Halo multiplayer do's and don'ts

Games Halo Infinite
1

I’m probably totally wasting my time but I’d like to throw some of my thoughts on what I think is needed for infinite’s multiplayer.

Must have’s:

  • Hardcore and Casual gamemodes: What do I mean by this? I myself enjoy the hardcore/competitive playstyle of halo.One of halo 5’s weaknesses was it’s always hardcore and sweaty gameplay, there were times when I just wanted to relax and not have to concentrate hard. Social playlists like quick play and coreplay I often couldn’t tell the difference in play style to ranked onyx team slayer, even warzone was super sweaty in part to its loose skill pairing. There was no escape and it led to burnout. What’s the answer? I believe lowering the skill ceiling is the best way. Have certain gamemodes where the skill ceiling is reduced thereby bringing everyone more in line with each other. This can be done by starting people with autos or removal of certain armour abilities.(I believe this is why fiesta is popular, the skill ceiling is much lower) - Win EXP system: I never understand people’s interest in the CSR system all it shows is time invested but if people like it, leave it in. A much better system I felt was the EXP system from halo 3. Every win in a playlist gave 1 EXP and you ranked up in the playlist up to 5 star general. This shows some level of skill and is something to show off, a level 50 5 star general in MLG was a seriously good player. - VETO/Random: One thing halo 4 and early MCC showed us is how voting is a terrible way to pick a map. It leads to the same map being chosen over and over and over. Halo infinite should have a veto option where the current map can be rejected and the second generated map is kept. Random is also works. - Good variety of launch playlists: Halo 5s launch playlists were extremely poor, no social (other than warzone) and 5 ranked playlists which were practically all 4v4 slayer. I believe excluding BTB and reduced playlists were a tactic to force more people through warzone and hence buying packs. In any case for a game to have a good stable playerbase it needs to hit the ground running, when people leave they often don’t come back. - Pregame lobby chat: it blows my mind h5 has no pregame lobby chat! xbl is anti social as it is don’t make it worse. Give people an incentive to stay out of party chat. If I’m with a friend why would I go gamechat and then not be able to hear him between games. - Custom browser: great edition - no bloom and no health bars - Weapons range: Something that isn’t noticed often is the accuracy falloff with range. h5 does have this to some extent but being able to shoot someone accurately across map is really annoying and limits map roaming. h2 & h3 had a good BR spread with range. If you remember h2 coagulation even with a rifle it was next to impossible to kill someone at range which means on a nice big map you can safely run around and not have to hug cover constantly, same goes for h3. H5 pistol just becomes harder to aim at extreme range but you can still accurately shoot way too far. - Forced ranked gamechat: I think this worked really well in MW2 search and destroy. It helps the social aspect and meeting new people. - ranking system: I think the current ranking system works quite well. I’m not a fan of the 6 ranks within a division though. It makes plat 2 > 3 feel totally meaningless you only care about getting to diamond. Halo 2 however had a different colour change every 3 ranks so it was exciting to try to get the next symbol. - Theatre and forge need to be available on launch: A nice touch would be able to watch a clip with a friend. - 3 pillars of halo: Melee, shooting, grenades - melee should bleed through shields, reach cough
  • Armour abilities: Halo in the last few games has been following current trends rather than creating them. It takes a brave move to go against this specifically because at the end of the day they make games to make money. I believe halo should only have classic movement. Sprint is an illusion of speed, you don’t go any faster because they have to make the maps bigger. The endless debate but there’s no right answer. I think it’s time to be different and go back to halo’s roots and not have the same mechanics as every other game. There’s just something more fun when everyone is locked at the same speed it’s less stressful and feels less chaotic. CS:GO is a good example of a successful no sprint/armour abilities game.
2

Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.

In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.

3

I agree with everything except no health. I think that should be an option for custom games.

4

> 2533274879416877;2:
> Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
>
> In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.

To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.

Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season

heres a clip of mine to illustrate

5

> 2586218893182442;4:
> > 2533274879416877;2:
> > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> >
> > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
>
> To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.
>
> Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season
>
> heres a clip of mine to illustrate
> GameClips.io - Fraggy Muffin playing Halo: Reach. Watch more Xbox Clips at Clips.Games

Okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and that clip does illustrate your point. But really, that was just bad play on your part. You didn’t pace your shots. That’s why you missed. That’s why so many people miss in Halo: Reach. The randomness isn’t inherent - it’s there if you don’t understand that you need to pace your shots. That’s the extra layer of skill: you have to pace your shots. If you don’t, randomness becomes a factor. It’s not hard to understand, so I don’t get why people don’t do it.

