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Introduction I love Halo. Halo has been my favorite video game ever since I played it first at my friend's house, when I was a child. And not without good reason. Halo CE offered an incredibly fun, balanced, and competitive first person shooter experience that could entertain for days. My friends and I always seemed to find ourselves on Blood Gulch or Sidewinder, playing slayer or capture the flag. Those were some of the best video game moments I've ever had. The fervor continued all the way through Halo 3, the height of my gaming career. I didn't have xbox live in the Halo 2 days, so most of my online and ranked Halo-ing was done in Halo 3. The ranking system combined with the general fairness of the game, and its design philosophy created a formula that always kept me coming back for more. When I won I soared on the ecstasy of victory, and when I lost, I would curse my opponents, and re-enter matchmaking to redeem myself. All of this ended when Bungie released Halo Reach, and 343 made matters even worse with Halo 4. None of this is news; at the time of this writing in April of 2014, the failures of Reach and Halo 4 are well documented: armor abilities, sprint, high aim assist, loadouts, slow movement speed, instant spawn, ordnance, bloom, shield bleed through, descope, the list is rather endless. It is quite obvious at this point that Bungie and 343 have transformed Halo into a game that conforms with the average modern shooter, ie Call of duty, Battlefield, sprint and classes, call-in rewards. Call of Duty has been immensely successful, so I think that 343 industries sought to emulate the features of this and other games in attempt to appeal to the players of those games. The ploy failed however, as the new Halo alienated its original formula and fan base, and failed to grasp the intended market for very long, because Call of Duty makes a way better Call of Duty than Halo does. So what will happen now, I wonder? I can not say. Perhaps 343 industries will release another Halo title that continues to go in the direction following in Halo 4's footsteps, with more loadout options, more customization, unlocks that affect gameplay, and the like. Perhaps they will learn from their mistakes and take a step back, to recreate the original Halo formula. The latter would of course be the better choice, but big business is a fickle and shallow thing, and its hard to say for sure what is going to happen. It is possible that 343 industries really has no control of this. Maybe this decision is made at a corporate level. You might be wondering what the purpose of this writing is then. My intention is to outline exactly my opinion on how the Halo franchise should progress onward from this point. I have been along since the beginning, and I have a firm grasp what Halo is, and what makes it fun. I have filled a fair number of notebooks with drafts of this theoretical game, and have fussed over every point of the game for months and months now, in my own mind, building Halo up from scratch, not really innovating, but trying to pull the best from all of the Halo games, and filter out the worst, mediocre, and average. I care about Halo perhaps a little too much. Regardless of whether or not my words sway any minds or have any real affect, I would like to put them out there. I hope that I can participate in a movement that pushes Halo back into a what it used to be: fun. Summary This "build" of Halo that I will share with you is not a radical step forward in any way. It is actually more of a step back into the days of Halo's CE, 2 and 3, and would play very much like one of those games. My goal in this section is to communicate to you a summary of the features that would go into my "build" of Halo. I won't pretend that all of this information is my own, most of this information has been outlined before, and often, this build does include some new ideas though. After the summary, you will find the same points, but in much greater detail. This article is extremely long. Here, I go over literally every detail I can think about to make Halo the best game it can be. I have contained the rest of the article, the more detailed section, in a spoiler below to save space. Please check it out if you feel the need, especially if you would like to see my explanation for a particular decision you might agree or disagree with. I have organized the more detailed section with clear titles, so it should be relatively easy to find what you are looking for. Bonus points if you read the whole thing. I have spent an immense amount of time on this. Please be respectful of my opinions, as I am respectful of your opinions. I intend to give you logical explanations to try and bring out thought provoking discussion. Without further adieu, here is "my" Ideal Halo 5 build. -No sprint. Sprint breaks Halo. Move and shoot! I really hope I didn't just loose most of you here. Feel free to check out my arguments in the spoiler section. -Smaller maps to account for the lack of sprint, and to keep up the action. -Fast base movement speed and acceleration for a powerful strafe, and to increase game pace. -You won't be slowed when taking fire. -Fast and deep crouch. Fast crouch walk (66% base movement speed) for improved effectiveness of the stealth function. -No reticle bloom on precision weapons. No spread on the BR. There is no reason for programmed randomness. -No custom Loadouts. No loadouts in most gametypes. Everyone