Shadowrun is a better game than Reach
> > By the way, Halo has always been about the skilled player. Not the casuals you seem to defend blindly.
>
> No. It’s ALWAYS been about balanced Sandbox play.
>
> The whole Skilled vs. Casual thing is a lame excuse, a smoke screen self pro-claimed pro’s use to lie to themselves and the rest of the world when they can’t adapt to change.
Amen
Couple things:
About “Balanced Sandbox” play: Halo is about balanced sandbox play and always has been, Reach doesn’t have that. Halo 1, 2, and 3 had a pretty good weapon sandbox and allowed skilled players to use it to their advantage with little to no luck factors built in. Halo Reach introduced Bloom which broke the sandbox. We have a sandbox, but it’s not balanced, which leads me to…
“Bloom affects everyone equally so it’s balanced”: What a crock. I’m sorry but this just doesn’t make any sense. This game isn’t friggin Dungeons and Dragons where the outcome is based on a roll of the dice that affects both players equally. That kind of set up has no place in a shooting game’s precision weapon. I fully understand the concept on automatic weapons like the AR, but not a precision weapon. It needs consistency. It’s one thing is the weapon has recoil, but Bloom is not appropriate. At least with recoil you can control it and you know exactly where your bullet is going to land when you shoot, with Bloom is a crap-shoot.
To say that just because player A is affected in the same way as player B by a random mechanic makes it ok is just shortsighted in my book. That’s like a Tennis ref saying: “Ok we’re going to use this ball now. It has a 50/50 chance of bouncing in a completely random direction just to make things interesting and help that sucky tennis player over there at least have a chance of beating the much better player.”
> Couple things:
>
> About “Balanced Sandbox” play: Halo is about balanced sandbox play and always has been, Reach doesn’t have that. Halo 1, 2, and 3 had a pretty good weapon sandbox and allowed skilled players to use it to their advantage with little to no luck factors built in. Halo Reach introduced Bloom which broke the sandbox. We have a sandbox, but it’s not balanced, which leads me to…
In H2 and H3 you had the BR, and that’s all you used. Now granted the DMR still gets used most of the time in Reach, it’s no where near as unbalanced as the BR.
> “Bloom affects everyone equally so it’s balanced”: What a crock. I’m sorry but this just doesn’t make any sense. This game isn’t friggin Dungeons and Dragons where the outcome is based on a roll of the dice that affects both players equally. That kind of set up has no place in a shooting game’s precision weapon. I fully understand the concept on automatic weapons like the AR, but not a precision weapon. It needs consistency. It’s one thing is the weapon has recoil, but Bloom is not appropriate. At least with recoil you can control it and you know exactly where your bullet is going to land when you shoot, with Bloom is a crap-shoot.
It does matter which weapons bloom is on, as long as it treats every player equally, the better player will consistently win.
> To say that just because player A is affected in the same way as player B by a random mechanic makes it ok is just shortsighted in my book. That’s like a Tennis ref saying: “Ok we’re going to use this ball now. It has a 50/50 chance of bouncing in a completely random direction just to make things interesting and help that sucky tennis player over there at least have a chance of beating the much better player.”
No, your example is horrible, and is more like if you were given a DMR at the start of a round but spawned at a random distance from the nearest ammo. Not only does this not happen is Halo, but it should serve as a warning to anyone new who is reading this thread, that this is how you bloom haters view Halo Game play, irrational.
I will never understand people’s logic that the H3 BR was somehow less random than the DMR. At long range, two thirds of the BR bullets didn’t hit where you aimed. I think most peoples’ biggest beef with Reach whether they realize it or not, is that Reach gave players a visual representation of its randomness on the DMR, where as Halo 3 let the randomness of the BR stay mostly hidden unless you did custom game experiments.
Also: Hitscan>Bullet Travel. Halo 3 can die a slow death for its bullet travel BR nonsense.
Halo Reach is a game with an influx of imbalanced maps and an inherently random reticule blooming feature. Basically ever since Reach and Black Ops came out I’ve stopped playing console shooters. It’s obvious that these games are all about giving the “noobs” a chance when they don’t deserve it.
> I will never understand people’s logic that the H3 BR was somehow less random than the DMR. At long range, two thirds of the BR bullets didn’t hit where you aimed. I think most peoples’ biggest beef with Reach whether they realize it or not, is that Reach gave players a visual representation of its randomness on the DMR, where as Halo 3 let the randomness of the BR stay mostly hidden unless you did custom game experiments.
>
> Also: Hitscan>Bullet Travel. Halo 3 can die a slow death for its bullet travel BR nonsense.
