respond to your earlier mention about weapons killing faster all around when you enhance them, I think that's OK. I don't think a blanket boost is the trick. I will explain one thing driving my arguments: I think your kill time with a loadout weapon should get faster the closer you get to your target. To elaborate, I think the AR/Storm Rifle/Suppressor should all have faster kill times than the BR and the Carbine, and I think the BR and the Carbine should have faster kill times than the DMR. The balance is accuracy/recoil/ease of use rather than just straight kill time. I don't think you should see a lot of DMRs on smaller maps like Abandon, because that isn't the map for that gun. I think BTB is rightfully full of DMRs and Lightrifles, because those are long range rifles. Maps and playlists with a good variety of encounter ranges tend to show how weapons perform vs. how they SHOULD perform, and playlists with only one type of map tend to be less friendly to a variety of weapons. As it is now the BR and the carbine underperform EVERYWHERE, and so I want them to perform SOMEWHERE. If you nerf the DMR, the other guns don't perform any better, the DMR just performs worse.

Lol, if you just want to talk **** to me that other account better show you being a lot better than you are. I'll be happy to stop wasting time trying to educate you, at least you can take comfort knowing that 343 knows about as little about designing a game as you do.

To be fair, the BR from Halo 3 was extremely well done. I don't wish for "the good ol' days" and I don't reject change, but I don't agree with changing things just to change them. Not every new Halo game should change the weapons that worked in previous games. The BR in Halo 3 was an excellent gun which filled its role well without completely overpowering the alternatives outside its intended arena. They tampered with it and now its pointless, doing well with it doesn't prove anything, because the same player could probably do even better with a DMR. If you make the Halo 4 BR a 4-shot kill it becomes much more like the Halo 2 BR than the Halo 3 BR, and the Halo 2 BR was just a little too good. If this BR really is much less accurate than a DMR then it can work as a 4-shot kill, but if it's as accurate and consistent as it feels when I use it then I think the gun is just ruined and fixing it will require way more work then 343 is willing to do. Hopefully one day they're stop screwing with things that work and focus on fixing things that don't as well as consistently adding new content (I love the Mantis, Promethean Vision, I might be in the minority in liking how ordinance works, etc.). They obviously can do a good job, but it's just as obvious that they won't do a good job when they start tampering with things that worked fine before. Just so we're clear early on, the BR is way down on the OP's service record, and on most service records I've seen. That's where it will stay unless they do something to fix it. That's fine if it's what everyone wants, but it's clearly a gun which simply fails to fill its role properly, or else it would see more use. If people agree that making it a 4-shot kill isn't the way to go, they will hopefully at least agree that it sucks and there is in fact a problem with that. I don't have many BR kills in Halo 4, or many kills at all, but I do pay attention to how the game works when I play. To make my arguments I just look at the numbers and point out the obvious problem. I also kill a lot of BR users, often while they're reloading. That I can say from experience. Try to figure out why, and you might re-evaluate your position.

A 10% damage boost nearly completely fixes it by making it take 7 shots instead of 8 to kill. Your kill time only improves slightly due to the short amount of time to fire one shot from a carbine. You remain competitive with a DMR in your chosen range, and you have slightly more padding in your clip in case you make a mistake. It's simple enough for 343 to implement a 10% boost to one weapon's damage, although I don't think they're plan to improve certain weapons, they should.

