The Skilled Player should kill the Less Skilled Player - Community Discussion

Games Other Halo
501

It has to shoot fast, or this game becomes a boring -Yoink- of a game. If the DMR can’t at least compete with AR spam, then you will have more random than you ever could dream about hating. The DMR needs to kill faster than it does right now, but the strafe and movement speed needs to increase so you can actually avoid shots.

Voila! A skill gap! 6 shots would keep an element of team shooting viable, while rewarding individual skill a bit more and relieving a bit of the “randomness” so many people apparently hate about the DMR. Just don’t complain when you get crossmapped for standing still.

502

Crossmapping is one thing I much prefer about the DMR. Offhost you couldn’t shoot a long way with the BR. The only infuriating thing is that the only way to get crossmap kills, assuming the person you’re shooting has hands, is to shoot faster than bloom allows as otherwise they’ll get behind cover. Which basically means 20% of the time it’s a crossmap killing weapon, bit silly

503

> Crossmapping is one thing I much prefer about the DMR. Offhost you couldn’t shoot a long way with the BR. The only infuriating thing is that the only way to get crossmap kills, assuming the person you’re shooting has hands, is to shoot faster than bloom allows as otherwise they’ll get behind cover. Which basically means 20% of the time it’s a crossmap killing weapon, bit silly

Agreed, which is why I hated and continue to hate the Halo 3 BR. It was the worst mid-to-long-range gun of the franchise.

While I agree with you, Bungie expressly stated that they wanted something that could kill faster at midrange than long range without making it impossible to be consistent longrange which is what led to the bloom we have now. I wish you could kill faster long range (at all ranges honestly) also, but Bungie disagreed. I think the population drop in Big Team and Objective is a result of Halo 3 and Reach becoming increasingly weighted toward slower engagements and team shooting.

504

> Wasnt the idea of bloom to control how accurate you are with a weapon? And if so then at short range you dont need to be that accurate so you can spam the trigger fast and still hit, at mid range you can go slightly faster than that and still be effective, and at long range you have to pace your shots to be accurate. So technically you are not the more skilled player if the less skilled player understands the way bloom works and applies the rate of fire to the distance at which they were at. Also you dont deserve a kill just because you think you are better than another player, you only deserve it once you have killed the player and shown that you are more skilled. Also if the “more skilled” player always won, then Halo wouldnt be fun (As an ex. Player A is better than Player B so the score of the game is 25-0) Seriously, someone tell me a fond memory they had of halo where all you did was camp and destroy the other team. And a less skilled player will always get “lucky” in some way (A random grenade stick or headshot you as your sheilds are down from another battle) and thats what makes Halo so much more fun to go back and get your revenge!

You missed too much of the debate it looks like because we’ve covered all that but I’ll catch you up a bit:

The principles you mentioned are all fine, but they are only principles at this point because you can get killed from mid-long range using the same firing rate as close range. That means that if you are pacing your shots at the optimal speed someone else can spam away with a fully bloom reticle from halfway across the map and still kill you with 5 shots. It might be rare, but it shouldn’t even be possible.

As for your last comments about players getting “lucky,” there are two kinds of luck: luck based on a random variable (bad and that is the case with Bloom on the DMR) and and the “holy crap I can’t believe I just pulled that off” kind (which is fine and is what makes games fun).

