I used to think of bloom as a skill gap - pace your shots to get the best out of your weapon.
But then people pointed out that ‘spamming’ wins the encounter anyway.
So the skill gap is actually having good enough aim that your bloom reticule never comes off the target.
If you are far enough away from the the target that bloom causes you to miss you probably should choose a better weapon and/or get closer to your target.
So what I’m reading is that really good players (good aim, weapon selection, and control of engagement) don’t even notice bloom.
Bloom is so bad, and now even the sniper can’t remain accurate unscoped. Skill is punished while RNG is rewarded with faster TTKs.
Its genuinely disappointing to see 343 regress in this way when most precision weapons in Halo 5 shot straight and the first major thing they ever did was reduce bloom in the Reach TU and add no bloom playlists.
There are so many better ways to limit a precision weapons effectiveness at range Adding projectiles instead of hitscan(or pseudo-histcan for the pedants), predictable and controllable recoil, lower aim assist and magnetism(why on Earth are they raising it?) are all vastly superior to bloom.
Bloom needs to go on precision weapons. Hopefully 343 does a balance pass and removes it at some point. Balance weapons with slower projectiles or something instead, make them take skill at longer distances, not RNG.
I think people massively overrate its impact on Infinite.
its only on 2 weapons. One of which was likely given bloom solely to weaken the weapon (Sidekick) and the other was so OP they’re already nerfing it (Commando)
Bloom isn’t anywhere close to as prevalent as in Reach. Now I don’t have exact statistics here but I’d say even on the weapons that actually have it (which is very few as I already stated) its a bit less than TU playlists were in Reach… So its not that strong or impactful.
Won’t be relevant at all in Ranked modes. BR starts renders this an irrelevant aspect compared to flight where all you had was Sidekick/AR.
I just think this is overblown, like I may dislike the sprint in Infinite but if you were to pretend that sprint is anything close to as strong/impactful as it was in Reach/4 heck maybe even 5 I’d say your exaggerating.
Bloom was impactful because it was basically on every precision weapon, was extremely potent, and you (as players) had zero control over it, even if you went into competitive settings you were still forced to deal with it constantly. Compare that to now where if you don’t pick up Sidekick (will this even be a pickup in Ranked modes?) and don’t just constantly spam Commando all game its very easy to ignore/overlook.
In what way can bloom be improved as an RNG feature?
Either you have a roll of a dice, or you don’t.
RNG and “manipulating” it, always come down to probability.
If you’re timing your shots to always have 100% accuracy, and your hit percentage the same, anyone who “spam” will get in more shots than you, and by the time you’re one hit away from dying, you may have two more shots to make before killing your spamming opponent. In that timeframe, you can end up dead before you can make the final shot.
Let’s say making six shots takes 2.4 seconds, that’s 400ms to get full accuracy back between shots.
Then, let’s spam a little, eight shots in 2.4 seconds, 300ms between shots, but full accuracy isn’t maintained. However, that’s two more bullets than before. With the sixth and potentially killing bullet coming in at 1.8 seconds, more than half a second before the killing bullet at 2.4 seconds. In addition to that, there’s one extra bullet incoming before the killing shot of not spamming, also potentially lethal, then at the last bullet, it’s a potential trade.
That’s two extra bullets to use to avoid being certainly killed, and a third one for a potential trade. At that point, even a 33% accuracy will statistically lead to living, or it being a trade.
Even if one or two shots before getting the pacer to lethal, it’s still a one in three chance to get a trade. Not ideal odds but it’s possible.
So, with that in mind, what kind of improvements to RNG features can be made?
Still annoying in CE on both the AR and Magnum. I don’t really like the argument of “it was this way in older Halos just do it like that!!” I just think bloom is an annoying mechanic in general.
Bloom is still in Halo to keep players from getting murdered across the map with an assault rifle, and to make sure snipers make their shots count instead of spamming shots at a player and getting a kill. I actually like bloom in Halo, but I don’t think that one part of the community is necessarily wrong about this. It also depends on how strong the bloom is, and if the bloom is unnecessary on a certain weapon.
