Bloom?

Games Other Halo
1

Bloom? Bullet spread? What is the difference? I have seen arguments on both sides that bloom has always existed, and never existed. I for one remember the pistol (I still have ce and verified this) in ce had some sort of variance in it when shot at full RoF.

I am not stating (in this thread at least) that bloom has always been around, but rather I’d like to better understand the difference between spread and bloom (if there is one) and to understand why some people seem to think there has never been anything but pin point accuracy at any RoF with precision weapons in previous titles?

I could very well be wrong, but if I am I’d like it explained to me so I can see why I am wrong.

2

I really wanted a legitimate answer to this, and it seems odd that their are dozens of people ready to blast someone for their opinion but when I ask for some help understanding this apparently controversial topic not a one person can clarify. Seems to me there is just to much trolling going on.

Someone out there must actually know and not just be talking out of their -Yoink-?

3

bummer

4

bump

5

Your right in that spread has existed before and that bloom is very similiar to it. Bloom basically just gives players a better way to determine when there shot is going to be pinpoint accurate and when its going to likely fly to the side a bit. Spread on the other hand is a constant and doesnt change at all no matter how long you hold the trigger or rapidly tap it. so basically the people who are shooting the idea of bloom being a good thing often are the medium or lower end players who lack understanding of the mechanics of the game. Im glad that you actually show a slight understanding of the topic without being directly told anything, this gives me hope for the common people.

6

My best answer is that while there has been bullet spread in previous Halo titles it has not been as big as it with Reach.

7

> Your right in that spread has existed before and that bloom is very similiar to it. Bloom basically just gives players a better way to determine when there shot is going to be pinpoint accurate and when its going to likely fly to the side a bit. Spread on the other hand is a constant and doesnt change at all no matter how long you hold the trigger or rapidly tap it. so basically the people who are shooting the idea of bloom being a good thing often are the medium or lower end players who lack understanding of the mechanics of the game. Im glad that you actually show a slight understanding of the topic without being directly told anything, this gives me hope for the common people.

On top of this, both bloom and spread are mechanics to simply limit the effectiveness of a precision weapon, especially at range. The further you are away from a player the more bloom and spread limit the weapon.

That is all they are in any game for.

8

Yea what the guy above me said.

I think about like a flash light. If your hand moves slightly the light at the end moves much more and this increases the farther away you are.

I might have been able to explain that a bit better…

9

IMO
Competitive system link (mlg tournaments): Spread >>>>>>>>>>>> Bloom
Online halo matchmaking (with lag and hosts): Bloom >>>>>>>>>>>>> Spread

10

> On top of this, both bloom and spread are mechanics to simply limit the effectiveness of a precision weapon, especially at range. The further you are away from a player the more bloom and spread limit the weapon.
>
> That is all they are in any game for.

The practical difference, if you want to get into more complicated arguments about their effect on gameplay, is that bloom does allow for perfect accuracy so long as the player lays off the trigger. Spread, on the other hand, applies a base penalty which everyone must suffer with regardless of their trigger habits so it does tend to do a better job at limiting the abuses of the long-ranged weapons it’s applied to.

11

so why do I keep hearing claims that these mechanics never existed before?

And if they are more or less something that makes the game more difficult, why is it that I am hearing that taking away this difficulty makes the game more challenging. It seems that bloom forces people to control their pace, where as zb seems to allow for spamming.

The problem is, when I do play someone with zb, they just spam the -Yoink- out of the trigger. I am sure in theory this allows a better skilled player to kill quicker, but in practice its a trigger race. If they spam their whole clip, they only need the 5 to kill me, that is a lot of misses, but with the RoF and no detterant to spamming, why not spam the -Yoink- out of it.

And another all together unrelated question. Why is it I keep hearing about faster kill times. I personally have always liked halo for the longer kill times. This isn’t CoD where a pot shot should win, this is Halo. Halo has always been a more gladatorial gun fight. Dodging, running, punching. In some cases a downright long fight. It is so much more gratifying when you get the (god forbid) 5 to 10 second fights and come out the victor.

12

> so why do I keep hearing claims that these mechanics never existed before?
>
> And if they are more or less something that makes the game more difficult, why is it that I am hearing that taking away this difficulty makes the game more challenging. It seems that bloom forces people to control their pace, where as zb seems to allow for spamming.
>
> The problem is, when I do play someone with zb, they just spam the Yoink! out of the trigger. I am sure in theory this allows a better skilled player to kill quicker, but in practice its a trigger race. If they spam their whole clip, they only need the 5 to kill me, that is a lot of misses, but with the RoF and no detterant to spamming, why not spam the Yoink! out of it.
>
> And another all together unrelated question. Why is it I keep hearing about faster kill times. I personally have always liked halo for the longer kill times. This isn’t CoD where a pot shot should win, this is Halo. Halo has always been a more gladatorial gun fight. Dodging, running, punching. In some cases a downright long fight. It is so much more gratifying when you get the (god forbid) 5 to 10 second fights and come out the victor.

