The solution for competitive players (An educated look)

Games Other Halo
1

Before we get into the solutions we need to address the problems, however people have been telling the developers (343i) to remove, add, destroy, this and that without really explaining why. I have been in Onyx in Arena, I play and watch MLG alot, and I play regular Reach. I will attempt to explain the problems,and the solutions to 343i on what they should do for Reach.

We will set a couple of ground rules first:

No Bungie Bashing. Bungie bashing is extremely stupid and F’ed up, especially when it comes from my fellow competitive community. Did you guys forget that Bungie’s Halo built MLG? Did you guys forget that Bungie actually did something unprecedented and made a specific playlist for MLG in Halo 3? Did you guys forget that it was the Halo Pros in MLG that got to play the new maps Bungie created for Halo? Bungie employees would come to MLG events and watch pros play as well as support MLG because honest to God Bungie didn’t never needed to do that. They never needed to acknowledge MLG in the first place but THEY did. Hell Pros even got to play Reach before anyone else.

This is what Urk from Bungie said in a reply to a message:

" “Default” Reach was playtested, and lauded, by MLG players long before it ever shipped, marking it as the first and only Halo title that was exposed to professional players and their feedback prior to launch. I distinctly recall players like Hysteria and Elamite Warrior noting that systems like bloom would be an incredible boon to skilled players. It’s sort of en vogue now to trash it as a non-competitive, “casualized” game, even though it was vetted and influenced more significantly by MLG players than any other Halo title, ever. Part of me thinks that’s sort of funny and ironic. Another part of me reads these posts and realizes that it’s mostly sad. Live and learn."

Source: Re: MLG and Halo: Is this the end of the road?

Granted when anyone plays a new game first they would be honored and probably just say “OMG this is great” Like Hysteria and Elamite probably did. In theory it also was a good idea, think about it, noobs should always be able to lose to the pros because the pros would know when to pace their shots and how to aim for each circumstance. (While we all know the actual problems with bloom I am just explaining what they thought by theory)

Bungie was never against MLG at ANY point in development, they wanted to please everyone by putting 1 ranked playlist. That in itself is a theory, all the hardcore players would play in that and the load times to find a match would be extremely fast. In truth if every Hardcore person played in Arena regularly that theory might have been true, but it was the mistake of having your rank based on rating rather than win/loss that just encouraged people to camp and not help out their team for the win witch was opposite from the previous teaching of Halo gameplay. It wasn’t until much later on that Bungie “fixed” it but by then people were already disillusioned. (Note even though Arena has been “fixed” to Win/Loss, there are still many problems that I will address later)

In conclusion I would like to state to EVERY COMPETITIVE PLAYER, MLG or just HARDCORE COMPETITIVE PLAYER, to acknowledge that Bungie meant no harm, they wanted to try something new and the theory was good, even during the beta there wasn’t much complaints (Don’t give me sh*t on how you guys complained during the beta because you didn’t I saw the MLG forums then too)

I hope that everyone sends Bungie their best wishes on their next game and tell them you hope there was no misunderstanding (In fact send them an email, or tweet them) people are passionate about the game they play every -Yoink!- day, whether it be through thick or thin, good or bad.

The Next Ground Rule: Forumite bashing.

We should not turn this forum into B.net forums where everyone just yells ADAPT and whatnot, we should understand that Halo is not just a game for one specific set of people whether it be casual or competitive, it is a game series unlike other game series that you can literally recommend to a friend without guilt or worry to their likes and dislikes. This is a game series that used to be the one argument for the Xbox and Xbox 360. And it was a valid argument. When PC elitest, and other console fanboys name their 20 games, all we had to do was just say “Halo” and that was VALID. This is because Halo catered to everyone and had such revolutionary ideas that every game uses them since. We should be thinking about getting it back to its former glory. We may have ideas to help our desired community, but we should also think about ideas that would help the other communities as well. We should be helping each other out. So what if people like to play their casual games, so what if people like to have a challenge when playing, we should not be angry at each other rather we should work together to build a better experience.

Now that we set the ground rules, we can begin the problems and solutions for current Halo Reach.

