I hope we get Social BR and more ranked modes

Do we know if all social modes will use the Tech Preview settings? what about ranked? will al ranked modes use the HCS settings we watched in the recent livestream?

I hope its not the case since sometimes its ok to play BR starts without the risk of losing your rank and sometimes is enough playing a regular ranked mode, no need to use the same settings as in official tournaments. There is a lot of stuff between casual modes and hcs modes.

edit: Just to clarify: im not saying they should get rid of AR starts, what i mean is that they should create at least one Social BR playlist while keeping AR starts in a lot of other modes, im 100% ok with that.

Please no. BR starts should stay in competitive. The very fact you want BR starts so badly shows how strong and versatile the weapon is and having it as the start in social would ruin what made the flights so enjoyable, weapon variance. I and many others lived the fact we had to go looking for other weapons including the BR and it encouraged us to use many different weapons. My biggest fear, which has been realised in the new comp.footage, is that with a BR start people don’t really bother picking up anything else and it results in kinda bland gunplay and sandbox play.

I don’t want social to also be just BR vs BR that can and should stay in competitive.

> 2535469521092906;2:
> Please no. BR starts should stay in competitive. The very fact you want BR starts so badly shows how strong and versatile the weapon is and having it as the start in social would ruin what made the flights so enjoyable, weapon variance. I and many others lived the fact we had to go looking for other weapons including the BR and it encouraged us to use many different weapons. My biggest fear, which has been realised in the new comp.footage, is that with a BR start people don’t really bother picking up anything else and it results in kinda bland gunplay and sandbox play.
>
> I don’t want social to also be just BR vs BR that can and should stay in competitive.

Im not saying all social modes should be BR starts, what i mean is that it could be nice to have some social modes be AR starts and some social modes be BR starts, the same goes to the ranked modes: it could be nice to have regular ranked modes and hcs ranked modes.

There is no need to segregate the community in 2 groups: casual and hcs, its nice to have modes in between like always has been.

Im ok with AR starts, i just feel not all social modes shouls be AR starts.

I’m just going to keep saying it until I run out of air: just copy the social match composer from MCC. Let everyone choose to queue for whatever team size, mode, and starting weapon. They will really be dropping the ball if this isn’t a thing.

Obviously have a couple ranked playlists like Team Slayer, HCS, doubles, FFA, maybe BTB.

But just let social be whatever an individual player wants it to be for them.

> 2533274833576927;4:
> I’m just going to keep saying it until I run out of air: just copy the social match composer from MCC. Let everyone choose to queue for whatever team size, mode, and starting weapon. They will really be dropping the ball if this isn’t a thing.
>
> Obviously have a couple ranked playlists like Team Slayer, HCS, doubles, FFA, maybe BTB.
>
> But just let social be whatever an individual player wants it to be for them.

I haven’t tried the match composer that much but this seems like a good idea.

> 2533274832513510;5:
> > 2533274833576927;4:
> > …
>
> I haven’t tried the match composer that much but this seems like a good idea.

I’m really not interested in AR starts. And as much as I’m interested in HCS, I often don’t feel up to trying that hard.

A match composer might honestly be make or break for me. In H5 I usually play some ranked Team Slayer and then switch over to BTB later in the night. Ranked or not, at least a composer would let me play the modes I’m interested in without sacrificing BR starts.

I agree. I don’t want to play ranked all of the time and ar starts isn’t that fun to play imo. A social BR start with the AR, would be great.

> 2533274832513510;1:
> without the risk of losing your rank

I really think it’s unhealthy to think of ranks this way. It’s probably a holdover from the days of linear numeric rankings, but more modern tier-based ranking systems seem designed to allow for a variance in “sweatiness” between matches without feeling as much of the binary “up and down” of a 1-50 ranking system.

A good ranking system, which I think Infinite will have (if it’s anything like 5), should just work as a way to prevent regular stomping (giving or receiving). I think people should be more comfortable just playing at whatever tier gets them the most fair matches. It doesn’t have to be a source of anxiety.

I know this has very little to do with your post, but I think a lot of Halo 5 ranking anxiety is sort of leftover trauma from the Halo 2 and 3 days, and I’d like to move past it as a community.

This problem is solved by having Slayer and Slayer Pro gametype’s showing up in social. I hope they do

BR are starts should absolutely be in social and the only thing available for BTB. If a versatile weapon with a molasses slow TTK is all it takes to remove “variety” then your sandbox was never good to begin with.

You don’t really care about true variety, just more pretty lights and colors. Variety for varieties sake when it comes to weapons doesn’t measurably improve the game if the weapons themselves are not interesting.

I honestly don’t know which weapon some of you think would get dropped that were not already getting ignored. The Pulse Carbine went largely unused even with AR starts, the plasma Pistol lost a huge part of its usefulness without vehicle EMP and the sidekick is designed to be thrown away. But people would rather invent elaborate fantasies about Precision weapon starts somehow making anything close range or “not a power weapon” useless.

> 2533274819446242;10:
> BR are starts should absolutely be in social and the only thing available for BTB. If a versatile weapon with a molasses slow TTK is all it takes to remove “variety” then your sandbox was never good to begin with.
>
> You don’t really care about true variety, just more pretty lights and colors. Variety for varieties sake when it comes to weapons doesn’t measurably improve the game if the weapons themselves are not interesting.
>
> I honestly don’t know which weapon some of you think would get dropped that were not already getting ignored. The Pulse Carbine went largely unused even with AR starts, the plasma Pistol lost a huge part of its usefulness without vehicle EMP and the sidekick is designed to be thrown away. But people would rather invent elaborate fantasies about Precision weapon starts somehow making anything close range or “not a power weapon” useless.

