RedStarRocket91

Recapturing the feel of CE without the Magnum!? Seriously though, I'd definitely play something like this, I've really missed the mad Assault Rifle battles from Halo 3 and CE now that every battle generally just consists of rifles and power weapons. I think for that reason it might also make sense to restrict the weapons as far as possible to 'Classic' weapons: Assault Rifle, Magnum, Plasma Pistol, Shotgun, etc. The Magnum I think deserves to be included because outside of close range it has a fairly long kill time if the shooter tries to pace their shots, but still lets players at least hit back against anyone with power weapons straight from spawn without being overpowered. A very slight damage increase might also help, leaving the Magnum at 6sk but making the Assault Rifle kill slightly faster to balance it. Battle Rifles and DMRs would definitely be banned, though. As for the maps, I think we really would need some new Forged arenas: while existing ones potentially could be okay with Sprint, they're generally quite geared towards open sightlines and ranged combat, whereas ideally CQB maps would need to be quite small and claustrophobic - along the lines of Chill Out, Rat Race and Derelict. At any rate, getting back to the good old days of killing people by punching them in the face instead of shooting them there sounds like a lot of fun - and welcome to the forums!

I'd actually prefer that the Chief didn't get a new AI or for Cortana to return at all. If Cortana comes back it makes her sacrifice effectively meaningless, and thus becomes just a cheap dramatic trick rather than something important. If he gets a new AI, while there could be some interesting interplay between the two of them, it would feel too much like they're just reestablishing the status quo instead of actually looking at consequences. Right now, the Chief is, for the first time, completely alone. Almost everyone he's ever known is dead or MIA: and he's never had to deal with that before. Out of all the Halo games, the only time he's never had anyone else with him was during the first encounter with the Flood: at no other point wasn't there a friend nearby in contact with him. That feeling, of being completely alone, is something that could be used to explore the Chief in a lot more depth than just chucking him a new AI and telling him to shoot something: think of the Rookie's levels in ODST. What could be more interesting, from a story perspective, than seeing how an ageing soldier who's known nothing but war and loss tries to adjust to not only having lost everything that mattered to him, but effectively being replaced?

That's a VERY high sensitivity for anything but close-quarters fighting - if you're using a precision weapon like the DMR in your loadouts, I'd highly recommend dropping it down to about 2 or 3. It'll take a little while to get used to, but you should see a marked improvement in accuracy, especially if you're on something as mobile as the bumper jumper setting - while high sensitivity might work for the pros, it's not a good choice for the rest of us when it come to mid-range. If possible, you should also try playing with friends and microphones, as having people who you can actually talk to and coordinate with generally helps improve play quite a bit.

Interesting idea to make a record public like this - seems like you played really well, too! I'd love to see your stats when playing with a full party, it'd be interesting to see just how much that affects the results.

The only real problems with that would be how the game would work out the paths, and how the player would know exactly where each one was going to end up? Otherwise it basically ends up filling the same role as the Thruster Pack, or even just sprinting, but with the disadvantage that it isn't as precise. That said, I can imagine it being amazing for something like Flood, so that there's a quick escape route when the Spartans get surrounded, or Regicide, to give the King a chance to escape from a big group of enemies! I actually haven't seen that video, I'll definitely have to watch it - the 'Hacker' one sounds pretty interesting too, I wonder what it does? Perhaps it disables the HUD or interferes with it, like during Cortana's rampancy moments in campaign? I actually kind of envision it being used more as a method of fast transport, rather than just a way of avoiding damage, as otherwise it would basically just be doing the same job as the Hardlight Shield or Thruster Pack - though imagine how hilarious it could be for someone to waste a long-range shot from the Rocket Launcher or Incineration Cannon, only to watch the target vanish before it hit! That's a good point. I'd hoped the idea of being able to take damage while unable to fight back might compensate for that, but I suppose it might still be controversial just for existing. If you can think of any ways it could be better balanced, I'd love to hear them! Depending on where you could actually teleport to (fixed destination or random destination) it might not actually need to be that high. If it was a random jump, it would definitely need to be quite high, but if it was a fixed destination it might only need a few seconds, as if you activated it again very quickly you'd only be moving a few metres and so it wouldn't be worth doing. That's exactly what I was thinking! Imagine how great it could even be for something like MLG, where teams can afford to push up and be aggressive all the time - it could completely change how defending and attacking objectives works!

