> If anything precision weapons are more closely associated with spray and pray (although its more like spam and pray). Once the shields break a single headshot will kill, so you can just spam the weapon hoping one of your shots lands on his head before he manages to land one on you.
This isn’t really about giving automatics the ability to do headshots. It’s merely talking about the dynamic of hitting a person in the head and doing ever so slightly more damage. At no point should an AR in Halo be a headshot weapon. That would be the death of all of us…
> > If anything precision weapons are more closely associated with spray and pray (although its more like spam and pray). Once the shields break a single headshot will kill, so you can just spam the weapon hoping one of your shots lands on his head before he manages to land one on you.
>
> This isn’t really about giving automatics the ability to do headshots. It’s merely talking about the dynamic of hitting a person in the head and doing ever so slightly more damage. At no point should an AR in Halo be a headshot weapon. That would be the death of all of us…
Agreed.
A head shot damage multiplier would make the player have to hold their aim over their targets head for a small time in order to get a certain number of bullets in.
If it were full on head shots it’d be a spray and pray hoping that one of the AR’s many bullets lands.
No headshot multipliers for automatics. There are other ways to balance them. One method is to shrink the reticle size on precision weapons. Giving automatics a larger reticle allows a greater area for aim assist, like “sticky reticle”, to occur in.
The player’s health is a balancing factor, a buffer zone, between the killtimes on automatic weapons, which must drain all of a target’s health through bodyshots, and the killtimes on precision weapons which can drain all of a target’s health with a single headshot.
The key to all of this is that landing the final, lethal headshot with one of the precision weapons should be difficult due to low aim assist and fast player movement speed.
> No headshot multipliers for automatics. There are other ways to balance them. One method is to shrink the reticle size on precision weapons. Giving automatics a larger reticle allows a greater area for aim assist, like “sticky reticle”, to occur in.
>
> The player’s health is a balancing factor, a buffer zone, between the killtimes on automatic weapons, which must drain all of a target’s health through bodyshots, and the killtimes on precision weapons which can drain all of a target’s health with a single headshot.
>
> The key to all of this is that landing the final, lethal headshot with one of the precision weapons should be difficult due to low aim assist and fast player movement speed.
shrinking precision weapons’ reticules and expanding automatic weapons’ reticules has exactly the opposite effect for what we are trying to do. Headshot multipliers are a way of rewarding an automatic rifleman for carefully aiming and controlling his fire. Expanding the reticule would only serve to shorten its effective range and to encourage spray-and-pray practices. The damage increase suggested would still take a few good shots to the dome to incapacitate your target, but in the time it takes to control your shot placement, you could get outgunned by a precision rifle. If you were to incorporate it right now into H4, it would already be perfectly balanced. Like I said, it’s just a small reward for being accurate and a way to further refine the identity of automatics.
If a weapon has random spread, it should not be headshot capable.
> If a weapon has random spread, it should not be headshot capable.
Please read my OP. I am specifically not proposing headshot capable ARs. I have said in a couple different ways that that sort of thing does not belong in Halo. It is merely an ever-so-slight increase in damage to the head. Not a headshot.
> If a weapon has random spread, it should not be headshot capable.
It wont be head shot capable. It’ll have a head shot multiplier.
This means that the player will have to hold their aim over their targets head in order to get the decreased kill time.
There should be no headshot bonus for weapons with random spread. Not aiming for the head but dealing bonus damage anyway because of random spread is not ideal.
> There should be no headshot bonus for weapons with random spread. Not aiming for the head but dealing bonus damage anyway because of random spread is not ideal.
I think you’re over exaggerating how bad the spread will be. It isn’t magic that draws all of the bullets to your targets head. People aren’t gonna be getting faster kills because of this. If they want the faster kill they’ll have to hold their aim.
You aim for the head. You get a faster kill. Simple.
As it is the automatics are like beginner weapons that expect less skill from their wielders but their potential for power is less then that of their precision counter parts. In situations where aiming for the head is what’s going to win a fight the automatics are at a disadvantage and they have no way of countering it.
Head shot multipliers mean that the automatics will require the same amount of skill and be just as effective as the precision weapons.
> > There should be no headshot bonus for weapons with random spread. Not aiming for the head but dealing bonus damage anyway because of random spread is not ideal.
>
> People aren’t gonna be getting faster kills because of this.
