I want to be clear, right out of the gate…That this is not a “hate” thread. This is, however, a criticism thread that looks negatively upon many aspects of Halo Reach. I’m going to try as hard as I can (And I assure you, this is not easy.) to check my negative emotions at the door.
I’ve made many topics criticizing, nitpicking, and yes, even raging about Reach in my day. However, over the past few months, I stopped playing Reach regularly, and pretty much just stuck to talking about how to improve it. I thought it was a bit ironic that while I was talking about Reach a lot, I never really played it. Well, today being Bungie day and all…And me not having much to do…
I decided to put my nose to the grindstone and play as much Reach as I could today, with the purpose of finding out if all those problems that basically made me quit playing Reach were as bad as I remember them to be.
Results?
THEY WERE.
At first, I wasn’t really noticing much, and I was actually having fun herp-derping around with a Jetpack and a Plasma Repeater. But, after that got old…All those problems started coming back, and I began to get frustrated. Mild frustration turned to Anger, and that led to me putting down my controller about a half-hour ago, deciding that I was going to write this post, and probably never, ever, EVER play another game of Default Slayer ever again.
So…coming fresh off of an entire day of Reach…Here are Reach’s problems:
1. Armor Lock:
So, this Armor Ability is broken. It just is. If you’re still in denial about this, you should probably seek professional help, because there is something deeply wrong with you. I can’t tell you how much I had to deal with this AA today. It was BAD. Funny thing was…In the hands of a herp-derp, this Armor Ability is the easiest one to counter. You really do just sit there, wait for the right time, and throw a 'nade…
However, in the hands of anyone who has some degree of skill, and uses team coordination…This Armor Ability is just a nightmare. The skilled players know they can win any CQC fight with this AA by quickly locking as you melee them, then getting out of lock when you’re still in contact with them, causing your shields to fall, and they pummel you. But that isn’t even the worst of it.
I saw many teams simply running the “Dual Lockers” strategy; Pairing up and just trading off locks to take down individual players. It was unbeatable in the right hands. If these people were derps, again, this would be easy as pie…But these were highly-skilled players using this AA as a tool to give the other team no fighting chance at all.
I tell you, some of those games I really felt like rage-quitting. I didn’t…But when you have a bunch of ignorant teenagers all using Armor Lock, Power Weapons, and are all laughing and Tea-Bagging you when you’re the last person left on your team…That’s some strong temptation.
Bottom Line: Armor Lock is an overpowered Armor Ability in the right hands, and should frankly be removed from all small-team Slayer gametypes ASAP, if not removed from the entire game. It’s that broken, and based on my experience, anyone who denies this is either a USER of this broken, overpowered ability…Or has simply had the luck of never running into entire teams of very skilled players using Armor Lock to move themselves up from “Very good” to “Unbeatable”.
2. Bloom/Weapon Damage
I’m going to lump these two because I think they overlap more than most people realize.
First of all…We all know the problem with Bloom: Spammers have the ability to win over Pacers. No matter what percentage of the time…The fact that this can happen at all is a problem, and does not lend itself well to competitive play…Or really any kind of play. There is a far more overlooked problem with Bloom, however, and it ties in perfectly with my other big complaint in this category…
The difference in power from “Power weapons” to “Utility weapons” is too great…And this is actually BECAUSE of Bloom. Allow me to explain:
Power Weapons are supposed to be powerful…Duh…But they’re also supposed to be able to be countered in some form. In the previous Halo games, we saw that if a user was good enough with a utility weapon (Usually a BR/Pistol), then they could counter someone with a power weapon if they out-played them, and the power weapon user had to be smart to stay alive.
However, the utility weapons in Reach are set to such a slow kill-time, and are so nerfed, that you will have a VERY hard time taking down anyone with a power weapon by yourself. The obvious fix would be to “Buff the utility weapons!”…But not so fast, guys. We have Bloom to worry about…
See, the reason the utility weapons like the DMR and Needle Rifle are so weak power-wise is because they are SPAMMABLE. If you’re going up against a power-weapon user at a spammable range…Then that kill time just got cut in half, and the utility weapon user just got more powerful. This creates a disconnect. If you buffed the Utility Weapons to help combat Power Weapons and even the playing field, you would inherently turn those utility weapons into Power Weapons at a spammable range.
Follow?
Basically, Bloom forces utility weapons to be nerfed so they aren’t overpowered at spammable ranges. However, in doing this, it makes them almost useless against power weapons at their intended ranges. Because of this fact, power weapons become a very dominant force in the battlefield…And if you’re going up against a half-decent team hell-bent on Weapon Control…You might as well send them a steak yourself.
Bottom Line: Something needs to happen here. I think fixing Bloom so spamming is no longer an option is the easiest one. However, this would have to be fixed so well that spamming a utility weapon would not be effective at ANY range, including super-close. The other option is to remove bloom entirely, and go back to recoil and capped rates of fire. I personally think the second solution is better, because you can then buff the Utility Weapons to stand a chance against Power Weapons without turning them into CQC killing machines.
(Cont…)
