Question about "useless" weapons

Games Other Halo
1

There have been several posts in this forum from veteran players who state quite adamantly that the automatic weapons in Reach, with the possible exception of the Needler, are useless and should never be picked up. I’ve noticed that, in general, these players also seem to support the TU, and say 343i is moving us in the right direction with their changes. They say 343i is trying to improve the game. So it seems they respect 343i’s decisions about what would make Reach work better.

Here’s my question: If the automatic weapons are so worthless, why has every new map produced by 343i/Certain Affinity contained automatic weapon spawns, with each member of the quadrumvirate of so-called “useless” automatic weapons–Plasma Repeater, Assault Rifle, Plasma Rifle, and Spiker–appearing on at least one of these maps? The much maligned Plasma Repeater even appears on a big map, Highlands (as well as Condemned, Uplink, and Solitary), something veteran players decry.

If 343i is trying to improve things, why haven’t they just omitted these types of spawns from their maps if they feel they are clutter? On the contrary, they have gone further with them than even Bungie did. Bungie never had any Plasma Rifle spawns or Spiker spawns on their developer maps for Reach, and they only had one designer map with an AR spawn (Breakpoint). So an argument can be made that 343i believes (as I do) that these weapons are not garbage littering the sandbox.

2

Well there has to be SOMETHING for the new players to use.

I remember when I first started playing Halo 2 at LAN parties (My very first experience with Halo), all I could even manage to use was the SMG and melee.

Automatics really are a “newbs” weapon. Veterans deem them useless because they can use precision weapons better.

3

As much as anything I think its about giving you choice. I use the AR quite a bit situationally and my k/d thanks me. That being said, any weapon with non tracking projectiles with a flight time is gonna be rough against a moving target. Grenade launcher and rockets obviously are the exception to the rule by having a blast radius and one hit kill ability.

4

To be perfectly honest, I think it is just so the low-level players don’t rage about there not being any “variety.”
Same reason everyone complains about MLG, because they omit the abusable/useless weapons, powerups, etc.

5

> Well there has to be SOMETHING for the new players to use.
>
> I remember when I first started playing Halo 2 at LAN parties (My very first experience with Halo), all I could even manage to use was the SMG and melee.
>
> Automatics really are a “newbs” weapon. Veterans deem them useless because they can use precision weapons better.

Okay, I can see this for the AR, but I don’t think the Plasma Repeater and Plasma Rifle are new-player friendly at all.

6

> To be perfectly honest, I think it is just so the low-level players don’t rage about there not being any “variety.”
> Same reason everyone complains about MLG, because they omit the abusable/useless weapons, powerups, etc.

But as I said, Bungie never felt the need to include Plasma Rifle, Spiker, or AR spawns to provide variety. They only used Plasma Repeaters as map spawns (with the one rare exception on Breakpoint).

Putting 2 Plasma Repeaters on a big map like Highlands doesn’t seem to be needed for variety’s sake either when it already has a Plasma Launcher, a Spartan Laser, a Grenade Launcher, Plasma Pistols, Shotguns, Rocket Launchers, Sniper Rifles, Mounted Machineguns, Needle Rifles, DMRs, Frag Grenades, Plasma Grenades, Ghosts, and Warthogs. Similar analyses can be made for the other big maps. Heck, Ridgeline/Timberland and Breakneck have both Assault Rifle and Plasma Rifle spawns; if they were just there for variety, that would be overkill. There would be no need for both types of weapons.

7

Weapon placement is not indicative of usefulness. Its the same with useless portions of the map that don’t provide any sort of tactical advantage. They exist on the map because the maps in the game should provide a wider experience than competitive gameplay. There are players who enjoy bad weapons, and there are players who enjoy exploring maps.

8

AR is the way to go!

And whats with all of these labels lately?! Veterans/noobs high-level/low-level???
I miss just playing halo…

9

> Weapon placement is not indicative of usefulness. Its the same with useless portions of the map that don’t provide any sort of tactical advantage. They exist on the map because the maps in the game should provide a wider experience than competitive gameplay. There are players who enjoy bad weapons, and there are players who enjoy exploring maps.

Really? I always thought good maps were economical and didn’t waste space or place weapons poorly. I’ve never seen any designer of Halo-type maps give advice to would-be map makers along the lines of “include bad weapons for those who like them” or “make your maps too big for those who enjoy wasting time exploring them.” The advice I’ve seen is quite opposite to this. There are even, as you know, many overt complaints about maps like Boneyard and Spire having wasted space, and one of the things that I continually see MLG being extolled for is the careful way they place weapons on maps.

