N1AK

I can let the odd cutscene go but in general I think you make a good point. Elites are supposed to be better than even John 117 in terms of physical strength etc. It is tactics, teamwork and determination that help the outclassed humans win through. I can appreciate that having the game constantly telling you you're doomed because 6 hunters just appeared would get old, but acting like taking out better troops, while outnumbered and in enemy territory is a cakewalk constantly seems a little silly. In my opinion Halo is at its best when it's closer to 'survival horror' than 'action hero rampage'. When I'm playing H1 or H4 campaign on legendary I know I'm outclassed in a front on confrontation so I need to plan, sneak, use terrain and generally outsmart my foe to win. If it's that hard to Masterchief to do it then it shouldn't be blown off as trivial by 2nd rate 'spartans'.

The character hasn't grown on me so far. As others have said he seems inappropriate for the role he fulfils, combat operations and controlling a starship aren't the place for puerile comments and messing about. Hopefully they'll make it work, and I think the change may be to differentiate him from Cortana and/or AIs without a personality, because he detracts more than he adds so far.

I think we're talking about a world where the 'marines' are no more advanced than modern day standard infantry in terms of armour, tactics or weaponry. The Halo universe is not a believable setting if you start from the premise that they are 500 years more advanced than we are and that is true for weapons as well as most other things.

You should have led him on for a bit first this could have been an epic troll

It'd be a nice option to increase re-playability. It would also be nice to do something to discourage players from constantly running in and getting killed without a plan and/or something that stops scum-bags from AFK boosting.

I got an AFKer in my second run of SO (only me and him). Got about half way through the level 'avoided' him then climbed up to a safe location and went out for a couple of hours. When I came back he'd left the game which I proceeded to complete. It was enough to put me off playing SO multiplayer again because I don't want to carry AFKers through and get them XP. I'll either play with a party or solo in future.

I think they've got the Scorpion pretty much bang on. It requires team play to defend which is great because if it didn't it would be so much more powerful than anything else in the game. A remotely decent player with a couple of team mates in support can rack up dozens of kills. Some people seem to forget that tanks don't operate in densely terrained environments without considerable infantry support in real life because they ARE vulnerable if OF get close. It's one of the reasons why conventional armies struggle to force insurgent forces from built up areas. So far I have found every vehicle in H4 to be impressively well balanced. The Ghost in particular can run riot if not countered properly but is very vulnerable to players who play smart.

I think friendly vehicle fire is a required 'evil' to make players think a bit more about where they fire weapons when team mates are in vehicles. I'd rather see people who consistently team kill vehicles come up on a boot menu and people who get consistently booted get matched with other douches. Splatters can be a real pita. I've been hit by, and accidentally caused, plenty and I think most people can appreciate the difference between a mistake and some idiot using the hog chaingun to destroy his own team's mantis etc.

Got quite a bit more play in over the last couple of days and my view on the Boltshot continues to gradually shift. I wouldn't mind seeing the charge time slightly increase (0.1-0.2s) or the OHK range slightly shortened because it does seem to be a bit of an easy cheap kill generator at times. I think having a gun like it in the game is a good thing because it makes shotty/Scatter users think a little more but it could still do that with a tiny tweak. Also I've found that firing it slightly early really isn't that big an issue when you get the drop on someone or fire simultaneously. Most times I'll BS and then headshot for kill before BR/DMR user that starts firing at the same time gets the kill.

Having played a little more big team today this is definitely my experience. The Mantis can't chase opponents it is reliant on them making themselves easy targets. Against a couple of tactical players the Mantis would be lucky to get either of them.

I think this is exactly the point. I usually start vehicle maps with the plasma pistol anyway but even if I didn't I'd always have a loadout with it in case I needed to swap to it on kill. I've played two big team games in total, both games started with me getting on a warthog gun (once gauss) with a random driver; the first time I got a 7 kill streak and the 2nd a 6 kill streak. It feels to me like vehicles still make you feel plenty powerful enough but have enough counters to stop them dominating without proper support. If you're playing against smart opponents you need to keep track of when anti-tank power weapons get picked up and avoid going too near obvious ambush points.