I think people are exagerating the Bloom in this game from what I played Bloom is only present in the Commando and the Sidekick. And I was fine with that as both weapons would be waaay too overpowered with no bloom. The sidekick would just be a precision weapon thats viable and the commando’s TTK was too low so bloom allows good players to do well with it
You are aware that there are other ways to prevent cross mapping right? Like limiting projectile range, or slowing projectile speed? You seem to be specifically talking about Reach balance which was awful. Stop making bad excuses. Also Infinite is the first Halo game in which snipers have had bloom. They had a minor amount of spread in past games, and yes, spread is different than bloom.
Even just yesterday someone said that 343 is lying about the Sniper unscoped bloom being in other Halo games and someone literally said “the Game files I have open right now in Halo 3 literally show that there is an unscoped bloom that offsets its accuracy when hip fired”
Halo has always ALWAYS had bloom, and in the weapons it DIDNT have bloom there was a lot of weird funky stuff in place of it. the BR in Halo 3 was particularly bad for the weird stuff. First bullet was accurate. Bullet 2 and Bullet 3 though. Went where it wanted to. This resulted in Moving targets having a TTK that was super high at times. The plasma rifle in H3 was ATROCIOUS for bloom. Spray it for longer than a second and the thing was like putting your hand over the top of a hose. HOWEVER tapping these weapons? Suddenly they were accurate.
While bloom certainly varied from series to series (Like H2 didn’t have bloom for most weapons except the the Full Autos as far as I remember) it did exist.
Also dthe argument OP is using is the No True Scotsman argument. Literally a fallacy. “Everyone that is a Halo 1 or 2 veteran and actually LIKES Halo agrees”
Well, I don’t agree, and I’ve been playing Halo since it came out, and Love it. So please don’t speak for me.
Edit: Also I don’t think there is any AAA modern shooter that doesn’t have Bloom. So why is this the only community that gets bent out of shape over it? The RNG Argument is invalid, Bloom controls effective distance of a weapon and there will always be a Set range and situation in Which weapon spam may be more feasible than Methodical. The argument to do Away with bloom doesn’t fix the weapon spam problem it ENABLES the weapon spam problem because once within a set range you only have 1 course of action or 1 choice. Maximum rate of fire speed, and there is no reason to set a rhythm to a gun.
Dude. Spamming your shots gets you killed. Bloom is there to encourage trigger discipline. Not spam. If they can still kill you while spamming shots then a nerf needs to take place to fix that.
The height of Skilled Competition. This is what amuses me the most; this constant battle for Casual vs Competitive, and this over-emphasis on “you’ve got to be good at the game” (while simultaneously making demands to tailor that game to a specific skill set) and then railing against a visual mechanic that assists in skill growth.
I just explained how it works with randomness attached to bloom.
Spamming gives you a chance to kill your assailant before they kill you.
Firing faster than someone who paces their shots for 100% accuracy with their weapon will get more shots in, and, with randomness, have a chance of killing the pacer faster than the pacer can do it.
What kind of nerf would that even be?
You really can’t have bloom, and randomness to encourage trigger discipline, and then not have it be random.
Well, you could make it so that bullets can fly in all manner of directions but at that point you enter a realm of ridiculousness, and you’re still not really getting away from spamming if people find the sweet spot of firing while retaining enough accuracy to matter, a different kind of “trigger discipline” than waiting for full accuracy.
Why would we even “want” people to to have trigger discipline and not just set firing rates in the first place?
But if you’re not pacing it for 100% accuracy, you leave it to randomness, and that’s away from skill.
It’s the randomness aspect people dislike with bloom.
And where exactly is the sweetspot?
You pace for 100%
I pace for 95% 19/20
You then pace for 90% 18/20
I pace for 85% 17/20
You pace for 80% 16/20
Every time you pay accuracy for time, you decrease your chances slightly, which is something I can afford to do myself to gain that little extra time for a chance to take you out first. Because you already decreased your chances of killing me first, you don’t retain a much higher chance than me. Then we may jump back up again and start that dance again. We start spamming, just slightly faster than the other.
You leave quite a lot to chance for the “skill” of pacing shots, and what does that skill then matter when it’s down to a roll of the dice who wins and loses?
Dude. There are visual cues in Halo Infinite to show you how accurate your weapon is. Use the weapon right and maybe you’ll hit something.
Bloom is there to prevent spam like I’ve said for the umpteenth time. It’s not a roll of the dice. You’re being given cues on how much accuracy to expect on the weapons that have bloom mechanics in place.