Weapon Balancing Impressions

I love most of the available weapons in the flight thus far, but have some critiques I wanted to share, to see if you guys agree with me.

  • The gun I currently have the most issues with is the pulse carbine. At close range it is very difficult to use, since the plasma bolts track very badly when not aiming don the sights. At medium range it is better, but only useful while aiming down the sights, or firing on an unmoving target. In a firefight at medium range it is beaten by basically any other gun, even the assault rifle. I think the balance could be improved by increasing the projectile speed, and slightly increasing the tracking capabilities whilst hip-firing. That will make it more difficult to dodge shots, and players would have to rely less on aiming down the sights.

  • The ravager seems good, but inaccurate. In weapon drills, shots aimed directly at still standing opponents still seem to miss. Perhaps there is a trick to hitting shots with this weapon that I have yet to get the gist of. The charged up shot of the ravager seems too weak to me. From what I have seen it does barely any damage.

  • The bulldog feels nice to shoot, but the damage is disappointing. A true shotgun should one shot at close range at least, but the bulldog needs at least two shots to kill. Perhaps this is done to leave room for the inclusion of the classic shotgun down the line, but since it won’t be in at launch I think the bulldog feels underpowered if it is supposed to be Infinite’s ‘main’ close range UNSC gun.

  • The AR is balanced nicely, but I find the recoil when staring to fire too intense. In most Halo games it has been a kind of viable tactic to fire short AR bursts when firing at a longer range, but this is very difficult due to the recoil when beggining to fire. In my experience right now, it is even better to just spray at a target than burst firing the AR, when firing from afar. To me that feels a little wrong, so maybe decreasing recoil when starting to fire, and increasing it while spraying could be a good idea.

  • The sniper has a bit of a learning curve compared to previous games, which I think is fine. I think this is because Infinite seems to have decreased bullet magnetism, and smaller hitboxes. This puts an emphasis on accuracy, and heightens the skill-ceiling. The same goes for the skewer and other precision weapons like the commando.

  • The skewer is powerful, but is balanced by being difficult to use. Very satisfying to hit shots with. Feels clunky and brutish, which is immersive.

  • The gravity hammer seems kind of slow, ‘winding up’ takes a long time. I don’t mind this as it makes it feel more ‘brutish’ and like it is not made to be used by Spartans. The range of the gravity effect seems to have increased too compared to previous games, which in combination with the slower nature of it makes it a slightly different weapon to use. I need some time to get used to the new feel, but I like it overall. Still I would suggest making the swing time slightly faster.

I like most of your points. I too think the Pulse Carbine needs a buff. Here are my thoughts.

Pulse Carbine: Increase magnetism or rate of fire.

Gravity Hammer: I love the new gravity hammer, but it needs a quick melee attack (one that doesn’t use gravity) I also want to increase gravity disruption for close enemys so they really fly away when they die. The lower gravity effect actually makes the weapon stronger because it doesn’t push your foes away. Foes upclose is good when you have the hammer.

AR: Just slightly reduce recoil. Other than that I think its good.

Sidekick: A very pleasant surprise for sure. This gun feels great

Heatwave: This gun is strange and feels slightly inconsistent. Sometimes it feels really good other times it doesnt. Not sure what to do to fix it.

Needler: Love it dont change a thing besides the sound effect

Bulldog: Increase the damage so it can one shot kill when you are virtually as close as you can get to the enemy. Increase the damage slightly more for range and mid range.

Drop wall: It deploys a bit slow. Im fine with the animation delay, but it should deploy faster once it hits the ground.

SPNKR: I felt that the blast radius was reduced.

Ravager: Needs more visual appeal when using a charged shot.

Skewer: This item feels good because it should be very difficult to hit a spartan (and it is) and yet I cant wait to see the physics and flipping action it will do to light vehicles.

So far the game is great! Lots of fun!

