Halo 4 Needs Faster Kill Times

Games Other Halo
1

Let me start by saying something we can all agree on: the kill times in games like Call of Duty and Battlefield are way too fast. The winner of the battle will almost certainly be the person who took the first shot. But Halo Reach (and even Halo 3) may have gone overboard with making the kill times longer. For Halo 4 to truly meet its potential, it’ll need to find a balance between instant kills and the painfully slow kill times of Halo Reach. Doing this will please casual gamers, competitive gamers, and will simply make Halo more fun.

From a casual standpoint, there is nothing more frustrating than shooting at someone for five seconds only for them to waltz around the nearest corner and lob a grenade to ensure you don’t follow them. Even if you can get 5 shot kills every single time, your opponent will likely be able to get away astonishingly easily. This makes the game frustrating, not to mention flat out boring.

From a competitive player’s point of view, long kill times are detrimental to the game’s complex strategic elements. In Halos 1 and 2, players had to spread out across the map and develop a set-up that could deal with enemies attacking with a huge variety of their own strategies. In Reach, people simply held hands the entire time. The best “strategy” in that game was by far just staying within a few feet of your teammates. Competitive gameplay is incredibly boring when everyone is constantly using the same simple tactic over and over and over again.

Furthermore, quick kill times would lead to more multi-kills. With the default settings of H3 and Reach, it was nearly impossible to get past a triple kill without a power weapon or vehicle. Say what you will, but deep down you know how exciting multi-kills can be.

There are many different approaches that 343 can take to fix this problem. They could make bloom reset faster (which would obviously make kill times faster) and create more open maps. With open maps, people wouldn’t be able to run away as easily, and if they did, they would be more likely to run into the line of site of one of your teammates who would be happy to finish the kill. According to Killa KC (MLG guy), 343 has made bloom reset faster, and from what I can deduce from gameplay footage and screenshots, the maps do seem to be more open. Those two things right there may be enough to fix this issue. However, I’m willing to take it a step further. I think that, in addition to the changes they’ve already made, 343 should make the DMR and BR 4 shot kill weapons, the magnum a 5SK weapon, and then give the necessary buffs to the AR, PP, etc.

Please leave some feedback on this idea. I’m interested to know if anyone has a reason why slightly faster kill times would be a bad thing for Halo 4. As a final note, I’d just like to say that I love you 343, and I can’t wait for Halo 4 :smiley:

EDIT #1: Average kill times are fine where they are. What Halo 4 needs is a really fast minimum kill time (around 1 second flat) and an average kill time of about 2 seconds. Assuming Halo 4 doesn’t dramatically drop aim-assist, it looks like the min kill time will be around 1.8 and the avg. kill time will be right around 2 flat.

What 343 should do is make the guns more powerful, but also more difficult to use.

2

Nah, Halo kill times are pretty decent.

Fast enough to keep the game moving, slow enough to require skill.

3

> Nah, Halo kill times are pretty decent.
>
> Fast enough to keep the game moving, slow enough to require skill.

The kill times in recent Halo games keep the game “moving” in the same sense that modern medicine can keep a brain-dead comatose vegetable “alive”

4

i somewhat agree. thats why i like to play swat on reach. but i dunno. i kinda like the “kill time” i guess because thats the way its been for almost a year and half. so changing it would be a huge curveball for many

5

Kill times have been fine with Halo. As I look at it though kill times have decreased in Reach.

6

> i somewhat agree. thats why i like to play swat on reach. but i dunno. i kinda like the “kill time” i guess because thats the way its been for almost a year and half. so changing it would be a huge curveball for many

Perhaps it would be a curveball for many, but so is removing AL and letting people see through walls and having drop pods fall down with random weapons

7

> The kill times in recent Halo games keep the game “moving” in the same sense that modern medicine can keep a brain-dead comatose vegetable “alive”

Firstly, that’s a TERRIBLE metaphor.

> Perhaps it would be a curveball for many, but so is removing AL and letting people see through walls and having drop pods fall down with random weapons

Secondly, your assumptions are terribly misconstrued.

