Halo: Reach Discussion

[FRain]

I'm liking what I see in the new maps, and I'm REALLY enjoying the look of Highlands. I think that will be the map I look forward to the most. I realized how visually un-interesting all of the stock maps (even the campaign missions) were until I saw these.

[Arteen]

Giving the DMR 15 shots was a great move. I'm glad Bungie made that change, as it makes the DMR more enjoyable to use in both multiplayer and campaign/firefight. It's too bad the pistol's magazine size wasn't increased to 10 or 12 after the beta though.

[Pooky]

By contrast, same situation in Halo 1: guy hits you, you recoil and throw a plasma grenade. Most likely you both die. At best you kill him and survive. At worst you miss the grenade and get killed or kill yourself.

If it was Halo 1 the guy wouldn't be able to melee you in the first place by just barreling around the corner like a tard. Without lunge the melee takes more conscious thought to get into position.

It's not the armour abilities. It's the over powered melee, the melee lunge, the bloom (to a small degree, but not much), and the reticle magnetism. Also I swear that the hit boxes are bigger than Halo 1, but I have to see the files.

Yeah, those are all the points I made back when I first said this game (competitive multiplayer that is) sucked and nobody believed me.

I think the biggest problem with Armor Abilities is how they are incorporated into the game. AA's should be pick up items on the map and treated as power weapons because that's exactly what they are in previous Halo's you would never start out with an Active Camo or Overshield you would fight for them and pick them up on the map, and they might only spawn 2-3 times over the course of an entire 4v4 Slayer game. They should not be constant abilities that you spawn with that you can use whenever you like.

You know I never thought of it that way but I agree. I never thought the Camo or OS were really useful enough on big vehicle maps because they run out too quickly. If you could start the timer yourself after picking them up as an ability it might be more interesting.

Except armor lock. AL's really good at setting up unwinnable situations.

So is Sprint. Hurr double melee.

We all complain about BR/DMR spamming, but we didn't complain so much about the pistol in the first game. I think that's because while they all do the same thing, you can fight back in the first game and because the pistol also took some skill to use well.

I whined about the Pistol pretty hard back in the day. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that I realize how perfectly balanced it really was. Going back to playing Halo 1 I can see how the Pistol really does give you a fighting chance in any situation and takes a world more skill than the DMR.

What the big deal is is that the game is too easy to pick up. Games are games, yes, but when it's easy to pick up and go it gets aggravating when you know you have more practise but there's no return on it. As a result, the game loses players. Who wants to play a game where you get killed by the new guy every two seconds through no fault in execution of your own? Who wants to play a game where the only way to win is to exploit the same system every single time? Like I said before, who needs guns? We have fists of fucking adamantium.

That's the trend with all modern FPS games (read: MW2) which is why I stopped buying them. In fact I think I'm pretty much done buying new video games in general. They just seem to get more and more shitty each year.

camo in this game is hardly comparable to camo in the past games. i cant tell you how many times some random asshole jumps through the air and blasts me out of nowhere with camo and a shotgun or rockets in halo 3.

The camo was OP as FUCK in Halo 3 because it disabled your autoaim which is absolutely essential to aiming in that game. Seriously, if you go play CoD 4 then back to Halo 3 you see how incredibly shitty Halo 3's aiming controls are.

i love how even though most of the power weapons are on the map, you still have a choice of something decent to start with. that has always been a complaint while playing halo 2 and 3 for me. you spawn with such shitty weapons sometimes that all you can do is get killed by people with better weapons. at least now even if you just spawn with a pistol, you can have SOME form of defense (not to mention that the weapons dont all inherently suck like they did in halo 3. yes, im looking at you AR spawn. fuck you ar.)

Agree with this. The default spawning weapons in Halo 2 and 3 were so amazingly bad that once someone got a BR it was pretty much over for everyone else. Halo 3 made that problem even worse by making all the other guns suck balls. The only ones worth picking up besides the BR were the shotgun (just as a melee enhancer, not as a real weapon) and the sniper.

See, in the first game, the AR was a great spawn weapon. The only one that inherently sucked was the Plasma Pistol, but the Plasma Pistol is now useless compared to what it used to be. I'm sorry, but if you want over charge bolts to be the only useful thing, then just make it shoot overcharges.

The plasma pistol is actually scarily effective sometime. Just ask Sever.

Giving the DMR 15 shots was a great move. I'm glad Bungie made that change, as it makes the DMR more enjoyable to use in both multiplayer and campaign/firefight. It's too bad the pistol's magazine size wasn't increased to 10 or 12 after the beta though.