Spamming the trigger only gives you a benefit with bloom. There is no benefit to spamming the trigger with ZB, as you have to aim for every single trigger pull. You can spam the hell out of the trigger all you want in ZB, but if you miss your shots you don’t get the kill. With bloom, your aim could be off and you would still get the kill. Don’t think of it as a trigger race, think of it as an aiming race, and you should see how it makes it more skillful.

And kill time in Halo should be slower than CoD’s, but not to the point where it becomes annoying. A 1 second kill time is 5-10 times slower than CoD’s and we have kill times that are way longer than 1 second in Halo.

13

Bullet spread was in the Halos with static reticles (always random spread depending on the gun); the reticle of the weapon shwed how accurate the weapon was.

Bloom is in weapons with blooming reticles (fist accurate, then inaccurate), and in Reach there’s way too much bloom, which doesn’t even punish spammers.

14

> Your right in that spread has existed before and that bloom is very similiar to it. Bloom basically just gives players a better way to determine when there shot is going to be pinpoint accurate and when its going to likely fly to the side a bit. Spread on the other hand is a constant and doesnt change at all no matter how long you hold the trigger or rapidly tap it. so basically the people who are shooting the idea of bloom being a good thing often are the medium or lower end players who lack understanding of the mechanics of the game. Im glad that you actually show a slight understanding of the topic without being directly told anything, this gives me hope for the common people.

I couldn’t have said it better :smiley:

15

I always seem to hear people say no bloom is more like “classic Halo” but really in Halo 1 the only precision weapon other than the sniper was the pistol and the pistol had a form of bloom. If you unloaded it your bullets went everywhere just like the DMR. I feel as fun as Halo 2 and 3 where online the Br with no bloom made the game a one weapon game online and bullet spread didn’t add enough skill to make it ok to get spawned killed over and over from cross map.I was never like"wow this team has some skill, I just got spawned killed from cross map". Bungie added bloom because they knew this and they knew how annoying it was. Bloom is good. Now there is no cross map spawn kills, now the AR and other weapons have purpose, now jumping around like a bunny doesn’t help you at all, and Halo is more fun and Balanced online in my opinion. I pace my shots and win 90+% of the time at far and at medium range. I never loose to other players spamming like so many people say happens and If they get to a range where spamming is more effective than pacing I do the smart thing and switch to my Ar. and I win most all one on one battles. I feel like the anti bloom community are like spoiled kids at a store whining and stomping there feet for this and that. 343 is the parent that just give that kid whatever it wants just to shut it up regardless if the kids needs it or not. Of course that is just my opinion on this whole TU thing going on. There where a ton more things that could of been updated in my opinion and the only relevant one to me that makes sense is playing co-op and firefight without the hard drive.

16

> IMO
> Competitive system link (mlg tournaments): Spread >>>>>>>>>>>> Bloom
> Online halo matchmaking (with lag and hosts): Bloom >>>>>>>>>>>>> Spread

I would say the exact opposite.

Since every time I play in a LAN party, I notice how spamming shots with the DMR is less effective in zero lag conditions, than online.

17

> Bloom is good. Now there is no cross map spawn kills, now the AR and other weapons have purpose, now jumping around like a bunny doesn’t help you at all, and Halo is more fun and Balanced online in my opinion. I pace my shots and win 90+% of the time at far and at medium range. I never loose to other players spamming like so many people say happens and If they get to a range where spamming is more effective than pacing I do the smart thing and switch to my Ar. and I win most all one on one battles. I feel like the anti bloom community are like spoiled kids at a store whining and stomping there feet for this and that. 343 is the parent that just give that kid whatever it wants just to shut it up regardless if the kids needs it or not. Of course that is just my opinion on this whole TU thing going on. There where a ton more things that could of been updated in my opinion and the only relevant one to me that makes sense is playing co-op and firefight without the hard drive.

I don’t want to offend you or anything, but you’re right, Bungie added bloom fot that reason!

For commanders with competitive k/D ratios of 0.94 or less.

And you don’t have to worry, vanilla Reach won’t go anywere, but for us, the anti bloom community, the people you call spoiled kids, will get our classic playlist with zero bloom so that we don’t have to deal with vanilla Reach which has an almost non-existant skill gap.

