Firstly, I want to say this is my first post in these forums so go easy on the new guy.
In this thread I’m going to go over what I think is wrong in halo reach and what I’d do to fix it if i had the power.
Now to kick off the discussion I’ll begin with something near and dear to my heart.
The energy sword and close quarters combat:
I don’t know who decided that melee weapons and actual melees themselves needed to be changed so drastically, but I hope one day that they’re brought back to their former glory. The sword used to be the funnest aspect of the halo games for me. In reach I despise the damn thing, why would I use a weapon whose damage can be lessened by a punch? Why was that a good idea? I can’t punch shot gun pellets away why can I punch a sword away? And before anyone goes off about how they’re two different weapons it doesn’t matter; because the sword lunge had it’s knee caps broke so now the sword and shotty now serve almost the exact same role in reach. Actually, the shotty has more applications than the sword simply because it doesn’t glow like it’s radioactive (something that makes hiding around corners a little more tricky).
Fix: I think this answer is going to become a broken record but, bungie shouldn’t have tried to fix what wasn’t broken. Out of all the halo games H3’s melee system felt the most balanced to me in respect to the rest of the elements in that game. The speed of the melees and how the sword functioned are simply funner, not to mention there’s no horse crap about false bull trues.
Weapons: (The ones not mentioned I feel are fine, nay even balanced in reach’s sandbox)
The PL: I don’t like it, it’s slow like reach’s gameplay. Which is indeed, a bad thing. Not the mention the unintentional betrayals this will net you.
The RL: The placement of it in maps doesn’t sit well with me. I dont’ believe there should be anti-vehicle weapons on any map without vehicles.
The Sniper Rifle: It, as well as the DMR, shouldn’t be anti-vehicle. We have plenty of other weapons to deal with vehicles we didn’t need more to join that club.
The FR: What was wrong with the beam rifle and why did we need to merge it with the sentinel beam? Covenant weapons are widely ineffective and we didn’t need another one.
The PR: Why? We have the plasma rifle we did not need a less accurate version of it.
Grenades: Too damaging and has too wide an AOE.
The DMR: This is halo, I never once looked at the BR and thought, “How great would it be if this gun was semi-automatic and was unreliable in close to medium combat distances.” This gaming series is about skill, whichever player with the most of it should win fights, period. But now we have drastic bullet spread; granted every halo game had some degree of spread non ever had such a horrid case of it as the dmr. This weapon has no place in halo, it should not have replaced the BR. Yes, I’m aware the title update will give play lists that make this argument moot. But I’m saying here that it should never have been added in the first place.
The Pistol: Too much bullet spread, hopefully the TU will fix.
The Needler: Out of every weapon in the game none are so dependent on what enemy you’re facing than the needler. Great against elites, aweful against spartans.
The ES: It should have a larger threat area and attacks with it should be faster. The attacks themselves should also be easier to connect, this also applies to regular melees and the hammer.
Vehicles:
The revenant: I miss the chopper… I don’t know why it was replaced with a fast tiny wraith. And just to put this out there, I also miss the spectre. Actually I think the spectre would have been a better fit for reach than the revenant. The warthog deserves a covenant counterpart.
The Goose: In H3 it was funny, in reach it’s giving your opponents free points.
The Hog: My problems with the hog stretch to all vehicles as well; they don’t control as well as the used to, ruble will stop them dead in the tracks, and they aren’t as much of a threat on the battle field as they used to be (excluding the banshee and to an extend the revenant). The gauss variant wasn’t over powered in H3, why is it now? The gauss should have a longer cool down time between shots.
The Banshee: Remove banshee bomb, extend the recharge time in between dodges.
The Wraith: It used to be on par with the scorpion, It should still be.
The Falcon: The grenade variant should be in multiplayer. It should be able to carry a(n) additional passenger(s) (like in campaign), for objective game types like CTF and assault.
(Ran out of space, see next post…)
