BR starts are now a necessity

Games Halo Infinite
1

Now that it has been confirmed that the new pistol is currently replacing the M6 and is closer to something like the H5 Gunfighter or H2 Magnum, BR starts are now a necessity.

Halo multiplayer requires a strong versatile precision weapon off spawn to keep matches fair and prevent games from turning into one sided blowouts. Whether the precision weapon takes the form of a rifle or pistol, I’ve never much cared, but now that we know the Sidekick isn’t going to be up to par BR starts are now the go to choice.

You can make a bullet hose like the AR and a close range precision weapon like the Sidekick as good as you want, but they just are not up to the task to protecting new spawns. You are likely going to have no ability to respond to to any ranged weapon and you will be at the complete mercy of any close range power weapons. When you spawn with a BR(or CE Pistol or H5 magnum) you have the ability to turn the tide if you have the requisite skill. With a BR you can can keep a sniper at bay with descope while closing the distance and gaining advantage over said sniper. With a BR you can keep you distance from rockets and shotguns. With a BR(or another similar weapon) you have the ability to respond to just about every situation the moment you spawn which means you are always a threat to the enemy team. The same cannot be said for Auto starts.

As it stands AR/Pistol gametypes in Infinite would just be a repeat of the auto starts from Halo 2, 3, and Reach. Everyone wlll rush to the nearest scoped weapon and anyone without a BR or something similar is going virtually defenseless against someone who has a precision weapon and/or a power weapon. A close range weapon is only a threat at close range, meaning any decently experienced player can easily avoid a respawning player with auto starts and can easily predict where they will go because of their limited effective range.

This isn’t a Casual vs Competitive issue. Strong versatile precision weapons are important in both casual and hardcore playlists. No one should be forced into playing a competitive playlist just to get decent settings that don’t leave fresh spawns as sitting ducks. If you are concerned about players using a variety of weapons that isn’t a problem with BR starts provided the sandbox is actually diverse and interesting. Auto starts have never fixed the “variety” issue, they just add a pointless middle man to the proceedings where everyone rushes to the nearest scoped weapon they should have spawned with in the first place. “Variety” is an issue that concerns the entire sandbox, not the starting weapon.

TL;DR
BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.

2

It doesn’t matter if you have a precision weapon if you are in a tight corridor. In the end this all boils down to map design, not the weapons themselves.

3

Bloom really has be down about the sidekick tbh. Not happy to see any form of bloom returning on precision weapons.

I honestly think the Halo 3 pistol was a pretty solid starting weapon IMO. While it was certainly underwhelming because of dual wielding, it had a clear advantage over the AR at range, and couldn’t exactly contend with the BR which was a nice spot to be in. The exact opposite of the Halo 5 Magnum after the retuning.

It really does boil down to maps though; weapon placement, spawns, cover. They all place a role in how games play. I’m holding any major opinions until we see multiplayer, but tbh I’m not impressed with what I’ve seen so far

4

When people want a BR they are usually referring to Halo 2 version… which is too powerful to start with.

As long as everyone starts with the same two competent weapons all is good. I actually like the H5 magnum / AR start. As long as the new versions provide that level of versatility I will be happy.

I think the key is to be a tad frugal with the amount of ammo in the weapon spawns.

5

> 2535441118578282;2:
> It doesn’t matter if you have a precision weapon if you are in a tight corridor. In the end this all boils down to map design, not the weapons themselves.

Which is why Chiron TL 34 is the best multiplayer map in the series right? One would think if that all a dev needed to make auto starts “work” in Halo was down to map design they probably would have made at least one good auto start map in Halo’s almost 20 year history.

> 2585548714655118;4:
> When people want a BR they are usually referring to Halo 2 version… which is too powerful to start with.
> As long as everyone starts with the same two competent weapons all is good. I actually like the H5 magnum / AR start. As long as the new versions provide that level of versatility I will be happy.
> I think the key is to be a tad frugal with the amount of ammo in the weapon spawns.

The Halo 5 Magnum is literally more powerful than the Halo 2 BR(sans button combos), just as accurate if not more so with hitscan and a longer RRR. I would also be perfectly fine with a H5 style Magnum, but that is not what we are getting in Infinite which is why I made this thread.

6

Why don’t they just keep those AR/Magnum starts, and have a BR that actually takes skill to use at range, like the H3 BR (or something like that), instead of a halo 2-style BR that can immediately and easily take down anyone from anywhere on the map. That way, new spawns have a chance to fight and it will skew the sandbox to be more close-range, which is where Halo is at it’s best anyway.

