RedStarRocket91

The guaranteed kill distance is slightly less than the Energy Sword's lunge range - which is how I personally judge range to be 'point blank'. Do you think I should edit the previous post to make that a bit clearer?

At the moment I'm making heavy use of the DMR, with a backup Magnum and Frag Grenades - the Magnum basically exists so I have something to trade away for any other weapons I find, but I prefer having it over the Plasma Pistol and Boltshot as I like to be versatile, and the Frags are because I like the ability to attack around corners (and because I literally can't stick people who aren't moving). I'm also finding Regeneration Field to be very useful, it makes fighting multiple opponents much easier as I can try to takke them out one at a time and still have my shields fairly strong. Mobility is my first perk, as I like to be able to escape when a fight isn't going well, though lately I've been playing with AA efficiency, which is a lot more useful in Objective games where because I like to defend I'm not running around so much. It just makes me that little bit harder to kill if the other team are attacking constantly instead of as one large group every minute or so. The second perk I'm using when I have a mic is Scanner, as I like to be able to let my team know in advance when and how we're about to be attacked: it also means I can find targets with my DMR more quickly, and I'm less likely to be caught at close range unprepared. This changes to Ammo when I'm lone wolfing, as I prefer to hold onto my DMR for longer.

The small number of playlists is pretty much for the reasons you've given: they want to make sure they're well-populated so they can have the most balanced games with the best connections possible. Sure, it was possible to get the occasional good game back in some of the smaller playlists in Halo 3, but for the most part they suffered really badly from lag or had uneven teams. Plus, most of the new maps were designed specially for certain game modes, so having lots of other playlists would mean they wouldn't play as well as they should. Also, it's to try and encourage people to try the new game modes and see how they've changed: there'd often be something like 500 people in Team Objective in Reach, now we have thousands of people in every objective playlist, and that's because the playlists are less weighted towards Slayer gametypes. There'll be more playlists coming, and they've said they're willing to make rotational playlists permanent if they get enough demand, so they're basically holding these things back to make sure there's a good demand for them before they're introduced: a playlist with only 500 people isn't worth having, you won't find a good match very often and it makes finding a good match for people in other playlists that much more difficult. They don't have a rank system yet because they want it to be as fair as possible: some people will be new to Halo games with Halo 4, some will have been around since playing splitscreen back in 2001. It's a way of making sure that everyone has had a chance to get the hang of the controls and learn how the different weapons work, find a favourite loadout, and learn all the different rules before they start getting ranked on it. If it was from Day 1, some people would do much better than they actually are because of good luck, and some people much worse for the same reason. Holding back the ranking system just means it'll be that much more fair when it finally arrives. As for people going AFK in-game, it's unfortunate but that's just always been a part of Halo. I think the new AFK booting system takes something like ten minutes to kick in, which is why you may be seeing it a little more frequently than in Reach, where players would just get banned rather than kicked out mid-game. The reason that's changed is because there were too many complaints about people getting banned unfairly, a lot of which seemed to actually be legitimately unfair. Think of it as a bonus, rather than a right. 343 don't want everyone getting all the specialisations too early, as it would make it unfair for those people who don't have the time to get to maximum level in the month after release. For example, while I love Halo, between my job and my studies I just don't have the time to play for five hours a night, and I imagine for a lot of the other older fans, the situation is the same. Nobody can get above SR-70 at the moment, all that differs is which specialisations they can pick from. Once enough people hit max level, they'll unlock the next set of specialisations. Also, what's wrong with being twelve? I first played Halo when I was ten, and I'd like to think that I wasn't banned from liking it just because of my age. In fairness, a lot of them challenges HAVE been very difficult. How many people managed even 12 regicides in one game, for example? The logic behind it is the same as capping players at SR-70. It helps people who don't have the time to put in 5 hours a day rank up. I can't just skip work to make sure I hit the XP cap for the day, but I can make sure I get 50 Assault Rifle kills in a day. If you're looking for a difficult challenge, you could also try setting your own: a game of Oddball becomes a lot more fun when you decide at the start that your personal goal is to kill 5 Oddball carriers, for example. There's no XP reward, but if you're having fun and playing enough to hit the cap anyway, what's the problem? Supposedly it's to help them get the filters working. Back in Reach, with the tag system a lot of people started adding really horrible tags to files: there was the whole 'author rams whatever' thing for a while before Bungie stepped in, so they probably just want to make sure nobody has to worry about their videos getting tagged by trolls. I don't think it's so much that they're trying to upset hardcore gamers as it is they want to make it so that everyone can play. If a casual picks up Halo 4 and likes it, they'll probably keep playing it, so we get a new player for the community. Plus, there's a very big difference between how good someone is and how hardcore they are: my flatmate, who plays nothing but Farmville and The Sims, completely destroys the rest of us every time we play splitscreen, while another of my friends, who's been playing Halo pretty much every day since Halo 2 launched, sometimes can't kill me if I'm standing still and not firing back.