I was playing some campaign earlier today, when I noticed something about the Promethean combat AI. When they begin to take heavy damage, they will often suddenly stop fighting and disintegrate into a ball of light, then reappear somewhere else a few moments later - usually out of sight, which gives them time for their shields to recharge while the player attempts to track them down. This is particularly frustrating on Legendary difficulty, where players can't afford to waste ammunition taking down shields more than once. But seeing the Prometheans teleporting around the battlefield at will gave me an idea. What if it was possible to use something similar in multiplayer? There are immediately a lot of interesting potential tactical applications. Players could use it to avoid being trapped in enemy-controlled areas, quickly get to ordnance drop locations or vehicle spawns, escape from pursuing enemies, coordinate surprise attacks, flank opponents, or quickly return to their bases in Capture the Flag or Dominion, allowing teams to actually push forward and be aggressive instead of worrying about who's supposed to be defending. To avoid it becoming too overpowered, while players using the teleport ability would be unable to move or attack while disintegrating or reappearing, they would still take damage from all sources, though damage might be higher or lower than normal. Using the teleport would also reset the shield recharge delay timer in the same manner as the Hardlight Shield, so that shields would treat the moment the player fully reappeared as the last time they were hit. The only problem would be determining exactly where the player would teleport to. An arbitrary direction, like toward an initial spawn or objective, might not be very useful, and a random direction or evenn a player-controlled direction could still lead to problems with different surface heights, or falling off the edge of/through the map, especially if the distance to be travelled couldn't be controlled. The solution is therefore a two-part activation system, similar to that used for beatdowns and assassinations. Pressing the armour ability button would mark the player's current location as the teleport destination, for example the Red Flag spawn. This could be done multiple times, though only one location could be active at any time: so if the player pressed the button again at a Warthog spawn, they would instead teleport to the Warthog spawn instead of the Red Flag spawn when they activated the ability. Activating the ability would be done by holding down the armour ability button, and would clear the destination location once the player had reappeared: while they would immediately be able to set mark another destination, there would be a short cooldown before they could activate the teleport again, perhaps fifteen seconds. Once the player's body had begun to disintegrate, it wouldn't be possible to cancel the teleport: however, there would be a half-second of animation in which the button could be released to cancel the jump without activation or penalty. There could also be medals associated with use of the ability, for quickly killing an opponent, securing an objective or just picking up ordnance, as well as for killing players while they disintegrated or reappeared. Obviously it would need a lot of tweaking to make sure it was balanced properly, but what do you think of it in theory? Does it sound like it could be interesting, too overpowered, or too underpowered?

Dude. Shut up. Stop making sense.

What I don't get is why they singled out sexism for this. In my experience there's significantly more abuse based on sexuality and race than there is gender, and it's not any less hurtful.

The absolute easiest thing to do is add coloured lights to different parts of your maps. Even by the end of one match, people will probably have an easy time finding 'the red room' and 'the green room', whereas asking them to head to 'the hangar' or 'the reactor core' might just confuse them until they've gotten very used to the layout of the map. Other than that, try adding shields into windows and walls, man cannons, toys and static weapon spawns, all of which can make for good callouts.

