343i, please fix BTB

First off, i like Halo 4, i find it fun to play…on the most part
343, you guys are awesome, i love every aspect of Halo 4 so far, except Big Team Slayer

i love BTB mostly for vehicles
Halo clicked with me because of the cool vehicles that one could drive

I always pictured BTB with a large focus on vehicular combat and teamwork
In halo 3, a competent Driver and Gunner could be unstoppable, however a good team could either seize power weapons/vehicles to eliminate said warthog, or do some epic team-like stuff, like flaking the hog when it’s distracted, or using a frag to flip the warthog over and take out the crew when they eject

even in Reach, where vehicles were almost made of paper, still some teamwork and know-how was present, people still had to go for power weapons, or they “Team-shot” the enemy vehicle

But in halo 4, one single person can easily take out a warthog
just with a plasma pistol and two Stickies

enemy warthog inbound? no problem, just Zap 'em an stick 'em,
two easy kills

there’s a hostile mantis near you? why should you take cover or find a power weapon if you have the tools to take it out now? just Zap the mantis, and climb onto its back, no biggy, 'cause it can’t fight back anyway

Hostile Scorpion? same as before, just zap it, and stick it/board it, the main gun can’t be used, so what’s the worry?
is there a gunner on that scorpion? Just stick him, and Zap the tank again!

it completely eliminates any need for teamwork, and destroys any reason to use most vehicles in the first place
i mean, we already have personal power weapon drops from ordnance, why should a driver have to worry about every SINGLE PLAYER being a fatal threat to their vehicle?

in past halo games, i could get my gunner 15+ kills easily, now i struggle to get more than three

the warthog itself is not that much of the problem, a good driver can allow his/her gunner to take care of targets withe ease
i’ve played a few games where almost no one used stickies, and i could easily get my gunner 10 or more kills in a LAAG warthog, and it was a really fun game for me

but in most games, i find myself getting blown up no longer than 30 seconds after i find a gunner

and yes, i know what i’m doing
i’m not the 90% of all drivers that just make a beeline for the enemy as a driver
and i don’t try and farm Road Trips either

i think a good solution is to make Sticky Grenades an Ordnance-only weapon

i know, they already are, but who actually calls them in? Very few people
why?
Because you can already spawn in with them
and the guys with Frag or pulse Grenades don’t want to call in them because they chose the grenades they want to use,they really don’t need more

it only takes two of them to blow a warthog up,
call me crazy, but those seem like stats for a reliable power weapon

and in normal Team Slayer/FFA, how many times have you come across the guy that you’re winning against, and you’ve almost killed, and all of a sudden, he just starts chucking his Plasmas at you? Much too often i assume
it can happen a lot less frequently if Stickies are an Ordnance-Only weapon

Now i move on to the Plasma Pistol:
i somewhat like the fact that you can spawn with one,
it prevents good vehicle pilots from dominating the entire team
like, for example, that Cardboard Dragon we like to refer to as the Banshee

however, the EMP time is ridiculous, and the homing projectile is annoying

In a warthog, if i’m EMP’d… it’s not too much of a problem, my gunner is usually already engaging the EMPer, so not too bad there, but it gets annoying when i can’t move more than five feet at a time without getting EMP’d

In a Scorpion, if i get EMP’d my main gun goes offline, so i can’t defend myself
even if i have a gunner, the enemy might just snipe him out/board through the rear
and if i get out, it’s just a free tank for them, because i get annihilated by gunfire as soon as i exit the vehicle

In the Mantis, the thing gets stalled so long via EMP, i can go to my kitchen, get a glass of water, drink half of it, and sit back down before i get un-frozen (i’d know, i’ve tried it once)

quite simply, it needs a MUCH shorter EMP time, and a much less agile Homing ability

now i’ll move on to the DMR

i find that it is not a problem to deal with on any other gametype, but since BTB takes place on very open maps, the DMR dominates over any other gun, a majority of the time

it’s not a huge problem for me, since i usually stick to vehicles, but when i DO go on foot, it gets me before i can properly retaliate

would a simple Rate-of-fire Nerf be acceptable?

in Lore, War games is training for Spartans
BTB i assume, trains Spartans abilities to drive, and eliminate vehicles

why should they make it so easy to take out the vehicles, and an Uber pain in the -Yoink- for one to Use a vehicle?

this training is supposed to encourage Spartans to work as a team, and to be versatile,tactical,and intelligent on the battlefield

it should not be teaching them how to rely on their weapons to do all the work for them.

i agree, the most easy fix is to lower the Plasma count to 1 off spawn.

it would cut the spam by HALF and make it impossible to kill a warthog off spawn unless you use a perk. a fair tradeoff if you ask me.

i just dont get why they let you spawn with 2 anyways, it is like they learned nothing from halo reach elite slayer.