Precision starts are only really a necessity on the huge, open BTB maps, I think.

7

Halo has always been about precision, so If it’s not BR starts then it’s VK78 Commando starts that could be the main weapon, though I hope it isn’t.

8

> 2535406868639540;6:
> Why don’t they just keep those AR/Magnum starts, and have a BR that actually takes skill to use at range, like the H3 BR (or something like that), instead of a halo 2-style BR that can immediately and easily take down anyone from anywhere on the map. That way, new spawns have a chance to fight and it will skew the sandbox to be more close-range, which is where Halo is at it’s best anyway.
>
> Precision starts are only really a necessity on the huge, open BTB maps, I think.

Because as far as we can tell the pistol in Infinite isn’t up to the task. If we were talking about a Pistol that performed at least as well as the Halo 5 Pistol then I would have no problem with AR/Pistol starts, but it doesn’t look like we are going to get that.

There is no functional difference between Halo 2 BR starts and Halo 5 Magnum starts. Auto starts as seen in Halo 2 Halo 3, and Halo Reach have never “worked” in any meaningful capacity and just leads to more one sided blowouts. Auto starts don’t alter the meta, the game still revolves around precision weapons only now with a pointless middle man with the added bonus of giving the players who have picked up precision weapons more free kills.

Precision starts are necessary in every standard gametype from 2v2 to 8v8. If you want to encourage players to use more close-range weapons than make those weapons actually worth using.

9

> 2533274819446242;1:
> TL;DR
> BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.

Egh… I think playlist dependant is the best approach. BR starts in everything leads to repetitive one-gun gameplay in my opinion.

10

> 2533274808548953;9:
> > 2533274819446242;1:
> > TL;DR
> > BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.
>
> Egh… I think playlist dependant is the best approach. BR starts in everything leads to repetitive one-gun gameplay in my opinion.

There has never been a “one gun” Halo game. Even if there was Auto starts wouldn’t actually fix a “one gun game,” it just means that everyone rushes for the nearest precision weapon anyways and makes the players who can’t get to them free kills. If people are not picking up certain other weapons it because a noticeable chunk of the sandbox has been either underpowered and/or redundant from Halo 2 onward. A truly diverse sandbox is the only way to ensure diverse weapons use.

Having a bunch of reskins filling out most of the sandbox leads to most weapons getting left behind.

11

> 2533274923428997;3:
> Bloom really has be down about the sidekick tbh. Not happy to see any form of bloom returning on precision weapons.
>
> I honestly think the Halo 3 pistol was a pretty solid starting weapon IMO. While it was certainly underwhelming because of dual wielding, it had a clear advantage over the AR at range, and couldn’t exactly contend with the BR which was a nice spot to be in. The exact opposite of the Halo 5 Magnum after the retuning.
>
> It really does boil down to maps though; weapon placement, spawns, cover. They all place a role in how games play. I’m holding any major opinions until we see multiplayer, but tbh I’m not impressed with what I’ve seen so far

I think the bloom is just a cosmetic part of the UI, there is no way 343 would be stupid enough to bring bloom back for precision weapons.

12

> 2533274819446242;10:
> > 2533274808548953;9:
> > > 2533274819446242;1:
> > > TL;DR
> > > BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.
> >
> > Egh… I think playlist dependant is the best approach. BR starts in everything leads to repetitive one-gun gameplay in my opinion.
>
> There has never been a “one gun” Halo game. Even if there was Auto starts wouldn’t actually fix a “one gun game,” it just means that everyone rushes for the nearest precision weapon anyways and makes the players who can’t get to them free kills. If people are not picking up certain other weapons it because a noticeable chunk of the sandbox has been either underpowered and/or redundant from Halo 2 onward. A truly diverse sandbox is the only way to ensure diverse weapons use.
>
> Having a bunch of reskins filling out most of the sandbox leads to most weapons getting left behind.

Well, weapon redundancy is a whole different discussion. I do think automatics should have generally faster killtimes than precision weapons (for the most part they do, it’s just a little too inconsistent), I also think whoever gets a BR, DMR or whatever should be able to press the range advantage and get easier kills, as a reward for finding the weapon (but get their -Yoink- kicked in if an auto gets close), while maps should have fairly evenly-spread precision spawns help prevent one-sidedness.

