A Civil Approach to Fixing Loadouts

Games Other Halo
1

I’ve noticed that there have been a lot of complaints about loadouts in this game. I have a lot of complaints about them too. Which is why I’m going present a solution to them. My solution is by no means perfect, but I’ll try to address all of the major complaints. These include primary weapon balance, secondary weapon balance, and armor ability balance. I don’t think there are any glaring errors in the tactical packages, support upgrades, or grenades. [EDIT: Some people seem to advocate spawning with one plasma and two pulse grenades. I agree.] The pulse grenade, I believe, would have its problem solved when KotH is released again. So, I will start off by addressing primary weapon balance.

PRIMARY WEAPON BALANCE

Let’s start off by showing the current killtimes for each primary. These killtimes are 100% accurate because they were gotten through a frame by frame analysis in theater mode.

DMR- 1.47 seconds
BR- 1.73 seconds
Carbine- 1.63 seconds
LR (unscoped)- 1.77 seconds
LR (scoped)- 1.4 seconds
AR- 1.5 seconds
Storm Rifle- 1.4 seconds
Suppressor- 1.2 seconds

Okay. The major complaint about the DMR is simply because it holds far too many advantages and very few disadvantages. It has the second fastest killtime of the precision weapons, it is laser accurate, and it has the farthest aim assist range. Plus it has ridiculous bullet magnetism. Also, its one and only killtime disadvantage to the scoped LR is offset by the fact that it is only by 0.7 seconds, it has more aim assist and bullet magnetism, and it also has a much farther range than the LR. Oh, and for those of you scratching your head over the Suppressor’s killtime, it only seems to suck because it has a HUGE amount of bloom. Trust me. At shotgun range, it rips things up. So, now let’s get into my solution.

Step 1: Fix the DMR.

The only thing I will do to the DMR is half its bullet magnetism to about the amount it had in Reach. I don’t want to nerf it too bad as to not punish DMR users too much, and honestly, nerfing weapons always turns into trouble anyway, so the rest of my solution is in the other weapons being tweaked.

Step 2: Fix the Carbine.

I think we can all agree that the Carbine right now isn’t very good in general. My first order of business would be to make it a 7sk. It was a 7sk in the E3 build, but after that, they nerfed it to and 8sk AND they made it have more spread. Wow. See what I mean about nerfing? The spread can be the same, but it needs to be a 7sk. I would also make it have a 21 bullet magazine, because it already has plenty of other disadvantages to even it out.

Step 3: Fix the BR.

The BR needs a killtime buff. I would make it a 4sk (12 bullet kill), but reduce the rate of fire to 14 frames in between shots instead of the current 13 frames. This would give it a killtime identical to the DMR. Awesome. Then the BR would outclass the DMR in close range because of bleedthrough, aim assist, and burst fire. They would be equal at medium range. The DMR would be better at long range. The BR also now has an advantage over the DMR in terms of magazine size to damage output ratio.

Step 4: Fix the LR.

I would make the unscoped LR as powerful as the current BR (13 bullet kill). I’d make the unscoped LR fire every 12 frames rather than every 13, and I’d make the scoped LR fire every 13 frames rather than every 14. This is very interesring. The unscoped LR would be slower than all the other precisions by 0.13 or 0.2 seconds. However, it would have a 1.3 second killtime scoped in. So it sucks at close range and rocks at long range. Awesome. At long range it would tie the DMR for reasons stated above, and it would also have a very interesting skill gap because of the whole mixing of scoped and unscoped shots thing, while still not becoming completely overpowered because of its minimal aim assist and bullet magnetism.

Step 5: Fix the automatics.

To offset all of the killtime buffs in the precisions, I would make the AR and SR each kill in one bullet less, and I would make the max bloom of the Suppressor 75% of what it is now.

Now let’s look at the new killtimes.

DMR- 1.47 seconds
BR- 1.47 seconds
Carbine- 1.4 seconds
LR (unscoped)- 1.6 seconds
LR (scoped)- 1.3 seconds
AR- 1.4 seconds
SR- 1.3 seconds
Suppressor- 1.2 seconds

Much better, don’t you think? Now that the primaries are taken care of, let’s move on to secondaries.

SECONDARY WEAPON BALANCE

Step 1: Fix the Boltshot.

Well, well, well. The Boltshot. The pocket shotgun. That overpowered secondary. Whatever you know it as, you know it needs tweaking. The fact that we buffed the automatics already makes it less powerful. My suggestion is not to nerf the range, but to make it act like a Spartan Laser: the charged shot will shoot if and only if you charge it up for a specific amount of time. This would make it a lot harder to use and it would make it harder to recover from a missed shot, something I personally suffer from all the time already. In addition, I would make the Boltshot a 7sk for its regular shots, because it is kinda hard to aim and it needs a better primary shot.

