Hey everybody, first post on the forums. I’m a long-time veteran of Halo multiplayer since CE, and so far I’m really enjoying the Halo 5 beta for the most part. I’m going to be offering a more comprehensive Week 1 feedback later in the week, but for now I wanted to immediately address an issue many have been discussing, and that is TTK.
For starters, I’ve always been the type to enjoy competitive Halo over more casual player. I’ve played CE and 2 at the competitive level, and in fact I continue to play CE regularly. My opinions will obviously be slanted to that state, but I’d like to offer up feedback that would enable vanilla Halo 5 and its competitive variants to feel very similar, as I believe this is key to success in maintaining a broadly enjoyed game.
I have seen a very common complaint being that all of the weapons are “too OP”. Many are calling for TTK to be raised across the board, and suggesting that this would somehow raise the individual skill gap. My initial point would be this: we’ve gone this route before, and it had the exact opposite effect. Halo CE, to this day, still possesses the fastest TTK, at .6 seconds with a perfect pistol TSK. And yet there is a perfect balance achieved; I can easily outgun two lesser skilled players, but at a higher level of play teamshooting will still be a necessary tactic to prevail. But in the days of Halo CE, before Halo 2 was released to the world, there was a substantial portion of the community that felt the pistol was too dominant in gameplay The notion was that most of the sandbox wasn’t being used, and they felt this was a problem.
Bungie’s solution was not to buff up the other weapons in the sandbox, as we all know. The pistol was nerfed drastically into the BR, which, while still very competent, had a perfect TTK that was more than twice as long as the pistol’s. Automatic weapons, however, still remained virtually useless. The problem of an unbalanced sandbox was not solved, but what was created was a game that was now far less about individual talent and more about the ability of a team to deal damage while mitigating their own. Even a player of middling skill could retreat fairly easily before the fourth and finishing burst. Even worse, the weapon itself was much easier to use.
This problem was exacerbated in Halo 3. While the new BR was more difficult to use, its TTK was higher still, and auto weapons still had little purpose. I was playing Halo 3 with my Halo CE partner one day, who was beginning to get quite good at 3. In teaching me the differences, his most important tip was this: never trade shots with someone. It was sound advice, but I didn’t enjoy the gameplay, and we both went back to CE rather permanently.
Then came the era of armor abilities, and more importantly, sprint. With Halo Reach and Halo 4, a new problem arose: the incredibly high TTK, coupled with the ability to rapidly sprint away, produced two games where a mediocre player could make a bad move and escape with his life intact.
Now we come to Halo 5, and while we now have a much faster TTK than any Halo since CE, we also still have a sprint that is rather effective at mitigating a poorly made decision. We have a thruster ability that can launch players back to cover quicker than ever. Let’s be honest: everyone on here has escaped a bad decision with these mechanics, likely several times. I have undoubtedly made overly aggressive plays and lived to tell about it in ways that I shouldn’t have due to these new mechanics. I have seen players on Truth sprint from bottom mid to Red One faster than a perfect kill could be achieved. I would suggest the following:
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Maintain a low TTK, for the most part. A low TTK is better for fast, arena-style gameplay. A low TTK allows a quick and skilled player to dominate multiple attackers if they are unprepared, or unable to exact a perfect kill.
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A low TTK punishes players who make bad decisions. When one wrong step can send you to the respawn screen, you must learn something every CE player knows: never overextend (unless you can make the perfect kill).
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There is a strong precedent for low TTK in the Halo series. The new BR kills at roughly 1.3 seconds, which is an eternity compared to the .6 second CE pistol.
Now, what do we change? How do we tweak things to be optimal?
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The AR, for the first time, has a very prominent role in the sandbox. While I will undoubtedly spend more time with BR starts, there are many who have always lobbied for the AR to have its place, and they shouldn’t be disenfranchised. I would suggest leaving it alone, and instead bring the BR down to an even 1 second TTK. This is, effectively, how Halo CE’s sandbox should’ve been altered in Halo 2: rather than drastically nerfing the pistol (now the BR) and leaving the autos weak, we have now beefed up the AR while only slightly raising the TTK of our utility weapon.
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To balance this change in utility weapons, and to promote a more skillful game in general, hitbox adjustments will need to be made. Sticky aim levels seem to be mostly fine, and in fact I would say are lower than any game since CE. The hitbox for a perfect headshot, however, seems to need some adjustment. For starters, it seems to sit a bit low: initially I would shoot over an enemy’s head, but by aiming more for the upper body, I’ve achieved drastically more Perfect Kills. Raise the hitbox up a bit, making the transition from bodyshots to headshots a bit harder. In addition, the hitbox seems to extend to the sides a bit far: I’ve hit many headshots that seemed like they should’ve almost clipped the enemy’s shoulder.
Well, that got long-winded. To summarize, I propose the following:
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Leave the AR alone. People have always wanted it to have a spot and now it has one.
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In the wake of new movement options and a beefier AR, let’s bring the utility weapons closer to Halo CE speeds, at the cost of making them slightly more difficult to use.
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The result: the AR will still be beastly which will please casual players, and competitive players will love utility weapons that are simultaneously more punishing and more difficult to properly learn. All players will benefit from a game with a higher skill gap and less opportunity to escape from a bad play.
That’s all for now. I’ll be back later in the week with a comprehensive list of week 1 feedback. See you on the battlefield!