Bloody Initiate

UNSC Gauss Cannon

Some time during Reach I thought of a SWAT gametype that included sniper rifles in one of the loadouts. I don't think it got any other weapon though. The gametype had SWAT settings but loadouts like an actual SWAT team might have, so you had a sniper and a shotgun and stuff as well as a loadout with a DMR (Although to be honest, most "sniper rifles" SWAT teams use are probably more like "marksman rifles"). Loadouts with less versatile weapons (like the shotgun) had other stuff to make up for the lack, like a certain AA or grenades. I posted the gametype in the B.Net Reach forums at the time and some people seemed to like the idea quite a bit. You just have to be careful to balance the loadouts so that everyone can contribute.

It almost seems like a separate Halo game, since it sounds a lot like Iron Brigade or something similar.

I've never understood the resentment of the shotgun in shotty snipers. Even in Halo 3 lots of people complained about it, it was always strange to me. Getting mowed down by a dude with a shotgun while you and your team all have both shotguns and sniper rifles is really your own problem. Anyone who plays half-way intelligently just doesn't have a problem with getting shotgunned often. That being said, playing intelligently is harder in Halo 4, as is keeping people at sniper-rifle range, but that's just due to map choice. Haven, for example, is just ridiculous for either team snipers or shotty snipers. You can't see people until they're within mid-range in that map, and you have no mid-range weapon in sniper gametypes (Magnum is NOT a mid-range weapon). It's just dumb. The very thing that make Haven work in other game-types (Keeping a very consistent encounter range) makes it just plain stupid in sniper gametypes (No mid-range weapons). Abandon is similar, but abandon isn't as consistent as Haven.

You won't find a lot of campy shotty rounds. For starters, people who still camp are SUPER stupid, Halo 4 is very much against the traditional camper. You can get your team together in one spot and defend it, but since your whole team is there that gets to avoid the designation of "camping" more often, especially in snipers. I watched a guy repeatedly try to camp in Haven yesterday, it was pathetic. His first mistake was that he was crouching... in a gametype without the motion tracker. His next was that he wasn't actually hiding from anything! You know the twin pillars in the Haven upper hallways? He was crouching on the outside of those. Not between them, not in the safer alcove between the two pairs of pillars, he was just crouching on the outside... so anyone coming down the halls couldn't help but notice him. I remember one of the Halo bulletins recently on waypoint talked about how much fun it was to camp. It further cemented the notion that 343 are complete morons, because they design this game to kill campers and then... camp, when they play it. Of course the developers are typically bad at their own games, but 343 gets it rough from me because of the horrible job they did with Halo 4. I don't pretend not to have a bias. So while you may see people turtling up in the bases in Solace, they're not going to be nearly as effective as they would have been on any other Halo game. Halo 4 just frowns on camping unless you do it with your whole team, then it's "tactical" or something. You can't just watch a corner knowing someone will eventually come around it, because while eventually someone WILL, these are Halo 4 maps and while you're waiting more people will walk in behind you or above you or otherwise at the advantage. You used to be able to just pick a corner and have a teammate or two do the same thing, but it just doesn't work like that anymore.

Exile is in there too, but since the Halo community is you know... the Halo community, they instead vote for Haven. Also played a game in Longbow, hoping for Ragnarok. I enjoyed the game in Longbow, but I feel like if I were making pre-built loadouts I would have given them mobility, because BTB maps just sort of call for it. Once I finally get it I'm actually excited about the idea of playing snipes in Exile, it would be the one gametype that works in that horrible map. It won't work WELL mind you, but it's still better than BTB Exile. Definitely feel your pain.

I think you're misinterpreting what you're seeing. I think you're seeing that you can only speak to members of your team without knowing whether the other team has mics or not.

Ah yes, there are certainly fewer hiding spots in H4 maps. That's a defining feature of H4 maps actually. Although it's pretty easy to disappear on Abandon since the outskirts of that map see so little traffic. I also won't deny there's a certain increase in pressure when it's just you and single teammate, the fewer players there are the more your individual performance matters. That might be another reason 1v1 never picks up, because people don't like it when they don't have room for error. Without a team or even enemies backing you up you have only yourself to blame when you lose, and you really only have to lose to a player once to know for sure "Yeah, that guy is just plain better than me." You can't instead comfort yourself saying things "If they hadn't had their teammates there..." I think in H3 when a lot of people were getting their hardcore thrill from doubles I was getting it from Lone Wolves though. I don't dislike doubles, I just never found anyone so close to my level that it felt like a fun match for both of us. Either they were carrying me or I was carrying them usually. My two brothers were very close to my level, we would trade off being the best, but our history as siblings kept us from developing good team play and communication. Eventually when I found people who might have been just about right we played other playlists. I would be very happy to enjoy doubles in H4 consistently, although I'm terrible with the railgun and the few games I've played show that is a major problem. I also still get furious about things like running into cover but still dying to a headshot, and spending 6 seconds waiting for my shield to begin recharging. The one game I enjoyed most was the one I talked about in my first post where we just stayed in our base the whole time letting the other team come to us, and that doesn't seem like a good game to measure the playlist by, so we'll see.

