Will dual wielding come back?

[FloodMaster]

I really liked when I could dual wield a plazma pistol and magnum and kill everything. It was fun to have two guns out at once. I liked being dominant with small guns. I really hope 343 brings that back. At least make it a tactical package I could use. Simply weaken the side arms so its an even match. JUST BRING IT BACK! Tell me what you think in the comments.

[BeckoningZebra1]

I think it would be great to see the return of dual-wielding. I think 343i should test it extensively to be sure that they have the perfect balance in bringing it back. I think it would only be fair if anytime a player were to start dual-wielding they immediately lose the ability to throw grenades, pummel, or switch weapons. I also wouldn't want armor abilities functional while dual-wielding since dual-wielding while jetpacking, or with promethean vision would be overpowered. 

[MCPO Mayh3m]

*at the end of Microsofts E3 press conference they bring out 343 for their presentation*

-announcer, please welcome kiki wolfkill from 343 Industries!- 

 

"In the world of Halo, anything is possible. Last years E3 revealed that the Halo journey continues this year. Well, I am proud to announce that one of the most iconic and popular games that launched this franchise is getting a makeover! Yes, indeed... coming this Holiday season you will be able to buy Halo 2 Anniversary for the Xbox One. We have given the campaign a graphic overhaul so you can  enjoy Halo 2 in full HD, use Smartglass Technology or your back button to swap between the classic and new look Halo 2! -crowd applauds- Wait, you didn't think we would stop there would you? No! in Halo 2 Anniversary we are bringing back the classic Multiplayer featuring some of our classic Halo 2 Maps such as Lockout, Midship, Coagulation, and more! We will have new and returning weapons such as the Brute Shot, DMR, and the return the Dual wieldable SMGs, Plasma rifles, Needlers, and Magnums! -crowd uproars in cheers-"

 

*wakes up* What?! It was only a dream!? Dang it.... I guess we wont find out until E3 or the release of the game itself. (that is if the next announced game is H2A) 

[Sadly Just AL]

Hmhm, amusing Mayhem.

 

But of course we would love to see this return, as it was a feature inherited during the franchise's pinnacle game and story, Halo 2. This ability adored by the players due to its efficiency and speed of execution, leaving you with only a mere reload to stress about... which is not that much of a drawback. Sure, I'd like to see it come back, SMGs maybe, but if that package were to slide with me with minimal friction, I'm afraid it will demand the return of the Brute Spiker, maybe the ONLY automatic weapon, aside from the SMG, that I like; for its appearance and performance of course.

 

So... bring it back if you will, but it will all matter on its conduction, because no one can say they are a stranger to the phrase "Good things gone bad". 

[sindronian]

I wish that it would but I don't think it will.

343i should realize that the most successful Halo multiplayer experience (halo 3) had dual wielding in it and it was balanced enough. Sure, some combinations of weapons may not be as viable or sometimes they may never be viable but having dual wielding brought more variety and made the game more fun.

For example playing team duals and mowing down all the noobs who used dual pistols/smgs instead of just throwing grenades. That was amazing.

It's also very satisfying to take out a player's shields at long range with a pistol in your right hand and then close in to finish him off with an smg in your left hand. Dual weilding can be tactical and in some situations it works better than switching to another weapon (usually in close quarters).

I  think 343i is worrying too much about balance as that was one of their main reasons for not incorporating it in Halo 4. All dual weilding combinations don't have to be perfectly balanced.

The BR was infinitley better than the AR in Halo 3 at medium and long range, did that make the game worse or less fun? No...a lot of people still used the AR and still enjoyed using it. BRs were strategically placed on the map or used in certain gametypes only. In Halo 4 eveyone can use a BR/DMR in almost any gametype and any map thanks to loadouts. This doesn't work as well.

I think dual weilding is awesome and if Halo 3 didn't have it the game wouldn't be as good. I think 343i underestimates the impact of removing dual weilding and I think it is an essential part to the success of Halo multiplayer.

