Ideas For Changes To Existing Promethean Weapons

Games Halo Infinite
1

While the Promethean weapons have some cool aspects to them I’d like them to be more unique and have more of a focus on mechanics that are good against groups (especially really large groups) of enemies. As that is generally not a focus of Human or Covenant weapons and I’m under the impression the were created specifically to combat the Flood. But have some weapons also hyper-focused on individual enemies or even both! They may generally do less shield damage but significant health damage which balances them out to be highly effective against Flood in particular.

On a side note, ammo could even be changed to where each individual weapon would have its own base of ammo that can’t be refilled through clips but rather from the incinerated remains of foes. For balance, if this was the new form of ammunition for these weapons they would probably have lower base ammo compared to UNSC/Covenant forces but for lower-power weapons ammo could be sustained for a while with careful use.

Scattershot;
Able to be rapid fired, releasing with each shot a wide scatter of bolts that will target one enemy unless that enemy has already been selected by another bolt. Otherwise it’ll continue on its straight path. Makes use of an ‘overheat’ bar so you can spam shots but not overdue it. If the bolt hits a wall it will automatically target a nearby enemy regardless of whether their being targeted by other bolts or not.
//Alternatively//
Ditch the re-targeting after bouncing off a wall mechanic for a secondary firing mode which is activated when holding on to the trigger long enough to supercharge the bolts which will increase their number by three times and when dispersed will make them rapidly richrocket off walls at incredible speeds.

Boltshot;
Similar to Halo 5, release all tracking bolts in a single violent burst (with Halo 4 Boltshot shotgun-burst animation) instead of quickly in a row. These bolts go about the speed of Halo 5’s and travel as a swarm to your targeted victim for a nice chunk of damage. Can be rapid-fired with one burst a second and has enough ammo before reloading to down one spartan. Acts as a reliable weapon to quickly down single opponents at close to medium range.

Suppressor;
A tweaked version of Halo 5’s Suppressor that is reworked to function the same while maintaining powerful suppressing pressure but with more counter-play. This comes in the form of a slower base bolt-speed and fire-rate but it can still spin-up to a faster one and the bullets do a little more damage to compensate. However, it does have the lowest kill-time against a spartan compared to the other auto rifles. To help this, the weapon and its bolts have a wide range in which it locks on to distant opponents. As such, its aiming will kinda feel like wielding and shooting a weapon from an arcade. Especially when entering precision zoom. Its overall tracking and feel can also be compared to the Halo CE Needler. Making it a medium to long range weapon. To get kills against fully shielded opponents its best used in open areas where they have nowhere to take cover but otherwise is great for quickly targeting weak individual enemies including those part of a swarm.

Lightrifle;
A versatile weapon that when zoomed in is even more powerful and slower than Halo 5’s but when not has a fast fire-rate and fires multiple shots in a burst like Halo 4’s but with even lower damage, making that alternate fire serve the purpose of landing precision shots or eliminating weak enemies like Flood Infection Forms. It continues to have the highest zoom and most powerful shot out of the precision rifles.

Binary Rifle;
Similar to Halo 5 but further hyper-focused on destroying anything in front of you. Has inherent promethean-vision and has only one shot before reloading but as it fires for a full second (like Halo 5). It can pierce through multiple infantry and with overall increased damage than previously can also do great damage to vehicles that is only rivaled by the Spartan Laser which can still pierce through many vehicles unlike the Binary Rifle.

Incineration Cannon;
Maintain the two modes of fire but go back to Halo 4’s single shot before reload to balance the two tweaked modes of fire. The uncharged shot fire a single projectile this time which is visually similar and follows about the same arc before dropping to the ground. When landing it works most similarly to Halo 4’s version but does less damage and has even greater range. When fully charged it still tracks like Halo 5’s but when it lands it explodes into a high-reaching pillar of incineration, doing more damage than ever but in a smaller more concentrated radius. This makes it one of the most powerful and versatile power weapons which can adapt between crowd control and devastating single target destruction.

2

Scattershot: Outside of a slight Rate of Fire buff, it doesn’t need to supercharge or use an overheat instead of rounds imo.

Boltshot: Sounds like a kind of unnecessary change to the current 3 round burst that might even make it weaker if it takes a full magazine (with maximum accuracy) to kill a single Spartan.

Suppressor: Basically the exact same but with a slightly slower startup and slightly more damage and tracking. It already has a pretty bad TTK unless its warmed up. Tracking is actually pretty high too, especially when you’re around the 10-11 meter mark is where the bolts really lock on.

Lightrifle: Kind of a hybrid of the Halo 4 unscoped burst and Halo 5 scoped heavy shot. I dig it.

Binary Rifle: It sounds kind of OP. It was nerfed from Halo 4 for a good reason, and although the Halo 5 version might need some recoil and etc tweaks, I don’t think constant x-ray vision and even better anti vehicle abilities are the answer.

