Remove Bloom on the Commando; Add Bloom to the BR's hipfire (hear me out)

Games Halo Infinite
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For one thing there really shouldn’t be enough ranged weapons that have so much ammo you can consistently hold an entire team down in a spawn forever.

2 the BR has historically been the best ranged weapon and until Infinite the BR out killed many close range weapons at close range.

I have made/played custom games where if there is even a Utility Weapon on the map there is only 1 or 2 at most with limited ammo. Those games have never been as one sided as people claim they would be. Thats even with the Utility Weapon of previous games being stronger than in Infinite.

Whether or not people realize it they want the BR as a crutch. They don’t want to have to move to grab map weapons then purposefully use those map weapons as intended. A utility weapon allows people to somewhat ignore Halo’s arena shooter elements and without one you would have to lean into those elements more.

Not only that but while the Infinite AR is not lethal at range it can provide cover fire and has the ability to descope allowing you to more easily move even if you were pinned.

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I didn’t advocate for this here but maybe ranged weapons should be harder to use at range too.

For instance in Battlefield ranged weapons can be quite lethal one shot kills but theybare also quite difficult to use at range when comapred to Halo’s arsenal.

Most ranged weapon projectiles being right at hitscan speeds simplifies their use to the point that even an unskilled player can easily cross map people.

This combined with maps getting larger with more players has led to very slow playing matches with less movement than would have happened otherise due to hitscan projectiles.

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63

No… just no. That’s all I can really say. No.

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64

Please give counterpoints. If all you have is “I like playing the game this way” then thats not a strong argument.

Plenty of people rely on OP weapons in various games and whine when they get nerfed because they enjoy them. Only difference is Halo allowed one weapon to be OP in every game for 20 years.
I get it, it lessens how much you have to worry about map weapons, but i think that harms the arena shooter elements of Halo for little gain.

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You’re asking for an op weapon by removing bloom from the commando. You clearly don’t understand balancing, I’m sorry.

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The bloom doesn’t kick in enough before the full auto recoil becomes substantial enough to prevent shots from being easy to land consistently especially at range anyways.

Tell me, why do we need 2 different tuning mechanisms that both act at the same time to cause the same thing i.e. making it hard to use full auto and land shots accurately?

As i said before its taking 2 stones to kill 1 bird when that is comepletly unnecessary.

And again you provide no actual discourse just a disagreement without backup.

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Adding bloom to the BR is the biggest mistake 343 could make.

Pitchforks everywhere. The BR has had enough nerfs. I can’t possible imagine another happening.

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Not enough people agree with you or want what you want. A utility weapon is what I enjoy in halo, so yeah I like my crutch, so do majority of halo fans. Give me my h5 magnum back.

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No one wants bloom in halo and no one wants recoil either if I’ll be honest. If we had projectiles that we’re slow enough to be dodged at range and then some at mid we’d be solid. Apex hardly has recoil in its gun and yet people miss shots all the time

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Plenty of weapons in Apex have recoil. Not sure what you are talking about there. And not every weapon can only be tuned with projectile speed.

That is a very boring game IMO.

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The idea that from Halo 3 onwards the games were designed with utility weapons in mind is nonsense. Bungie was actively hostile to the concept and the fact they still couldn’t escape from them is a testament to how worthless it is to appeal to developer intent.

It is also incredibly funny to me to watch you call utility weapons a “crutch” while defending radar, just perfect, no notes.

The BR is not a marksman weapon, a full auto bullet hose like the AR is never going to be a sufficient starting weapon nor is the AR ever going to have as many use cases as even a nerfed BR with bloom, which as we saw in Reach, doesn’t stop a utility weapon from being a utility weapon.

The fact we can’t carry a bunch of weapons is precisely why spawning with a versatile one is so vital in Halo. You don’t need a multitool in traditional Arena shooters because you can carry an entire specialized toolbox while moving at vastly higher speeds.

A minority of weapons throughout Halo history have failed to deliver on their own merits as either powerful and/or engaging weapons in their own right but instead of fixing those few weapons you just want to tear down something people already enjoy.

People make almost identical complaints about the Gnasher in Gears. Shoot I can’t even say I personally get why the Gnasher should be like it is, but I’m not going around telling Gears fans they are wrong for enjoying the game for what it is rather than what I or even the developers thought it should be.