2

Problem: Loadouts in Competitive playlists:

While this has already been addressed by MLG it is important to understand why these actions have been taken by them. Loadouts create problems, chaos infact. This is because many loadouts are actually power weapons in themselves. Note I am not saying to remove armor abilities but rather loadouts themselves.

Jetpacks are very powerful in the sense that not only can they break team set ups, but kill people under cover. While the argument goes that they are sitting ducks in the air, the other team has to (you guessed it) raise their vision to the skies and really neglect the rest of the map and the players on the other team. Having Jetpack as a treated power item however will encourage smart movement, and less chaos. Having a good setup is Key in Halo, Reach just enforced an individualized run and gun gameplay that does not penalize but encourage skill-less and gimicky playstyle. Again I am not saying Jetpack is BAD but Jetpack as a LOADOUT is bad.

Invisibility: Being Invisible right off the bat is actually highly game breaking, people may argue that it’ll show on the radar if someone invisible is nearby but consider this: In countdown one can go to S1 (Where shotgun spawns) just put on invisibility and screw up the radar for the other team in the above floors while my teammates come in and break their setups because they dont know where they are coming from. Granted what I explained was just a setup that we used to do in the old arena days when invisibility was there, but that problem remains, a noob doing it may not understand the full effects of what they are doing when they jam radars but it is happening either way. Invisibility in itself is not gamebreaking but having it as a loadout IS.

Armor Lock: When watching through Bungie vid docs I was convinced that AL was mainly for Invasion and BTB, and in that sense it was a good idea for players to protect themselves for scorpion users, banshee hoggers, and ghost kids. However the problem was putting this in a 4v4, or even a 5v5 gametype. The main difference is that in a 4v4 one kid shouldn’t be allowed to go in the middle of the map lose all his sheilds, armor lock and his friend saves the day. It encouraged dumb behavior, where the waiting game used by AL’s proponents is not a valid answer when his team can come in and save the day. This is the one armor ability that should only be locked into BtB, invasion, multiteam, rumble pit, and other chaotic playlists. Not for traditional 4v4 gametypes.

Hologram: I find nothing wrong with this, this is probably the only armor ability that is the most underpowered. I would like to see it fleshed out more, imagine kids Sh*t themselves when they see a hologram with a sword sprinting at them at full speed, only to find out it was a hologram.

Sprint: This AA is very controversial, competitive players don’t like it because it just encourages sprint and double beatdown. sprint and sword combo is nearly impossible to stop and when someone is clearly losing a battle they could just sprint away rather than thinking about how to engage their enemy. And yet, some people find sprint to make the game more fast paced, I don’t know a good answer to this, hopefully 343 will figure something out.

Evade: The one AA that is almost universally loved by both Casual and Competitive gamers despite being the most overpowered. This AA blows every other AA out of the water, you can see in MLG it is the favored AA because it is in almost all gametypes because it helps you get out of a sticky situation and go from one place to another really really fast. It does it in a way that most people don’t complain about. The funny thing is that this overpowered AA would just be the best one out of all of them.

Regardless of Hologram and Evade it is easy to see why most of the AA’s as loadouts are gamebreaking in the sense that it encourages dumb behavior and using them does not really penalize anything.

Ranking: The Arena ranking system vs 1-50 system (What should we do?)

We see this resurgence of talk from competitive players that they want a 1-50 ranking system. We know why Bungie took out the 1-50 ranking system in the first place: Because of Derankers that would derank their levels and exp so they could level up easier. And Boosters that would have a higher skilled level player ruin the system which was supposed to match players based on skill so they could have an even match and promote which team played better. This was not that evident in the upper levels like 45-50 but in the mid to lower levels it was rampant. This is why arena was created in the first place.

Arena in theory sounds like a good idea, and despite its poor beginnings as a rated based ranking instead of a W/L ranking it still is a good idea. However in its current state not for team based games. When looking at how Arena was set up it is almost the exact set up for Starcraft 2’s ranking system. Starcraft 2 has 5 leagues, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond league. each of these leagues represent 20% of the population skill level, then there is an upper diamond level called master league which is top 2% of diamond league and a Grandmaster league which is the top 200 players (Which is considered pro level by many.)