505

> > Wasnt the idea of bloom to control how accurate you are with a weapon? And if so then at short range you dont need to be that accurate so you can spam the trigger fast and still hit, at mid range you can go slightly faster than that and still be effective, and at long range you have to pace your shots to be accurate. So technically you are not the more skilled player if the less skilled player understands the way bloom works and applies the rate of fire to the distance at which they were at. Also you dont deserve a kill just because you think you are better than another player, you only deserve it once you have killed the player and shown that you are more skilled. Also if the “more skilled” player always won, then Halo wouldnt be fun (As an ex. Player A is better than Player B so the score of the game is 25-0) Seriously, someone tell me a fond memory they had of halo where all you did was camp and destroy the other team. And a less skilled player will always get “lucky” in some way (A random grenade stick or headshot you as your sheilds are down from another battle) and thats what makes Halo so much more fun to go back and get your revenge!
>
> You missed too much of the debate it looks like because we’ve covered all that but I’ll catch you up a bit:
>
> The principles you mentioned are all fine, but they are only principles at this point because you can get killed from mid-long range using the same firing rate as close range. That means that if you are pacing your shots at the optimal speed someone else can spam away with a fully bloom reticle from halfway across the map and still kill you with 5 shots. It might be rare, but it shouldn’t even be possible.
>
> As for your last comments about players getting “lucky,” there are two kinds of luck: luck based on a random variable (bad and that is the case with Bloom on the DMR) and and the “holy crap I can’t believe I just pulled that off” kind (which is fine and is what makes games fun).

Thanks for clearing that up for me. I can see why so many people are angry. I didn’t get it at first cause the ex vids were all shown close range.

506

> > > > Those ‘scenarios’ may not reflect gameplay situations, but they definitely proove that DMR spamming is random, leaving chance for unpredictable gameplay situations. If it wasn’t random, then the results wouldn’t be 50-50, or 25-75; they would be 100-0 or 0-100.
> > >
> > > This too. It just proves that the randomness plays at least some role in the game. Who cares how much, it just doesn’t belong in any form.
> >
> > You know what, I thought about posting it again, but nope. Tired of it.
> >
> > You keep wanting an explanation of why bloom was implemented and why it’s a good system and I have fed it to you like a baby and still not a single thing has stuck… Pathetic.
>
> If randomness isn’t allowed in any game, then why is football played with an oblong ball that bounces in a mostly unpredictable fashion?
>
> Because you can throw it further. It’s called a trade off. Game designers make the “best choice” because there is no “perfect” choice. The best choice is a matter of opinion. When people try to pass off their opinion as fact it just shows their immaturity.

the problem is, blooms current implementation in reach is NOT a trade off. we dont benefit at all by making it so spamming works against pacing (at any range, but especially mid range).

i certainly cant think of a single good reason why its -ok- for someone shooting their gun incorrectly, and worse to beat someone who is observing the mechanic, and shooting better… can you?

if you can, then you can say its a trade off, until then, its just a trashy mechanic that doesnt actually benefit anyone in the least.

and natetendo, bloom can be tweaked to function as intended at every range. it might seem impossible, but the tools are there, they just need to implement things properly.

for example, take the current DMR bloom algorithm as a baseline

-make max bloom twice as big
-make the bloom reset rate a bit faster
-make it so when the gun is fired at fully bloomed (the DMR should hit max bloom at 3 spammed shots), it will be unable to headshot, and the bullets will only land on the outer circle as seen in this video.

the weapon will bloom as follows

1st and 2nd shot fired at full spam cadence will have 100% accuracy, but a visual indication of ‘blooming’ to allow a 1, 2, pause, 1, 2, pause cadence to be slightly better than a 1, 1, 1, 1, 1 cadence, whilst also requiring a bit more skill and thought put into a cadence that isnt 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, but instead one that has a bit of variance and is a bit more complex.

the thirds shot fired at full spam cadence will hit max bloom (and probably wont hit anything), same with the 4th, 5th, 6th, etc. etc. shots.

so basically you can spam twice, then wait for it to reset, but if you spam more than twice you’ll fall flat on your face every single time at damn near every range save ‘lets hug it out’ range.

> So technically you are not the more skilled player if the less skilled player understands the way bloom works and applies the rate of fire to the distance at which they were at. Also you dont deserve a kill just because you think you are better than another player, you only deserve it once you have killed the player and shown that you are more skilled.

thats the problem. the thing were having trouble understanding is why someone who makes no attempt to throttle their rate of fire would be able to kill someone that does, especially at mid range where full auto spamming is terrible because it will only net you a kill over a pacer 24% of the time. we’d like this to be 0% of the time, or at least less than 1%.

and its never been about the lesser skilled person killing the more skilled person when it comes to bloom. the problem is that the person who SHOOTS WORSE can beat the person who SHOOTS BETTER.

