There's Something To Be Said For No Hit Scan

Games Halo Infinite
1

I think we’d all agree Halo 3 has a distinct mechanical identity, and I think a big part of that identity is the way weapons function in Halo 3. There’s a lot of nuance to the way weapons work in Halo 3, and that is due to the lack of hitscan. When I was a kid playing Halo 3, the BR was like a friggin’ mystery to me. I didn’t understand that thing! I was pretty squirrel-y in one-on-one engagements, but I really couldn’t consistently win BR fights in a way that made me seriously competitive. I didn’t understand until recently how to use it well, and it has changed the way I play.

So, what’s the point? I feel like Halo 3’s precision-weapon mechanics actually did a lot to round out what is essentially fairly simple gameplay. They, in very subtle ways, did a lot for the skill-gap and for the “Hidden complexity” of Halo (3) that anyone who’s put a significant amount of time into the game can speak to. People are saying 343i is reluctant to return to the bare-bones (pre-reach) bungie era of Halo, and I think many understand that from a developer’s side of things releasing a game like Halo 2 in today’s shooter market would feel like a half-baked effort–like the game was “under-featured” or something. But to me, Halo 3 has a lot more flavor than Halo 2, even though essentially they’re the same game in terms of–you have grenades, you have these movement options (i.e. crouch and jump, cardinal directions etc.), you have melee, you have your gun–and that is in large part due to the lack of hitscan.

Short story shorter: there’s a lot to be said for digging into the features that are there and digging into them to add complexity, rather than adding new features altogether. I would argue that Halo 3 was the most complex, shooting-mechanics wise, of any game in the franchise, and it was also the most successful. I would not go so far as to say that’s the reason, but I wouldn’t be reluctant to say that that was one of many factors of its success. In a Halo community context in which all the arguments about Halo multiplayer’s decline pretty much revolve around sprint or no sprint (or abilities in general), I’m curious where the arguments for or against hitscan fall into place, and if they have one at all.

Disclaimer: I am not an avowed abilities or no-abilities guy. I loved Halo 3 and still believe it’s the most fun game in the franchise. I also, from an imaginative standpoint, appreciate the capacity to, as a spartan, just -Yoinking!- “sprint” places. I have at times been a fairly competitive Halo 5 guy. I have fun with that. I hear the arguments against sprint and how they break Halo’s identity (/gameplay in a fundamental way) and I go, “Yeah, that makes sense.”

Side note: Hitscan and its relevance may actually have a larger role in arguments about big team/vehicular combat. Vehicles, in my opinion, haven’t been fun since Halo 3, and I think that is largely due to the huge increase in weapon accuracy in following Halo games. Never in Halo 3 could you so easily grab the standard mid-to-long-range weapon and snipe a guy out of the back of a warthog or ghost as you could in Reach, 4, and 5. This coupled with the new mobility options that have also been introduced since three, and you have your answers as to why big team just doesn’t feel like big team anymore. I’m not saying that a lack of hitscan would fix this, but I am saying that a huge increase in weapon functionality/accuracy has led to a broadening of mapspace that has been one of the factors that has led to a dissolution of Halo’s multiplayer identity. Removing hitscan could be one way to address this.

2nd disclaimer: This taken with the grain of salt that (I’m sure) many other subtle adjustments would have to be made to make the removal of hitscan functional and logical to the gameplay.

2

I’ve always been terrible with a Sniper Rifle. So I can’t really remark on the whole Hit Scan thing. But I do understand the getting-sniped-from-a-warthog thing. I feel that in CE the hog had a LOT more room to book around. Recent maps haven’t been as expansive, or have been too location-based that it’s more effective as a hog driver to linger in an area rather than be constantly on the move. If vehicles had enough room to roam free on uneven grounds, they’d be able to dodge more sniper rounds.

