Bloody Initiate

I think the idea that the carbine kills faster if you're good with it is a bit of a long lasting Halo myth. All the videos I've seen have it losing to the DMR in kill time, so no matter how good you are with it you still lose to the king gun, making using it mostly pointless. Another option for the Covie weapons is status effects. A face shot with a carbine could cause a slight green flash on the affected player's HUD which might slightly disorient them enough to make them miss a shot or two. The storm rifle could screw up their HUD, make it staticky and spin their motion tracker etc. so that they have to rely more on their instincts and experience rather than their ability to simply turn and own the storm rifle. The trouble with these ideas is that I think they're harder to put into the game. That's the trouble though when you release a game with fundamental flaws, you have to work harder updating it than you would have otherwise.

I didn't think they'd done a lot of weapon rebalancing yet. Chances are you're witnessing network issues combined with the fact that players are simply learning how to play better as they get used to the game. The first few weeks of a game's release are full of people getting a feel for the game and making a lot of mistakes they'll never make again. There will be a similar influx of new players around Christmas, more players will seem clumsy and you might find them sitting still for a suppressor kill or walking onto a sticky detonator for you. After awhile the community just gets better at the game as a whole though. The best methods for playing a game, unlike wealth, trickle down. Usually you see people start doing stuff at the highest levels in order to get an edge, then slowly everyone at lower levels learns it and it becomes standard. Later in the game's life certain tricks that fool new players now won't fool anyone.

I don't think randomness ALWAYS lowers the skill gap. I don't disagree entirely with your assertion, just with the broadness of it. For exampe plenty of people argued that random BR spread was BS because it wasn't consistent, except a skilled player accounts for the unreliability and doesn't expect it to perform perfectly at the ranges in which its spread becomes inconsistent. It's a different type of skill, but it's still a skill, and the best players could both learn and memorize consistent spread AND account for inconsistent spread. Thus random didn't automatically lower the skill gap, because the best players know when their weapons are at their best and when they're not. I could go on, and in fact I did write a longer post but it got very close to ranting about unrelated topics, likely because I should get off the internet for the night. What it comes down to is: The best players consistently come out on top, not due to one thing but due to many. This includes memorizing consistent features, accounting for potential randomness, and perfecting a lot of different tricks which frequently shouldn't be in the game (various button combo glitches, etc.), but as long as they ARE in the game the best players make sure they have them down to a science. Often random DOES lower the skill gap, often it instead adds a new dimension to the game which the pros master, or quite often it makes no difference at all (Like how a rifle kicks doesn't matter that much because you aren't going to fire it until it's ready anyway. You may have to, but those situations are already unlikely to go your way). What random really represents is unpredictability, and no one predicts everything perfectly 100% of the time anyway. Acting like you can is a bit unrealistic, and a bit unfair considering they probably just put the RNG in these places because they thought it made the game more interesting.

I'm glad to be helpful. Keep your eye out for more tips like that from anywhere you can find them. I'm far from the best player and the DMR is probably going to remain the best gun in this game, so there will be a lot of information out there about getting good with it, lots of it likely better than what I can offer.

That's a good point, I didn't think about it when I made my post but if you equip Explosives you pretty much have to equip Resupply or Grenadier too. Otherwise you've got a perk that you literally throw away after your first two grenade tosses. I know the loadout I use Explosives on has Resupply, and I can't imagine putting it on a loadout that didn't have Resupply or Grenadier. There's even more proof it's not OP, it takes 2 perks to benefit from the 1. Also the damage resistance is very slight, but I think it's saved my life a couple times. You know how often a DMR fight starts to go south for one of the fighters and so he ducks behind cover, whips out his CQB secondary, and hopes the other guys gets close? Usually you just grenade that guy and walk away laughing when you get the kill. I have been that guy and had people grenading me, and if I made an effort to avoid the 'nades (Like jumping when they're about to detonate, grenades seem to have a lot less vertical splash in this game) I can occasionally survive the explosions long enough to get a second chance with the Scattershot or whatever I'm packing. I remember 1-2 instances specifically where I'm pretty sure I would have died without the perk. It IS only a slight bit of resistance though, so it's designed for you to only have 1-2 stories of it saving your life. More often I suspect it lets you be slightly sloppier with your frag throws and sticky detonators, which in turn saves you time lining up the toss/shot.

