So in Halo 4 we were introduced to some new Forerunner/Promethean weapons such as the Light Rifle, Binary Rifle, Incineration Cannon, Scattershot, Suppressor and… the Boltshot. But they didn’t feel very original on their own. They felt more like copies and combinations of other weapons with a forerunner code of paint. While I thought were fun to use, they felt very unoriginal (the only thing the felt unique was how the start assembling when you pick them up). The concepts of these weapons to me felt rushed and slapped together and they don’t add any variety to the gun fights weather its in campaign or multi-player. I think in Halo 5 the Promethean weapons should feel less like counterparts.
Indeed. I always imagined that as a Promethean weapon ran out of ammo it’d fall apart and you’d have to find a new one. Another thing that would be nice with the would be that there could be a Promethan Base and then you find different pieces which do different things for the weapon, a heavy piece combined with a scatter piece could make the weapon fire a hail of small explosives.
And when the weapon runs out of energy, it’d transform into a deadly melee weapon, if you kill someone, it steals their energy from the shields and get a partial reload to use it’s ranged part again.
Enough with my ramblings.
Yes, they felt very much like reskins of existing weapons, only slightly more powerful. Except the light rifle and supressor.
I agree, but it is a lot more difficult than we give 343 credit for. I mean, I can’t think of 3 sets of unique weapons.
Naqser actually had a good idea for a third unique weapon base. What happens when they run out of ammo? Do they have ammo, or are they timed weapons. UNSC weapons are bullets and one shot lasers while Alien is mostly Plasma, constant lasers, and unique melee weapons. The Forerunner weapons should be about efficiency above all else due to the lore behind them so having an empty weapon being more than just an empty weapon would be the next logical step.
What would a weapon with only enough energy to maintain its form but not shoot anything do? Well, to me it is obvious, transform into a POWERFUL incineration grenade, powerful enough to instantly kill those close enough, but guarantee at least complete shield depletion if within range at all. The grenade should also not be throwable, but require self detonation. Kind of like suicide grunts, but for Spartans or the player using them.
If you want to get into why self detonation well then think of using your energy source from your Spartan armor as the source for the Forerunner weapon to initiate detonation.
Unfortunately I don’t see 343 radically overhauling the entire promethean sandbox. I would settle for having them be the most lethal weapons in their class when used correctly.
I feel like the Binary Rifle and Incinerator Cannon already do this pretty well. They are single most powerful weapons in their respective classes, however they still have their own set of limitations. The Post patch LR does this to a degree as well since its scoped DPS is so powerful, yet it is limited in closer range encounters.
I think giving the Pulse, scattershot, suppressor and boltshot some upgrades and they can do the same.
Pulse grenade: Increase damage done by the field
Scattershot: More consistent damage, better accuracy, and a more predicable ‘bounce’, add some minor explosive damage to shots.
Suppressor:Now fires in 6 shot bursts with only a minor delay between shots, buff its accuracy.
Boltshot:Buff single shots to 6-8 shot kill, Charge now fires a single accurate bolt(close mid range) OHK headshot. A ‘Pocket’ railgun in a way.
As far as new things go, with the Promethean being a military class, I could understand that their weapons might be fairly ‘straightforward’, however I could easily see some Builder weapons being more exotic or flashy(see the sword/cannon things from Origins).
With the Halo sandbox having as many guns as it does you are going to see some guns behaving similarly more often than not. How many counterpart weapons are completely unique from the other Factions? Plasma Pistol, Sentinal Beam maybe, technically the Brute Shot cause its UNSC counterpart never appeared in the same game as it. If we want complete unique weapons in our sandbox we are going to have to cut most of it. The other option is each faction gets its counterparts to the UNSC weapons but they function different or have some gimmick to set them apart.
> Unfortunately I don’t see 343 radically overhauling the entire promethean sandbox. I would settle for having them be the most lethal weapons in their class when used correctly.
>
> I feel like the Binary Rifle and Incinerator Cannon already do this pretty well. They are single most powerful weapons in their respective classes, however they still have their own set of limitations. The Post patch LR does this to a degree as well since its scoped DPS is so powerful, yet it is limited in closer range encounters.
>
> I think giving the Pulse, scattershot, suppressor and boltshot some upgrades and they can do the same.
>
> Pulse grenade: Increase damage done by the field
> Scattershot: More consistent damage, better accuracy, and a more predicable ‘bounce’, add some minor explosive damage to shots.
> Suppressor:Now fires in 6 shot bursts with only a minor delay between shots, buff its accuracy.
> Boltshot:Buff single shots to 6-8 shot kill, Charge now fires a single accurate bolt(close mid range) OHK headshot. A ‘Pocket’ railgun in a way.
>
> As far as new things go, with the Promethean being a military class, I could understand that their weapons might be fairly ‘straightforward’, however I could easily see some Builder weapons being more exotic or flashy(see the sword/cannon things from Origins).
I kind of like these. so the suppressor would basically pulse as it fires? 6 shots, a gap of about one shot then 6 more?
for the pulse grenade I could either see it becoming a pure emp field (shields, motion tracker, maybe even entire hud don’t work with within its radius, recovering in about 1-3 seconds after leaving it) or one where rather than a field, it emits a series of damaging pulses, sort of like a plasma grenade except it sticks to anything (like the spike grenade used to) and it detonates weakly 3-5 times over as many seconds. overall damage is the same, but it lasts longer so it would be more for denying the area than for actually killing (unless you actually manage to tag someone directly with it). as it is now, i think it only does damage when expanding, and then when collapsing, but i could be wrong. another buff could be increasing the size of its effect.