It also seems to me that if 343i wants to improve the Reach experience, they would not provide bad weapons just because some players enjoy them. In fact, this runs contrary to what they have been doing. For instance, there are also Reach players who enjoy bad AAs and “bad” bloom, and look at what 343i is doing with the TU, much to those players’ consternation.

10

For the record, I like using all four of these weapons situationally. I think they each have their uses. I will even at times replace an AR with a Plasma Repeater.

11

Useless weapons should never be in the game, regardless what “noob” potential they may hold. If one is a noob, it is the job of a good trueskill mechanic to determine that the player plays players around his or her skill. The sandbox should not be undermined just for the sake of some new players.

That said, they are on the map because we have them in-game. It is of my opinion that the entire sandbox should be buffed (either 125%/110% or 110%/100% damage/resist) so that they are at least given a better purpose.

12

> Useless weapons should never be in the game, regardless what “noob” potential they may hold. If one is a noob, it is the job of a good trueskill mechanic to determine that the player plays players around his or her skill. The sandbox should not be undermined just for the sake of some new players.

I agree completely, as I think most players would.

> That said, they are on the map because we have them in-game.

But that doesn’t explain why 343i would continue to place them on their new maps, nor why Bungie didn’t originally use some of them on their maps. And not all in-game weapons are on the maps.

13

> > Weapon placement is not indicative of usefulness. Its the same with useless portions of the map that don’t provide any sort of tactical advantage. They exist on the map because the maps in the game should provide a wider experience than competitive gameplay. There are players who enjoy bad weapons, and there are players who enjoy exploring maps.
>
> Really? I always thought good maps were economical and didn’t waste space or place weapons poorly. I’ve never seen any designer of Halo-type maps give advice to would-be map makers along the lines of “include bad weapons for those who like them” or “make your maps too big for those who enjoy wasting time exploring them.” The advice I’ve seen is quite opposite to this. There are even, as you know, many overt complaints about maps like Boneyard and Spire having wasted space, and one of the things that I continually see MLG being extolled for is the careful way they place weapons on maps.
>
> It also seems to me that if 343i wants to improve the Reach experience, they would not provide bad weapons just because some players enjoy them. In fact, this runs contrary to what they have been doing. For instance, there are also Reach players who enjoy bad AAs and “bad” bloom, and look at what 343i is doing with the TU, much to those players’ consternation.

Mlg is not the totality of what makes a map good.

People forging maps do so for different reasons. Visit forgehub and the various sections for types of maps. Some make maps purely for aesthetics.

Go into condemned and look for the various ledges and platforms that seem to be there simply to finish the sense of place. Go into highlands and find all the places on the edge of the map that aren’t out of bounds and have no apparent use. For competitive play I would agree that maps should be economical (lockout from h2 for example), but competition isn’t the only reason to play reach.

Improving the Reach experience is a nebulous thing. No one group has the monopoly on it. The TU seems to be a move to improve the game for a subset of players, not the whole. Matchmaking itself does not represent the whole of reach players. I like the TU, and think it is an improvement, but would be adverse to all maps from here on out only including Dmr and power weapons for the sake of competition.

14

> Useless weapons should never be in the game, regardless what “noob” potential they may hold. If one is a noob, it is the job of a good trueskill mechanic to determine that the player plays players around his or her skill. The sandbox should not be undermined just for the sake of some new players.
>
> That said, they are on the map because we have them in-game. It is of my opinion that the entire sandbox should be buffed (either 125%/110% or 110%/100% damage/resist) so that they are at least given a better purpose.

I wish there was a way to buff weapons but not nades. I love the 110/100 split. The AR shreds.

15

Pajamadad

The movement of the Halo franchise has been away from a full sandbox of weapons towards emphasis on precision weapons. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about go back to Halo: CE or CEA and try using any of the other weapons, like the Plasma Rifle. In my opinion, the Plasma Rifle is a better weapon than the AR against one shielded foe in CE. But the AR is a better weapon against two or more unshielded foes. The Pistol was the all around bad -Yoink- weapon, but you could do without it easily. Because you had small one-hit-kill hitboxes in CE, the pistol wasn’t a guaranteed headshot weapon. Since CE, Halo 2, 3, and then Reach made head hitboxes larger, gave more magnetism to the bullets, and created two weapons that are highly effective precision weapons: the BR/DMR and Sniper Rifle. But by making them so precise, they kinda of made it difficult to use any other weapon. Halo 2 saw the intro of the noob combo: plasma pistol/BR for those of you who never played Halo 2. The weapon switch speed allowed for the convenient using of two weapons at a time, but no one used anything but the noob combo or power weapons on MM.