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Again the AR back then was absolutely abysmal and the Utility Weapon i.e. the DMR had a faster TTK at close range than the AR. On top of that the DMR had antimaterial rounds making it effective against vehicles especially with group fire.

We are not in the same situation we were back then…

The Gnasher is in no way similar to the utility weapons of Halo. Its basically the classic Halo shotgun. Only difference is Gears maps are much tighter and you can get closer to enemies much easier with the cover mechanics. Outside of close range the Gnasher loses like any shotgun in gaming tends to do.

I get what you mean by saying don’t come into a series and tell the games how they should be played. I use that argument against Halo 4 and 5 fans.

My argument is different since the devs originally intended to not have a Utility Weapon but failed due to their refusal to give us an AR that was 1% above trash.

We finally have a decent AR and i think the Utility weapon has just outstayed its welcome.

Not sure were you get this info. If true its interesting but then that just shows how each dev is just terrible (Bungie and 343) if that was actually their goal. Their refusal to give us a better AR like they did in Infinite i think just shows they were only doing it because people got used to it.

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Other weapons also being better like they were in H4 or H5 doesn’t suddenly make a utility weapon not a utility weapon. Also the DMR doesn’t have “anti material round”, the Reach vehicle health system is just garbage and vehicle gameplay has been demonstrably worse ever since. But that’s neither here nor there. You could buff a Reach AR, but it wouldn’t have stopped the DMR from being the utility weapon in that game.

A game which I remind had a lead designer that was so against the idea of a utility weapon that he was featured on camera saying as much. Still didn’t stop a utility weapon from existing.

The point of comparison of the Gnasher was not that it is a versatile weapon like a Halo utility weapon, it was that ignorant people whine about the Gnasher being all people ever use, or that other weapons are useless by comparison. The Gnasher is also clearly not intended to be the face of Gears multi either. That is why I brought it up.

I have no idea why you seem to think that having historically underperforming weapons buffed like the AR is somehow antithetical to having a utility weapon. Having strong niche weapons is not incompatible with having a utility weapon, it only enhances the overall experience provided things are also balanced with skill requirements and depth in mind.

I will remind you once again Infinite is no the first game with a decent or even outright good AR, both Halo 4 and 5 had incredibly powerful autos, AR included, didn’t stop utility weapons from being “meta.”

The idea that Bungie was ever amenable to utility weapons is nonsense between your own statement of the CE Pistol being the work of one dev, which co-founder Jason Jones takes credit for.* The fact that SMG starts were ever a thing. The fact the AR was brought back at all in attempt to basically be SMG starts 2 now with more grenades and melee. The fact that again, the Reach lead sandbox designer is on camera being against weapons that “work in all cases” and still pushed AR starts

Absolutely none of the things paint a picture of a Bungie designing any of the games with utility weapons in mind. All it does is show Bungie isn’t especially good at balance, and even then we are still only talking about a minority of underpowered weapons, not an especially powerful utility weapon, in fact during Bungie’s tenure the utility weapons only got worse.

Its just easy for you to believe that it was the devs that pushed utility starts became the norm rather than the playerbase because you can’t accept the playerbase(both casual and competitive) love the very thing you hate.

20 years later utility weapons are still meta, but sure, its everyone else that’s the problem

*Something he claims he did because they were unhappy with the Pistols performance and obviously wouldn’t have the option to adjust it after the fact.

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Never said it was Apex. Someone else used Apex as an example of a game that balanced its weapons without using recoil and they were just wrong…

Even if Apex didn’t have recoil thats a bad argument because movement, health, and engagement distance are much different in Apex.

Again you provide no counter points though.

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I said they have barely any recoil not that they had none at all

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Quite a few of them have a good amount of recoil… the Alternator being a prime example. It even has a separate type of recoil that bounces quite far horizontally. This means you have to learn how to control it comepletly separate from all the other weapons. This is what makes Titanfall and Apex weapons fun to use. Many control differently or are balanced using different systems.

The Devotions requires “spinning up” in a sense to reach full fire rate and at that full fire rate it kills rather quickly while the Spitfire is rather consistent but not overly powerful. The L-Star never has to reload but it overheats quickly and has very slow projectiles. This forces the L-Star into a close range LMG.

If all Halo does is have very little recoil and balance everything with range damage drop offs and bullet velocity every weapon outside power weapons will feel too similar. Diversity is the goal here along with keeping weapons in line so one doesn’t just absolutely dominate the meta and reduce the usefulness of every other weapon.