Now on Exile, it's possible to simply avoid the Gauss Hog altogether: it's a big level with plenty of indoors areas around the edges and centre, where the Warthog's size and low manoeuvrability would make it an easy target for any driver stupid enough to try and drive it inside. But the real problem is that while it's possible to avoid being killed by it, there aren't any real hard counters to it. The Scorpion is very effective, as is the Banshee in the hands of a skilled player, but once they're wrecked there just isn't anything with enough punch to take it on outside of ordnance weapons, which are an unreliable source. There's no point nerfing the damage of the weapon itself - if it's not capable of one-shot-killing someone, then unless the gunner is particularly exceptional it's very unlikely to get many kills while moving at high speed. To compensate, drivers will have to move more slowly and predictably, and suddenly there's no real advantage over regular infantry: and even then it's basically just filling the same role as the chaingun Warthog, so there's no point in it being there to begin with. Taking it out altogether wouldn't help much, as it leaves the Scorpion and Banshee basically unchallenged - and the Scorpion in particular doesn't take nearly as much skill to use effectively. It would also hurt team games, as suddenly there's a lack of transport for objective carriers or for players to actually capture objectives whilst the 'hog stands on guard. Replacing it with a chaingun Warthog is potentially an option, but it doesn't really have the power or range necessary to make it a viable option on a map that large and with sigh tlines that long. So removal's not an option, and the weapon's power can't really be reduced. The other options are therefore to add more hard counters, weaken its strength overall, or nerf the weapon in some other way. Hard counters aren't a particularly good choice, as due to the random nature of ordnance drops they're as likely to be completely useless or even help the Warthog's team as they are to help the defending team. Even assuming the enemy team doesn't get it first, you're still as likely to get a Needler or a Concussion Rifle as you are to get a Spartan Laser or Binary Rifle. Weakening the Warthog's strength is also a bad idea, as it's already actually quite weak, and any further reduction would make it worthless as a transport as well as unable to stand up in a straight fight against regular infantry. Vehicles need to be wrecked over the course of minutes, not seconds, at least when dealing with rifles and grenades. So the last option, and by far what I believe to be the best, is a non-damage nerf. Firstly, the Gauss Warthog isn't supposed to be used to take on groups of infantry: that's the regular Warthog's job. At the moment, the Gauss Warthog is just a straight upgrade rather than an alternative in terms of preference or role, and these upgrades are what we need to look at when deciding how to nerf it. Kill times against infantry are probably about the same, allowing for the delay between shots Far greater effective range, even with the slight projectile travel time Much greater damage against vehicles No warm-up time, unlike the chaingun which requires a few seconds to spool up to maximum damage per second Though much more accurate, has about the same strength of aim assist and aim assist range Ideally, when nerfing the Gauss Warthog, we don't want to just keep it as an improved Warthog in terms of role. So, my proposal is that when deciding how to nerf it, we aim to make it a dedicated anti-materiel vehicle, which is actually weaker against groups of infantry than the regular Warthog. Kill times necessarily need to be extended if raw damage is to be preserved. There are three main ways of doing this: the first would be to increase the cooldown time after firing a shot. This makes misses more costly, as instead of just being able to fire another shot straight away, there will be a longer time where the vehicle is vulnerable to counter attack. It also means that even if the shot hits and kills the target, other nearby enemies have more time to either run away or try and do damage, making it less effective against multiple targets than the regular Warthog. The second option is to implement a charging time for the weapon, like the Railgun or Spartan Laser. This makes the weapon's use more tactical, as if someone is moving in and out of cover, it becomes much harder to effectively guess when to begin charging, and relies on the ability to track movement rather than just the ability to aim at all. However, this might be too much of a nerf, especially against vehicles, as in the time it would take to charge and fire the Warthog could be destroyed, especially against powerful vehicles like the Scorpion or weapons like the Rocket Launcher. The last option is to implement an overheating system similar to the Beam Rifle. Though the weapon could be fired quickly it would result in overheating - and due to the size of the weapon, it would need a lot longer to cool down for use again. This would encourage gunners to pace their shots and increase kill times against multiple opponents, whilst still allowing for multiple rapid shots under stress. Though I think this would be probably be the best way of nerfing the weapon (provided the heat generated from each shot was high enough and took long enough to cool, even before the overheat), it has the major disadvantage of not being user-friendly, and might be very difficult to master, especially considering the comparative rarity with which most players get to use the Gauss Hog's cannon. The other way that the Guass Hog could be nerfed is with the cannon's aim assist. By making the weapon more accurate and reducing or even removing aim assist an bullet magnetism, it becomes much more dependant on the accuracy of the gunner, meaning that while most players will still be able to reliably hit large targets like Ghosts, Mongooses and Banshees, they'll have much more difficulty hitting smaller targets like enemy Spartans. This would also help those who're particularly good marksmen really stand out, as while there'd be a lot more near-misses among the weaker players, they'd be able to hit enemies at even longer ranges due to the smaller reticule.

Congratulations, quilts! Very well deserved

It'd be nice if they patched it so that you never get any of the same things twice in a row - otherwise it's basically a wasted specialisation.

When inside of combat, you'll probably find that an increase in your ability to jump will prove to be a lot more useful than the Jetpack, as while most players are good at tracking and hitting the players who're moving in near-straight lines that come with being on the ground or using the Jetpack, they have a lot more difficulty in keeping their aim on someone who's constantly jumping around. Outside of combat, it should also be an advantage as even if you have to waste time moving your hands around the control, you're not at risk of getting shot if you get it wrong. Ultimately, just go for whichever feels more comfortable, as the increased mobility will not make up for the problems that arise due to hitting the wrong buttons or having to actually think about what your hands are doing, instead of being able to control your character subconsciously.

Very true, but there's a difference between refusing to discuss stuff that's already been posted and seeing the same things posted over and over again. It's very frustrating to put a lot of thought and time into making a topic in order to actually provoke discussion, and then seeing it get bumped off the front page - sometimes within an hour - by new threads which are just repeating what other, currently-active threads are saying.

