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Everything posted by RedStarRocket91
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PORKDumplings, that's only how Armor Lock works in theory. If it's used online, due to lag there's a few extra moments where the player appears to still be using the ability, so no other players can hurt them. For some reason, playing online also introduces a strange effect known as 'Frosting'. It's not known why this happens, but the effect is that for a few extra moments after they come out of Armor Lock the player is still completely invulnerable to damage. If the player in question is the Host for the game or is just facing someone with a weaker connection, these two things make it entirely possible that by the time a player exits Armor Lock their shields will be back up, or at least recharging. You've also overlooked the fact that if a player doesn't activate it instantly after they last took damage (just between DMR rounds, for example) then any time there counts towards the recharge cooldown. It's frustrating to have an Armor Ability which so effectively manipulates lag in online games.
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What I think Halo 4 is going to Have and Some Great Ideas!
RedStarRocket91 replied to TheL337destroyer's topic in Halo 4
I think what you're trying to say is that since we've had 3 Halo games set after Reach, it doesn't make sense for things that only appeared in Reach to appear in Halo 4 because you then have to wonder why they didn't appear in the games set after Reach. Is that about right?- 23 replies
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Esorath, be quiet. You're making too much sense!
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You kiss your mother with that mouth? Seriously dude, someone says they've enjoyed every game in the series and that they've made the effort to learn how to play with the new game mechanics, and you call that person a n00b? What's wrong with you?
- 27 replies
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I love the way every time people want to discuss weapons in Halo 4 it descends into BR versus DMR and what the Assault Rifle is going to be. Nobody cares about how the Sniper Rifle will work, or whether we should be using the Grenade Launcher instead of the Rocket Launcher or whatever. Anyway, on topic. As long as every 'general purpose' weapon (Assault Rifle, Battle Rifle, DMR, SMG, Carbine, or whatever new weapons appear) are balanced against each other properly, I don't really mind. In Halo 3 the Assault Rifle and Battle Rifle were balanced really well: the former won at medium-close ranges and below, the latter won at medium ranges and above as a general rule. A player who was much better than his opponent could still beat them at other ranges though, provided they used their weapon effectively: it was about not just how skilled you were with the gun, but how skilled you were with your positioning and tactics as a whole. Weapon bloom really needs to be removed, as it brings an element of luck - however small - into encounters, and that spoils competitiveness, something which has put off a lot of players. What's the point in trying to get better when you'll often be killed not because the other play was better than you, but because they were luckier than you? As far as non-general-purpose weapons (Plasma Pistol, Concussion Rifle, Magnum, Grenade Launcher) go, I don't really mind how they're implemented as provided they aren't far too overpowered or underpowered they provide variety to the weapon set as well as different styles of fighting. I'd also like to see new weapon types: perhaps one weapon with a bigger blast radius than the Rocket Launcher, but which only affects Shields - it might only have one shot at a time and a long reload, but could carry a lot of ammunition to make up for its non-lethality. That would encourage teamwork, as it'd be incredibly effective in the right hands but you'd need team mates to finish off your opponents. It might also be fun to have two types of Assault Rifle, one which is very powerful (as little as twelve bullets to kill) but horribly inaccurate beyond close range, and another which has far better performance at range but takes a lot more bullets to kill (sixteen or eighteen or whatever). Perhaps the first could have less spare magazines so it has to be used tactically, or the latter could have a small amount of bullets in each magazine so that it rewards accuracy. There's all sorts of combinations: if anyone's interested, I could post a topic about it.
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Very true, but that's a limitation of the tools we're given. That's not to say we can't come up with good maps: Synapse is not only well designed in terms of cover, map control points, weapon spawns and balance between teams, but looks really good as well. Same with Affinity and Kingdom. But truly huge or detailed maps aren't forthcoming because of limits on both Forge budgets and item restrictions, and of course the fact that the more 'stuff' the is put into Forge, the more likely it is that framerate issues will start appearing: as regards the latter, if anyone could explain to me exactly why this happens, I'd really appreciate it! Even then, Armor Abilites and differing playstyles don't justify poor power weapon placement or map design. A team should not have most of the power weapons or control an incredibly strong map position (e.g. the tower on Pinnacle or the top of the elevator on Reflection) just because they were lucky enough to start on one team rather than the other: both teams should have an equal chance to access particularly important weapons and key areas from the start of the game. If people choose to run around by themselves rather than working as a team or charge around looking to get into a fight as fast as possible instead of controlling power weapons, that is why they should lose, not because the map itself is inherently imbalanced. Now there's something we definitely agree on!