will enter the game with the exact same capabilities. -All weapons benefit from headshots. Some benefit more than others. -Marksman Rifle (essentially a 4sk, no bloom, 2x scope, 16 round magazine DMR) and Assault Rifle Starts. -The Assault Rifle is vastly redesigned and improved; it is a fast collapsing bloom weapon (Halo Reach's AR and Halo 4's AR were slow collapsing bloom weapons) that can do headshot damage. Burst firing will be more effective than ever, and the skill curve of the weapon will be higher than ever. Using the AR will be about using the correct length of burst at certain ranges, and then landing accurate headshots. -Higher damage, faster kill times (somewhere between Halo CE and Halo 2,3,Reach). The marksman rifle, one of the slower killing weapons, will kill in 1.17 seconds. -All pickup weapons are balance to have the capability to kill faster than the MR, requiring some extra effort or skill to wield. -Lower Auto-Aim and Bullet Magnetism Values for increased skill gap. -No ordnance. All weapons, grenades, armor abilities, powerups and equipment spawn on the map, like in Halo CE-3 and partially, Reach. -No armor abilities off spawn. You must pick up armor abilities off of the map. -Armor abilities have fuel, limiting their use, and they can be picked up off of dead Spartans. -There will be no HUD images displaying the location of pickups on the map. -Pull out your equipment by pressing LEFT on the d-pad (the spartan will hold it in his left hand), and deploy it by pulling Left Trigger. -Many grenades have been reworked into equipment, leaving frags and plasmas as the only two grenades. -The reticle will be in the center of the screen, not slightly below center. -You will be forced out of scope upon taking damage (Descope). -No hit markers. Shield flare serves the purpose of letting a player know he hit the enemy. This is not a huge point, I would relent on this if I had to. -Experiment with a sound que to signify hits, as a possible replacement for hitmarkers. -No hit markers on grenades. These make them too useful as scouting tools. -No grenade indicators (the arrow that shows where a live grenade is in relation to your location). -15m (short range) motion tracker that can distinguish between up and down. Short range to allow for play around the motion tracker's periphery. -Shorter shield wait and recharge times (4 seconds wait and 2 seconds charge as opposed to 7 seconds wait in Halo 4) -Health will be visible, and will fully regenerate if you lose only two bars of health. If you lose almost all of your health, it will regenerate to half. There will be health packs on the map, which will begin charging your shields the moment you pick them up. If you have below half health, you are vulnerable to being one hit killed by a well placed frag grenade even with full shields. Plasma grenades have the capability to kill a full health, full shielded spartan when on the ground. You have 10 bars of health to start off with. -Your shields and health will drain from right to left, rather than from the outsides, to give more clarity as to how much of your shields and health remain. The shield and health bar will be located at the top middle of the screen. -No instant spawning. Wait 4 seconds to spawn. I changed the timer from 5 to 4 to save everyone about a second on every respawn. -Melee requires 3 hits to the front to kill, and 2 hits to the back to kill. If you land a melee to the back, a follow up melee to the front will kill. If you land a melee to the front, a follow up melee to the back will kill. -Melee will bleed through the shields into health. -When you melee, you will not move forward, or lunge towards your opponent like in Halo 2, 3, Reach, and 4. Rather, you will remain stationary like in Halo CE. The melee speed will be faster however. This does not mean that the melee will be significantly shorter range, it just means that you will not change location when meleeing, which can be annoying. The player model will appear to lean forward a large amount when meleeing. -Players cannot assassinate others by holding melee, like in Reach and Halo 4. -Instead, players must pull out their knife by pressing DOWN on the D-pad, and then they can assassinate others from behind by pressing Melee (LB) or Fire (LT). Players can unlock different knives, and knives can have skins. -Assassinating an enemy will double his respawn timer (to 8 seconds) for that respawn, adding a tactical advantage and a risk/reward element to assassinations. Assassinating in previous Halo's was a risk/risk system, only giving the players a nice aesthetic to look at. -Duel Wielding has been improved and rebalanced, and makes its return. Players can now melee and switch weapons without dropping their left weapon. Duel wield-able weapons are not found in pairs like in Halo 3, rather they are spaced out around the map, requiring a player to travel to two different locations to duel wield. Note that you do not spawn with a duel wield-able weapon. I do not predict that duel wielding will see much use, but it is an attractive feature that might help sales, and it's nice to be able to use the ability in campaign. -The weapon reload animations will make sense. In most games, the reload animation suggests that one bullet is left behind in the chamber. A fresh mag is inserted, but the extra bullet isn't accounted for. Instead of having the weapons be X+1 rounds, I want the round count to return to X, not X+1. So reload animations