Some changes could be made to it though. For example if you try using a melee attack while dual weilding you should be able to do it without losing one of the guns you are weilding. That would make dual weilding more viable and even more fun than it already was. Little things like that can make huge impacts you'd never expect. It could improve the gameplay by a lot.

[Caboose The Ace]

perfectly balanced.....

 

 

Halo 4 being very unbalanced was one of the key things that really destroyed its community from the start. Lets face it for a long time the DMR was the best precision loadout weapon. Not until a patch that came out long after launch finally made the Br , lightrife , Carbine into weapons that were finally its true equal.

( Also  #NEVERFORGETHEBOLTSHOT

 

 

When Halo 5 launches all weapons must be very balanced and if they are not, it needs to be one of 343I topic priorities.

Edited May 30, 2014 by Caboose the Ace

[RedStarRocket91]

I actually think that since the introduction of reticule bloom, dual wielding would be even more balanced than before. Provided other automatics like the Assault Rifle had more controllable recoil and less maximum spread, I think it could work really well. Perhaps when dual-wielding weapons, reticules could expand twice as quickly and to twice their normal maximum spread levels, and then shrink back a little more slowly? That way there's a genuine drawback to compensate for the sheer firepower, and prevents damage tables from needing to be altered as with the older Halo titles.

 

Plus, it would open up the secondary weapons slot a little more. Something like the SMG is both weak and inaccurate when used by itself, but taken as a secondary it could become very deadly once another dual-wieldable weapon was picked up. Plus, it might mean we actually get another proper plasma weapon back again to give a racial equivalent, and I'm all in favour of that - I'm sick of 'plasma' weapons that just do regular damage rather than stripping shields really quickly and bouncing off armour.

[sindronian]

 #NEVERFORGETHEBOLTSHOT

How could I ever forget something that made me fear for my life every time I was within 5 feet of another enemy player? #DONTBRINGITBACK

[Is not JL]

Word

If they bring back DW I hope they don't do so through bloom implementation, because that will make people angry as heck.  It isn't compensation for firepower if you simply add a bunch of randomness in; there is a chance that your shots, while super close to the enemy, completely misses them. Fair? No. Or there's a chance that you're shooting a guy DW'ing from afar, and guess what? All his shots land right on you just by lucky bloom. Fair? No. It would become the new boltshot, except half the time you can kill people from long range and the other half of the time you won't hit a single shot despite good aim.

 

IMO recoil is the way to go. Each different duel wield combo had a different recoil pattern that you needed to master.

[Rue]

I sure hope they do! That was an awesome game feature

that was well balanced by having the ability to throw grenades

be disabled. I think players should again have the option

of having two guns or throwing grenades!!!

[BaconShelf]

In the Art of Halo 4, there are several SMG concepts and a spartan dual wielding. Also, animations for it were found in the game's files so it is likey that 343 wanted to return it but never had time to do so.

[Caboose The Ace]

^

 

Bacon I remember early on soon after Halo 4 was announced in a 343 Podcast stated the reason that duel wielding was not coming back was because they tried to implement it in the game. But overall felt it was OP.

 

 

( Explains those animations ) 

[RedStarRocket91]

If they bring back DW I hope they don't do so through bloom implementation, because that will make people angry as heck.  It isn't compensation for firepower if you simply add a bunch of randomness in; there is a chance that your shots, while super close to the enemy, completely misses them. Fair? No. Or there's a chance that you're shooting a guy DW'ing from afar, and guess what? All his shots land right on you just by lucky bloom. Fair? No. It would become the new boltshot, except half the time you can kill people from long range and the other half of the time you won't hit a single shot despite good aim.

 

That's a terrible way of looking at it, by that logic you might as well just ban all automatic weapons because they have spread and go to precision weapons only. Yes, if you use a weapon beyond its effective range, there's going to be some luck involved in the outcome - but that's the way it's always been, and yet most people aren't lining up to get rid of the Assault Rifle and SMG. And frankly, if someone insists on using their weapons at the wrong range, then if they get killed that's all to do with their own poor tactics and nothing to do with their weapons or spread.

