The original thread was posted here.
Unity is a community driven movement to help create a link between us (the competitive Halo community) and the developers (343 industries). Our current team is comprised of the settings creators for GoldPRO, Orange, and EVO community competitive settings. All respective teams have discontinued their personal ventures in hopes of creating a greater good. This movement comes with settings to start in the venture to unite the community under a competitive standard for FFA, 2v2, and 4v4. These settings have been refined and offer an experience that is respectful to the opinions of as many competitive Halo players as humanly possible. In short, we have looked, asked, and listened and we seek to give the community what it wants.
Statistically speaking, it’s impossible to give every player exactly what they want, we hope that players can put their differences aside and recognize that there voice was heard and taken into consideration and these settings are a direct result. Regardless of what your stance on settings or the current state of Halo I hope you can agree and get behind the idea of creating a team composed of this community’s members that interact and work for this community nearly every day simply because they love it to work directly with 343 for the betterment of Halo’s present and future.
Goals
- To create a competitive standard that is respectful to the opinions of as many competitive Halo players as possible.
- To maintain and adjust this standard based directly on community feedback and intelligent discussion.
- To get unified competitive settings(4v4, 2v2, FFA) applied into matchmaking for a broad audience to experience and give competitive Halo a chance to grow.
- To create a direct relationship where we can communicate directly with 343 to give them feedback, create settings for them, and make reasonable requests for back end adjustments we can’t do ourselves. This is the most important goal, not just for Halo 4, but the future of Halo beyond. If we can get a team from THC to have input into matchmaking we can use this influence to make sure these problems don’t happen in the future and make special requests ahead of time. Maybe we could get a competitive playlist with no sprint, consistent timers, etc at the start of Halo 5 with this relationship.
Important to note, this isn’t about any 1 or group having all the control. The way this team will operate is that the community members who show the biggest desire, knowledge, and ability to help craft and maintain settings will be the team, it’s as simple as that. Right now, that is the settings leaders from GoldPRO, Orange, and EVO but as this game progresses and new halos come out this team can and will change. The key is to have active community members that interact with the forums on a regular basis. The current systems in place do not reflect the wants/needs of the community as a whole and this is the biggest issue we want to rectify.
Features
- Weapon balance tweak using damage modifiers
- 4sk BR, 5sk DMR, 4skLR(regardless of scope)
- All 4 precision weapons used as loadouts
- No Secondary
- Wide Variety of competitive maps supported
- Continued support for FFA and 2v2(not just 4v4)
What can you do?
There are lots of things members of the competitive community can do to help. Start by posting POSITIVELY in this thread and voicing your support for the movement. Even if you don’t agree with the settings or something else, remember that the big picture is to get this community in direct contact with 343 for matchmaking and future input.
Next, tweet @BravoMLG, @quinndelhoyo, and @kevin_franklin(Please link to these twitters). We need to get their attention, let them know we’re here and we want to work with 343 directly to bring a fun and competitive experience to matchmaking that will help Halo grow.
That’s all we’re asking. If you have great ideas and want to get more directly involved then do so. Start setting up custom game lobbies and running scrims then leave detailed and thought out feedback. If you’ve got great ideas then bring them to us. Show your desire, dedication, and knowledge and you will have a direct impact. This is an entirely community driven movement, so drive.
Settings:
Loadouts:
Loadouts are Slayer Pros/Doubles Pro. No secondary, Resupply and Explosives with extra ammo via the ammo glitch for your starting weapon. BR, DMR, LR, and CarbineBase traits:
Shields are 90% recharge speed with a 5 sec wait. This change more closely emulates past Halos while also empowering the individual.
Faster Shield Recharge from Overkill
While playing the default game players are 1 shot for excruciating long periods of time and would actually be better off dying not only to keep their sanity but also to be in a better position; this is especially true in instant respawn gametypes. So to say that the shield recharge time on default is very long would be an understatement. The default recharge traits are 100% recharge rate and 6 second recharge wait.
Halo 2/3 had 4.25 second delay and 1.75 second full recharge. The shielding has been set to 5 sec wait and 90% recharge rate. On these settings it is a 5 second delay and 2 seconds for full recharge. 1 second was added to the down time to accommodate for sprint.
The 1 less second that you have to wait for your shields to come back allows you to challenge and get into the battle to help out your teammates earlier. With a slower rate it will still take less time to get to full shields than it does on default but only by a second. The slower rate makes the player susceptible to death from bleed through weapons like sniper, BR and explosives but it allows them to eat a shot or two that they would have not been able to under the default shield traits b/c they are no longer one shot.
There is still a sense of vulnerability and caution when it comes to the shields recharging but the pacing has been increased to where players can be more confident in challenging while weak allowing for a deeper meta game of shield management and player behavior prediction. On default settings a weak player will always run and hide regardless of skill level b/c the kill times are so long and it takes forever for the shields to come back that challenging is not a wise choice. A good player can now choose to challenge when shields are being restored instead of resorting to continue to hide just like a bad player would b/c its the only option.
Also, suppression is introduced as a tactic which is a brand new element of gameplay when it comes to Halo. Suppression is when you fire at where the enemy was last seen or where you expect them to be before they actually show themselves; essentially “pre-firing”. Suppression can be used to keep the enemy’s shields from recharging while you wait for your own shields to recharge allowing you to push up and flush him out. Suppression can be a solo effort or a team effort which adds another layer of depth and strategy to the game. This kind of meta game is none existent when the shields behave in such a way where you are one shot for 90% of the duration with shields recharging insanely fast for the last 10% as it currently is set to in GP.