All weapons need to be good "Halo CE"

Games Halo 5: Guardians
1

Halo CE
Had dominant and power weapons. However every gun had a use, skill, purpose. No “Tool weapons”.

Vehicles too, a ghost could take out a tank, and so on.

Plasma weapons had use, felt powerful, and acted unique.

Halo since then
Dominant rifle is good in all scenerios 50+% of the time. Other then power weapons most small arms are pointless if not duel wielded or in very strict areas.

In Halo CE ive beaten Pistol users on Hang Em High with assault rifles using proper cover, aim and skills. Yet in Halo 3 or Reach or 4 you rarely see a weaker weapon beat a rifle in any other fight than close combat and/or with luck/team fire.

So whats this all mean, for Halo 5

Means every gun needs a use other than “Oh it stuns vehicles but nothing else”. Distance and such isn’t good enough. Why does a storm rifle feel like a weaker Assault Rifle? Why is a shotgun limited to 5 feet? Why does one weapon make up 50+% of all kills.

The Halo CE pistol was OP, strongest damn gun in Halo almost. Yet it wasn’t the only good gun, every gun in Halo CE could be used, learned, mastered and used. My brother would whoop my -Yoink- in Halo CE with a plasma pistol back in the day, even when I spammed the pistol and power weapons. You would rarely see that today.

The BR/Carbine/LR are good, and yes having them be most efficient is ok. Yet dont take away the good from other guns. Here’s some examples

Plasma Weapons: Slight stun, higher shield damage.

Side Arms: Faster take out speed (i.e switcing to pistol is faster than switching to other weapon or reloading)

Promethean weapons: Hard to tell. Perhaps the best of Human and Covie weapons, yet more rare. These guns would be “Power weapons”, where even the boltshot would be worth getting. And since no loadouts it would be fine. Perhaps these weapons overall would do more damage. Like the Light Rifle would be a 3-4 shot kill body but hard to use, or the suppressor would freeze enemies for easier kills.

2

> In Halo CE ive beaten Pistol users on Hang Em High with assault rifles using proper cover, aim and skills. Yet in Halo 3 or Reach or 4 you rarely see a weaker weapon beat a rifle in any other fight than close combat and/or with luck/team fire.
>
> …
>
> The Halo CE pistol was OP, strongest damn gun in Halo almost. Yet it wasn’t the only good gun, every gun in Halo CE could be used, learned, mastered and used. My brother would whoop my -Yoink!- in Halo CE with a plasma pistol back in the day, even when I spammed the pistol and power weapons. You would rarely see that today.

This sounds like BS. Stuff you’ve twisted to support your argument.

Just because a higher-skilled player can beat a lower-skilled player even while handicapped does not mean the handicap does not exist.

3

OPs examples are exageratted, but I think the overall idea is good.

That is something I loved about Halo CE. Pistol was super powerful, but so was almost everything else in their own regard. (Everything except AR IMO.)

4

> The Halo CE pistol was OP, strongest damn gun in Halo almost. Yet it wasn’t the only good gun, every gun in Halo CE could be used, learned, mastered and used. My brother would whoop my -Yoink!- in Halo CE with a plasma pistol back in the day, even when I spammed the pistol and power weapons. You would rarely see that today.

I’m not quite sure what you’re trying to point out with this, I don’t feel the pistol needs any adjustment at this point in time.

5

I definitely agree with this sentiment. Halo has been filled with far to many useless weapons as well as too many clones.

People may debate the overall balance of CE, but I don’t think you can really argue that each weapon did not have a unique place in the sandbox. The plasma rifle was more than the ‘blue smg’ it became in later games.

Pretty much all auto weapons post-CE have followed the same high spread, bullet hose template. They have not done anything new or interesting in a while and as a result they have lost much of their usefulness. Halo 4 may have made them lethal again, but the are still functional clones of one another.

As a general rule:
*Every weapon needs to be useable as a weapon first. The H2/H3 plasma pistols may have useful overcharges, but they were useless as weapons. The CE and Reach variants were much better in this regard.

*Every weapon needs a unique place in the sandbox. Halo has far to many functional clones and we could honestly use a ‘downsize’. 343 only has so much time to balance a sandbox and we need to make good use of every ‘slot’. We should not waste them on functional clones like the beam rifle when we have more diverse options like the focus rifle. The same goes for vehicles.

I also don’t want to see the sandbox watered down to make room for superficial mechanics like dual wielding or loadouts.

6

I just hate that precision weapons dominate in all ranges

7

> I just hate that precision weapons dominate in all ranges

that should nearly be the standard.

not all ranges, but the spawn weapon should have the most broad amount of possibilities, whether it’s automatic or not.

every other fps, not some, but every fps has precise weapons off spawn, it’s strength should be up for debate, however they have enough range and accuracy to COMPETE

spawning with automatics only can be the death of a match once 1 team heavily pushes advantage, there is no opportunity to swing it back without the NEED for power weapons, unlike with precise weapons.

automatics should have more precision and range than what they currently do, however people seem to want to nerf the good weapons instead of buffing the bad ones.

as some people may have already stated halo currently suffers from too many clones and useless weapons.