Source 1: League (StarCraft II) | StarCraft Wiki | Fandom
Source 2: Battle.net Leagues - Liquipedia - The StarCraft II Encyclopedia

Halo Reach Arena also has 5 leagues but it differs in the sense that it doesn’t have the same degree of separation from those at the top whose skill level is at the top of the mountain rather than those that are just simply good. having 2 sub levels like master league and grandmaster league (1 for top 2% and 1 for top 200 players) at the Onyx division would have the same degree of separation as the 1-50 matchmaking system, without the hassle of deranking and boosting (It would be season based, and before you kids complain SC 2 is a much more competitive game than Reach- and they definitely got it right having it season based.)

So instead of bringing back 1-50 and creating such a hassle which would bring back the problems with it, improve the arena system, take out the rating system and ensure people know that it is 100% win/loss based.

Problem: Grenades and Bleedthrough

Halo 3 bleedthrough was a good idea because it meshed well with the game. Halo Reach’s bleedthrough is terrible because a single grenade can kill you when you have full sheilds. Lower the power of grenades so that at full sheilds 1 grenade will take away only the shields, if you are half sheilds then sure bleed through can work and kill you but not at full sheilds. This needs to be fixed immediatly as it ruins the game for everyone.

Hopefully 343i and others take this thread into consideration when fixing some things that are wrong Reach and developing Halo 4.

3

> Problem: Loadouts in Competitive playlists:

I think I love you.

4

> Before we get into the solutions we need to address the problems, however people have been telling the developers (343i) to remove, add, destroy, this and that without really explaining why. I have been in Onyx in Arena, I play and watch <mark>MLG</mark> alot, and I play regular Reach. I will attempt to explain the problems,and the solutions to 343i on what they should do for Reach.
>
> We will set a couple of ground rules first:
>
>
> No Bungie Bashing. Bungie bashing is extremely stupid and F’ed up, especially when it comes from my fellow competitive community. Did you guys forget that Bungie’s Halo built <mark>MLG?</mark> Did you guys forget that Bungie actually did something unprecedented and made a specific playlist for <mark>MLG</mark> in Halo 3? Did you guys forget that it was the Halo Pros in <mark>MLG</mark> that got to play the new maps Bungie created for Halo? Bungie employees would come to <mark>MLG</mark> events and watch pros play as well as support MLG because honest to God Bungie didn’t never needed to do that. They never needed to acknowledge MLG in the first place but THEY did. Hell Pros even got to play Reach before anyone else.
>
> This is what Urk from Bungie said in a reply to a message:
>
> " “Default” Reach was playtested, and lauded, by <mark>MLG</mark> players long before it ever shipped, marking it as the first and only Halo title that was exposed to professional players and their feedback prior to launch. I distinctly recall players like Hysteria and Elamite Warrior noting that systems like bloom would be an incredible boon to skilled players. It’s sort of en vogue now to trash it as a non-competitive, “casualized” game, even though it was vetted and influenced more significantly by <mark>MLG</mark> players than any other Halo title, ever. Part of me thinks that’s sort of funny and ironic. Another part of me reads these posts and realizes that it’s mostly sad. Live and learn."
>
> Source: Re: MLG and Halo: Is this the end of the road?
>
> Granted when anyone plays a new game first they would be honored and probably just say “OMG this is great” Like Hysteria and Elamite probably did. In theory it also was a good idea, think about it, noobs should always be able to lose to the pros because the pros would know when to pace their shots and how to aim for each circumstance. (While we all know the actual problems with bloom I am just explaining what they thought by theory)
>
> Bungie was never against <mark>MLG</mark> at ANY point in development, they wanted to please everyone by putting 1 ranked playlist. That in itself is a theory, all the hardcore players would play in that and the load times to find a match would be extremely fast. In truth if every Hardcore person played in Arena regularly that theory might have been true, but it was the mistake of having your rank based on rating rather than win/loss that just encouraged people to camp and not help out their team for the win witch was opposite from the previous teaching of Halo gameplay. It wasn’t until much later on that Bungie “fixed” it but by then people were already disillusioned. (Note even though Arena has been “fixed” to Win/Loss, there are still many problems that I will address later)
>
> In conclusion I would like to state to EVERY COMPETITIVE PLAYER, <mark>MLG</mark> or just HARDCORE COMPETITIVE PLAYER, to acknowledge that Bungie meant no harm, they wanted to try something new and the theory was good, even during the beta there wasn’t much complaints (Don’t give me sh*t on how you guys complained during the beta because you didn’t I saw the <mark>MLG</mark> forums then too)
>
> I hope that everyone sends Bungie their best wishes on their next game and tell them you hope there was no misunderstanding (In fact send them an email, or tweet them) people are passionate about the game they play every -Yoink!- day, whether it be through thick or thin, good or bad.
>
> The Next Ground Rule: Forumite bashing.
>
> We should not turn this forum into B.net forums where everyone just yells ADAPT and whatnot, we should understand that Halo is not just a game for one specific set of people whether it be casual or competitive, it is a game series unlike other game series that you can literally recommend to a friend without guilt or worry to their likes and dislikes. This is a game series that used to be the one argument for the Xbox and Xbox 360. And it was a valid argument. When PC elitest, and other console fanboys name their 20 games, all we had to do was just say “Halo” and that was VALID. This is because Halo catered to everyone and had such revolutionary ideas that every game uses them since. We should be thinking about getting it back to its former glory. We may have ideas to help our desired community, but we should also think about ideas that would help the other communities as well. We should be helping each other out. So what if people like to play their casual games, so what if people like to have a challenge when playing, we should not be angry at each other rather we should work together to build a better experience.
>
> Now that we set the ground rules, we can begin the problems and solutions for current Halo Reach.

