Blackeyed Blond

I swear 343 are obsessed with the “scavenging” aspect of the game like it’s some brand new concept. We’ve picked up weapons around the maps in every Halo game (some more than others). Power weapons, grenades, power ups, niche weapons… there has always been reason to pick stuff up. I don’t need to be presented with a new weapon or pickup every 5 steps though.

Probably the best settings I could have hoped for all things considered. I agree with everyone that the BR primary is too easy/slow but given the current sandbox I think it’s the best option for now. I’d prefer something like the no bloom reach DMR with less zoom or the H5 pistol. For me a lot of it will come down to whether the maps are fun to play and right now they’re all pretty bland. I’m hoping for some remakes because I don’t trust 343 to deliver anything great. I’d love to see extraction as a gametype return also, it’s so much better than strongholds in my opinion.

I thought about that but then I added the word “proper” into my statement so I didn’t have to include it. Garbage map. As someone else mentioned Countdown has verticality but it’s more like stacking so it’s pretty segmented on each level. I do enjoy Countdown quite a bit though.

Thinking about grappling from OS to top snipe on Damnation has me shook. Feels like we haven’t had a proper vertical map since Construct?

Why is it that in games like Overwatch or Dota (or most other competetive titles) there are balance patches released at least every couple of months but with Halo you might be lucky to have AR starts removed 3 years down the road? Even dating back to Reach, 343 refused to patch the whole game to 85% bloom so we got stuck with the stupid Title Update vs Vanilla settings and further splitting of the community. They wanted to appease the vanilla kids, and continue to hold that mindset. 343 needs to normalize regular balance updates just like every other dev if they want their game to be successful at both a casual and competetive level for more than the first season.

Something I’ve noticed with the BR is that the 4th shot usually finishes stripping the shield and will bleed through to get the kill. It makes it hard to tell when you are truly one shot against a BR user. I think they could could probably tweak some damage scales to fix this but still keep it as a 4sk, with perhaps slightly less red reticle range and aim assist, and slightly faster fire rate. I feel in that clip that the BR is serving an intended function of backing down a sniper who keeps poking out. Snakebite is just used to sniper = free kills for a long time now.

If 343 wants to make giant maps they should be taking inspiration from Sandtrap or Headlong, not Orbital…

H5 kids lol… The reason people are complaining about the strafe being too fast is because the guns/aiming doesn’t work.

But why do I have a fireteam if I’m searching solo?

For anyone who tried BTB can you tell me why certain players on my team are appearing in a different color? When I look in settings apparently these are my “fireteam leaders” but I was playing solo and there was nothing different about these players compared to the rest of the team. It’s just more visual disruption.

It’s a shame 343/Microsoft are running the tournament scene these days so we can’t just strip the game down to it’s most competitive state with custom settings and forge. We’re forced to compete on the garbage they give us. This game will have without a doubt the worst tournament settings we have ever seen (excluding the MLG H4 launch event).

One of the loading screen tips says that your reticle will turn red to indicate enemies are in range. Umm… 343 you sure about that? Another load tip encourages you to scavenge bodies and weapon racks to gain an advantage. Why don’t you just give us a decent gun off spawn? And finally another load tip basically says how cool descope is. I guess they learned their lesson on that one.

In what we’ve played so far, I’d rank infinite maps as Behemoth > Recharge > Live Fire > Bazaar. Behemoth looked great, and I feel it would play well with BR starts. It will suck to play with no utility weapon though. I wish they would have opened up the front of the bases but I can live with it. Recharge will probably be a FFA favorite and was okay all things considered. That said I tried to throw a grenade cross map and it got stuck in the ceiling rafters because why wouldn’t it. It’s not very good but wasn’t a drag to play on either. Live Fire just felt like someone was messing around with forge objects and threw something together just in time to demo the game. Very lazy and uninspired map . Bazaar just feels really bad. Everything is set at a 90 degree angle, the rooms are cluttered with poor dancefloors, and the clamber spam was particularly bad here.

Some of my most fun in Reach came from nudging teammates off the top of Spire. Sad days indeed. RIP collision.

On first glance Launch Site looks like a remake of Countdown. More remakes in this game would probably be a good thing because the old maps won’t be laden with clamber spots.