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- Zero Bloom
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I actually didn't like Reach's Assault Rifle. It takes an extra two bullets to down an enemy compared to the Assault Rifles in previous games and fires a lot slower - an extra second and a half kill time sounds like nothing, but it makes a lot of difference when you're up against someone with almost any other weapon: horribly inaccurate, likely to reliably hit only at shotgun ranges, and it just takes too long to kill anything. I did like the general feel of it, though. The firing sound and the controller vibrations at least made it feel useful, despite the fact that even on Easy Difficulty it could take more bullets to bring down a Grunt than on Legendary Difficulty on Halo: CE. Feel free to count the bullets and test that out if you don't believe me. I suppose my perfect Assault Rifle for Halo 4 would be balanced against all the other weapons properly: Halo 3 seemed to get the balance right, as it overpowered the Battle Rifle and Carbine at close-mid range but lost out at mid and above, and was in turn beaten by the SMG at close range: notice how every weapon reliably beats every other weapon when used at its effective range. That said, I'd like to see it be perhaps as accurate as its Halo 3 counterpart, with maybe one fewer bullets to kill (15) and a larger magazine, perhaps as high as 45, so that a skilled player could down three enemies without needing to reload. Ideally it'd sound like the one found in the original Halo, not the remake: the new one is okay, but the original sounded like Thor was beating down your enemies. Seriously satisfying stuff.
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That's a bit unfair, Twinreaper. Just because someone lacks the ability to create a map doesn't necessarily mean they can't judge what is and isn't a good map. Take Pinnacle, for example. I'm not a great map maker by any stretch, but by playing the map I can tell that not only are the spawns badly implemented, but that the team spawning in the tower overlooking the central area (by default the Red team) has an unfair advantage in that they can see almost the entire map, have plenty of cover, and anyone attempting to get into the base has almost no cover while doing so. This is unfair not because it's an incredibly powerful position to hold that allows whoever holds it to dominate the surroundings and dictate the flow of play, but because one team automatically gets it from the start. There's no skill or teamwork involved in taking control of it: either your team has it, or it doesn't. Other maps have their problems, too. The Cage/Uncaged have horrendous problems with sightlines and flow of play, and there aren't really any focal points or key areas that reward map control and teamwork. It's the same story with Haemorrhage, which also really is far too open and lacking in cover. Then you have maps like Reflection, a remake of an older levels with both flaws in engineering (how many people have been killed trying to do nothing more than go up the lift?) and design itself: one team automatically gets the Rocket Launcher, one automatically gets the Energy Sword. Unless someone gets unlucky with the lift, the Sniper Rifle is basically promised to one team, too: so there's not just a problem with power weapons not being contested, but that the teams don't even get equal amounts of those weapons (i.e. one or two per team, with some 'neutral' weapons possibly being scattered around). And then there are levels ripped straight from campaign. The only truly balanced (and thus, genuinely competitive) map of these was Countdown, unpopular due to its poor combination of sight lines and abundance of camping spots. Boardwalk is at least close to being balanced in non-symmetrical-Objective gametypes and for that I can forgive it, but Sword Base suffers from the same problems as Reflection and Countdown: Red Team starts with an immediate height advantage and gets almost guaranteed access to the Concussion Rifle and the Shotgun, again meaning there's an imbalance between power weapon distribution. The yellow lift exit room also has two entrances but only one exit: the fact that there's only one thing you can do is just plain bad design and hurts map pace and flow. Could I design maps better than these myself? No, probably not. But then, I'm not a paid, professional level designer for a series which sells itself on its multiplayer content. But the fact that I personally can't build a better level doesn't mean that problems don't exist within existing maps, and doesn't mean that I am somehow incapable of finding these problems.