6

I second everything in your down-to-earth reasoning.

Only interesting thing is the melee-shield-bleeding issue. I enjoy the bleed-through melees in Halo 3, but I also like the mind-game of Reach’s “don’t melee till he’s weak”. Can’t decide which is more fun. Any arguments for your opinion?

7

> 2533274823699327;6:
> I second everything in your down-to-earth reasoning.
>
> Only interesting thing is the melee-shield-bleeding issue. I enjoy the bleed-through melees in Halo 3, but I also like the mind-game of Reach’s “don’t melee till he’s weak”. Can’t decide which is more fun. Any arguments for your opinion?

It’s a terrible game mechanic (like most game mechanics in reach tbh) it promotes cheap nooby kills and lowers the skill ceiling.

So a beatdown will only kill if the player is on no shields. If there’s a sliver of shield left it will just remove the remaining shield. Halo reach was a 5 shot kill with the DMR if you see a player running around the corner, you shoot 3 perfect shots but they have now managed to run up to you and melee you. What do you do now? if you melee back he is now one shot and all your damage is pointless, then you die to a beatdown. If you decided to keep shooting you die to the beatdown. There was no punishment for being caught sprinting, on the smaller maps people would just run round beating people down. Because there’s no bleed through all the damage you do before they get up to you is completely pointless

8

> 2586218893182442;7:
> > 2533274823699327;6:
> > I second everything in your down-to-earth reasoning.
> >
> > Only interesting thing is the melee-shield-bleeding issue. I enjoy the bleed-through melees in Halo 3, but I also like the mind-game of Reach’s “don’t melee till he’s weak”. Can’t decide which is more fun. Any arguments for your opinion?
>
> It’s a terrible game mechanic (like most game mechanics in reach tbh) it promotes cheap nooby kills and lowers the skill ceiling.
>
> So a beatdown will only kill if the player is on no shields. If there’s a sliver of shield left it will just remove the remaining shield. Halo reach was a 5 shot kill with the DMR if you see a player running around the corner, you shoot 3 perfect shots but they have now managed to run up to you and melee you. What do you do now? if you melee back he is now one shot and all your damage is pointless, then you die to a beatdown. If you decided to keep shooting you die to the beatdown. There was no punishment for being caught sprinting, on the smaller maps people would just run round beating people down. Because there’s no bleed through all the damage you do before they get up to you is completely pointless

Agreed, that convinces me. Halo 3’s melee rules are more fair and fun in the end.

9

> 2533274879416877;5:
> > 2586218893182442;4:
> > > 2533274879416877;2:
> > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > >
> > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
> >
> > To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.
> >
> > Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season
> >
> > heres a clip of mine to illustrate
> > GameClips.io - Fraggy Muffin playing Halo: Reach. Watch more Xbox Clips at Clips.Games
>
> Okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and that clip does illustrate your point. But really, that was just bad play on your part. You didn’t pace your shots. That’s why you missed. That’s why so many people miss in Halo: Reach. The randomness isn’t inherent - it’s there if you don’t understand that you need to pace your shots. That’s the extra layer of skill: you have to pace your shots. If you don’t, randomness becomes a factor. It’s not hard to understand, so I don’t get why people don’t do it.

The problem with bloom was that while, yes, you can perfectly pace your shots such that your shot will land at the center of the reticle with 100% probability, this is not the most optimal tactic. The reason is that if you pace your shots perfectly every time, someone who paces their shots just a tiny bit less perfectly (say, that their shots are only 90% likely to land at the center of the reticle) will beat you more often in an encounter than you will beat them, provided everything else is equal. Concretely, if you are 100% likely to get in five out of five shots, they are 59% likely to get in five out of five shots. This means that 59% of the time, they will beat you even if you are pacing your shots perfectly. In other words, the most optimal tactic with bloom is just to succumb to the randomness. That is, the most optimal tactic doesn’t reward the player who lands their shots most consistently, and that is not good for competitive play.