IMO MLG is the worst thing to happen to any game and is completely terrable. It is the second worst thing for me to ever witness in any game [armorlock being first]

5

This post has been edited by a moderator. Please do not post spam.

6

Can we please respond to the thread reasonably, not like 4 year olds?

7

> IMO MLG is the worst thing to happen to any game and is completely terrable. It is the second worst thing for me to ever witness in any game [armorlock being first]

elaborate please.

OP:

minor issue on the “ground rules” and what urk said: which someone either misspoke or was misinformed; I just listening to an interview with Sundance the other day who said that they were also apart of testing H3. although he made it seem like, for both games, the play time pre-release was very minimal and was frustrated with what seemed to be Bungie not listening to any of the advice the pro’s had given.

Also, the beta bloom functioned much more like SR’s which actually did take at least a decent amount of skill. The pacer always won, although the problem was that you lost to an AR user pretty much everytime. So Bungie minimized the bloom thus increasing the effectiveness of “spamming” drastically. Also Hysteria and Elamite may have just been excited by the new element of skill that bloom brought and didn’t play it enough to see how “broken” it was. They obviously were all pacing as spamming was totally useless prior to the games release, in which case yes it would add a new element of “skill”. Although even with SR, who got bloom right, a lot of people secretly wished it wasn’t there.

On your post about the loadouts, I totally agree and this is a new way of saying it, that everyone MEANT just no one realized. Everyone who thought negatively about AA MEANT that they were just bad as loadouts, not that they were ACTUALLY bad, but no one even really realized the option of default settings with the AA’s on the map.

Honestly, the more and more I think about it, the more and more default settings could benefit from this. This will make Reach’s comparison to Reach MLG much more similar to how H3 functioned compared to H3 MLG. In H3 you had big some big maps and power drains and bubble shields and warthogs that all were a different skill set than that of MLG, but not necessarily lesser than MLG. MLG just took the core of Halo, while H3 Ranked expanded on the new things Bungie brought to the table. while comparing that to Reach, it’s pretty clear that default settings have an immensely smaller skill gap than MLG.

Just think of all the possibilities of using AA’s as pickups, with maybe a little less skill than the setup MLG had (JP and evade) but still a new element of depth. This would also open a whole new world of maps, as now you have 10 power weapons on the map because it includes AA’s. And similar to how H3 was were some had some power ups, some had others, not Evade, AL, Holo, and JP all on the map somewhere.

__

or as I was thinking yesterday, at MINIMUM, a To4 should only be able to have 1 person who can use each AA at a time (excluding sprint). Similar to how in SR you had your troll, your dwarf, your human, and your elve (I don’t know if it was restricted to only one person can be each, but you benefitted the most from one person being each). This way you don’t have a To4 jetpackers or ALers; you have your designated jetpacker, just like how you have your designated sniper or shotgunner, etc.