First off, I never said any of the crap you just put on me. I don't like having one gun being better than all the rest, whether it's the DMR the BR or whatever. You don't seem to either, we just believe in different methods of fixing the problem. I believe in elevating the elements which fail to perform while leaving those that do alone, you believe in removing the single element which performs properly, even though you don't view it as such. The idea you propose is the problem Bungie and 343 have had from the start, they keep nerfing the top performers instead of bringing other things up to their level. I've ranted enough against nerfing in other threads, I'll continue now to the topic. To clarify, I think the BR and the Carbine should be roughly equivalent, but I don't have all the answers, so I don't necessarily know how to accomplish it (The damage boosts I suggested - which are not original ideas - deserve a try in customs at least, perhaps on larger maps which have a greater variety of encounter ranges). I think the carbine and the BR should both defeat the DMR mid-range, because they're both mid-range weapons. I think the DMR should defeat them both long-range, because it's a long range weapon. The lightrifle is its own unique animal, and most people I've talked to like it even if they don't use it. Second, you're failing to see beyond the kill times. That's not the only factor in making a weapon work. The BR should be a 4-shot kill because it's designed to be a 4-shot kill. There are 36 rounds in a magazine, it fires only in 3-shot bursts, and it takes 5 shots to kill someone but only 13 of the bullets. That means you spend 15 rounds per kill mininum, and you have to reload after at most 2 kills. Everyone else has to reload after two kills too (I think a scoped lightrifle actually has a whole 3 kills in the clip, I haven't counted), but the DMR has more slack in its clip, making it more forgiving. People think the BR is more forgiving due to the 3-shot burst, but the burst spread is so tight it and the weapon is hitscan so it ends up making very little difference. If the BR were a 4-shot kill, all of its other numbers suddenly fall into place and make sense, because that's literally exactly what it was designed to do. They nerfed its damage without appropriate adjustments to its other aspects. The problem with the BR being 4-shot is that it IS hitscan and its burst spread IS very tight. That's why I want its damage to be set up so you need exactly 12 bullets to kill, because the way that works is your last shot MUST put its last bullet in the head. That adds a degree of difficulty, but with the tight spread and hitscan nature I'm not sure it's enough of a degree of difficulty. It becomes a matter of needing to test it more extensively, but the problem with THAT is that I KNOW the 5-shot kill is terrible as it is, you just don't have as much killing power in that gun. The carbine's killing power per clip is actually WORSE than the BR's, but at the moment it can kill faster, so I think that damage boost would actually keep the two roughly on par. I think it DOES get harder on the CQB weapons though if the carbine and BR get better, and while everything needs a little fine-tuning anyway, I'm not sure 343 is up to the task. I wouldn't blame them if they hadn't screwed it up in the first place but they created the problems by deliberately nerfing everything. They dramatically increased the BR's RoF, but made the incredibly stupid move of making it a 5-shot kill, forcing it into a situation where it can only be either completely awful and pointless or just a little too good. Those are the choices, with a damage boost the BR and Carbine could easily rule smaller maps (Seems fair at first, but it's already harder being an automatic weapon user since you take so long to raise your weapon after sprinting), but without the boost they're both hideously bad and completely outclassed by the DMR. That's why you have to look past kill times, btw. If you just look at kill times they're all just within a tenth of a second of each other and it seems insignificant, but you have to look beyond that to the second kill, and the third. How does the weapon keep you alive whenever the **** hits the fan? You have to think of how the weapon plays when your primary contribution to your team is assists from teamshot. The BR and the Carbine just get worse the longer you use them and the more situations in which you use them.

Made a custom gametype to see how the BR performed with a 10% damage boost. It performed perfectly. I could not find a way to accurately measure how many bullets were actually required to drop the shield/finish the kill though (It was a 4 shot kill, but I don't know how many bullets were doing what on the last burst). I could have hopped into theatre to count but I didn't. I got the feeling it was dropping shields with 10 bullets and sending the last 2 to the head, couldn't be sure though. In other news: The shield recharge delay felt much better at 4 seconds instead of 6, in fact while I haven't gone back to check I suspect that's where it was in previous games, just based on my memory. The 10% damage boost made the BR AND the Carbine perform more closely to balanced. I think an easy fix to the carbine is to give it this boost, its high RoF will keep the buff from trimming too much time off its kill time (Since a high RoF means a small amount of time per shot, saving one shot doesn't save much time, but it does save ammo). The BR's RoF might save too much time on kills though, felt more like a Halo 2 BR than a Halo 3 BR. If I knew how the last burst performed I could know for sure, but I suspect it actually needs closer to an 8% damage boost than a 10. The idea being that it should take 11 bullets to drop the shields and the 12th makes the headshot. The 10% damage boost made other weapons perform far too well. The boltshot is indisputably too strong with the boost, and most of the fully automatic weapons set up a melee way too fast. I think if you really want to feel what Halo of Duty 4: Smack Ops might be like you should try a custom with a 10-20% damage boost, because it definitely started feeling way too easy to kill people. I think the head hitboxes are bigger than previously. Either that or the people talking about bullet magnetism have accidentally stumbled upon something (I say accidentally because they seem largely unaware of the assistance they've been receiving from the very first Halo). It seems high chest shots are frequently all you need. Makes sense with the BR due ot the recoil, but also noticed it on the DMR. I didn't test the boost's effect on the light rifle, which was actually an accident. I had a loadout set up for it and everything, just forgot to check it.

