CaptainMarksie

There was a boss fight in Halo 4? Either i was half asleep when i was playing through the campaign or im pretty sure there wasn't haha

As far as i know, 343 have implemented a "true skill" matchmaking system are putting it through the testing phases at the moment so that its working properly for when they release ranked mode. It would appear to me that you have not played many games with a good true skill matchmaking system. Yes Halo 3 had ranked but in that you start from rank 1 and work your way up the ranks by winning games, so it has a fairly predictable learning curve, i.e it starts off easy and gets harder as you rank up. This is very different to the system 343 is using. The basics of the new true skill matchmaking system: You have a hidden matchmaking rating. It will try and match you with people with a similar rating. If you keep beating people the system matches you with higher rated players, it will keep matching you with higher and higher rated players until you start losing about 50% of you games and your rating will level off at that point. The same goes for losing to, it will keep matching you against lower rated players until you are winning about 50% of your games. What can sometimes happen is you play against people who are over-rated/under-rated (this happens quite a lot when the system has only been in place for a short period of time and it hasnt had time to filter everyone through to the correct ratings). What is happening to you is happening to many other people. In the past you have played against people who have been over-rated and by beating them this has made you over-rated to. So at the moment you are playing at a level too high for you. It's not an ideal situation to be in but the only way to get out of it is to continue playing. Yes you may lose a bunch of games and your KD may go down but after a bit of time the system will keep lowering your rating until you get to a place where you are again winning 50% of your games. But in all honesty, i think you are probably playing against people of similar skill level. If you are playing slayer, then if the system is working perfectly, you should win 50% of games and have a KD at around 1.00 (definitely not 2.XX unless you are playing with bad team mates all the time so you still only win half your games). Sometimes it a massive shock to "good" players when they come up against other good players instead of getting matched randomly (which usually means worse players than you). It's not hard to get a 2+ KD when people you are matched against are worse than you. This is why KD stats can ruin games. People care too much about getting it high, but does it really mean anything if most of the people you play against are worse than you? Now actually good players shine, and the "posers" are getting their face rubbed in the dirt.

Every player should have a loadout with the Plasma pistol for any map where vehicles play a big role. A lone mantis is easy to take down. One overcharge plasma pistol shot and you are free to jack it easily. The problems arise when the other players on the other team are supporting the mantis. This is when it becomes a very powerful unit. But the same goes for the tank and wraith to, its just alot less common to see. I think that the reason players seem to support the mantis player more in this game is because of the way it moves. It moves like a spartan i.e. it can strafe, rotate and move all at the same time. This means it is very easy to reposition yourself and since it doesnt take up much room it is very easy for your team to move around you. I am still undecided on wether i like the mantis though. In BTB fair enough, it has its place their, but in CTF it can get out of hand very quickly if you are playing with people you dont know and arent communicating and working together. It is almost impossible to, by yourself, take down a mantis with teammates supporting him. In all honesty though, i feel like they need to bring back atleast a few power weapon pickups on the maps which respawn in around the same time as the did on reach/H3. Atleast then if you know rockets on splaser is about to come up you can make a push for it and try and take out the mantis with it

The DMR is simply better or as good as the BR in almost every case. The only "advantage" the BR has is that it is burst so it is easier to land a head shot when the other guy has no shields. That is literally it. The DMR is either better, or as good as the BR every other situation. While both guns kill in 5 shots, the DMR takes down shields in 4 shots whereas the BR takes down the shields on the 5th shot. Basically meaning the the DMR does more damage in 1 shot than the BR does in 1 burst. So the DMR does more damage in one shot than a BR does in a 3 round burst, It has better precision at long range to the point where the DMR wins 9/10 long range fights against BR, and the DMR has no close range draw backs (for anyone whos says that its easier to get hits with the BR at close range because of burst fire, its not strictly true, although you may get more hits it still requires a minimum of 5 full bursts to kill someone (it may be 4 and 2/3 bursts to kill im not sure, eitherway the difference is negligable) just as the DMR has to hit 5 single shots. The only advantage is if you both go down to no shields at the same time, all you have to hit is a single bullet of the burst. And this slight advantage doesnt make any difference as you get to higher level of play where players hit that killing headshot the first time 9 times ouy of 10

For me it all comes down to what AA i plan on using. I used bumper jumper in H3 and Reach and thought i would give the jetpack a chance this year so switched over to Default since im not great at claw. Stuck with it for a while, even when using other AAs but recently i have switched back to Bumper Jumper since i am not using the jetpack at all really anymore. Both layouts (and a few others to) are perfectly viable, none really better than the rest.

While it can be annoying when your own team steals your assassinations, what helps is if you simply take a look at it from their point of view. There can only really be 3 reasons why a teammate stole your assassination. 1. Accidental. Sometimes these things just happen, he is just about to shoot the guy or he throws a nade in the direction of the guy not realising you are about to assassinate him etc. If this is the case then there is no point getting mad because he didn't mean to. 2. He feels it was his kill. In other words, he drops the guy to no shields then you start assassinate him, in this situation i usually feel that it is acceptable for him to take the kill if he choses to do so. 3. The guy is a jerk and is simply doing it to annoy people or because he needs to get a good K/D to feel good about himself. Again, there is no point in getting worked up about it. It is likely that the guy is a loner in real life, with few or no friends and has no real skills in life or a good job and feels miserable for most of the time so he comes onto halo and tries to make people miserable to because "why should he be the only one who is unhappy?" right?... In all 3 cases there is no point getting worked up, and as always, never feed the troll. If you react to him stealing your kill, then sometimes he will continue to try and follow you and steal more of your kills and annoy you through out the game. My best advice though would be to find some people you enjoy playing with and try and play as a party as much as possible, that way there is less chance of getting a jerk on your team.