THAT is how Halo Reach should have been released. If it doesn’t work, then so be it we can go back to the old formula, but loadouts was seriously probably the dumbest thing Bungie did with Reach.

takes deep breathe

/rant

edit: This post has inspired me, while I considered the thought of AA’s as pickups in the past, and have seen many people as well, I don’t think anyone actually thought of it as possible reality. In the next few days I am going to make an elaborate posts on why and how 343 should try some playlists using AA’s as pickups.

8

Thanks @ Pi039, and I agree on the fact that regular reach 4v4 could benefit from no loadouts as well, but I believe we are too far in to change regular reach that drastically, better to keep that change for Halo 4.

Any ideas on the Ranking, bleed through, and grenades?

9

Very nice post, and i agree on most parts.

You said sprint made the game more fast paced, and something along the lines of you didn’t know what to say about this. It is actually a common misconception that sprint makes gameplay faster. Actually it makes it slower. Because of sprint default movement speed and i think move acceleration have been made slower. So even in a game where everyone uses sprint, the sprint doesn’t actually speed up the game at all, they just go superfast for 5 seconds, whereas in other halo games, it would take the same (or less) amount of time to get to the same spot. Furthermore sprint also allows people that have made a mistake to simply sprint away, slowing down the game even more. Sprint may work in a game like cod, because of its fast killtimes, but it most certainly does not belong in a halo game.

And i also noticed what you said about the ranking system. While i agree that this system works, looking at reach’s arena i don’t think that people care enough about these ratings. Unless we tie the rank you are able to get to your division, i do not see this working. And also i wasn’t sure if you meant to have only 1 ranked playlist like in reach. I feel that we should have about 50% ranked playlists and 50% social.

Aigan though, thank you for your post, we need people like you

10

> Thanks @ Pi039, and I agree on the fact that regular reach 4v4 could benefit from no loadouts as well, but I believe we are too far in to change regular reach that drastically, better to keep that change for Halo 4.
>
>
> Any ideas on the Ranking, bleed through, and grenades?

Yeah I was also thinking that it is probably too far into Reach, and many are already complaining at how many different “kinds” of Reach there is now with ZB, TU, Default, and Anniversary. But it’s worth writing and exploring even if I don’t end up posting it or even if I do and it doesn’t happen.

When it comes to Arena the main problem is not what is used to display the skill, it is how. The fact that you can rank up regardless of your Arena rank, that you have to dig 3 pages into someones service record to find how well they did in Arena, the fact that it resets every 3 months, along with the fact that the first 3 months Arena was a joke are the reason it is where it is.

Bungie based the entire division system around the FFA ranking system they had set in place. Once they made it win loss, it literally is now EXACTLY the H3 system, just using realtime divisions instead of local 1-50 (idk what the correct terminology is; I’m talking about how your Arena placement is based off the trueskill of everyone else who is rated, while H3 your rank was not affected by the trueskill of other players). You can boost in Arena JUST like how you could in H3, in Season 5 and 6 the high tier default players were all fighting for 1% onyx, and many used deranked iron accounts to “boost” themselves there. Now no one cares anymore, but if Arena was as big as H3 ranked, the boosting would be just as bad.

And now without the FFA ranking there really was no reason for divisions as 1-50 is superior when it comes to keeping players interested.

IMO all Bungie needed to do to fix the 1-50 was fix the way your team mates trueskill affected you with a “simple” algorithm change.

So the current system (I’m going to try and simplify it as much as possible as it’s quite a complex equation):

Everyone knows that players high sigma (A LOT of games at or around the same rank; rank is “set in stone”) will “boost” account with low sigma. I am pretty sure the true skill of the high sigma account doesn’t affect how much it boosts, but people derank a lot more than they rank up so that when you go to “boost” the new account, you will still be a 25 when your new account is a 49 and you will be facing level 30’s.

Although, the low trueskill may cause the sigma to be a multiplier over if you had a high trueskill. Regardless, there is a simple solution:

Just have a decaying rate on the effect one accounts high sigma has on a new acocunt and have that decay rate multiplied by the 50 - X (X being the rank of the high sigma account), when those 2 players continually play together.

