Some general feedback

[ALIENwolve]

I have no idea if you guys care to read this mess, but I'm bothered enough to write it. This is, in general, pretty much all my observations on gameplay and things that could use attention.

 

As a start: I like this game. I've been dying to play Halo again, as I haven't in a year or two and this is a really nice change to do so. It's smoother than Reach and has potential. But this game is also full of things that I really, really do not like. So I'm just gonna throw these things at ya and hope somebody gives a crap about it.

 

 

-The DMR is almost undoubtedly the best weapon in the entire game. That's not a good thing. Pretty bad thing, really.

 

It's quite simply, far easier to use than any other starting weapon. The accuracy and stability of the rifle make it a constant source of precision damage at all ranges, unlike the three mid-range rifles, which actually stand a chance of missing a few hits.

 

I'm sure players have some dismissive view of this sort of opinion, but it really cuts down the gameplay. Yes, it's available to everyone from the start, but it also restricts their choices from anything else. Once you match together players of merely a competent skill level, every other starting weapon is at a disadvantage against people who choose the obvious DMR.

 

The average player can lay down nearly 100% accuracy from any range with the DMR and only the DMR. This turns the gameplay away from landing accurate hits and instead becomes time exposed to other players. There is almost no chance of a player missing once he has a shot, so you really can't get away with anything due to the DMR's prevalence.

 

Using a plasma pistol secondary to your rifle is almost completely pointless against DMRs. In the amount of time it takes you to fire a charged shot and switch to your other weapon, a DMR likely has more than enough time to take you down, which invalidates the entire concept and just makes you exclusively use a DMR.

 

I don't even know if the automatic rifles are even any good because a DMR is so much more effective than all three of them at anything beyond melee range!

 

I'd really appreciate it if, in the likely upcoming updates, you look into the recoil mechanics of the DMR and tweak it so that the minimum accuracy is something more significant than the battle rifle's standard accuracy.

 

 

-The pulse grenade is sadly, the absolute worse grenade choice. It's too finicky to land where you want it to land and the damage dealt renders it negligible as an area denial weapon.

 

I really want this grenade to work. Even spike grenades worked. But it feels like I'm throwing snowballs here.

 

It doesn't rapidly hit players like frag grenades and going through the effort of directly hitting players only drains their shields instead of outright killing them. The active stage of this grenade doesn't actually do any serious damage and I've had players just sprint through the damn thing and kill me. I assume the final explosion of the pulse grenade is actually quite deadly, but the three second fuse makes that impossible to do intentionally.

 

And then you have to be jerks and make it so you actually get to bring less pulse grenades with you when you put it into a loadout. It's weaker than a frag or a plasma and you get two of those!

 

I don't even know what I want from this weapon. Higher damage per second? A shorter fuse? Don't make it bounce and just light as soon as it hits the ground? At least gimmie two, here.

 

 

-The thruster pack in its current form is straight up unviable. Hops are too slow and far too short a distance.

 

I've given the thruster pack a lot of use to see if I could use it in any situation. Heck, I've given it some experiments even. And it leaves me wondering, who in testing ever thought this thing was all set?

 

I tested just how fast and far the thrusters move you. They move you at the same speed you get from running forwards; same distance too. You're giving us the ability to run straight in one direction from a third person camera, here!

 

Yes, technically it is slightly faster than strafing and suffers from no deceleration, but you'd really be better off with a jet pack. I have used it to save myself a couple of times, but it's fallen flat on its face so many more times because it doesn't do anything.

 

The distance and speed you currently move just seeks to disorient you with the third person camera while your opponent kicks the crap out of you. It's entirely slower than sprinting which makes thrusting forwards a null gesture and thrusting backwards a death sentence. They're borderline useless, guys.

 

Apparently, they're exponentially more effective when player move speed is increased. Or maybe they're still too slow and actually slowing you down.

 

Seriously, increase the distance you jump. Until then, a jet pack is so much more effective for aggressive loadouts.

 

 

-You need to further expand on matchmaking gametypes and maps. As it stands, you're really only giving us a portion of what this game has to offer.

 

And I know you'll change it, but it kind of frustrates me that on launch, you only have a few maps and gametypes available for every playlist. You've got a lot more just lying around that nobody can play on matchmaking, like Extraction and Relay or other pre-forged maps.

 

Just like Infection of the previous games, you have one generic Flood gametype. You can do so much more than that! Give players more subgametypes. Other guns to use and other kinds of zombies like camoflagued ones sneaking in the open.

 

So I guess... Just hurry it up?

 

 

-You have no asymmetric gametypes. Not one. ...Why? Why you do dis?

 

Asymmetric gametypes were the beauty of objective games. All offense versus all defense. It's so much more exciting than two flag. You don't even have assault. Technically, Grifball is assault, but that's marred by hardcoding, which I'll whine about later.

 

I know you guys have the tools to hack together these extra gametypes, so pleeeeeease do this soon. Otherwise, why bother calling red and blue team in Forge Offenders and Defenders any more?

 

 

-Your gametypes are full of unnecessary hard code.

 

One of the beauties of previous custom games was you could manipulate gametype settings in a way that developers weren't expecting and make a completely new gametype. Not so much in Halo 4 right now.

 

Everything that you would consider different in a gametype either was removed from the generic gametype interface or greyed out.

 

Right friggin' now, you could turn Grifball into neutral bomb. But he's still orange and you can't change that trait simply because you guys didn't feel like the bomb carrier should never be orange. You flat out removed a generic feature from your gametype. You also can't turn initial ordinance on, removing all map weapons from any neutral bomb game you played. You don't need to do this guys, just leave us the option to do so and have it disabled by default.

 

In Flood, you can't even change the loadouts of zombies. This hampers your ability to make new Flood gametypes! What if I want my flood to have weak ranged weapons? Can't do that, simply because you hardcoded it away under the assumption that we would never need it.

 

I'm sure you could fix that with your end of gametype design being open.

[Maximum Clutch]

The DMR is fine. Just because it is a good weapon doesn't automatically give you the skills to be good with it.

[ALIENwolve]

The DMR is fine. Just because it is a good weapon doesn't automatically give you the skills to be good with it.

The problem is it's so easy to use that everyone has the skills to be good with it.

 

I do and so do my opponents, so we never miss shots on each other.