AR Starts Ranked/Comp Playlist

Games Halo Infinite
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I am making this post as I don’t think I am the only one who wants a competitive/ranked playlist with AR starts. The reasons I think such a playlist should exist is as follows:

  1. The BR, per design, automatically beats lots of weapons that would otherwise see more play thus making map pickups less important than they normally are.
  2. AR starts allow for more map movement and flow as you are less likely to be hit by a mid range precision weapon since they would be map pickups.
  3. Referring back to point 2, the game fundamentally plays different when you start with a BR and the people/friends I have talked to personally prefer AR starts and the increased need to fight for map weapons.
  4. BR starts also reduce vehicle viability as it is much easier to kill someone out of certain vehicles with a BR than an AR which results in less vehicle play in general
  5. If ranked/comp has rewards and there is no AR start ranked/comp playlist I know my friends and I just won’t play ranked because playing with BR starts is almost like playing another game as all the other points I have made suggest.

A good example of how different variables can make ranked modes play so different is Rocket League. 1v1 , 2v2 , and 3v3 ranked modes play so differently you have to learn entire new strategies to be good in each mode respectively.

I am posting this as a 20 year veteran of Halo (I started playing CE when I was 5 and it is my favorite video game) and out of my group of friends no one gets on the forums but we all have the same thoughts so I wanted to know how many others had the same opinion. I am not saying the BR playlist should go away; I’m just saying I would also like an AR ranked/comp playlist because it plays so much different from BR starts.

Also so far I love Infinite and have very high hopes for it.

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This was attempted recently with Halo 5… Wasn’t very successful to say the least.

AR starts just lowers the skillgap and ends up leading to less fun gameplay overall.

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But in 5 the pistol was essentially a DMR and Infinite has a different sandbox. I wouldn’t say it “lowers the skill gap” as playing with a BR allows for a whole different style of play. Not saying it’s bad but I just prefer what AR starts allow for (movement around maps and other map weapons viability/importance in the sandbox)

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Ranked AR starts are a joke and I don’t even know where to begin with the rest of the nonsense OP.

AR starts have an inherently low skillgap due to the fact that it is a high spread bullet hose, the idea that map movement is lowered due to BR(or Magnum or DMR) starts has always been complete fiction. If you want people to pick up weapons, how about devs actually create some weapons worth using rather than a series of badly designed, poorly balanced weapons.

Vehicles will always be bad as long as the chip damage system is in place regardless of starting weapon.

AR comp is a waste of everyone’s time and energy.

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It does lower the skillgap. 1v1 AR vs AR doesn’t have anywhere close to the skill differentiation that you’d see from a 1v1 BR battle, this is not to say that the AR has zero skill but obviously less so.

Your overall point is solid, that AR starts means they can get a bit more ambitious with weapon pickups, but pickups themselves are typically not anywhere close to as determinative as the starting weapon. I’d venture a guess that in a regular match starting weapons (BR, pistol, DMR, whatever) is responsible for 80% of all the gunplay in the match… Surely something this impactful should be taken into consideration for competitive play right?

Other things should be considered, like spectator/viewership, anybody seriously think that AR starts would be as popular as BR starts would be? Anyone remotely as pumped up watching Pistola out AR someone compared the him out BRing someone? This is meaningful because I think it also is why Sidekick is not starting weapon… Even if we go by the “starting weapon should be trash” idea I think how fans/viewers see Infinite come December 17th is massive and cannot be understated.

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And that’s why I’m not saying get rid of BR starts, I understand that is what people have come to expect. I just think an AR competitive playlist could co exist. It doesn’t have to be the official one that tournaments are played in but I honestly don’t personally know anyone who wants to play competitive with BR starts. We like the way the AR plays. I don’t think the starting weapon has to be trash but just not good in most situations which I think is what is wrong with BR spawns.

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You don’t have to play it and map movement being affected is not fiction. Try to play Blood Gulch with or without a BR starts. Completely different game. Now this applies to any map that isn’t a series of closed and tight rooms without any long sights. Low skill gap is relative because aiming in Halo has always been particularly easy compared to other shooters because of bullet magnetism, low to no recoil, (with the exception of H3) hitscan bullets from the BR, and Spartans get slowed when hit. The BR absolutely dominates when it is a starting gun and without recoil, bloom, or projectile speed how do you make a gun that is worth picking up except outside of severely restricted circumstances i.e. a shotgun in a very tight room? Not sure why a separate play list would affect you at all unless you know it would be more successful and don’t want to lose players who would otherwise be forced to use a BR in comp.

