Bloody Initiate

I can't tell you how Halo 2's system worked, I never played it online enough to even know there were ranked playlists. Halo 3 let you see your trueskill rating, which is based on two things: Winning and consistency. I don't know what your Trueskill rank is, I DO know that I hope your rank isn't anywhere near mine because I don't feel like getting betrayed just because you're bored. I'm pretty sure Trueskill is still active in all Xbox Live competitive multiplayer titles, just hidden from the player in most. I can't be sure about a game like BF3 where there are dedicated servers and they play a big part in deciding with whome you play. With very few exceptions, Trueskill works as long as people aren't directly interfering with it. People don't like to admit it when Trueskill says they're far from the best, but generally you are as good as it says you are because the best players win consistently. Winning is the objective in Halo 3 and Halo 4, and consistency is the difference between a good player and an average player. Everyone has good games where things just seem to go their way, but not consistently.

I am not as bothered by losing the ones when I die (It's obviously frustrating, but at the same time I blame myself for dying). I DO think it's weird how the ordnance drops behave sometimes. Like today I was running for a Spartan Laser, when I got there it was a... Suppressor?!? WTF?!? I also wanted a SAW, but found that it has spawned behind a wall/under the floor and I couldn't possibly get to it. Later I figured I'd grab a light rifle that I saw because it would be better than my normal secondary, so I pick it up and BOOYAH it's a binary rifle instead! Wait a sec... WTF?!? Also for the entire time I was playing Team Regicide this evening the weapons spawned below the floor in Haven, making it impossible to pick up most of the starting ordnance. This is, to be kind, a stupid issue to have. It's simple code stuff that should have been much cleaner when the game shipped. I don't even know that much about coding games, but I know the types of problems I see from certain developers (Like Obsidian, who can't code to save their lives). These mistakes are uncommon in most Halo games. I was glad that I got that binary rifle instead of a light rifle, but for each free binary rifle I also got a free suppressor, three unobtainable SAWs, and a sticky detonator that was buried in the floor somewhere in every game of Team Regicide on Haven.

I don't really care, both just show that you've played alot rather than how good you are. That doesn't bother me, but I also don't care if people can see how much I've played or if I can see how much they've played. I think most people have never understood any of the ranking systems, how they function, what they mean, and what they're supposed to mean. Even once people had Trueskill explained to them they still all thought they should be 50. It's exhausting. I didn't even care when they made the switch from visible trueskill to invisible in Reach. I didn't like how Bungie redefined victory so the Trueskill system got corrupted, but I understood why they made it invisible. So far I think the system works fine. The SR rank just shows what you've unlocked and how much you've played, and Trueskill gets to do its job behind the scenes so I don't have to listen to everyone say how they're "actually as good as [insert level between 45-50], but [unnecessary excuse]." It's like one of those tests where you ask normal people questions that should have common-knowledge answers and you find out that most people are so depressingly clueless you don't even want to read all of their answers after the first few. On another forum we were discussing hurricane Sandy before it hit the U.S., and one guy asked if California was at risk. Sometimes people don't deserve to know.

I only really use 2 loadouts, despite recently unlocking the 5th, I never used the 3rd and 4th. I have a mid-range loadout that I use for 6-8 player games: DMR, Magnum, Frags, Promethean Vision, Resupply, Explosives I am trying the boltshot instead of the magnum atm, but I really don't see what's so special about that thing. I tend to keep my distance in all fights, so it just doesn't have a place in my playstyle. 343 did the right thing by decreasing the melee lunge. Now you can have a gun fight without wondering when the person will suddenly jet toward you around a corner and punch you (Had that happen in Reach, they lunged 5-6 feet, around a corner, and another 5-6 feet all in one lunge. No lag that game). I also have a BTB loadout that I like quite a bit: DMR, Plasmas PIstol, Plasma Grenades, Jet Pack, Ammo, Mobility It has anti-vehicular abilities in the PP and Stickies, good map movement thanks to the jet pack + unlimited sprint, and of course a DMR cuz weapons haven't been balanced since Halo's inception. I often consider changing the DMR into a lightrifle on the BTB set up, but I really don't like how that gun can't defend itself at any range but long. I also considered switching the jet pack for a thruster pack, since jet packs are much more limited in this game. I hate the thruster pack, but suspect the short burst of fast movement will have more application than the slower vertical jet pack - which received no where near the support in map design it did in Reach. Not to mention everyone complained until you couldn't even look up without hitting a soft kill zone. My favorite pieces so far of any loadouts are probably the ammo and resupply upgrades. I love having all that ammo in BTB, where you frequently have to fight long range in one spot for most of the game. Picking up grenades has obvious application. 5 shot weapons means you leave every fight in a condition which WILL lose you your next fight, so having those grenades to shorten the fight helps a lot. It was always more effective to 'nade then headshot than to 4-shot in Halo 3, but it's absolutely necessary in Reach and Halo 4.