8 shots to kill right? 18 rounds in the clip? I haven't bothered counting, so I could be wrong, but if I'm not it has 2.25 kills in the clip before it has to reload. It kills faster than the BR, so it's at least as good as the BR, which is a horrible gun, and a terrible standard. I honestly think I'd rather have an AR, at least with that gun you know you suck and you don't make the mistake of starting fights against real guns. By the way if anyone was wondering why I use the kills per clip measure so much, it's because you often actually miss your shots, but you have so much killing power before you have to reload (and die, because that's what happens when you have to reload). It's like a countdown measured not by seconds but by shots, when it runs out you die. In a fight, every shot you miss is a second off the clock, and in Halo 4 some guns just have shorter countdowns than others. Anyone ever watch Burn Notice? In the very first episode he says he'd rather have duct tape than a gun, because guns make you stupid, and duct tape makes you think. While there is no duct tape option in this game, there are guns that are only as good as a roll of duct tape. Guns like the carbine and the BR make you stupid because you think they work. Guns like the AR make you think because you know it doesn't work. I remember going for my fully-automated and up close and personal challenges with an AR loadout, and finding myself doing well in the games. It wasn't because the AR was good, it was because I was focusing hard on surprising people and taking fewer chances. The carbine and the BR are probably close to being only as good as an AR, but people think they work, so they rely on them. The carbine sucks. The only thing it has going for it is the long standing urban myth that if you're awesome, it's the best. That way a bunch of people keep using it thinking if they just got better, they'd be unstoppable. Instead they get slaughtered, as we know, but at least we have someone to shoot until they figure it out.

I guess the game wouldn't break if the power weapons had less ammo, but I tend to get a little nervous with 343's definition of power weapons. The hammer, for example, seems to spend a lot of time running after people and dying before it gets there, and the needler doesn't really kill that much more efficiently than any other mid-range weapon (It kills faster, but requires a larger uninterrupted window of opportunity). It's only fair to admit that I don't use that many power weapons though, I try to secure them when I'm working with a team, but most of the time I open games in ways that secure me at most one minor power weapon (Sticky detonator, scattershot, sniper rifle) or I hang back and let everyone who rushes for them kill each other off so I can get to the business of DMRing. I'm likely not the best authority on power weapons.

An exception to my earlier post: I still want Boarding Action. They've never remade it, it's easy enough to make something that serves the purpose of a ladder, stairs for example. I want Boarding Action, an accurate community forge of it would be fine. The only one I've seen so far (and I have NOT looked very much) was an OK attempt in Halo 3's sandbox which failed due to the buildable area not actually being big enough.

Your first question echoes in my mind for a lot of the choices 343 made with Halo 4. I can see what they were doing, but I can never figure out "Why?" I like the idea of specializations, but I really don't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to make their availability so limited. At least let people keep accumulating experience after they hit 70 so that they can use the specializations once they're unlocked. It's my understanding that if you keep playing past 70 you are basically gaining no credit toward those specializations, and all your completed commendations and such are just getting wasted. I'm not even especially concerned about it (Although some specialization upgrades give you a real competitive advantage, like stability), I just don't understand WHY they effectively punish players who don't have them all unlocked from a code or from the LE. I don't mind when LE buyers get some extra stuff, I prefer it all to be arbitrary in a competitive multiplayer title, but I really prefer that people paying more money get more stuff. What I don't prefer is the people who buy the base model or standard edition getting punished for it.

It makes more sense once you get over there. The halowaypoint forum is harder to navigate, gets about as much attention from 343 as this one does, and it seems to lag out and fail quite a lot. I was very sorry to find that it felt more appropriate for Halo 4. I posted in a thread just last night and wanted to see what responses had been posted this morning, I cannot find that friggen thread, and I had even left my computer on hibernate in order to be sure I wouldn't lose my place. Back on topic, I enjoy the Explosives perk in one loadout designed for smaller maps, but it's really not worth it in many more. In BTB I run ammo and mobility. Usually I try to make something more tailored to the needs of the game I'll be playing next (Like awareness when I hope to get a sniper rifle, and sensor when I hope to get a vehicle, etc.). It can be tricky sometimes when a map that challenges your loadout gets voted in, but the loadouts are designed to have a small impact on gameplay, so I never feel too far behind.