I think it was actually put into place to make boosting slightly less convenient. If things are inconvenient people will do them less. You say you still can't hear them in the post-game lobby in doubles? I don't know generally because honestly I'm one of the people who bails on the lobby ASAP. Hearing people on the other team has yielded so few good things over the years I generally don't have a lot of interest in it, especially in Halo 4 because I'm much worse at this game and am ashamed to have my name linger in the lobby for long. For me I understand why people wouldn't be allowed to hear each other in the pre-game lobby, as I said it makes boosting less convenient and it also allows teams to plan things out so that they don't all run for the sniper rifle at the beginning or anything silly like that. I don't see any need to keep the other teams muted in post-game lobby though, even if you don't like hearing trash talk you can just leave or you can do the much rarer thing and speak about the game or even compliment each other. I remember back in H3 we fought a team that had one very good player and 4 shockingly bad players. The one guy played brilliantly but they lost and in the post-game lobby I told him he'd played amazingly well and it was a shame he lost. Just yesterday I played some Doubles in H4 and one of the other team quit in the pre-game lobby, leaving the enemy 1v2 versus myself and my partner. I thought we were going to crush him, turns out he was better than both of us together and he won the game. After the game he or we left immediately, but he sent a message saying something like "gg better luck next time" and I sent one back saying "awesome job." Even if he meant it as a taunt the point is you can still reach out to people if you want. It's less convenient, but it's the things you do that AREN'T convenient that tend to make people appreciate your effort. I'll share another positive war story: In H3 a buddy and I were in BTB and got matched up against a team of much higher level players. That made us want to play harder and focus on slaying (it was CTF). The thing is we were BTB specialists, I don't know what playlists those guys focused on but they seemed to have an idea of what to do in the game. Either way we still opened hard, I went 1v3 at the laser and turned it into a triple kill (I could hear them in their proxy mics, the last guy I killed said "Wow!" for the last two kills of the triple, him being #3. I stuck #2, heard "Wow," stuck #3 and heard "Wow."). My buddy ended up getting some insane spread in the tank, I think he got at least a running riot and another 15-20 kills outside the riot. At one point I fired a long range rocket to stop their flag carrier and landed it perfect, wiping out their whole grab party so no one could even pick up the flag right away. We lost but the game was epic, all the kinds of plays you'd remember fondly. Just my buddy and I outslayed their whole team, and I honestly thought they'd be a bit bitter about it since players at their level tended to focus more on their stats. Instead the first thing I heard in the post-game lobby was "THAT WAS A ****ING AWESOME GAME!" And I was thrilled. We had lost the game but we had a great time, and we managed to show some guys who I doubt spent a lot of time in BTB just how much fun it could be. It wasn't until the post game lobby that I realized just how fantastic the game had been (I had been pretty focused on playing hard when the game was actually still going on), I felt good because I'd done what I wanted to do on my turf and the enemy felt good because they'd won the game despite being outside their normal play area. My favorite part was that the enemy team had a great time though, because honestly focusing on slaying in CTF can become a serious bummer to the less bloodthirsty team, and it doesn't guarantee the win in any sense. So the fact that we sort of got put in our place by losing, and by losing to higher level players, was fair. However they had overcome our cheap play and had a good time, and we had fun losing. It was sort of a perfect game, and I wouldn't have had any idea that it was without their enthusiasm.

I have generally combatted the idea of a RoF nerf on the DMR because at LONG range where it's supposed to engage targets they're often fighting from cover. In mid-range and close-range you can use cover only so much because your opponent can throw an accurate grenade or simply move around the cover to hit you. At long range your only weapon is your gun, you can't throw accurate grenades that far with any consistency and I think they all detonate before they land at extreme ranges. You also can't alter your firing line nearly as much as you can in closer ranges. If someone grabs cover they're completely safe. Thus you have to be able to kill quickly, which is why the sniper and beam rifles were the only extreme range weapons for so long: they could kill in one shot. It's for that reason that I've never really appreciated the insertion of the DMR into the game, because a long range rifle that kills slower just seems silly. With all that in mind, I have never liked the idea of increasing its kill time in any way because even as fast as it kills people get behind cover after shot 3 or 4 all the time in Big Team. Since Big Team is the fair and reasonable realm of the DMR, I just generally don't think any kind of nerf to its damage model or RoF is a good idea. I know that's the lean of the poll and not just yours, but I feel like people who want to reduce its RoF aren't realizing just how bad that would be for the gun. As long as it is in the game it ought to have a place, and if it gets any slower it will lose that place. It shouldn't be the best at all ranges, but it should remain at least as good as it is at long range. If they remove it from the game in Halo 5 that's fine, they won't have to balance it then. However as long as it is in the game it should be balanced, and making it kill slower just knocks it off the top without addressing the flaws in the other weapons. I'm sure Twinreaper knows his stuff, I never said he didn't.

