@Super87Ghost I almost never pick up the AR in BR starts. The BR is just so good that unless they barrel stuff you with the AR its very easy to burst them down before they get close enough. The SK is lethal though so i do accept that but even then it has way less range than the BR and the BR still over performs at that upper close to lower medium range generally.
The AR is decent and i don’t think it needs a buff i just think the BR is a tad too strong outside of its ideal usecase.
Yes, the BR is definitely strong at middle range. I agree with that. But also there it can find it’s match against the commando when the holder is decently skilled.
The problem is not that the BR is strong in almost every range, the problem is more that fights are often held in the range where the BR is strong at. This is also because most players like the BR and try to keep enemies at the distance for that weapon, so they don’t get outshined by other weapons.
@Super87Ghost I would be fine with the BR if i felt that was the case but i don’t see that when i play.
It feels more like people always holding onto the BR because its any easy crutch and why switch weapons/risk moving out of your spot to grab weapons more suited to closer ranges when the BR really isn’t at too big of a disadvantage at those closer ranges anyway?
Its always felt that way and Halo Infinite finally giving us an AR that does beat the BR at close range helps but the BR still feels just that tad bit too strong thus lessing the importance of other weapons to compliment it.
I feel the BR holds back weapon diversity and map movement. In custom games i make i usually never add whatever utility weapon the current Halo has to the map. When playing those maps and modes Halo feels so much more diverse and engaging to me. I would love to be able to enjoy the BR but when it is so oppressive in so many situations it puts a damper on things.
needs a complete rework of weapon balance
I am also pleasantly surprised that so far people agree with my maps idea. I thought suggesting that some maps should avoid having long ranged weapons to let vehicles shine on open maps would be unpopular but i think also long as it was in playlist labeled something like “The Garage” you would know the its a vehicle centered playlist.
First and foremost - FIX.THE.CONTROLS:
increase the sensivity to 20 at least, if not 30 - current turn speed is way too slow, sure, you can play with acceleration, but that makes the controls unpredictive, unprecise, so you either get speed or precision, but never both, while turning down (or completely removing) that awful acceleration and its wonky curve while increasing the sensivity of the raw input would greatly improve the game.
unified controls/gun behavior - it’s unthinkable to have each gun handled completely different than another, and yet it does in Infinite, Commando and Sentinel Beam are virtually uncontrollable on a controller, wheteas stuff like Bulldog, AR, Spanker play like a dream, it’s just so wrong and you’ll never have a decent sized community with something like that. My guess is it all has to do with the reticle size and/or aim assist that depends on reticle size and shape, so like I said - unify that, controls are what makes or breaks games on consoles, it’s been proven to death in the past 15 or so years already.
put aim-assist on the correct stick, a.k.a. the aiming stick, 'nuff said (and fire whoever though about/decided to put it on the left analog).
Once that’s sorted out and people stop abandoning the game due to how poorly it plays/controls, you can actually start thinking about further balancing and improvements:
nerf melee, to the ground - a simple button press depletes your entire shield and 80% HP, is this a shooter or Street Fighter? And there’s almost no cooldown between consecutive melees, which might even be OK if it wasn’t for the lounge, but it’s there and we have to learn to live with it. So long story short, turn down melee damage by like 20-30% at least, or make it insta-kill when you’re shoeldless but only remove a third, half at best of the shield, and double the cooldown time so it’s not as spammable like it is now, so people who actually put effort into shooting are rewarded instead of being penalized for trying to shoot in a shooter, duh.
Sidekick - turn down the HS bullet magnetism the same way it has beed done for BR recently. Also I’d turn down its rate of fire in favor of slightly increased damage, maje it fell more like H5 pistol.
AR, a.k.a. the gun everyone spends over 90% of time with and is the reason many people aren’t having fun with the game and abandon it - where to start? Huge recoil, huge bloom, and inability to hit headshots (tested on a dude that was afk), something needs to change. IMO just turning down the bloom would make wonders alone, because it’s ridiculous to have someone in the very center of the reticle and not hitting him at all because the bullets start to fly whenever the heck they want (and no I’m not talking about desync situations), again - controls are everything, so if you can’t control where you’re shooting, what’s the point of playing such game at all? You do that, increase the gun’s accuracy, and you can alongside decrease the damage since you won’t be missing that many shots anymore. And add headshots just like other guns do.
Commando - same as above, turn down the bloom and we’re set (after fixing the controls first that is).
Plasma Pistol and Ravager - disable ammo drain once fully charged, that’s really all that’s needed to make them useful, viable, and fun.
