I’ve been reading these forums occasionally since the beta came up and one thing stuck out to me.
There’s a lot of complaints about BR starts and how AR starts are better. The most common argument is that it promotes more varied gameplay and makes the game less boring. I will illustrate what happens with AR starts when competent halo players are playing.
Both teams will rush for the closest BRs, DMRs, …
They will then move up and try to gain map control over the other team. Whichever team wins that initial battle has now most likely won the game.
I will use Midship as an example here, which has little long range weapons on the map.
The blue team won the initial push and now controls the map with BRs.
Red team is now spawning with ARs and will often have trouble getting more BRs due to the other team’s map control.
The remainder of the game will proceed either very slow due to camping/waiting for BRs to respawn, or it will be a one-sided spawnkilling fest.
Rather than promoting variety, it promotes one-sided gameplay and ultimately comes down to the BR anyway.
BR starts are simply more fair for everyone because it allows you to properly defend yourself as you spawn.
AR starts should absolutely never be an option in ranked playlists, but I guess it could be in social playlists.
It has absolutely no place in a competitive setting and I believe that this idea of AR starts being better stems from not understanding the game mechanics and a lack of strategic thought.
This would be a logical conclusion as the majority of AR starts advocates are not good at Halo, no offense.
I beg to differ. My experience has obviously been different from yours. Every match I played on Truth, which was the entire first week by the way, I played every day and vastly preferred Truth over Empire. Never once did the enemy team spawn camp or even gain control of the map. My team almost always caught them by surprise and used the new abilities to our advantage to take them out in close quarters. If we had the BR’s and DMR’s, we never stayed in one place. We constantly switched places on the map to maintain distance from our opponents, though that didn’t always work as they had the same idea we did. There would be times where we’d get corned in an enclosed space and grenades easily flushed us out, only to be finished off with AR’s, SMG’s, and Magnums. Prophet’s Bane was also a good choice to kill camping enemies as they never reacted fast enough and usually lost 2 to 3 guys in the process.
The point of a spawn weapon is to give you an adequate weapon to defend yourself against players with the same spawn weapon. The goal is to trade up to a better weapon during the match to give yourself a competitive advantage over your opponents. If everyone spawns with the most competitive weapon, most on-map weapons typically go unused because the BR is typically the be-all-end-all. That is not to say however, that I haven’t played BR spawn matches in the Beta where players moved around the map, same as before. The problem now, was that there didn’t really seem to be any differences from match to match. For instance, on Regret, all players charge Hydra spawn immediately, one team grabs the Hydra and then runs for higher ground. Once both teams have gained the high ground, it becomes a -Yoink!- match. Yeah, they run around, but at the same time they typically don’t go very far. Not very often did I see anyone get up close and personal. Sometimes, but not most of the time. And that was because they always had a BR. Why get up close when you can use your starting weapon at range? Whenever I traded out my BR for something else, I always ended up regretting that decision. It got to the point where I stopped trading it out and just had two mid to long-range weapons at any given time because it was all I needed to get kills. It was ridiculous. I haven’t played nearly as much this past week because it just sucked the fun out of it. I loved the tense moments where you got up close and managed to score two or three kills due to skill. Now it’s just a game of who can score four headshots in a row before the other guy.
Also, since this is becoming a trend around here I’m gonna save some of you the trouble. Yes, I’m a Bronze II, and my K/D is negative. Bite me.
> 2533274805989038;1:
> I’ve been reading these forums occasionally since the beta came up and one thing stuck out to me.
> There’s a lot of complaints about BR starts and how AR starts are better. The most common argument is that it promotes more varied gameplay and makes the game less boring. I will illustrate what happens with AR starts when competent halo players are playing.
>
> Both teams will rush for the closest BRs, DMRs, …
> They will then move up and try to gain map control over the other team. Whichever team wins that initial battle has now most likely won the game.
> I will use Midship as an example here, which has little long range weapons on the map.
> The blue team won the initial push and now controls the map with BRs.
> Red team is now spawning with ARs and will often have trouble getting more BRs due to the other team’s map control.
> The remainder of the game will proceed either very slow due to camping/waiting for BRs to respawn, or it will be a one-sided spawnkilling fest.
> Rather than promoting variety, it promotes one-sided gameplay and ultimately comes down to the BR anyway.
>
> BR starts are simply more fair for everyone because it allows you to properly defend yourself as you spawn.
> AR starts should absolutely never be an option in ranked playlists, but I guess it could be in social playlists.
> It has absolutely no place in a competitive setting and I believe that this idea of AR starts being better stems from not understanding the game mechanics and a lack of strategic thought.
> This would be a logical conclusion as the majority of AR starts advocates are not good at Halo, no offense.
That speaks more to a poor (albeit unfinished) weapons layout on Truth that to an inherent flaw with AR starts.
There are simply too many easily accessible ranged weapons and they Respawn too quickly. The entire team can pick one up as soon as the match begins. That makes it too easy for a team that assumes control early to dominate for the entire match.
There needs to be fewer DMRs/BRs in total, and fewer located inside of the bases. Instead some should be located in highly contested neutral places.
With AR starts there IS more of a penalty associated with your entire team being killed at once; that is the difficulty you’ll have recovering from that heavy loss. There is also a greater reward for achieving map control. That makes sound Strategy MORE important, not less so. Still, to ensure that teams have the ability to mount a comeback, 343i needs to position the weapons so that teams will have to leave their areas of safety to resupply.
The notion that AR starts in general offer more variety is undebatable. The chances of you encountering enemies bearing weapons they didn’t start with is several orders of magnitude hire.
im GoldII