To try and force the use of other “non-power” weapons, Halo 3 made weapon switching a more lengthy process. You couldn’t overcharge-shield-strip and one to the head with the noob combo as quickly as you could just fire 4-5 bursts with the BR. (Unless you walked around with an overcharged PP which would now drain the battery.) What the removal of fast weapon switching really did was remove any impetus for using combinations of weapons in an effective manner to kill. In CE, one could whip out a Plasma Rifle to remove shields, then quickly switch to AR for increased body damage, all while in the same firefight with the same opponent. And the person who could do that invariably killed the guy using either weapon alone. But that isn’t possible in Reach. If you stop firing for any reason now, the guy who keeps firing will invariably win, regardless of weapon choice. This has lead to an increased emphasis on precision weapons for their high damage power and their accuracy with headshots, while de-emphasizing the use of automatic weapons, with their comparatively lower damage power and no headshot capability.

Above is merely an analysis of know data. Below are my feelings on how to “fix the problem.” One is the reintroduction of the CE AR to Halo. The 32 shot clip is good for killing precisely two enemies (one if it’s an Elite Minor, none if you go higher than that). In CE, one could run through two or three Elites on one clip of the AR, and several Grunts/Jackals. Compared to the DMR of Reach which allows you to kill up to 15 enemies before reloading, the AR is a joke. The only reason I ever used one in campaign was because I defaulted to it. The instant I could get my hands on a pistol or DMR, I’d switch. Also the bullet kill power of the AR, PR, Repeater, and spiker need to be upped so that they provide a viable alternative for quickly killing opponents. This would allow the AR to become a weapon that people wouldn’t mind using, instead of having the DMR/BR/pistol. It would add variety and allow for a person to try multiple different methods for killing groups of enemies. Some might say that the game is precision-centric and I would agree. But that doesn’t mean that automatic weapons don’t have their place and should be entirely ignored either.

16

> > > Weapon placement is not indicative of usefulness. Its the same with useless portions of the map that don’t provide any sort of tactical advantage. They exist on the map because the maps in the game should provide a wider experience than competitive gameplay. There are players who enjoy bad weapons, and there are players who enjoy exploring maps.
> >
> > Really? I always thought good maps were economical and didn’t waste space or place weapons poorly. I’ve never seen any designer of Halo-type maps give advice to would-be map makers along the lines of “include bad weapons for those who like them” or “make your maps too big for those who enjoy wasting time exploring them.” The advice I’ve seen is quite opposite to this. There are even, as you know, many overt complaints about maps like Boneyard and Spire having wasted space, and one of the things that I continually see MLG being extolled for is the careful way they place weapons on maps.
> >
> > It also seems to me that if 343i wants to improve the Reach experience, they would not provide bad weapons just because some players enjoy them. In fact, this runs contrary to what they have been doing. For instance, there are also Reach players who enjoy bad AAs and “bad” bloom, and look at what 343i is doing with the TU, much to those players’ consternation.
>
> Mlg is not the totality of what makes a map good.
>
> People forging maps do so for different reasons. Visit forgehub and the various sections for types of maps. Some make maps purely for aesthetics.
>
> Go into condemned and look for the various ledges and platforms that seem to be there simply to finish the sense of place. Go into highlands and find all the places on the edge of the map that aren’t out of bounds and have no apparent use. For competitive play I would agree that maps should be economical (lockout from h2 for example), but competition isn’t the only reason to play reach.
>
> Improving the Reach experience is a nebulous thing. No one group has the monopoly on it. The TU seems to be a move to improve the game for a subset of players, not the whole. Matchmaking itself does not represent the whole of reach players. I like the TU, and think it is an improvement, but would be adverse to all maps from here on out only including Dmr and power weapons for the sake of competition.

I understand aesthetic criteria and creating a sense of place. But I think this is very different from putting worthless weapons, that can actually be used in-game and not just looked at, on a map just to satisfy players who like bad weapons. If anything, this lacks aesthetics. It’s ugly.

17

Those weapons are in there for the sake of variety, nothing more, nothing less. I would never use them, but they certainly don’t bother me. In fact I wish more people would use them, it would give me easier kills.

They are regarded as garbage weapons, because that is what they are. Someone using any of these weapons has absolutely NO chance against a skilled DMR/Pistol/NR user.

18

> Those weapons are in there for the sake of variety, nothing more, nothing less.