[ZHOXEON113]

RedStarRocket91 I think spread is great but I don't think it should increase with continued fire that would suggest your his doesn't work properly or your gun magically gets worse accuracy I think Yolo has a goo d point about the recoil it seems in all more believable considering chief is using an aiming assistance device I.e. his hud

[Vaulting♥Frog]

While I hope it never does come back due to its impracticability on any sort of battlefield or firefight I expect it will at some point in order to quell the fans. 

 

That being said, IF it comes back then it definitely needs to be tweeked to the extreme. Visible bloom should be in with it just like every other weapon. Remember that it is only a visual representation of what has occurred in the games since their inception. I think RSR is going along the right lines on increasing the amount of inaccuracy with them and keeping them inaccurate for longer periods of time. It definitely would help balance them out to shorter ranges.

 

Reload speeds should also be increased. Seriously both hands are in use, the Spartans don't exactly have a third arm to load their weapons for them and trying to load one handed (while on the move no less) is extremely difficult. 

 

Offhand weapons I think should suffer a greater accuracy penalty than main hand weapons would. It should be a selection when creating your online Spartan avatar. Make them either left or right handed. This would change which side the weapons are on your screen as well, according to which ever hand is your dominant hand. Thus when you are dual wielding weapons your main hand (which ever it is) has slightly more accuracy than your offhand making you decide which weapon is more important for you to have in each hand. This inaccuracy can be displayed simply with a slightly larger bloom on the reticule as well as faster expansion than the main hand. 

[Buns]

While I hope it never does come back due to its impracticability on any sort of battlefield or firefight I expect it will at some point in order to quell the fans. 

 

Certain Brutes use a hammer that manipulates gravity in a local range when they could be using a heavy weapon that fires raidtion filled area of effect projectiles

 

Since when has Halo had practicality? Although I do see your point.

 

I'm not 100% sure how I feel about the DW topic. I could care less if it returns or not although if it did return I would want my Plasma Rifles back.

 

Plus most of the current weapons in Halo 4 aren't very feasible to be DWed. The only weapons that could be DW in the whole game are the Magnum, Plasma Pistol, and wow thats all I can remember. (You could also say Boltshot but no one wants that to be DW)

[ZHOXEON113]

R.o.f.l.o.l.

if for any reason whatsoever they don't bring back duel wielding the bolt shot would b the best reason I've seen people play entire matches with that gun it can b out right scary sometimes

[SilentGamer64]

While I hope it never does come back due to its impracticability on any sort of battlefield or firefight I expect it will at some point in order to quell the fans. 

 

First of all, gameplay trumps realism/practicability any day, especially in Halo. Secondly, tweeking it to the extreme the way you said above is going to do the opposite of "quell the fans". It's going to **** them off.

 

Bloom is a counter-intuitive mechanic for duel wielding, because DW is supposed to encourage close range spray and pray tactics. Bloom is a visual representation of increased inaccuracy to encourage burst firing, which works for two-handed weapons like the AR and other rifles, but NOT a bullet hose weapon like the SMG. If you're trying to burst fire duel SMG's, or even one SMG for that matter, you're doing it wrong. A medium-sized static crosshair that indicates the weapon's range through a red reticule will suffice for duel wield weapons.

 

Reload speeds for duel wields in Halo (save overheating/plasma weapons) have always been longer than most two-handed weapons. Increasing the reload time too much will make DW redundant, and leave fans of the mechanic unsatisfied.

 

Changing the accuracy of DW weapons based on the dominant hand would be extremely complicated and chaotic. You are suggesting two different reticules with different bloom/spread sizes. A lot of players will be confused and turned off by this, and I imagine it would be very hard to compensate one DW weapon over the other simultaneously in the heat of battle. I'm not against having left or right handed options for single wielding, but DW should be kept as simple as possible. The challenge that players will face when compensating DW weapons will come when they try duel wielding two different weapons, like the SMG and plasma rifle.