8

I played Halo 3 tonight and I realized how damn slow the gameplay is. The movement speed made me feel like a snail, and the bullet time was incredibly obnoxious and inconvenient. Halo 2’s was the most entertaining to play.

9

I thought this was the point of power weapons, to oneshot your enemies.

10

I want the kill times to be balanced with all the other AAs that slow down the game. If the kill times are also slow, this game is going to drag just like Reach.

At least a 4 shot kill. AT LEAST.

11

HELL NO.

This game is enough like Call of Duty already.

12

It’s called linear aggressiveness. It’s plagued Halo since Halo 3 and Reach, and to a much lesser extent Halo 2.

Kill times are so ludicrously slow that teams have to rely on “team shooting” in order to play well. Team shooting is what most kids these days consider good teamwork. Even though it is a good team skill to have, it’s only the basis for good teamwork. The linear aggressiveness comes into play in the fact that more or less competitively it ends up being kill 3/4’s or all the enemy team, tell your team to push up on the map, and then attempt to spawn kill for a flag cap or scoring. It’s just a constant forward/backward tug of war.

Since kill times are so slow teams have to rely on team shooting instead of individuals making big changes. Sure, it happens from time to time, but no where near as much as it should. If you could decisively kill someone out of position or just outmatch them, in a fairly quick manner then more interesting strategies could be employed and it would really allow individual players to shine, especially when said player has such great positioning and map knowledge that he could subdue 2 or even 3 players if caught completely off guard.

More importantly it also makes asymmetrical maps flow much better, and I think Halo’s gameplay has always lended itself well to asymms.

The important thing is to find a way to make the max kill time for certain weapons difficult to achieve. The CE pistol is a good example of this, people talk about how OP the CE pistol was and how fast a 3sk is. But most people can’t 3sk for their life, much less across the map. But the potential for sick plays was there.

13

1.7 sec with the BR is Halo 4 isnt fast enough for you?

14

Yes, I totally agree with this. Lets take the one thing that make Halo, Halo, and just completely screw it up. Lets make those “Halo is becoming COD” complaints a reality by taking the one thing that makes Halo different the most in gameplay.

15

Nah they are good.

16

.01 second kill times for most guns are optimal.

17

lol@ the slippery slopers who are screaming CoD when we’re talking about making kill times faster by increments of 0.4 seconds tops. Besides, like I mentioned, increasing kill times is only good when only good players can achieve the fastest kill time. Say if a weapon had a kill time of like 2 seconds on average, 1.5 seconds would be optimal.

Say the DMR (not gonna happen, but for example) could kill in 1.5 seconds flat, a mere 0.2-0.3 seconds faster than what the ZB DMR is. But movement and strafing in H4 is so crisp and responsive that a good player can juke the -Yoink- out of people if he reads them right, this increases the kill time for the opposing player by quite a bit because they can’t hit their target with 100% accuracy, this will happen to MOST people to varying degrees.

But say you’re a top tier player, and you have a great shot, you can achieve that 1.5 second kill time just because you don’t miss. That’s what a skill gap is people, doing something far better than the rest of the players. Technically most kill times would be comfortable, but high level play would be intense and fast. Although I’m sure many posters here would dislike that because they can’t rest easy knowing that they can get thrashed so hard by people better than them. It’s the nature of any game, you lose and get better, or just back down and play with the small fries.

18

> HELL NO.
>
> This game is enough like Call of Duty already.

Because I clearly said that I wanted this game to have a 2 shot kill Assault Rifle…

19

Hell no the Slowness and team shooting make halo “HALO”

20

> Yes, I totally agree with this. Lets take the one thing that make Halo, Halo, and just completely screw it up. Lets make those “Halo is becoming COD” complaints a reality by taking the one thing that makes Halo different the most in gameplay.

Literally, my first sentence was about how Call of Duty kill times are way too fast. An AR in CoD can kill someone in like 3 shots, the AR in Halo kills in like 25…I think we can find some middle ground