Here is my initial assessment regarding the update after playing for several hours yesterday.
I do like certain things about this update. I like the improved kill time with the BR. It’s definitely my go-to weapon in my loadouts now along with the pistol. Couple that with Dexterity and you can take down opponents very quickly.
For the carbine, from the times I got killed by it, the Carbine seemed to kill much faster. From watching the killcam, it appeared Carbine users could take me down in 5 shots, even though I know it’s a 7sk, so either my shield was partially down already or the killcam was not showing all the shots they put on me.
Because you can kill people so quickly now with the BR, I felt the full auto weapons were much more useless. I played around with the AR and the Storm Rifle some but I really didn’t like how they felt. The AR seemed slightly more powerful but the kill time seemed about the same because of the reduced auto aim magnetism. The Storm Rifle felt worse to me. I had gotten use to the way the Storm Rifle was, and I think the change hurts this weapon. To me, the SR had a learning curve before to learn how to effectively use this weapon, and now I feel like I have to re-learn it again. The suppressor, when I picked it up, felt the same. It’s still under powered. I would never choose this weapon in my loadouts. I was able to easily kill people with the pistol by strafing or jumping or backing up to get out of its range. You still might as well melee people with this weapon. The boltshot is better to use than the suppressor IMO.
I personally think reducing the auto aim magnetism of the bullets hurts the full auto weapons, even though the damage has been slightly buffed. It may take more skill to use them, but it just seems with the slight lag the game naturally experiences across different connections, not enough bullets are registering as hitting the target even though your reticle is directly on them from a few feet away. The precision weapons have better magnetism, and to compensate for lag, you are better off just using a pistol as your sidearm. That’s what I personally experienced after playing yesterday. If you’re going to use a full auto weapon, use the AR. I traded out my SR, which I had in three loadouts, for the AR or a pistol now. I think the full autos would work great on a LAN connection, but since we don’t have that luxury, I would avoid using them unless you are just going for the commendations on them. I think more games will be frustrating now than ever before when trying to use them.
I will add if you get a chance to pick up a SAW, that gun is absolutely beastly now since they upped the damage to compensate for the increase damage in the AR.
My last point will be about BTB. The addition of new power vehicles and new power weapons to the maps makes it quite chaotic. After playing BTB one way for seven months, the gameplay has changed drastically and you have to re-think your approach to this gametype entirely. Regular 4x4 Infinity Slayer felt better to me, but big team felt worse.
Or it felt vastly different I should say. I’m not sure I would say it’s worse but it is so different now that I will likely steer clear of BTB going forward. Unless you have a power vehicle or power weapon (namely a sniper), you stand little chance as a foot soldier. This is how it should have been from the beginning, but I honestly don’t have the desire to dedicate the time now to learning the new weapon spawns, player spawns, vehicle spawns, ordinance drops, etc. Maybe someone can comment on this as well, but it felt like to me the enemy was spawning much closer to your base or behind your base even though the majority of your team had not pushed halfway past the middle of the map. I know they changed the vehicle/weapon/ordinance spawns but did they monkey with the player spawns as well?
For BTB, I use to be able to jump in and play without a party but the new changes make that nearly impossible. Especially since they don’t have a radar on the pro variant of this gametype. They really do need the radar on all variants of BTB. Overall, I would have liked to have seen more powerful vehicles on BTB from the launch of the game, which reduces the effectiveness of sitting with a DMR and camo, but after playing several rounds last night, I almost felt like there were too many power vehicles out there. Or at least they should change the respawn timers on the power vehicles. I think they were respawning every 90 secs, and to me, it felt more chaotic than fun. Much like COD Black Ops 2 (BLOPS2), which I hate because of the chaotic, frenzied pace and the terrible spawning system.
I think player movement speed being bumped to 110% is a bad idea. You already have sprint, so you don’t need an increase in base movement. This speeds the game up even more, which I don’t like. I thought the speed was fine before. It was already the fastest movement speed of any halo game. The movement speed now borders on BLOPS2 pace.
In summary, I liked the 4x4 gametypes a little better now. I think BTB is worse than before. I would have liked to see how BTB played with the new weapon tuning updates before they started monkeying around with the maps themselves. I like the BR and pistol. Carbine seems solid. LR doesn’t seem much different to me. DMR is slightly worse. The SAW is monster gun. Oh, and the CSR system is still terrible. I was in a BTB game with ranges from CSR 2 up to CSR 40. That makes little sense to me.
Did the title update do anything to make me want to continue playing Halo 4 or tell my friends to come back and try it? Not really. The changes are not drastic enough to make the game feel that much better. Like I said in 4x4 gametypes, the gameplay is slightly improved, but since BTB is worse, it kind of evens out. Most folks play BTB anyway, and maybe the chaotic vehicle heavy pace will bring some back in, but I personally don’t like the changes. It’s too much all at once for BTB.
I estimate the population will get a slight bump this weekend. It only got a 5k bump yesterday, so it might get a 10k bump by the weekend. But that will level out again to around 30k or under in a very short time. I actually think the title update might make some players leave the game who had played for so long learning the best strategies to use before the update, so the numbers will likely even out. Honestly, I don’t see myself playing much more after yesterday. Most of friends have stopped playing anyway, and since BTB was the only gametype previously where you could be consistently successful as a lone wolf, and since they have drastically changed this gametype, the game doesn’t hold much appeal for me anymore. If my friends started playing again, I’d play but otherwise I’m mostly finished with Halo 4. I got one of my friends to jump on yesterday. He played a few games and was quickly bored so the title update did nothing to pique his interest in the game again.
Sorry for such a long post.