will show the spartan pulling the charging handle back at the beginning, which would fictionally pull the bullet out of the chamber and stick it back into the magazine. This is a point of polish of aesthetics. -Weapons will not automatically reload after the mag is empty. Players have to initiate all reloads always. This will get players to pay more attention to their ammo meter. Of course there is an option to turn this off in the options menu, but all matchmaking gametypes would have this feature. -There should be a general lack of explosive barrels in Halo. Few to none. These only serve to amplify grenade power, and cause frustration. -Improved controls and user interface options. Left handed support. Multiple HUD layouts. -Default Controls are similar to Bumper Jumper, to get everyone using the superior scheme. A bumper jumper-esque control scheme allows players to aim, melee, and jump all at the same time. -An interesting point: when a player picks up the jet pack armor ability, the controls for Jump and Armor ability will switch, so you can use jet pack and aim at the same time. There will be an on screen que to remind the player that this is happening. By default, Armor Ability is on the A button, so without this feature, you would not be able to use the look stick while jet-packing. This feature can be disabled if the player so chooses. There are also many more control schemes available, and more options to customize the player interface. -Jumping has been modified slightly. Instead of always jumping to the same height, you can preform a shorter jump by barely tapping the jump button, and preform the full height jump by holding onto the jump button ever so slightly. This helps players get up onto smaller ledges more quickly and efficiently. Of course, this feature can be disabled, and the hold time value required for the full jump can be adjusted to the players liking. Small (and quiet) jets will launch the spartan into the air when the full jump is used. -The control scheme is designed to give the player the capability to drop any item they pick up, including weapons, grenades, AA's, Equipment, and ammo. You cannot drop a powerup, or your knife. Default controls: Left Stick: Move/Crouch (click) Right Stick: Look/Zoom (click) Left Trigger: Throw Grenade/Fire Left Weapon Right Trigger: Fire Weapon, Fire Right Weapon Left Bumper: Jump/Jetpack Right Bumper: Melee A: Armor Ability Up: Flashlight B: Switch Grenade/Reload Right Weapon Down: Pull out Knife X: Reload/Reload left weapon Left: Pull out Equipment Y: Switch Weapons Right: Drop Armor Ability (hold) Hold B to drop Grenades Hold X to drop Ammo Hold Y to drop Weapon Hold Left to drop Armor Ability Hold Right to drop Equipment You cannot drop Powerups. -Completely revised and balanced weapon sandbox. -Completely revised and balanced vehicle sandbox. -Revised Objective Gametypes that fall more in line with original Halo's. You can drop the flag, no throwing of the oddball, ect. -Separate competitive ranked playlists and casual unranked playlists. -Halo 3-esque ranking system. See NakedEli's Ideal Halo 5 Ranking System. Look it up. -Fair and balanced in-game scoring system. Players earn kills (each kill is worth 1 point for the team's score meter), but they also earn personal points exactly equal to how much damage they do to the enemy. Say you do 81% damage to an enemy, and your teammate snipes him in the head for the remaining 19%. You earn 81 personal points and an assist, and your teammate earns 19 personal points and a kill. Players with higher personal point levels will be placed closer to the top in the post game stats. This is done to give a more accurate representation of how much damage a player did to the enemy team, and to help out players who frequently get their kills "stolen", or players who are more support oriented. -Revised betrayal penalties and quit penalties. If you are betrayed even once, you will be presented with a option to kill your betrayer with the press of a button, and give him a triple than normal respawn time (12 seconds). You will also have the option to excuse the incident. You will respawn instantly after making your selection. Quitters will not be allowed to re-enter matchmaking until the game they quit out of is finished. Though they will have the option to re-enter the same game that they quit out of. If you are betrayed twice by the same person, you will have the option to boot him from the game, and he will not be allowed to re-enter any games at all until the game you are playing is complete. -Long lasting and fair progression system. Customizable aesthetics, nothing that affects gameplay. -Players will not be allowed to play as elites in standard gametypes. I realize this is an unpopular decision, many of you want to play as elites, but they have different hitboxes, and are harder to headshot from behind, giving them and unfair advantage in this area, also Elites are much bigger than Spartans. Allowing players to play as elites in standard matchmaking means that not all players have the same capabilities and attributes. There could be elites in Invasion though, and we could have elite slayer as a separate playlist. -Well rounded options menu in custom games to allow for game polish and refinement. Well, thank you for reading this far. The section below is absolutely huge, and contains more detail than I think the average forum reader is interested in, or has the time to read. But please, feel free to check it out!