The XP cap is in place to help prevent boosting. It is the same for every player so it is fair. It only affects a tiny amount of halo players (boosters and people who play alot and/or use double xp). 343 obviously know this and definitely will not remove the cap, and it's unlikely that they will reduce it significantly. Since you can only hit the cap by playing alot, it is fair to say you enjoy playing the game alot to. This means that even though there is a cap, it is not likely you are going to stop playing all together because of it. They want people to play their game for a long time. Having an XP cap is pretty much the only viable way for this to happen. With out and XP cap, they would have to make the leveling system take alot longer than it is at the moment or else people who use Double XP and/or play alot will hit the final level far to quickly. But if they do make it so the leveling system takes longer to cater for the player who play alot/double xp then people who play casually will stop playing the game because it will feel like it's taking far to long for them to level up so they wont be getting rewards often enough to keep them interested. Assuming the percentage of players who hit the xp cap frequently is less than 5% (probably even less than that), if they were to cater the leveling system towards them then they would probably lose interest from most of the other 95%. Removing the cap and keeping the leveling system as it is would mean that the 5% who used to hit the cap would hit top level quickly and then most would probably lose interest meaning 343 would lose about 5% of its population early on in the games life. The only way to keep both players playing is the XP cap, yes people will complain about it (343 knows this) but they probably wont stop playing because of it (probably less than 5% of the 5% who hit the cap frequently).

When they release the ranked playlist they should make it so it is not JIP. They should also make it so if you quit out of a game in ranked you will only be able to reconnect to the same game you were just in. Hopefully it would encourage people to stay in games since they have to wait for that game to finish anyway before being allowed to join a new game. The social playlist (don't know if it actually has a name but thats what i've been calling it since H3 lol) should be JIP, since it is aimed at the social side of gaming and players should not be caring so much about wether they win or do well, they should just be having fun. If a player wants to take it serious and cares about his stats then he should play ranked mode.

Im finding more and more that almost every engagement in infinity slayer goes the same way. Each player throws a grenade at each others feet then the shoot out begins. Even if its 3v1 all 3 players will throw nades at the 1 guys feet. Don't get me wrong, i think you should be rewarded for a well placed nade, but when each player starts with 2 nades then it gets a bit silly. I feel like it is slowing down the game. All that happens is that each player throws the nade in anticipation of the guy coming around the corner (which is fine) but they have a second nade incase the guy doesnt come around so they throw another one. So before a fight can happen 2 nades get thrown which slows down the pace of the game massively. Another issue is since all players start with two, it means a team of 4 can hold hands and throw 8 grenades while the other time has to play footsies and try and avoid these nades before engaging. All i am proposing is that the starting amount of nades is reduced to 1. That way you have 1 chance to land a good grenade each life (unless you have the nade pickup package), so it should stop all the nade spamming i see every game. TL;DR: I would rather see gun fights than nade fights

I can imagine that they will bring back all the old game modes you posted. I don't see why not. As for your suggested game modes. Guns blazing could be alright but may get a bit boring after a while, especially if there are no weapons pick ups (not sure, you didn't state) One shot one kill sounds like team snipers for people who can't get head shots. Again i can imagine it being fun for a bit but tailing off pretty quickly. I had an idea the other day while playing spartan ops. I had promethean vision on and killed an elite and saw i could pick up his camo. For some reason i thought i could have bothe promethan vision and camo, which lead me to thinking how awesome it would be if you could have both. It would be like being the predator (from predator of course haha). This led me to thinking of what i think would be a cool game mode. It is basically juggernaught. The juggernaught (predator) Has camo, a sword (and or hammer, havent got a chance to try things out yet so this is all going to be theory but probably just sword), promethean vision and overshield (the amount would be decide through testing, i think 2x might be too much but if the survivors stick together they could still quite easily rip through that). The predator hunts down the other players gaining points for kills. If the predator is killed the person who killed him becomes the predator. A few reasons why i think it would be a good game mode: 1.Simple (one game and you will have a good grasp of how to play it out, stick with your team mates or die alone) 2. Strategic (goes for both the predator and the survivors, As predator do you go into a room full of people and go for a big multi kill or take out stragglers away from their team mates) 3. Sense of fear (When the predator uses his promethean vision the survivors will see it ping across their radar alerting them that the predator is near and probably knows exactly where they are, the survivors then have to options, fight or flight. again the promethean vision adds more depth and strategy, do you use your vision to see how many people are in the next room and risk giving away your position to the survivors?) As for which weapons the survivors should have i think it would require a good amount of testing to figure out which guns work and which don't. Im thinking survivors spawn with BR and Shotty. Then have a few power weapons around the map like sniper, saw, (only unsc weapons though, and probably no rockets), and the weapons should spawn in vulnerable places to so there is a risk/reward factor. Probably no vehicles either, maybe mongeese as a way of trying to get to the power weapons faster but the sound may give away your intentions to the predator (again adding depth and strategy to the game). Anyway it would be great to here what people think and any suggestions they may have. Also i would love to see more ideas for game modes to, always interesting to see what people think up!