Step 2: Fix the Magnum.

We need the Magnum to be a more viable choice. So I was thinking about how to make it a 5sk without making the Flagnum pointless. And this is my genius idea: give the Magnum bleedthrough. This would make it similar to the current unscoped LR. 5 headshots to pop shields/kill and 8 bodyshots to kill. The Flagnum would become a 4sk. This would make the Magnum actually viable compared to the Boltshot, while not being absolutely overpowered, because it has less range and aim assist than some of the other primaries. If necessary, I could also make the bloom on the Magnum slightly larger, maybe by 25%.

Step 3: Fix the Plasma Pistol.

I think we can all agree that the PP is mostly just for BTB. Therefore, my only change to it would be to make it lose ammo slightly slower, because it doesn’t seem fair for the other secondaries to be buffed and for the PP to not be.

ARMOR ABILITY BALANCE

Step 1: Fix Active Camo.

To balance Camo, I would make it last only 75% as long and also reduce the amount of scrambling dots on the motion tracker. That way, you can know when someone is using Camo and see them on the motion tracker easily, but it is still hard to see them.

Step 2: Fix Promethean Vision.

The only thing I’d do is make it last only 75% as long, just like Active Camo. You can already see the PV wave on the motion tracker, and you can counter it with Stealth or Active Camo.

Step 3: Fix Thruster Pack.

This is the only one I’m not sure about. I think it should go about 25% farther, but then I’d extend the recharge time by about 1 second (0.5 seconds for AA Efficiency). I don’t think people really use it every 3 seconds, and I think it should go farther so it can actually evade more effectively.

And that’s it. That’s what I’d do to fix loadouts. Now obviously, there are other problems about the game, but this is a big one and this is my favorite solution. Tell me if you think I should add something or if you disagree. Please be civil. And never give up on this game. It has great potential.

2

I kind of agree

I would just make camo a power up and completely remove it also make gamemodes where theres only one loadout like how swat should have been. I would like a longer thruster pack yes but as it is its almsot perfect to me. Promethean vision to me should just give you like a flash of where someone is when used like the last known position ability in splinter cell conviction and then immidiatly it disipates over like 2 seconds. Boltshot should have a reduced range take up all shots when charged and maybe just have it take your shields away.

3

I agree with these switches. Well said sir.

4

Love your ideas about the primary weapon balance and the boltshot. I’m not sure about the plasma pistol though; to me, the ability to spawn with a plasma pistol secondary AND sticky grenades (3 of them no less, and buffed ones if you pick both those perks,) completely wrecks the dynamic of vehicle combat. Anything other than a banshee, tank or Gauss hog becomes a big moving death trap when anyone can spawn with an anti-vehicle loadout. I’d say that the plasma pistol’s EMP effect on vehicles should be the Operator perk’s effect by default, and the wheelman mod should either make you immune to EMP or a very small half a second to one second window.

As for the AAs, I’m not sure about increasing the Thruster Pack’s time to recharge. I’d either leave the ability itself as is and give it two charges per use like evade, or buff it to the campaign version’s functionality and give it one charge per use. Maybe the campaign version would need a longer recharge, but I think that’d be a much more worthwhile ability. The Thruster Pack is pretty underwhelming as is.

5

Agree with the direction
Disagree with ALL the solutions
Im not going to go through the multiple faults most of the changes would cause but the basic idea is on track.

6

Going to get hit with a ton of hate but i don’t think any of the weapons or any of the load out items in general need editing. I have spent a good amount of time with all of the weapons and AA’s. I’m only an above average player so its not like i’m amazing.

The carbine is an amazing weapon if you know how to roll with it. It along with the BS require you to stack the odds in your favor to make it be the monster it is. A good example is this time i got a tripple kill with it agains 3 DMR users on heaven. grenade headshot the first guy out strafed the second guy then with my shields at 50% i jumped back words while firing to get over a small ledge. waited a second and threw a grenade to flush him out and finished him off.

the thruster pack is also very dear to me. It has a high learning curve. used to dodge grenades splatters stickies melees. If you get good you can thrust behind players for a back smack.

if any weapons got tweaked i would like the grav hammer to be looked at. Its splash damage is smaller then the past making it much harder to gain kills with.