Yes but that was at extreme range so it wasn’t as big of a deal. Imagine having that inconsistency that H3 had at extreme range but at almost every range, that’s the problem.
> > Couple things:
> >
> > About “Balanced Sandbox” play: Halo is about balanced sandbox play and always has been, Reach doesn’t have that. Halo 1, 2, and 3 had a pretty good weapon sandbox and allowed skilled players to use it to their advantage with little to no luck factors built in. Halo Reach introduced Bloom which broke the sandbox. We have a sandbox, but it’s not balanced, which leads me to…
>
> In H2 and H3 you had the BR, and that’s all you used. Now granted the DMR still gets used most of the time in Reach, it’s no where near as unbalanced as the BR.
And in Halo 2 and Halo 3 you also had the pistol, rockets, plamsa pistol for knocking out shields, stickies, sniper, shotgun, etc. The only difference between Halo 2/3 and Halo CE was Halo CE had the 3 shot pistol which was the closest thing to messing up weapon sandbox. The problem wasn’t the existence of the BR, it was the prevelance of it.
> > “Bloom affects everyone equally so it’s balanced”: What a crock. I’m sorry but this just doesn’t make any sense. This game isn’t friggin Dungeons and Dragons where the outcome is based on a roll of the dice that affects both players equally. That kind of set up has no place in a shooting game’s precision weapon. I fully understand the concept on automatic weapons like the AR, but not a precision weapon. It needs consistency. It’s one thing is the weapon has recoil, but Bloom is not appropriate. At least with recoil you can control it and you know exactly where your bullet is going to land when you shoot, with Bloom is a crap-shoot.
>
> It does matter which weapons bloom is on, as long as it treats every player equally, the better player will consistently win.
Wrong on so many levels. A random mechanic can treat everyone equally but that doesn’t promise consistent results. I don’t know how else to explain this to you. Everyone else has wrapped their head around it but for some reason no matter how many times I, or someone else, tries to explain it you keep coming back saying that if both players have to deal with randomness it makes the skilled player win. That’s just not true and until you realize that bit of truth I have nothing else to say on this and will not respond to any comments (other than saying you are wrong) until you think this one through.
Remember: A mechanic that creates random results does not promise the more skilled player the victory. The skilled player could pace their shots properly but if the less skilled player spams away and then lands a lucky headshot because a) The bloom rewarded it out of luck and b) The center of the reticle wasn’t even on the head, only the tail end of the BLOOMED part was on the head and yet the headshot still was awarded…well, that’s garbage and if you are OK with that then…well, let’s just say I STRONGLY disagree with you.
> > To say that just because player A is affected in the same way as player B by a random mechanic makes it ok is just shortsighted in my book. That’s like a Tennis ref saying: “Ok we’re going to use this ball now. It has a 50/50 chance of bouncing in a completely random direction just to make things interesting and help that sucky tennis player over there at least have a chance of beating the much better player.”
>
> No, your example is horrible, and is more like if you were given a DMR at the start of a round but spawned at a random distance from the nearest ammo. Not only does this not happen is Halo, but it should serve as a warning to anyone new who is reading this thread, that this is how you bloom haters view Halo Game play, irrational.
That was a completely irrational statement (use of the word “irrational” was intended there). Your example made no sense. You said that if both players are affected equally by the randomness it’s ok right? So how is a tennis ball that can bounce in any random direction any different? Both tennis players would be equally affected by the random bounces from the tennis ball. It fits in perfectly with your analogy and shows the holes in your logic.
yes the more skilled player should prevail as long as he doesent enter the battle with a disadvantage, like getting supprise, not getting the first shot, getting hit with a nade etc , ther are a lot of factors… but in an engagement that is equal the skilled player should win as long as he makes no mistakes. i do believe though that their should be more things to help the new player learn how to become a more skilled player like a kill cam type deal or combat training
> Remember: A mechanic that creates random results does not promise the more skilled player the victory. The skilled player could pace their shots properly but if the less skilled player spams away and then lands a lucky headshot because a) The bloom rewarded it out of luck and b) The center of the reticle wasn’t even on the head, only the tail end of the BLOOMED part was on the head and yet the headshot still was awarded…well, that’s garbage and if you are OK with that then…well, let’s just say I STRONGLY disagree with you.
That actually happened to me. One time I played a Slayer game in Countdown. My reticule was a few millimeters from the opponents head when I paced my final shot. I took the shot, the bloom expanded but the reticule didn’t turn red, but it counted as a headshot.
I admit, I support the Bloom. The only conclusion I came up with was a bit of lag. Since in the game, 2 players from the other team didn’t had a very good connection.
But if it turns out that it was a random kill, then I hope the TU can fix this sort of thing.