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Blood Gulch or any BTB map is demonstrably worse with auto starts so much fun shooting at players who can’t shoot back once you get a hold of any weapon with range. This applies in BTB and 4v4 and has been proven over and over and over again that auto starts don’t work but sure this time it will work, even in a competitive environment, sure Jan.

The difficulty of aiming a weapon with a giant reticle and huge amounts of spread is not remotely the same as one with a small reticle that is reliant on headshots. Its completely disingenuous to pretend they are remotely close even in a game with higher auto aim and magnetism.

If you want people to use other weapons you give each of those weapons a unique niche that gives explicit advantages compared to the starting weapon. There are any number of examples from the CE Plasma rifles stun(BTW its otherwise only Halo 4 and 5 that slow players down when shot and only when sprinting), grenade launchers, concussion rifles, plasma pistols, the Mangler, certain AR’s, the Needler, Light Rifle, ODST Pistol, there are any number of examples of weapons that can find use in BR(or any utility weapon)starts, you just lack the imagination or capability to actually use them.

You don’t start people with worse weapons in the hope they pick up other bad weapons

AR starts competitive playlist is like going to bike race where everyone has training wheels. Its limiting to everyone involved and lacks any competitive edge…

If you love AR starts you are not interested in competitive play. You might as well ask for competitive Fiesta for all the merit it has. Auto starts are bad enough in social(especially in BTB) and it makes even less sense in a competitive environment.

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You are assuming that getting and using the BR is the end all be all of skill in Halo and its not. Fighting over map weapons, especially if the BR is one of those is important and that’s where the skill should come from in an Arena shooter. Since Halo 2 fans have grown accustomed to the BR negating most of the map weapons. And we have already seen pro gameplay with BR starts. 99.9% of the time they would only the BR and if they did use another weapon it was mainly just because the BR ran out of ammo and they didn’t have time to reload. Halo does play different with different starting weapons so why not have ranked for those modes? Rocket League has ranked for the silly modes and its great. I’m not saying make it the official ranked mode I’m just saying add another playlist what is so wrong with that? Then BR start people get what they want and the rest of us can get what we want too.

Besides the, “i don’t want to play it argument,” I haven’t heard a good reason not to have a separate playlist but I have given good reasons as to why there should be one, mostly boiled down to the game just plays different.

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If we were to ever get this I’d also like a playlist for BR starts in BTB again. The AR/pistol combo is fine in a 4v4 setting but we really should be starting with scoped precision rifles in BTB.

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Then they simply aren’t competitive players. Ranked is about the best settings not the ones that offer the most weapon variety. The point of BR starts is to start off strong, so your starting weapon is technically all you need. In my experience this is called the utility weapon. Ranked AR/pistol starts doesn’t need to be a thing, because the player who plays that playlist religiously usually doesn’t do so well when they go play the BR starts mode. I remember many people who were 50s in h3 team slayer and doubles, but would play significantly worse in MLG, because of how different the modes felt. It’s nice having ranked variety but I personally think halo should have one ranked playlist or 2 and they should be tournament settings only.

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I’d disagree but if there is a new playlist I’m totally fine with that. Halo Infinite MP being free to play should keep the playerbase up to have lots of modes so im all for more modes.

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But that’s what I’m saying. Ranked as it currently sits allows you to ignore the Arena shooter parts of Halo. It turns it into a game with one main gun that if it had infinite ammo and no need to reload people probably wouldn’t even bother to pick up more than a rocket or the occasional shotgun. Making a mode that purposefully ignores key parts of a game doesn’t make it competitive. That’s like telling rocket league pro players they can’t use boost or abilities in Overwatch; Only noobs would need to use them. It’s not really “ranked Halo”. It’s It’s own game basically with the Halo art style.

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It very much still is halo. Halos comp has been this way for a long time and doesn’t neee to change. Halo isn’t a traditional arena shooter I’ll add, it’s not like quake where you can rocket jump across the map.
I’m not completely against the playlist idea of it just being the social settings, but ranked. But many of us have experienced what it’s like to play auto starts in ranked and for someone to grab the BR and dominate. But the AR and even the pistol with bloom isn’t half bad. I was dominating with the sidekick in the flight so I can still be on board.
The problem with Auto starts in the past is it makes certain weapons too powerful. Example the sniper

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I can understand that but that is where keeping/fighting for weapons should be the point. But if they have rewards for ranked I don’t want to have to play with everyone having the BR. We have done that, even in social until they added more playlists to the MCC, since H2 and it just isn’t fun to me. The Reach Beta was amazing because the DMR was a map drop. The Infinite Beta played amazing because of the AR/Sidekick starts. Now to the point of of someone gets a BR or Sniper they dominate, easy way to fix that is to limit the pickup ammo and have more dynamic spawns to make it harder to predict enemy routes. I only made this thread because I know too many people who aren’t active in discord, YouTube, or the forums to not post this.