Just a problem that I saw while playing War Games. It's great that the BR and DMR are back, but the balancing is wrong, IMO. For the BR, you have to constantly aim at the head to achieve maximum damage and a quick kill. Not with the DMR. You can aim anywhere on the body for full damage and aiming at the head isn't really required. You can still 5 shot a person even if 4/5 of the shots are on his or her body. Not to mention the DMR fires faster to. Sometimes I'll even get the first shot on a DMR user, but they'll still kill me due to superior firing speed and the ability not to shoot at the head for full damage. You can say I just suck, but this has happened to me numerous times even when my aim is perfect. All I ask is that the DMR is tweaked a bit so that shooting the body does less damage than shooting them in the head. It gives the BR a chance in mid range against the DMR, which is the way it should be because the DMR should be a dominant long range weapon. (IMO)

So the game has been updated and certain things have been adressed, such as the Boltshot reload glitch and the super throw glitch. But why has the game yet to be re-balanced? Anyone who has been playing FPS games competitively for a length of time knows and has realised since the first time they used a charged Boltshot, that its just simply overpowered. It is the ONLY firearm that you can have as part of your loadout that can OHK (One Hit Kill). The very fact that it can OHK effectivly makes it a "power weapon" such as the sniper rifles, the Rocket Launcer, Sticky Detonator, Shotgun etc. With these weapons its absolutly fine, because you cannot spawn with them and can only aquire those weapons from ordnance drops, or finding them placed on maps. Its boring how close-range encounters nowadays just devolve into two people both charging thier Boltshots and seeing who gets the shot off first. Its not gameplay that promotes skill. I would like to see 343is' reasoning behind leaving the Boltshot OHK in the game, so I hope that one of you are reading this. I think (and I am sure many others do) its one of the major things that need re-balancing in this game. I am sure this problem has been brought up many times, but I mean. It still hasn't been fixed even after much less important issues have.

DISCLAIMER: I applaud 343i's balancing for being one of (if not) the best multiplayer balancing feats ever. Any and all critisism regarding flaws in my logic should be constructive. Thank you. In this post I will explain through various means why the Covenant Carbine in Halo 4 is a technically flawed primary weapon. This doesn't mean it's outright terrible, because there are plently of circumstances in which it is effective, but something's not correct. I will also provide various solutions to ammend the issues I've found with the weapon. First, let's recognize why the Carbine is on par with it's two other precision weapon brethern, the DMR and BR. This is a shot list below demonstrating such: CHARACTERISTIC: CC, DMR, BR FIre rate (RPM): ~257, ~155, ~155 (accounting for 1200 RPM burst and 0.5 second delay) Shots to down Shield: 7, 4, 12 (4 bursts of 3) Headshots: 1 for all Shots to kill an unshielded body: 5, 3, 7 (3 in a burst, one shot out of last 3 can kill) Now what we should really consider is that most players are experienced enough to aim for the head, at which point the last values are obsolete. Judging from these characteristics, we could say very liberally that they are all about the same lethality. And that is true, somewhat, when you're talking about just ONE enemy. In fact, due to the compiled nature of the shots, the hypothetical Time to Kill (TTK) of the CC is greater than both the DMR and the BR, respectively. But let's go back a second. What happens when you're trying to kill more than one enemy? Under the circumstance that every person is 100% accurate and lands nothing more than the necessary shots to kill with a headshot, the following replecates the ammo required to do such: KILLS: AMMO LEFT FOR WEAPONS (CC, DMR, BR) One: (18- = 10, (14-5) = 9, (36-15) = 21 Two: (10- = 2, (9-5) = 4, (21-15) = 6 (divide by three, explained below) Three: (2- = -6, (4-5) = -1, (6-15) = -9 (divide by three, explained below) What can we take from this? First, the values designated by the "Two:" row indicate how many "compensation