7

Oh, just remembered some more tweaks: Spartan Laser’s anti-infantry power, the Railgun’s splash damage/anti-vehicle power, and the Scattershot’s “lotteryshot” damage output. I’m not asking for the OP Halo 3 laser back, but it’s pretty ridiculous how you can direct hit someone with the splaser sometimes and it just pops their shields. I was under the impression going into the game that the Railgun was going to be a man-portable version of the Gauss Hog’s turret as a power weapon, but it does a really underwhelming amount of damage against vehicles and has weak splash damage.

The most aggravating one though for me has got to be the Scattershot (or “Lotteryshot” as some of us have taken to calling it.) It’s supposed to be a power weapon, but consistently loses to boltshot users up close, and randomly chokes at killing people inside of its intended range. It’ll randomly get a 1sk from like 30 feet, then take 4 shots to pop someone’s shields up close. Make it consistent, and give it a slightly longer range than the shotty to make up for its smaller magazine and smaller 1sk chance.

8

OP, I love everything you have said but there are still a few things I would change:

  1. The BR will still be inferior to the DMR. If the BR’s min kill time is the same (as the DMR’s) with a 12 bullet kill that means 4 perfect shots are required for a kill. I say leave its RoF alone and buff it to a 12 bullet kill. The DMR will win at range and the BR up close.

  2. Automatics do not even require the slightest bit of aiming skill. Buff the damage accordingly, but reduce the ammount of aim assist.

9

I agree with everything except making the thruster packs time longer than it is already. The thing is already the underpowered armor ability, why nerf it even more?!

Also, they need to take out plasma grenades from starting loadouts. They should only be map pickup. I’m tired of people running up in my face, sticking me and running away.

10

So what your basically saying is…

“Hey 343i fix everything in the game!!”

Wow…I think everything is fine as it is.

11

> I agree with everything except making the thruster packs time longer than it is already. The thing is already the underpowered armor ability, why nerf it even more?!
>
> Also, they need to take out plasma grenades from starting loadouts. They should only be map pickup. I’m tired of people running up in my face, sticking me and running away.

I said that I would increase the distance on the thruster pack in exchange for lengthening the recharge time a little. I doubt anyone uses it as soon as it recharges anyway.

As for the stickies, a solution could be to make it so that you spawn with only one and get an extra with Grenadier.

12

> > I agree with everything except making the thruster packs time longer than it is already. The thing is already the underpowered armor ability, why nerf it even more?!
> >
> > Also, they need to take out plasma grenades from starting loadouts. They should only be map pickup. I’m tired of people running up in my face, sticking me and running away.
>
> I said that I would increase the distance on the thruster pack in exchange for lengthening the recharge time a little. I doubt anyone uses it as soon as it recharges anyway.
>
> As for the stickies, a solution could be to make it so that you spawn with only one and get an extra with Grenadier.

I still don’t think that’s enough for thruster.

I also still think that’s too overpowered. You should start with frags or plasmas depending on what map. Everybody should start with frags or plasmas depending on the map. It doesn’t change anything if they have 1 instead of two, they’re still gonna abuse them.

13

Personally I hate suggesting changes to how a company has made a game, unless it’s just a total failure. And Halo 4 is far from that. But I like the direction this post is headed.

One little suggestion on AA:

Not to fussed with CAMO as it is, but I’d prefer CAMO to be much shorter in length e.g. 50% less, BUT allow it’s full effect even when at full sprint. In this way, it might then be used as a recon AA, or a means of moving from point to point instead of being a camping AA. Also, the radar scramble effect was better IMO.

PROM. Vision - Agree with shorten of time. It already seems overpowered.

Thruster - initially agreed to range increase. But since seeing the increase in range when speed boost power up is applied, I decided it suits just as it is.

14

> I agree with everything except making the thruster packs time longer than it is already. The thing is already the underpowered armor ability, why nerf it even more?!
>
> <mark>Also, they need to take out plasma grenades from starting loadouts. They should only be map pickup. I’m tired of people running up in my face, sticking me and running away.</mark>

You should only be able to spawn with one sticky by default, and should be able to spawn with two pulse grenades normally. Pulse grenades need a buff too, they’re really only good at blocking doors and stripping shields. Maybe give them an EMP effect on vehicles and make the shield stripping effect deplete health at the same rate?