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I phrased that badly. I meant to say that since MLG has always used different settings from the rest of the game, so people who played it even before the TU did so because they like different settings from the regular playlists, so changing another setting probably won't upset people who play it as much as people who just want 'normal' gameplay (although I do agree that it makes a big difference). Even with the changes to these playlists, there are definitely still some in which people can play according to pre-TU rules, so I don't understand the problem. If you like them play in those: if you don't, play in the new ones. Reach lovers still get to have inaccurate luck-based games full of 'Nade and Armor Lock spam without having to listen to us older players complaining about it, while we get a style of gameplay that we enjoy instead of one that feels broken to us. Nobody has to play in a style they don't like, everybody wins.
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True, but that doesn't matter so much since MLG has always used different setting from regular Reach anyway (move faster, longer shield recharge, etc).
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My apologies for the misinformation: thank you for setting the record straight, Mystic!
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Breakneck is incredibly fun. Reach desperately needed a map that actually mixed vehicles and infantry gameplay properly, and this provided it perfectly. That said, Prisoner and High Noon and the most aesthetically beautiful maps: or at least, while Prisoner's geometry is the best looking the skybox for High Noon is so pretty I get killed even more than usual as I can't stop staring at it.
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- halo ce aniversary
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Wait, what? If you're only interested in the achievements, the reason you can only get the new ones on the new maps is because you're only supposed to be able to get them on the new maps. If you want Defiant achievements, get some friends together and that raises your chances. The Defiant Map Pack has been out since March, so you've had nine months to get them. It's no use complaining now. If you really want the achievements I'm sure you can cope with playing ten games with the new settings. If you don't care about them and just want to play vanilla Reach, as far as I'm aware you can still play Rumble Pit, Team Slayer, Squad Slayer, Team Objective, Team Doubles, Arena, Invasion, Infection, Big Team Battle, and MLG, not to mention Grifball and Action Sack. So what exactly is the problem with 343 introducing a playlist that's based on what the community actually want? And yes, they do want it, because there's nobody being forced to play it and otherwise 343 wouldn't have bothered making it.
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Very important! If you still have Sprint on when you start the Assassination, you will not get the Achievement. If your player touches the ground before the Assassination starts, you will not get the Achievement. If you player touches the Elite before you Melee, you will not get the Achievement. If the Assassination animation shows your player's boots touching the ground, you will not get the Achievement. So as you can see, it's sometimes a matter of luck whether you get it or not. If you've done it previously and not gotten the Achievement, check if any of the above happened - if not, best way is the turn off Sprint half way down and Melee just before you get to the Elite: Melee calculates whether or not to do damage for about half a second (the length of the melee animation), so you have that much time in which to actually connect with the Elite. If you come from directly behind the Elite, this increases the chances of getting one of the correct Assassination animations. Hope this helps!
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Who would like a more diverse ranked play list?
RedStarRocket91 replied to Absolute Dog's topic in Halo Reach
Ranked Snipers. The Sniper Rifle is the only weapon without aim assist in Reach (or at least it's so small that it doesn't matter). Team Snipers really is the best way to tell who are the best players because there's almost no luck involved: unless there's a lucky reflex shot involved when two players accidentally run into one another at close range, the better player is looking for another target, the loser is wondering if their insurance covers holes in their heads. Getting a Sniper Rifle kill, even if it's with two body shots and two misses, still shows some skill because it's such a small reticule and there's so little aim assist and bullet magnetism: if you're not a good shot you won't kill anything, ever. Quite why this isn't already a ranked playlist confuses me. -
Big #5 "Biggles Style" Replays, Roles, Going Into The Past!