shots" the user would have left to finish off the opponent(s) (remember, this was under the impression that everyone was 100% accurate, which no one actually is). In this, we find that the DMR has a full 4 compensation shots to use between the two enemies. That's an average of two compensation shots per enemy. This is very gracious for such a precise weapon. Either way, let's move onto the CC and BR, which have 2 and 6 respectively (when you divide by the 3 shots per burst that are fired it's still 2), so they're both the same... right? Consider this - every burst fired with the BR contains three bullets, only one of which actually needs to be lethal. So it's really not necessary, if at all in the first place, to take more than one compensation shot, or burst for that matter. The CC actually needs to land one of two lethal headshots per each enemy, otherwise the user won't be left with enough ammunition to finish the job. That's why, from that standpoint, the CC is already worse than the BR and DMR. Now take the second point, which is under the "Three:" section, containing all the negative numbers. This is what we could call the "clean-up" values, or how many extra headshots it'll take to kill the third enemy once you've killed the two above (again, not accounting for ANY lapses in accuracy, totally ignoring the first segment we've discussed above). Looking again at the DMR, you'd need only 1 more headshot from your pistol to finish off the opponent. Triple kills, all things aside, should be pretty easy. This time, the BR and CC are not even relatively close. The BR has a value of -9, translates to 3 shots from your pistol of choice. Quite a bit worse than the DMR, but not as bad as what you'll see next. So you'd like a Triple Kill with the CC? FORGET IT. You'd need a full 6 (TWICE as much as the BR and SIX TIMES as much than the DMR) headshots to clean up the job afterwards for that third guy, at which point, you'd be better off running away and reloading or something. Assuming you can actually do that, you're probably extremely talented at getting headshots with everything. Throw human error into the mix and you have yourself a weapon of which just doesn't compete in terms with the other two comparable primary loadout precision weapons. Sure, you could down the shields with other means, and say that the DMR has more sway etc, but I'm just talking on a pure technical basis here. There's a problem, and it needs to be addressed. Below are some solutions I'd like for someone to consider here. If you have your own or are in support of any of these, please reply: SOLUTION 1: Increase magazine size to 22 This would eliminate most issues with our little ammo conservation problem, keeping the lethal capacity at a cap of 2 kills like the other ones. If you chose 22, that leaves 4 compensation shots comparable to that of the DMR, and would make it take only 4 pistol headshots to finish off, one worse than the BR. You get one good and one bad, which is better than two crumby stats. 23 rounds would push each number up one, which could make the gun a little bit too good. SOLUTION 2: Decrease shield threshold from 7 to 6 shots Effectively changing the "Two kill" equation to (18-(2*7)) = 4 compensation shots and (4-7) = 3 pistol shots, which is more subtle than changing it to 23 rounds but at the same time is more effective than a 22 round improvement since it not only changes it from 4 to 3 pistol shots, but also lowers the TTK on each successive individual opponent. SOLUTION 3 (kinda extreme): Worsen the other two weapons The DMR could be worsened by cutting one or two bullets, and the BR by cutting the ammo count to 33 or one less burst. These are fair enough options that would force these guns to be more conservative with their ammo exhaustion. NOTE: This took me a considerable amount of time to create. If you don't mind, the feedback for this topic would be greatly appreciated. Again, I'm being logical about this, so please be constructive in your feedback as we try to solve these issues regarding this weapon. If you disagree with my statistics, I can show proof on demand. However, I should inform you that all of these statistics were privately tested and calculated using my game and HD PVR recordings broken down in Sony Vegas. Thank you again. Looking forward to those responses. .