Yeah the guy who initially posted about that on Bungie.net made a good point. With a larger amount of rounds in the mag a more accurate player has the ability to engage multiple enemies before having to reload.

One other point I made back then is that hitscan bullets were a terrible decision. The thing that made maps like Blood Gulch have any flow at all is that players have a limited effective range with the Pistol. There's a certain distance beyond which you can see someone but not engage them directly. Reach doesn't have that. Any time you can see someone, you can hit them. This means that you have to spend the entire game cowering in cover because the second you stick your head out you'll get hit by a hail of DMR spam from everywhere. It's also part of the reason why light vehicles in Reach are so phenomenally useless, since there's no way to regenerate a vehicle's health you can just chip away at them from across the map until they explode. Bungie must have had their head up a donkey's ass when designing the vehicle damage system in this game.

[p0lar_bear]

I thought I posted a reply in the vein to Arteen's post, guess my internet ate it before it made it to the server. vOv

Giving the DMR 15 shots was a great move. I'm glad Bungie made that change, as it makes the DMR more enjoyable to use in both multiplayer and campaign/firefight. It's too bad the pistol's magazine size wasn't increased to 10 or 12 after the beta though.

Yeah the guy who initially posted about that on Bungie.net made a good point. With a larger amount of rounds in the mag a more accurate player has the ability to engage multiple enemies before having to reload.

Nearly all bullet weapons in this game need more shots per magazine, in my eyes. The magazine sizes in Halo 1 are ridiculous compared to 3 and Reach, (Pistol from 12 to 6, AR from 60 to 32, shotgun from 12 to 6), and I think it's a good thing. Sure, nubcakes that can't aim (like me lololol) would be rewarded with a kill or maybe two, but crackshots would be rewarded with multikills and not have to put up with people spawning behind them while they're out of ammo as often.

Course, I'm sure putting more ammo in magazines would cause issues elsewhere that I can't see from here...

[Kornman00]

For a second, I thought I was browsing bungie.net...

[Arteen]

More than in previous games, a lot of balance choices for multiplayer bleed into campaign/firefight in a really bad way. The shotgun is a prime example. It has only 6 shots and takes ages to reload, not to mention being a tad too weak.

A health system based around no-bleed-through shields, which essentially gives you a bit more durability in multiplayer? Screw you, because Elites don't play by those rules and can kill you in one punch at full health and half shields.

The grenade launcher's manual fire got needlessly nerfed after the beta to the point of being useless as anything other than a vehicle EMP. The primary fire is too weak, or the total ammo capacity is too small, for the weapon to ever be worth picking up. If you need an EMP weapon, you'll never have a problem finding a (much more versatile) plasma pistol.

Needler's targeting? Elites are just going to roll away, and they never have enough ammo. The plasma launcher, also nerfed after the beta, is similarly lacking. It's pretty ridiculous how the fuel rod is so overpowered, but enemies with the plasma launcher are all but nonthreatening.

The plasma grenade's short fuse and massive blast damage is fine in multiplayer, but a complete bitch in campaign.

Vehicles are useless, unreliable trash in both campaign/firefight and multiplayer. The rocket hog in particular is a joke. Seriously Bungie, would it kill you to put in a vehicle health meter?

The pistol is too wildly inaccurate and has too small a magazine size to be anything other than a shitty DMR, instead of being a useful weapon in its own right.

I get that weapons should have some consistency between modes, but the campaign would be a lot more fun if the "noob combo" wasn't the only effective way to play.

At least the needle rifle is pretty sweet in both modes.

[Kornman00]

Vehicles are useless, unreliable trash in both campaign/firefight and multiplayer. The rocket hog in particular is a joke. Seriously Bungie, would it kill you to put in a vehicle health meter?

Don't forget passengers. I never understood why they removed both of those after Halo 1 -_-

[annihilation]

^This

It makes it a lot harder to rotate my gunner and passenger.

[Pooky]

For a second, I thought I was browsing bungie.net...

Because I'm not a Bungie fanboy?

More than in previous games, a lot of balance choices for multiplayer bleed into campaign/firefight in a really bad way. The shotgun is a prime example. It has only 6 shots and takes ages to reload, not to mention being a tad too weak.

I thought Halo 3 was bad about this until I played Reach. In Halo 3 the shotgun couldn't kill a MINOR BRUTE on NORMAL in a single hit. What the fuck.

Don't forget passengers. I never understood why they removed both of those after Halo 1 -_-

I don't understand why they removed the health bar after Halo 1. You still have health in Halo 2 and 3, it would be nice to know how much.

[Arteen]

Why the heck do holograms intercept melees? That's gotten me killed more than a few times.