> Voila! A skill gap! 6 shots would keep an element of team shooting viable, while rewarding individual skill a bit more and relieving a bit of the “randomness” so many people apparently hate about the DMR. Just don’t complain when you get crossmapped for standing still.

whats the kill time for this 6 shot kill tho? one of the big problems with reach is that it takes so incredibly long to kill someone, even if you are full auto spamming and get the lucky 5 shot kill its still a 1.7 second kill time which is incredibly long. i’d say the optimal kill time for the utility weapon would be 1.5 seconds, but no more than 1.6, when fired properly (if bloom is implemented). with a 6 shot kill at this, you will be firing 4 bullets every second for a 1.5 second kill, or 1 bullet every .26666 seconds with a 1.6 second kill. this is borderline ridiculous. even at a 2 second kill time thats 3 bullets fired every second.

imo it should be a 4 shot kill, and certainly no more than a 5 shot kill, with a 1.5 second kill time on the utility weapon. this would mean you would have to fire a bullet every .375 seconds, which doesnt seem to bad.

507

"whats the kill time for this 6 shot kill tho? one of the big problems with reach is that it takes so incredibly long to kill someone, even if you are full auto spamming and get the lucky 5 shot kill its still a 1.7 second kill time which is incredibly long. i’d say the optimal kill time for the utility weapon would be 1.5 seconds, but no more than 1.6, when fired properly (if bloom is implemented). with a 6 shot kill at this, you will be firing 4 bullets every second for a 1.5 second kill, or 1 bullet every .26666 seconds with a 1.6 second kill. this is borderline ridiculous. even at a 2 second kill time thats 3 bullets fired every second.

imo it should be a 4 shot kill, and certainly no more than a 5 shot kill, with a 1.5 second kill time on the utility weapon. this would mean you would have to fire a bullet every .375 seconds, which doesnt seem to bad."

The quote was getting super long so…earlier in my post I said the ideal six shot kill time in my opinion would be close to a four shot in Halo 2 (which I thought was 1.5 but I don’t feel like researching so let’s say 1.5 seconds), so the rate of fire would obviously be quite a bit faster (4 shots a second), but that’s the point…a perfect kill should be HARD. The reason I think this would work is that it creates space between average kill time and perfect kill time, plus it gets harder to do at distance. I wouldn’t call it borderline ridiculous unless you are comparing it to the super easy 5 shot that anyone can do now that you are griping about.

The other reason I went with more bullets is that as an indicator of trends, bigger sample sizes yield more accurate results. Say you want to separate two players close in skill. Right now, it’s a toss up. With a fast six shot kill, Player A’s slight deficiency may show up against Player B, where before, it may never have manifested itself.

508

> > Voila! A skill gap! 6 shots would keep an element of team shooting viable, while rewarding individual skill a bit more and relieving a bit of the “randomness” so many people apparently hate about the DMR. Just don’t complain when you get crossmapped for standing still.
>
> whats the kill time for this 6 shot kill tho? one of the big problems with reach is that it takes so incredibly long to kill someone, even if you are full auto spamming and get the lucky 5 shot kill its still a 1.7 second kill time which is incredibly long. i’d say the optimal kill time for the utility weapon would be 1.5 seconds, but no more than 1.6, when fired properly (if bloom is implemented). with a 6 shot kill at this, you will be firing 4 bullets every second for a 1.5 second kill, or 1 bullet every .26666 seconds with a 1.6 second kill. this is borderline ridiculous. even at a 2 second kill time thats 3 bullets fired every second.
>
> imo it should be a 4 shot kill, and certainly no more than a 5 shot kill, with a 1.5 second kill time on the utility weapon. this would mean you would have to fire a bullet every .375 seconds, which doesnt seem to bad.

