Feedback for Halo 4 multiplayer (+jetpacks).

Games Other Halo
1

First off, hats off to you 343i. Through all the minor griping to follow shortly, you guys did a helluva job, in both in terms of cinematic presentation and gameplay.

Now through pouring hours into Halo 4, I think I have a fair share in what could potentially be tweaked or changed.

Thanks for reading in advance. No tl;dr, sorry. I bolded the subheadings incase you just want to find the parts that interest you the most.

While I would love to get into a great brain storming session with the live team at 343i - share ideas, bounce back gameplay patterns and expected player patterns, potential abuse of mechanics and mechanisms, etc. - that isn’t very likely. Everything below is compromised of my opinions.

Bumper Jumper and Jet Pack
Anyone else who uses bumper jumper knows as well as I do, it’s impossible to use a jetpack. It’s beyond cumbersome. My proposition is to change the jetpack (perhaps just for that control scheme?) to engage when pressing the jump button again while mid-air. While this might alter some minor tactical ability (jet packing from a stand still to gain upwards ‘surprise’ momentum), it would take the jetpack from being unusable to being functional for people who choose to use this layout.

The Boltshot
Seems to be a hot topic here, so I’ll keep this brief as I know peoples’ opinions vary. I feel as if it is too powerful for a loadout weapon, and there could be a few options to change this:

**A)**Lower the range. Probably the most direct nerf.
**B)**Increase charge time. I can’t give an exact time increase, as testing would prove to be the most efficient way to determine this.
**C)**Increase the audible noise of the charge up. Even giving players more of a “heads up” could sway the power of this weapon.

The SAW
Similar to the Boltshot, seems to be a hot topic. I feel as if there is little to no counter play against the SAW unless you are in close quarters and/or have a one hit weapon (shotgun, boltshot, scattershot, sniper, etc.). Through pulsing the trigger, you can achieve: fully automatic rate of fire and no decrease in accuracy, leading to long kill ranges with incredibly quick kill times. My proposition:

**A)**Lower the range through accuracy decrease. Probably the most fair nerf. It would keep the SAW dominate in close-medium range, but it would be down to player skill vs. other players equipped at medium-long range.

I feel like if you lowered the damage or RoF, it would become unwieldy and unreliable.

Improve spawning algorithm
Just today I was playing on Complex, and we were back by back-complex. Long story short, I got out-gunned, dropped my enemy to one-shot (who hid behind tree), then instantly respawned to blue-elbow, sprinted out the door and put one round into the guy who had just recently killed me.

I understand this is a constantly evolving problem that will be constantly ironed out - bit by bit - I thought I would just mention it in my list.

Create a (or increase the) threshold to which games can not be joined.
I know that matchmaking will constantly be improved, but it seems like this would be a simple fix. There has been many times where I will consistently join Slayer games that are 10-20 kills away from completion, or have more than a majority favor towards one team (i.e 120-490 in TIS).

There is a very specific drum to Halo matches: where the power weapons lay, where the enemy players are consistently congregating, where players like to roam, who the power players are, etc.

Being thrown into this mess, if you will, is completely chaotic. You’re pretty much thrown into the grinder when you fill the vacant slot left by a disgruntled player. But this also brings up the problem of games becoming un-winnable by slots being left void.

Until a permanent, agreeable solution can be reached, I say give players the option to not be put into games that are currently in progress. The momentum of a match is very important, and understanding this is a key part of success or defeat when playing. And you cannot understand said momentum unless you start from 0-0.

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I claw my controller when using the jetpack, which means I shoot with my middle finger while using my thumb to aim like usual and I use my index finger for pressing X to use the jetpack. I kind of got used to it because I practised this in reach too.

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> First off, hats off to you 343i. Through all the minor griping to follow shortly, you guys did a helluva job, in both in terms of cinematic presentation and gameplay.

Agreed :slight_smile:

In my opinion the thing that immediately needs to be change is the join in progress.

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Great topic. I completely agree!

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What a level-headed manner in which you’ve sent this feedback. Wish other players would read this and really think about it. Can’t disagree with any of the points you’ve brought up. Jetpack is super duper tricky, because I bumper-jump as well. I radically changed the way I used the controller in order to keep things in the game like I preferred. Boltshot also needs a direct nerf, and to me, it is more egregious an imbalance than the DMR debate (which really feels like a non-issue to me, since I get BR’d, LR’d, Carbine’d and AR’d and SAW’d and SR’d and BeamR’d and IC’d and RL’d and M’d and SS’d and SG’d and FRC’d and Supp’d and StormR’d and SD’d and RG’d and A’d and BD’d and H’d and S’d and PP’d all the time).

Cheers. 343i is listening, and little rays of light like this post, in a sea of outrageous statements and other attacks on the community and other players and developers and support, are really encouraging to the players who just want to have some fun and play and have a good time, which according to the Forums and its 200K+ topics, just isn’t happening for a lot of them.

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Yeah the JIP needs to be fixed. 80% of the time I join a game late, I always get stuck on the losing team. JIP=Guaranteed loss.

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Thanks for the replies, guys. I’m going to bump this post in hopes of getting some more community feedback.

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One more bump in hope of some discussion.

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There is no “hot topic” on the Saw. It’s fine… A few people had lag issues thinking that the weapon was weak… but it’s not.

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If you’ve got the time should take a look at my article HERE where I tackle a few similar issues I see with “Game” 4.

You’ll enjoy it.

-Valky

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> Yeah the JIP needs to be fixed. 80% of the time I join a game late, I always get stuck on the losing team. JIP=Guaranteed loss.

Not exactly. A couple days ago, I joined a game in progress on Harvest, I was on blue team with had I think around 280 point while the red team had at most 400. I was furious because I hate JIP. The reason why it’s called JIP is because it ‘jips’ players out of a grande experience like Halo 2 and 3. But I, being the lone wolf player I am now (because none of my friends play Halo 4 anymore) I brought the team back up and won by a gap of 20-40 points. So when JIP does occur, there is at least a dwindle of hope.

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Great topic. Finnaly someone talking about this stuff level headedly. I agree with most of you points.
I think the idea of adding a load noise to the boltshot charge is brilliant. Should solve that weapons “problems” just fine. Only change needed IMHO.
Join in progress is a good idea in concept but tends to be difficult to balance in a fair and enjoyable way, not sure how to fix that.
The SAW seems fine to me and I’ve never seen anybody complain about it, but I’m not a forum addict so I might have missed those.
I would add the DMR to the list of things to be balanced. Not in terms of kill times but the simple fact that it deals significanly more damage to vehicles than all other loadout precisions.
Vehicles in general are a little to frail, considering that there are more power weapons and PP/Stickies on the field than ever, but I find them to still be playable just not the game changers they were capable of in previous halo games.

I have plenty of other minor, personal gripes with the game, but after reading your post and thinking about it, none NEED to be changed.