> 2533274998823536;2:
> I like most of your points. I too think the Pulse Carbine needs a buff. Here are my thoughts.
>
> Pulse Carbine: Increase magnetism or rate of fire.
>
> Gravity Hammer: I love the new gravity hammer, but it needs a quick melee attack (one that doesn’t use gravity) I also want to increase gravity disruption for close enemys so they really fly away when they die. The lower gravity effect actually makes the weapon stronger because it doesn’t push your foes away. Foes upclose is good when you have the hammer.
>
> AR: Just slightly reduce recoil. Other than that I think its good.
>
> Sidekick: A very pleasant surprise for sure. This gun feels great
>
> Heatwave: This gun is strange and feels slightly inconsistent. Sometimes it feels really good other times it doesnt. Not sure what to do to fix it.
>
> Needler: Love it dont change a thing besides the sound effect
>
> Bulldog: Increase the damage so it can one shot kill when you are virtually as close as you can get to the enemy. Increase the damage slightly more for range and mid range.
>
> Drop wall: It deploys a bit slow. Im fine with the animation delay, but it should deploy faster once it hits the ground.
>
> SPNKR: I felt that the blast radius was reduced.
>
> Ravager: Needs more visual appeal when using a charged shot.
>
> Skewer: This item feels good because it should be very difficult to hit a spartan (and it is) and yet I cant wait to see the physics and flipping action it will do to light vehicles.
>
> So far the game is great! Lots of fun!

Thanks for your thoughts!

I agree about the gravity hammer needing a quicker attack. I think they should either make the normal attack quicker, or add a quicker secondary attack, like you said. I think in H5 when ‘meleeing’ with the hammer you would punch with just the hilt, that would be good to have in Infinite as well.

The drop wall is indeed a little slow, I think there should be a slight delay between hitting the ground and activating, but right now it takes too long.

I like the heatwave so far, but I have had some inconsistent results with it too. Sometimes it took two vertical blasts to kill an enemy, other times I couldn’t do it with less than four of them. Even though it looked like I hit spot on. The horizontal fire mode seems kind of ineffective to me though, maybe increasing projectile homing after ricocheting could make it better.

I personally felt the opposite about the SPNKR blast radius. At least the instant-kill radius seems big to me when I first used it. I had a couple of shots which surprised me were still instakills, since I felt they were far off. But I haven’t had the chance to use it too much yet, will need to test it out more.

> 2533274903772750;3:
> > 2533274998823536;2:
> > I like most of your points. I too think the Pulse Carbine needs a buff. Here are my thoughts.
> >
> > Pulse Carbine: Increase magnetism or rate of fire.
> >
> > Gravity Hammer: I love the new gravity hammer, but it needs a quick melee attack (one that doesn’t use gravity) I also want to increase gravity disruption for close enemys so they really fly away when they die. The lower gravity effect actually makes the weapon stronger because it doesn’t push your foes away. Foes upclose is good when you have the hammer.
> >
> > AR: Just slightly reduce recoil. Other than that I think its good.
> >
> > Sidekick: A very pleasant surprise for sure. This gun feels great
> >
> > Heatwave: This gun is strange and feels slightly inconsistent. Sometimes it feels really good other times it doesnt. Not sure what to do to fix it.
> >
> > Needler: Love it dont change a thing besides the sound effect
> >
> > Bulldog: Increase the damage so it can one shot kill when you are virtually as close as you can get to the enemy. Increase the damage slightly more for range and mid range.
> >
> > Drop wall: It deploys a bit slow. Im fine with the animation delay, but it should deploy faster once it hits the ground.
> >
> > SPNKR: I felt that the blast radius was reduced.
> >
> > Ravager: Needs more visual appeal when using a charged shot.
> >
> > Skewer: This item feels good because it should be very difficult to hit a spartan (and it is) and yet I cant wait to see the physics and flipping action it will do to light vehicles.
> >
> > So far the game is great! Lots of fun!
>
> Thanks for your thoughts!
>
> I agree about the gravity hammer needing a quicker attack. I think they should either make the normal attack quicker, or add a quicker secondary attack, like you said. I think in H5 when ‘meleeing’ with the hammer you would punch with just the hilt, that would be good to have in Infinite as well.
>
> The drop wall is indeed a little slow, I think there should be a slight delay between hitting the ground and activating, but right now it takes too long.
>
> I like the heatwave so far, but I have had some inconsistent results with it too. Sometimes it took two vertical blasts to kill an enemy, other times I couldn’t do it with less than four of them. Even though it looked like I hit spot on. The horizontal fire mode seems kind of ineffective to me though, maybe increasing projectile homing after ricocheting could make it better.
>
> I personally felt the opposite about the SPNKR blast radius. At least the instant-kill radius seems big to me when I first used it. I had a couple of shots which surprised me were still instakills, since I felt they were far off. But I haven’t had the chance to use it too much yet, will need to test it out more.