1.5 second kill time with 4 shot kill really is the most optimal kill time you can think of. This quarantees that kill times aren’t too slow or too fast. It also allows for a huge skill gap as a regular player can only kill in about 3 seconds while a good player could be able to do it in a bit less than two, but no one would actually be able to do the 1.5 seconds unless the game had huge aim assist.

On a side note: Please, could everyone in this thread stop using examples from other sports than Halo. They really give the wrong picture as the situation in every example is totally different than actually in the game, making the example unclear and cause misconceptions. I understand it may be easier to explain your opinion with an example from chess, football, dice roll, base ball or any other sport in that matter, but it doesn’t or barely reflects the actual situation. So please, use examples that stay directly in the boundaries of Halo or at very least, FPS games. I too have used few examples liek that, but later realized they can’t be applied to how the same situation works in Halo. So please, take your examples from Halo, it makes them clearer.

509

I agree with fast kill times. I said earlier I think BTB and Objective have suffered greatly from slower kill times, but the other side of the equation is what you have to accomplish to achieve that optimal kill time. MW2 has fast kill times, but I don’t think many people here would argue it’s more “skill based” than Halo.

510

I see there being multiple kinds of skills in the Halo community.

Aiming skill [the snipers,the timed shots,great accuracy]
Movement-strafing skills [may not have great aim but is good at out manuvering]
Strategy skill [map control,team work,has plans in game]
Vehicle skill [killing or using]
Equipment/ability skill [grenade usage,weapon knowledge, ability usage]

See players can be lacking in one skill but may beat you with their own skills. Who ever has the right skills for the encounter you enter will walk out of it. You can beat someone 9 out of 10 times but if you enter their niche in the battlefield they are bound to win in it.

511

I can see the validity of argument, that due to the random placement of the bullet in a full bloom reticule, that an unskilled player could get lucky, and get perfectly placed shot resulting in a kill. The one question I have, which no has yet to answer, is statistically, how often does this happen? 1 in 5? 1 in 10? At what frequency do these events occur in encounters? Sure, the possibility exists in every encounter for it to happen, but what are the odds?

Is it greater or lesser than the chances of a lesser skilled player getting off a lucky grenade which nets a kill? If it’s less than, then why is this an issue and the lucky grenade not? I’m just playing devil’s advocate. There seem to be plenty of random events where lesser skilled players can kill you, not just grenades. You can’t predict an opposing players actions 100% of the time. Occasionally, the random grenade (or other event) is going to get you.

512

> I can see the validity of argument, that due to the random placement of the bullet in a full bloom reticule, that an unskilled player could get lucky, and get perfectly placed shot resulting in a kill. The one question I have, which no has yet to answer, is statistically, how often does this happen? 1 in 5? 1 in 10? At what frequency do these events occur in encounters? Sure, the possibility exists in every encounter for it to happen, but what are the odds?
>
>
> Is it greater or lesser than the chances of a lesser skilled player getting off a lucky grenade which nets a kill? If it’s less than, then why is this an issue and the lucky grenade not? I’m just playing devil’s advocate. There seem to be plenty of random events where lesser skilled players can kill you, not just grenades. You can’t predict an opposing players actions 100% of the time. Occasionally, the random grenade (or other event) is going to get you.

its about 1/4, at 24% chance that a spammer would beat a pacer, and this is when a pacer has flawless accuracy too (meaning if he misses the % chance for the spammer to win goes up even more). so yea, its a LOT.

and in reach the grenades are basically mini nukes, but dying to them is never really ‘random’. there arent too many events that are actually ‘random’ in nature in halo.

random would be…

spawning…
bullet spread…
bloom…

and… thats about it. i cant really think of too many other random things.

513

Halo isn’t cod. The more skilled player almost ALWAYS wins.

Don’t let halo 4 be a game where luck decides the outcome of a battle like in halo reach.

These are all halo reach examples.

1.) You are doing outstanding on your warthog. The enemy team gets frustrated and easily obliterates your warthog with dmr’s.

2.) You are slicing people up until you run into this noob who encounters you with an ar he tries to melle you and he gets sword block leaving your shields down and him more time to kill you.