Incineration Cannon: Sounds cool. Not a fan of the current uncharged attack, so having two different but useful fire modes would be nice.

3

> 2533274881560701;2:
>

Thanks for your thorough thoughts/feedback.
Yeah, all I truly want is a faster rate of fire for the Scattershot akin to Halo 4 while maybe also giving slightly better tracking to the bullets when they bounce off walls. I just thought these other additions might be interesting.
The idea with the Boltshot and Suppressor was to further differentiate them while making them more fun and dynamic to fight against, especially when facing the Prometheans.
Concerning Suppressor’s tracking, my thought was to increase the range at which you can lock on (reticle turning red) so it can essentially be used at all ranges but it continues the theme it already has of not being the fastest kill option because of that and fulfilling its namesake. Adjusting the speed and damage of the weapon was mostly just to make it feel less obnoxious to deal with while still retaining its power with the damage buff.
My philosophy with pistol weapons is they should of course fill a certain niche but perhaps not be the strongest weapon out there and that was another one of my approaches to the changes on the Boltshot. For example, I think the Halo 5 magnum, while fun, is a bit over-tuned and out of all the existing Magnums I’d probably choose the Silenced pistol from ODST to be the standard. That said, I don’t intend for the Boltshot to be weak but rather a good burst-damage tracking weapon. In the end, making it potentially stronger than it was in 5 but with more weaknesses.
Your probably right about the Binary Rifle. Like your saying, I’d like it to be just a little better than it was in Halo 5.
Glad not all my ideas were too off base for you.

4

Personally I want to move away from automatic lock-on and tracking for Promethean weapons, Don’t step on the poor needler’s niche.

So as for my own suggestions.

Scattershot: 3 Words: Explosive auto shotty. Increased mag size, automatic with a much lower damage per shot but with a bit of splash damage for each pellet. Each pellet also has some impact physics that allow it to push back players and potentially flip vehicles. Imagine the Shotgun had a baby with the concussion rifle filling out the Prometheans close range power weapon and their mid tier explosive weapons(along the line of the GL, Railgun, Sticky det, Brute shot, Concussion Rifle, plasma Caster). Keeps the Promethean sandbox fully fleshed out while still keeping it relatively modest size wise. Unlike the Shotgun, sword, or Hammer, the Scattershot would actually be more comfortable at a close-mid range rather than point-blank due the danger of suicide via your own splash damage. Excellent at crowd control and keeping lighter vehicles at bay.

Boltshot: Halo 4 style standard fire with a 2rd burst, no tracking. Overcharge launches an impact grenade similar in strength to a normal frag, Difference being it has a straight trajectory allowing it to hit areas with much greater ease than a normal grenade. Great at softening up enemies and finishing other enemies who are hiding just out of sight.

Suppressor: Standard fire works like the Halo 4 variant. The difference is when you click zoom instead of scoping in you activate player controlled 'wire guidance". Basically all shots will follow the reticle wherever the player moves it. Aim left and all the ‘bullets’ will curve left, aim right, bullets will curve right, up, down etc. If anyone has played Battlfield 2 or Battlefield 4 and used the SRAW, think of it along those line. Anything from curving your shots around corners to take out an opponent or sending an entire magazine across the map to deal with an unsuspecting sniper. Naturally if your are “descoped” you the rounds stop tracking(but you can reacquire it if you stop taking fire). Lots of opportunities for creative uses without being a simple fire and forget weapon like the Needler.

Light Rifle: I agree making a hybrid with the Halo 4 burst fire unscoped(5 shot kill) and keeping the Halo 5 scoped fire(3 shot kill). This would make it a potent long range weapon as well as an effective clean up tool, that is vulnerable at close range compared to the utility weapon or a automatic spray weapon.

Binary Rifle: Visually, it now fire two beams ala the twin jewels, still does normal damage. Only one 8X zoom level. Beam also has impact force that again allow it to knock back player and knock around vehicles. Though personally I don’t care for long range weapons doing a lot of actual damage to vehicles, unlike the Spartan Laser or other heavy weapons the Binary, Beam Focus, and Sniper Rifles(to say nothing of the DMR and friends) don’t offer any opportunity for the driver/pilot to dodge incoming fire. It leads to passive vehicle gameplay where vehicles are afraid to cross into enemy territory for fear of their vehicle getting shredded from across the map by weapons they can’t hope to dodge. Giving the Binary the ability to push vehicles around without heavily damaging them gives it some utility without making it a hard vehicle counter.

Incineration cannon: Keep the Charge dynamic of Halo 5, lower its overall damage. but give it the “wire guided” firing I suggested for the Suppressor, only it can be used both with and without the scope. Again this offers some interesting gameplay opportunities that are entirely player driven unlike the say the Hydra with its hard lock-on(or the Halo 2 rocket launcher). This change makes the iCannon inferior to the Rockets or Laser in terms of raw damage, but gives it greater flexibility for taking on fast moving air and ground targets that takes more skill to use than a Lock-on weapon.