No you're not, you're providing LIMITED data: And THEN you're hanging your faulty conclusions on it: I appreciate the work you've done, even if I don't understand exactly how difficult it is. But please don't pretend you're just some under-appreciated objective researcher when as often as you post data you spackle your posts with hostility and condescension. I don't expect you to have all the answers, but if you want to just play objective researcher then you need to stop making conclusions before you have all the information. I don't make $#!7 up. I don't pull ideas from my @$$. I don't have the same information you do, but I get my information one way or another, frequently from people like you who are willing and able to do the research. Thank you for that. Just as myself and other players don't have all the numbers you do, YOU don't have what we have either, which you made plain as day when you post a table that doesn't prove anything and then talked like it did. You've spent all your posts since that post excusing discrepancies. So forgive me if I'm not completely in love with you and ready to have your children, you posted inconclusive, inconsistent data and then got mad when we picked it apart. If you want to just keep jumping to conclusions about your own research then feel free, but don't be surprised when we treat it like you would expect us to treat anything else someone posts. We're skeptical when things conflict with our own conclusions, as we should be, as you should be. I appreciate the work you do uncovering this data, but you could have saved yourself a lot of headache by simply posting it and doing what we did, which is read it objectively and form appropriate conclusions. Stuff like the carbine's damage are clearly wrong, which you should have noticed when you acquired the information. Instead you chose to ignore it and post conclusions that prove inaccurate in the game. You knew you didn't have all the information, and I don't expect you to find it all, but you should have made that disclaimer in your first post. Instead you formed faulty conclusions, excused them, and then got mad when you couldn't defend them.

I remember two things that were challenging about the legendary campaign: 1. The segment right after the covenant and forerunners start fighting there is a room where you first see an elite who runs to a banshee. Getting in that banshee and flying high got me killed so many times. I finally got it right, twice now I've beaten that segment, a different way both times. The first time I had massive amounts of trial and error so I eventually got things thinned out in such a way that I could use the banshee to kill everything. The second time I just flew low and fuel rodded the cores, then flew up to the bridge, landed on it and went to the objective avoiding most of the enemies (had a few skulls active). 2. Knights in general are pretty tough. However you can use variations on "noob combos" to take them out, although they tend to need a few more headshots than one. I also got good at baiting them into warp-charging me when I had a shotgun of some kind. I'd attack them at mid-range with a clean line between us, eventually the A.I. decides I'm ripe for the melee, charges, and I whip out my shotgun and kill them. Once you include skulls and such for the challenges you end up better off avoiding conflicts a lot and sneaking around a bunch.

