Halo 4 weapon sandbox and how to improve.

Games Other Halo
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We haven’t gotten a good sandbox for a Halo game in about 10 years, and I think 343 needs to understand what makes a good sandbox. This post will explain how to make the game have a good sandbox and how strafe needs to be good for a good sandbox to be made.

While strafe seems something that isn’t to big of a deal, it actually is a very big thing.

The reason why CE’s pistol took so much skill was the fact that the strafe in that game had fast negative acceleration(deceleration in laymen terms) and fast positive acceleration allowing for fast changes in direction. Coupled with no bullet magnetism, it made the gun extremely difficult to consistently get 3sk’s with.

Now if we were to look at H3 and reach, getting the highest speed for a kill time was a lot easier. Harder in H3 because of the BR spread, but lets look at the strafe in those games compared to CE.

The strafe in H3/Reach was a lot slower, it took way to long to turn to the other direction and this makes it so dodging shots become a lot more irrelevant and therefore make the game more of a “first to shoot wins”. Now obviously H3/Reach really don’t play like that, but they are much closer then CE, and if we have a great strafe we can then achieve fast kill times without breaking the game.

Now lets look at Sprint, in Reach it was something I really disliked and in my opinion I don’t think sprint is a good addition to Halo, but something Reach did wrong made sprint terrible when it could have been a lot better.

In Reach the killtimes are 1.5 seconds (which is a decent killtime) with the DMR. But with sprint the game becomes a lot slower because players are able to run away a lot more.

Now if we were to increase kill times then we can make it so players cant just turn around and run away, this makes the game a lot faster.

But how can we increase the kill times without making the game a “First to shoot wins” sort of mentality? Well we make it so turning left when you were turning right is instantaneous.

Lets look at this scenario, the BR in H4 now kills in 1.0 seconds, now what some people here might say is “Now the killtimes are to fast, the game will feel like CoD!”. Now this could be possibly true if the straf is something like H3/Reach, but lets say H4 has a strafe acceleration similar to CE.

Now that the kill time is 1.0 seconds, it feels like a very fast kill time. But the strafe is now similar to CE, and this in turn increases the average kill time. Because it is so difficult to land…lets say 4 shots to the head, the average kill time is increased since it is so difficult.

Now lets say the average kill time is about 1.5 seconds, well guess what? That is around Reach’s highest possible kill time.

Guess what we just did? We increased the highest possible kill time with a BR to 1 second, and also made it so that the gun is difficult enough where it is around Reach’s DMR’s killtime or H2’s BR.

Now you might ask, but if the gun is to difficult to use to where it is around Reach’s kill time wont we be stuck to where we previously were? No because killing a player sprinting is a lot easier to get headshots with rather then someone who is strafing.

Since now that sprinting away when you are one shot is a lot less effective, we have made it so “Standing your ground” in a way becomes more effective. Because of the fact that the strafe is effective, we have made it so players will less likely use Sprint to run away since they will notice that strafing is a lot harder to get a kill with and trying to run away is a lot less effective.

And even if they do try sprinting away rather than standing your ground, they will most likely die since the killtimes are fast and a lot easier to achieve.

Now to balance the sandbox because the BR is faster, we should now make the other killtimes for weapons balance around the BR’s kill time.

If 343 were to do this, the game would have more depth and would be so much fun.

Also please 343, do not add the BR spread back to the BR. Make it at least like H2’s BR when it comes to how effective it is.

here is a another post to explain how to make the sandbox better

“Balance” shouldn’t mean that all weapons are equal. Balance should mean that all core weapons reward the user proportional to the amount of skill required to weild them. An AR shouldn’t kill as fast as a precision weapon because it requires much less skill to weild effectively (assuming reasonable amounts of aim assist, which at this point is a rather bold assumption on my part).
I want the precision weapon to be able to kill rapidly (~1 second) but require a lot of skill to weild with any consistency. If the BR or DMR or whatever the utiltiy weapon is takes 4 shots to kill, the average shots to kill for 95% of players should be at least double that. Thats how you balance a precision utility weapon: you don’t lower it to be as weak as the AR or PR or whatever, you just make it require a lot more skill to use than those weapons.
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-Bigshow

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This thread isn’t even about the sandbox. It’s about utility weapons and strafing. Also, Halo: CE did not have a good sandbox. Sniper, rockets, and the pistol were the ONLY viable weapons. However I agree strafing and balancing the utility weapons is important.

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> This thread isn’t even about the sandbox. It’s about utility weapons and strafing. Also, Halo: CE did not have a good sandbox. Sniper, rockets, and the pistol were the ONLY viable weapons. However I agree strafing and balancing the utility weapons is important.

AR was a vible close range weapon, so was the shotgun and plasma rifle was made viable by the stun effect it had on other players. The only weapon in the sandbox you would have never used was the Needler, every other weapon served a purpose.

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> This thread isn’t even about the sandbox. It’s about utility weapons and strafing. Also, Halo: CE did not have a good sandbox. Sniper, rockets, and the pistol were the ONLY viable weapons. However I agree strafing and balancing the utility weapons is important.

Halo CE did have a miraculous sandbox, actually. The best one in the series. The only useless weapons were the Needler, and the AR. The AR did have the fastest melee, though, so it was somewhat viable as a club.

The Plasma Rifle had a bonus for hitting the head, a stun effect that slowed the player being hit by it. The Plasma Pistol shared this trait. The PR was also insanely accurate when tapped, it could even reach the same rate of fire as holding the trigger if tapped fast enough.

The Plasma Pistol is virtually the same as in later titles. The main differences being a more evenly-distributed shield:health damage ratio, and the plasma stun mentioned above.

The Shotgun had a much longer viable range than in the later games. While the range for the weapon to one-shot kill someone was relatively the same, it could output more damage at range, and had a 12-round magazine with a decent rate of fire.

While the Pistol was used most for its versatility between ranges, the other weapons were not useless as they are now. The game was a utility surrounded by a group of niche weapons that have a suitable role in their respective ranges.

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> This thread isn’t even about the sandbox. It’s about utility weapons and strafing. Also, Halo: CE did not have a good sandbox. Sniper, rockets, and the pistol were the ONLY viable weapons. However I agree strafing and balancing the utility weapons is important.

Strafing fixes the sandbox, and I also stated more then once that we should balance weapons from the BR’s max kill time/ avg kill time.

And are you really saying that those weapons were the only viable ones? Have you played CE what so ever?

The shotgun had a lot of range

Plasma weapons had stun effect where you couldn’t move an inch HOW is that not effective?

AR had the largest melee hitbox

Every gun was effective besides the Needler, which it never was in any Halo.

Edit: and above me also explains why.