The light rifle is already obsolete at the range you should use the BR. It's the best long range killer and the weakest mid-range killer of the marksman rifles. I actually think the lightrifle is an interesting gun, but don't find myself using it much due to its weakness at mid-range (Fights always find their way closer to you). The POINT is that it isn't going to get any weaker, it already loses to every other marksman rifle at mid-to-close range. It practiced hands it beats them all in long range. That's kinda fun and interesting. The DMR doesn't need a nerf. I'd be happy to repeat that every time someone was silly enough to suggest it. Here's how you do this: You look at the best one, that's the model. If you drop the DMR's rate of fire or damage you make it completely useless. As it is now good players get to cover before you land 5 shots. That's how it should be. The gun is fine as it is, and that means you need to bring the BR and the carbine UP to its level instead of bring the DMR down. What exactly the carbine needs I don't know, because unlike the UNSC and Forerunner weapons it doesn't really have a LONG range option (UNSC has DMR, Forerunner has scoped lightrifle). That means the carbine has to do the job of two guns or the job of one weird gun (the lightrifle). I made a suggestion in another thread about what might do the trick (Hint: I think a full-auto carbine would be hilarious, AND awesome, AND kinda balanced in a way most people wouldn't expect). The BR is the topic of this thread though, and the solution to that gun's problem is to make it 4-shot. Its accuracy and recoil, as I have already stated, prohibit it from competing with the DMR and lightrifle at long range. However it was originally designed for mid range, and that's what burst fire weapons are designed for IRL, so let's make it king in that range. Make it 4 shot again. It's a simple and effective fix. Will more people use BRs then? Of course, because it will have a purpose again. But it will still get sniped by DMRs and lightrifles at long range, which is what SHOULD happpen. It should lose at long range, win at mid range, and struggle up close.

The Carbine has always had a hard time distinguishing itself, because the more shots you have to land the more likely you are to make a mistake. Since nobody's perfect, that makes it hard to win with this gun. I think the solution is to let it go fully automatic without actually increasing its rate of fire or decreasing its accuracy. It's stupid that only a few weapons can headshot, and it's equally stupid that NONE of them are fully automatic. Limited accuracy and recoil are adequate balances for fully automatic weapons, no point in holding them back even more by prohibiting them from making headshots. This would make the carbine a very unique weapon in its ability to engage at literally any range. You don't get a faster kill time, but you get a weapon that's much easier to use without sacrificing versatility. You can decrease your recoil by choosing to fire it semi-auto, but when you just need to zap some mofos you hold that trigger down and watch them weep. As it is now it's just the little rifle that couldn't.

Landing all 12 bullets with the BR was always the trick too, and it was a GOOD trick to require of people. You only 4-shotted if you landed that last burst perfectly, which you frequently didn't. I had a pretty good BR in Halo 3, and I fought people who were better than me all the time, and the fights often ended after 5 shots instead of 4 because of either the shots not registering or the 12th bullet missing the head. That was a good model. Using your final 3-shot burst to land ONE headshot is not.

Until you get rogue (And btw, Rogue doesn't remove the effect of shots on you, it just halves them) I recommend pulling your aiming stick down in long range fights. I frequently 5-shot people at long range who are shooting me back. So far the best practice I have found for this is to go for snipe on Solace as soon as the game starts. Even if you don't want the sniper rifle, go up there and start shooting across the map at the guys on the other team who are doing the same (There are always 1-2 guys). This won't always be the best play for the game, but it will be a good play for practicing your control of the DMR in long range fights. This often nets me a first strike, and sometimes a double kill as well if I don't take too many shots putting the first guy down. Usually you drop your guy and your teammate damages his enough that the second guy has to run away, but most players think they can step out and surprise you or something, so you get lots of practice up there. Even after this practice, that rogue perk is probably a good choice. I fought a guy the other day on Complex who I THINK had that upgrade on, and I couldn't win a long range fight against him at all. No matter how many shots I put toward him he always got the 5th one in before I did, and half the time he had a sniper rifle and never seemed to miss his initial shot to drop my shields, even with me hitting him with DMR fire. In a fight where you're both in the open, lead your shots by about one body width. The guns are hitscan, but your fingers aren't. The time it takes your brain to tell your finger to pull that trigger is the time it takes your enemy to move into that reticule. Lead all shots by the same amount though, because you don't need to account for bullet velocity. If you have a jet pack or use bumper jumper it's ok to jump in a long range fight to land the last 1-2 shots. Normally jumping is a pretty predictable trajectory, as is jetpacking, but in a long range fight the other guy is probably pulling his thumbstick down too, so going UP will screw him up even more. This was another thing that guy I fought kept doing, he'd gain just a bit of elevation whenever I needed that headshot and I was always pulling that stick down. Finally, don't take any chances with your shields. Halo 4 is designed to kill you in anything greater than a 1v1 fight. If you take 3 shots before you can guarantee 3 into the other guy, take cover and let your shields FULLY recharge before you emerge again. Cover is the only thing you can count on in a long range fight, and in fact it's more useful than in a mid-range fight because Promethean Vision takes awhile to reach its farthest range and it also has a max range. Much of my Halo experience is in BTB, so everyone has to learn stuff like this. You just learn to fight at longer ranges in that playlist. I don't think it's actually great practice anymore though, because frequently there is something nastier than a DMR looking back at you so it's not really worth getting into a DMR fight in BTB (You still get into tons of them, but often get teamshot or sniped or worse). You usually teamshot or kill guys who aren't firing back with your DMR. In Halo 3 BTB you HAD to learn to use your BR long range, but in Halo 4 it's actually a more useful skill in smaller playlists, especially now that getting shot doesn't zoom you out. You end up getting a lot of good long-range DMR practice in Complex, Solace snipe vs. snipe, and Abandon if you don't join the lemmings in R3.