So if you have a 25 with “10000” sigma and try to boost a new account it will boost the first game, get exponentially less of a boost the second game, and so on. 50-25=25 resulting in a 25X multiplier of the decay rate (obviously multiplier will need to get tweaked to suit whatever sigma values they use)

But if it’s a 50 with “10000” sigma, while the decay rate will still be there, the multiplier will be 0 (50-50=0), so the decay rate at which the high sigma “boosts” you will lower with each game, but not to the point where it becomes pointless to play with that teammate, seeing as you obviously deserve a 50 if you’re winning against 50’s.

So this way it doesn’t totally screw over a level 30 who just loves playing with his level 10 friend, but no one is getting an unfair advantage by consistently playing with a high sigma, low trueskill account.

Obviously it will need some tweaking and such, but the general concept fixes boosting for all the reasons I can find.

The only reason I can see not to do this is if MS has some sort of rule about not changing their trueskill system. Either way though, boosting is a problem in any game that uses true skill and has a visual representation of that, so maybe MS should modify their formula.

But obviously a True Skill change like that won’t happen for Reach. A, what seems to be, simple solution to the emptiness of Arena is adding 1. more ranked playlists and 2. Having your division be seen on your player tab just like H3 where you had your “XP” in that playlist, along with your rank in that placed. Except the “XP” Slot would be your Division placement also showing your % and then the rank is replaced with your overall rank (legend, mythic, inheritor, etc).

Many players have been asking for this, and if in H3 Bungie was able to implement the playlist XP system with a TU, I would think 343 could implement a TU that incorporated division’s in your tag.

Although I think they’ve already realized Arena is too much work for too little profit and just to focus on stuff like the TU game settings and H4.

Onto the bleedthrough grenades problem, I think you are experiencing a placebo effect, or at least I have not experienced this effect. Grenades and explosive ordinances (rockets, concussion) have always had bleed through in Reach. 343 adding bleed through to melee, and the other weapons should not have had any effect on the bleed through in grenades.

I have ALWAYS seen BS like this happen where you are full shields yet 1 grenade kills you. Although in customs no one has been able to recreate this. I have a feeling anytime 1 nade kills someone, they actually got shot as the nade hit their feet and they just didn’t notice. I could be wrong though, but either way grenades shouldn’t have changed with the bleed through added to the other weapons.

Also, contrary to how it may seem, Reach nades only due slightly more damage than H3 nades (they might actually be the same), it’s just that their blast radius has been increased and the decay of damage from the epicenter decreased. Meaning that in Reach a grenade will do damage from X ft away but in H3 it wouldn’t. And then Reach nades do very similar damage when they are 5 feet away or at your feet, while H3 5 feet away would do very little damage.

Have you ever seen the health pack glitch? Idk if this may be the issue you are experiencing. Here’s a link to a vid of it

11

Don’t be scared of my essay you guys! haha

Also OP, The only real solutions I saw (I didn’t dissect the essay word for word so maybe I missed them) was that of improving the Arena ranking; what do you suggest for all the other tomfoolery in this game?

12

I am flattered that you almost completely repeated my verbage in your heading, I can only assume you have taken notice and are responding, awesome.

A little before I had time to respond as I was playing some Reach and I decided I would breeze through the playlists to check population.

Living Dead= had about 10,000

Arena= little over 700

Thats a problem that could not be solved if 343 decided to remove every loadout, put a BR in Arena and made it as close to Halo 3 as possible in every way. ( I know you just got chills, just from the thought of that happening )

The reason is this is Reach and for the most part, the people that play it, like it, except for a few thousand incredibly vocal Halo 3 diehards who wish to remove everything from Reach that made it different from Halo 3. Good luck.

13

> I am flattered that you almost completely repeated my verbage in your heading, I can only assume you have taken notice and are responding, awesome.
>
> A little before I had time to respond as I was playing some Reach and I decided I would breeze through the playlists to check population.
>
> Living Dead= had about 10,000
>
> Arena= little over 700
>
> Thats a problem that could not be solved if 343 decided to remove every loadout, put a BR in Arena and made it as close to Halo 3 as possible in every way. ( I know you just got chills, just from the thought of that happening )
>
> The reason is this is Reach and for the most part, the people that play it, like it, except for a few thousand incredibly vocal Halo 3 diehards who wish to remove everything from Reach that made it different from Halo 3. Good luck.