> > Couple things:
> >
> > About “Balanced Sandbox” play: Halo is about balanced sandbox play and always has been, Reach doesn’t have that. Halo 1, 2, and 3 had a pretty good weapon sandbox and allowed skilled players to use it to their advantage with little to no luck factors built in. Halo Reach introduced Bloom which broke the sandbox. We have a sandbox, but it’s not balanced, which leads me to…
>
> In H2 and H3 you had the BR, and that’s all you used. Now granted the DMR still gets used most of the time in Reach, it’s no where near as unbalanced as the BR.
LOL, do you still not see why the primary spawn weapon in Halo will always make up most of the kills? Having a strong utility weapon is a necessity the ways Halo weapon balance is layed out and the movement speeds or most fights would be rock,paper,scissors and power weapons would completely dominate like they do in Reach. The problem here has always been the niche and automatic weapons not the utility weapon. If you want overpowered automatics to dominate the game go play CoD.
> > Being inconsistent for everybody doesn’t make it consistent.
>
> Yeah, it does.
>
> To steal an idea posted earlier in this thread. In other games you have what’s called a “critical strike”.
>
> Having a larger critical strike chance gives you the edge in a battle. Increasing your chance of making a critical strike helps you and is something skillful players try to do to gain an edge on their opponent.
games that use the ‘critical strike’ mechanic are almost never FPS games, and are almost always games that have higher HP values so if you encounter people, the critical strike is a bit of help, but its not the end of the line for the person who doesnt get the critical strike. when spamming wins against pacing, this is basically like a critical strike. the funny thing about this is, this ‘critical strike’ only comes when players are playing in a way that would make them lose 76% of the time, so when they get the critical strike they are lucking out to ‘crit’ into not dying due to their own stupidity. this is about the most bonkers off the wall concept you could possibly come up with.
Yep.
But thats what happens when a company wants to make lots of money. They have to rid of the elements that make the game great and employ casual mechanics to appeal to a more casual audience. IE CoD
Blame Bungie for being greedy -Yoinks!-.
Bloom makes sense on automatic weapons, but makes no sense on precision weapons. Instead of allowing bloom, just force people to wait until the recoil is over to fire again, like with the BR. Unfortunately for the Carbine, it was always on random spam mode. You can blame it for giving birth to the blooming DMR and Needle Rifle.
While I agree with the sentiment of the thread somewhat, the methods chosen I completely disagree with.
The more skilled player should win, and then the lesser skilled player should be able to enjoy Halo at his/her own level.
To anyone who thinks taking away bloom would would shorten this ever-so-mistifying “skill gap” I ask (rhetorically) how would giving everyone a super duper laser weapon that is always 100% accurate accomplish this? Now even the lesser skilled player can shoot you just as accurately with each shot as you can to them. Not only that, but you’ll end up with Halo 4: BR Battles which would quite possibly be the worst re-iteration of Halo I can possibly imagine.
If anything, to make the skill gap larger, bloom should be tweaked to be increased so that spammers really are punished, and someone who can keep their cool and pace their shots is rewarded with a 4-5 shot 5-6 second kill.
And AAs being ‘random’ is the worst argument I’ve heard. Nothing personal, because anyone who would have said the same thing I would have thought the same about, but it is. Call them over-powered, call the over-used, call them annoying, and call them stupid (AL, JP, AC, Holo respectively) but random they are not. Each AA is combatable in a different way and you just have to learn it. Not every enemy is best beat by BRing them 4 times. A little game experience in REACH is all you need to be able to tell, prior to use, what AA people have (or in the case of some, just eyes).
I liked Halo 3, I like REACH, I cant comment on all the difference between arena and Ranked play lists but I dont like either of those, I enjoyed Social and just like playing halo because I can play guest with my brother. That doesn’t make me any less of a fan of Halo than anyone else and I can say, that my opinion, as a fan, is that REACH’s different twists were a good addition. I wont be butthurt if they aren’t in Halo 4 but I honestly hope they are in some respect because I liked the changes.
TL;DR: (Opinion:) You’re wrong. I like that stuff, Bloom is good, probably needs moar, AAs are fun, REACH is fun if you get out of your -Yoink-.
> > > > You probably are better, so?
> > >
> > > So therefore I understand gameplay mechanics better. Bloom is not fine. If you think it is, then you need to read this.
> > > If you wish to continue this discussion, feel free to send me a PM. I’m done with this thread.
> >
> > I’ve been reading that link for months.
> >
> > CLEARLY the author of that post states that the spammer will ONLY win 24% of the time.
> > Is that too much? Not enough?
> > IT DOESN’T MATTER.