The DMR is fine, the BR needs a buff, nerfing is a waste of time. As it is the DMR has a respectable kill time at its intended range (Long) and appropriate versatility. If you get someone in the open they're dead, but if they're close to cover they can defend themselves. That's the way it should be. The BR however is just a crappy pretender at this point, I'd like to see it brought back down to 4 shots to kill. Its lesser accuracy and burst recoil will keep it from usurping the DMR or lightrifle at long range, but it will be appropriately powerful at mid range, which is its intended range. It needs just a very slight damage boost to return to its proper 4 shot kill time. I don't even think it needs a full 10% boost, but I don't know the actual damage per shot numbers.

I think the competitive aspect probably hurt halo has much as helped it. I loved Halo 3's multiplayer, but people play games for different reasons, generally to enjoy themselves. Eventually a lot of players got seriously burned out on Halo 3 because they were sick of feeling like they had to try super hard to only be OK at the game. Not everyone has the talent to become a professional player, or even a GOOD player, so a game with an extremely competitive feel drives people, but it also makes them wish they could just relax and run around shooting things without turning their brain on first (CoD sounds like a good option for that). This doomsayer BS gets friggen old too. I complained plenty about Reach and I've complained plenty about Halo 4, but you won't find a lot of instances of me forecasting the Halo Apocalypse where no one plays Halo anymore. The amount of players giving Bungie and 343 business advice - like the players would know - about how "you need to shape up or CoD is gonna take over" feels stupider than people whining about how the last game was "the good old days." I liked Halo 3 better than I liked Reach, but I was also playing Halo 3 while I was still in college, had lots of friends around me, and not a care in the world aside from playing Halo 3 and occasionally going to class. There are multiple factors determining whether you love a game, and there's no time like the first time, so I'm guessing that most people like the Halo where they first "got it" better than they like the others. Halo 2 sucked.... in my opinion. Halo 2 was the best... in your opinion. Which was the first you got to play a lot on Live? I bet there's a strong correlation. Halo has become more and more of a niche shooter as other shooters have come out for consoles. It was originally king because all the alternatives were terrible (It was also very good, but the alternatives WERE terrible). It still gets an audience big enough to finance the game's continued creation, and they will do what they need to continue that trend. As much as I disliked Reach I met people who thought it was wonderful, really and earnestly thought it was great. You may not like it, and I may not like it, but perhaps the most frustrating thing for those of us who liked another Halo game better is that ENOUGH people like THESE Halo games better and that means we might never get the things we loved back. The glory days may be over, but not for the game, just for the players who had them. Halo has changed a lot, and while we may argue which changes are good and bad, the fans of each game will just play while we argue. People change a lot too, so whether you leave Halo behind or it leaves you behind, if you don't like it, someone will. If no one does, they'll change it til someone does, and we won't know about it unless we keep trying them out as they come out.

