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(TL;DR near bottom of page, but read through this if you want to know the reasons behind my suggestions, they are all reasonable, fair, and have been tested.) First of all the latest TU is really sweet. The armor lock has been nerfed and is not only unable to be exploited, but actually a fun aspect of the game now. The bleedthrough has been removed, which is great because REACH originally had no bleedthrough and this really helped with clarification of melee kills, along with allowing individual skill to play a larger role in deciding who comes out on top in cqb encounters! Some will complain that bleedthrough fixed the double melee problem, I will get to this problem further on, but in direct response to those pro-bleedthrough, it's addition opens up the window to loads more issues and gameplay inbalances. Ok onto the the topic of bloom. It seems there are three popular settings each with their own die hard fans. 100%, 85% and 0%. At first I liked 100% bloom, I found the DMR and the NR required more skill to use effectivly, but I have got to say the 85% bloom setting really evens out the game so that everyone gets a shot at the DMR and kicking ass. And those more skilled with it before will still be skilled with it now, but don't have to worry about their targets coming out from cover to shoot until their shields are dropped and not being able to take the final shot at them before they escape due to the higher bloom. I tell you that was far more annoying than the times people used AL against me in CQB. The TU features 85% bloom and I think after a bit of credit bribing to get people to try out and get used to these new settings, people are loving it. I personally believe it adds to the game and should stay in future TUs. Infact all current TU features should stay the same if you ask me. But I do have some new suggestions which have already been touched on with other playlists such as classic anniversary. Melee damage in classic anniverary is set to about 50%, not only does this mimic Halo CE, but it also means that any player on full health and shields requires 3 melees to kill. So after screwing with these settings in custom games I found that 50% is indeed a great value to keep melee on simply because it requires 3 hits to kill, but unlike on 90% or 75% where it also takes 3 hits to kill, you are going to need more than a quick AR burst/dmr headshot before 2 follow up melees to down a player with half a brain. Incase I dragged that sentence on for too long and it made no sense, this means that DOUBLE MELEE WILL NO LONGER OCCUR!!! (yay) and the best thing is WE CAN STILL KEEP BLEEDTHROUGH OFF!!! And as a bonus to those who enjoy paying extra attention to detail/ those with OCD who like to believe every weapon should have a role in the game (both describe me really well ), the gravity hammer's melee attack (with the RB or B button not the RT trigger) still takes 2 shots to kill rather than three thanks to its massive blade. Awesome! This got me thinking about the spiker. Poor old spiker... It has less DPS than the AR, slow moving bullets (or spikes whatever), terrible accuracy and to top it off the bayonette only gives the spiker's melee attack extra oompf in campaign. That's right with 50% melee, the spiker does the same damage to a fully shielded sparten as an AR. So all in all the spiker is just a bad AR in every way. This got me thinking about how other weapons might not be balanced. And I straight away jumped back to how much better the DMR and NR are with 85% bloom. They can quite easilly take out an AR or Plasma Repeater (and ofcourse spiker) in close range where the auto weapons should dominate. In tight quarters the AR/Plasma Repeater will win still, but at close range in open ground the DMR/NR will usually rip through automatic users. So here are a list of weapon tweaks that I think know will balance the game while keeping current TU bloom and no-bleedthrough settings how they are now: awesome:) Assault Rifle: Recoil/bloom needs to be toned down by a small fraction, nothing too drastic. Damage is actually at a good level if you make your shots count and burst your weapon. The thing is in order to land every shot on a DMR user (the only way to kill them if they are landing every headshot QUICKLY) your bursts are forced to be too short and too close of range. If the recoil/ crosshair bloom was to be toned down a small fraction, it would make ALL the difference. No joke when testing I found I got my friends down to 1 health bar each time as long as they landed every headshot and killed me first. This still requires control and skill on the AR user's behalf, but it makes it possible against skilled DMR users who are starting to venture into the automatic range domain with their reduced bloom. Plasma Repeater: This weapon needs a slight increase in damage dealt to shields. This is because while it can in theory beat an AR if every shot lands (only just), the thing is it isn't hitscan, and enemies don't stand still which means the weapon will overheat when fired more (even in bursts) and slow down. Once the weapon has started to slow it will lose outright to an AR unless there are teammates around etc. The Plasma Repeater needs to be more effective against shields, even if the buff is slight, it will still make a difference and balance the gun. Spiker: Needs slight damage buff (health, not shields) and increased melee damage (on par with the RB/B melee attack of the grav hammer) and to keep it balanced with plasma rifle, slight