15

> Personally I hate suggesting changes to how a company has made a game, unless it’s just a total failure. And Halo 4 is far from that. But I like the direction this post is headed.
>
> One little suggestion on AA:
>
> Not to fussed with CAMO as it is, but I’d prefer CAMO to be much shorter in length e.g. 50% less, BUT allow it’s full effect even when at full sprint. In this way, it might then be used as a recon AA, or a means of moving from point to point instead of being a camping AA. Also, the radar scramble effect was better IMO.
>
> PROM. Vision - Agree with shorten of time. It already seems overpowered.
>
> <mark>Thruster - initially agreed to range increase. But since seeing the increase in range when speed boost power up is applied, I decided it suits just as it is.</mark>

Right, because people get speed boost all the time and want to pick it over more useful options… haha

Seriously though, why isn’t the thruster pack the way it is in campaign for multiplayer? I don’t see how that would be overpowered at all, you’re still vulnerable while thrusting and it only gets one charge as opposed to Reach’s evade.

16

Reduce the number of stickies at spawn to 1.

Weaker Secondary fires on both Boltshot and Plasma pistol,
And stronger primary fires on them both.

Buff for the Grav hammer.

I like your list, not sure if it’s the best choices as your giving the weapons much faster killtimes, but if it balances them out then I’m fine.

17

> Personally I hate suggesting changes to how a company has made a game, unless it’s just a total failure. And Halo 4 is far from that. But I like the direction this post is headed.
>
> One little suggestion on AA:
>
> Not to fussed with CAMO as it is, but I’d prefer CAMO to be much shorter in length e.g. 50% less, BUT allow it’s full effect even when at full sprint. In this way, it might then be used as a recon AA, or a means of moving from point to point instead of being a camping AA. Also, the radar scramble effect was better IMO.
>
> PROM. Vision - Agree with shorten of time. It already seems overpowered.
>
> Thruster - initially agreed to range increase. But since seeing the increase in range when speed boost power up is applied, I decided it suits just as it is.

No, your camo idea would be horrible. Being able to stay full camo and moving at full speed, even sprinting? Are you insane? That would be the only AA anybody would use. It’s already ridiculous as it is.

Also, thruster is insanely underpowered to the other AA’s. The fact that it gets a boost when you get speed boost doesn’t matter. I hardly every see anybody with speedboosts. It needs a buff.

