DracoAvian

I actually ended up playing a whole bunch of Mass Effect through the break. Got my way through 1 and 2. I need to find my copy of ME3 now. For some reason I guess I never imported a ME1 character all the way through... It'll be interesting to see all the results in ME3.

We can clearly see that UNSC ground based weaponry is adequate. In many cases UNSC weaponry has clear advantages in range, accuracy, and rate of fire. I believe the UNSC has the policy of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

The point of choosing your weapon is so that you can decide what your playstyle will be. The point is to add variety to the game where there is none. If you do nothing different as a BR player from an AR player and end up dying to him when you round a corner at the same time... didn't you deserve it? I'm against double primaries at start as an across-the-board occurrence mostly because I love the H4 magnum. That thing is so satisfying to use. I personally feel that "overkilling" the AR and DMR/BR is a little lazy, although effective. I'm not sure how matches would tend to play out, but I'm fairly certain it'll end up being either the majority of the players rushing with the automatics or the majority would end up being long-range play. Either these would happen, or everyone would use weapons exactly as they were intended and there would be very few Automatic vs. Precision match-ups at all.

I'm liking the idea of "on the map" armor abilities. Limiting the availability of them could really open up the possibilities. Right now, armor abilities are balanced against eachother and as loadout choices. How much more fun would it be if there were utility AAs akin in usefulness and balance to loadout weapons, but additionally power AAs akin in usefulness and balance to power weapons? I've had an idea about an "EMP-burst" AA for a while. Same animation as the regen shield, but instead of a green bubble there would be a spectacular electrical discharge. The initial effect would be a hard EMP, instantly knocking shields down to zero and stunning vehicles. There'd be a residual effect for a few seconds, illustrated by occasional electrical arcs from the center of the event. This would be a soft EMP which would cause damage over time to shields and slow vehicles to a crawl.

Aren't assassinations supposed to be fairly 'low-key?' Personally, I like the regular knife animations. The flag and ball assassinations are crazy too. I don't think any of those remove the pretense of 'stealth' either. That isn't to say I wouldn't like to see more assassination animations though. I just don't think they should be hyper flashy.

Well they have a terrain palette dedicated to "dominion" so I figure they could easily pull out some flood terrain. Honestly all they'd need to do is throw together a few sets of those flood bubbles. Forgers would be able to get creative with them. I'd like to see a greater variety of natural terrain. Rocks and trees are good and fine... But I'm talking about large sand dunes, gently rolling hills, winding caves, brush, tall grass. They could get really crazy and have highly aesthetic pieces like waterfalls, rivers (which would just be a block of water with a current), or rocks with staircases cut into them. Additionally there were no "old human tech" pieces. Nothing was made out of concrete and reebar. Depending on the map, I'd like to see a definite style to the blocks, be it new UNSC, old UNSC, Forerunner, Covenant, ancient ruins, space, etc. Last of all I'd like to see a "custom filter" which would give the player some pretty basic visual settings.

If not Invasion, then some sort of asymmetric, progressive, and team-oriented gametype.

Ah, but you can. Kinda... In custom game settings there is an option for custom ordinance drops. When I play custom 1v1s with my brother, we have it set up to drop loadout weapons. There are settings for all sorts of things though. You can even weight the chance for weapons to appear in the drops. I'm afraid it is still all very random though. There is no way to award specific weapons based on personal actions or by what your team needs. "Infinity" gametypes are still very much whichever team had the most sniper drops wins and they are roflstomping us with two mantises and nobody is getting any splaser or rocket drops.

Yeah. I like having choices. I've got to say my favorite matches have been the ones where I only get the choice of primary weapon. I think I'd hate ARs or BRs only...