EDIT: Here is an example of what I am thinking about with the the Suppressor and iCannon

5

> 2533274819446242;4:
> Personally I want to move away from automatic lock-on and tracking for Promethean weapons, Don’t step on the poor needler’s niche.

Loving these changes your suggesting! I was personally never a big fan of the tracking that was added to many of the Promethean weapons and overall enjoyed the Halo 4 version of the weapons much more. The ‘wire guidance’ feature your suggesting is one that I’ve always really enjoyed in games and its surprising its hardly used in Halo. That said, seeing as how the Needler has in more recent years moved to ‘power’ weapon status I don’t mind there being a couple weaker tracking weapons out there.
I’d like to expand on my thoughts per weapon.
Scattershot: This weapon sounds like soooo much fun and a worthy successor to the Concussion Rifle ect… However, speaking of Covenant weapons, we haven’t seen a shotgun from them yet and I think what you described would be the perfect opportunity for a Covenant shotgun. Whether thats of Brute design or the general Covenant look that something like the Plasma Caster exemplifies, assigning it to one of those factions makes the most sense to me. And that way we can also retain having a fast-firing shotgun with the unique wall-bounce trait.
Boltshot: I really enjoyed its standard shot in Halo 4 so I’d be all for that. Its charged shot sounds very useful and fun! 343 would have to be very careful with balancing this charged shot though and I’d suspect the explosion’s strength to be around half the strength of a grenade.

Suppressor: I already had a blast using this weapon in 4 and mixing it with 5 in the form of guiding the bullets when zoomed sounds genius and consistent with the other Promethean weapons! Though it’d probably be difficult to implement correctly, if done, it’d be one of my favorite auto rifles in Halo hands down!

Lightrifle: Yup, that was my general thinking. It allows for certain versatility but is balanced out by a big weakness at close range against a prepared opponent. It felt like too much of a variation of the DMR in 5. In that sense, maybe even the Carbine could use a bit of a revamp.

Binary Rifle: I’d totally be on board for this. I like the idea of vehicles being hard to take down but having a weapon that instead messes them up a little by pushing them around adds much more dynamic and in my opinion, fun gameplay. My main concern being how it affects the player. So long as its making it harder for the opponent to react and hence easier for you to pick up the kill I think this could be a needed buff for the weapon. If it pushed around the opponent, making him harder to hit/kill, then I’d object.

Incineration Cannon: I like the idea of controlling its charged projectile but with that change and the reduction to its damage I think it would make the weapon incredibly niche in this seriously nerfed state. As it would lose its automatic tracking while being now inferior to the UNSC rocket in nearly every way. Sure, it’d have more versatility but I feel the damage reduction would be too steep of a nerf when losing tracking.
If you still think the overall damage nerf is still sound I’m curious to hear why.

6

> 2533274819446242;4:
> Personally I want to move away from automatic lock-on and tracking for Promethean weapons, Don’t step on the poor needler’s niche.
>
> So as for my own suggestions.
>
> Scattershot: 3 Words: Explosive auto shotty. Increased mag size, automatic with a much lower damage per shot but with a bit of splash damage for each pellet. Each pellet also has some impact physics that allow it to push back players and potentially flip vehicles. Imagine the Shotgun had a baby with the concussion rifle filling out the Prometheans close range power weapon and their mid tier explosive weapons(along the line of the GL, Railgun, Sticky det, Brute shot, Concussion Rifle, plasma Caster). Keeps the Promethean sandbox fully fleshed out while still keeping it relatively modest size wise. Unlike the Shotgun, sword, or Hammer, the Scattershot would actually be more comfortable at a close-mid range rather than point-blank due the danger of suicide via your own splash damage. Excellent at crowd control and keeping lighter vehicles at bay.
>
> Boltshot: Halo 4 style standard fire with a 2rd burst, no tracking. Overcharge launches an impact grenade similar in strength to a normal frag, Difference being it has a straight trajectory allowing it to hit areas with much greater ease than a normal grenade. Great at softening up enemies and finishing other enemies who are hiding just out of sight.
>
> Suppressor: Standard fire works like the Halo 4 variant. The difference is when you click zoom instead of scoping in you activate player controlled 'wire guidance". Basically all shots will follow the reticle wherever the player moves it. Aim left and all the ‘bullets’ will curve left, aim right, bullets will curve right, up, down etc. If anyone has played Battlfield 2 or Battlefield 4 and used the SRAW, think of it along those line. Anything from curving your shots around corners to take out an opponent or sending an entire magazine across the map to deal with an unsuspecting sniper. Naturally if your are “descoped” you the rounds stop tracking(but you can reacquire it if you stop taking fire). Lots of opportunities for creative uses without being a simple fire and forget weapon like the Needler.
>
> Light Rifle: I agree making a hybrid with the Halo 4 burst fire unscoped(5 shot kill) and keeping the Halo 5 scoped fire(3 shot kill). This would make it a potent long range weapon as well as an effective clean up tool, that is vulnerable at close range compared to the utility weapon or a automatic spray weapon.
>
> Binary Rifle: Visually, it now fire two beams ala the twin jewels, still does normal damage. Only one 8X zoom level. Beam also has impact force that again allow it to knock back player and knock around vehicles. Though personally I don’t care for long range weapons doing a lot of actual damage to vehicles, unlike the Spartan Laser or other heavy weapons the Binary, Beam Focus, and Sniper Rifles(to say nothing of the DMR and friends) don’t offer any opportunity for the driver/pilot to dodge incoming fire. It leads to passive vehicle gameplay where vehicles are afraid to cross into enemy territory for fear of their vehicle getting shredded from across the map by weapons they can’t hope to dodge. Giving the Binary the ability to push vehicles around without heavily damaging them gives it some utility without making it a hard vehicle counter.
>
> Incineration cannon: Keep the Charge dynamic of Halo 5, lower its overall damage. but give it the “wire guided” firing I suggested for the Suppressor, only it can be used both with and without the scope. Again this offers some interesting gameplay opportunities that are entirely player driven unlike the say the Hydra with its hard lock-on(or the Halo 2 rocket launcher). This change makes the iCannon inferior to the Rockets or Laser in terms of raw damage, but gives it greater flexibility for taking on fast moving air and ground targets that takes more skill to use than a Lock-on weapon.
>
> EDIT: Here is an example of what I am thinking about with the the Suppressor and iCannon