Yes, the whole “BR STARTS KILL VARIETY” is just a myth, if we take a look at the Infinite Sandbox we can see that it is nonsense:

CQS48 Bulldog, Gravity Hammer, Heatwave - I will put these 3 in the same category: Dont see anything wrong with this weapon with BR starts, maybe it becomes more useful since everyone is going around without an AR, maybe it becomess less usefull since everyone is not mindlessly running around with an AR, its hard to tell but shotguns and melee weapons have always been useful no matter the starting weapon

M41 SPNKr Rocket Launcher - The balancing in this one actually benefits from BR starts since it gives the victim of the Rocket Launcher more of a chance to fight because they are not forced to engage in close quarters against a dude which has a rocket launcher.

MA40 Assault Rifle - Still useful in short or even medium distances since it is kinda OP, but that is a different debate.

MK50 Sidekick Pistol - The only weapon that has the potential to become useless with BR starts, BUT it has a lower TTK than the BR, skilled player can use this to kill br users and its still useful if you run out of ammo and need a quick weapon to finish your enemies.

Needler, Plasma Pistol, Pulse Carbine - These 3 weapons are in a weird spot already, they have always been tbh and its not like they are part of the most effective weapons right now, putting BR starts wouldnt make any of these weapons more or less useful

Ravager - This weapon is really unique and there is nothing like it in the series, i have used it against BR players a lot and its a fantastic close quarters weapon with 2 different types of fire that can be used in varied situations, it doesn’t matter if there is AR starts or BR start

S7 Sniper Rifle, Shock Rifle, Skewer - These 3 weapon are kind of the same so i will just consider the 3 as snipers: Again, another weapon that has balancing issues without BR starts, in big maps or long distances in smaller maps. You have almost no way of countering a good sniper. With a BR is as easy as shooting them and descoping them to get a huge chance of surviving. Its specially horrible in Fragmentation and Behemoth since you can find yourself being surrounded by at least 2 sniper users really easily and you are basically a sitting duck against them without a BR.

VK78 Commando - This one is perfectly viable against BR, it has a much lower TTK in short distances, it headshots people and its really hard to use, right now is the only headshot weapon that kills in under a second. Skilled players can make use of this weapon no matter the distance, its a really versatile and skill based weapon

I dont see the BR affecting the sandbox in a negative way at all, there is literally not a single weapon that becomes useless with BR starts. This isnt like Halo 3, 4 and 5 which had tons of reiterative weapons that were obviously worse than the UNSC counterpart, Halo infinite sandbox is really varied and finely tuned (for the most part) so there isn’t repetition in the sandbox, and when 2 weapon have similar niches they both work in different ways, like the bulldog and the heatwave and they also can appear at random in the maps so they dont collide and its fun learning to use both.

> 2533274796415676;8:
> I really think it’s unhealthy to think of ranks this way.

I completely understand what you mean and i agree! whenever i lose in Halo 5 i dont get angry or anything, my thought process is more like “if i go down in rank, that means i will have some easier matches in the future because of the lower rank”. Halo 5 ranking system is very good, i actually prefer playing it over social even if im trying to play more “relaxed” since you will always play with people that is more or less your level but in social its random so maybe you will play against someone much much better.

> 2533274832513510;11:
> > 2533274819446242;10:
> > BR are starts should absolutely be in social and the only thing available for BTB.
>
> Yes, the whole “BR STARTS KILL VARIETY” is just a myth, if we take a look at the Infinite Sandbox we can see that it is nonsense…

Quoting for truth.

To follow up with a point I’ve been attempting in other threads: even if the BRs optimal kill time was faster (close to the ARs perhaps) the rest of the sand box would still be viable as long as it’s average kill time was still slow (if the BR was made more difficult to compensate for a faster optimal ttk). Heck alot of these weapons still have much faster kill times situationally.

I think people remember a time when duel wielding weakened the whole sandbox and apply it today, even though the sandbox is structured completely differently now.

> 2533274833576927;12:
> Heck alot of these weapons still have much faster kill times situationally.

Exactly, what is great about the current Infinite sandbox: there is almost no overlap in weapon usage, most weapons are good in a certain situation and is not like Halo 5 that gave you: br, dmr, light rifle, carbine, magnum and all these weapons are basically the same with a few differences, being the pistol the best overall. Halo infinite feels more like a better Halo CE in that regard since every single weapon is unique.

Dual wielding was a mess and it should have stayed in custom modes and campaign, the H3 sandbox is good but only if you get rid of half the weapons and i dont like that. Maybe the way to implement dual wielding is to make weapons that dont need combinations but are dual wielded themselves? like in dark souls 3 where some weapons are just 2 sword instead of having to equip 2 different swords a la dark souls 2; i think it could work: imagine a forerunner weapon that consist on 2 shotguns, the one on the left trigger shoots EMP at short distance and the one on the right trigger shoots hard light bullets, it could be like a faster bulldog but only if you land your emp shot before.

That way you can expand weapon variety and dual wielding without destroying the sandbox IMO.