The-Halo-Bulletin-5113 Weapon balancing, end in sight.
The-Halo-Bulletin-5113 Weapon balancing, end in sight.
Well, if people aren't somewhat happy with what is being said about weapons in here then maybe the final results will. http://blogs.halowaypoint.com/Headlines/post/2013/05/01/The-Halo-Bulletin-5113.aspx
Whenever good friends stop by, I tend to ask ‘em if they’d like to go for a ride in the new Warthog. This is especially the case when the friend in question is a 3-time Halo National Champion. Last week, Dave “Walshy” Walsh was in town, and yes, this Warthog is not only drive-able, but is also a total monstrous beast that little children should not be playing around (Watch out, kid.).
After we discussed what an excellent driver / gunner Warthog duo we would make, Walshy and I swung by the 343 Multiplayer playlab to get hands on with some of the current weapon tuning efforts. We played several matches together, and I got a chance to catch up with him after he stopped by. Here were his impressions on what he saw as well as his dominance with the Assault Rifle.
Hey, Walshy! What were your first impressions with the new weapon tuning? Did anything immediately stand out as different, enjoyable, confusing, etc.?
New weapon tuning felt much better! Three features stood out the most to me:
- The Battle Rifle being a 4-shot makes it a force to be reckoned with, no longer is the DMR the go-to choice for top players.
- Decreased magnetism on automatics definitely adds more skill to those short-range fights.
- The LightRifle's increased rate of fire while zoomed in will possibly make it the best long-range starting weapon in the game.
I’ve certainly seen quite a bit more LightRifle in our playtests. The slightly increased ROF when zoomed makes it even deadlier at range. So tell me – was the 4-shot BR as crispy as you expected?
Cookie Crisp crispy! I might have to start doing the wolf howl after each kill! On a slightly more serious note, the 4-shot kills give the game the faster kill time that I loved from previous Halo games.
Walshy and me, catching up with Xbox LIVE's Major Nelson.
We played a 1 vs. 1 on Haven with Assault Rifles only, and I think we both agreed that the new tuning made it quite interesting and different. How did you feel about the reduced auto-aim on the automatics?
First off, you and I both agree that I am the best 1 vs. 1 Haven ARs only player in the world. Secondly, I think this will only result in even more dominance from me in 1 vs. 1 Haven ARs! I think this change accounts for the few automatics in the top level of play to take slightly more skill to use. However, this change primarily affects the casual level of play, which is the majority of Halo players – overall, I think everyone will be very happy with this change.
How do you think these tuning updates will affect gameplay, both Matchmaking and tournament play?
Both tournament and Matchmaking play will see more variance with starting weapons. Biggest difference in my opinion will be in the short and long-range game since the DMR currently is the go-to weapon for almost every situation. With the updates to the BR and LR, we now have weapons that, on paper, are superior to the DMR. I'm excited for this change and am excited to see how it changes the game!
Walshy – Thanks for stopping by, checking everything out, and showing me the proper way to shoot an AR. Hope to see you again soon!Current State of Weapon Tuning
As you probably know by now, we have been actively tuning some of the weapons in the Halo 4 sandbox. We are still regularly playtesting, and excited to say that we’re nearing the end of tweaking and tuning each weapon. At this point, we are happy to share several key items that we’re looking forward to in the schedule:
- In the month of May, we’ll be inviting a small group of community members into the studio to get a sneak peak at the new weapon tuning. We are finalizing this list and will announce once we have done so.
- We’ll also be bringing you a live stream that will allow everyone to check out some of the weapon tuning in action before the settings deploy globally. This live stream will feature insight and commentary from designers, as well as gameplay from community members and 343 staff. This live stream will give you a close look at how the newly tuned weapons behave alongside one another. Once the live stream is officially on the calendar, we’ll announce the date and time. The location, however, will absolutely be http://www.twitch.tv/343industries.
- Before we go live, we’ll be detailing the final changes for each weapon on Halo Waypoint. This content will give you a detailed breakdown of what to expect when the tuning goes live.
- Our final changes, once solidified, will go live across all Halo 4 playlists on Monday, June 3rd.