When are 343 getting back from holiday?? just asking because Halo 4 is basically a train wreck ATM. I do hope, Frankie and Kiki and the rest of 343 are having a great time in the sun... but you have got a job to do fixing this game you have the cheek to call Halo. Firstly the game was sloppily put together, if you the common sense to have a beta maybe there would be so much issues and people could actually connect and actually play the game, well I guess that would send even more complainers to the forums. Next is the file share system, or lack of one... we know you have taken so many options out of the file-share browser. Just like the rest of Halo 4. So whats the wait, your quick to shove your poxy crimson Map pack and Spartan flops in our faces so why can't you listen to the fans and give us what we want. Just for once. Your killing the whole of the forging community. Just saying. When I get bored of war games... (Which doesn't take long) I love to play custom games, May I ask you 343 what have you done with the "Custom" part of Custom games?? I can't find it anywhere, Options?? Nope. Settings?? Nope. Forge??? No Chance. What planet are you guys on ? If 343 are on holiday please accept my apology, Just tell me when 343 are going to be back in business and start fixing this half finished game. Because the game if full if glitches and bugs and the game as so many broken features: Scoring system broken "Death Cams" broken Alpha Zombie broken Custom load outs broken Flood customistion problems Connection problems Network problems Weapon balance Map flow problems No ranking system No File share Poor forge maps No precision editing Forge bugs and glitches Declining population EDIT: NO RACE WTF!! There are so many more to name but I'll be here until next week. Discuss.

So why did people hate Halo Reach so much? Why is there such a problem with bloom? It didn't bother me so I want to understand why it bothered others so much. Please respond with articulate explanation not just telling me it is dumb crap. Thanks.

I have been a long time player of the halo games and I think I speak for a lot of people when I say we are a little bit hung out over the DMR. I'm not just complaining here, I'm going to make a valid statement. It is the most prominent weapon used in general. Just look at anyone on waypoint. It covers long range with 50/50 on snipers,beam rifle and can disrupted binary equally well if it lands first. It has no competition in mid range from pistol, carbine ,light rifle and about 50/50 with battle rifle when direct no cover face to face confrontation and has the advantage on close range over storm rifle and assault rifle variants if you don't make the first 5 bullets connected before hand which can be easily countered with a quick grenade head shot combo or melee. It also has the ability to jolt the character more then most other guns slowing them down and has boosted aim assist which is very obvious. I've shot people half off my scope and have gotten kills with it. Doesn't anyone else think the assault rifles should get a bit more of a boost in close quarters? Not much point if they loose every direct confrontation. They only one up in groups or whilst the target is distracted so you can land your first couple of hits. Its at least 50/50 in long range, 70/30 short and 80/20 medium if not more so. That is far more average coverage to other weapons. You cant knock someones scopes out at long range with an assault rifle and such, it is strictly short range so why should it share that territory with DMR so much. It's used too much because of the clear advantage and I would like to be able to have an equal chance while using all the parts of the game. Shouldn't there at the least be a lobby like classic where you don't get to start with dmr, battle rifle or plasma grenades. I think it would do the community well to appeal to people in some way that have delt with the dmr all through halo reach and now halo 4. I miss halo 3 starting with assault rifle, one grande and a pistol and everything else was on the battle field. I believe it would make the game play flow better, allow players to use more weapons, appeal to veteran gamers and also chop down on high grenade kills. What do you all think?

I'm sure there are many people out there, like me, that think the Jetpack kinda ruins the game and makes geometry obsolete. Now I know asking for it's removal may be a bit much, but I do have some suggestions to help make it a bit more balanced. Please add your suggestions/opinions too. 1. Drastically reduce amount of time of flight 2. Increase cool down 3. Don't allow shooting while jet packing. This is my personal favorite. This way the jetpack can still be used for mobility while restricting the ability to abuse the height advantage given from flying and shooting. You would still able to shoot in the air, just not while pressing the jetpack button. 4. Put the jetpacker in 3rd person momentarily, like the thruster pack.