RedStarRocket91 replied to Mr Biggles's topic in Game Help
That's a little harsh, maybe? Choot 'em already has over 400 posts so it's not as though he's a total newcomer, and he has bumped this to make it more likely newer players (i.e. the ones who need it most) will see it. Anyway, additions for new players. BigglesBrown is right when he says if you're in trouble you need to keep your head and go run towards your team: I can't begin to tell you how many times I've seen players killed because they run away from the only people who can help them when they're in trouble. Take a long route to put yourself in cover if you need to, but make sure you're going the right way overall. It's also worth considering how you're going to get there. If you have Sprint or jetpack, turn your back on your attacker and just get out of there. If not, play intelligently. Run backwards and keep firing to make it riskier for them: nobody likes being shot. Try and get around corners and toss a 'Nade near the base: this works better with Plasma but Frags are good too. Your attacker will either have to wait an extra few moments to pursue or risk massive damage, and if you've been firing at them they won't have enough health to want to risk that. It takes less than eight seconds for your shields to fully recharge after last being hit, so even if you only delay your opponent for an extra second it can mean the difference between life and death. And occasionally of course, they'll be stupid enough to walk into the blast and you'll get the kill! As far as playing better players goes, you might want to have a look at the Arena once it gets to mid-season (seasons are three months in length, you'll be told how long is left in a season when you open the playlist - you don't even have to play a game!) as you'll be matched to people very close to your own skill level: it's very rare that you and your Warrant officer buddies will be up against nothing but Inheritors and Reclaimers, or players well above your own skill level. This is actually a good way for newer players to get better, as your opponents won't be so easy winning isn't a challenge nor so difficult that all you do is sit at the respawn screen instead of playing and learning. As you improve your matches will get harder, so your skills will always be sharp. As far as roles within teams go, this works better if you communicate, which BigglesBrown has already very kindly discussed in an earlier post. If you're going for kills yourself, grab a DMR, a Grenade Launcher, or just have you and your team-mates focus-fire with Assault Rifles. If you're supporting, get a Sniper Rifle and use it to scout for enemies as well as shooting at them: get the Shotgun and stop them getting through doors. If you're moving as a group, get a Plasma Pistol and down shields so your team's players with Assault Rifles and DMRs can finish them off. 'Nades are also your best friend, use them whenever you want to pin an enemy down. You may not be getting the kills yourself, but you'll be making it a lot easier for your team, and that naturally increases your chances of winning. Lastly, learn how to lose effectively. BigglesBrown has already told you how important it is to watch replays of how you were killed, but even if you don't, ask yourself why you lost/did badly. Were you using cover enough? Were you straying away from your team and being simply outgunned? Is your shooting sloppy, so you need to practice or consider a different weapon approach (there is no shame in admitting you can't use the DMR and reverting to the Assault Rifle, regardless of what the trolls on Bungie.net tell you!), or did you spend too much time going for objectives to hurt the enemy team so they got all the good weapons and wiped your team out/you spent too much time chasing down isolated enemy soldiers to actually go for the objectives? Even if you played well and just came up against a better team or got unlucky (this does happen) it's better to recognise that and move on rather than getting angry and thus playing worse. Remember, the worst thing you can do is to lose and not learn from it. A bad game that makes you a better player is worth a hundred games where you win without a challenge. Anyway, excited for the next instalment Biggles, keep it up! -
I'd really like to see being able to choose whole armour styles instead of just bits, so your whole body could be set to Mark IV, V, VI, or VII or whatever's in the game, so that you don't have Mark IV or V helmets, shoulders, and kneepads sitting on top of Mark VI or VII chest pieces, boots, forearms, undersuits, or whatever.
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- Halo reach
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A little more realism with the future ideal
RedStarRocket91 replied to LastChance72's topic in Halo 4
The idea of weapon mods has come up before, and it's not a good idea. Halo's gameplay is traditionally based on the philosophy that all players start equal, and that the only difference is individual skill: the better player wins, the loser watches the respawn timer count down. You won because you played better than me in that situation, not because you had better equipment (or because you played well enough to get a better weapon than me, but you still had to work to get it). If players can mod weapons, suddenly that goes out of the window, especially if it's based on a system where better equipment has to be unlocked: even though you're still a better player than me, you're the one waiting to respawn because while you had a flashlight attached to your Assault Rifle, I had a grenade launcher. It stops being about who's the better player and becomes about who's got the best stuff, which they can get straight from spawn and thus don't even have to work for. It doesn't matter that your team worked hard to get control of the power weaponry, because I can just have it anyway. It's the same problem seen with