18

> I’ve noticed that there have been a lot of complaints about loadouts in this game. I have a lot of complaints about them too. Which is why I’m going present a solution to them. My solution is by no means perfect, but I’ll try to address all of the major complaints. These include primary weapon balance, secondary weapon balance, and armor ability balance. I don’t think there are any glaring errors in the tactical packages, support upgrades, or grenades. [EDIT: Some people seem to be advocating spawning with only one plasma (without Grenadier) and 2 pulse grenades. I agree.] The pulse grenade, I believe, would have its problem solved when KotH is released again. So, I will start off by addressing primary weapon balance.
>
> PRIMARY WEAPON BALANCE
>
> Let’s start off by showing the current killtimes for each primary. These killtimes are 100% accurate because they were gotten through a frame by frame analysis in theater mode.
>
> DMR- 1.47 seconds
> BR- 1.73 seconds
> Carbine- 1.63 seconds
> LR (unscoped)- 1.77 seconds
> LR (scoped)- 1.4 seconds
> AR- 1.5 seconds
> Storm Rifle- 1.4 seconds
> Suppressor- 1.2 seconds
>
> Okay. The major complaint about the DMR is simply because it holds far too many advantages and very few disadvantages. It has the second fastest killtime of the precision weapons, it is laser accurate, and it has the farthest aim assist range. Plus it has ridiculous bullet magnetism. Also, its one and only killtime disadvantage to the scoped LR is offset by the fact that it is only by 0.7 seconds, it has more aim assist and bullet magnetism, and it also has a much farther range than the LR. Oh, and for those of you scratching your head over the Suppressor’s killtime, it only seems to suck because it has a HUGE amount of bloom. Trust me. At shotgun range, it rips things up. So, now let’s get into my solution.
>
> Step 1: Fix the DMR.
>
> The only thing I will do to the DMR is half its bullet magnetism to about the amount it had in Reach. I don’t want to nerf it too bad as to not punish DMR users too much, and honestly, nerfing weapons always turns into trouble anyway, so the rest of my solution is in the other weapons being tweaked.
>
> Step 2: Fix the Carbine.
>
> I think we can all agree that the Carbine right now isn’t very good in general. My first order of business would be to make it a 7sk. It was a 7sk in the E3 build, but after that, they nerfed it to and 8sk AND they made it have more spread. Wow. See what I mean about nerfing? The spread can be the same, but it needs to be a 7sk. I would also make it have a 21 bullet magazine, because it already has plenty of other disadvantages to even it out.
>
> Step 3: Fix the BR.
>
> The BR needs a killtime buff. I would make it a 4sk (12 bullet kill), but reduce the rate of fire to 14 frames in between shots instead of the current 13 frames. This would give it a killtime identical to the DMR. Awesome. Then the BR would outclass the DMR in close range because of bleedthrough, aim assist, and burst fire. They would be equal at medium range. The DMR would be better at long range. The BR also now has an advantage over the DMR in terms of magazine size to damage output ratio.
>
> Step 4: Fix the LR.
>
> I would make the unscoped LR as powerful as the current BR (13 bullet kill). I’d make the unscoped LR fire every 12 frames rather than every 13, and I’d make the scoped LR fire every 13 frames rather than every 14. This is very interesring. The unscoped LR would be slower than all the other precisions by 0.13 or 0.2 seconds. However, it would have a 1.3 second killtime scoped in. So it sucks at close range and rocks at long range. Awesome. At long range it would tie the DMR for reasons stated above, and it would also have a very interesting skill gap because of the whole mixing of scoped and unscoped shots thing, while still not becoming completely overpowered because of its minimal aim assist and bullet magnetism.
>
> Step 5: Fix the automatics.
>
> To offset all of the killtime buffs in the precisions, I would make the AR and SR each kill in one bullet less, and I would make the max bloom of the Suppressor 75% of what it is now.
>
> Now let’s look at the new killtimes.
>
> DMR- 1.47 seconds
> BR- 1.47 seconds
> Carbine- 1.4 seconds
> LR (unscoped)- 1.6 seconds
> LR (scoped)- 1.3 seconds
> AR- 1.4 seconds
> SR- 1.3 seconds
> Suppressor- 1.2 seconds
>
> Much better, don’t you think? Now that the primaries are taken care of, let’s move on to secondaries.
>
> SECONDARY WEAPON BALANCE
>
> Step 1: Fix the Boltshot.
>
> Well, well, well. The Boltshot. The pocket shotgun. That overpowered secondary. Whatever you know it as, you know it needs tweaking. The fact that we buffed the automatics already makes it less powerful. My suggestion is not to nerf the range, but to make it act like a Spartan Laser: the charged shot will shoot if and only if you charge it up for a specific amount of time. This would make it a lot harder to use and it would make it harder to recover from a missed shot, something I personally suffer from all the time already. In addition, I would make the Boltshot a 7sk for its regular shots, because it is kinda hard to aim and it needs a better primary shot.
>
> Step 2: Fix the Magnum.
>
> We need the Magnum to be a more viable choice. So I was thinking about how to make it a 5sk without making the Flagnum pointless. And this is my genius idea: give the Magnum bleedthrough. This would make it similar to the current unscoped LR. 5 headshots to pop shields/kill and 8 bodyshots to kill. The Flagnum would become a 4sk. This would make the Magnum actually viable compared to the Boltshot, while not being absolutely overpowered, because it has less range and aim assist than some of the other primaries. If necessary, I could also make the bloom on the Magnum slightly larger, maybe by 25%.
>
> Step 3: Fix the Plasma Pistol.
>
> I think we can all agree that the PP is mostly just for BTB. Therefore, my only change to it would be to make it lose ammo slightly slower, because it doesn’t seem fair for the other secondaries to be buffed and for the PP to not be.
>
> ARMOR ABILITY BALANCE
>
> Step 1: Fix Active Camo.
>
> To balance Camo, I would make it last only 75% as long and also reduce the amount of scrambling dots on the motion tracker. That way, you can know when someone is using Camo and see them on the motion tracker easily, but it is still hard to see them.
>
> Step 2: Fix Promethean Vision.
>
> The only thing I’d do is make it last only 75% as long, just like Active Camo. You can already see the PV wave on the motion tracker, and you can counter it with Stealth or Active Camo.
>
> Step 3: Fix Thruster Pack.
>
> This is the only one I’m not sure about. I think it should go about 25% farther, but then I’d extend the recharge time by about 1 second (0.5 seconds for AA Efficiency). I don’t think people really use it every 3 seconds, and I think it should go farther so it can actually evade more effectively.
>
> And that’s it. That’s what I’d do to fix loadouts. Now obviously, there are other problems about the game, but this is a big one and this is my favorite solution. Tell me if you think I should add something or if you disagree. Please be civil. And never give up on this game. It has great potential.

19

If adding things is possible to the game’s sandbox, I’d like to see the Halo 1 plasma rifle return as a loadout option. I miss having a useful automatic weapon that could be accurate for more than 30 feet and had a distinct role in the sandbox. (“Plasma freeze.”)