As far as I'm aware, ordinance drops are completely random - no matter what happens, you're just as likely to get a Needler, Frag Grenades and a Speed Boost as you are to get a Fuel Rod Gun, SAW and a Damage Boost. It could be that your opponents are getting better weapons at the start, meaning they're more likely to stay alive and thus get new ordinance drops more frequently, or just that your opponents are choosing to call in Rocket Launchers while your teammates are requesting Pulse Grenades. Some people just prefer different things: while I like to replace my secondary weapon with something bigger as soon as I can, other people might just be very happy with their starting weapons, and will only call in for grenades or powerups, if they use them at all. Anyway, if you are just having a run of bad luck with ordinance and teammates, I hope it improves soon!

I don't understand the problem: it's a high risk//reward weapon. The person using it has to not only get in close and aim properly but get the timing exactly right, otherwise it's completely ineffective. Considering how easy it is to counter and what a situational weapon it is, if someone manages to use it perfectly they deserve to get a kill. If you don't want to die to it, just stay out of melee range and keep firing. Its regular non-charged projectiles are pathetically weak as well as being slow-moving, so you shouldn't have any problems. The Boltshot is a specialist weapon: don't get into the situation it was designed for, and you're pretty much guaranteed to win. Besides, it's actually the least useful of the spawning secondary weapons, in a way: Magnum Pros: Very long range, no need to lead shots, easy to get headshots, can be spammed to give it advantage at close range and paced to get one at long range. Cons: Low ammunition capacity, inaccurate if spammed, does nothing against vehicles. Plasma Pistol Pros: Powerful individual bullets, can overcharge to take out shields, only spawning weapon that can EMP vehicles, extremely high ammunition capacity. Cons: Can't headshot, slow projectile travel time Boltshot Pros: One-hit kill if used correctly, can headshot. Cons: One-hit kill only works at fairly close ranges and must be perfectly timed, very low ammunition capacity, slow bullet travel time which can make headshots at anything but close range very difficult, non-charged shots are almost worthless Basically, though you're getting a weapon which is very powerful in certain situations, you're sacrificing a lot of versatility for it.

How so? We agree they play differently, but our opinions on why are different. It was a good system, but I think the new one is, too. Plus now at least you get your favourite weapon from spawn. which is better than the days where you'd end up fighting a team full of Battle Rifles with nothing but your Assault Rifle. There's no harm in trying something new, and you could always try the 'Slayer Pro' playlist if you want a more classic match. A Magnum will easily beat an Assault Rifle or Storm Rifle at long range, as well. Use that if you don't like getting up close, or kill one person at close range and steal their weapon. Would we really have been happy if we just ended up with a Halo 3.5, though? The market is changing, and like it or not Halo has to compete with other modern shooters. Those are what people like to play, so that's what Halo has to borrow from if it wants to stay alive. And while it's less diverse than it used to be, it's hardly fair to say that it's like every other game on the market. It's actually several, not just one. And I do like Haven. It's not my favourite map by any stretch, but it's well-balanced and has a good mix of open sightlines and close-range areas. As for paying for maps, that's pretty much standard these days, with the exception that you'll also be able to get a regular supply of new Forged maps completely free. If you really don't want to pay full price - and I don't blame you, maps packs are normally way too expensive - then you could always wait until they come out on Deal of the Week on the Marketplace. Until then, you could always try jumping around between playlists, as that way you're much more likely to get a wide selection of maps, rather than just the same three or four. 343i said before launch they wanted people to play more than just Slayer, and this is just their way of trying to encourage you to do that.

It's just a way to stop you from immediately re-boarding the vehicle you were just kicked out of. I think it works okay as it is, though it would be nice if maybe you took a little less damage when being boarded.

I'd suggest that's more down to the people in those playlists, rather than any effect of the numbers themselves. More competitive players go for the Ranked playlists, more casual players go for the Social ones. Nobody stops trying heir best just because they're in Social, all that changes is that they're probably less interested in winning than they are in having fun. If you're using a DMR, chances are most other people in your games are using it too, so ammo really won't be that hard to come by - and the secondary weapons are all quite capable of beating the primaries if used properly. If it's that much of a problem, you could always try using the Firepower perk to get a backup weapon like the Battle Rifle or Lightrifle, or use the Ammunition perk to get a bigger supply of bullets. At any rate, most players get killed well before their ammo runs outs, so while if you're particularly good I understand your frustration, for the most part it just isn't a problem. Plenty of them aren't. Again, if it's your personal preference that friendly fire is turned on then I sympathise, but a lot of people prefer it shut off, and at the end of the day it doesn't really make that much difference. I actually play Halo 3 more than Reach when I'm not online, as my flatmate who doesn't have XBL dislikes Reach, so when we play over LAN that's what we go on. In terms of raw polygon count and texture detail it IS very dated - again, the reason it's aged so well is because of how stylised the graphics are. Halo 4 has the same sort of style, it just has a really up-to-date graphics engine behind it. Think of Team Fortress 2: the actual graphics on that really aren't very realistic, but it still looks good, and it'll continue to look good for a very long time because of how stylised it is. Same thing with Halos 3 and 4. I don't agree. The only map so far that I've found I really don't like is Abandon, but that could be just because I've only really played it in Objective playlists, where its asymmetric nature makes it much less fun. Plus, if you give it a month or so, they'll start bringing out map updates for multiplayer, and hopefully we'll see both maps that play better in terms of weapon and player spawns. I'm also pretty sure we'll see the first few Forge maps before long, and with a bit of luck they'll be better than the garbage we got back in Reach.