I don't entirely agree with your view of power weapons, just because generally they don't give me much more trouble than they ever did. What gives me trouble - and what keeps the power weapons from dominating - is how the game is designed to kill you after so many meetings with the enemy. You don't get your shields back for 8 seconds (6 seconds to begin recharging, 2 to fully charge), all of your starting weapons have less killing potential than they did previously (You have to reload sooner and you don't start with any more ammo), and you can return to combat very quickly (instant respawn + sprint) without actually getting any better prepared or equipped for combat. The result is that the people with power weapons die after just a few kills and so does everyone else. Their weapons usually despawn or go to someone else after that. I agree 100% with your second point though.

Agreed completely. What people with few complaints don't understand is that those of us WITH complaints want to play Halo 4 and have fun too, and our definition isn't even that different, it's just that we like to think we can do something about it by publicly pointing out flaws. They also don't understand how upsetting it is to like something enough that you want to like it more, but you just can't because of how badly it was done.

Then you didn't play Reach, or you're just full of it. My money's on the latter. Every other day they were dropping new soft kill zones all over every map to keep people from getting into nigh-unassailable high ground positions. I actually objected to it because I think soft kill zones are like duct tape, they save you some time but ultimately the thing is going to fall apart anyway. They got SO bad about using soft kill zones in Reach that eventually you couldn't get on top of a pebble without "9 seconds to return to Battlefield." There may not have been super bouncing, but Reach's maps were horrible and the people "fixing" them were worse. As for hackers, I haven't experienced anything like what the OP is describing. I HAVE experienced enough sudden lag that I've begun rethinking my long-time dismissal of "lag switch" talk, because it seems like after that sudden lag I'm always respawning instead of just coming back where I was.

The fact that the DMR outperforms most guns at most ranges is not a problem with the DMR, it's a problem with most guns. The BR sucks. There is plenty of information to back it up, and in fact there is ONLY information to back it up. It has a slower kill time, fewer kills per clip, and fewer kills per spawn (fewer kills in a clip means your two reloads accomplish less and less, because you're just wasting time putting more bullets in a gun that doesn't use them properly). It wastes 2 bullets per kill, that waste is mandatory, and outside of SWAT this fantasy people have of just wiping out a crowd of one-shots with1-2 bursts is exactly that, a fantasy. With the BR you're always reloading, so all those kills are gone before you can get that dream burst. It should be 4-shot, that simple change makes all of its problems go away. Do you know why? Because it was designed to be 4-shot from the start. 343 didn't decrease its clip size, they decreased the clip size on the DMR, but not on the BR. They kept the BR as similar to its original design as possible, but changed the one aspect that held it all together: A 4-shot kill. Even if people got their pointless nerf to the DMR, the BR would still suck. You'd just have one more sucky gun. The BR was built around that 4-shot kill, taking it away devastated that weapon. It wouldn't bother me so much if they'd adjusted its other numbers, but they didn't. It also wouldn't bother me if the nerf was at all necessary, helpful, or smart in any way. Instead it was just them destroying a gun for no reason. In a proud tradition 343 decided they should fix what wasn't broken; no, actually, they tampered with something that worked perfectly and broke it with their clumsiness, never for a moment realizing that they were doing the wrong thing.

You forgot trolls and their lesser kin.

I agree, but 2 games ago. (I think they should have left them alone before they changed them). The DMR didn't need 1 less bullet in its clip, and the BR didn't need to be a 5 shot kill. They were unnecessary nerfs, like most nerfs, and the result is one gun got a little less good and the other gun got just plain bad. You still die to a BR almost as often as you die to a DMR in small maps, but that doesn't make them equivalent. It just means that people are dying or combats are ending before the weaknesses in the weapons are affecting the outcome. The problem is still there, just not as easily noticed when you die so fast and respawn instantly.

I know what you were talking about, and I don't think they've done anything like that. They've only released a few updates for the game, and they told us what was in them.