3

> 2533274809073993;1:
> I think we’d all agree Halo 3 has a distinct mechanical identity, and I think a big part of that identity is the way weapons function in Halo 3. There’s a lot of nuance to the way weapons work in Halo 3, and that is due to the lack of hitscan. When I was a kid playing Halo 3, the BR was like a friggin’ mystery to me. I didn’t understand that thing! I was pretty squirrel-y in one-on-one engagements, but I really couldn’t consistently win BR fights in a way that made me seriously competitive. I didn’t understand until recently how to use it well, and it has changed the way I play.
>
> So, what’s the point? I feel like Halo 3’s precision-weapon mechanics actually did a lot to round out what is essentially fairly simple gameplay. They, in very subtle ways, did a lot for the skill-gap and for the “Hidden complexity” of Halo (3) that anyone who’s put a significant amount of time into the game can speak to. People are saying 343i is reluctant to return to the bare-bones (pre-reach) bungie era of Halo, and I think many understand that from a developer’s side of things releasing a game like Halo 2 in today’s shooter market would feel like a half-baked effort–like the game was “under-featured” or something. But to me, Halo 3 has a lot more flavor than Halo 2, even though essentially they’re the same game in terms of–you have grenades, you have these movement options (i.e. crouch and jump, cardinal directions etc.), you have melee, you have your gun–and that is in large part due to the lack of hitscan.
>
> Short story shorter: there’s a lot to be said for digging into the features that are there and digging into them to add complexity, rather than adding new features altogether. I would argue that Halo 3 was the most complex, shooting-mechanics wise, of any game in the franchise, and it was also the most successful. I would not go so far as to say that’s the reason, but I wouldn’t be reluctant to say that that was one of many factors of its success. In a Halo community context in which all the arguments about Halo multiplayer’s decline pretty much revolve around sprint or no sprint (or abilities in general), I’m curious where the arguments for or against hitscan fall into place, and if they have one at all.
>
> Disclaimer: I am not an avowed abilities or no-abilities guy. I loved Halo 3 and still believe it’s the most fun game in the franchise. I also, from an imaginative standpoint, appreciate the capacity to, as a spartan, just -Yoinking!- “sprint” places. I have at times been a fairly competitive Halo 5 guy. I have fun with that. I hear the arguments against sprint and how they break Halo’s identity (/gameplay in a fundamental way) and I go, “Yeah, that makes sense.”
>
> Side note: Hitscan and its relevance may actually have a larger role in arguments about big team/vehicular combat. Vehicles, in my opinion, haven’t been fun since Halo 3, and I think that is largely due to the huge increase in weapon accuracy in following Halo games. Never in Halo 3 could you so easily grab the standard mid-to-long-range weapon and snipe a guy out of the back of a warthog or ghost as you could in Reach, 4, and 5. This coupled with the new mobility options that have also been introduced since three, and you have your answers as to why big team just doesn’t feel like big team anymore. I’m not saying that a lack of hitscan would fix this, but I am saying that a huge increase in weapon functionality/accuracy has led to a broadening of mapspace that has been one of the factors that has led to a dissolution of Halo’s multiplayer identity. Removing hitscan could be one way to address this.
>
> 2nd disclaimer: This taken with the grain of salt that (I’m sure) many other subtle adjustments would have to be made to make the removal of hitscan functional and logical to the gameplay.

Probably would be hard but certain weapons imo should work with hit scan and others should have the halo 4 and 5 mechanics

4

I honestly didn’t like that much the switch to projectile, but I still enjoyed Halo 3 a lot. The thing, see, is that Halo 3 was designed with BR uncontested at the top of the weapon chain and the other weapons (way) under it, except power weapons of course. But the BR had its fair share of problems, like the spread of the burst being RNG and the shot itself being projectile.

The fact the the BR was dominating so much even though it had some defects gives us a clear picture of how bad the general balancing of the weapons was. The rest of the guns (again, except power weapons) was basically trash. So I guess they tried to balance out by making the spread RNG which doesn’t do much but add frustration to the gameplay.

What I’d like is them to follow the patch marked since Reach, hitscan on weapons where it makes sense (BR, DMR, etc.) and keep projectile for plasma or other weird stuff. If they are worried about a certain weapon being too effective at long range, they could just make the spread increase a lot after a certain point or lower the rate of fire so that every missed shot counts. It’s not like RNG or going projectile are the only solutions for this issue. Oh, and don’t make 90% of the weapons borderline useless.