I'm sorry I looked at that table and saw a bunch of information I already knew and had previously dismissed, some information that I think is actually wrong, and some that doesn't matter or seem existent in-game. Let's focus on the red: Starting with the BR, which we know is the runt of the litter, I see it has four red boxes, but one of them it actually shares with the DMR (Error angle) and the other three it gets from its firing mode which we also know isn't that special. The burst fire is the virtual equivalent of NOT putting all your eggs in one basket. If you simply fired a bigger projectile then it would be an advantage because it would be harder to dodge and harder to miss, but instead you fire three which means you can hit with one and miss with the other two. You'll see you've hit your target but for all you know you're 1-2 bullets behind. So the BR has NO advantages except that it's better at cleaning up one-shots, which is why people use it more in SWAT. I already knew all that. Next lets look at the carbine. We see, as we knew, that its primary edge is its fire rate. We sadly also see that it's based on the player, not the gun (As in if the player has a good trigger finger, the carbine is awesome, if they don't, it isn't). So again that gun loses its edge because all of its advantages are dependent on a high-performing player. Remember we're talking about the guns in this thread, not the players using them. There is a part of the table I don't understand and that's the damage upper bounds maximum and minimum. It shows the carbine is somehow better than the other two, which we know isn't true. You explain it in yellow as the damage the projectile does, but we KNOW that it doesn't do better damage than the other two (Actually it DOES do better damage than the BR's projectiles, but the BR fires 3). So I am failing to understand something relevant about that statistic. We know the carbine takes 7 shots to drop shields while the other two guns take 4, something is missing from that section. Finally the DMR. We see it chuckling when the BR boasts its one red box of error angle, because the DMR has the same error angle. Next we see it has superior range, we also knew that. Next I'm confused again, because it has a velocity listed, but we know the weapons are hitscan. It has two big red boxes of "i'm better than you" velocity, but we KNOW that velocity isn't a factor in these weapons. So again I'm missing something. The DMR's final red box is the error angle maximum, which I suspect is accuracy degeneration/bloom? We see that the DMR is apparently superior even though it doesn't have the lowest number, I'm guessing that's due to the combination with fire rate that makes accuracy degeneration more or less prevalent (A weapon that fires fast will be adding its error angle maximum more times per second... if I'm reading that right). What I end up seeing here are: Numbers that don't matter being listed as favorable, like the BR's burst. Numbers that appear to be wrong, like the BR's shots per second and the carbine's damage. Numbers that don't exist, like the velocity. The result is that what little information I can gather from that apparently-flawed table is that the carbine and the BR have irrelevant or non-existent advantages and I'm forced to again recall my experience and the wealth of videos and experiments posted by other people in various places that show the DMR is simply superior. @Twinreaper: I like your focus on data, and I respect that you're a poster who tries to use facts and such as your guide. However I see a table like that and either I misunderstand the stat (I read your explanations) or I ask myself "Has he even played the game?" I know you've played, and if I remember right you don't intend to play it much more, but one look at something like the carbine's projectile damage would have clued an experienced player in to the fact that something was wrong (Or maybe the player just doesn't understand the stat, like I don't). I don't think that table is accurate/current, or if it is then I don't think the numbers you collected are an accurate representation of what the weapons do in-game. Even if it IS accurate, I don't think the numbers have been judged correctly, because these three weapons are NOT equivalent in any sense, and I know that. It is exactly as people have been saying it is: The DMR is better than the other two and the carbine loses to the BR because it's the hardest to use. The carbine when used perfectly defeats the BR. We know all that. What I now struggle to understand is what level of removal from the game had to be present for you to look at that table and not see its flaws or its lack of bearing on the game. @King of Coffe: Did you notice you quote everyone twice?

Ok, plenty of people will tell you I don't take it easy on 343, but this is just dumb. You need to organize your thoughts a little better before writing them down, because if there is one thing 343 DIDN'T copy from CoD it's crouching with camo. That's Halo 4 and Halo Reach all the way. Also I'm not sure what kind of doubles YOU'VE been playing over the years, but I distinctly recall plenty of campers in H3 doubles. Doubles has ALWAYS been a playlist full of dirtier tactics, that's what happens when you reduce the amount of players. I can't even really fully explain why, but there was never a doubles utopia where people didn't try to sieze every advantage. Did they have camo back then? No, but again that has nothing to do with Call of Duty and has everything to do with Halo Reach and Halo 4. I played some doubles yesterday and while I can't recall the name of the map my partner and I got attacked at our spawn pretty early, and by the time we recovered from the first attack we were attacked AGAIN at our spawn. Having beaten back both attacks pretty easy, we decided this was working for us and so we didn't attack, we just stayed at our spawn and played defensively and won the game by a massive margin (30 to 3 I think). We weren't using camo, and I wouldn't even call it "camping" because in this map there are only two items of interest, a sniper rifle and an overshield, and we could get both with a quick sprint. So we didn't leave our spawn because it had high ground and the enemy was happy to feed us kills. Dirty? Maybe. Effective? Laughably so. I distinctly recall a game in Construct in H3 where the enemy got a lead and started hiding. I remember crouch walking everywhere so as not to alert them, I rounded a corner and spotted them both crouching in one of the alcoves on the bottom level. They hadn't seen me yet so I stuck them for a double kill. They were literally just hiding. Doubles has never been a playlist of elevated standards and the best plays, it has ALWAYS been a playlist where people minimize risk as much as possible and doing that frequently requires them to play dirty. This is one of the many reasons I've never understood why people speak with such nostalgia about doubles, because even when I do awesome in doubles I think "Yeah but there were only TWO of them."

I like this idea and this map. I think if you can you'll want to invest as much energy in moving targets as possible for your future forging.

It spawns most of the way through the match, as does the binary rifle. If you don't know when it spawns I suggest looking in Forge and either memorizing its spawn time so you know when to go for it or wearing that tracker perk that shows it coming down 10 seconds or so before it does. The incin. cannon spawns in one of those alcoves on the bottom level, if you're on top mid looking at the closed side of the map then it'll be on your left and down. You can sprint and jump from the grav lift landing to get down there faster.

