Halo: Reach Discussion

[ejburke]

I just think straight nerfing the melee isn't the answer. It should be able to deplete all remaining health when the shield is down. You have this nice visible shield pop telling you that it's safe to melee. You don't have to continue wittling him down, until you figure that he's half-health, before you melee.

I also think it's a problem that in the case of a pure melee fight, the guy who lands the first punch always wins. He's ahead of the damage over time curve and all he has to do is keep throwing punches. I know that's a special case, but it highlights that the melee mechanic is kind of thoughtless. For being one of the "Holy Triangle", it strikes me as needing more design attention.

[Warsaw]

See, that's basically how it was in the first game. You didn't have to try to keep whittling him down before the melee, it just happened when the excess damage to the shields carried over. I don't call it nerfed, I call it balanced. There is no reason a punch should take out shields or all health in a single blow, anyways, especially considering that you don't have 3500 J behind your punch and you do have 3500 J behind each of your assault rifle bullets. I'm not even trying to be a realism freak here, it just logically doesn't make any sense no matter how you slice it.

As for the "Holy Triangle", that's some bullshit Bungie invented after they [wrongfully] thought it needed to be there starting in Halo 2. In creating this bullshit triangle, they turned Halo into a melee/grenade shitfest. Even Halo 1 with infinite grenades was never that bad.

[ejburke]

The damage bleed made for some inconsistencies. Obviously, when you play a game a ton, you get a feel for it and you could predictably finish people off. But depending on what combination of attacks you used to take a guy's shields down, he might be one melee away from dying or two. I think that's a problem, but I imagine most people didn't give it a second thought.

As for the triangle or tripod or whatever, it's only about 42% bullshit. If we go with the tripod analogy, guns are the massive, throbbing, turgid cock and the other two are just a couple of legs. Grenades and melee will never be the equal of guns, but that doesn't mean they can't have as much utility as possible.

The kernel of truth that spawned the Holy Tripod is that we are constantly evaluating whether we should be pulling the trigger, throwing a punch, or lobbing a grenade. That is what's stimulating about Halo for a lot of people. Whereas, I can't stand Call of Duty, because they trade off a lot of tactical opportunities for aiming down dumb-ass iron sights. But hey, what do I know? A million people walking around with cheap night vision goggles and remote-controlled cars packed with fake C4 can't be wrong.

Where was I? So, while gunplay is important, I believe grenades and melee should be attractive options that occupy tactical niches and are fair. Halo 1 melee was the most fair, bu its tactical niche was a bit fuzzy. I just think it can be done better, is all I'm saying.

But I've always missed the Halo 1 frag grenades. My theory about all the Reach grenade spam is: that's all they're good for. If I could rely on my grenades to fucking land where I throw them and detonate, I would be less likely to chuck them blindly around a corner and cross my fingers.

[Pooky]

Where was I? So, while gunplay is important, I believe grenades and melee should be attractive options that occupy tactical niches and are fair. Halo 1 melee was the most fair, bu its tactical niche was a bit fuzzy. I just think it can be done better, is all I'm saying.

You might not say that if you obsessively melee whored as much as I did in Halo 1. Just ask Teekup, I was deadly with that shit on Halo PC. The melee attack did exactly what it was supposed to do and it did fine. There's no reason a melee attack should ever win over a gun in a straight fight, yet that's the mistake all modern FPS games seem to be making.

But I've always missed the Halo 1 frag grenades. My theory about all the Reach grenade spam is: that's all they're good for. If I could rely on my grenades to fucking land where I throw them and detonate, I would be less likely to chuck them blindly around a corner and cross my fingers.

If you're talking grenade behavior, and not grenade damage, then yes. Halo 1 grenades were absolutely fucking ridiculous, nerfing their radius and damage was the best thing Bungie ever did IMO. I knew people who were so good with the frags, they could place one precisely on any point of the map from any other point. It made the small maps pretty retarded after a while.

Really though, a lot of the grenades inconsistency comes from Bungie's newfound love for putting random jutting pieces of geometry all over their maps. They started that with Halo 3, and carried it over into Reach.

[DarkHalo003]

I don't know if its just me, but doesn't Breakpoint look like Snow Grove? Looks like the same concept, but smaller and slimmed down.

It's nothing like Snow Grove at all. It's kind of like an outdoor Rat's Nest mixed with Sandtrap in terms of scale and proportion. The mix of internal structures and external terrain make it a great map for Invasion.

[annihilation]

Tempest is a essentially Valhalla.
Anchor 9 is similar to The Pit.

Also, MLG is a really fun playlist (everyone is horrible in this playlist) just make sure you have a good team.

[Hotrod]

Tempest is a essentially Valhalla.
Anchor 9 is similar to The Pit.

Also, MLG is a really fun playlist (everyone is horrible in this playlist) just make sure you have a good team.

Tempest is completely different from Valhalla...I mean yeah sure, you have the two bases that have a gravity lift but aside from that, they're completely different in size and in layout. And yeah, I agree with you when you say that Anchor 9 is similar to the pit.

And I dunno, the MLG playlist just doesn't appeal to me. Maybe it's due to the fact that I just can't get used to the tweaks they've made, or maybe it's because it's a DMR spamfest. Either way, I don't like it :S

[annihilation]

Actually Valhalla is very similar to Tempest if it was shrunken.
It even has a crashed Longsword instead of a Pelican and a very similar rock layout.

[Pooky]

Tempest is completely different from Valhalla...I mean yeah sure, you have the two bases that have a gravity lift but aside from that, they're completely different in size and in layout. And yeah, I agree with you when you say that Anchor 9 is similar to the pit.

And I dunno, the MLG playlist just doesn't appeal to me. Maybe it's due to the fact that I just can't get used to the tweaks they've made, or maybe it's because it's a DMR spamfest. Either way, I don't like it :S

It's MLG, how could you expect anything other than human midrange headshot weapon spam.

[sevlag]

person cant accept fact new armor cant be added, then goes back on himself and says he never said it...also "ujcap is now a injoke"