Armor Abilities in Reach. If you have a Hologram and I have a Jetpack, then the fight isn't fair: suddenly the result doesn't depend solely on who is the best fighter, but on who has the Ability best suited to the job, so even though you had the better weapon and was in a better position, I'm able to escape a way that you can't follow. In short, if we're playing Team Slayer and I kill you, it should only be because I played better in terms of map movement or aim or clever gameplay, not because I have an advantage over you either because I'm going for a certain style of play (a flashlight which lets me see better than you) or because I've spent longer playing (I start with a rocket launcher and you only get a pistol). As far as map movement goes, I don't think I've ever had problems getting over anything that I was supposed to be able to cross that couldn't be fixed by just jumping - that said, it would be better if I didn't have to worry about jumping over something that's supposed to be walkable, and I don't see why this needs to be a problem if they just test their maps properly before release: something that 343i apparently does a lot better than Bungie, judging by how much better the Defiant and Anniversary maps are than the vanilla ones. I'm actually slightly worried when people say they want to 'attract new fans to the franchise'. Reach is a lot more like Call of Duty or Battlefield than Halo 3 was, and in addition to having by far the most complaints about its gameplay and design of any Halo title to date, it's actually got the least amount of active players: Halo 3 was the most popular game on Xbox Live for over two years, and on an average day had between 100,000 and 200,000 players on at any time. Reach was designed to attract more players to Halo, and even though it's only a year old it's the ninth most popular game on Xbox Live. What we ended up with was a game that tried to be Call of Duty, but because players who want to play CoD will just play CoD instead, and because Reach was so unbalanced, newer players eitherwere just waiting for CoD anyway, or didn't understand why Halo is supposed to be so special and diferent when it's just like every shooter out there, and traditional fans were annoyed because the game had changed completely from what they'd been used to previously. Instead of trying to bring in new fans, who'll just complain that Halo 4 isn't enough like CoD, 343i should focus on making it feel like a Halo game again. -
Big #4 "Biggles Style" Headsets, Teamwork, It's Getting Real!
RedStarRocket91 replied to Mr Biggles's topic in Game Help
Just quickly on the subject of teamwork. It's not always the best idea to move as a team. If you and your fellow players are grouped too close together, it's almost as though you're deliberately asking for someone to throw a 'nade or hit you with an explosive weapon like the Rocket Launcher - it's good to stay close, but don not bunch up. Ever. With 'nades being as powerful as they are, even someone with little skill can seriously punish you for it. Sometimes it's also a good idea to split up. The guy sneaking around with the Shotgun or the Energy Sword, looking to catch enemy players unawares, won't be happy if there's two members of his team following him around and decreasing his chances of staying hidden. Same thing goes for a sniper who's found a good hiding place: it doesn't help your team at all if you stay close by him, because not only are you making it more likely he'll be seen but unless you've got a long-range weapon too, you probably won't be helping your team. All that said, there's not much that can stand up to four players with Assault Rifles or DMRs focusing fire (if all four of you DMR the same target, you can actually kill it before bloom even kicks in!), so unless you have a specialist weapon it's probably a good idea to stay close together. -
Big #3 "Biggles Style" Communication, Life After Death, BOOYAH!
RedStarRocket91 replied to Mr Biggles's topic in Game Help
Useful stuff! As far as calling out player positions goes, in Reach most levels are divided into named areas. For example, the central ground floor on Sword Base is known as the 'Atrium', while other areas on the level include the 'Meeting Room' and 'Operations Hall'. The name of the area you're currently standing in is located in the bottom left corner of your screen, right beside your motion tracker. If you want to communicate like an expert, spend a few minutes learning the names of these sections so that if you spot an enemy heading into a certain area you can tell your team-mates exactly where the target is, instead of telling them that it's 'the little room next to the big room'. If you want to communicate like a pro, use the compass on the Assault Rifle to work out which way is North - you can then let your team mates know exactly what's going on, i.e. 'target heading East into the Meeting Room from the Atrium'. Your team mates will be grateful for this quality of information regardless of whether they're a Recruit or an Inheritor. -
There's no reason either single or dual SMGs can't be balanced to work alongside an Assault Rifle in Halo 4. If bloom is in Halo 4: If dual-wield isn't in (or it is and you're just single-wielding anyway) the SMG should bloom moderately bigger and faster than the Assault Rifle. If dual-wield is in and you're doing so (either with two SMGs or the SMG and another weapon) the SMGs should start with bigger bloom and bloom significantly bigger and faster than the Assault Rifle. If bloom isn't in Halo 4: Recoil should make a return (i.e. the crosshair starts to lift higher and higher the longer you keep firing, like in Halo 2 and 3). If you single-wield it this shouldn't be too powerful, if you dual-wield it with another weapon it should be quite strong, if you dual-wield SMGs it should be very strong - but hey, if you're using it at close range then with that many bullets it shouldn't matter!