Hi jockmahn. I'm pretty certain that the red arrow in kill cam is added to the replay and not something that the player has during the game. I've seen Kill cam footage of me getting kills and it shows the arrow but I don't have that arrow during normal gameplay. Hope that helps.

The Mantis is resilient but it seems to me that the armaments aren't that powerful. The rockets have very little splash and the minigun doesn't seem to be as effective as the Hog/Turret version. It moves slowly and is a massive target. I see most Mantis getting loads of kills because players will rush at it on open ground. Some counters: If you've got a Gauss hog or Scorpion you should be able to beat it in a gunfight. There are plenty of power weapons that handle it (sticky launcher, railgun, spartan laser, rocket launcher) and snipers murder its shields. Plasma pistol is an insta-win if it is near any terrain that lets you get in range. Jet Pack, Camo, Dash, Hologram can all be used to make a dash to board. People seem to be frustrated that you can't simply take it on 1v1 with a DMR and expect to win but you shouldn't be able to. It takes a strong counter or 2+ players working in a coordinated manner to beat and that's fine.

A lot of people will say that the BR doesn't really have an advantage over the DMR; personally I'd suggest you give them both a try but expect you'll settle on using the DMR soon enough. As to finding your enemy; you'll have to use your legs and go find them or play with a group who tell you. Most of the time it isn't too difficult. You can see where team mates are and if they are getting hurt. Personally I think not always knowing where enemies are is an important point as it makes you think about routes, ambushes etc.

Sticky grenade is a fantastic power weapon. I play with Explosives most of the time which apparently makes the blast even bigger (though I wasn't aware) but I can get a kill with ~80% of shots and it can be used defensively: you only need to see (and be target-able by victim) for the time it takes to fire the single shot. I rarely use it for more than direct shot and kills but using it tactically on a choike point or objective can be very effective

343 have massively mishandled the specialisation unlocks. I can understand the reason for giving them to pre-order players for a time; but then they rewarded early buyers in the US and basically gave the finger to the rest of the world. Also by limiting XP/Level at 70 they are putting some off the most active players off (not me at my mighty 32). At least if they still tracked XP/Level and assigned it when new specialisations came out they would be more likely to keep playing in the meanwhile. Finally if they'd announce when they are planning to unlock the specialisations they'd help themselves because atm everyone who is waiting is frustrated where as many less active players who won't reach 50 let alone 70 for months wouldn't care if they unlocked in March etc.

Firstly, you do actually get something for getting to 130SR (the perks for all the specialisations that you don't have at 50). That said boosting is all the more annoying because if they simply played they'd get there virtually as fast without annoying people. Secondly, generally when companies bother taking notice of cheating/****** playing they don't ban etc someone for one report. They look at what the average number of reports is for a legit player and then add a safe margin. Perhaps a legit player gets reported for AFKing once in 3 games so they set the limit at 1 in 10 games etc. Thing is OP already summed it up, the best solution is remove the reward. Personally I would give points as: > Play match 500pts > Bonus Points earnt > Kills x 25pts > (Kills - Deaths) x 50pts > In objective games lower kill points and add multipliers on objective medals. As it is I see two frustrating kinds of point grab behaviour: Players AFKing and players who play suicidally in team games getting lots of kills and even more deaths; I assume the logic is that more kills = more medals thus more xp which is frustrating for players who manage to keep a positive ratio and are rewarded with less xp.

I've played a fair bit more using the Boltshot since I last commented. I still think it fills a useful niche (stopping the close range power weapons from dominating small maps) but it can seem to get cheap kills at times. I'm finding that I now put much less energy into going for shotgun/scattershot drops because although they are better the improvement over the Boltshot isn't that huge. That said, before the Shotty was one of my must get weapons (along with the binary cannon and stick launcher).