shield damage nerf. The increased damage should be just enough to allow this weapon to beat an AR so long as every shot hits. This will still force the players to use the spiker only in very close quarters where neither the spikers slow projectiles or horrible accuracy will have too much of an effect on the weapon. The increased damage melee will give this weapon a small advantage over other automatic weapons in hand to hand combat and this is fair seeing as the weapon is still probably the worst auto weapon with all the above settings in play. And besides it has dual blades c'mon it should be better than the rest Imagine not getting to use the chainsaw on the lancer in gears of war, or being able to use it but it only does the same as the hammerburst melee! It is currently a plasma rifle clone, with slightly more ammo and firing times (before reload/overheat) and more accuracy, but will be beaten as the rifle increases ROF with continued use and will kill just faster. With a slightly increased kill time (takes a little to deplete shields, but much quicker to deplete health) it will, like the plasma rifle be capable of matching the AR in extreme CQB, and with slightly (not extreme, otherwise campaign will become unbalanced) adjust shield and flesh damage stats, the weapon could finally become unique and have its own purpose, eg as a sidearm or cqb weapon with a sick melee damage boost. So while the kill time will only be marginally greater still making it and the plasma rifle inferior at most ranges, these two weapons are balance out against the assault rifle due to not having bloom, the plasma rifle dropping shields faster and leading to a melee kill quicker, the spiker having more ammo and time before reloading, and also a sick melee capability should the next TU include 50% melee damage. Firefight sniper rifles need 24/24 ammo to begin with. It cannot make use of the resupply crates and takes 3 headshots to kill an ultra on heroic, which is difficult enough because they are fast moving and jumpy, but they will also run away and recharge shields. Currently snipers start with 12/24 ammo. Allowing them to make use of the resuply ammo crates would be a bit OP, as with more than one sniper on the team with unlimited sniper ammo could reak havoc. Also, it would make the snipers from weapon drops useless if players spawning with snipers in custom firefight don't need to search for more ammo. Maybe a way for the author to limit how many people on one team can actively be using each loadout at one time (limit loadout 1 to 1 person at a time, limit loadout 2 to 4 people at a time etc) for both custom firefight and MP. Playlists: Invasion could do with TU settings, although it is a big new addition to reach and should also retain a default playlist as well. I think there should be 3 default playlists and the rest all with TU settings (aside from the one classic anniversary playlist.): Default: FFA - mix of FFA slayer and objectives Team - mix of slayer and objective, team size 4-5 (squad slayer yay) Big Team - mix of big team slayer, objective and invasion gametypes. (team size 6-8 ) Give TU users invasion as well and everyone is happy. This one may or may not be possible to add in so long after the release, but I think would please a lot of users: Add a new silver skull to firefight and campaign that turns on TU settings. You may chose to add this feature to both custom and matchmaking firefight or just custom firefight, but either way it is certainly a good idea that allows players to play the game their way and jump straight from campaign/firefight into MP with the same settings. Considering it is apparently easy for developers to turn TU on/off in matchmaking, so a simple 0/1 (off/on) value from a skull should be very easy to impliment and a feature that gamers shouldn't be denied. TL;DR Incase you didn't like my rambling here are the changes/things that should stay the same I think should be added/kept to/in the next TU: (Don't comment complaining about them if you haven't read the full post which goes in detail about my reasons for these changes.) Bloom: 85% Armor lock nerf: good, keep it. Bleedthrough: off, keep it off. Melee Damage: 50% (dont panic, read the post) Assault rifle tweaks: Slightly toned down spread/recoil/bloom. Plasma Repeater Tweaks: Slight damage done to shields buff, damage done to health stays the same. Spiker: Damage doen to health buffed until the weapon is capable of beating an AR in close quaters so long as each spike/round hits. Buffed melee damage (on par with RB/B attack of grav hammer). Slight nerf to shield damage, to balance it with plasma rifle and keep the two from being too similar to one another. Sniper spawns with 24/24 ammo in firefight (custom and matchmaking, both weapon drop and loadout/spawn) TU Invasion added to matchmaking Keep vanilla invasion, big team, normal team and ffa to keep vanilla fans happy and to not go back on promise. TU settings skull for campaign and custom firefight, maybe for matchmaking firefight (players vote for skull on/off). Ability to limit each loadout to a certain amount of people when editing game options in custom MP and firefight. (e.g. loadout 1 limited to 1 person, loadout 2 limited to 4 people etc etc). The Classic Anniversary is great with zero bloom, super pistol, no armor abilties, 110% shield regen, 120% player movement speed and 50% melee damage modifier. But I'm not here to talk about classic, I'm here to discuss the TU settings and how they can be modified for next months TU to make the game even better.