I play both hitscan and projectile characters in Overwatch that has similar engage distances and time to kill to Halo. I can tell you that the main difference between them is that the longer the range/the slower the projectile the more you’ll have to guess where your opponent is gonna be during the travel time. That’s not equivalent to saying “higher skill ceiling!” that just means that if your aim is good, at certain distances hitting a shot with a projectile mostly becomes luck. All I see in weapons going back to projectile Halo 3 style is frustration and not much else.

5

Not to mention Halo 3 had a wonderful bug that if you moved an object it would take that object’s movement over making bullets so sometimes Halo 3 Netcode would literally turn bullets into blanks.

Here is a video discussing that very problem and why Bungie made the changes they did.

6

Projectile weapons + solid netcode are always going to be preferable to hitscan. Halo 3 to be fair most certainly did not have solid netcode and the random spread on the BR/Carbine only made it worse.

The problems with Reach-Halo 5 BTB and ranged engagements has far less to do with hitscan and far more to do with excessive aim assist, bullet magnetism, bad map design and the horrid chip damage system for vehicles. Halo 3 works in spite of its bad ranged weaponry not because of it.

Halo 3 vehicles are fun because they allow player skill to keep them alive as they can’t be easily worn down and destroyed by small arms fire alone. Because the vehicle health is tied to shields players can afford to be aggressive in enemy territory, which allows infantry players to also make inroads into the enemy side of the map. Combine this with a healthy amount of hard counters(missile pod, laser) and soft counters(stickies, power drain, plasma Pistol) and you have a recipe for player movement that doesn’t include giving them random ranged weaponry. Later Halo games often had so few vehicle counters(or otherwise rely entirely on loadouts)on the map that would despawn so quickly, it often left players with nothing to fight over or contest.

TL;DR Projectile for all weapons is always preferable to hitscan, but let’s not pretend the problems with later Halo games ranged combat lies with precision weapons being “too accurate”

7

I prefer hit scan but don’t mind projectile, I’d be fine with them adding it back. Just don’t, for any reason, add back random spread. That ruined the H3 BR for me.

8

> 2666640315087182;5:
> Not to mention Halo 3 had a wonderful bug that if you moved an object it would take that object’s movement over making bullets so sometimes Halo 3 Netcode would literally turn bullets into blanks.
>
> Here is a video discussing that very problem and why Bungie made the changes they did.

Yes?

I’d be surprised if that same known issue was present in a later Halo game 10+ years after that bug was present.

9

I honestly have no idea what the difference is and probably would not be able to spot the difference even if I were looking at clips of the two. What exactly is hitscan?

10

> 2533274823470699;9:
> I honestly have no idea what the difference is and probably would not be able to spot the difference even if I were looking at clips of the two. What exactly is hitscan?

Hitscan is a shot that is registered the moment is fired, while projectile is a shot that has travel time to reach its target. To give you a clear example: in Halo 5 the rocket launcher is a projectile weapon while the sniper rifle is a hitscan weapon. Now these two are pretty obvious and you can clearly see the difference, but in Halo 3 every weapon* is a projectile weapon, so the result is that the longer the distance you’re shooting at the more you’ll have to lead your crossair to take travel time into account. Of course there are examples of very fast moving projectiles (BR, AR, pistol, etc.) and very slow ones (brute shot, plasma rifle, etc.) and you have to account for the projectile speed as well as target’s distance when shooting.

Most human weapons were turned into hitscan from Reach going forward, plus some exceptions for Covenant/Promethean weapons.

*except the spartan laser and the snipers, while they still just technically were still super fast projectiles if I’m not mistaken

11

I think projectiles works fine with single shot weapons like the Sniper Rifle and it hugely increases the skill gap and make it more satisfying to use. On the other hand, it makes very complicated for more casual people or noobs like me, that I would like it to be more friendly and encouraging to use. I know in Halo 3 it is good when you get the thing of the Battle Rifle, but for a casual player, it is very frustrating to land your shots and randomly missing them.
In short words projectiles is good for competitive, but not so fun for casuals.