Hey there, I don't know if 343 regularly checks these forums but I'm trying to give constructive feedback for them because I think they did a great job on Halo 4 but it could be even better. -The Meta Game: Currently there isn't that much of a reason to replay Spartan Ops after doing Legendary other than commendations. If you added the ability to turn on the Meta game in Spartan Ops and Campaign, and also added a leaderboard, this would create more of a buzz around Spartan Ops and we could compete for high scores. -Spartan Ops Special Episodes: I was thinking that maybe you could incorporate Red vs Blue into Spartan Ops for special episodes/seasons (like a Christmas special) where players play as new recruits into Blue and Red team, having a unique mission to complete and are instructed by Caboose and Church etc. Here is an example of a mission they could do - There is a giant Grunt that is filled with too much methane gas and the Prometheans are trying to kill it because it shouldn't be there, worst of all Serge just bought a brand new Mantis and if the Grunt blows up the Mantis' wax finish will be ruined, so highjinks ensue. You could string these specials together to create a bonus mini series within Spartan Ops. -TrueSkill Ranks: I heard you guys are implementing TrueSkill, please have them be based on wins/losses, kills/deaths and bring back hit ratio's which could also contribute to rank progression. Have them be symbols not numbers, and display them next to the player's SR number rank. -Clan Support: You could have a Clan section in the roster menu, where you can start a clan, accept/decline clan invites, send out invitations and there could be a Clan Kudos system where the clan gains Kudos for playing in a full party of clan members or completing daily/weekly/monthly clan challenges. -Playlist Refinement: At the moment there too many playlists and no variety within each one. Create a 'Team Objective' playlist combining King of the Hill, CTF, Dominion and Oddball. You could also bring back game varients for each, such as One Flag. -DMR: Slightly lower the fire rate. Currently it's a bit OP. I would really love 343 to make these additions. I think old and new players would aswell. Please respond to this topic 343 and/or forum moderators so I know that topics like this are actually read and worth doing.

I’ve seen weapons nerfed in Halo before, and it’s not pretty. The Focus Rifle in Reach and the Trip Mine in Halo 3 are prime examples of why we should fear the word “nerf” when it comes to Halo’s weapons and gadgets. But obviously weapons can’t go for the rest of the game’s lifespan unbalanced, so something has to be done about them (just not the nerfs that I’ve seen). So far, I’ve encountered 3 things that need balancing out a bit in Halo 4. Now, I’ve been gaming for years and have been playing Halo since Halo CE back in 2001, and I am confident that my solutions will not nerf these weapons up to the point of uselessness. 1. Boltshot. I’ve recently had the displeasure of facing someone that has used nothing but this weapon throughout the entire match. I don’t even think the Scattershot or Shotgun would have been able to kill me at the range that he killed me from. Now, the standard shots on the Boltshot are headshot capable, so that gave me an idea… Solution: 343i should lower the damage slightly on the Boltshot’s charged shots so it just takes down shields rather than instantly kills people. People would still be able to kill enemies with the Boltshot, because as I’ve said, the standard shots are headshot capable, so you’d just charge up your Boltshot, fire it at someone to take down their shields, then aim for the head. This not only maintains the Boltshot’s effectiveness (as well as requiring a bit more skill to use), but also gives players on the receiving end of its deadly fury a small reaction gap by perhaps a second or so. Now, you might be thinking a second isn’t a long time, but trust me when I say it goes a long way in Halo. 2. DMR. Yes, it is overpowered. But no where near what people have been claiming it to be. It’s only slightly overpowered, and that’s only because it’s dominating in ranges that it’s not supposed to be dominating in. It’s supposed to be a long range weapon, beaten in range by nothing else but the Sniper Rifle (and its counterparts). In shorter ranges, the Battle Rifle (and Covenant Carbine) is supposed to win against the DMR, but the DMR appears to be winning most of the time unless shots are missed. So how do we fix this? Solution: This one is rather simple, actually. The DMR is only dominating because of its firing rate. It can fire as fast as the user can pull the trigger, and that I think is where the problem lies. Lowering the rate of fire ever so slightly gives the Battle Rifle a fighting chance in shorter ranges, while the DMR still keeps its effectiveness in longer ranges. Once again, the lowering of firing rate on the DMR will only give BR users just under a second or so of extra time in combat, but as I’ve said before, that time goes a long way in Halo. 3. Active Camouflage. Ah, the camper’s true love, this one. Basically, the camo is more effective when you’re not moving