Making 1v1 gunfights enjoyable in Halo 4

Games Other Halo
1

One of the major problems I’ve had with Halo 2 all the way through Reach is the 1v1 fights. They weren’t so much about who had the better strafe and aim, but who had the first shot. I do realize that there were times when you outshot a guy after he had the first shot, but it didn’t happen often enough to make it relevant.

One of my fondest memories of Halo CE was out pistoling a guy on Prisoner. We were on the top bridge, and he put two shots on me. I quickly turned around, strafed to the left and hit a shot, strafed to the right quickly and hit a shot, and then crouched and landed the final shot for the perfect 3sk. These moments tend not to happen in later Halo’s because strafing is too slow and the weapons take too long to kill. Here’s the things that need to happen to bring back enjoyable 1v1 fights:

Faster Strafe Acceleration
Watching a good player strafe in HCE and to a degree Halo 2 was almost magical. Against some players, they would become almost unhittable. Strafing needs to make a return to add depth to gunfights.

No bloom or bullet spread on precision weapons

There’s nothing more frustrating then thinking “did I really win that fight, or did I just get lucky?” When that goes through a player’s mind, it kills the game for them. Precision weapons can work with no bullet spread, they just need to be hard to use.

Quicker Kill Times
1v1 gunfights are almost non existant post Halo 2. The DMR and H3 BR take too long to kill, so fights boil down to “who has a teammate closer to help teamshoot the enemy.” Quicker kill times also make things like 1v2’s possible for the guy by himself. Do note, I do not want CoD kill times, but a mix of CE and H2. 1.3 to 1.5 seconds sounds perfect.

Less Bullet Magnetism, Smaller Hitboxes
These are necessary so a one hit guy isn’t always a guaranteed kill. Pretty self explanatory.

Single Shot weapon, (bloomless DMR or Pistol)
Burst fire weapons are easier to use than single shot, simply because of the fact that you can sweep your shot instead of having to be accurate. I know everyone seems to love the BR, but if 343 gives us a bloom toggle for Reach’s patch, I think you’ll all see how fun a bloomless single shot weapon really is.

1v1 gunfights seem to be a lost art in Halo. Teamshooting is the way to play, but it wasn’t always that way. A guy could be a one man wrecking crew and literally dodge bullets with a good strafe. One shot guys weren’t guaranteed kills, and you could outshoot someone and still be aggressive as a one shot if you were good. And knowing that you can destroy everyone in your path is one of the things that made Halo so great for me.

2

Anything that brings more skill to the table sounds good to me. They need to think about the casuals though and they don’t like it when it takes skill. This might scare them off which means less profit.

3

> Anything that brings more skill to the table sounds good to me. They need to think about the casuals though and they don’t like it when it takes skill. This might scare them off which means less profit.

But a game that takes skill gives players of all types something to aspire to.

4

Agreed. Kill times NEED to drop.

5

I’m all for it accept the quicker respawn time, I want time to gracefully squat up and down on my opponents’ face

6

> Anything that brings more skill to the table sounds good to me. They need to think about the casuals though and they don’t like it when it takes skill. This might scare them off which means less profit.

We need this. And if 343 implements a correct ranking systems, casuals will always play others of the same skill so it doesn’t matter how skill intensive H4 is for them. We need everything in the OP. Make it happen 343.

7

The only game I noticed this being a real problem in was Reach. And why? CRAPPY BLOOM MECHANIC.

8

> One of the major problems I’ve had with Halo 2 all the way through Reach is the 1v1 fights. They weren’t so much about who had the better strafe and aim, but who had the first shot. I do realize that there were times when you outshot a guy after he had the first shot, but it didn’t happen often enough to make it relevant.
>
> One of my fondest memories of Halo CE was out pistoling a guy on Prisoner. We were on the top bridge, and he put two shots on me. I quickly turned around, strafed to the left and hit a shot, strafed to the right quickly and hit a shot, and then crouched and landed the final shot for the perfect 3sk. These moments tend not to happen in later Halo’s because strafing is too slow and the weapons take too long to kill. Here’s the things that need to happen to bring back enjoyable 1v1 fights:
>
> Faster Strafe Acceleration
> Watching a good player strafe in HCE and to a degree Halo 2 was almost magical. Against some players, they would become almost unhittable. Strafing needs to make a return to add depth to gunfights.
>
> No bloom or bullet spread on precision weapons
>
> There’s nothing more frustrating then thinking “did I really win that fight, or did I just get lucky?” When that goes through a player’s mind, it kills the game for them. Precision weapons can work with no bullet spread, they just need to be hard to use.
>
> Quicker Kill Times
> 1v1 gunfights are almost non existant post Halo 2. The DMR and H3 BR take too long to kill, so fights boil down to “who has a teammate closer to help teamshoot the enemy.” Quicker kill times also make things like 1v2’s possible for the guy by himself. Do note, I do not want CoD kill times, but a mix of CE and H2. 1.3 to 1.5 seconds sounds perfect.
>
> Less Bullet Magnetism, Smaller Hitboxes
> These are necessary so a one hit guy isn’t always a guaranteed kill. Pretty self explanatory.
>
> Single Shot weapon, (bloomless DMR or Pistol)
> Burst fire weapons are easier to use than single shot, simply because of the fact that you can sweep your shot instead of having to be accurate. I know everyone seems to love the BR, but if 343 gives us a bloom toggle for Reach’s patch, I think you’ll all see how fun a bloomless single shot weapon really is.
>
> 1v1 gunfights seem to be a lost art in Halo. Teamshooting is the way to play, but it wasn’t always that way. A guy could be a one man wrecking crew and literally dodge bullets with a good strafe. One shot guys weren’t guaranteed kills, and you could outshoot someone and still be aggressive as a one shot if you were good. And knowing that you can destroy everyone in your path is one of the things that made Halo so great for me.