This schedule will ensure that the new weapon tuning receives proper testing across all of Halo 4’s game modes, input from various community leaders and that the entire community will be able to get a detailed look at everything before the final update goes live. Once this update is released, we estimate that we won’t be making adjustments for at least several weeks as we examine the results of how this update changes gameplay behavior, strategy, loadout selection and more.
This is most encouraging and I look forward to playing on the new settings.
I am also glad to see more new forge maps are finally being added into MM.
:slow clap:
I'm especially looking forward to the LR tweaks, it's really frustrating trying to fill out my kill challenge for that gun right now since it's so grossly underpowered compared to the DMR.
Getting a bunch of new maps into matchmaking, too. About damned time.
Sounds good all around. It's too bad that it's almost surely too late to save MM.
I think all these things were equally detrimental. The problems with theater, film rendering, and working fileshares put a huge dent in the user created Halo content, which was a massive mistake. However, for me the number one thing is actually the maps. That's closely followed by a bunch of details like weapon balance, etc.
On whether it's too late, I agree that a lot of people are still out there and own the game and just aren't playing it (me, for example), but there's now a massive coordination problem in getting them back in that is insurmountable I think. Think about all the people who already quit. For them, the game was not good enough to be fun even though many of their friends were still playing it. At this point things are even worse because many of their friends have quit too. There's no way they are going come back unless they can easily find good matches and a bunch of their buddies get back into playing. Meanwhile their buddies aren't going to play unless a bunch of their buddies get back into playing. Etc. If they (we) all just agreed to start playing again on a certain date once someone has conclusively verified that they fixed the game, all would be fine. However, that coordination problem is just too great to overcome. It has almost never been done in history.
At this point the only hope is a fixed H5 (one way of solving the coordination problem would be a new title, an agreed date upon which a lot of people start playing again), and even that may not be enough because they've burned a lot of capital on the last two games. I think H5 is no longer a no brainer purchase for a lot of people.
Not only that, but how many players have left and actually prefer the style of play that a competitor (Battlefield, Call Of Duty, Gears, etc.) provides? How many of those folks could you possibly even hope to win back? It's quite possible that Reach screwed the pooch for the rest of the franchise, from a matchmaking perspective.
Meh, as long as I can find matches I won't consider matchmaking "dead". Granted the connections are usually sucky in playlists with smaller populations, but overall I'm still enjoying it.
I am consistantly getting frustrated at the connections in this game. It seems now after 12a that the game connects people with the crappiest connection and the opponents are bullet sponges. It was very frustrating for myself last night. It's not often I lose a BR vs DMR battle at close range, last night I was losing landing 7 bursts on the chest and the shields still didn't pop.
Thankfully I'm still trying to beat GTAIV.
I was having the same issues yesterday, but was playing a ton of foreign people. I wish there were connection options for mathcmaking like H3 that allowed to search for "good connection", but oh well.
I should be playing this more, toss me an invite some time for some team bullet sponge.
Halo is still one of the top played games. CoD is the only FPS franchise beating it.
Unless you count Call Of Duty twice and two sports franchises: http://majornelson.com/2013/05/01/live-activity-for-week-of-april-22nd/
when this goes live ill take another look at the game, it seems my favorite weapon the laser rifle has gotten even better, and the lamest weapon dmr's uber aim assist has been toned down.
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played some Halo 4 last night with some 2o2p'ers. It was really fun. I hate the new maps.
I'm at CSR 11 on big team infinity. Got first a couple times. So weird how that happens after I'm away for months.
If you haven't played since the TU, then your TruSkill was basically 0. Everybody's TruSkill was reset with the TU and CSR addition.
Yes I know. I meant I started at 0 last night and in 4-5 games was an 11.
CSR is a joke btw. It in no way indicates skill in Infinity Slayer, BTB, or any other solo list. Finish first on your team and you will go up.
Actually, as far as btb, I believe if you finish in the top 2 or 3 on your team, you will rank up. Got a 50 on my second account a few days ago in btb and I didn't finish at the top of the leaderboard for my team every game and still ranked up. Depending on how good your friends are, it can actually be a benefit to play the slayer playlists solo if you're looking to rank up. Less competition for kills = more kills for you.
Yep, shox and I hit 41 a couple days ago and hardly play BTB...
Sounds like I need to start using the Light Rifle in BTB.
Yes! Once you get the hang of it, you'll never use the DMR outside of SWAT again.