Okay, Darkrain had a pretty broad first topic, so I'll bring up these. 1. I've always thought the boltshot would be balanced if it was more like the mauler. The one-hit KO is pretty powerful, even at nerf'd stage. It just doesn't happen as often. The mauler had a one-two combo of a shot then a melee for the KO. It worked pretty well and didn't make it so a critically wounded player could straight up win a fight with a fresh player. Additionally the 'shotgun' mode is the only way I seemed to be killed by the boltshot. The single fire mode seems woefully underpowered. I think the same goes for the PP. If the single shots were more viable, I think we'd see a little less of the alternate fire modes. 2. As a warthog driver I've got to say: YUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUP. I dislike "Infinity" gametypes, like non-"Infinity" gametypes, and love "Legendary" gametypes. The reason I love "Legendary" is because of the lack of sticky and plasma pistol spawns. I'm okay with the combo itself, but I don't think a person should have access to it every five seconds. Even if a rocket launcher instantly spawns in the middle of the map, you'd have to move to get it. That takes a little bit of time and gives the enemy a chance to stop you. 3. On one of my DMR classes I use the "stability" perk. That usually fixes the problem nicely. I do agree that the flinch can seem a little ridiculous at times, but it is nothing compared to the flinch a sniper rifle causes. The flinch mechanic was added because the mechanic of 'being unscoped when taking damage' was removed. Apparently 343 felt they needed something to slow down ranged battles with precision weapons.

I did say I liked the idea As with any AA there would be certain maps it would be especially useful on and others where its abilities would be limited.

Huh... I feel like the jetpacks in H4 are underpowered... they don't climb like they used to, and you can't get anywhere the same amount of distance. Additionally maps aren't designed with 'jetpack shortcuts' like it seemed they used to be. In Reach there were maps where you could significantly shorten travel time by flying over a wall, jumping to the top of a structure, jetting over chasms, or by taking nature's downward express and feathering out a soft landing. Jump packs do sound sort of fun though. I imagine it would function sort of like a portable short-range mancannon. It would kind of fling you in whatever direction you were facing. I can see it being crazy overpowered as well... It could easily make you more maneuverable than a vehicle... I think it could be very hard to balance. Too high and you'd be dead every single time. Too low and it would only be a bunny hop. Too fast and it would be game-breaking in terms of getting around the map, but too slow and it would be kinda worthless. I could see it as being functionally similar to jetpack in terms of height achieved and distance traveled, but have the jetpack exclusive to UNSC and jumppack exclusive to Covenant. Just to add a flair of flavor to each faction.

I still don't know what anybody plans on doing with voice commands. I could see some mild campaign usage, but in multiplayer? I don't see any compelling reasons anyone would need it.

Well you can always take the hardlight shield and look at whatever is shooting at you. I don't know if Halo is the best for voice commands in general. Endwar is a strategy game, and voice commands were used to give general orders to units and call down strikes. Halo is about you and your gun... and your grenades. I just can't think of a reason you would need them. Someone on the forums had an idea about personal or team AIs, so maybe it would be useful or fun to ask the AI to drop waypoints where specific weapons spawn, to ask how much time is left, or to ask how many points in order to win... But anything I can think of are either on your HUD or built through experience and map knowledge. EDIT: Additionally it wouldn't take 'advanced consoles' or 'tons of work' to make something like this happen. It would be reletively easy to license out some commercial voice recognition software and just meld that into your game. With all the time since the release of Endwar I can't imagine voice recognition has become worse. It would come down to programming the game and how it plays with the newly aquired software, and then a nice, long session of bug squashing to make sure everything runs. The real question is not "How?" but "Why?"

I play a lot of PC strategy games. Total War: Rome 2, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Wargame: AirLand Battle are the ones I play pretty regularly. I'm also getting back into Halo 4. I think some of the changes 343 has made are pretty good. I really love the 'oldschool' gametypes with just the primary weapons for loadouts. Ricochet is a blast as well. I've also been playing a ton of Tom Clancy's Endwar singleplayer recently. I've haven't tried multiplayer again... It was actually pretty fun back in the day. I doubt it has any sort of real population though. Even so, I saw a copy of Endwar at my local Gamestop for like $7 bucks. If you like singleplayer strategy, it is most definitely worth it.