Plasma Carbine - increase projectiles velocity, that’s the gun’s only issue right now,
Stalker rifke - it’s a good, balanced gun, but let’s be honest, it’s dull and completely soulless due to how gluted the reticle is to the screen, so maybe add a bit of recoil to it, but increase the damage and decrease the rate of fire, so that you’ll have a gun that has some identity to it whete each shot actually counts, while temains its TTK,
Shock rifle - similar to above, feels somewhat soulless, and feels, heh, actually is useless unless you land a headshot, so similar adjustments needs to be made like it happened to Ravager’s primary fire, as right now you can upload while two clips into someone, all for nothing. And/or maybe increase the clip size.
Hydra - either increase missles speed or primary fire’s splash radius, right now it’s a great weapon only on Behemoth map and maybe Launch Site (and BTB), the rest of the maps are too tight for it to be useful.
Frag/Spike grenades - increase splash radius, especially fot Spike, or add more spikes, as it’s easily the weakest nafe type in the game. The frag nade has been rightfully netfed when it comes to its damage, but the effective radius feels too narrow, you get situations like for example King of the Hill whete you throw two frags and two spikes right in the middle of the field where entire team is aaand… nothing. Reminds of the Hudra’s nearly non-existent splash to be honest.
maybe limit the amount of nades to just two? So if you want to pick plasma or dyno, you excjange the frags, instead of having two sets of two.
The rest of the guns seem perfect as they are currently if you ask me.
Now, when it further comes to wrapons and the whole sandbox experience, I’d create a single rotation for each map instead of two different loadouts like we jave now, for example - a game starys with sniper rifle, so the next time there’s gonna be Skewer, then sniper, then skewer and so on. Starting power wealon is Spanker, so the next respawn will be Cinder, then Spanker again, and so on. Once you get Overshield, the next time Stealth, etc. This way each match would have significantly wider weapon variety.
If we’re at it, I’d add delay to power weapons/equipment, like at least 30s or something like that after the match started, not right from the start where all the players are desperately chasing and fighting for Spanker or Overshield.
Also - highlight the weapons and equipment that are available near you, I think that would help a lot to for especially newcomers to pick up something else than AR for once, there’s a scanner I know, but nobody uses it, similar to spotting, those are two features that were added with good intentions but aren’t really used by players, it just is what it is. So add those yellow icons for each gun/equipment like power weapons have, but reveal them only when the player is within some small proximity to the pod.
The motion tracker needs a rework, because in its current state it’s just a BS legal wallhack. The only thing it should reveal is show whenever someone is shooting, and when someone’s outside its range highlight him on the eges the way sprinting currently is. This simple change would dramatically, and I mean DRAMATICALLY improve the whole flow of the game, as people would know where the action is going on, when to go, as well as improve, actually allow to begin with, any tactical aporoach, especially in objective-based modes where you’d be able to flank the enemy, sneak them from behind, walk pass underneath/above them etc. unlike what’s going on with that build-in wallhack where everyone knows where are you going before you even go rhete and nades are being thrown at you before you even get from behind the corner…
Vehicles need to be actually destructible after receiving X of any sort of damage, right now bullets nor nades to anything, there isn’t a single day without someone on Reddit putting a clip of him getting 40+ kills just like that in a Wasp while the entire enemy team os constantly shooting at him, it BS and complete lack pf any nalance at all. The alien vehicles with constantly fully charing shields aren’t any better. So something needs to be addressed here. Also add cooldown to all tbose vehicles but increase the damage, so they kind of work like power weapons, whete ok, it’s easier to get kills but you have to eatn ot onstead of just hold your trigger and melt people without any penalty, whereas with a cooldown if you screw up you screw up, and now you have to wait a bit until you can try again.
Just a bunch of adjustments from on top pf my head, just some very basic, minor stuff that would lie a foundation to eventual further add-ons and improvements to the game.
So i like how both these weapons control on controller. The recoil of the Commando necessitates burtsing it at a range for full effectiveness and the Sentinel Beam does have crazy recoil but that keeps in the short range category by making it untenable at range.
I also disagree about changing radar the way you want it. Part of Halo is it has always had you on radar unless you were cloaked or crouched. It actually needs to be increased in how far it it shows to something closer to what previous Halos had which i think was 3 times what it is now.
I also disagree with your melee statement. I think its fine as is.
I also like the AR as is. I don’t want it to become too strong and feel its in a good spot.
I like some weapons having recoil and some having bloom because that would make each weapon feel vastly different in how they control requiring youbto learn different skills per weapon.
I’m not talking about the recoil, which I find to be fine on both of the guns, but the way they sort of kick whenever you move them left and right, it’s nearly impossible to lock them on on a target, especially a moving/strafing one (those two guns alone are reason why I always burst out laughing whenever some desperate PC guy say something about supposedly “stronk!” aim-assist).
Edit:
Another thing I’d love to see is “hold to pick” option for equipment, so that you don’t randomly pick up just anything whenever you have a free slot.