How do you know this for sure? You sound so certain.

> They are regarded as garbage weapons, because that is what they are. Someone using any of these weapons has absolutely NO chance against a skilled DMR/Pistol/NR user.

As I said in my opening post, this is a belief held by some such as yourself and often repeated. I disagree that it’s a universal truth. For instance, just last night on Penance I got several kills by being near a teleporter exit and firing a Plasma Rifle on opponents coming through it, removing their shields, and immediately pummeling them. They were all armed with DMRs or Magnums but had no chance to fire back and they died. I don’t think it would have mattered how much skill they had with their weapons. Also, ARs are good for spraying invisible opponents, something you can’t quite do with a precision weapon. And so on.

19

> > Those weapons are in there for the sake of variety, nothing more, nothing less.
>
> How do you know this for sure? You sound so certain.
>
>
> > They are regarded as garbage weapons, because that is what they are. Someone using any of these weapons has absolutely NO chance against a skilled DMR/Pistol/NR user.
>
> As I said in my opening post, this is a belief held by some such as yourself and often repeated. I disagree that it’s a universal truth. For instance, just last night on Penance I got several kills by being near a teleporter exit and firing a Plasma Rifle on opponents coming through it, removing their shields, and immediately pummeling them. They were all armed with DMRs or Magnums but had no chance to fire back and they died. I don’t think it would have mattered how much skill they had with their weapons. Also, ARs are good for spraying invisible opponents, something you can’t quite do with a precision weapon. And so on.

i know they are in there for variety and not for tactical reasons because you stand very little chance while using a plasma repeater/ar/plasma rifle vs a skilled Precision weapon user, especially at further than melee distance range. the odds tip even further in favor of the precision weapon user when we are talking about TU, Anniversary, or ZB settings.

the non-precision/non-power weapons such as the AR and its friends are basically in there for low skilled players to use. have you ever seen a highly skilled player (one with a high k/d and good win ratio) use mainly an AR type of weapon on a DMR starts or aniv playlist, no, you haven’t and you won’t. i can guarantee you if you took the time to look at people using the AR type weapons (especially in DMR or other precision weapon start gametypes) you would see there stats would be sub par, and that is because the weapons they are using cannot stand up to precision weapons.

to your other points, you could do your teleport strategy just as good with a melee and a headshot as opposed to your strategy, just a 3sk with pistol if it was anniv. settings, or stand further back with the dmr.

also, if you keep going thru the teleporter and to get pummeled to death, then you are most likely not a very skilled player

and grenades are much more useful than an AR to detect a nearby camo’d opponent

20

> > > Those weapons are in there for the sake of variety, nothing more, nothing less.
> >
> > How do you know this for sure? You sound so certain.
> >
> >
> > > They are regarded as garbage weapons, because that is what they are. Someone using any of these weapons has absolutely NO chance against a skilled DMR/Pistol/NR user.
> >
> > As I said in my opening post, this is a belief held by some such as yourself and often repeated. I disagree that it’s a universal truth. For instance, just last night on Penance I got several kills by being near a teleporter exit and firing a Plasma Rifle on opponents coming through it, removing their shields, and immediately pummeling them. They were all armed with DMRs or Magnums but had no chance to fire back and they died. I don’t think it would have mattered how much skill they had with their weapons. Also, ARs are good for spraying invisible opponents, something you can’t quite do with a precision weapon. And so on.
>
> you could do that just as good with a melee and a headshot as opposed to your strategy

No, that would give the skilled DMR/Magnum/NR user a chance to do the same thing back to me. With the Plasma Rifle, I didn’t have to be within melee distance until after I finished firing a very rapid 3 shots from it, leaving my opponent no time to do anything except maybe get out one melee or one shot. And beside, your statement was that someone using the Plasma Rifle would have NO chance against a skilled DMR/Magnum/NR user.

> if you keep going thru the teleporter and to get pummeled to death, then you are most likely not a very skilled player

These were different people.

> this is no knock to you, but i am assuming you were in team slayer due to the map. the only time you will find a skilled precision weapon user in TS is when they are just playing to mess with noobs.

My point is that it wouldn’t have mattered how skilled they were because of the time element.

> also grenades are much more useful than an AR to detect a nearby camo’d opponent

We’re comparing the AR to precision weapons, not to grenades. Also, once a grenade is expended, it’s expended. At least with the AR you will [usually] still have ammo left.

And you avoided my question: How do you know for sure automatic weapon spawns are on the map for the sake of variety, nothing more, nothing less? Did you read my argument for why I don’t think this is true?