eLantern

HALO 4 NEEDS MORE VARIETY WITHOUT DILUTION Unnecessary repetition causes boredom and disinterest. IMO, I believe this issue is hurting Halo 4 the most, therefore some careful changes to the playlists should occur in order to address the problem without creating another... such as a significant dilution of the player population amongst the playlists by creating too many. Take a look at how Halo 4's population numbers have dwindled incredibly fast as a form of evidence in regards to the effect of disinterest that I'm referring to as the cause. http://www.halochart...kpopulation/all THE PLAYLISTS: https://forums.halow...spx#post2127896 THE MAPS: Another area that desperately needs additional variety is in the amount and diversity of maps. Don't be afraid to use the Forge yourselves 343i! Forge existing maps. Create something new and re-name it. Plus, start including the custom game or forge only maps as well as different versions of them too. THE FORGE & CUSTOM GAMES: https://forums.halow...table--343.aspx Other notable issues that need attention... THE MATCHMAKING: Continue improving the game's stability. Ensure that lobbies don't start games without even teams. THE DMR: I understand and appreciate both the ideas of slightly lowering the DMR's RoF and/or reducing its effective range, but I still think the best solution for the game is to actually buff the DMR a bit and make it into a Power weapon instead. I think it should be made into a regular 4 shot kill weapon (3 to break shields + headshot) while slightly lessening its current rate of fire. It's range should be maintained, but I do think that most of the weapons in Halo 4 are in severe need of a bullet magnetism reduction and that includes the DMR as a Power weapon. IMO, these changes would make the DMR an official mini-sniper option. And as an obvious upgrade over all of the starting precision weapons, it'll act in a similar fashion to how the SAW is an upgrade over the starting automatic weapons. This change would also mean that there would now only be one primary precision weapon option per the 3 different weapon factions (Human=BR, Covenant=CC, and Forerunner=LR), similar to the offering of fully automatic primaries, the secondaries, and the grenades. Now, contingent on the DMR becoming a power weapon a few tweaks should also be made to the Light Rifle, which easily fills the void as the dominate medium-long range weapon in the absence of the DMR. I propose that the solution given to the LR be that it receives a reduction in its zoomed-in range to match closer to the ranges of the Battle Rifle and Covenant Carbine. This causes all of the precision loadout weapons to compete in the same effective ranges with their own set of niches and drawbacks. The powerful strength of the LR (4-shot kill w/ zoom) has to come with a big risk/reward trade-off which is that a user is forced to deal with the flinch effect and when used in the un-zoomed state the user is faced with using the least effective precision starting weapon. I believe those two drawbacks do manage to provide a fair trade-off in order to justify it's major strength. BR = A sort of jack-of-all-trades option for the precision weapon. It doesn't have any glaring weaknesses, but no significant strength either. LR = The fastest TTK when able to land hits while zoomed in, slowest TTK when firing unzoomed. Hardly more accurate at distance then the other precision loadout weapons. CC = The fastest TTK in the unzoomed state, but its TTK is also contingent on the player's trigger finger ability which has to take advantage of it's fire rate. This can make it a more handy weapon then the BR for certain circumstances, but the weapon's big downsides are that it uses much more of its ammunition to earn the player kills, in fact a good portion of its ammunition from a magazine clip has to get used thus requiring a lot more reloads which of course leaves the player vulnerable more often. I recommend this solution over the idea of just reducing the DMR's fire rate because I think it will help Halo 4 become less of a campy stalemate, especially on the bigger maps. It'll force players to press their opponents and be more mobile. Allowing for more map movement and position jockeying verses leaving players capable of sitting back and accurately landing deadly fire from afar which causes games to get bogged down and campy. I can think of two maps in particular which would see significant improvement in the gameplay on them because of this change... Ragnarok and Complex. Basically, let the true long range weapons be power weapons, but this also means that 343i would need to take precautions to prevent to many long range power weapons from appearing in a game at the same time, because it'll be that much harder to counter people who have them. THE BOLT SHOT: Secondary weapons play specific roles. The Magnum is essentially a poor man's precision weapon and in comparison, it has a limited magazine, a shorter effective range, plus a quicker and much bigger bloom effect, but it does have a fast RoF. The PP is kind of a specialty weapon in that its major niche is its overcharged EMP effect. The Bolt Shot's major niche is its 1SK capability at close range. In relation to the CQC power weapons its suppose to have noticeable drawbacks, but I don't believe those drawbacks are significant enough, therefore the focus to fix the weapon should be on providing ideal drawbacks to its key purpose. First, remove the semi-firing capability of the Bolt Shot, so that it's only a charged shot weapon and modify it so that it operates similarly to the human Railgun. The firing mechanism should become fully automatic once triggered, meaning that pulling the trigger will enact the weapon's charging and it will continue to charge until firing off a fully charged shot. This prevents players from being able to fire the weapon at their leisure and makes timing crucial. Going hand-in-hand with this change should also be slight increases to the weapon's charge time and cool-down period. The cool-down aspect should be mandatory, similar to the Incendiary Cannon, so if you swap from the Bolt Shot after firing it it'll still need to perform its cool-down animation when swapped back for reloading. Any final mods should involve carefully tweaking the range and swap speed. THE SPARTAN LASER: Bring back its lethality. Make it closer to the Halo: Reach and Halo 3 Spartan Laser.