The Explosives perk increases the blast radius of frag grenades and sticky detonators by about 2 meters, and makes you take about 10-15% less damage from grenades (Which isn't much). I don't believe it has any effect on plasma or pulse grenade radius, though you still get your slight damage resistance against those. That doesn't sound especially broken or all-powerful. I also don't know why you think EVERYONE is using it, since the difference it makes is relatively minor. I use it on one loadout. It always bothers me when people speak like they know a lot about how OTHER people play and prefer things, since I'm not sure how you believe you found out this information. Maybe your friends list has a lot of people who use the same perks, that makes sense since friends are generally people with similar interests. Every other support upgrade gives you a good alternative to explosives (Although I admit to being unsure just how beneficial ordnance priority is).

Even though I complain more than my fair share on these boards, it doesn't bother me that the map pack came out before a lot of fixes, just because if you think even briefly about how things work it makes sense. They were planning to release the DLC from the start, they would have started working on them as soon as THAT project began within the company. The various problems the game has probably went unnoticed until the game was released, which would have been AFTER the work on DLC began. When it comes to fixing things and not just making new things, you are always running behind and your timeline is based on your response instead of your plans. If you were re-painting a room in your house and your roof collapsed, you probably didn't anticipate the roof collapsing, and the two are kinda unrelated. One is a project you planned and begun with a timeline in mind, another is a problem that sprung up to which you now have to respond. No reasonable person with half a brain would expect you to fix the roof on the same day you planned to be finished painting the room. Similarly, the DLC and the bug fixes are probably completely unrelated projects within 343i's company structure. Expecting them to do everything all at once is ridiculous. Furthermore, MORE problems sprung up with the release of the DLC, like the ODST achievement unlocking for seemingly random reasons. Patching things and releasing new content are completely different jobs which CAN be rolled in together, but usually just because the opportunity arises not because that's how they work. Finally, to stray from the painting and roof example, the DLC is a commercial product they said they would release by a certain time. To NOT release it at that time would have been bad business and you all would be complaining that it didn't come out when they said it would. Fixing the bugs is a maintenance issue, with teams and timelines of its own, DLC is an aspect of the business and is part of the companies planned projects. Again I'll say that they often DO try to roll updates into DLC because it's convenient, but they don't have to and if the fixes aren't ready when the DLC is then the DLC still has to ship because if it doesn't you're in even more trouble.

I'm not sure if it's because everyone sprints or they just zero in on snipers, but I've rarely had a serious problem with almost any player using almost any tactic. The closest I came to seeing someone get away with a big spree was a Gauss Gunner on Exile before I lasered him. That may seem unrelated, but my point is people just seem to have a harder time staying alive for long, and so when I've fought camo snipers they've gone down one way or another. Then they respawn, run for their rifle, and it's despawned. In Reach the DMR could engage a sniper at pretty long ranges, and that helped, but in this game I think people just have a harder time getting away with stuff unless the enemy is just playing insanely stupid. It's easier to get a sniper rifle than it once was, but it's harder to keep one. The other day I was dealing with a camo sniper on Ragnarok, he was giving us a pretty hard time because at first we didn't know he had camo. Then finally someone got on his side of the map with a ghost or something and he was trying for that kill when I domed him. In Halo 3 I don't think anything would have gotten that close to him to distract him, and in Halo Reach he and his team could have just wrecked anything with teamshot because it would have be one of Reach's super-exposed maps.

Yeah, this happens constantly in just about every game where developers release updates. Things that work well get nerfed into oblivion and people never use them again. This is regarded as OK, when in fact it's not. I would rather play a game with a few exceptional guns than a game with a lot of mediocre guns. I would PREFER that all of the guns rocked in their own way, but since that's a harder balance to strike, I'd rather they didn't nerf things that do their job.

The flag carrier's magnum IS better, even if it isn't visible in the game settings. Looks like a 20-25% damage boost that saves you a shot. AKA "the Flagnum"

I enjoyed fighting the prometheans. I did not enjoy fighting the didact, because I hated the campaign in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