I fight til the game stops me. I like when people fight back because I get practice aiming w/o a reticule. I don't think it says anything about good or bad about sportsmanship. Teabagging and excessive taunting are bad sportsmanship, but fighting to the last is just natural. I do think it's dumb that the game takes so long to end after the victor is declared. As long as I can move and fight I will, I'm sure other people feel the same way.

I had a lot of complaints about Reach, but the lack of Dual-Wielding was not one of them. I hated that crap since Halo 2. Nothing feels less professional or badass than having such a surplus of crappy guns and such an absence of good ones that you have to wield two to make anything happen.

Why should it take 1.7 seconds to kill at close range when there are several weapons that kill you instantly at that range? Let's be perfectly clear on a very important fact about guns in Halo: Their bullets all do the same damage at all ranges. Your kill time with the DMR at 100 yards is exactly the same as your kill time at 1 yard. It's harder to land the shots, but if you land them they die just the same. So the AR should have a much faster kill time than the DMR at its effective range. I know the idea of a weapon performing better at the range it was designed for is hard for you to believe, but that's how it's supposed to work. The AR should kill faster because its accuracy and recoil keep it from being effective at mid-to-long range. So when you're up close with an AR user and you have your DMR, you should die before you can get 5 shots off because you made the mistake of letting them get that close. If you use a DMR in CQC, you deserve to die. If you use an AR at mid-to-long range, you deserve to die. If the AR worked like it should you would have already learned this lesson and I wouldn't have to explain this to people over and over and over again. Instead ARs have been underpowered for so long that people really believe that ARs just don't deserve to win fights at any range, ever. THAT'S "terribly dumb." If you think the AR should just lose every fight, then just say "I hate ARs" and get it over with so those of us who want to discuss it seriously can do so. Back on topic, I'll just re-iterate that if the automatic primary weapons weren't so friggen miserable than the boltshot wouldn't seem so impressive.

No the DMR should lose at close range even if every shot is perfect, and it should lose at mid-range to the BR. Close range should belong to the automatic weapon. Why on earth would you think a marksman rifle should be good up close? Long range: DMR/Light Rifle MId range: BR (Should be 4 shot again, the new recoil should stay because it keeps it from winning long range) Close range: AR/Suppressor/Storm Rifle Somewhere in there the carbine is supposed to find its place, but I couldn't tell you where. I will never understand people who think one weapon should be the best at all ranges. That's not how it works IRL, and that's not how it works in almost any game. The DMR should get absolutely raped in Close Range, and the BR should barely survive. That is not their territory. It actually IS because the AR and its friends suck, but they shouldn't suck. They should be devastating in their effective range, and outclassed outside that effective range.

I wouldn't have any problem if players received an experience penalty for quitting a game. I also wouldn't have any problem if that penalty dropped them a rank and made them lose unlocks they'd gained. I wouldn't even have a problem if I suffered a lag-out and suffered this penalty unfairly, because I understand that for the most part it would be doing a good thing, and I understand that the system doesn't know the difference between me lagging out (Which happens very rarely to me btw) and me quitting. However people don't like it when their actions have consequences, especially on the internet. They don't behave well and they don't behave reasonably. I wouldn't expect 343 to do something like this because as far as I can tell they listen to the loudest voices, and the loudest voices are usually stupidest.

