So, after reading Silent Storm and the Spartan Field Manual, you’ll find out that certain guns, specifically the MA5D, have multiple firing styles and a safety. Upon closer investigation of the Assault Rifle’s design in Halo 5, you’ll notice that there is a switch in the side which switches between fully automatic, semi-automatic, and off. I personally think that if these were to be implemented into Infinite, it would have the potential to be really cool. I think you could maybe manually switch between the modes by using up and down on the D-pad, and these settings could be turned off in competitive modes. Let me know what you think.
It makes sense to have that option in the books since even modern day military platforms, such as the M4, have that option. In regards to a video game, maybe? In multiplayer it makes since to separate them out to have full auto AR/SMG, 3 shot burst BR and semiautomatic DMR/sniper. Helps separate out weapon identity and pickups.
Might be interesting to do but the question is what would be the controls. now one of my favorite games was Perfect Dark which did have the 2ndary fire mode as well as a quick button combo (B+Z) to immediately make a 2ndary firing shot. However Perfect dark for the most part was designed from the ground up (also melee attacks was a weapon in itself and not a quick button). I mean with weapon customization we can go all out with different ammunitions (shredder rounds form the fall of reach) different firing modes (3 round burst or full auto) different modulations (adjusting the plasma rifle frequency to tune it from elite to brute) and so on, but there comes a point when this just becomes an overload of options that just overwhelms the player.
Instead of fire mode/ammo/plasma frequency selection I am more for ways of making firing modes intrinsic. Now H4 with all of its faults did do something interesting with the light rifle where scope was single and unscoped was 3 round burst you could easily do that with other weapons such as the Battle Rifle which would be full auto when unscoped and semi when scoped and that would make it different from the DMR (of course you run the risk of making a weapon too good at everything). Also the different ways to shoot a weapon could make for some interesting mechanics. The Reach Grenade launcher (way better than the sticky grenade launcher) had an EMP detonation so if you held down the trigger instead of immediately releasing it you could control the detonation of the emp. There are other ways you can like a single pull from the trigger of an assault rifle is a semi shot but holding it down was full auto. I think they tried that with the classic pistol but no one held down the trigger for full auto since semi was simply faster and more accurate (which shows another problem with secondary fire modes on all weapons, some are just not worth using). So I am all for things to make the different rifles, automatics and pistols function different from each other, I don’t think using the d-pad fire mod selection is the correct way to go.
Hmmm not sure if I’d like that or not. Think I’d just like each weapon to have a specific role instead of giving them multiple functions.
I think it’d be a nice thing to explore, however done more widely and in that case a spin-off. Though the promethean weapons could be redesigned this way I’m about to explain.
UNSC: Weapons feature two modes of fire.
Covenant: Regular mode and charged mode, like the Plasma Pistol.
Promethean: Modular. You get a base form, and pick up different parts that add a new trait to the weapon base.
For instance, Projectiles base, fires a single projectile.
Add a Seeker Module and a Scatter Module, what you get is Scattershot with semi-seeking projectiles.
Two or three modules would be supported on a base form.
As far as having only UNSC get the special treatment of fire modes, it’d feel like the other weapons were left out, where they do have potential for something new.
This is one of those things which make sense in the cannon but not by a gameplay perspective.
Imagine switching the AR to semi-automatic in a game of multiplayer. What’s the point? That’s going to be ridiculously weak since most of its damage comes from the fact it’s spitting out a lot of bullets very fast.
Similarly the BR on fully-automatic would be a power house, destroying everything in its path, completely negating the AR.
Its more functional to have seperate weapons with different purposes over having one weapon which can cover both.