> Unfortunately I don’t see 343 radically overhauling the entire promethean sandbox. I would settle for having them be the most lethal weapons in their class when used correctly.
>
> I feel like the Binary Rifle and Incinerator Cannon already do this pretty well. They are single most powerful weapons in their respective classes, however they still have their own set of limitations. The Post patch LR does this to a degree as well since its scoped DPS is so powerful, yet it is limited in closer range encounters.
>
> I think giving the Pulse, scattershot, suppressor and boltshot some upgrades and they can do the same.
>
> Pulse grenade: Increase damage done by the field
> Scattershot: More consistent damage, better accuracy, and a more predicable ‘bounce’, add some minor explosive damage to shots.
> Suppressor:Now fires in 6 shot bursts with only a minor delay between shots, buff its accuracy.
> Boltshot:Buff single shots to 6-8 shot kill, Charge now fires a single accurate bolt(close mid range) OHK headshot. A ‘Pocket’ railgun in a way.
>
> As far as new things go, with the Promethean being a military class, I could understand that their weapons might be fairly ‘straightforward’, however I could easily see some Builder weapons being more exotic or flashy(see the sword/cannon things from Origins).
I like where you are going with this. My friend and I have talked about something similar to this before. This is what we came up with.
Pulse Grenade-A mini energy drainer, that actually pulses. You should see the “energy field” disappear and then come back.
Scattershot-Should be combined with the Boltshot. Pulling the trigger rapidly should act as it does now, but holding the trigger should behave like the Boltshot does
SuppressorShould be overhauled and be an equivalent of the SAW.(then remove the SAW)
Boltshot-Should be removed
Light Rifle-Should be identical to the Focus Rifle from Reach.
Binary Rifle-Should not be changed
Incineration Cannon-Should not be changed
Obviously with these changes there would only be 6 Promethean weapons (after taking away one), which is something that I find good. I feel like a futuristic society such as the Forerunners would have simplified everything down. They would have a small set of specialized weapons, and this would allow for that.
Like The1astJoker said earlier, Promethean weapons should be all about efficiency. I don’t know if I agree that they should be used as grenades when out of ammo, but I did just come up with this idea: Ammo should act like the batteries from Covie weapons, but walking over weapons will refill the battery. There should be no reloading like there is now, it should be overheating like the Covie weapons. Unlike Covie weapons, when the battery runs out it feeds off of your shields instead of being useless. In this state they wouldn’t be as powerful as they are with real battery power, but they would be workable, allowing a player to use one for the entire game if they feel like.
Oh yes, I agree, they were quite underwhelming and uninspired for being Forerunner weapons. I honestly don’t like the idea of identical weaponry cluttering the sandbox.
They need to make these forerunner weapons at least power weapons or sub-power weapons, to pay respect to their powerful technology. I doubt loadouts and equal starts for the entire multiplayer are gone, so I’d at least want them to keep forerunner weaponry out of loadouts. Disappointed with suppressor, LR and boltshot for the most part.
One is a subpar br with good scope feats. The other is a weak pistol with shotgun feature, as if we don’t have scattershot and Unsc shotgun. Even the mauler was a better edition. Suppressor is rather weak, nothing but an smg that has weaker bullets per damage. Its Rof is supposed to somehow compensate, but it’s not enough. Leave it out the sandbox since we are getting an smg. Binary rifle is pretty easy to use seeing how no descope was featured, making a 1hit kill sniper simple to use in a quickscope. It’s just isn’t challenging to use in scope at all.
I’d personally would take a slightly buffed Sentinel beam with a scope, but give it an out-of-scope special ability that can shoot a super charged beam when trigger is held.
> SuppressorShould be overhauled and be an equivalent of the SAW.(then remove the SAW)
I love this idea - way better than the state it’s in now, it’s completely redundant.
If you ask me, Promethean weapons should be “god weapons”. Basically a set of weapons that is significantly more powerful than its human/Covenant equivalents. If the BR is 5 shot, let the new and improved LR be a three shot. The Scattershot should have a much larger range and should do more damage than Halo 4’s (which was very inconsistent). The Incineration Canon doesn’t need a boost, it’s already way overpowered. You get the point. To counter their massive power, they should have minimal ammo and should be very rare in multiplayer and should only be found on Promethean knights in the campaign (and they would make those enemies really tough to fight).
On top of that, I agree that we need some more unique weapons on the Promethean side- maybe a laser weapon kind of like the Sentinel Beam, a grenade that (when sticked) slowly starts to drain your shield and health and can EMP vehicles… More variety.
> I agree, but it is a lot more difficult than we give 343 credit for. I mean, I can’t think of 3 sets of unique weapons.
Then perhaps they shouldn’t try. There’s no need for humans to be able to use the weapon carried by every bad guy they encounter, especially when it stretches believability when they do so.
The boltshot is a cool weapon (as a map pickup). The incineration cannon is a cool weapon. The pulse grenade has some potential to be cool (but isn’t that cool in its current state). But the scattershot, suppressor, and LR add nothing new. They could have, but I suspect they wanted them to be able to be loadout weapons, so that affected how dissimilar they could be from their human equivalents.
Were they to remove them from loadouts (or simply remove loadouts), then they are much more free to make the weapons unique.
I think they should make the weapons hard to use, but extremely powerful for those who know how to use them.