> >
> > That is purely subjective. I have no problem with someone getting a cheap kill on me 24% of the time. You do.
> >
> > That doesn’t mean it’s broken.
> >
> > That doesn’t mean it needs a change.
> >
> > It just doesn’t work the way you want it to.
> >
> > If you’re going to insist on using the logic: “I’m better than you so I know and you don’t” then we’re done here. In this thread and otherwise.
>
> An interesting quote from the man himself! (Especially the bold!)
>
> Not only does this contradict your entire argument thus far of, ‘The better player ALWAYS wins’, it is an admission that it doesn’t bother you.
>
> Unless if, of course, you WANT people to have the chance to get cheap kills 24% of the time.
> But that can’t be the case, because you have been saying that it doesn’t happen (which is then contradicted by the quote above… I’m confused!)
>
> You obviously have a zero care-factor regarding this topic, and are just arguing for the sake of arguing. I think we’re done here.
this. theres no point in arguing with you guywiired. you dont listen to logic, nor reason, and you contradict yourself about every other post you make.
you have no problem with someone getting a cheap kill on you 24% of the time?
and heres the kicker:
what if i told you this 24% could be lowered to 1%, and everyone would subsequently stop playing the game in a way that will slap them in the face 99% of the time by spamming.
how is 24% illogical, contradictory, unintuitive better than 1% (OR LESS) illogical, contradictory, and unintuitive?
you literally have nothing to argue about because its so blatantly obvious how it should be.
its like saying you dont mind working with a co-worker that only works 76% of the time instead of one that works 100% of the time because you ‘dont care’. well guess what? everyone else you work with sees that, metaphorically speaking, the work that the 76%'er doesnt do is work that everyone else has to do, so they dont like it.
thats the thing guywiired. it butterfly effects into the rest of the game with sloppyness.
are we the majority? probably not, but were the only ones who actually see how this is a problem, and the only ones that can debate our stance on said issue (not that we have to because the change we suggest could not be more logical, or intuitive).
really.
its option A or option B
option A.) game wants you to pace your shots, but rewards people who do not some of the time
con . players playing the game correctly can be beaten by someone playing the game incorrectly 24% of the time.
con . players are discouraged in engaging in 1v1 battles for fear of losing to someone shooting worse.
con . players playing the game incorrectly will get slapped in the face by the not-so-obvious mechanic 76% of the time, when both players have good aiming.
con . close range battles boil down to whomever gets the most ‘hits’ based on random chance because of spamming being optimal.
pro . ??? are there any pros to this? i sure as YOINK! cant think of any, can you? give me one please.
option B.) game wants you to pace your shots, and NEVER rewards people who do not (spam = fail as close to 100% of the time as possible, at every range)
con . ??? are there any cons to this? i sure as YOINK! cant think of any. can you? give me one please.
pro . person who shoots better wins close to 100% of the time.
pro . no getting killed by people spamming, at any range, ever.
pro . consistent kill times make the game more methodical, clean, and crisp.
pro . you can now move around the map without fear of being killed by someone playing the game incorrectly.
and COULD IT BE MORE OBVIOUS WHICH IS BETTER?
i submit that it could not.
> The more skilled player should win, and then the lesser skilled player should be able to enjoy Halo at his/her own level.
true. but what this means is the lesser skilled player should be paired with people HIS SKILL LEVEL. it should have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the mechanics, or implementations of the mechanics; especially when we are talking about a system that would give them room to fall flat on their face 76% of the time because its not obvious enough.
> Now even the lesser skilled player can shoot you just as accurately with each shot as you can to them. Not only that, but you’ll end up with Halo 4: BR Battles which would quite possibly be the worst re-iteration of Halo I can possibly imagine.
first of all the issue isnt, nor has ever been that the lesser skilled player could out shoot the more skilled player. the crux of the issue has always been the person SHOOTING WORSE (also, suboptimally) could beat the person SHOOTING BETTER.
and what does the BR / DMR have to do with the rest of the sandbox? literally nothing. the DMR is a 1.5 second kill where the person who shoots better wins 100% of the time. ok? how does this effect the AR, or ANY other gun, for that matter? everything can be tweaked to accommodate ANY changes, especially those who would make the game play more ‘clean’.
if the DMR is a 1.5 second kill time with 100% accuracy, and no bloom, the AR could be tweaked to be a 1.4 second kill with 90% accuracy, etc.
the same is true for every other gun. the accuracy of 1 gun has literally NOTHING to do with other guns, AT ALL.
> And AAs being ‘random’ is the worst argument I’ve heard.
do you know which armor ability someone has by looking at their front (save jetpack)? no. you do not. they are inherently random because of this. just how much is irrelevant.