Basically, whoever puts in the effort to find weapon pickups, deserves to have an advantage of some kind (whilst every weapon should also have it’s disadvantages). But if we start everyone off with long-range weapons, then everyone just plinks at each other across the map all day, and that is not fun. If they start everyone off with AR/Magnum (or sidekick, in this case) and balance them properly, then we’ll be starting off with a decent close-quarters weapon for standard brawling, and a fast-firing short-mid range headshot weapon with a decent killtime and potential for combos.

And anyone with a BR will have to be mindful and secure kills from a distance, because they’ll lose up-close.

13

> 2533274819446242;1:
> Now that it has been confirmed that the new pistol is currently replacing the M6 and is closer to something like the H5 Gunfighter or H2 Magnum, BR starts are now a necessity.
>
> Halo multiplayer requires a strong versatile precision weapon off spawn to keep matches fair and prevent games from turning into one sided blowouts. Whether the precision weapon takes the form of a rifle or pistol, I’ve never much cared, but now that we know the Sidekick isn’t going to be up to par BR starts are now the go to choice.
>
> You can make a bullet hose like the AR and a close range precision weapon like the Sidekick as good as you want, but they just are not up to the task to protecting new spawns. You are likely going to have no ability to respond to to any ranged weapon and you will be at the complete mercy of any close range power weapons. When you spawn with a BR(or CE Pistol or H5 magnum) you have the ability to turn the tide if you have the requisite skill. With a BR you can can keep a sniper at bay with descope while closing the distance and gaining advantage over said sniper. With a BR you can keep you distance from rockets and shotguns. With a BR(or another similar weapon) you have the ability to respond to just about every situation the moment you spawn which means you are always a threat to the enemy team. The same cannot be said for Auto starts.
>
> As it stands AR/Pistol gametypes in Infinite would just be a repeat of the auto starts from Halo 2, 3, and Reach. Everyone wlll rush to the nearest scoped weapon and anyone without a BR or something similar is going virtually defenseless against someone who has a precision weapon and/or a power weapon. A close range weapon is only a threat at close range, meaning any decently experienced player can easily avoid a respawning player with auto starts and can easily predict where they will go because of their limited effective range.
>
> This isn’t a Casual vs Competitive issue. Strong versatile precision weapons are important in both casual and hardcore playlists. No one should be forced into playing a competitive playlist just to get decent settings that don’t leave fresh spawns as sitting ducks. If you are concerned about players using a variety of weapons that isn’t a problem with BR starts provided the sandbox is actually diverse and interesting. Auto starts have never fixed the “variety” issue, they just add a pointless middle man to the proceedings where everyone rushes to the nearest scoped weapon they should have spawned with in the first place. “Variety” is an issue that concerns the entire sandbox, not the starting weapon.
>
> TL;DR
> BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.

I agree

14

I know I’m in the minority but I actually much prefer the DMR to the BR because not only am I better with it, but headshots feel a lot more satisfying and fair because you actually need to land a singular shot instead of just dragging your reticle across a player’s head, which feels awful whenever that doesn’t get you a headshot for whatever reason. Of course the problen with the DMR is that it has a 3x scope which makes it too powerful as a starting weapon especially on very open maps, so despite my preference, the BR is the more balanced choice.

I’ve never had a problem with precision starts themselves, I really just want automatic weapons to have a genuine advantage at close range that way people will actually use them, unlike in Halo CE and Halo 5 where the Magnum was so good that there was essentially never a reason to use your AR. In my opinion, the Halo 5 smg was pretty much perfect for how strong automatics should be, noticeably stronger than the standard precision start weapon at close range but with lower versatility.

One huge problem with automatics is with how many of them there are in Halo, the AR and SMG are already very redundant and for whatever reason 343 decided that it would be a good idea to add in the VK78 Commando as if we needed another human automatic. I realize that it can zoom in and that it might be treated like a power weapon, but if they really wanted an automatic power weapon they could have just brought back the SAW.

At least the non-human automatics have some alien flavor to them which makes it easier to make them unique such as the plasma rifle which overheats and does more shield damage, but one thing that 343 has screwed up with all of their plasma weapons is projectile speed which not only ruins the uniqueness of them but also makes dodging plasma fire basically impossible. A slightly faster TTK could have been given to the plasma rifle to balance out it’s slower projectile speed but unfortunately that can’t happen with fast plasma projectiles.