I haven't played it enough to call it the best Halo yet. For me that's still Halo 3. I have been enjoying it, even though I DO complain a LOT anymore. I've just played a lot of different games and it's hard to overlook flaws after you've seen how many different games approach the same problems. You learn what works and what doesn't, and you want to share what you know because you want the best game you can get. Sadly this takes the form of complaining. For me - I don't know about anyone else - my complaints are really driven by the potential I see in a game not by the problems I see with it. I see how good something can be and I point out the things keeping it from getting there. I have enjoyed Halo 4 so far though, and I don't think it has the same glaring issues Reach had. The grenades aren't nuclear bombs, for example, and the explosive weapons aren't obscenely powerful. The armor abilities all seem like they have SOME limited use, although much more limited than previously. I think Hologram is probably weaker than ever, but not because it's poorly designed but because by now players are used to dealing with it. The campaign DID suck and it IS stupid how much they copied from Call of Duty. Modern Warfare 2 had the worst campaign of any game I have EVER played, so I felt almost sick when I had to "(L) to crawl" and "L to plant grenade." Master Chief doesn't friggen crawl, and I sure as hell don't. Nor should Master Chief tire from sprinting. I'll continue to stand up for what I think is better.

I think a good 4-man team would have 1-3 promethean visions (depending on how good their communication is) 1-2 active camos (depending on the map and their tactics) and 1-2 regeneration fields. You'd probably want your sniper or whoever has the power weapon to have camo or promethean vision, you want your camo guy close to the enemy so your visible guys can bait them into his range. Your regen fields are obviously best when you have a buddy to share it with you. I found regen fields very helpful in objective gametypes where you're forced to stay in a location for a period of time. Retreat isn't an option so you put that field down so you can hold your ground better. The other armor abilities are interesting and jet pack/thruster pack deserve honorable mention in BTB or other big maps for the enhanced mobility they offer. Most of them seem to have more limited functions and they tend not to help your team as much.

Who the hell is going to run to the the boltshot or plasma pistol spawn like it's a power weapon? You don't see people making a mad dash for the needler now, and it has actually been good the last few games. Power weapons are not all created equal, and the needler is not a power weapon, yet it's better than both the plasma pistol and the boltshot. You should be able to start with the boltshot because it's one of the few secondary weapons that does its job. I find the plasma pistol EMP combo doesn't work as well now that it takes longer to switch wepaons. I use it in my BTB loadout to stop vehicles, but it's not fast enough for the EMP combo anymore. Furthermore the weapon drops are already terrible. How often have you felt like you were getting screwed by your ordnance drop because the best thing in it was a needler while the guy on the other team got a binary rifle from his? He got his ordnance drop from racking up kills with the rocket launcher or incineration cannon while you got yours by fightng like hell with your DMR. The good drops are already extremely rare, the last thing I want is for the stupid boltshot or the plasma pistol to suddenly appear making it even LESS likely that I'll get what I want. I don't want anything about the boltshot changed. I want the primary automatic weapons to be better so that they don't get crudely violated by a stupid pistol.

That's because it IS better. I like it much more, but it's not always an option and the other maps are soooooooo bad that it's better to spend the game hiding from the tank and the gauss on exile than to run around vortex trying to find some purpose.

Give both sides a Gauss, keep the tank because it will only get shredded most of the time anyway, and put some cover on light side so that people don't spawn in open view of the newly-placed enemy Gauss. Don't put any rocket hogs in because frankly they suck (At least two of the times I've gotten one running it's killed itself). The vehicles only have a narrow corridor of operation, most of the time they get destroyed shortly after spawning. The only one that lasts any time is the banshee, which tends to get boarded by the entire enemy team - from anywhere on the map at any time. If you really hate the Gauss then you can replace it with rocket or chain hogs, They'll just get wrecked anyway. Gauss Hog might be better in one of the less open BTB maps like meltdown or vortex. They both suck so bad now it's hard to imagine anything making them worse.

You made the same topic twice. Also the reason they get voted for every time is because the alternatives suck. Longbow, Meltdown, and Vortex are just a lot of dudes milling around fighting on foot. Vortex has to be the worst map in the game, everywhere you are feels like you're in the open and helpless and there's no reason to go anywhere else because the whole map is just a clunky mess. Longbow is the map where you attack "Bravo" and never do anything else because every other part of the map sucks and reminds me of Vortex. Meltdown is almost good for two reasons: Mantises are awesome and action is good, sadly it's again all on foot. There's no point in trying to run a hog because you'll just be annihilated due to the map's layout, and the hogs/mantis are the biggest things on the map, which makes the map perhaps OK for 5v5 or 6v6. The most common vehicles are ghosts and warthogs, both of which die instantly upon contact with the enemy. This is coming from a guy who specialized in Warthog gunning in Halo 3. There is nothing "Big" about most of the Big Team Battle maps, and they're mostly designed to trap vehicles, which makes them horrible for Big Team Battle. Vortex and Meltdown in particular are just deathtraps for vehicles. Someone can get within 10 feet of you without ever giving you line of sight on them. So I will continue to vote for Ragnarok and Exile, even though Exile is one of the stupidest maps I've ever seen beause only one team starts with a Gauss Hog - arguably one of the most devastating badass vehicles ever seen in Halo - while the other team's consolation prize is a shorter RUN to a tank. "We gave the other guys a Gauss Hog, but don't worry, you don't have to RUN YOUR ASS OFF nearly as far as they do to get a tank." Oh by the way, they put a rocket launcher on the way to the tank IF you run from the Gauss Hog side. Have fun with your 3 second run in the tank, because you're going to get hit by rockets and then flanked by a Gauss Hog. Even THAT lousy deal is better than fumbling around in the canyons of Meltdown or in the pointless wasteland of Vortex.

