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| Re: Whole Sandbox Is Not Broken | |
| Posted By: Gravemind <kuukan_no_kage@yahoo.com> | Date: 2/3/12 4:06 a.m. |
In Response To: Whole Sandbox Is Not Broken (Hoovaloov) : As for whether the whole sandbox is completely broken, that is up to your : definition of whole sandbox. Does a ZB Needle Rifle make Rockets, Sniper, : Sword, Hammer, Laser, Banshee, Warthogs, Grenade Launcher, grenades : worthless? No. Does it make Automatic Weapons worthless? Yes. And that's the problem. Reduced bloom creates the same situation present in every other Halo game where the mid-range precision weapons dominate all other small arms. Avoiding this "one gun to rule them all" situation (i.e., the primary precision weapon dominating all other common small arms) is exactly what Bungie set out to avoid when designing Reach's weapon sandbox, and 343i is effectively undoing that. : So the whole sandbox isn't "completely broken," just automatic
I wouldn't say "worthless." Automatic weapons are more than capable of holding their own against a DMR in vanilla settings. The needler is great at mid range, and the AR is quite formidable at closer ranges (not to mention automatics are easier to use, plus the AR is the most accurate it's ever been). Some rough tests I've done under controlled conditions with vanilla settings indicated that at distances of 10 or 15 meters (1 world unit ≈ 3 meters) two players, one holding the trigger on the AR and one spamming a DMR and both players having optimal reticle placement, the AR guy wins. In fact, the only time the DMR was able to beat the AR when both were firing at their max RoF was within 5 meters, and even then the DMR guy was always left with one bar of health. Of course, this is under controlled conditions (both players stationary & firing at the same time), but it's clear what the damage potential at a given range is. If anything, the TU, instead of reducing bloom and thus decreasing the kill times of the precision weapons, should have boosted the damage output of the AR, plasma weapons, and spiker. : So it's fair to say the TU reduces the effectiveness of guns that were not
There are no gametypes with both AR and DMR starts to begin with, at least not in Team Slayer and Squad Slayer where the AR would be more useful (smaller maps and all). Both Slayer DMRs and Slayer Pro give the players a pistol as the secondary weapon instead of an AR. : Now let's look at AR-start gametypes. Most of the time, AR-start games have
Because the AR actually not only stood a decent change against the DMR when used at the proper range, it also was a somewhat superior weapon within that range. When playing AR starts, I keep my AR and ditch the pistol for a DMR or NR (because I can't hit the broad side of a barn with the pistol for some reason; it is less accurate than the other precision weapons, after all). : This can only be fixed by either removing DMRs from the map (boring), making
: So it's obvious to me that the AR was never supposed to be the equal of the
Like I said, Bungie made it clear that the DMR was not supposed to dominate at all ranges like the M6D and BR did, and that weapons like the AR were supposed to be dominate at close ranges. Nor was the DMR supposed to dominate at long ranges, as it was intended to be more of a suppresive weapon; you could go for accurate shots to guarantee they'd hit, but at the cost of rate of fire (and you could reduce the bloom by crouching, which comes with its own obvious disadvantages), or you could just go for max rate of fire and hope for the best. The TU makes it far more lethal at range, allowing players to effectively negate most if not all shot spread even when spamming the trigger (this past afternoon I was tearing people up on Hemmorhage at long range while crouching mid-field with the DMR and hammering the trigger; I wouldn't have been able to do that nearly as effectively in vanilla Reach). While there are some balancing issues in vanilla Reach, it's still the most balanced Halo game so far, but the TU negates that, turning it into the same "precision weapons & power weapons only" scenario prevalent in past games which Bungie set out to avoid. : Personally, I would like to see a major buff to automatic weapons, both in
The automatics are good, but they could be better. The TU just takes them from "having an edge over the DMR at closer ranges" to "completely useless." If 343i was going to reduce bloom, they should have rebalanced the entire sandbox. Their failure to do so smacks of incompetence and/or not giving a shit.
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