yea I haven’t acquired the SPNKR that much so I dont have a lot of shots on it yet. Ive picked it up only about 4 times. Time will tell.

Only issues I have are the pulse is pretty weak vs carbine other rifles in previous games. Sidearm probably could be a 6shot vs 7. Ar is pretty good minus the reciul, br is good. Sniper needs to get rid of randomness of flick shots.

The Bulldog needs to be up close one shot head shot or two body shots. Ravager needs a buff. Heatwave needs some kind of fix to make it feel better to use. Needler is perfectly balanced. Sniper might need a tad bit of aim assist but feels great. Pistol has a great skill curve. BR feels fantastic. Commando could use a tiny bit of balancing but feels great.

I agree that the bulldog does not do enough damage. It does not have much range, which is understandable, but usually takes multiple shots to get a kill. It seems better to just keep the AR for close quarters.

The heatwave doesn’t appear to improve on the starting weapons at all. The shots bouncing of the walls doesn’t do anything.

The gravity hammer is too slow. In halo 5, it is a weapon to have. It is more of a liability.

> 2770517985052012;7:
> I agree that the bulldog does not do enough damage. It does not have much range, which is understandable, but usually takes multiple shots to get a kill. It seems better to just keep the AR for close quarters.
>
> The heatwave doesn’t appear to improve on the starting weapons at all. The shots bouncing of the walls doesn’t do anything.
>
> The gravity hammer is too slow. In halo 5, it is a weapon to have. It is more of a liability.

Bulldog TTK feels faster than the AR for sure.

Pulse Carbine:
Meh it’s ok, 2 shot kill so it’s obviously very powerful, in exchange to only being effective at the right range. I get the idea, but it’s not fun to use though.
(this is off topic, but this weapon is sort of a reminder of the fact that there is probably no plasma rifle or carbine rifle in this game, which makes me dislike it more)

Ravager:
I like it, it’s a unique-ish weapon that has potential. Personally I think I’ll prefer this weapon in the campaign, so I can’t wait to use it on the Banished.
I’m hoping we will be able to boost our jumps with this like we could with the concussion rifle. The flame on floor effect is cool, seems a bit weak maybe? I haven’t have a lot of experiences with it yet.

Bulldog:
I don’t like this one, not much more effective up close than the AR. This games sandbox would be way more fun with a real shotgun. This is so underwhelming.

Assault Rifle:
OP, but hear me out! I want to make it extremely clear that I think it’s a good thing that this weapon is more powerful than it used to be, and is now good for killing, I like that idea, and they should still stick to that. And I also think the amount of damage is good, I’m happy with that.
The way I think it’s op is that it’s effective range is too far, it’s just powerful in every single situation, but a sandboxes purpose is to give weapons different roles, this AR a lot of the standard primary weapons in Infinite are kinda stepping in each others territories. Halo not being a “full blast all-ranges automatic weapons spraying game” is one of the things that has separated it from other fps games imo, but preference is preference.
The way I interpret the AR and BR next to each other is that they have about equal in advantage at mid range, the closer you get the further that advantage goes towards the AR holder, and the further away you get and the advantage goes more towards the BR holder. If you have another interpretation of that, that’s fine, this is just the way I’d like it to be.
I want to point out that I personally want ADS completely out of Halo, and I think if ADS was removed this problem might almost solve itself, but I can’t say that for sure. Maybe once the aim assist is improve the precision weapons, maybe that’d do it? but idk.
The other problem with this is how it puts the Sidekick in the corner, which I’ll get more into now.