In Reach you might have voted for regular Slayer w/o DMRs but people still went for them, and in the gametypes when DMRs were available in a loadout people favored those loadouts. I know when I wanted a jet pack I'd get that loadout, then either grab a DMR from the map or kill someone who had one. The AR was awful in Reach, probably the worst it's ever been in any Halo game. I agree automatic weapons need a buff, but not necessarily the buffs you suggest. I just want them to make headshots. They do enough damage to drop shields quickly now, then I want to be able to raise my reticule, stick my assault weapon in someone's face, pull the trigger and have something happen. Instead you knock their shields off then you have to plod your way through their health, which tends to just get you a lot of assists because other players are using headshot weapons. The automatic weapons would still lose to mid and long range weapons, as they should, because they lack the accuracy and have too much recoil to compete at that range. That's fair. Overall though people will always prefer marksman rifles because they can attack at any range. How bad does it suck to run around with your AR and see some dude ahead of you, but too far ahead of you to engage him just yet? You can empty your clip getting his attention, but then he's going to turn around and you'll be at a disadvantage. That's just the plight of CQC weapons, even if they buff them to work properly, you don't attack at mid-range with a shotgun.

Making the DMR a 6 shot kill is not a good idea at all, it has nothing do with "players with good aim will make it work" it has to do with you slowing the kill time of a long range weapon. Even if you land every shot, you're giving the target more time to get away, which they do A LOT at long range now. The DMR is just fine as it is, nerfing it is a terrible idea. The problem is not that the DMR is too good, it's that the BR isn't good enough. How about we look at some numbers no one else is looking at? Most people just focus on kill times. Perhaps people don't realize just how terrible they made the BR: It has a 5 shot kill now, which means it takes 15 bullets to kill someone, you have to spend 3 bullets on the last 3-shot burst to shoot them in the head, even though you only need one of those bullets. However they did NOT increase its magazine size or the amount of ammo in a clip, you still have only 36 rounds (12 3-shot bursts). You previously had exactly 3 kills in the clip assuming perfect accuracy, now you have 2.4. You have to reload two shots into the third guy, he still has half his shield, and now you're going to die. The DMR also suffered a clip-size reduction (Another stupid move I'll never understand or forgive). It too previously had exactly 3 kills in the clip, assuming perfect accuracy. Now it has 2.8. You have to reload right before finishing the third guy off, or switch to a headshot secondary, or let a teammate clean them up, or drop a 'nade for them so you can laugh in the afterlife, but they're at least one-shot. Even if you die, did you notice how many more options you had? You may think that this applies only rarely, but have you perhaps noticed the frequency of the "Relaod This" medal? I bet you get it a lot more on BR users than on DMR users, I know I do. I'll also bet you get it a lot more in Halo 4 than you ever did in Halo: Reach. Again, I know I do. They should never have nerfed the clip sizes, but that's a different argument. The fact is they DID nerf the clip sizes, very stupidly, but they did. AND THEN they make the BR a 5 shot kill, also very stupidly, because it becomes a weapon that simply has fewer kills in it than other guns. It just fails to perform, while everyone else is doing their job. They hit the BR from two sides in this game, and while its kill time is only a tenth of a second slower or something, it's overall killing potential is lower too, combining with the other nerfs it becomes a gun that falls farther and farther behind. My guess is 343 hated all the BR fanboys and such from Halo 2 and 3, I don't blame them because often the biggest fans of a thing can make you hate that thing, but the fact is the weapon worked then. It doesn't now.

It also balances the power weapons and personal ordinance in the sense that you only have to kill the guy once to get rid of his sniper rifle, instead of killing him and taking over that part of the map long enough to retrieve it yourself, or killing him and making a kamikaze charge just to get one stupid gun. I said in another thread that it's easier to get a sniper rifle in this game, but harder to keep one. That's much closer to a balanced set up than what came before. I like almost everything to do with ordinance except how one guy gets gravity hammer, plasma grenades, and overshield in a BTB game while another guy gets incineration cannon, binary rifle, and damage boost. I think they might do well to increase the odds of certain weapons appearing in certain maps or gametypes in which they make sense, and decrease the odds of things appearing in maps or gametypes that don't make sense. This is really how stuff should have been done from the start: weapons and such tailored to each map & gametype, the trouble is they've NEVER done it like that, most developers don't either, and I imagine it's too hard to make it happen now anyway.