Grenades have been weakened a lot since Reach, so it could be that you're used to the size of the explosions from there. It could also be down to lag, jump height, or just the target having a perk which reduces the damage taken from explosives. For me, it feels like while Plasma Grenades are as powerful as ever, their damage drops off a lot more suddenly than before: so you're a lot more likely to take either full damage or non at all, instead of the way Frag Grenades work, where although damage is lower it decreases at a steady pace from the centre of the blast, hence shields often being dropped by a half or a quarter.

They actually did something like this with the Spiker and the Brute Shot - they worked perfectly well as projectile weapons, but did slightly more melee damage than other weapons (which, with the exception of the Energy Sword and Gravity Hammer, all did exactly the same amount of melee damage). I think the Brute Shot in Halo 2 also had a slightly greater melee lunge range than the regular melee, so you could sometimes catch someone off guard if they thought you were out of range. Maybe in the future they could try something similar? Like if they brought back the SMG they could add a bayonet to it which gave it slightly more damage, or the next Sniper Rifle could be used to melee people slightly further out because of its length, or whatever. Perhaps pistols could have a faster cooldown animation than other weapons, like the system in Halo: CE, so that someone with a Plasma Pistol could beat someone to death faster than another person with a Rocket Launcher.

I think it's a little extreme to buff Promethean Vision specifically against a single weapon - not a race's weapon, a class of weapons, but an individual one. To know if someone has a Boltshot is great and all, but not knowing whether that person without one is wielding an Assault Rifle or a Rocket Launcher... A better way of doing it may be the highlight weapons as a different colour, like yellow or white or cyan or whatever - something distinctive, but which affects all weapons equally. That would also help balance it a little better, as the extra advantage would take skill to use effectively and thus mean stronger players would be more likely to use it instead of just relying on their motion trackers, and also wouldn't create a situation where players are basically shoehorned into avoiding the Boltshot just in case someone on the other team has Promethean Vision.

Not too in-depth at all, it sounds very interesting! My internet speeds are very low at the moment, but once they pick up I'll give it a try and let you know the results.

Maybe it's because you were more relaxed than usual? Listening to all the sounds in-game might make you a little more tense, and that's usually when people start making mistakes.

...you're a Slayer man, aren't you? Seriously though, I really don't like the idea of a single Objective playlist. I love things like Capture the Flag, Extraction and King of the Hill, but I can't stand Oddball, and I know there are a lot of other players out there who have the same love-hate relationship with the various Objective gametypes: I think most of us in that position tend to avoid playlists where we might get stuck on those gametypes altogether, rather than just join and hope for the best. Plus, it's nice to be able to finish a game and be able to choose what gametype you want to play next, rather than having to hope the vote goes in your way. I'd also like to see a more classic free-for-all playlist, as I'm just not that big a fan of Regicide. I wouldn't mind if it weren't the only option, but at the moment if I want to play by myself it's Regicide or nothing, and I think that making a mixed-bag free-for-all playlist would raise the population instead of shrink it. I'd also ideally like to see the Crimson DLC playlist removed, and matchmaking adjusted to try and group together players with DLC so that it comes up more often in all other playlists: there were more than enough season passes bought to make this a viable option.

1. It's not gone, you just don't see it now. And just because something has previously been included doesn't automatically give it a pass to be included. Again, what's the problem with it being invisible if matchmaking remains unaffected? 2. Play a game with them. Play another if that's not enough. Stats are nice and all, but a number alone does NOT give you a good idea of someone's abilities. 3. And this is linked to a number beside a gamertag how? Anyone can ask anyone else for help or advice at any point.

It is definitely in there, though MUCH weaker than it was in Reach. Maybe it's also to help keep the Jetpack under control?

There's actually about a second's delay before you can start firing again, so it's not immediate - and since most kill times are ~ 2 seconds, that's more than enough time for the other player to land critical damage.

I can't actually think of a single spot in multiplayer where fall damage is high enough to kill outright at full shield strength: it's really not that big an issue. With that in mind, I don't really know why the didn't just get rid of it altogether, though maybe it's just a way of controlling map movement?

Semi-automatics sacrifice raw power for versatility. While even if you're accurate enough to land every shot at maximum firing speed, you still can't physically get a kill as fast as someone with an automatic can. However, no matter what range you're fighting at, you'll be able to damage and potentially kill your opponent, which you just can't do with automatics. Basically, if you want a weapon that's very effective, but only in certain situations, go for an automatic. If you want something which will at least let you fight back in any situation, go for a semi-automatic.