If you didn't disable ordnance then I suggest using Ordnance priority and/or the perk that lets you re-shuffle your ordnance. Acquiring power weapons makes a big difference in 1v1 and you want to be better at it than your opponent. If you didn't change the map and you don't know the weapon spawns by heart then you should try the tracker perk that lets you see an ordnance is coming earlier, because Haven spawns an incineration cannon and a binary rifle, both of which will decide 1v1s without a lot of fuss. If you specialize in ordnance you should also consider ammo (So your power weapons give you an advantage for longer) or dexterity (So in the highly unlikely scenario that you miss with your incin cannon your reload time doesn't kill you). If you haven't disabled power weapons then they will decide the winner, which is why you should probably disable them, but regular settings mean things like the sticky detonator will decide many fights. Some guy in regicide got 4-5 kills on me in a row because I kept spawning near him while he had the sticky detonator. It sucked, there was literally nothing I could do, I even tried running away but the spawns put me so close he just put those grenades at my feet and detonated them with ease. There's a very good reason power weapons are frequently limited the smaller the amount of players, because they make a massive difference.

If you're playing game settings designed for 1v1s then you're probably reducing the amount of kills to win and placing nav points above your heads. You're probably also limiting the power weapons available. The nav points are why I didn't recommend nemesis, because in order for 1v1s to work you have to spend your time fighting not hiding from each other, so the game settings frequently include nav points or another way of finding each other. Promethean Vision as I recommended it above isn't for finding your enemy, it's for lining up shots before they enter your line of sight. It makes a ton of difference with the boltshot, for example. For long-range 1v1s resetting your reticule after a shot is absolutely essential, which is why I initially recommended stability for longer range maps. If you both have perfect control you still have half the distance between their head and your reticule, so you can shoot faster than they can because you're moving your reticule less. It's a simple matter of how much time it takes to travel a distance. High sensitivities decrease the time too, but they still benefit from stability. Also in 1v1 games you can just start shooting someone in the body and let their shots carry yours to their head, because you know they're always full sheilds when you meet them. If you went with frag grenades definitely go with Explosives, because other grenades aren't affected by Explosives. If you just want to win more 1v1s in normal matchmaking then there are a lot more variables (Like the fact that you often won't be 1v1, and even when you are often one of you won't be at full shields to begin the fight), and your preferences matter a lot more.

Primary: DMR Secondary: Boltshot Grenade: Pulse Grenade (Fastest fuse time of any grenade, can knock off shields or finish kills before enemy can react) AA depends on map: Tactical Package: Grenadier or Resupply (Roughly equivalent, Grenadier is for 1 round games that go to 1 kill, Resupply is for 1v1 games that go to more than 1 kill). If you're on a big map then you probably want Shielding or Firepower (DMR + Lightrifle in that case). Shielding doesn't help much, but getting that 1 second jump on someone could decide the fight. Support Upgrade: Stealth or Stability, depending on map size yet again. If you're really unsure of your ability you can go for dexterity, but generally 1v1s are over before you have to reload. If you can't consistently end 1v1s without reloading then you probably shouldn't specialize in them (Or you SHOULD because you need the practice).

I actually would like the non-player powers of the DMR reduced (Like the tendency of bullets to find their target when your reticule isn't on the target) however without that I want the mid-range and full auto weapons buffed. I want the full auto weapons to have roughly twice the clip size they do now, I want the mid-range ones to get tweaks that make their kill times exceed the DMR's at mid-range, the specifics of which I've detailed in many other threads. I also want the full-auto weapons to get better kill times, but I don't necessarily want EVERYTHING to be that much faster. I think the obsession with "faster" hurt this game a lot, so until we get a new sandbox I just want the full autos to be able to fire longer without reloading/overheating. Also I suggest you try not to be indifferent about any of the weapons (Except those that perform fine already, it's fine if you don't care about those) because to discuss weapon balance with sincerity and credibility you need to see a place for all the weapons in the game. You need to have a sense that each should belong somewhere. The reason I say that is because catering to just one style of play is Halo 4's biggest mistake. You run the risk of repeating that mistake if you don't look at the big picture. You have to think "what will the game look like if I get my way?" and that way if you ever DO get your way you find yourself playing a better game, not one that's just better for one faction of players.