They have also kept the AR starts playlists in the MCC which means there are enough of us out there to keep a playlist alive and Infinite will have even more players as it will be new and free to play.

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You’re probably right. I’d be relatively down for a playlist like this. However mcc is social so there’s that. I had no problems with AR starts tbh, but on Behemoth I did as it made vehicles like ghost way op. And since plasma pistol no longer EMPS it’s even worse.

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Yeah ghost was definitely OP in the flights. But that is where electric weapons/other vehicles come into place. But also if people don’t want to focus on any map pick ups shouldn’t they be punished for that? At least if we are considering Halo an arena shooter? It’s like ignoring someone on a kill streak in COD because you let them get the AC130 and not even care then you will get messed up. Just my thoughts as to why I and my friends would love a new ranked AR starts play list.

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I’d say halo is more a hybrid of arena and tac shooters than an arena one. It’s arena nature is just the map pick ups on the map.

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The utility weapon is the glue that holds the entire Halo experience together whether it takes the form of a CE Pistol, BR, DMR, or Halo 5 Magnum. Spawning players with a strong versatile weapon is vital in order to keep games fair and keep them from devolving snowball matches.

The BR(or any other utility weapon) is not the only place where skill comes from in Halo, but it does require orders of magnitude more skill than a bullet hose like an AR.

And I really wish these nonsense myth that the BR(or insert utility weapon here) “invalidates” other parts of the sandbox would stay in the garbage where it belongs. Good weapons do not invaldate other weapons, bad weapons invalidate themselves.

Instead of actually doing holding devs accountable and demanding more from your Halo sandbox, you’d rather just make the BR a scapegoat for bad design elsewhere and let the rest of the sandbox wallow in mediocrity as long as you get to have more pretty lights and colors.

If people are not using other weapons in compettiive, then congrats you’ve noticed that Halo Infinite’s sandbox is bad despite 343 patting themselves on the back. If people won’t grab other weapons despite the BR being one of the worst in the series(its tied for the bottom in terms of BR’s you can currently use in Halo), that just demonstrates how bad the sandbox truly is.

Halo doesn’t play “different” when you spawn players with auto weapons, the actual balance of the game doesn’t change, it just means more free kills for players who manage to grab some of the handful of ranged weapons across the map. We figured out 20 years ago that spawning players with limited and/or bad weapons is a bad idea, but some players and devs have been sticking their heads in the sand ever since.

I already told you its a waste of time and resources, especially given the issues Halo has had with playlist bloat in the past spreading the playerbase too thin. Unlike Rocket league, Halo hasn’t had the long term population to support a large number of playlists since Halo 3.

Where does it end? Ranked Infection?

I also think AR starts are garbage for social too, AR starts shouldn’t even exist let alone be given a ranked playlist.

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This is sad. No Halo to date have had an AR (aside from the Infinite flights) that are worth anything. Sure in 4 and 5 it’s better than 3 but still gets smoked by really anything else. The problem is the BR does invalidate guns because of its design. Again how do you make map weapons worth anything if you spawn with a gun that is hitscan, has no bloom, very little if any recoil, and good range? Try it, name more than the rocket, sniper, and shotgun/hammer/sword. It sounds like you are arguing Halo needs to drastically reduce its sandbox to have very little options. If that is the case go play Splitgate as it’s battle rifle is exactly what you want and it has way less weapons in its sandbox.

Not sure why some people say using the AR is boring because it’s not. Shooting a full auto gun is fun in almost every video game. That’s why most shooters have your starting weapon be a full auto gun. On top of that maps like Blood Gulch can’t exist with BR spawns, it dominates the map and doesn’t allow for big open maps that focus on vehicles.

There is a reason more people will play social over ranked, it is generally more fun to spawn with shorter range weapons and allow map weapons be better in general than you’re starter unlike the BR where it is the rare exception to find a gun better even in infinite.