Yeah the original medal was perfect, no pun intended. The requirements were Win a Slayer game with at least 15 kills and zero deaths. That puts 4 very important requirements on the player. First and foremost you have to win. That is a very good requirement, and one they actually removed in Reach (The text of the medal didn't change, but you could get perfections for losing. I was furious when I found out, and I found out by getting a perfection in a losing game. I resented that perfection, and would have happily had it removed from my service record). The requirement that you win means you have to get out there and make sure the victory happens even after you hit your riot. That meant in lone wolves you actually had to get 25 kills without dying to get a perfection. Second it has to be slayer. The other team's objective has to be to KILL YOU. If they don't care about killing you and just want your flag, or your oddball, or whatever, than suddenly it's not challenging to never die. If it's slayer, then it's a challenge. If it's not, then it's worthless. Third you have to get 15 kills. It's a nice number which is challenging but not overambitious. Fourth you obviously need to survive the whole match without dying at all. These last two are actually the least important, because they only become challenging when you have the first two. I loved the original perfection medal. I was proud of the few I had and thought it was probably the most valuable medal in Halo 3. Invincibles were harder, but also a little over the top and much simpler. The same goes for killionaires. I love Exterminations, but they really just require you to slay and get a little lucky doing it. They weren't so different from a basic overkill in a lot of gametypes. The perfection medal was a mark of someone who'd played a game... perfectly. It was the highest honor in Halo 3. I haven't gotten any in Halo 4 yet, but since it's a commendation and they might have screwed up the requirements again like they did in Reach I'm not too worried about it. I also admit to kinda sucking at Halo 4, but if you don't need to win the game then it's no honor at all, and you didn't need to win in Reach. If you don't win, then it's not a legit perfection.

Not bad; short and sweet. The "avoid R3" is pretty much the most important part as far as I can tell. I much prefer to get under or behind it and pick people off. I only go in there when there's a challenge for melee kills or something.

I've been running default because I ran default in Reach due to the fun of aiming while jetpacking. I keep thinking of switching back to bumper jumper (I used it in Halo 3) but haven't been able to give up my LB for AAs yet. I think AAs on LB makes you better prepared for most fights but bumper jumper makes you better at the actual fights.

Unlike many people I got my specialization code in an e-mail right around the time I was supposed to. At the time I was SR38 or something, and I redeemed it. Only recently did I reach SR50 to choose a specialization, but when I did only Wetwork and Operator were available. So while I got my code, it didn't appear to work. I'm not that worried about it because I suspect this will all be ironed out in good time, but I don't know if I'm the only one with this issue. It may be because I'm running on trial subscriptions until I get another 12 months of gold for Christmas. If not though, I hope the problem gets fixed eventually because I was really looking forward to a couple specializations . I was seriously interested in wetwork anyway.

I know there are a few youtube channels that do experiments, but I haven't seen a few questions answered and I was wondering if anyone knew the answers or was willing to conduct experiments to find and share them. I can do experiments myself, but I don't have a capture card so I can't share results. I have a few questions: How does the Halo 4 shield recharge delay compare to the recharge delay in previous games? It FEELS much slower, but at the same time enemies find you faster and it could just be my mind playing tricks on me. Keep in mind I'm talking about the recharge delay, not the recharge rate. I know I'm not the only one who's asked. Does the dexterity upgrade decrease vehicle reload speeds, like those on the Mantis and the Rocket Warthog? In general I'd be interested to know if the upgrade improved fire rates on things like the Gauss and Banshee bomb as well. Does the shielding upgrade increase the Mantis's shield recharge rate? Does the Awareness upgrade work for vehicles? (You may be sensing the trend that I'd like to know if upgrades that COULD work for vehicles actually DO) Are sticky detonators affected by the explosives perk? (I have a hard time thinking of how to test this) Eventually I'll get around to testing a lot of this myself. Like I said though, all I can do is post numbers and such I can't really upload it the video or anything. I also wasn't sure if someone had already tested this stuff or had the information, which would save anyone who was curious some time. Thank you.

Must be that people just come straight at it a lot then. I can't recall ever having to deal with anyone strafing against me when I have the flag. I suspect they assume the carrier should be an easy kill, which he would be if they took him seriously. I'll have to try your suggestion with the magnum to see if my opinion of it improves. I still suspect it will do its best work in too small a range window for it to shine a lot in any situation.

Are we counting all the games you don't finish? There's a lot of those.

That was my point... I think you missed some context, sorry for that. I was saying that the magnum actually kills very fast, but only up close where the boltshot kills faster. At range you start missing shots with the magnum, so it no longer kills fast. Thus there is usually a weapon that works better than the magnum for whatever ranger you are at. Have you looked at the settings for the flag carrier in CTF? I haven't, but I've noticed it's very easy to kill with the magnum when you're a flag carrier. Perhaps people just get dumb against a flag carrier and go straight at him (had my fair share of people walk right at me), but he may get a 10-20% damage boost to the weapon (They obviously get a melee damage boost, but I know in Reach you could set melee and weapon damage to different percentages). It might be worth a look. I know that I like being a flag carrier a lot better than I once did. Having my pistol handy and an insta-kill melee makes me much more comfortable diving for the flag.