Across map spawn killing was fun in Halo 2 (since in Halo 3 they catered to you guys too; random spread), and all you needed to get out there was raw skill and team work, something that few have.

I don’t care if we get random spread of Halo 4s precision weapons, but if it has bloom for competitive playt, and it’s like Reach’s, I’ll say goodbye to Halo.

Right now I’m enjoying classic zero bloom customs :smiley:

18

HumanDruid:Right now I’m enjoying classic zero bloom customs

So if classic halo, CE had bloom on the pistol (which it did), so whats classic mean…new?

It is a fact that bloom forces you to pace, and not spam, other than at cqc, but really, in cqc you should spam, that gun isn’t meant for cqc to begin with. Bungie did make a big mistake with bloom, they announced it, and let players see a visual representation of it on screen. Which was stupid, because now they are aware of it, and instead of using the knowledge to their benefit, to play and improve their skill in an awesome game, they use the knowledge to complain until they get their way.

The DMR is already, hands down the best weapon in the game. OVER ALL. Halo 2 was flawed, it was a one weapon game, and it was lame. I don’t know where all this reverence for h2 comes from, I personaly thought it was the weakest int he series. Sure if you have one weapon to rule them all, then it’s balanced. bit really, anything you do is balanced, because everyone is playing on the same field.

I love the AR. I love that they brought back the AR, and that they made it have a purpose. I wish the plasma rifle still had the stun effect so it was almost worth using. I games with “pros” who complain when someone picks up a needler, or a rocket “Oh what a newb using the needler because he can’t use the DMR” “Oh you only won because you had rockets twice.”

WTF is that? Yeah how’d my rockets taste. I play the game I was given. They built an awesome game and I don’t think it needs changing. I am all for variety, and if they are going to make a seperate playlist and split game mechanics up, I am not against that. But all this BS about how it makes for a better game, or bigger or smaller skill gap, is utter -Yoink-. You are all given the same things to work with, the skill is what you make it. If you -Yoink- with one setting and not with the other, its not because one has a better skill gap, it’s because you are personaly better/prefer it. Thats it. So don’t go pawning off your shortcommings on game mechanics.

19

Right now there’s a miss conception that “bloom” existed on the pistol in CE. This is simply not true, to an extent. The pistol is as accurate as ever regardless of ‘spamming’ or range, on the xbox. However, there’s a pretty convincing video floating around that shows the pistol in CE having bloom, and it does, on the PC version.

You see, apparently Bungie wanted the pistol to originally have bloom, but something went wrong (or so I’ve heard). Anyway, point is, the xbox version didn’t end up having bloom on the pistol. But Bungie worked on the PC version of CE too and I can only conclude that they fixed up the bloom on the pistol to function properly. Thus, you have bloom on the PC version and not the xbox. Don’t believe me? Boot CE up on the xbox and see for yourself.

Anyway, the difference between bloom and spread is that spread has a linear relationship solely with distance. The further the target is the less accurate your shot will be, regardless of how fast you’re pulling the trigger. Bloom is kinda the opposite. Instead of having a linear relationship with just distance, it has one with how fast you’re pulling the trigger and distance. Pull fast, shots become inaccurate. Pull slowly, shots become accurate. Though with bloom there’s still a linear relationship with distance too, but instead of its base value being a set variable that doesn’t change (like with spread) the base value does change and is determined by how fast you’re pulling the trigger. Hm… confusing to explain it, it is. Basically, think of bloom as spread, but the amount of spread is determined by how fast you’re pulling the trigger.

20

In the intrest of not just talking out of my -Yoink-, which I know, goes totaly against the internets, I just popped in CE for x box. This is what I found.

The rof of the pistol in CE does not effect the spread, the spread is the exact same, making it have no bloom, only spread. HOWEVER the spread increases when the trigger is held and fired automaticaly. I still don’t think this qualifies as bloom however because there is no varying degree of spread, there is simply two (and a fairly small diffrence at that.) diffrent spread sizes.

If you hold the trigger down the spread is slightly larger, but you can in no way make the spread grow larger by continued rapid fire, meaning, that there is in fact no bloom on ce for the box. I was absolutly wrong on that point.

I still like reach, and i stand by the rest of what i said. I am all for variety, but claiming that one way is better because it takes more skill is bs, if you are better you will win it doesn’t matter what is going on, as long as it is going on the same for both sides. I still like the idea of bloom in general, and I still do not like ZB. The game was built around it, if you tweak one feature it throws everything else off. 85% is slightly better, but I think keeping seperate playslists seems to be the best idea. I am not one to deprive someone of the way they want to play, nor would I want that to happen to me.

But I was still wrong about bloom. Bummer.