around so much. This is where I think the problem lies. It promotes camping and overshadows a lot of other Armour Abilities because of this. So, how do we fix it? We need only look to the past… Solution: …Because we already have the ideal Active Camouflage in Halo 2! Remember the Arbiter levels? Remember the Active Camouflage you could use in them? That’s our balanced Active Camo right there. A short burst of semi-invisibility, lasted around 15 seconds or so and you could move around as fast as you wanted without revealing yourself. The cool-down period was about 20 seconds, although I think it varied depending on what difficulty you were playing on. But let’s say around 20 seconds, because that seems pretty balanced to me. Oh, and if you fired your weapon or performed a melee attack, the Active Camo would deactivate and you’d have to wait for the cool-down period to end before you could use it again. Ah, but you’ll probably think that you won’t have enough time to kill someone within 15 seconds. Well, it was more than enough time to use it effectively on Halo 2, even on Legendary. As I’ve said before, that ti- ah, screw it. You already know what I’m going to say. So those are my solutions. Again, I’m just using my experience as both a gamer and a long time Halo fan to come up with these ideas. I don’t really know what you guys and gals think of them, but hopefully you’ll find them reasonably effective at balancing out Halo 4. Thanks for reading!

I was thinking how I should approach this post and how I should get this point across... I considered going with ‘Spartans need more face armour’ or simply ‘Arrgggh!’ but then I realised that no matter what I do or how levelly I look at this it is going to get flamed to hell by a large chunk of the community once I insult their precious Battle Rifle... I’ve just had a game, one of many, in which the entire enemy team took to using Battle Rifles and backing away from every single encounter firing. Now some of you are surely going to say this is not an issue and just how the game is played... or rather, given the mindset of these people I’m expecting a lot of variously illiterate comments along the lines of: ‘LOL AM NOOB YOU?!’ The problem is, besides from being annoying, this tactic doesn’t really seem to really make any sense in this game. Most players who operate like this rarely seem to bother with a sidearm or their abilities... features which in their eyes may as well just be removed. So it has to raise a question as to the balance of the game when one weapon is utilised so heavily that not only other weapons but also key game features simply go unused. The other issue I have with this is that the primary way of beating a team doing this is to do exactly the same thing... which means the game soon becomes very solely focused and all semblance of tactics go out the window. On the face of it Halo 4 seems to offer quite a good degree of customisation which allows individuals to explore and develop their own play style. Armour specialisations, abilities, upgrades and weapon loadouts should create a great deal of variety in the opponents you face. However when one style of play defeats all others with ease it leaves people little option but to do the same. In short individual preferences go flying out the window faster than a grunt targeted by a fuel rod cannon... Now I am not going to suggest the Battle Rifle be nerfed, surely such a thing would be tantamount to heresy. I mean clearly the developers have decided that it should be able to beat automatic weapons at close range and that its ability to complete destroy armoured vehicles from across the map with its small calibre rounds is working as intended... but I feel as if one simple change could massively improve game play and balance issues. Reduce the speed at which you walk backwards. It’s that simple. The Battle Rifle can still be a flak cannon, shotgun and sniper rifle all rolled into one confusing bundle but just reducing the rate at which you can back peddle ever so slightly, I think, will make the game not only more balanced but more enjoyable. It would mean that when you have someone charging you down with the oddball they are actually a threat. It would make automatic weapons rightly more powerful in one on one close range fights. Most importantly it would just make sense. I mean as much as I’d love to see it there’s no 100m backwards sprint in the Olympics... Now perhaps everyone loves Battle-Rifle-back-peddling but when both teams are standing at opposite sides of the maps doing this it quickly resembles a game of duck hunt... The best games I’ve had were when both our team and the enemy used a variety of tactics and equipment. It meant you had to constantly adapt and weren’t sure what to expect next... that, ultimately, seems like the sort of game play Halo should revolve around. I’d dig out the box and quote it directly but if you recall, one of Combat Evolved’s main selling points was that you were the master of every weapon and that all vehicles were tools of destruction just waiting for a driver... it was not advertised as the ultimate ‘shoot each other in the face with a rifle until someone falls over’... game.