How does this promote mediocrity? Just because I don't have a little number next to my name doesn't mean I'm going to stop trying in my matches. I'd actually say not knowing exactly how good the teams are helps players to improve, as you're focusing on the game at hand, instead of worrying that they're all five ranks higher than you. You'll know how well you're doing after the game when you look at the carnage report. Yeah, it's a real shame that Halo 4 doesn't have, I don't know, some sort of system whereby players who're getting a lot of kills could, say, get new ones delivered directly to them wherever they are on the map. Or you could try picking up weapons from your opponents' corpses. I do kind of agree with you here as I think friendly fire makes the game more interesting, but I hardly think it's a 'cardinal sin'. Plenty of modern shooters don't have friendly fire enabled, and that isn't seen as gamebreaking. It's basically a matter of personal preference whether it's turned on or off, and I don't think there's a single person who's been team-killed for their power weapon who hasn't wished it disabled. I don't agree at all. Halo 3 is beginning to look very dated, and I actually never liked the graphics in Reach to begin with: between that HORRIBLE motion blur effect (seriously, why couldn't that be turned off!?) and the washed-out colour palette, I thought the whole game looked boring and uninspired. Halo 4 is a combination of the 'realistic' graphics of Reach and the stylised art direction of Halo 3: and while it takes a little getting used to, I think it's probably the best-looking entry so far. This isn't necessarily a problem, though. All the maps we have are purpose-built for their respective game modes - and I'd personally prefer to have a small number of well-made, well-balanced maps than have a large number of maps that just don't play very well. Think back to Halo 3. In Team Slayer, in an average day you'd normally be offered Snowbound, The Pit, Guardian, Construct and Narrows. That's not a great number of maps, but nobody complained back then, because they were all so much fun to play. Now think of Reach. You had an enormous number of maps in rotation there: Sword Base, Boardwalk, Reflection, Countdown, Zealot, and however many Forge World maps were in it by the end, which easily doubled the number of maps. And for the most part, they were badly-designed, stale, uninteresting and unbalanced. So while you had variety, the matchmaking was a lot less fun, and I for one vastly prefer the new system.

I'd love to see something like this, pretty much the only gametype I play in the Gears of War series is Warzone, which to those who haven't played it is basically an Elimination gametype, where players don't respawn except at the start of new rounds and the winning team gets one point per round, with the match ending once either team gets a certain number of points. I can see this working really well with the new loadout system, too - everyone gets their favourite weapon and perks to start with and the only barrier to winning is your individual skill as a player. Plus, camping would be less effective if someone thinks to bring along Promethean Vision, or has a perk to extend the motion tracker's range. I'm not sure how each match could work, but if it was done well or played anything like Warzone, I'd definitely give it a try. Perhaps it could be that whichever team wins three rounds first wins, and rounds set to a three-minute time limit? A point gets awarded to one team when the last player on the other team dies, so suicides or betrayals aren't a way to escape for the losing team. I don't know if ordinance drops would necessarily be fair, but perhaps they could be tweaked to only provide specialist weapons like Shotguns and Sniper Rifles, rather than catastrophically damaging weapons like the Rocket Launcher. I'd definitely play something like this if it was done well, and can see it very quickly becoming one of the better competitive playlists - the only problem would be that random players and teams wouldn't be able to mix, as that would unbalance things VERY quickly.

I don''t really agree with the rest of your points, but I've noticed this as well - I thought it was just that I was particularly bad. The newer games in general seem to have really poor collision detection, I've been splattered by Wraiths turning on the spot, and jumping into them from the side while they were boosting forwards. At the risk of sounding like one of these idiots who complains that everything new is bad, I think they really nailed it back in Halo 3, and I'd like to see collision damage patched back to those sorts of levels and styles.

Hey, you've managed to answer your own question!