Now, you could absolutely fix this. if you forgo all immersion, you could make it so that if you fire the next shot too quickly, it’s guaranteed to never hit. There is no randomness, and players are forced to pace their shots. Alternatively, you could be less drastic and make it so that as soon as bloom takes effect, the probability of landing a shot is less than, say 60%. However, as a designer you should ask yourself: is this really worth it? In most games that do recoil/bloom, you either have weapons with very fast fire rates, or it takes one good headshot to kill, the reset time is always fast, and you might even have preset recoil patterns to eliminate randomness. This means that the player often doesn’t actually need to fight the weapon, or it’s a completely deterministic system that can be learned. The actual practice of pacing shots might be there, but it’s not that big a skill. In Halo, with long kill times and slow firing precision weapons, pacing is all the skill there is to bloom, but it’s a really trivial skill to learn. You just need to be familiar with the correct rate of fire.

Furthermore, you need to consider what other effects bloom has on the game. It is well known that Halo Reach was a very slow game. The DMR even with no bloom has the highest kill time of any main precision weapon in Halo. Having to pace shots at distance just made the combat a complete drag, giving players plenty of time to notice when they are losing an encounter and run away. The long kill times also meant that one player against two was essentially a no-go, totally disempowering the individual player. Halo is not a game of near instant kill times, but contrary to popular belief, it still needs relatively fast minium kill times (~1s) for combat to flow properly.

10

> 2533274879416877;5:
> > 2586218893182442;4:
> > > 2533274879416877;2:
> > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > >
> > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
> >
> > To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.
> >
> > Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season
> >
> > heres a clip of mine to illustrate
> > GameClips.io - Fraggy Muffin playing Halo: Reach. Watch more Xbox Clips at Clips.Games
>
> Okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and that clip does illustrate your point. But really, that was just bad play on your part. You didn’t pace your shots. That’s why you missed. That’s why so many people miss in Halo: Reach. The randomness isn’t inherent - it’s there if you don’t understand that you need to pace your shots. That’s the extra layer of skill: you have to pace your shots. If you don’t, randomness becomes a factor. It’s not hard to understand, so I don’t get why people don’t do it.

Bloom isn’t a good competitive mechanic because someone can spam and win a fight to someone who controls their shots based on luck. Fair enough the person who controls their shots wins the majority of the time, but they don’t win all of the time due to a completely random, uncontrollable factor. It definitely lowers the skill gap and has no place in Halo. That being said it has formed a pivotal part in some competitive games such as Shadowrun although personally I think the game would be better without it.

Bleedthrough beatdowns are a necessity really, the user a few posts up described it perfectly. Just makes small maps not very fun to play.

11

> 2533274825830455;9:
> > 2533274879416877;5:
> > > 2586218893182442;4:
> > > > 2533274879416877;2:
> > > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > > >
> > > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
> > >
> > > To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.
> > >
> > > Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season
> > >
> > > heres a clip of mine to illustrate
> > > GameClips.io - Fraggy Muffin playing Halo: Reach. Watch more Xbox Clips at Clips.Games
> >
> > Okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and that clip does illustrate your point. But really, that was just bad play on your part. You didn’t pace your shots. That’s why you missed. That’s why so many people miss in Halo: Reach. The randomness isn’t inherent - it’s there if you don’t understand that you need to pace your shots. That’s the extra layer of skill: you have to pace your shots. If you don’t, randomness becomes a factor. It’s not hard to understand, so I don’t get why people don’t do it.
>
> The problem with bloom was that while, yes, you can perfectly pace your shots such that your shot will land at the center of the reticle with 100% probability, this is not the most optimal tactic. The reason is that if you pace your shots perfectly every time, someone who paces their shots just a tiny bit less perfectly (say, that their shots are only 90% likely to land at the center of the reticle) will beat you more often in an encounter than you will beat them, provided everything else is equal. Concretely, if you are 100% likely to get in five out of five shots, they are 59% likely to get in five out of five shots. This means that 59% of the time, they will beat you even if you are pacing your shots perfectly. In other words, the most optimal tactic with bloom is just to succumb to the randomness. That is, the most optimal tactic doesn’t reward the player who lands their shots most consistently, and that is not good for competitive play.
>
> Now, you could absolutely fix this. if you forgo all immersion, you could make it so that if you fire the next shot too quickly, it’s guaranteed to never hit. There is no randomness, and players are forced to pace their shots. Alternatively, you could be less drastic and make it so that as soon as bloom takes effect, the probability of landing a shot is less than, say 60%. However, as a designer you should ask yourself: is this really worth it? In most games that do recoil/bloom, you either have weapons with very fast fire rates, or it takes one good headshot to kill, the reset time is always fast, and you might even have preset recoil patterns to eliminate randomness. This means that the player often doesn’t actually need to fight the weapon, or it’s a completely deterministic system that can be learned. The actual practice of pacing shots might be there, but it’s not that big a skill. In Halo, with long kill times and slow firing precision weapons, pacing is all the skill there is to bloom, but it’s a really trivial skill to learn. You just need to be familiar with the correct rate of fire.
>
> Furthermore, you need to consider what other effects bloom has on the game. It is well known that Halo Reach was a very slow game. The DMR even with no bloom has the highest kill time of any main precision weapon in Halo. Having to pace shots at distance just made the combat a complete drag, giving players plenty of time to notice when they are losing an encounter and run away. The long kill times also meant that one player against two was essentially a no-go, totally disempowering the individual player. Halo is not a game of near instant kill times, but contrary to popular belief, it still needs relatively fast minium kill times (~1s) for combat to flow properly.