First I'd like to say, as I often do in game balance discussions, that usually when something is being called overpowered it's because the alternatives are actually UNDER powered. People will always complain about campers. They always look silly doing it. The camping strategy gets better and better the less the game allows you to slow down and think, but this game also lets you see through walls, so I don't really sympathize with anyone who can't handle a camper. "But he had camo!" well camo still lets everyone know you're using it by radar jamming and in Halo 4 there's a specific sound effect that goes with the cloaking effect. Most camo guys use it in the open so that they can get the first shot on you (which wins the fight in an even contest), they don't usually use it to fool Promethean Vision. The only time campers give me problems are when everyone else on the map is feeding them kills by being stupid, and I have to compete with with their score when everyone is trying their best to make them win. Here's a tip: Stay the hell away from a fight someone has set up for you. As for how the Boltshot owns Automatic Weapons: EVERYTHING OWNS AUTOMATIC WEAPONS! The only decent automatic weapon is the SAW. The needler can do a bit of work in the right circumstances. The AR, Storm Rifle, and Suppressor all suck and have always sucked. Bungie and 343 both hate automatic weapons, why else would they make sure they sucked so badly in every game? I don't like it, but it's the truth. It doesn't mean every weapon that can destroy them is OP, it means they're Underpowered because every weapon can destroy them. I have never seen someone win a game because they had a boltshot. It's not OP, it's the one friggen CQC weapon that you can start with that does its job. You DO get owned by boltshots when you have an AR, because the AR sucks not because the boltshot is OP. And you get owned by campers because you're so busy getting a rush out of sprinting around every corner that you'd get owned by anyone who has a motion tracker (Hint: That's everyone). Don't sprint around corners, don't approach areas you know campers are, and don't get close to ANYONE because the closer you get the closer you are to trading kills, which is bad unless you're already losing that fight. Keep your distance, and try running Promethean Vision for just a couple games so you can see how in EVERY GAME there is at least one or two occasions when someone is crouching around the corner. Seriously, I see it in every game. I bounce a frag around to get them to back off, and if they don't then another frag is already on its way. People still get me with the boltshot every now and then, but not nearly with the frequency they would if it was actually an OP weapon. You don't get close to ANYONE if you have a choice, because the closer you are the more costly the fight will be, even if you win. I melee sword guys when they take me down so that if a teammate of mine comes around the corner they're one-shot. That's CQC, it's tougher and riskier. Avoid it at all costs unless you're already losing the fight. Any weapon that is meant for CQC should have a faster kill time than a weapon meant for mid-range, because if you don't end a close-range fight fast then you're going to end it in pieces.

If you're out for yourself Promethean Vision is probably the best (Unless you're in Big Team, then its short range and slow scan speed becomes a problem). Active Camo is another option. If you want to help your team, you probably want Regeneration Field. Jet Pack doesn't help much except in a few map-specific situations. It lets you move around the hill on Ragnarok, it lets you save some time in Haven, and it lets you jump the tops of the bases in Solace. The Jet Pack was way better in Reach because they designed the maps with it in mind. In Halo 4 they've designed the maps with more lateral movement. As far as I can tell 343 caved completely to all the whiners who hated jet packs, and all those same whiners made all the forge maps that showed up later in Reach because you couldn't jump on top of a pebble without hitting a soft kill zone. The fact is everyone loves using jet packs but everyone hates having jet packs used against them, so they all wimped out and made it so there are soft kill zones suffocating every decent elevated point on every map. It was the single must frustrating thing I ever experienced in Reach: the collective surrender of the community to LESS interesting maps. They literally cut the top half of most maps off. I think the thruster pack has potential, but I can't stand how it jerks me out to third person and how I can't aim it. Auto sentry and hard light shield intrigue me, but they both make me slow down and even when I want to slow down my enemies won't let me. Hologram's value is so subjective and so dependent on your imagination and the imagination of your enemies that its value jumps up and down with each encounter.