Well moest of the halo 3 diehards have actually left Halo myself included. They’re on CoD, Gears or whatever. Reach’s population shows that Reach simply isn’t as popular as halo 3 during its 3 years. And yeah you’ll probably bring up: Well you know Reach has to compete with more games bla bla, which is simply not true, but whatever.

14

"Living Dead= had about 10,000

Arena= little over 700 "

Casual players will always exceed hard core players. I am not saying we should remove casual playlists, but we should expand and improve hardcore playlists so that other casual players can play people at their skill level while hardcore players can do the same.

15

I love this argument. LD has 10,000 ppl, way more than Arena.

It also doubles the pop of regular Team Slayer, so should that be nixed from Reach as well?

Or should we just put a rank in Living Dead since that’s where the most people are?

The reason why LD is so popular is because you can pad your stats and cR, you can betray your teammates to make them zombies without fear of being booted, and then let you rack up the kills so you win all the time.

My solution would be to make ranking permanent (no more seasons), and reserve the top 2-5% for Onyx division. There’s only a year left anyway until H4 is supposed to drop, might as well let the hard work actually pay off and last for these players.

I like the idea of no loadouts where you get to choose your AA to start with, I’ve been advocating the implementation of AAs as pickups, like in the campaign. It will direct the flow of the maps for players who want a specific power up just like power weapons, and will reward you with an added advantage for the player(s) who survive the battle royale for camo or AL.

Far as 'nade damage is concerned and bleedthrough, I’ve never been killed in MM outright from a frag grenade landing at my feet with full health and shields. I’ve always been shot before or after the explosion to finish me off. A lot of players don’t hear the shot as the 'nade explodes, which is probably why they think the frag is more powerful. But with plasmas, they’ve always killed ppl outright even if they had full health and shields. Don’t really think much needs to change here. Although if the movement speed were fixed nades could be avoided much easier.

16

"Far as 'nade damage is concerned and bleedthrough, I’ve never been killed in MM outright from a frag grenade landing at my feet with full health and shields. I’ve always been shot before or after the explosion to finish me off. A lot of players don’t hear the shot as the 'nade explodes, which is probably why they think the frag is more powerful. But with plasmas, they’ve always killed ppl outright even if they had full health and shields. Don’t really think much needs to change here. Although if the movement speed were fixed nades could be avoided much easier. "

I agree increased movement speed would help. However, I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say 1 grenade can kill you. If you are hit by a grenade with full health and full sheilds you will lose your sheilds and some health, when you regain your sheilds and if you are hit by a nade you might die. The bleed through I feel should only apply to when you aren’t full sheilds. If you are full shields and you get hit by a nade then you should only lose your sheilds.

17

> I agree increased movement speed would help. However, I don’t think you understand what I mean when I say 1 grenade can kill you. If you are hit by a grenade with full health and full sheilds you will lose your sheilds and some health, when you regain your sheilds and if you are hit by a nade you might die. The bleed through I feel should only apply to when you aren’t full sheilds. If you are full shields and you get hit by a nade then you should only lose your sheilds.

In all honesty this aspect of the game is one that works most like the previous iterations of Halo. I think it’s safe to say that any sort of explosive falls in the ordnance category even though 'nades are in their own class of weapon. Therefore these sorts of weapons will bleed through shields if they don’t kill you outright. Following the logic of your idea, if you get hit by a nade and it ONLY drops your shields, that renders getting stuck with a plasma almost useless. The beautiful thing about sticking someone is that once they’re stuck, you can just get clear and move on. Every Halo game has had the damage from a grenade bleed through and cut in on your health if it didn’t kill you outright, the only difference is, now we actually get to see how much damage you actually take, whereas in H2 and 3 you have that regenerating health a second or two after your shields come back, but it’s unseen. But incidentally, now with bleed through damage being implemented from the TU, it’s really a moot point because the grenades were doing that to begin with.

I can understand the issue about 'nades being overpowered, but that’s only because the damage radius was increased. The actual power of the 'nades is pretty much the same from H3. And if you guys think the H3/Reach nades were OP, you haven’t played much Halo CE, lol.