Oh and lastly in regards to redundancy, why in the world did 343 think we needed another burst fire precision weapon? People already complain about how the Covenant Carbint and Battle Rifle are too similar, and 343 had to go and make the Pulse Carbine to remove the main difference between both guns by making it burst fire.

And of course bloom coming back honestly makes me lose hope for the gunplay in general. Gunplay was one of the few things that I thought that 343 did genuinely better than Bungie, but now they’re deciding to make it frustrating again.

15

I respectfully disagree. I think that should certainly be the start in competitive play, as it always has been, but with matches that always start with the BR, there is very little reason to use anything else. Making for very uninteresting matches.

I think most modes should start with AR/Pistol, with BR pickups on the map, as God intended lol

16

> 2535406868639540;12:
> > 2533274819446242;10:
> > > 2533274808548953;9:
> > > > 2533274819446242;1:
> > > > TL;DR
> > > > BR starts are necessary now that the Sidekick has been confirmed to be a “sidearm” and isn’t suitable to being the main starting weapon in standard multiplayer gametypes.
> > >
> > > Egh… I think playlist dependant is the best approach. BR starts in everything leads to repetitive one-gun gameplay in my opinion.
> >
> > There has never been a “one gun” Halo game. Even if there was Auto starts wouldn’t actually fix a “one gun game,” it just means that everyone rushes for the nearest precision weapon anyways and makes the players who can’t get to them free kills. If people are not picking up certain other weapons it because a noticeable chunk of the sandbox has been either underpowered and/or redundant from Halo 2 onward. A truly diverse sandbox is the only way to ensure diverse weapons use.
> >
> > Having a bunch of reskins filling out most of the sandbox leads to most weapons getting left behind.
>
> Well, weapon redundancy is a whole different discussion. I do think automatics should have generally faster killtimes than precision weapons (for the most part they do, it’s just a little too inconsistent), I also think whoever gets a BR, DMR or whatever should be able to press the range advantage and get easier kills, as a reward for finding the weapon (but get their -Yoink- kicked in if an auto gets close), while maps should have fairly evenly-spread precision spawns help prevent one-sidedness.
>
> Basically, whoever puts in the effort to find weapon pickups, deserves to have an advantage of some kind (whilst every weapon should also have it’s disadvantages). But if we start everyone off with long-range weapons, then everyone just plinks at each other across the map all day, and that is not fun. If they start everyone off with AR/Magnum (or sidekick, in this case) and balance them properly, then we’ll be starting off with a decent close-quarters weapon for standard brawling, and a fast-firing short-mid range headshot weapon with a decent killtime and potential for combos.
>
> And anyone with a BR will have to be mindful and secure kills from a distance, because they’ll lose up-close.

this guy gets it. classic halo was about melee, short medium long range weapons, and grenades, they all had a somewhat fair balance. melee, short medium range weapons and grenades to an extent were all messed up in halo 5. getting close in halo 5 is hard, the precision weapons just ping you anywhere on the map at any range. you cant fix this by making close range weapons more powerful. you can make the close range weapons have more precision but then that just defeats the purpose of a close range weapon. another big mistake in halo 5 was the ability to thruster at anytime, it made melee kills very inconsistant when people could just speed away and this further destroyed the close range combat of halo.

17

Nice to see some common sense posts popping up.

The BR is better as a (powerful) map pick up.

It would require some neutering to be a balanced starting weapon… and that would make people sad.

18

Absolutely not.

Ranged precisions starts completely ruin the Halo sandbox and simplify it into a more typical CoD-type shooter where you spawn with the weapon you will get 90% of your kills with and can engage targets as soon as you see them. They have their place within the “competitive” sub-community who have this obsession with one-on-one duels, but it absolutely shouldn’t be a mainstay mode. It’s more like Snipers or SWAT. It’s not the real Halo experience.

Ranged precision starts as default are an admission of a failure of the system. It all started with Halo 2’s SMG starts that were far too close ranged and left you helpless against anyone with a BR/Carbine/Sniper/Beam Rifle. The quick and easy fix in 2004 was to just make BR-start game modes. In Halo 3 they added back the AR as a medium range option in hopes that they could keep the sandbox fully utilized while still having a personal defense from longer than just immediate CQC. They failed and the BR still ended up dominating, and people asked for BR starts. Reach said “screw it, let’s give you a scoped magnum as a sidearm” to fend off the precision weapons, but forgot to make the AR an actually valid option with a niche that wasn’t eclipsed by the utility of the sidearm itself, and essentially became precision starts. It took til Halo 5 to finally understand how to balance the game so the entire sandbox was actually being played.