I like these ideas. The tracking Promethean weapons in Halo 5 made playing through legendary really unfun because you couldn’t dodge the projectiles and could easily die when outside of cover.

7

The promethean vision on the binary would be really cool, maybe a little OP for MP so it shouldn’t have too much ammo. Also maybe change it one shot per reload instead of 2. The light rifle I really like how it is in H5. Scattershot I also like how it is now it just needs to be more consistent. Super annoying hitting someone point blank and it doesn’t kill when it should’ve. I’d like it if they went back to the H4 version of the suppressor. Boltshot I think is fine the way it is now. For the incineration canon I think it’d be cool if the charge shot left the ground it exploded on scorched in fire that would linger for a little while acting as an area denial tool.

8

> 2533274810100046;5:
> > 2533274819446242;4:
> > Personally I want to move away from automatic lock-on and tracking for Promethean weapons, Don’t step on the poor needler’s niche.
>
> snipped for space

Re: Covenant Shotgun. I can’t say I’m a fan of the idea of giving the Covenant a Shotgun and by that same token I don’t really care to see a UNSC melee weapon either. I think the Sword and Hammer already do an admirable job filling the general niche of “close range power weapon” without just following suit with how the UNSC weapons work. That being said I wouldn’t be against replacing the Covenant Plasma turret with something akin to the Halo CE Shade Turret plus some bouncing characteristics. This would help diversify the turret class weapons and give the Covenant a “shotgun” in a way that doesn’t step on the toes of the standard weapons.

Re: Binary Rifle. I totally understand your concern with regards to the ability to push Infantry, it would definitely be something that needed to be carefully managed. As for the Vehicles it is less about making them strictly harder to take down so much as making sure vehicle play or counterplay is fun for everyone involved. With a proper weapon layout for vehicle-centric maps that include fair numbers of hard counter(rockets, fuel rod, laser, etc) and ‘softer’ counters(GL, railgun, plasma Caster, stickies, plasma pistol), I don’t think having sniper/precision weapons doing high damage to the vehicles themselves is necessary.

Re: Incineration Cannon. I try to play fast in loose with damage as we don’t have any information on Infinite to compare it to. I wouldn’t classify it as a large damage difference. If you hit a player with a charged shot, they are still going to die. My ideal Rockets are dumb fire all the time which means hitting faster moving targets at range is a much more difficult. My general rule of thumb is the harder a weapon is to use the higher the damage/lower the time to kill should be.

The thing about “wire guided” weapons in games is that although they provide opportunities for some incredible skill based actions, they are at the same time much more forgiving when it comes to large, slow moving, stationary targets and overall is still a bit easier to use than trying to time a single dumbfire rocket. So again as a general rule from lowest damage to highest: Lock-on>“Wire Guided”>Dumbfire.

Just to reiterate, I’m not really wanting to see any severe nerf to its overall damage, just that it would be slightly lower than rockets. However if rockets retain the ability to lock on to air targets, then the damage should remain the same if not increase.

All in all it sounds like we are still on the same page overall :slight_smile: