Modernizing Halo for the betterment of all

Games Halo Infinite
1

The end of a era.

It is about time we address why the halo is not as popular as other shooters on the market anymore. Design problems to support controller gameplay have held back halo from being a true sport and being comparable mechanically to other games available on PC at the moment.

From a movement perspective H3 has an extremely high skill ceiling, but due to heavy bullet magnetization and auto aim the aiming skill cap is very low.
Leading to all high tier players being evenly dangerous in most scenarios regardless of skill or reaction time.

Aiming with a mouse has an infinitely high skill ceiling because it is impossible to move your hand as fast as it takes for your mouse sensor to skip or lose tracking… and in a shooter the highest skill ceiling aspect is aiming and should be aiming. It is the hardest thing to do and is impossible to master. Halo 3 and all halos game require a lot of physical effort to play with a mouse and the fact that more physical effort is being put in for less reward has created an environment where no PC player wants to play Halo or will take it seriously.

Even though H3 is probably one of the most fair and balanced shooters ever made no one cares to play because the games current state is unfair and biased to controller users. PC FPS is the modern and most competitively balanced way to play shooters at a high level…but when people are able to just flick a stick lock on to your target then wiggle the sick left and right to stay on with high tier tracking then just tap the stick up to the head is ridiculous and unfair to a person having to pixel perfect track the entire time and stop themselves on a flick with a mouse. When you flick to someone on a mouse it is pure muscle memory and skill…but on a controller you just hold a direction until in slows then let go. The fact that this has to be said is insane to me.

People in immortal rank in valorant headshot less than a random person who plays halo 2 hours a day on the controller. The level of aim skill that the auto aim gives you for such little physical or mental input is insane. To be able to stop on a person that perfectly with a mouse is decade of practice at least and requires you to be in the prime of your life… and all a controller user has to do is max their sensitivity… hold a direction wait until it slows the let go.

This is compounded by the fact the bullet magnetism is so strong that you can headshot people in the stomach with the BR even further reducing the importance of pixel perfect aim witch high tier mouse users have. Being able to headshot somebody in the stomach is a thing that does not fly in modern games.

If you told me that about any other shooter it would be called a “bug”… Not a feature to “help” you stay on target. That is not necessary look at games like CSGO, Valorant, APEX, Fortnite, Modern Warfare… all games you have to ACTUALLY TO PUT YOUR CROSSHAIR ON THE ENEMY TARGET TO HIT THEM! No one wants bullet magnetization. Having to actually aim at the head to hit a headshot in H3 with the BR to hit a headshot that alone would give PC players such a better chance of being able to compete.

Halo has the potential to be the most balanced shooters ever made… and it was on console when it was fair… because everyone was raised up to a high aiming skill ceiling with auto aim and bullet mag. But now it is not a fair game. Plain and simple. A shooter need to be balanced around what is fair not what is fun and what will keep a less skilled audience playing longer.

If Halo Infinite is designed with bullet magnetization it will be dead on arrival on PC… end of story.

This is not bias at all… there are facts to look at in this situation and it is a fact that to play with a mouse requires more physical effort more skill and much more input from the player to use. As a sport it is not fair and needs to be reworked. If balance changes cannot be implemented than input segregation needs to be an option.
ESPECIALLY for ranked and tournaments.

2

A post like this won’t be received too warmly around here, but I actually agree for the most part. Movement and positioning have always been the skills that separate one Halo player from another; you’ve got players known for certain movement patterns like the Skrafe or Gandhi Hop, top players and content creators always stress how Halo is all about map control and positioning, and modern titles like Halo 5 have greatly expanded on the ways in which players can move.

But the skill gap for the combat - the holy Guns/Grenade/Melee trinity touted so often as the DNA of Halo, has been decreasing with each installment. Halo CE had the largest gap between optimal and average killtimes, melee that didn’t lock on (I can’t believe melee is still a guaranteed hit after all these years), and grenades that required careful trajectories since they had to come to a stop to detonate. The combat in that game is more skillful, with players often able to take out multiple opponents in the same encounter based off their skill with a magnum, and the overall experience is more fast and aggressive. More and more, Halo has trended towards hitscan with higher and higher magnetism, on top of neutering TTK disparities, such that no one player can truly differntiate themselves from the rest based on their aiming skills. In a shooter game, I find that to be absurd. What’s more, since recent Halo’s weapons have longer killtimes on average, power weapons like the Sniper and Rockets practically run entire matches, since no weapon can reasonably contest them. Unlike CE, where you could reliably fend off a power wep user with just your Magnum, modern games practically force defensive, un-interactive gameplay because aggression is so heavily punished. The game sort of inorganically becomes all about positioning because your mechanical skills don’t mean enough in the first place.

Sometimes, Halo feels more like a strategy game than an actual shooter, and as much as I enjoy the series I really wish it would reward great aim as much as it does map control. I only hope 343 took the criticism of Halo 5 to heart; if Infinite is to have a successful Esports run like they seem to hope, I really think it needs a robust skill gap in its’ combat mechanics–not just movement. In short, confrontational tone aside, I gotta agree with you.

3

You exaggerate the extent of aim assist but overall I agree. Infinite needs to have less of it even if the game wasn’t coming out for PC, and definitely less or no bullet magnetism. H5 had insane amounts of bullet magnetism especially with certain weapons it’s crazy. I’m hoping that because Infinite is being built from the ground up for both in mind instead of just console like MCC and 5, we’ll have a more balanced result.

As far as input separation I think that should be an option regardless of how balanced they make Infinite. Give us the choice in online to play mixed or your input method only. For tournaments I think separation should be mandatory. No matter how good they can get the balancing, at the end of the day they’re still two different input methods and thus you’re not playing on a completely even playing field. I think it’s best to just not mix them when money is on the line.

4

https://youtu.be/119XiJ_tQWY

From my perspective I didn’t exaggerate aim assist if you don’t think its that strong good on you but go watch eli_x 360 people just based of of clicking when he sees red reticle and you will understand how unfair it is…

5

wummzy6601
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