Halo 5 Beta Weapon balance

Games Halo 5: Guardians
#1

The purpose of this post is to gather the overall feeling for the weapon balance and kill times for the weapons in the beta. I will start with my impressions and my feedback.
Halo 5 Beta Weapon balance:
Overall: In my opinion the gameplay would benefit from slightly longer kill times. I find myself getting frustrated because i have all this mobility, but often times i do not get the chance to use it because i get killed with a perfect kill. Adding one more shot to both the BR and the DMR as well as slightly more time for the automatics would be good.

Automatics: I feel like the assault rifle is in a weird spot. It is really powerful up close normally. Then if you smart scope it is really powerful at range. It beats out the smg in almost all categories. Which makes no sense. I think the smg kill time would be good if the others were reduced. the smg when smart scoping is really good, so if you get a jump on someone its awesome.

The BR: The reason I believe it should be 5 shots is because the time you have to react and fight back is too short as is. When someone gets the jump on you, they will usually shoot you twice before you can properly orient and react. By then, it is almost always to late to do much in the fight. And running doesn’t work on these small maps either because someone always can get a bead on your shieldless body.

DMR: Same opinion as the BR just add one shot.

Grenades: This is the worst point in the game i think. The grenades remind me of the grenades in the reach beta. They are little mini nukes that are thrown twenty times a second. So many times I thrust out of the way and they still chunk me for half of my shields from accross the room. The range on the AOE needs to be reduced a decent amount or make the damage fall of more with range. It should be more about skilled placement. With the pace of the game and amount of deaths, I think the starting count should be reduced to one grenade as well. It works out much better and takes more skill and teamwork to use them effectively.

Sword: the prophets bane feels really good, but often times is hard to use because of the kill times, the increase in kill times on the other weapons would help this a lot.

This is all my opinion and I am more concerned about the feel of the game as a halo game and the amount of fun i can have. With the kill times as they are now, I have much less fun because it takes out a lot of the potential for escapes/jukes/plays.
More feedback to come. Lets hear yours.

#2

If you make the BR a 5 shot everything would need reworked. Or the gun would collect virtual dust.

SMG crushes AR up close. Not contest.

#3

The BR and other ranged weapons don’t need more shots to kill, simply reduce their rate of fire. If you compare the new BR from Halo 4/5 to the Halo 2/3 BR, it’s a lot faster in the burst. In Halo 2/3 you could distinctly hear and see each shot of the burst, a nice “pop-pop-pop” with almost no time between the next burst if you fired immediately. The new BR is faster, like “p-p-pop” with a relatively long time before the next shot can be fired. I think reducing the fire rate would help since you could actually miss some of the bullets in the burst on your target if you didn’t hold the reticule steady. With the new BR you land all 3 shots of the burst on target 99.9% of the time if not 100%. It might as well be a more forgiving DMR at that point.

The full-auto weapons need a slight reduction somehow, probably a nerf to accuracy instead of damage. The sniper needs less aim-assist and/or bullet magnetism because I’ve seen plenty of body shots register as headshots. Instead give it a faster firing rate like Halo 2/3, which fits with the much more mobile opponents. Right now it handles like a jackhammer instead of an elegant ranger’s weapon. The edges of the screen are blacked out in smart scope as well, which kills your peripheral vision and that definitely needs to go.

The optical scope on the DMR gets glare on it if you are near a light source or are in sunlight, making it harder to aim in scope. That shouldn’t be. It’s 500 years into the future, and today we have anti-glare glass. It also defeats the purpose of a level playing field if the environment works against you.

In general the environments need to be brighter because Blue team is practically camouflaged on the Truth map with the blue/blue-violet environment.

#4

The smg doesn’t really smash the ar up close. That is the problem. If you can zoom, it does very well, but hip firing it has too much spread. And I did say that lengthening kill times across the board would help. Not just the BR.

#5

Don’t lengthen times. Just revamp the smg and AR. Both blow chunks. I prefer precision weapons anyhow, but when I can’t find any, Id like to be able to put more trust in my AR. Unfortunately I end up settling for my pistol.