Knighty

In Halo movement, grenades, melees, powerups and power weapons are all significant to combat as well as your spawn weapon. At a certain point you so empower the player off spawn that these things become much less relevant. If your aim is good enough with the very fast killing spawn weapon, you need nothing else. There is a sweet spot where the utility weapon both empowers the individual by killing fast enough AND doesn't kill so fast that it makes everything else irrelevant. A sweet spot where who sees who first is less significant than it is in point and click reflex shooters like the ones you've listed. We all know this intuitively, none of us want a gun which has an optimum kill time of 0.1 seconds at all ranges as the starting weapon. We then need to find that sweet spot. What we know for sure is 1.6 seconds aint it. Fastest possible kill time and average kill time is part of this but it isn't the only part because I think I agree that a gun which COULD kill very quickly but usually killed 3 times longer would be very frustrating to use.

Sure. The get out of jail free thing is an issue in 5 and Infinite. And it was also an issue in H3, not so much because of movement but because of a random spread + slow killing BR. But H5 didn't combine slow TTKs with get out of jail free movement. Because it didn't actually have a slow TTK. And Infinite has less get out of jail free movement options (no thrust by default and a slower sprint, although shields recharging while sprinting is problematic) with a slower TTK. I think my wider point is there is no straightforward arc with Halo games. Mostly they've gone backwards (away from the Halo formula and away from competitive merit) in some ways and stayed true to the Halo formula in other ways. Sometimes the game has moved away from the Halo formula in ways that have both added competitive merit in certain ways and detracted from it in other ways. For example, the movement skill ceiling in 5 was very, very high. Problem was, it made moving around the map a totally different experience to how Halo used to feel (away from the Halo formula). Plus, whilst it didn't quite separate combat and movement like sprint had done previously (because the transition between combat and movement was relatively smooth) it nonetheless did maintain a separation which is bad for Halo. Now imagine if it was possible to shoot whilst sprinting (but not strafe perhaps), thrusting, clambering and sliding... well you'd have had an extraordinarily deep game with a colossal skill ceiling. But it would still feel very different to traditional Halo.

Yeah I couldn't face trying to shoot the BR with less aim assist up close given how aiming feels. Like I'm not great at FPS controller games but I've played A LOT of Halo and when I miss in MCC or in Warzone I know it's my own fault. In this I feel like I'm being forced to wrestle with the aiming system.

So some of these sandbox weapons are actually pretty good. There are multiple mid tier weapons that reward aiming skill and outplay potential. Watching pros last night 3 shot kill guys with the mangler was pretty cool. Of course the BR should kill quicker and be harder to shoot (at certain ranges it's fine, at certain ranges it's impossible to miss) which would massively help but anyway.

I'm totally with you on honeymoon phases. But the pistol was 1.2 sec TTK right? People felt like H5 wasn't Halo DESPITE the TTK on the pistol. It was other things that were the problem.

They've got to change some of these settings. OS needs to be much stronger, rockets need 4 in the chamber or perhaps on a 90 second timer. Oddball can have 3 rounds but it needs to be total score not a point for winning the round. Perhaps drop rounds to 4 minutes and play all 3 every game.

Viewing numbers are, I reckon, pretty healthy. Particularly given the viewing mode that the Halo channel is using is abysmal. 82k watching Infinite on Twitch and a few more thousand on Youtube isn't too bad. Obviously not all are watching HCS but most are. Also, the competitor numbers are VERY encouraging.

I missed this when you first posted it, apologies. I play with true Halo casuals, folk who'll drop in and drop out of Halo, who'd NEVER post on Reddit and who'd never have 'screamed' adapt in 2016 because they got bored with H5 very early and didn't like the complicated button combos for movement. These are folk who've played very little of Reach, 4 or 5 but who have genuinely enjoyed Infinite so far. In no way am I saying that infinite is different to 5 in the most fundamental ways, but I am saying that in some important ways Infinite is closer to classic Halo, and the following genuinely matters, FEELS closer to classic Halo to true casuals, than 4 or 5 did. This isn't some massive internet debate to them, they have no skin in the game, it's just their experience. And I was trying to help articulate some of that experience because when the population doesn't drop anywhere as much as 5's did (although I guess we'll have no real way of knowing assuming we don't know 5's pop numbers), it'll be because in certain ways (perhaps objectively unimportant ways but to many they'll FEEL important), the game is more like 1-3 than 5 was. They're also much more sensible than Reddit - totally ok with BR starts, don't understand the lack of in BTB, quite enjoying no radar when they play ranked.

First post in ages. I forgot I had an account and have been lurking for weeks. Really cool to see chaos theory and Lemon still posting, you guys taught me what Halo should be when I first got into it with H3. I think some of you guys need to think through why this is getting good feedback at the moment. It's partly because in some important ways it's a return to more classic Halo. It's a big deal that my scope on the BR is a real scope, that there are no grenade hit markers, that there is a ranked playlist with decent objective settings out of the gate (aside from oddball weirdness). The maps aren't good but they could be worse, now I've played more they're definitely better than Reach's maps. Aesthetically it also 'feel's more like Halo should feel and that's with a really weird focus on human industrial spaces in the maps. It's also a big deal that it has a functioning BTB playlist out of the gate. The game has loads of problems but the only two that really matter is the aiming and the BR's issues. They won't fix either, but if they did this competitive scene would be very strong. Maybe it'll be strong anyway. They sure do love solutions in search of problems though don't they. Player outlines.. a waste of time except to sell skins. Clamber... a waste of time that impacts negatively on the game. Why do they still need clamber in the game? They got rid of the spartan abilities mostly, what does it add? Oh right I know, it makes Halo like other shooters out there. What they don't realise is Halo's map design, and higher jump (because you're a super soldier in a massive suit) should totally remove the need for clamber.

Has Neighbor's role at 343 changed recently?

Removing spread would massively improve the game on its own. That's not going to happen though.

Is that guy for real? 343 have released two broken products in a row, one of which was so pathetically broken that it's extraordinary they even still exist as a game developer. And yet he has the gall to claim that consumers are entitled? 343 employees have no moral capital to make comments like this.

Is there a bracket anywhere?

Assuming some of these maps are well suited for competitive play.... ecouraging an evolving meta is a good thing for a competitive game, a 'knowledge arms race' is a good way to look at it. And so the 'but I have more fun on maps I know' argument would work if we weren't a competitive community. But we are. And it's one of the basic axioms of a place like this that the level of fun is directly related to the level of competitiveness. Wanting to limit competitiveness for the sake of 'fun' is what Halo developers have been doing for years and what the casual community thinks they want. It's not what we want. Sure it pushes folk outside their comfort zone and when you're playing for real money 'winning' normally takes precedent over pure competitiveness (see h5 pros), but I'd of thought the H1 community, out of all of us, would be most willing to push themselves out of their comfort zones for the sake of an evolving meta and thus a more competitive experience.

Yeah I've been getting that. Seems to have stopped recently mind.