Please read this post carefully. It is not an anti DMR rant; I use DMR as my weapon of choice. I am not an embittered BR user. Neither is it anti Ragnarok. I think it is and always was a great map.
The problem is that great ingredients can sometimes spoil each other. Milk is delicious. Orange juice is great. But what do you get if you mix the two? A disgusting sour, curdled mess akin to the contents of your stomach.
Similarly, DMR and Ragnarok simply do not mix. The long sight lines combined with the ludicrously easy 5 shot accuracy of the DMR mean that players have become unwilling to move or take risks. Those who do so are instantly punished. Even vehicles, especially the once mighty warthog, are being reduced to spartan cookers. Life expectancy of the aggressive and bold players is rage inductively short whereas the timid, the campers and the hiders are rewarded with risk free, effort free kills and, in turn, devastating personal ordnance weapons.
The only logical conclusion of this arms race of stealth and caution is a dull, stagnant stalemate.
So how can this great map be saved without removing my favorite rifle? Does the DMR need to maintain its long range supremacy over the BR? Yes. Should it be able to pop an instant 5-shot all the way from the pelican to the forerunner wall? Most definitely not. Should the BR have a chance of winning a long range dual (no matter how slim)? Yes.
Now this is the bit where everyone rages at me, because the only solution I can think of is to increase DMR bloom. Yes, I said it… INCREASE BLOOM. It needs to be finely balanced to maintain its long range supremacy, whilst forcing players to pace shots at extreme ranges rather than inflicting easy cross map virtual insta kills.
Without some sort of fix, the DMR will kill gameplay on this classic map as well as any future BTB maps that include huge sprawling spaces.
If you agree with the reasoning of this post please favorite it.
I’m really undecided about how I feel about the DMR. I don’t hate it but BTB in general with the exception of Exile in the centre and Vortex centre as well just feels like a pew pew pew. It becomes such a standoff. You know that as soon as you go out of cover you’re going to get decimated. The Warthog as well, H3 you thought oh -Yoink- it’s coming after us, now you can just laugh. Why is the Light Rifle used so little as well, seeing as it is more powerful than the DMR zoomed in and on BTB you’ll be doing a lot of zooming in?
Big Team is really frustrating to me. Not because I can’t get kills but because it amounts to constant dmr exchanges. There is almost no point to get in a vehicle right now. DMR fire does way too much damage to vehicles. Allowing everyone to spawn with stickies and invisibility as well as unlimited sprint and the relatively tight layout of some of the big team maps almost guarantees you a swift death in a vehicle. Not to mention all the power weapons floating around the map as a result of ordnances.
I think this playlist is one that may have suffered the most from the new infinity mode. In my opinion the gold standard of Big Team Battle is Halo 3. Something with that kind of vehicle play and pacing would be excellent.
My thought was always that the DMR was king of mid to long range encounters while the BR was king of a slightly closer range. On maps like Adrift and Haven rolling in with a DMR is slightly dangerous because the BR’s three round burst fire means more chances at the kill, whereas the DMR user has to land every single headshot to win (which is sometimes hard in close quarters with the enemies dodging and jumping around and all). So I, as a DMR user, carry an assault rifle or boltshot to balance out the DMR’s weakness at close range.
But anyway… I think Ragnarok’s problem was always the openness which coupled with the DMR and now the ordnance drops which can put up to 3 or 4 snipers or binary rifles in rotation at once (not to mention camo users hiding behind the downed pelican and the rock arch) makes the map a living hell for guys running out and trying to fight in the open. If the ordnance drops were toned down, maybe less sniper weapons (2 snipers seem more than enough for the map), I think a lot of problems would go away.
Although the PODs are a undeniably a big problem for this map, I still think that the DMR is the main culprit in making it play badly. For every one sniper death, I’ve had 10 DMR deaths because I was foolish enough to try and push forward from one area of cover to the next without the use of active camo.
But yes, snipers need to be taken out of PODs.
Vehicle insta-kill weapons need taking out too. At least that way, the hogs can survive long enough to try and disrupt some of the DMR campers.
Finally, as I stated in my OP, DMR needs to be less effective at extreme ranges.
Without these changes, very large, relatively open BTB maps will remain non viable as quality halo maps.