Having thought about all the major worries and complaints I’ve seen posted around recently, including some of my own, I have come to a ‘radical’ final conclusion:
Faster kill times for most all regular loadout weapons could solve everyone’s problems! In fact, I don’t believe I ever seen anyone disagree with the principle of faster kill times, even as they pose various solutions to what ails the Halo games of late.
So first off I’d love to see your participation in this poll. If we all agree on this one point, 343 may take notice, since they do scan these forums for the community’s pulse at times. Secondly, I hope to demonstrate how this one major change might solve your more specific grievance.
THE MAIN COMPLAINTS I SEE REPEATED:
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Armor Abilities: they slow and break gameplay with their defensive capabilities.
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Kill Streak rewards: Sound OP to some who shudder at COD rewards that give the better players more ways to get cheap kills.
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Garbage Automatics and the broken sandbox dominated by utility guns: br, dmr etc.
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Garbage Utility guns with 5sk and too slow kill times
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Halo has turned into a teamshotting cluster-****, slow gameplay
Now over the years Bungie made adjustments to Halo CE’s mostly successful formula. It hasn’t always been clear how, exactly, these adjustments turned bad. But over the years, the complaints have continued their deluge and the community has become split in their ideas for what would satiate them and improve gameplay.
I now suggest to you this was a mistake that was easy to make, and can now be easily overcome. Halo differentiated itself from the rest of the FPS genre by taking a FPS campaign convention (that is, the ability to absorb a small hail of bullets and live, and return to the fight after taking momentary cover, and Rambo through hoards of enemies) and give it a sweet sci-fi explanation that allowed that ability to cross over to multiplayer gameplay.
The shield system that absorbs multiple rounds, and gives players in multiplayer a SLOWER death than a normal “modern world” based FPS actually proved to make the game MORE FUN AND COMPETITIVE. Anyone who has dabbled in COD or Counterstrike style games knows why.
So it wouldn’t necessarily dawn on Bungie that extending killtimes further would ruin the series, since longer killtimes birthed its popularity in the first place. Yet this has been the case.
Full Stop: Now imagine a world with faster weapon killtimes across the board. Not three automatic rifle bullets to the foot quick, like COD, just CE style gun damage.
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Armor Abilities: The hate these quirky gimmicks receive isn’t entirely unwarranted, but they could be more well received if they didn’t tend to drastically slow the game’s pace even more than weaker weapons already have, due to their defensive capabilities. CASE IN POINT: ARMORLOCK easily the most hated. With better guns, haters wouldn’t even notice b/c their arguments are based on slow gameplay.
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Killstreak weapons: With competent faster killing loadout weapons, the advantages of killstreak weapons no longer seem so OP. Getting a Scattergun or whatnot would not grant automatic kills.
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Garbage automatics: Now here’s where it gets interesting. Complaints #3 and #4 seem to be opposed to each other. One side thinks automatics need a boost, so they don’t suck in their intended close range, but #4 proponents would disagree, b/c they think stronger autos would ruin the skilled play aspect of a strong utility gun, which is already too weak in their eyes and needs 4sk at bare minimum. So buffed automatics are out of the question b/c they would turn the game into a spray n’ pray fest.
The real answer is, ala CE, both sets of weapons need a boost. Even in close range, autos can have slightly slower killtimes than a 4sk or 3sk utility weapon and retain their dominance in close range with faster killtimes across the board, due to the ease of use of the automatic at that range. WITH A SMALLER WINDOW OF ERROR THAT COMES WITH A FASTER KILLTIME, GETTING A 3SK OR A 4SK AGAINST A RAPIDLY KILLING AUTOMATIC IS MUCH HARDER THAN A 5SK AGAINST A PUNY SLOW KILLING AUTOMATIC, assuming that in both cases, the utility gun has a faster natural killtime than the auto. Human beings can only react so quickly.
Faster killtimes then would mean that auto users would have capable death machines and the MOST SKILLED utility users could still get kills with those guns at close range, rewarding their skill.
BOTH SIDES WOULD GET THEIR WISH!!!
- And obviously, the need for teamshotting to kill anyone would go out the window. Smart team play would still be rewarded, but the bunching that occurs in Reach would be gone due to its necessity disappearing with faster kill times.
343 please understand this, and simply speed up killtimes across the board for all weapons! It will solve everything!!
PLEASE PARTICIPATE IN THE POLL AND THANKS FOR READING!