I heard that in the upcoming update, they will make dropping weapons take the same time as switching weapons. And–surprise–they’re doing it because of competitive concerns.
I think this is a terrible idea, because it makes a feature unique to Infinite redundant and useless. If it takes the same time to swap, there is no advantage to dropping.
The way it’s been since launch makes so much more sense. Dropping is faster, but then you have to either pick your weapon or a different weapon back up to get back to having a second weapon. Swapping is slower, but you still have another weapon to switch to without needing to pick one up. It’s a tactical decision, dependent on which trade-off you’d rather make.
It also makes shield-draining weapons like the plasma pistol and pulse carbine even worse. As it is, the only real use of the plasma pistol in Infinite is too drop shields, and then get a faster noob combo by dropping the plasma pistol.
It never needed a nerf and no one wanted it to be nerfed either. The strategy was completely balanced because if there was a second guy by the time you pick up the weapon they already would have killed you.
Eh, since people in social don’t drop weapons, I don’t really see this really impacting many people. I’ll have to check up on competitive to see what they say.
Drop Weapon mechanic will now have the same speed as normal weapon switching
Sandbox Team Dev Note:The Drop Weapon meta was becoming very prominent in competitive play, to the point where nearly every top player was doing it. Many players shared their concerns about it becoming too prominent at the highest level of competition, so we’ve made sure the weapon ready up time after a dropped weapon matches the speed of swapping between weapons normally.
-I think the CSR progress is fine now.
-Weapon “red racks” only coming back once a weapon has despawned = ehh… I dont love it. But i will see how this goes first before really judging. it’ll just be less frequent ‘other’ weapons on a map at once.
-Frag grenade - i dont mind the radius decrease as much as the inconsistency of how the damage is dealt to opponents, that should be addressed first.
-Drop weapon - agree don’t nerf it
-Sniper - I’m ok with this one.
I think it was fine for game balance, because it made shield draining weapons more viable. Which was great for players like me who are often bad at the game, especially with Infinite’s awful aim assist, and have trouble consistently landing shots with pretty much any weapon in the game. The plasma pistol was already nerfed and redundant compared to previous Halos, and now it’ll be even more so.
Balance issues aside, it was also something that Halo hadn’t done before, that I thought was a neat innovation to the game’s sandbox. It being rendered useless is more or less taking away an intentional feature that’s been present since the beginning, which is something I bristle at. Especially when it’s done for competitive players, which 343 always prioritizes over casual players.
I also do not appreciate your tone. It’s fine to disagree with me, but you can do so without being condescending.
It’s not really exploitable if it’s a built in feature that was (I presume) made intentionally faster than swapping. That just makes it a normal mechanic of the sandbox. This isn’t them fixing some oversight, it’s them nullifying a feature.
That’s an entirely different game, era, and circumstance. And weapon dropping isn’t unfair how it’s been. Everyone has the ability, all of the time. That’s like saying a melee is unfair. And like I said, it’s a trade off-- faster, but you lose the weapon. Now it will be unfair to yourself if you do it, because swapping will be the same speed but let you keep the weapon.
They never intended this feature to be a gunplay/outplay mechanic. For one thing, its an unfair advantage to controller players. Another thing, the function or ‘advantage’ of dropping a weapon is literslly just sharing it with a teamate. Should be nothing else.
So their intention with the weapon drop was to have it be quicker than swapping?
And because they “intended” it to be that way, it means it’s a normal mechanic? What reason was it again that mechanics can’t be altered?
Could you still not drop weapons when the timing of it is altered?
If they wanted players to be able to switch weapons faster they’d speed up swapping.
Thay have an intent with the gameplay regarding times and what influences optimal kill times. I seriously doubt weapon balancing and timings of different kinds were made around how fast dropping a weapon is, considering they’re re-balancing it now.
On the one hand, this won’t really effect the casual audience so it doesn’t effect many people.
On the other hand, it’s a cool tech which does have downsides to its use if another player flanks you.
Really, only competitive players would use this tech so it should be decided by them if they want it in the game or not. If they don’t want it in, fair enough. If they do, then that’s 343i removing a feature people enjoyed.
I think they gave us a mechanic to drop a weapon, but unintentionally gave us a faster time to kill.
Previously in any Halo game you would need a 3rd weapon on the ground to be able to drop one of your own weapons.
Now they added a feature to drop a weapon ( to a teammate ) as long as you have 2 guns. Nice especially if you have rockets and snipe and want to drop one for a friend, but there isn’t any other gun laying around to swap for.
The nerf will not impact any social games because nobody is using it in social, and they did not intentionally add this feature to give a faster time to kill, it was an oversite.