19

> 2533274801472802;18:
> Absolutely not.
>
> Ranged precisions starts completely ruin the Halo sandbox and simplify it into a more typical CoD-type shooter where you spawn with the weapon you will get 90% of your kills with and can engage targets as soon as you see them. They have their place within the “competitive” sub-community who have this obsession with one-on-one duels, but it absolutely shouldn’t be a mainstay mode. It’s more like Snipers or SWAT. It’s not the real Halo experience.
>
> Ranged precision starts as default are an admission of a failure of the system. It all started with Halo 2’s SMG starts that were far too close ranged and left you helpless against anyone with a BR/Carbine/Sniper/Beam Rifle. The quick and easy fix in 2004 was to just make BR-start game modes. In Halo 3 they added back the AR as a medium range option in hopes that they could keep the sandbox fully utilized while still having a personal defense from longer than just immediate CQC. They failed and the BR still ended up dominating, and people asked for BR starts. Reach said “screw it, let’s give you a scoped magnum as a sidearm” to fend off the precision weapons, but forgot to make the AR an actually valid option with a niche that wasn’t eclipsed by the utility of the sidearm itself, and essentially became precision starts. It took til Halo 5 to finally understand how to balance the game so the entire sandbox was actually being played.

“who have this obsession with one-on-one duels”
you actually think precision weapons with a good amount of ttk promotes 1v1 duels? it doesn’t which is why it ruins the sandbox because the best strategy in the game becomes teamshooting, not 1v1’s. This is what people describe when they refer to halo 5 as a sweaty teamshooter because you are lucky if you get a 1v1

20

> 2533274801472802;18:
> Absolutely not.
>
> Ranged precisions starts completely ruin the Halo sandbox and simplify it into a more typical CoD-type shooter where you spawn with the weapon you will get 90% of your kills with and can engage targets as soon as you see them. They have their place within the “competitive” sub-community who have this obsession with one-on-one duels, but it absolutely shouldn’t be a mainstay mode. It’s more like Snipers or SWAT. It’s not the real Halo experience.

“Its not the real Halo experience” That is why AR/Pistol became the de-facto starting weapons in CE and literally every game afterward revolves around precision weapons regardless of whether the devs let you spawn with one or not. Precision starts are widely popular even in social scenarios.

> Ranged precision starts as default are an admission of a failure of the system. It all started with Halo 2’s SMG starts that were far too close ranged and left you helpless against anyone with a BR/Carbine/Sniper/Beam Rifle. The quick and easy fix in 2004 was to just make BR-start game modes. In Halo 3 they added back the AR as a medium range option in hopes that they could keep the sandbox fully utilized while still having a personal defense from longer than just immediate CQC. They failed and the BR still ended up dominating, and people asked for BR starts. Reach said “screw it, let’s give you a scoped magnum as a sidearm” to fend off the precision weapons, but forgot to make the AR an actually valid option with a niche that wasn’t eclipsed by the utility of the sidearm itself, and essentially became precision starts.

Its almost like there is a consistent pattern of auto starts failing without players being given a ranged precision weapon. You can make the AR as good as you want, but niche close range weapons are fundamentally unsuited to being the main starting weapon. Against players of similar skill levels, the team who lost the initial fight are at a massive disadvantage. The winning team will have options to move around the map and engage at whatever range they wish whereas respawning players have effectively 2 options, either run for a precision weapon of which there is a limited number on the map, or stick to pathways where they can use their niche weapons.

Both options can be easily countered by players have who have even basic map knowledge. Precision starts are necessary whether they take the form of a pistol or a rifle to ensure matches don’t end up snowballing into one sided blowouts. Speaking of which weapon shapes.

> It took til Halo 5 to finally understand how to balance the game so the entire sandbox was actually being played.

The Halo 5 Magnum is literally just another BR, in fact it is just better than both the Halo 2 and Halo 3 BRs. The only difference between Halo 5(and I would argue 4) is that 343 finally buffed many of the weapons that had been underperforming since Halo 2. There are still massive issues with redundant weapons, but at least most weapons you pick up have to be respected by your opponents.

The precision weapon didn’t change, it was other parts of the sandbox that changed. Its almost like it was a sandbox issue not a precision weapon issue. If it makes folks feel better to spawn with a pistol I wouldn’t care as long as it was at least as good as the H5 Magnum, but it doesn’t look like the Sidekick is anywhere near as capable.