8

I would like the CE Plasma Rifle

9

They need to be good, but not 1-shot like Halo 4.

10

> > In Halo CE ive beaten Pistol users on Hang Em High with assault rifles using proper cover, aim and skills. Yet in Halo 3 or Reach or 4 you rarely see a weaker weapon beat a rifle in any other fight than close combat and/or with luck/team fire.
> >
> > …
> >
> > The Halo CE pistol was OP, strongest damn gun in Halo almost. Yet it wasn’t the only good gun, every gun in Halo CE could be used, learned, mastered and used. My brother would whoop my -Yoink!- in Halo CE with a plasma pistol back in the day, even when I spammed the pistol and power weapons. You would rarely see that today.
>
> This sounds like BS. Stuff you’ve twisted to support your argument.
>
> Just because a higher-skilled player can beat a lower-skilled player even while handicapped does not mean the handicap does not exist.

Not really. I’ve seen it. When was the last time you played H:CE anyways? I’m not talking about H:CEA either. The PP was actually pretty decent and could actually kill. Now it does nothing except stun vehicles. You can go online and watch some gameplays that show exactly what OP is talking about. If you know how to use a weapon, you can be very efficient with it if CE. The scenarios seem a little far fetched, but they are more a reality than if he was talking about any other Halo.

> OPs examples are exaggerated, but I think the overall idea is good.
>
> That is something I loved about Halo CE. Pistol was super powerful, but so was almost everything else in their own regard. (Everything except AR IMO.)

Again, just like above, just because the scenario in todays Halo would be an outright lie, in CE, what he is saying is a complete possibility. I’ve seen it done with my own eyes.

The only thing the AR was good for was for Quick Camo and I believe it was also good against vehicles. It could tip Warthogs and such.

OT: The weapons do need to be unique like OP is saying. I’ve been an advocate for this for a long time. The only way I see this being possible though is if 343 does do away with Loadouts so each weapon can have it’s uses. So toast the loadouts and bring on the unique weapons.

11

> I definitely agree with this sentiment. Halo has been filled with far to many useless weapons as well as too many clones.
>
> People may debate the overall balance of CE, but I don’t think you can really argue that each weapon did not have a unique place in the sandbox. The plasma rifle was more than the ‘blue smg’ it became in later games.
>
> Pretty much all auto weapons post-CE have followed the same high spread, bullet hose template. They have not done anything new or interesting in a while and as a result they have lost much of their usefulness. Halo 4 may have made them lethal again, but the are still functional clones of one another.
>
> As a general rule:
> *Every weapon needs to be useable as a weapon first. The H2/H3 plasma pistols may have useful overcharges, but they were useless as weapons. The CE and Reach variants were much better in this regard.
>
> *Every weapon needs a unique place in the sandbox. Halo has far to many functional clones and we could honestly use a ‘downsize’. 343 only has so much time to balance a sandbox and we need to make good use of every ‘slot’. We should not waste them on functional clones like the beam rifle when we have more diverse options like the focus rifle. The same goes for vehicles.
>
> I also don’t want to see the sandbox watered down to make room for <mark><mark><mark>superficial mechanics like dual wielding</mark></mark></mark> or loadouts.

How is dual-wielding superficial… it worked great in H2 and H3. Using a plasma rifle and a smg could beat any other weapon if the right person was using the combo. They need to bring it back.

12

> How is dual-wielding superficial… it worked great in H2 and H3. Using a plasma rifle and a smg could beat any other weapon if the right person was using the combo. They need to bring it back.

I agree dual-wielding actually made the other weapons useful. SMG/Plasma Rifle combo, SMG/Magnum combo, Plasma Pistol/Magnum combo, etc. They all worked well in encounters against the BR.

13

> > How is dual-wielding superficial… it worked great in H2 and H3. Using a plasma rifle and a smg could beat any other weapon if the right person was using the combo. They need to bring it back.
>
> I agree dual-wielding actually made the other weapons useful. SMG/Plasma Rifle combo, SMG/Magnum combo, Plasma Pistol/Magnum combo, etc. They all worked well in encounters against the BR.

It is superficial because it was added for ‘cool’ factor and the sandbox suffered because of it. It added nothing we could not already do before. “Combos” were already a thing in CE and you were basically forced to dual wield in order to make most of those weapons viable at all.

If you need two to make them viable than why not just have a solid single weapon? Because using two guns at the same time is ‘cool’ making it a superficial change.

And to make things better in order to balance the dual wielding many formally unique and interesting weapons got nerfed into oblivion. The Plasma rifle was turned from a low spread, plasma stunning, headshot capable weapon into a blue SMG. We lost depth in the weapon sandbox for what is essentially a superficial change.