I have been killed by people who were pretty good with the boltshot. In my head I congratulated them. It's not OP. It required a charge up, which already disqualifies it from being OP, fyi, and close range, which further disqualifies it, and finally it has two shots before reloading (after you charge up for each). The amount of time you spend unable to fire this weapon in a threatening way is enormous. Charge-ups are just weaker because they can't rise to the occasion. The closest to OP a charge-up weapon in Halo has been was the Halo 3 Spartan Laser, and it wasn't OP it was just stupidly important. You absolutely had to have the laser if you wanted to run vehicles. If you didn't have it, you were doomed. It was a lack of other options that doomed you, not the power of the laser. Then they nerfed it super hard in Reach (Rockets did more damage, which was dumb) and finally in Halo 4 they've weakened vehicles enough and given you so many alternatives that you can run a strategy that doesn't involve a laser (where in Halo 3 you couldn't). It was a similar situation in Reach, but better balanced now. Also they made its sound and light effects much less satisfying, a highly relevant complaint. CQC weapons generally can't be OP because CQC requires you to close the distance, and in the time it takes you to do that you can be shot to hell. In a game with powerful CQC weapons people either camp or keep their distance, this gives everyone else a choice to not encounter them when they're strongest. A sword lunge across the map a la Halo 2 is NOT a CQC weapon. Reload/recharging/cooling down is another weakness, but not one that absolutely disqualifies a weapon from being OP. The boltshot is not anywhere near the league of importance or power as other such weapons. It's just a nifty pistol. I can kill someone instantly, with any loadout, by hitting them in the back. That doesn't make beat downs OP, it makes them subject to a highly restrictive set of circumstances.

The problems with dedicated servers that I see (In my very limited understanding of this technology) are: 1. As soon as the company stops running them, there is no more multiplayer for that game. Right now you can still go back and play Halo 3. I played Battlefield 3 and one of the first things EA did was stop running servers and start renting them out because they're scum. 2. The game isn't designed to run on them, thus it probably wouldn't be something they could do outside of a large update. 3. Even with a rent-a-server system, someone has to run that server and pay for it etc. Once again you make the life of the game more fragile. 4. WITH a rent-a-server system, you put the power in the hands of the people, and we know from lots of historical evidence (and from anyone who has spent two minutes on Xbox Live) that the "people" are friggen morons and have no capacity for restraint or remotely civilized behavior. People get on the internet and go nuts letting out all their weird issues. Give them the power of server admin and you have a lot of nightmares ahead. The benefits are more loudly mentioned, I DO know that there is much less lag. I played BF3 mostly this year and I think I had lag on one or two occasions MAX. It was effing incredible. I would be comfortable with a system that was capable of both server support and peer2peer hosting as a fallback, because with a good connection you can have a good game.

Just FYI, the "I don't care option" is the same as the "No" option in response to this poll question. If you don't care, you aren't upset, thus your answer is "No." So when I made this post 53.71% of the people who voted couldn't care less if they don't get to play Elites.

I voted no because a playlist where less is available is almost never going to be the solution to any problem. People love options, it is important to understand this and extremely important to also understand that taking things away NEVER makes them happy unless it's streamlining a type of gameplay (Like SWAT or snipers). "Everyone run into each other and die while racking up assists" is NOT an appealing gametype. The AR needs a buff, and has always need a buff in every single game in which it has appeared. It has always been that weapon you throw away ASAP or that weapon you use because you couldn't find anything better. I think the appropriate buff would be to let it become capable of making headshots. The fact that it can't has always been silly. The accuracy is enough to keep it as a closer-range weapon, but at least if it could make headshots you could have a chance of finishing your own kills. You don't need a damage boost, you just need a way to drop people quickly after you've popped their shields. At the moment you have to melee/switch weapons/'nade. You should just be able to cram in it their face and kill them. You will still lose fights to BRs and DMRs at their effective ranges, but you will win fights at YOUR effective range. That's how it should be, and that's how it should have always been. Then you will have a weapon that can compete at the range it was intended to work at, which it doesn't right now.