I’ve seen and heard quite a few people express that having a Bulldog in Infection is going to break the mode. Other than the obvious nostalgia, the only differences I see are the bulldog will be better with the faster rate of fire, but worse with the longer drum-mag reload. This seems like a minor difference that more-or-less balances out.
What am I missing? Or are people really just tripping over nostalgia?
Its because survivors are usually grouped together and unless the infected have shields they can be easily killed since the bulldog shoots faster and kills unshielded enemies at stupid ranges ranges that basically gets rid of the mid-long range purpose of the secondary and if the infected have shields that would make the secondary basically useless for the last man standing(i said this before and from what the matches i played of infinite’s infection with 10 people i felt like i was 100% right)
If 343 saw the bulldog being perfectly fine for infection we wouldn’t have to use a version of the game mode thats not officially released and we would’ve already had a playlist for it by now
Can you not adjust player health independent of shield strength?
I’m sure you can think of at least one other reason.
The Bulldog has overall better stats. Faster RoF, longer range, larger magazine (compared to 3, Reach, 4, & 5), faster reload (full drum as opposed to single shells). And since zombies don’t have shields, the lower damage won’t matter.
Then when you consider the fact that if players are grouped up, all that chip damage adds up and zombies can be killed from much farther away. With the shotgun you still had to let zombies get within slashing range before pulling the trigger. Both parties had a 50% chance to come out on top.
Basically, Infection was born from the interaction of the Shotgun and Sword. They are extremely similar but have slightly different attributes. Now one of the weapons has been changed considerably, while the other is more or less untouched.
It may play just fine and people like me were worried for nothing, but this isn’t first time 343 couldn’t leave well enough alone. H5 infection and it’s ADSing swords already showed just how fragile this balance can be.
It’s way more satisfying to kill a player and a zombie in particular with the good old pump shotgun than with the bulldog. That’s enough reason for me to say the bulldog breaks the mode.
It’s the same reason making the oddball a 2 hits kill was a **** decision. It’s not so much about the gameplay itself, it’s more about fun and satisfaction.
It sucks that 343i thinks more about gameplay and TTKs than it thinks about fun.
For infection, single shell reload is much more powerful. Sure, a full reload from empty takes longer, but the flexibility is a 100x better.
True, if you are thinking of base traits, but infection has always had modifications to player strengths. I don’t see why that won’t be the case this time.
I think the range on it is a plus. But not being able to partly reload the gun is a major down side. You can’t, let’s say, reload 3 bullets and sprint. Now it’s all or nothing if you decide to hit sprint to run away.
With the “dmr” coming back I think other weapons like the OG shotty will make a return through a drip feed style thing too.
Ok.
So what can we do here and now to get the game mode working best we can?
And I say this not being a particular aficionado of Infection - I just thought it was good project to practice scripting.
I’ve got the zombies at 1.2 (normal zombie) to 1.25 (alpha zombie) speed. And 1.15 slide speed and 1.10 slide length. I’ve got basic energy sword (normal) and red elite blood blades (alpha).
Currently I’ve got the survivors with bulldogs - and 0.90 weapon damage. I could also play with reload speed, and I guess, ammo capacity.
The first part of this quote seems to forget the fact that pistols have always been a part of Infection, and have allowed survivors to wrack up distance kills on the easily-headshotted zombies. The second only really applied to Halo 3, as in Reach, 4, and 5 the range of the shotgun got progressively longer and longer. You can pretty easily land deep one-taps on Infected players well before they are in sword range in all 3 of those games.
Honestly I think if they go the H4 route of having just a small enough layer of shielding to survive longer ranged Bulldog shots, and prevent the sidekick from one-tapping it will all be okay. There’s also the H5 route of providing single-magazine weapons on the map for survivors to take advantage of.
They should also experiment a bit with equipment. Give zombies unlimited thrusters, and give survivors limited uses of a repulsor on spawn (1-3), or a few equipment items on the map to play around with. We could come out of Infinite with more unique infection variants than ever before.
That’s the point of the secondaries to use against the shieldless infected that are out of shotgun range or as a last resort if you’re out of shotgun ammo but if you give infected shields the secondary becomes useless for the last man standing unless the last man standing gets a huge enough damage buff to make it a one-two headshot with the pistol at close to mid range
Also again survivors tend to group up in areas that tend to funnel infected so giving infected thrusters won’t help much against a bullet hell of bulldog shots
It’s fine. It’s just more reasons to complain about the Bulldog.
Yeah, single shell is better in a tight spot.
Changing the base traits doesn’t change the fact that the bulldog will be doing damage at greater ranges.
So here’s the thing nobody’s saying. The shotgun had a pretty LONG kill range in Infection thanks to the damage it dealt to unshielded foes being… Pretty substantial. The Bully’s got that too.
So, what you do to adjust, compensate, is lower player damage a little bit. Not so much that it feels inconsistent with other modes, but enough that you’ll one-bang with a midrange bodyshot, but aren’t crossmapping.
Not that, anyone’s gonna’ use the bully for that anyway, given how we’re likely to have Sidekicks too.
The bulldog’s not a problem. But I will say this.
IT IS EXTREMELY FUNNY THAT PEOPLE ARE NOW SAYING THE BULLDOG IS TOO POWERFUL FOR INFECTION, AND WANT THE CLASSIC SHOTGUN BACK BECAUSE IT IS WORSE AND THEREFORE MORE BALANCED.
LOL.
LMAO.
Then: “The bulldog is bad! The old shotgun is better!”
Now: “The bulldog is too good! The old shotgun is just right.”
lmao. Just. LMAO.
We had a bit of a run around on my Infection script yesterday.
The Dog was neutered back to 0.9 damage.
Seemed to play pretty well.
Sample size of 1. And with bots on a map with no nav mashes. 
OP’s post was asking about the Bulldog, so I only spoke of the Bulldog. And this brings up a great point. You can kill zombies at range, IF you can headshot them while you have to sacrificing your CQC strengths. Obviously the Bulldog won’t be crossmapping zombies, the kill threshold will likely be much farther back just going on base zombie traits.
The other thing is that the pistol and the shotgun always had very different range, but with the bulldog being the way it is, those two range have become much more overlapped. And the Sidekick doesn’t have zoom (smart-link isn’t true zoom). So we have a shorter range pistol and a longer ranged shotgun. Not the two extremes the mode thrives on.
Yeah, H4 & 5 both had shotguns with longer ranges, and I’m pretty sure that was criticized to an extent.
I agree, tweaking ammo and equipment ought to alleviate some of this.
The Bulldog is just a different weapon and it plays differently than the traditional shotgun that is what created infection and made the game mode that it is.