Also if two types of nades are here to stay, I’d like a toggle option that automatically switches you to the recently picked up nades, let’s say you’re going to pick up stickies and once picked up that’s the nade type that’s currently selected (although I think limiting the number of carried nades to just two would do the job and would be better balancing-wise).
That’s the smart thing to do. You’d have to reduce the accuracy of vehicle weapons to make open maps work without destroying infantry gameplay, but honestly the game needs that change anyway. The warthog chain gun being a boring laser is the easiest example of this.
I’ve always believed weapon range in general is a huge problem in Infinite. The 343 Halo games force you into medium and long range combat all the time due to map design and the weapon and vehicle sandboxes being designed around Sprint (Extended horizontal axis. Elongating playable spaces so sprint doesn’t break how long it takes to go from point A to point B). I will forever rag on Bungie for introducing sprint, and 343 for insisting on it. It’s the fundamental game mechanic around which all other gameplay mechanics are centered. It’s the source of nearly every gripe people have with Infinite’s gameplay.
@Canadianatlas I don’t agree that sprinting needs to go.
Games just can’t be as slow as Halo 3 was anymore. CE and Halo 3 are both in my top 10 favorite games but going back to play 3 especially you feel just way too slow.
Sprinting is needed because if you get rid of it you are back to being either slow like the older Halos or you need to make the movement speed as fast as Doom 2016 and that just wouldn’t work with Halo’s long TTK. I think sprinting is borderline necessary in all modern games unless you are something rare like Doom 2016.
You do know that all games in the original trilogy had the same movement speed and all games until H5G actually reduced the base movement speed in order to make sprint necessary in the first place?
I’m actually not sure what the final verdict is on Infinite, I never did any tests. Is BMS faster than the OT? Slower? Same? How much is the sprint speed? I remember that it was 9% above BMS in the flights but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s still that way in the current version.
LEAVE THE SKEWER ALONE!!! It’s balanced enough with slow reload and only one shot.
@ChaosFlame10000 The Skewer is just too easy to use. The Spartan laser had a charge and a laser you could see before the shot giving vehicles a bit of time to counter or hide. The Skewer has none of that. Along with the Hydra, Shock Rifle, Dynamo grenades, SPNKR, Sniper, Cindershot, and Grapple Hook there are just way too many vehicle counters.
Thats not even all the vehicle counters, just the best ones. You still have Frags, Spike nades, plasma nades, thrown Fusion coils, Disruptor, Invis lets you get close to hijack, group fire from Commandos and BRs can be effective against aerial vehicles or people in turrets, the rupulsor if you are a smaller vehicle, and other vehicles and players are still a threat.
I am not saying vehicles need to be unstoppable but dang do they have just way way way to many easy smooth brain counters that the vehicle has no chance against making them borderline worthless.
Plus it would be more fun to have the Skewer launching vehicles be its primary attribute instead of just damage.
halo 3 and infinite have the same average match lengths, so like you said its only a feeling of faster games. having sprint messes up the entire sandbox of halo, from vehicles, guns, map design and even teamwork.
they cant really remove sprint in infinte because of everything i listed, so what i say doesnt matter and instead i hope you guys get everything you want for this game.
One more thing that comes to mind and keeps me awake at night - why on earth respawns take so damn long?!? Should be 3s for kill-oriented modes like tdm, ffa, attrition, fiesta etc, and like at most 5s, if not also 3, for all the objective-base modes, especially given how the respawns work in those and how little time it takes to do the objectives.
It may have the same average time to cross a map but the maps are now bigger. Moving as slow as the old games i just don’t see working. All the games coming out now are faster and faster and personally i also prefer faster games. The Titanfall series was the best new IP for shooters in a long time and those games were incredibly fast.
I know they aren’t similar to Halo in the slightest but the palette of gamers seems to be moving towards faster and faster games. That said Titanfall 2 slowed down movement to allow for greater control while wall running and counter play by Titans. MW2 is also a bit slower than MW 2019 was. So i think there is a good balance but movement as slow as the older Halo’s just doesn’t seem to be attractive.
Just increasing sprint to 110% in custom games makes wonders, you actually move faster than default walking and feel a noticable difference, but not too fast, unrealistic, which 120% speed (and above) does. Also increasing clumber and reload speeds to 120-130% make the game feel much better. All the above combined fell like a much better match for the game’s TTK, while completely remaining the game’s identity. Also as I mentioned above, decreasing resoawn time down to 3s like many other games have also helps a lot, now you are forced to watch your lying corpse for no reason, those 8s are a bit to much and break the immersion, it sort of kicks you out of the game in a sense.
The average ttk in infinite isn’t any faster than the older games.
It is possible a player with Repulsor can block the Grappleshot, when tethered - causing similar blowback as a powered melee. If not, 343 could test encounters internally to see if gameplay can support it.