> i agree, the most easy fix is to lower the Plasma count to 1 off spawn.

i personally think that plasma grenades shouldn’t be loadout grenades, they reward carelessness, and discourage skill, teamwork, and vehicle combat

you can still deal a lot of damage with one plasma

one Sticky on a hog, and it’s in Critical condition
one sticky on a mantis, and its shields are down
one sticky on a banshee, and it no longer has wings
etc.

:expressionless:

like i said, i agree with you BUT if they are going to have them, just limit them nad buff the warthogs like they did the ghost, make it 3 plasmas to kill. and nerf the DMRs damage against them too.

> like i said, i agree with you BUT if they are going to have them, just limit them nad buff the warthogs like they did the ghost, make it 3 plasmas to kill. and nerf the DMRs damage against them too.

they buffed the ghost?

seems much weaker to me…

> i just dont get why they let you spawn with 2 anyways, it is like they learned nothing from halo reach elite slayer.

people that just try and stick me make me SAD

ELITE Slayer was the worst

I think that the Plasma Pistol should be eliminated from Loadouts and a new weapon (or bring back the Grenade Launcher) should be put in as an Ordnance so people can still EMP if they’ve earned the right to have a weapon that has that ability.

Stickies should stay because if you’re not EMPed all the time then stickies aren’t as big of a deal.

Well, I am not going to author a 1000-word reply in order to balance the scales, but I really don’t think that there is a significant problem in Halo 4 BTB. After playing more than 400 Big Team matches, I can safely say that I have still seen many games decided by the effective utilization of the various vehicles.

343 has no idea what makes Halo fun. BTB objective is one of those things.

Plasma grenades need to be reduced to on or be removed from laodouts completely.

> Well, I am not going to author a 1000-word reply in order to balance the scales, but I really don’t think that there is a significant problem in Halo 4 BTB. After playing more than 400 Big Team matches, I can safely say that I have still seen many games decided by the effective utilization of the various vehicles.

i’ll assume that the LAAG warthog is at the bottom of the list

This is why custom loadouts is such a terrible idea. On small maps you can spawn with a shotgun and on big maps you can spawn with PP and plasma nades making vehicles useless. I can’t believe they didn’t notice this stuff in the 2 hours that halo 4 was tested before release.

> Well, I am not going to author a 1000-word reply in order to balance the scales, but I really don’t think that there is a significant problem in Halo 4 BTB. After playing more than 400 Big Team matches, I can safely say that I have still seen many games decided by the effective utilization of the various vehicles.

+1

I agree 100%. I have done over 800 games and think this setup is ok. I often get around 10 kills with (my favourite vehicle) the Banshee (and sometimes I got the rampage and also my only running riot so far) and don´t think more would be “fair”. Same with the Scorpion but in that case team work is the key. The Ghost is also pretty awesome in some maps (Shutter is my favourite “Ghost map”) where you can sneak and also get cover easily.

The only thing I avoid is the standard hog. The turret is very weak.

> The only thing I avoid is the standard hog. The turret is very weak.

which is why i find BTB not as fun anymore

the LAAG hog is halo’s signature vehicle, it deserves a better reputation in halo 4

In halo 3 we had on maps plasma pistols, plasma nades power drain, trip mines ,missle pods, brute shot ,gravity hammer, rockets and lasers which all help take down vehicles . In halo 4 all we have is rockets ,lasers, plasma pistol and nades. Without plasma pistol and plasma nades vehicles will dominate

You would think Inifiity wouldn’t make it’s vehicles out of paper mâché and chewing gum.

> In halo 3 we had on maps plasma pistols, plasma nades power drain, trip mines ,missle pods, brute shot ,gravity hammer, rockets and lasers which all help take down vehicles . In halo 4 all we have is rockets ,lasers, plasma pistol and nades. Without plasma pistol and plasma nades vehicles will dominate

i never said take them out of the game
i said remove them from loadouts

> You would think Inifiity wouldn’t make it’s vehicles out of paper mâché and chewing gum.

if only it was chewing gum

…chewing gum lasts a pretty long time

and have you ever tried getting dried Chewing gum off of the bottom of a desk? it’s impossibru