That’s a pretty convincing argument, but I think that it doesn’t always apply outside of a vacuum. There are workarounds to the randomness. My go-to tactic at most ranges was to spam the first four shots centre-mass, then pace the fifth shot to get a perfectly accurate headshot. Halo: Reach’s bloom isn’t perfect or even great, and to be completely honest Halo 3 is my favourite game in the series (so I generally prefer not to have bloom anyway), but I think the implications of the system aren’t purely statistical in nature. You can learn to have bloom work in your favour for the vast majority of situations. And I tend to think it was a good balancing factor for the Magnum, since it was essentially the same weapon as the DMR, except it had more bloom.

And yeah, Reach was pretty slow. I have a few pretty fundamental issues with the game (no bleedthrough and -Yoinking!- Armour Lock), but I had a lot of fun with it. And despite all that, it’s very similar in pace if not faster than Halo 4 and 5.

But anyway, I do understand what you’re saying, and you’ve convinced me of a lot of it. Even though I wouldn’t want it implemented in a future Halo game, I still like it as it existed back in Reach.

12

> 2533274825830455;9:
> > 2533274879416877;5:
> > > 2586218893182442;4:
> > > > 2533274879416877;2:
> > > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > > >
> > > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
> > >
> > > To clarify I mean no health bar like in reach/ce.
> > >
> > > Bloom absolutely didn’t add an extra layer of skill, it added randomness and allowed bad players to have a chance. Bloom reduced the skill gap to its lowest level across all the halos which is likely why you feel you played the best. Bloom works in games like COD, battlefield etc where it doesn’t really matter where your bullets go on the person. Halos skill comes in because it really does matter where your bullets go once the shield is dropped. A game that resolved around accuracy had a gun that was very inaccurate this is the reason reach took the most popular esport in the world (halo 3) and was removed from the pro circuit in 1 season
> > >
> > > heres a clip of mine to illustrate
> > > GameClips.io - Fraggy Muffin playing Halo: Reach. Watch more Xbox Clips at Clips.Games
> >
> > Okay, I understand where you’re coming from, and that clip does illustrate your point. But really, that was just bad play on your part. You didn’t pace your shots. That’s why you missed. That’s why so many people miss in Halo: Reach. The randomness isn’t inherent - it’s there if you don’t understand that you need to pace your shots. That’s the extra layer of skill: you have to pace your shots. If you don’t, randomness becomes a factor. It’s not hard to understand, so I don’t get why people don’t do it.
>
> The problem with bloom was that while, yes, you can perfectly pace your shots such that your shot will land at the center of the reticle with 100% probability, this is not the most optimal tactic. The reason is that if you pace your shots perfectly every time, someone who paces their shots just a tiny bit less perfectly (say, that their shots are only 90% likely to land at the center of the reticle) will beat you more often in an encounter than you will beat them, provided everything else is equal. Concretely, if you are 100% likely to get in five out of five shots, they are 59% likely to get in five out of five shots. This means that 59% of the time, they will beat you even if you are pacing your shots perfectly. In other words, the most optimal tactic with bloom is just to succumb to the randomness. That is, the most optimal tactic doesn’t reward the player who lands their shots most consistently, and that is not good for competitive play.
>
> Now, you could absolutely fix this. if you forgo all immersion, you could make it so that if you fire the next shot too quickly, it’s guaranteed to never hit. There is no randomness, and players are forced to pace their shots. Alternatively, you could be less drastic and make it so that as soon as bloom takes effect, the probability of landing a shot is less than, say 60%. However, as a designer you should ask yourself: is this really worth it? In most games that do recoil/bloom, you either have weapons with very fast fire rates, or it takes one good headshot to kill, the reset time is always fast, and you might even have preset recoil patterns to eliminate randomness. This means that the player often doesn’t actually need to fight the weapon, or it’s a completely deterministic system that can be learned. The actual practice of pacing shots might be there, but it’s not that big a skill. In Halo, with long kill times and slow firing precision weapons, pacing is all the skill there is to bloom, but it’s a really trivial skill to learn. You just need to be familiar with the correct rate of fire.
>
> Furthermore, you need to consider what other effects bloom has on the game. It is well known that Halo Reach was a very slow game. The DMR even with no bloom has the highest kill time of any main precision weapon in Halo. Having to pace shots at distance just made the combat a complete drag, giving players plenty of time to notice when they are losing an encounter and run away. The long kill times also meant that one player against two was essentially a no-go, totally disempowering the individual player. Halo is not a game of near instant kill times, but contrary to popular belief, it still needs relatively fast minium kill times (~1s) for combat to flow properly.