I think it's a pretty good trade-off. Your Assault Rifle seems like a very situational weapon if you're using it as a secondary - and most of the time, you're probably going to be wanting to trade it away whenever you find a power weapon or get an ordinance drop anyway, so that's effectively a perk wasted. More importantly, if you have two general-purpose weapons, the time it takes to switch to whichever one suits your current situation best will probably get you killed, especially if you've taken any hits at all prior to that. Better grenades are always worth it, especially if you take the Resupply perk so you can get a regular supply of new ones. And even if you're out of 'nades, you also get the passive bonus of less explosive damage in return, which can literally mean the difference between life and death. You constantly have at least one bonus, whereas you basically lose a perk whenever you take a new weapon with Firepower. Unless you're particularly skilled with both of your current weapons and prefer powerups from your ordinance drops to new guns, I'd say ditch the second primary and go for the grenades!

Very occasionally, when you the target they survive for another second or two before visibly being killed, and in that time they can still fire their weapons, do damage and even get kills. A Sniper Pro variant without Magnums or the motion tracker would be nice. You can always vote against it, after all: and I'd definitely like to see some Beam Rifle loadouts. The two weapons are perfectly balanced, so players could choose to genuine personal preference rather than worrying they're picking one which is 'worse'.

In that case, glad to help you out!

For a Firefight-type game mode, you could maybe try playing around with the settings on Flood or Regicide? Knocking the shields off the Flood forms and decreasing their melee damage could make it more interesting, and setting Regicide so that non-king Spartans have less health and weaker weapons might also work. They said at some point that there definitely wouldn't be a Firefight in Halo 4, which I agree is disappointing. I don't have any specialisations yet, so I can't comment, but in principle they look quite good to me: if they had a really big advantage, it could almost be too unbalancing, rather than just giving a bit extra help.

I'm guessing I'll hit it sometime in the next few months, of late I'm posting a lot more than I was over the summer. It'll be something to celebrate, that's for sure - I think I'm probably the user who's been here the longest without hitting the 1K mark!

That's not necessarily true. What if you switched from the Battle Rifle to the DMR and discovered you weren't so good with it? Or if you just wanted to try a new style of play? This way you can still switch back to something you're comfortable with if you make a bad decision, or if you want to try a new strategy. They aren't going to risk stopping you from playing the game because you chose a weapon you didn't like and are stuck with it forever, you know?

I think it's a variation of the mute ban from Reach. Back then, if enough people muted you in a set amount of time, your voice would be automatically muted for all other players unless they specifically unmuted you: this is why you'd have games back then with players who you appeared to have muted, even though you hadn't actually done so to them. I think now they just give you an outright ban instead: people may be muting you if you're speaking a language different from theirs, or if they're one of those players who just doesn't like to hear other voices while they're playing.

If you're a member of The Halo Forge Epidemic (a truly awesome group of Forgers!) then they have a set of dedicated forums here. If you're not signed up with them, we also have a set of community forums here where you can post your various maps and gametypes. I don't think there's any exclusively dedicated to maps set in Halo 4 yet, but those are the best places to post them. Welcome to the forums!

If you give two people a gun when only one if them knows how to use it, the same thing happens. But look at it this way: if both players have a DMR, the weaker player might not even lower the better player's shields before they die. If they have a Battle Rifle, they have a better chance of actually winning, not just doing a lot of damage. The DMR is a better weapon, no argument, but it's a weapon that's very difficult to use and one which newer players probably just wouldn't do any damage with. It's an upgrade of the Battle Rifle, just like the Carbine and Lightrifle, not an alternative. I do understand where you're coming from, but the way I look at it is that the Battle Rifle is just a weapon for new players, who haven't yet decided on what they're best at. If they're good at shorter ranges, they can pick up a Carbine. If they're better at longer ranges, it's the DMR. If they want to stay more versatile, it's the Lightrifle.

While I don't agree that it's less balanced, I do miss Assault Rifle duels, as they were a lot of fun back in Halo 3. As far as I know you CAN still play without loadouts, but only in Custom Games. I'd definitely like to see some sort of 'Classic' playlist where everyone spawns with Assault Rifles, it's always nice to have alternatives.

Unfortunately, Theatre mode is probably the only way you'll be able to look at what's going on in-game without being a participant. Sorry to disappoint you.

What, it's wrong to have one two weapons for one role, one for newer players and one for more experienced players? How is that horrible balance?

Yeah. But if two weaker gamers were to have a dual, then the Battle Rifle would win every time. It's like Shotguns and Sniper Rifles. If two pros were to fight each other, the one with the Sniper would easily win because they'd be getting headshots WAY out of the Shotgun's range. But if two newbies were playing, The Shotgun would win every time because the one with the Sniper Rifle would be lucky to even hit the target. The DMR isn't overpowered. It's a Battle Rifle that requires more skill to use. And since it's harder to use, people who use it deserve faster kill times than those who take the more user-friendly option.