My clan got pretty good at Invasion and loved it, so they would be very happy if it returned. Although you wouldn't see it return in this game. I liked features of Invasion, like the battle buddy system where you could spawn on an ally. I don't understand why so many smart things like that were scrapped as if they never existed. I couldn't stand the fact that Invasion was the only gametype in Reach that had a smart spawn idea like that. It's frustrating especially because I didn't really like Reach that much, I thought Invasion made a few smart moves that I hoped I'd see in the next Halo game (Although not having a soft kill or force field on the attacking spawns was soooo stupid), and instead the slate got wiped clean and we're watching 343 start from scratch, re-inventing the wheel in terms of Halo but borrowing heavily from other games. It's just so damn counterintuitive! Anyway, Invasion was fun. I thought that some very basic game type & map-building prowess could have helped it a lot, because the attackers really were so screwed sometimes with their miserably limited spawns, but overall that was a gametype that should have at least been picked over for good ideas if not salvaged entirely. Instead it's effectively forgotten, and I cannot fathom why. I would definitely like to see the return of spawning on designated allies, and could we get some @$#*ing spawn protection in Halo finally please? It's right there in the game settings! "Respawn traits" under "Traits," 1-2 seconds of 2000% damage resistance, GO! No, instead we have archaic spawn systems. There was spawn protection in the original Halo 3 SWAT, but the Halo community is so saturated with morons that people actually complained that you could see the world before you got headshotted, so we return to the stone age of spawning where you spawn in designated locations (Read: Memorize-able) and can get dropped with a headshot before your screen changes from black. I don't even blame 343 or Bungie for this one, I blame the collection of drooling imbeciles that constitute a very vocal percentage of the Halo community. Those idiots compain when things go RIGHT and for reasons I'll never understand the developers acquiesce. Tip to developers: You can always get NEW morons to buy your game, you don't have to hang on to the old ones! Sorry for the rant. Invasion was pretty good. I don't miss it exactly and I don't want it in Halo 4 without other changes happening first (Reduction in shield recharge delay, can you imagine having to rush a capture point when you have to wait 6 seconds for your shield to start recharging?), but it won't happen in Halo 4 for programming reasons (Putting in a new gametype and maps that support it would likely exceed the reach of a normal patch, plus you don't need another 6v6 tactical gametype). I would at least like them to take some lessons from the smart moves of the past and get things like the battle buddy system back in ALL team gametypes.

Actually I agree in part, there was another thread where people started talking quite a bit about the "skill gap" being smaller and what has actually happened is it has gotten smaller for some skills and larger for others. You said the game was more "tactical" and to an extent I agree, specifically I feel like team play is more important than ever before because it is discouraged more than ever before. Without tools to assist players w/o mics like the Red X, players have to work even harder to work as a team, and players who do can frequently bowl over players who don't with astounding ease. Thus the "skill gap" for teamplay in smaller playlists seems to have grown. Of course I play with one or two deaf players every now and then, so they're screwed, but that's Halo 4. There is actually less room for tactical play in BTB though, because ordnance in BTB is so much better than it is in smaller playlists. It's still important to play as a team, but a good team really can be crushed by bad luck with ordnance, and I don't personally think that is any kind of good game design. I play with a team, and while it's debatable whether we're any good, I see on multiple occasions how much more important ordnance is than almost anything else. It's most apparent on maps like Longbow and Ragnarok, where most of the players are on foot and so are using their Ordnance. If Exile weren't so ridiculously imbalanced you might be able to pay attention to whether ordnance is affecting the outcome, but most of the time on Exile you're just focused on keeping control or gaining control of Gauss spawn, and keeping your head down when someone else is rolling the heavy vehicles. There is also a much smaller skill gap when it comes to just running around killing people on foot, in BTB and in smaller playlists, because the individual spartan is much weaker. Your shields get wiped out fast, your weapons take more shots to kill and reload more often (They kill faster, but taking more shots is a kind of nasty I've explained in other places), you're slow (Sprint doesn't matter because you get slowed by shots while sprinting, effectively making you easier to kill when you're sprinting because you're slowed down AND your gun is lowered), and the weapons are extremely easy to use (Hitscan is a big contributer, perfect accuracy is another). Thus in smaller maps I find any strategy that doesn't involve sticking to my team like glue has zero consistency, and in Big Team I find that I feel like I did in Reach: If you don't have a sniper rifle or a vehicle you just don't have anything to live for. Without one of those things to skew the odds in your favor you're either getting most of your kills off of people who aren't fighting back or you're running a high risk with each fight. That can be very frustrating to players who built their skillset around being reliable with a DMR/BR, because we step out to fight and we find even fights we win nearly killing us. That doesn't feel good, and it definitely doesn't feel right. So I will definitely agree that team work and communication are more important than ever before, largely because halo 4 provides very little programmed support for them so you're gaining an advantage that people without mics can't account for in any way. However sometimes good teamwork gets crushed by good ordnance (Most often in BTB, small maps don't have good enough ordnance to swerve the outcome of a game usually), and sometimes it would be nice if you didn't have to feel like a lost duckling every time you're more than a few feet away from your team. It would be especially nice if little details with massive repercussions were improved, like the insane shield recharge delay which stunts gameplay at every level in every playlist and game mode (aside from SWAT of course). Whenever I am killed by someone who had nothing to do with damaging me, or I have to listen to may team's sighs of frustration because they don't realize the game has simply decided the other team should win via ordnance and they think THEY'RE making mistakes, or I see Exile ever, or I barely survive the attention of 1-2 foot soldiers because I'm in a lowly vehicle and they have DMRs + plasma pistols & grenades, or I need my shields back and I can't find ANYWHERE on Halo 4 small maps to hide for 6 seconds, or I get a bad ordnance selection (At least once every game of slayer I play, no exaggeration), or someone gets to twitch-shot me at extreme long range due to hitscan weapons with high bullet magnetism, or any of the many things that make me feel completely irrelevant on the battle field and like I have no power to influence the outcome of the game or my lives within it, I get mad and I think this game simply doesn't allow for the higher levels of "good" because even when I'm playing well I find myself crippled and beaten down by the game. I'm not always playing well, and I'm painfully aware of mistakes I make that cost me my life or even as little as a kill. I can own up to those and admit my faults and accept that I'm not the best player ever, but sometimes it's frustrating to feel like you can't even get good at a game, not because you're missing something, but because the game just doesn't allow it in general. That's why people feel it's less competitive, because for a lone foot soldier it IS less competitive, and it may surprise many people to discover that was the majority of Halo's population. Unlike people say, it was never a bunch of teams having awesome close matches against each other all the time (Unless you were at the very highest levels), it was randoms making up most of the population. It's much worse to be a random in Halo 4, because your ability to influence the game - your ability to get "good" at the game" - is much more limited than ever before and much more dependent on you bringing friends. You aren't important or special to your team, what's important is that you have a team and you better hope you get good ordnance in BTB slayer. There are plenty of peole who play with teams and feel differently than I do, but what they might not be realizing WITH their team is just how hard it sucks to be without one in Halo 4. Or even when you're on one it sucks REAL bad to be away from them on the map (Unless you're just away from EVERYONE with a sniper rifle). Or when you're with one it sucks real bad to get crap ordnance and then have the collective frustration of losing a game where you pushed properly, gained map control, maintained your positions and teamshot, and just couldn't get the ordnance to make it count.