Best argument I’ve heard about bloom.

Some more suggestion for multiplayer.

  • more vehicular combat. I’m not a big fan of Btb but there was a there was a definite lack of vehicular combat in h5. I don’t really include warzone in this. - no breakout. I think this might be an unpopular suggestion, breakout was fun. It was different and exciting but the fact the rounds start the exact same over and over really limits the possibilities. You basically have 3 options: go left, mid or right. It very quickly gets played out and boring. It would be better to save dev time for something else. I do think elimination plays much better, as it very often progresses into unique scenarios. - Mancannon - Bring back risky movement. Man cannons, teleports, grav lifts and vents. - Hidden icons in matchmaking - what’s been learned from previous multiplayers is the fact if you give information about who you are playing before the match people will quit out to avoid. H5 almost got this right but you can see emblems before the match. Copy og h2 “matched player” - Medals - I saw a big thread about medals. Halo needs less medals not more. Remember when medals used to be a big deal now you get medals for all kinds of lame crap you don’t care about. Medals should only be for actual notable skill in game. Remove flag carrier kill, protector, avenger etc no ones cares. (Flashback to h4 “generic kill” medal) - social search - the mcc social searcher is so brilliant I think it could work well just covering only h6. May need some testing though to see if playlists are better for a single game. - Party matchingmaking - very very important. Maybe something you can look at turning off later in its life cycle. Teams of 4 should only match teams of 4, teams of 3 with 3s and solo, teams of 2 can mix with solos. This protects people from getting stomped by teams pairing with 4 solo players. H3 had party matching making and it worked well. - 3v3- Allow games to start 3v3 in slayer/objective. I used to love in H3 where I queued with a team of 3 in ranked and we would get paired with another team of 3. Adds some variety to the same gamemode without having to add a new playlist…
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> > > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > > >
> > > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
>
> The problem with bloom was that while, yes, you can perfectly pace your shots such that your shot will land at the center of the reticle with 100% probability, this is not the most optimal tactic. The reason is that if you pace your shots perfectly every time, someone who paces their shots just a tiny bit less perfectly (say, that their shots are only 90% likely to land at the center of the reticle) will beat you more often in an encounter than you will beat them, provided everything else is equal. Concretely, if you are 100% likely to get in five out of five shots, they are 59% likely to get in five out of five shots. This means that 59% of the time, they will beat you even if you are pacing your shots perfectly. In other words, the most optimal tactic with bloom is just to succumb to the randomness. That is, the most optimal tactic doesn’t reward the player who lands their shots most consistently, and that is not good for competitive play.