I actually completely 100% agree with you! It’s not that im bad at Reach or anything, but the mechanics drive me insane. It’s just truly not as much fun to play as previous Halos.

9

> One of the major problems I’ve had with Halo 2 all the way through Reach is the 1v1 fights. They weren’t so much about who had the better strafe and aim, but who had the first shot. I do realize that there were times when you outshot a guy after he had the first shot, but it didn’t happen often enough to make it relevant.
>
> One of my fondest memories of Halo CE was out pistoling a guy on Prisoner. We were on the top bridge, and he put two shots on me. I quickly turned around, strafed to the left and hit a shot, strafed to the right quickly and hit a shot, and then crouched and landed the final shot for the perfect 3sk. These moments tend not to happen in later Halo’s because strafing is too slow and the weapons take too long to kill. Here’s the things that need to happen to bring back enjoyable 1v1 fights:
>
> Faster Strafe Acceleration
> Watching a good player strafe in HCE and to a degree Halo 2 was almost magical. Against some players, they would become almost unhittable. Strafing needs to make a return to add depth to gunfights.
>
> No bloom or bullet spread on precision weapons
>
> There’s nothing more frustrating then thinking “did I really win that fight, or did I just get lucky?” When that goes through a player’s mind, it kills the game for them. Precision weapons can work with no bullet spread, they just need to be hard to use.
>
> Quicker Kill Times
> 1v1 gunfights are almost non existant post Halo 2. The DMR and H3 BR take too long to kill, so fights boil down to “who has a teammate closer to help teamshoot the enemy.” Quicker kill times also make things like 1v2’s possible for the guy by himself. Do note, I do not want CoD kill times, but a mix of CE and H2. 1.3 to 1.5 seconds sounds perfect.
>
> Less Bullet Magnetism, Smaller Hitboxes
> These are necessary so a one hit guy isn’t always a guaranteed kill. Pretty self explanatory.
>
> Single Shot weapon, (bloomless DMR or Pistol)
> Burst fire weapons are easier to use than single shot, simply because of the fact that you can sweep your shot instead of having to be accurate. I know everyone seems to love the BR, but if 343 gives us a bloom toggle for Reach’s patch, I think you’ll all see how fun a bloomless single shot weapon really is.
>
> 1v1 gunfights seem to be a lost art in Halo. Teamshooting is the way to play, but it wasn’t always that way. A guy could be a one man wrecking crew and literally dodge bullets with a good strafe. One shot guys weren’t guaranteed kills, and you could outshoot someone and still be aggressive as a one shot if you were good. And knowing that you can destroy everyone in your path is one of the things that made Halo so great for me.

That sounds like a great fight. Those 3 shots are intensely satisfying. With the DMR it just feels like once you get to a certain level it’s all about who gets luckier with bloom or who gets the first shot.

10

Yes, please.

11

Definitely agree.
Gunfights in Reach are slow and boring…they usually end up in beatdowns or grenades

12

I agree with all of those points.

What comes to bullet magnetism, aim assist and hitboxes, they can’t be incredibly small because of online conditions (although netcodes have seen pretty drastic improvement in the last decade). Of course all of these should be low as possible without affecting gameplay. Weapons should of course be hitscan, otherwise it just doesn’t work.

To the kill times, what about 1.5 second, four shot kill? That sounds good to me as that would make the weapon require more skill, obviously all of those four shots would need to be headshots to get a four shot kill, adding even more skill and making the kill times to not appear as too fast.

13

> Agreed. Kill times NEED to drop.

SIGNIFIGANTLY!!!

14

If you don’t know the reason why we strafe so poorly in H3 and HR I’ll explain it to you, Bungie made a game mechanic that I call Moving Acceleration (makes the spartan move in a more realistic way.), in HCE and 2 we didn’t have that and that made us run at max speed straight away, making it more fair when chasing or avoiding campers.

So what you would be asking for is the old moving mechanic which made us run at max speed straight away.

What we need is a bloomless, hitcan medium-long range rifle, and a scoped pistol that can at least kill 2 players with one clip.

Killtimes should definitely go back to how they were in Halo CE and 2, the community has been asking for faster kill times after Halo 3 came out, but then Bungie gave us even slower kill times with Reach (a spit in the face if you ask me).

I highly think that Social and Ranked should have different kind aim assissts, more for social and less for Ranked, that way players that want to get good actually get good. The amount of aim assist that H3 and Reach have is good for Halo 4s social, but less for ranked.

15

i miss all the time on halo 3 were 2 people would run at each other and melee at the same time, kiling each other

16

Everything you said+no hitscan and dedicated servers. Having to lead your shots exponentially increases skill gap (compare the Battlefield series to COD for example and tell me which is the more skillful shooter?)

17

> realistic military shooter

That’s the thing. Halo’s not a realistic military shooter. Name one online arena game that doesn’t have hit-scan? Other than the obvious Halo 3.

18

I agree with everything you said. But I think kill times in Halo 3 were fine, a 4 shot doesn’t take too long.

19

Are you kidding me? Strafing was extremely important in Halo 2.

20

> > Anything that brings more skill to the table sounds good to me. They need to think about the casuals though and they don’t like it when it takes skill. This might scare them off which means less profit.
>
> We need this. And if 343 implements a correct ranking systems, casuals will always play others of the same skill so it doesn’t matter how skill intensive H4 is for them. We need everything in the OP. Make it happen 343.

True, if they bring back the skill system the proposed changes above will work.