You have more tools, but so do the other players, and some of those tools are just plain better than other, so you actually end up with about the same amount of tools. "What?" Here's an example: DMR > Carbine & BR Thus you have 3 marksman rifles boiled down to one because that one is better than the other two, making them largely irrelevant. Here's another example: Incineration Cannon on Solace. You can move across the entire map without ever getting spotted or shot by another player due to the high cover on the map and the separation of levels. Thus you can grab the incineration cannon, sprint across the map unmolested, and then be within "auto-win" range with your cannon. That may seem like the incineration guy simply made the smarter play, but I hope you'll agree that "grab launcher and run toward enemy" isn't really a very smart play even if it IS the smartER play. In this scenario your teamshot and callouts did you very little good, calling the guy out was unlikely since he can move across the map w/o camo unseen, he can sprint, and you couldn't have shot him anyway. I don't have any problem with the incineration cannon on Solace, I'm just illustrating how the winning play isn't always the most intellectual or strategically complex. Lets continue with the examples: Now you have camo as part of your loadout, you get some assists in Big Team, and now you gain the same incineration cannon from ordnance. Or a sniper rifle. Who knows? Or you just have your DMR, and the other guy gets the free sniper rifle. Let's say you and I are on opposite teams, you score 70 points by jumping for the hill on Ragnarok and beating back my teammates with mad DMR skills. Your ordnance: Gravity Hammer, Speed Boost, Frag Grenades. You won't get another ordnance until 90 points I think. I hang back in my base, preferring not to expose myself too much because I'm a coward with a miserable strafe and DMR skills that only exist when I keep absolutely still and aim through my scope. I don't get as many points as fast as you do because I'm not very good, but I get a lucky break or two and kill a guy while reloading, and only slightly later in the game I have a beam rifle from my ordnance. Not only that, but some of my guys have been picking up kills from a distance with THEIR DMRs too, and they have sniper rifles and beam rifles too. They were luckier than you, so was I. Your teammates got roughly the same ordnance quality you did. We got it later because we're not quite as awesome, but from a distance we find our sniper weapons very easy to use with our camo, and suddenly your team has lost the lead and has to push to gain points, because we sure as hell aren't pushing anymore. Some more examples: You are an excellent ghost pilot, an even better banshee pilot, and generally a well-rounded vehicle operator. You aren't the best by any means and you're OK with that, because you know your team can count on you to stay solid in whatever vehicle you get. However those vehicles are very easy to spot and can be quickly sniped apart by people DMRing you at a safe distance, and this is what happens much of the time in fact. Life tends to be over within a minute or two in most vehicles, often before you've made a run worth your while, and life is even shorter when people use something other than DMRs. You have just out-DMRed me very handily on Haven. You recognize you have to take cover to get your shields back, and you avoid combat because you know better than to go for a fight while weakened. Luckily for me, I spawned behind you and headshot you freely before your shields even begin to return. You and your team are killing your way through my team, and you killed me twice already. For some reason though I spawn in the midst of the brawl and 5-shot you before you can say "WTF." I then die too, but you can't help but wonder why I spawned in the middle of a fight like that. You are excellent with the BR. Top notch, very proud of your skills that you've developed over a long period of hard-earned experience. I however brought a DMR to this fight, and I kill you some tenth of a second before you kill me, even though your shots were perfect. You are much better than me at BTB, an astounding Gauss Gunner, a game-changing Scorpion Operator, and a terrifying Banshee pilot. However you spawned Red, and I spawned Blue. On your way to Scorpion I Gauss you. To conclude, the massive variety of tools at your disposal are designed to perform very similarly to each other or to nullify each other. Got Promethean Vision? I got Stealth. Got Grenadier? I got Resupply, and on average they're probably identical. Got a bigger motion tracker? I have one that I can see while I'm looking through a scope. Got Marksman Rifle? Got Automatics? They're all designed to either look like each other or to get nullified. Nice short run to the Scorpion, I have a long run to it but I also have a Gauss Hog. Nah this one doesn't belong here, because having a Gauss Hog is much much MUCH better than having a shorter run to the Scorpion, and any idiot could have told you that. Nice DMR skills, you can kill me but I'll just let you die of old age while you wait for your shield to begin recharging. Got a full party? I got better ordnance. No I didn't work harder for it. Got Halo skills? I got Halo 4.

Why would he congratulate them on a job well done if he doesn't think they did a good job? Why should he acknowledge they are a good developer if he hasn't seen evidence to suggest that conclusion? Your thinking, like the text of your post, is a different color than most peoples'. I don't mean that in the sense that your opinion is a minority opinion, I mean that in the sense that you are talking about deciding to like the game and approve of 343's work before you even consider the game or 343's work. I don't think 343 is an especially good developer and I don't see a lot of potential. That doesn't mean they're not a good developer and that they don't have potential, it just means I came to a different conlclusion than you did after I saw the evidence. The way you suggest we should just pat them on the back suggests to me that you made your conclusion before you saw the evidence, and you think we should too. You are welcome to form different conclusions than I have. What I see is a developer who has made two games, one of which (Anniversary) borrowed gigantically from two other titles: The engine from Halo: Reach and the campaign from Halo: CE. That's a coding exercise. That's a class project. The other game they made (Halo 4) also borrows heavily from lots of other titles (CoD, Crysis, Far Cry, and some Halo too). I see a company that spends most of its time making knock-offs, which doesn't make them a bad developer, but it doesn't definitively make a good developer either. So why exactly should we admit they did a good job and that they're a good developer, when they haven't actually developed much on their own and they haven't really done such a good job of it either?

Oh it's no picnic, and I haven't posted nearly as much over there. The sheer volume of threads makes it hard to keep one good discussion going, so there's a lot more repetition. You end up condensing your message and just posting it every time a thread concerning the topic comes up, hoping one of them will survive. Combine the volume of posters with the volume of people just making new threads instead of discussing threads that are already present and it can be really frustrating. You end up finding more than 90% of the threads you post in didn't survive long after you posted, and there's barely any real discussion at all (people try for it, but you get 1-2 responses in and the thread is gone). Also for some reason waypoint works about a well as Halo 4, so you get on sometimes to find the server down. I wouldn't wish Halowaypoint on anyone, that site is a nightmare. I just can't help but hope that eventually through the quantity of certain threads certain things will be changed, but the problem is you don't get complete thoughts or discussions, so I expect any change that comes from waypoint to be of extremely mixed quality. 343 eventually DOES listen and nerf things, but if they took a survey of waypoint people and made decisions on that alone we'd end up with weird changes to problems that don't address the issue at all. So for example I hate how imbalanced Exile is, but you see a lot more complaints about its weight on waypoint than its imbalance. If 343 just did what waypoint people complained about most, you'd get less Exile in BTB but when you did it would be just as stupid. I don't think 343 will do that, but the point is to illustrate the narrow focus of ideas that gain momentum in a mob like that. I wouldn't expect anyone to sift through all that stuff, so I have no idea how 343 could ever use the forums as a way to accurately gain info. If they look at it at all I expect they do it by thread titles or something, because you just can't pull many solid thoughts from that writhing mass. You'd have to have a computer program sort through them for you.