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Two of the most popular complaints about Halo: Reach were the ineffectiveness of the Covenant's Focus Rifle in comparison with its human equivalent, and the supposed 'noob-friendliness' of the latter, seen as too easy for unskilled players to use and too powerful against both vehicles and infantry. With Halo 4, there's a chance to create a whole new set of weapons, or at least rework how existing ones function. My suggestion is pretty simple: let's decrease the damage of the Sniper Rifle, but change its damage properties to plasma. What are bullet and plasma damage properties and how do they affect gameplay? Plasma does more damage to shields than it does to health, bullets do equal damage to both. As far as I'm aware, while bullet damage is equal to both layers of protection (i.e. one bullet will deal ten points of damage regardless of whether it's hitting a shield or a health bar), plasma damage deals double damage to shields but only half to health - so the same bolt of plasma that removes twenty hit points from your shields will only do five to your health. The ratios themselves may differ (it could be plasma bolts do normal damage to shields but only half to health, or normal to health but three times as much to shields, or whatever) but the fact remains that bullet and plasma damage are calculated very differently. What's the point of swapping damage types for the Sniper Rifle and decreasing damage? The idea of swapping damage types works because a single round is enough to pierce the shield of the target and do at least one point to the health below, but unless a headshot is delivered the reduced damage to health means that three shots are required to kill. At least one point of damage to the health of a fully-shielded opponent is needed on top of the damage that destroys that player's shield, as otherwise the round would only knock out shields on the first shot, preventing one-hit kills even if aimed directly at the head. So how does this help gameplay? It promotes a bigger skill gap, so that while a newcomer is still perfectly able to score four kills after picking up the weapon if every round is a non-headshot hit, a talented marksman could still score the twelve kills afforded by the weapon's ammo reserves. It may also help with the current problem of players being betrayed in order that their attacker can get hold of the Sniper Rifle due to it's extreme power and ease-of use. It promotes going for headshots rather than body shots, bringing the weapon back into the 'High Risk/High Reward' category where taking the chance of firing at the head is much more important than previously in terms of ammo, and also encourages newer players to aim for the head and thus improve their own games as even if the first shot misses, they can still be in a better position than someone who just goes for body shots if they land a headshot on the second round. Is there anything else to consider? Vehicles, for one. Another major complaint of Halo: Reach was that the human Sniper Rifle was incredibly powerful against vehicles as well as infantry. A possible alternative solution could be to keep the weapon's current damage type, reducing the amount of ammo available or the amount it can hold per clip, thus forcing the sniper to choose between killing infantry or vehicles and not both, as is currently possible. If clip sizes were reduced to two, then a sniper would not be able to afford a miss unless going for a headshot, preserving the skill gap. It might also be interesting to try out both these weapon styles: a plasma-damage property, four round magazined rifle with reduced damage to vehicles (an anti-personnel sniper rifle) and a high-powered one capable of killing in two rounds to anywhere but the head and dealing moderate damage to vehicles, but with a reduced clip size and/or less ammunition (an anti-materiel rifle). The important note here is that both rifles are equally effective against infantry in the hands of a skilled player, unlike the current system whereby skilled Focus Rifle-wielding players simply cannot kill a player as fast as skilled Sniper Rifle users, creating an imbalance. The fact that one is more damaging in the hands of an unskilled player is less of a problem due to the fact that there are less kills to be had overall, and if a shot is missed it's more important. This system creates variety within weapons but without putting one inherently at a disadvantage. tl;dr Changing weapon damage types increases the skill gap, encourages attempts to improve skill levels, prevents the weapon being overpowered, and hopefully discourages betrayals by jealous teammates. It could also introduce variety without making one side at a disadvantage regardless of skill, unlike the current situation. Feedback is sincerely appreciated!
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I agree. Halo really came alive when it was just you and your AR against the world. I'd also like to see the return of Infection Form insta-death from Halo 3 (assuming the Flood do make it back), the Flood sections were a lot more frightening when your health is essentially cut in half, and there's nothing as exciting as desperately backing away from a whole swarm, spraying your AR in the hopes that your shields will recover before they get to you!
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I think secondary armour colours would work better than primary, for the sake of contrast if nothing else: I also think it might have to be restricted to custom games, as otherwise players might be able to gain unfair advantages (black armour would make the sword's glow, currently a big giveaway much less visible, for example). But yeah, it's a fun enough idea and there doesn't seem to be much harm in it.