 

I personally want to see duel wielding find a middle ground of balance to the point where it isnt too OP like Halo 2's system, or too UP like Halo 3's system. Other than that, I dont want to see too much drastic change from Halo 2 and 3's DW mechanics.

[UNSTOPPABLE_395]

Dual wieldin Submachine guns is 1 of the best features of Halo, and I would totally buy Halo 5: Guardians if it had that feature.

[Is not JL]

Having Dual Wield in Halo 5 is genuinely going to be a stupid idea that will cause an uproar. Reasons?

 

There is very little aim assist, which helped mitigate some of the superhigh kick we had in Halo 2 and 3. Dual Wielding in Halo 5 would be much, MUCH harder to control because the kick pattern will have small variations each shot + the lack of the aim assist which...assits the player in aiming.

 

That, and the fact that kill times are so, SO much faster in Halo 5 Guardians if you land all your shots; a single SMG in Halo 5G will be able to take out a fully shielded Spartan just as fast if not faster than a Dual Wielded SMG in Halo 3 and 2, at double the range. 

 

Combine the two and you basically get the horror of a near-instakill dual wield. And to balance it, we really have two options:

 

One is bloom, the reasons of which I explained why would suck in a post above a few months ago; to counterbalance how powerful dual wielding in Halo 5G would be the amount of bloom would also be blasted up to crazy levels which is also an increase in randomness - and thusly a compression of the skillgap, which is a) No fun for anyone on the higher end of the spectrum and Not in the spirit of Halo 5G, which so far has been marketed as the 1337 MLG ESL HCS Pro Competitive Ranked Equal Start game.

 

I may have exaggerated it a bit, but that's because I like these types of competitive games.

 

The other way they can balance it is recoil. But I'm sure the recoil will be so powerful that you aim will literally go through the roof and your spartan will end up arching his/her back as if making a bridge.

 

Any other factors really don't make sense to me; Range of a gun doesn't magically get stunted; A drop in fire rate makes sense but that negates the point of Dual wielding in the first place; Buffing all the other weapons doesn't seem to be a good idea considering people are already mad that Halo 5G is taking too much from twitch shooters; and making the SMG really crappy isn't innovative or useful.

 

And finally, people have been playing the Halo 5: Guardians beta already. I'm sure if Dual Wielding is in Halo 5G we would be hearing about it already.

 

[00101101]

I hope dual wielding comes back too, dual-wield SMGs were the best.

[l Xenoes l]

I think it should be brought back. Why it was removed all together is beyond me. I think a lot of the smaller arms should be brought back like the Mauler, Brute Spikers, SMGs, and Plasma Rifles. It broke up the monotony of using nothing but the BR, DMR, Carbine type weapons. Every map would have the same weapons besides varied heavies depending if there was vehicle combat or not. One weapon that should NEVER be removed is the Rail Gun.  

[depressant]

I really hope they bring dual wielding back, though I doubt they will because 343 is not nearly as good as Bungie. Also, it's probably too late.

 

I loved thinking about charging at the enemy in slow motion, SMGs blasting, reloading both weapons either one while shooting the other, or both at the same time and showing them at the enemy.

 

Also, reloading your dual wielding magnums calmly as a flood combat form gets closer, then blast him in the face with both magnums :D

[XI James 116]

I would like to see it make a return but I'm doubtful that we will in Halo 5

[Ailean]

Never used dual wielding that much.It is fun to have plasma pistol and M6D pistol at once and make kills faster than having these 2 weapons separated.Anyways I preffer cycling those two weapons more than dual wielding but I admit it,yes it is also fun to play like that.Second,I wouldn't believe DW will come back.That's history now.Halo's going to evolve more.