Weapon balance, and map design is the one thing that every first person shooter must get correct in order for the game to feel, play, and flow right. This isn’t just a statement, its a fact for this gene of games. Halo has always been known for these two things. That is one of the reasons its always had such a large competitive audience. Its also the reason its stood as a triple A title for a decade. I’m not saying halo 4 lacks these things as well, but i will say some things need polishing up because it cracks the game play,and shatters not only competitive play, but also key mechanics that made this game fun to play casually.
Here is a list as well as reasons why some of these thing should be fixed.
Adrift as a capture the flag option: adrift is a awesome map don’t get me wrong but for capture the flag it is extremely unbalanced due to map design. I will start with the flag/player spawns positions. The flag spawns on this map are irrelevant due to a one sided advantage given to one team by the positioning of the gravity lifts. One team (black team) gets a full out door way strait into the enemies(white team)base to capture the flag how ever the white team has to run mid way in before getting that luxury. This means that the white team needs more or better people on guard to defend the flag at base. The black team has the option to use less player resources defending, and assault witch leaves the white team less man power to attack, i hope you catch my adrift here because this is rather hard to explain. so when the black team pushes to hard on the white spawn it forces a mid way spawn flip putting the white team at another edge of the map letting the black team get about mid way center in with the flag and able to cap if they survive the regrouped white teams assault to get their flag back. I understand that maps aren’t always ment to be fair, but there is a limit to how much of a advantage you cant give one team.
The bolt shot as a secondary weapon: The bolt shot as a secondary weapon is like giving master chief in halo one the ability to have dual wielding bottomless clip magnums in mission one. If you get the best gun in the game at the start whats the point of picking up new weapons. Its like playing a game with cheat codes, whats the point of working for some thing if you already own it? I feel that this gun needs to be removed out of the load outs in matchmaking and strategically placed around the map like the plasma pistol was in halo reach. This will help make campers move around the map a little for resupplies and create better flow in team death match. Im not saying the gun needs to be nerved although it is a bit op, but i am saying it should be considered a power weapon considering it can stall map flow and if used correctly be a primary source of kills.
Promethean visions cool down rate: This is some thing that really needs to be increased you can not only see the whole map with this but there is little cost in using this besides the fact that it indicates you on the map for a few seconds for every pro their needs to be a con. Increasing the cool down will help people have even ground with this AA. After all this AA is made to pin point the “area” of a stable players or players movement directions in a map, but i see people walking around the game with it on like they are wearing a pair of sun glasses. Take of the sunglasses when its night time for crying out loud. please increase the cool down a tad bit to allow players to enof time to flank the user before being spotted again or decrease the field of view.
Buff the auto sentry turret: This has to be one of the most under powered AAs in the game because of the Ai takes too long to take a shot please fix this so it can acquire targets faster its not the fire rate or the damage its the Ais tracking method also something that would make this AA stick out is if it could track vehicles and tag it with a emp charge. This would promote the use of this in BTB and would be fit for more of a engineer role rather than for killing players. The con to this however would be that after emping a vehicle it would
self destruct/destroy itself.
More recoil on assault rifles: this will make players fire in a less spaying way the weapon climb will help balance long distant battles so burst fire will be needed to maintain the accuracy to deal heavy damage across the map giving the battle riffle and Dmr the advantage it deserves in a long range battle.
Head shot damage increase: This will encourage players to pace shots and aim for the head. I find hitting some one in the head to be extremely under powered Example: There was a afk player in match making that was boosting i go up behind him/her and unload 7 bullets from my Dmr into this players head before he/she died of a head shot it should only take four to five bullets in the head for a Dmr to drop a player.
This is only the surface of things that could be fixed to improve the game, and i know there are many thing that could be done to improve them that aren’t what i mentioned. I just simply ask you 343i to look some them over and improve flaws in items, maps and weaponry to try and to make them as perfect as possible so every thing works in cooperation with each other. This is just my opinion im sure all the other halo fans have their fixes too.