Yes they will. When I am aiming at your chest and one of the bullets I fired randomly flies off and happens to hit you in the head I will achieve a faster killtime than if the weapon’s projectiles did not deal bonus headshot damage.
> > > There should be no headshot bonus for weapons with random spread. Not aiming for the head but dealing bonus damage anyway because of random spread is not ideal.
> >
> > People aren’t gonna be getting faster kills because of this.
>
> Yes they will. When I am aiming at your chest and one of the bullets I fired randomly flies off and happends to hit you in the head I will achieve a faster killtime than if the weapon was not headshot capable.
And that’s one bullet out of how many that will be required to get an decrease in time that matters?
This is apposed to the insta-kill that the BR can get.
If the AR user wants a decreased kill time that’s going to compete with that than the AR user is going to have to hold their aim over their targets head.
If you want bonus damage for an automatic weapon’s headshots why not apply it to an automatic weapon without spread like the Sentinel Beam?
> If you want bonus damage for an automatic weapon’s headshots why not apply it to an automatic weapon without spread like the Sentinel Beam?
Because there’s no reason why all automatics can’t have this.
The spread isn’t an issue.
> If you want bonus damage for an automatic weapon’s headshots why not apply it to an automatic weapon without spread like the Sentinel Beam?
That’s not an automatic weapon, that’s a beam weapon. The sentinel beam and the focus rifle have a different mechanic than other weapons ins the sandbox. And why shouldn’t they have a bonus. The focus rifle is an alleged long-range weapon. It still has a relatively long kill time compared to a sniper rifle or a beam rifle. They could very well join in on the headshot multipliers… but they are not automatic weapons.
Rewarding inaccuracy with a faster killtime is a problem.
> Rewarding inaccuracy with a faster killtime is a problem.
It’s rewarding the opposite!
> > Rewarding inaccuracy with a faster killtime is a problem.
>
> It’s rewarding the opposite!
Not if the weapon has random spread. You already conceded that fact but tried to downplay its importance.
> And that’s one bullet out of how many that will be required to get an decrease in time that matters?
> > If you want bonus damage for an automatic weapon’s headshots why not apply it to an automatic weapon without spread like the Sentinel Beam?
>
> That’s not an automatic weapon, that’s a beam weapon. The sentinel beam and the focus rifle have a different mechanic than other weapons ins the sandbox. And why shouldn’t they have a bonus. The focus rifle is an alleged long-range weapon. It still has a relatively long kill time compared to a sniper rifle or a beam rifle. They could very well join in on the headshot multipliers… but they are not automatic weapons.
They continuously fire when the trigger is held down and deal damage over time rather than discrete packets of damage like a semi automatic weapon. The Sentinel Beam and Focus Rifle are effectively automatic weapons.
> > > If you want bonus damage for an automatic weapon’s headshots why not apply it to an automatic weapon without spread like the Sentinel Beam?
> >
> > That’s not an automatic weapon, that’s a beam weapon. The sentinel beam and the focus rifle have a different mechanic than other weapons ins the sandbox. And why shouldn’t they have a bonus. The focus rifle is an alleged long-range weapon. It still has a relatively long kill time compared to a sniper rifle or a beam rifle. They could very well join in on the headshot multipliers… but they are not automatic weapons.
>
> They continuously fire when the trigger is held down and deal damage over time rather than discrete packets of damage like a semi automatic weapon. The Sentinel Beam and Focus Rifle are effectively automatic weapons.
But you just told me that they are different than automatic rifles…
And about what you said to Mega066: ARs start out with a small reticule. The point is to optimize the use of that, instead of the fully bloomed reticule. Giving the AR an extra bit of oomph with accurate fire at close ranges and giving it a little more reach by allowing you to-by using short, controlled bursts-effectively engage a target at moderate range. If you spray your full clip at an enemy and get one little tidbit of damage (a fifth or fourth of the damage of a full bullet), you are not going to even notice a faster kill time. The headshot damage multiplier only becomes effective if you can land several hits accurately.
I can see the reasoning behind what you are saying. I get your concern. I poured a lot of thought into this and I can tell you that your concern has been addressed within the folds of my proposed methods if implementation.
> But you just told me that they are different than automatic rifles…
The Focus Rifle and Sentinel Beam are different from traditional automatics, like the AR, in that they are perfectly accurate. A player who is not aiming at a target’s head has a zero percent chance of hitting a target’s head. The same can’t be said for weapons with random spread like the AR.