Improving the BR is not the way to go. The BR is definitely competitive with all the other primary weapons already. Also, shortening the range on the DMR is nerfing what it is supposed to be good at (long range) when the issue is that the BRs niche should be middle-range and the issue people generally have with the DMR is that it matches or beats the BR in that niche. If the DMR is going to get nerfed then I'd suggest dropping the fire rate marginally (perhaps up the kill time from 1.6s to 1.65s or 1.7s) or add a small amount of bloom. I think a lot of solutions being proposed are going to put the DMR well below the BR etc which might suit some BR fans but isn't great for the game.

I loved Midship and Lockout, generally I'm a small map fan and I still thought the H4 maps are good. I would have loved to have another small symmetrical map (Haven sized or smaller) in the mix but the ones provided really seem to be balanced, with lots of options and paths. I've played a hell of a lot of Haven, Adrift, Complex & Solace and consistently enjoy all of them; I'm still finding more and more ways to use the map and it doesn't feel like every battle ends up focusing on the same flashpoint(s). I actually agree with some of this. Personally I think the level / perks argument is mostly nonsense. Many of the people I'm coming across at very high levels are actually pretty rubbish; they tend to get lots of kills but even more deaths, imo because that is how to get more XP. Besides having more play time level really doesn't mean very much. That said uneven starts and putting people into hopeless matches really seem like mistakes to me. I very rarely got frustrated by wait times or quitters back in H2/H3 yet now I've won & lost objective games because of dodgy starts and it is really annoying getting dropped into a match hopelessly behind. 343 could do many things to discourage quitting and I genuinely think some of them would work but no game devs seem to want to handle the issue. There could be a quit MM delay penalty: If # quits / # of games is greater than 10% then when you quit you can't MM for 2 mins, higher than 20% is 5 mins etc for example I also agree that anything less than a visible ranking in the game is a poor solution. There really isn't a good reason not to have it and it is a massive bugbear to many, if not most, remotely serious players.

I've got an AR loadout. It's competitive on some small maps especially on objective games and can be useful on other maps if you know the fight is focusing in an indoor area or similar. The issue with the AR is that at even quite a short range the BR/DMR can compete for kill speed without needing much more 'skill' and at longer ranges the AR is rubbish. One advantage of the AR is that average players seem to be less confident about how to handle it (when used by a semi-competent player) than the BR/DMR because they normally only see new players using it to run straight at them.

Contented, Fanboys, Blind Monkeys, Bullet Takers or anything else that means what you mean, rather than the exact opposite It may have escaped your attention, perhaps you should try reading it again, but I never debated your opinion. I pointed out that it is naive to start an argument, then say you don't want to see an argument immediately afterwards and then be surprised when you've created one.

IIRC the kill time for both is 1.6s I'd be tempted to marginally move both fire rates. Make the BR 1.55s and the DMR 1.65s or something like that. 1/100 seconds per burst is a tiny change but it would be enough to make the BR the marginally better option at short-mid range. Putting the BR back to 4 burst kills would make it much much better than the other loadout weapons unless the fire rate was slowed to make 4 bursts take almost as long as 5 currently, which I'm not sure is the way to go.

CTF is my favourite game mode in previous titles and my first response when I saw the change was concern that they'd ruin it. Having said that I can't really fault the new style. Not allowing the flag to be dropped makes protecting the carrier more important as they can't just drop it to pull out a power weapon whenever threatened. Scoring when the flag was home could be great but I saw too many matches that became hide the flag fests; the current system still forces you to prioritise scoring against defending. The flagnum is fine. To be honest the only thing I think I would have liked to see remain was a slight speed decrease for the carrier but it's not a big issue.

I think you might be mistaking cause and effect. MLG went H2 when H2 was completely dominating online play and actually did very little to change the game. MLG might have raised Halo's profile even more but the game was doing fantastically even before MLG became widely known. ciber 1.0's view is almost exactly the same as mine. I played Halo, H2 and then basically skipped H3/Reach MP and am having a blast playing H4 online 'out of the box'. Not having some kind of ranking system (or at least a timeline for one) is a big flaw but otherwise the game as it comes is enjoyable to a lot of people.