This is something I’ve asked not just myself but many others while in matchmaking. Now from what I gather bloom was introduced to put a larger skill gap into the game. Timing your shots originally was supposed to make it so that you out shot any player that wasn’t timing properly. Clearly this didn’t work out and it ended up being a mechanic that was abused. When combined with luck, a fast shooting DMR could out shoot that of a timed one (with some luck). What benefits does this give to gameplay? You still need to aim at your opponent (still requires an amount of skill), just it’s luck whether you’re going to kill faster if you don’t time any shots.
So I’d like to try and understand what people see in bloom. Or rather see if people are even phased by bloom or no bloom, and don’t mind playing either. Because when playing the team slayer playlist I noticed the votes generally were even between TU and vanilla slayer. And it seems the people in the playlist were more focused on the maps, as opposed to the gametypes.
Also for those of you who don’t enjoy using the precision weapons as much, how much different does TU play with automatic weapons?
In my opinion, Bloom had nothing to do with adding in a ‘skill gap’. It was intended as a recoil like limiter, to keep weapons like the Designated Marksman Rifle and the Needle Rifle in check. Making it difficult to get kills from longer distances without proper shot timing and give it more limitation in close quarters where it’s niche bled into the Assault Rifle.
From my game on countdown that was not DMR starts, i can see that the Assault Rifle became twice as effective. In Invasion, while pacing your shots into bursts; The Assault Rifle is capable of two kills in one clip. Now imagine that with bleedtrhough and bloom functionality reduced. There was a very noticable effective combat range that was increased(Hovering over the Countdown balcony at the cliff and pelting a target accurately in the side hallway on the right.) The moment the Dmr goes into the equation though, Assault rifles barely stand a chance unless you are up close already.
I find myself agreeing with your point about voting for maps over Gametypes, I’d much rather play my preferred map than choosing a different playlist because there is a 15% difference in bloom.
I’ve never liked the idea of zero bloom in Reach, from the way I look at it, If the DMR is less viable at extreme ranges due to the presence of bloom, it will bring players closer to each other, resulting in faster paced and more exciting games. At least that’s my take on things.
Bloom was originally intended to reward the aggressive yet calm - in essence it was supposed to give players more freedom of movement (particularly on large maps) and not be constantly locked down by DMR/Needle Rifle fire and punish those who couldn’t keep themselves in check or tried to just spam as many shots as possible.
However, the problem was that the original bloom didn’t work. It was too spam friendly at close range; and at long range spamming didn’t become inaccurate enough to be a negative. 85% bloom mitigates the problem by making the weapons more accurate and not giving spammers as much of an advantage while still not breaking the maps like ZB does. Of course by the time the TU came out the rage and hate for the original 100% bloom had gotten so big almost no one cared even for 85% bloom, even though it was much better and solved many of the issues people had been complaining about.
The more effective bloom solution would’ve been to have it so that as long as you’re staying in the weapon’s “sweet spot” its perfectly accurate, but as soon as you go too fast then the bloom kicks in hardcore and punishes you. That way you still had to be calm and as long as you were you’d beat a spammer anytime (except for maybe point-blank range, where bloom doesn’t matter in any case).
The solution is not to use ZB though. ZB has just as many if not more problems than 100% bloom does, not limited to just completely making BTB unplayable.
> Bloom raised the skill floor, it did nothing to raise the skill ceiling.
>
> It has no merit in a game like Halo where players have tons of regenerating health.
That’s a catchy turn of phrase.
I like 85% bloom. It isn’t so severe that it makes me feel like my aim doesn’t matter, but its enough that the different precision weapon feel different at all ranges, and keeps the sandbox interesting for different gametypes (like elite slayer. Needler kills faster than NR, but team shooting is faster than needler). Zero bloom is definitely fun if you pare down the sandbox, but I found the pistol nutty good, and only ineffective at the longest of ranges. And that’s a little boring.
Bloom was implemented as a punishment to going over the recommended ROF on a gun. Despite all the lies about it not working correctly it does. I have taken the game apart and looked at the calculations in place for bloom, they are sound. They are in fact, quite similar to the spray mechanic at high ROF that was used all the way back in halo one.
they actually start displaying it on the HUD and everyone freaks out. IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THERE.
The implementation of bloom has very little to do with skill, and a whole lot to do with the design of the sandbox.
The purpose of bloom is to dynamically scale the effectiveness of mid-range weapons at different ranges. It serves the exact same purpose as the BR spread in Halo 3, except in Reach you actually get to see it and control it. Both the BR spread and bloom increase kill times at long range, the BR spread by causing you to randomly miss bullets, and bloom by forcing you to wait for a full reset of the reticule (of course you can spam, but that usually doesn’t work at all for the longer extents of the DMR’s range). At mid-range, the intended range for the weapon, the kill times are reduced, since you will either miss less bullets (BR spread), or you don’t have to wait as long (bloom). Both are still mildly effective at close range, the BR less so due to the cap on it’s ROF.
In short, bloom is the answer to the competitive community’s complaints about randomness in the BR in Halo 3. Bungie said, “how can we maintain mid-to-long-range balance while reducing the uncontrollable randomness the player sees.” Bloom is a pretty good answer to this, and has nothing to do with “catering to the casuals” like some people try to contend. In fact, bloom is anti-casual, since it makes it more difficult for new players to simply pick up the game and be effective, since the meta-game at low levels of play favors pacing.
There are problems with bloom at very high levels of play, since when players of equal high skill get into a 1v1 battle, the pacing vs. spam choice saturates. Also, since the competitive community usually favors smaller arena maps, the long range balancing part of bloom isn’t an issue. Unfortunately, the competitive community had a fairly reactionary view to this, and have reduced most of their arguments to foolish dogma that serves no purpose for moving forward.
> Bloom raised the skill floor, it did nothing to raise the skill ceiling.
This. Bloom forces players to pace their shots, meaning players have more time to aim, meaning it’s easier to hit each shot. This decreased the skill gap because of the restriction bloom put on the better player.
Disagree? Try ZB slayer and then try default Reach. It’s a lot easier to be accurate five shots in a row when you’re forced to wait in between shots and have more time to aim.
Also, inb4ZBspamming. You can’t spam something that has no punishment for firing it as fast as possible; it’d be foolish in most situations to not use the weapon to its full capability.