3.) Your facing a noob in a dmr battle and he beats you in long range by spamming his dmr even though you paced your shots(Happened to me quite a while.)

4.) Your just right about to kill a guy, leaving both of you badly injured but he goes into aurmor lock and his teamates show up and they kill you.

These are a few examples how halo 4 should NOT be.

514

Armor lock is nothing more than a time out, should have never made the cut.

515

I agree aurmor lock has the most advantages of any aurmor ability. The only disadvantage is that you remain in the same spot.

516

Things like increased auto aim (which is because of bloom, I know), removal of melee bleedthrough, and the fact that a melee has a 10 foot lunge and a 180 degree range (exaggerated, I know) make the game cater to casuals. Make Halo 4 for the Halo fanbase, not to get ‘new’ gamers on board. If new people play Halo 4 and like it, let them like it for what Halo is.

I’ve seen a suggestion before about the melee range that made sense, if you reticle is on your target and you melee, you hit, if it’s not on your target, you miss. Adds more skill. And really cut down the lunge too. There should be a lunge, but not as auto aimed as it is now.

517

My honest opinion:
Halo reach’s gameplay mechanics are legitamate and do not cater to noobs, its the ranking system that does, people claim that bloom is random and broken when in reality, its the spammers that think bloom is broken because spamming allows for bs kills at close range and missing every shot at mid/long range.
To those that think spamming somehow reduces the skill gap, it doesnt, its the broken ranking system that allows people like me to go 40 - 2 every game of invasion and team slayer and get ridiculous 1600’s in arena.
When the title update comes and 1 - 50 comes back, im sure it will not only increase reach’s replay value for many people but its competitiveness and overall fun as well.

In short, I think reach has the capacity to be the greatest halo ever made, and its the ranking system thats the problem, not bloom, hitboxes, or the dmr as many may claim

518

In halo 3 I had a KD of .63 in reach i have a KD of 1.24. Reach takes 2times the less skill halo 3 took.

519

lol I dont think it takes 2 times less skill, but that is true for me as well (I had around a 1 in halo 3 and I have a 2 in reach)
but my stats have changed for very obvious reasons:

  1. Motivation
    In halo 3 to rank up you needed to win games, to win games you needed the objective so; “my life < the objective”
    In halo reach you actually rank up faster if you go for kills and ignore the objective (broken ranking system I know) because commendations will pay out more than you will get for winning the game.
    Also since w/l is not visible, the only immediate way of measuring another player’s skill is k/d ratio, in other words only go for kills no matter the gametype.

  2. Actual Skill
    Halo 3 was my first game and being a noob I would run out and die, a lot. By the end of halo 3, pulling off 17 - 3 in social slayer was no big deal, but because of my skewed k/d from earlier in my halo 3 career my k/d was always around a 1.
    Dont believe me, look up “REYAWEKS2” my second account, where I easily pulled off both a decent k/d and a 45 in team doubles in one month.

520

> My honest opinion:
> Halo reach’s gameplay mechanics are legitamate and do not cater to noobs, its the ranking system that does, people claim that bloom is random and broken when in reality, its the spammers that think bloom is broken because spamming allows for bs kills at close range and missing every shot at mid/long range.
> To those that think spamming somehow reduces the skill gap, it doesnt, its the broken ranking system that allows people like me to go 40 - 2 every game of invasion and team slayer and get ridiculous 1600’s in arena.
> When the title update comes and 1 - 50 comes back, im sure it will not only increase reach’s replay value for many people but its competitiveness and overall fun as well.
>
> In short, I think reach has the capacity to be the greatest halo ever made, and its the ranking system thats the problem, not bloom, hitboxes, or the dmr as many may claim

I pace and the only reason I hate bloom is because it’s supposed to reward pacers, but instead rewards spammers at close to medium range. 1-50 was just a visual representation of true-skill, which still exists, just isn’t visualized. Adding 1-50 back will do little to nothing, and wasn’t confirmed to be happening anyways. I think the skill system just needs to be revamped entirely.