So how exactly did CE do its bloom? I’m assuming it had bloom, or some kind of bullet spread.

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100% need to force gamechat In ranked playlists. For what ever reason what’s left of mcc population there’s a lot of people on mic, I’ve met so many new people

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If any AA has a right to stay as a default it evade.

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> If any AA has a right to stay as a default it evade.

Yea, thrust added a nice skill element to the game. I think spartan charge is the only truly awful armour ability the rest fit in good enough.

i myself would prefer non at all

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> 100% need to force gamechat In ranked playlists. For what ever reason what’s left of mcc population there’s a lot of people on mic, I’ve met so many new people

100% do NOT need to force gamechat in any playlist. I want the option to choose. I have no interest in homphobic comments, racism, religion bashing, gender bashing and any other anti social comments that some people come up with. I also have no desire to hear anyone crunching on chips (crisps) if you’re British, slurping on drinks, partners screaming at each other and music over the mic, then you have the delightful team mates that abuse each other if they’re not good or make mistakes. I was so happy they removed lobby chat. Gamechat has to be optional. If they force gamechat I’ll mute the entire team.

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> 2535442569875751;13:
> > 2533274825830455;9:
> > > 2533274879416877;5:
> > > > 2586218893182442;4:
> > > > > 2533274879416877;2:
> > > > > Not much to say. I agree with most of it. Although, I never really understood why people didn’t like bloom in Halo: Reach. I felt like it added an extra layer of skill to gunfights, and because I was good at controlling my shots, Halo: Reach was the game I was best at. Other people would just spam, whereas I would be methodical and I would win most DMR battles. And on that same dot point, I don’t think there’s any downside to having health bars. Halo 2 and 3 had health systems, they just weren’t visually represented. Ever notice how in Halo 3, while an enemy’s shield is recharging and you down their shield again, it takes less body shots to kill them than usual? I don’t think there’s any reason not to represent it on screen, but honestly I don’t care either way.
> > > > >
> > > > > In conclusion, I don’t actually care either way whether bloom or health bars are in the game, I just don’t get why so many people dislike them.
> >
> > The problem with bloom was that while, yes, you can perfectly pace your shots such that your shot will land at the center of the reticle with 100% probability, this is not the most optimal tactic. The reason is that if you pace your shots perfectly every time, someone who paces their shots just a tiny bit less perfectly (say, that their shots are only 90% likely to land at the center of the reticle) will beat you more often in an encounter than you will beat them, provided everything else is equal. Concretely, if you are 100% likely to get in five out of five shots, they are 59% likely to get in five out of five shots. This means that 59% of the time, they will beat you even if you are pacing your shots perfectly. In other words, the most optimal tactic with bloom is just to succumb to the randomness. That is, the most optimal tactic doesn’t reward the player who lands their shots most consistently, and that is not good for competitive play.
>
> So how exactly did CE do its bloom? I’m assuming it had bloom, or some kind of bullet spread.

The ce pistol had bloom when you held down the trigger, but this could be avoided by pressing it for every shot.

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> 2586218893182442;14:
> 100% need to force gamechat In ranked playlists. For what ever reason what’s left of mcc population there’s a lot of people on mic, I’ve met so many new people

If they force gamechat I’ll just mute everyone instantly.

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> 2592250499819446;17:
> > 2586218893182442;14:
> > 100% need to force gamechat In ranked playlists. For what ever reason what’s left of mcc population there’s a lot of people on mic, I’ve met so many new people
>
> 100% do NOT need to force gamechat in any playlist. I want the option to choose. I have no interest in homphobic comments, racism, religion bashing, gender bashing and any other anti social comments that some people come up with. I also have no desire to hear anyone crunching on chips (crisps) if you’re British, slurping on drinks, partners screaming at each other and music over the mic, then you have the delightful team mates that abuse each other if they’re not good or make mistakes. I was so happy they removed lobby chat. Gamechat has to be optional. If they force gamechat I’ll mute the entire team.

I think you can by all means block out chat in social game modes but ranked should be treated differently. Xbox live used to be a social experience it no longer is because of party chat.

I wouldn’t be against mute all button for those adverse to any social interaction. That’s not what it’s about though for the majority of people they can call out and work as a team with complete randoms in ranked competition. In the process you meet new people, form friendships and makes playing ranked much more engaging