Sidekick:
Sidekick, it does feel ok to shoot with, but since the AR is objectively more effective than the sidekick in every single situation I switch the sidekick with a better weapon as soon as I spawn, there is not reason not to do so. So basically I never ever use the sidekick.
Solution: Remove ADS to slightly reduce the ARs efficiency at long ranges specifically, and then give the sidekick a scope, which has about the same range as the magnums in other Halo games, which would kinda make it very similar to the h4 magnum in balance.
This way the two starting weapons would compliment each other. Which they do not do now at all.
(Off topic again, but if they were to give the sidekick a real scope, which they probably wont, I’d say they might as well call it a magnum and change the design too, but I’m dreaming)

Sniper:
In general I like it.
My only concern is, that this weapons is another thing that will give PC player a big advantage, sniping is almost as easy as anything else in with a mouse (I used to be a pretty sharp pc sniper myself when I was a teenager) compared to gamepad it’s laughably easy, even in games where the aim assist is strong with it, plus Halo is a game where you don’t need to zoom to be accurate, which is even harder on console compared to pc. If I get shot and my scope goes down I feel almost screwed, but on mouse I could just shot without the scope. So the fact that this game has less aim assist than ever before worries.
If not for cross-play I wouldn’t really mind, since all would then be at the same ground.

Skewer:
I love it.
Can’t wait to try it on vehicles

Gravity Hammer:
The swing time is too slow in my opinion, Spartans are extremely strong + mjölnir, hammers that size should be like a stick to them. It would make more sense to me if we were an ODST to swing it like that. But yeah it’s just a bit painful in gameplay, I’d like it to be responsive and fast.
The range is longer, which is a necessity in this game you would have serious issues reaching anybody without dying otherwise, people can back away from you almost at the speed you sprint towards them. I don’t think this power-weapon is as OP as in should be even with the range thing.

Battle Rifle:
It’s perfect, I love it.

Heatwave
I like this one, it’s something new, not just a copy of something else, semi-power weapon. I don’t know if it will do me much good against real humans yet, maybe it would deal just a little more damage.

Needler:
It feels very well balanced from what I can tell so far. I like it a lot.
But again, not a fan of ADS.

SPNKR:
Fun to use, but I might agree with above, I don’t know for sure but I suspect that the explosion radius is too big.

Commando:
Can’t talk about the balancing for this weapon without talking about cross-play again. According to the general thoughts I hear from people, It’s way easier to use on PC than it is on gamepad. When/if aim assist is improved, this could balance the mouse vs joystick thing out but I’m worried that if this gun is easy to use it will become OP.
The commando has an extremely fast TTK, faster than half the TTK for the BR, actually about only 1 second, however in exchange to the high damage it is hard to use, this is a good thing, if it becomes easy to use it becomes a power-weapon (which is bad), and what determines how powerful it is should come down to practise and skill.
I personally think the difficulty for the commando seems to be in an ok spot on gamepad where it is. I don’t really “want” to make the aim assist better for this weapon, but from what I hear and see, to keep up in cross-play it might be necessary, and even a skilled player should not get 1 second kill times with a regular non-power weapon, that’s not the kinda game Halo is, that’s more a generic fps kinda thing.
Another thing is that this weapon kinda stomps a little on the territory of both the AR and the BR, which concerns me but I can’t say yet if it does or doesn’t work. I do also question if this weapon was mainly created to attract fans of regular fps games to try Halo, because I don’t feel like there was actually a hole in the sandbox that needed filling, nor that it’s a very unique weapon. I prefer when Halo weapons are at least 1 of those 2 things.
My conclusion (I think) this that “if” it gets easier to use, the damage might need to be reduced. And considering cross-play, increasing aim assist and reducing damage is the only thing I can think of, unfortunately.
We’ll see what happens, it might turn out to be fine.

Equipment also works really well too from what I can tell, they are really well balanced for mp. I would personally like some sort of indicator that shows when you are in range with the grapple, range is shorter than I expected, but it’s no necessity, I’ll get used to it.