RedStarRocket91

One of the big changes the Title Update made was removing the power to 'Sword Block', i.e. the ability to survive being hit with the Energy Sword by timing a standard melee to strike the Energy Sword user at the same moment the sword attack strikes them, although still taking heavy damage. Those who liked it often suggested that having no chance to survive an attack was unfair, and that since timing a melee correctly required skill it was a fair addition to a player's starting abilities. Those who disliked it complained that since an Energy Sword can only be used at point-blank range, leaving a player completely vulnerable while they got into attack distance, it is unfair that they then have to worry that their attack might not even kill their opponent, even though they had worked hard to get the weapon and then risked a close-up attack. So, in a nutshell, do you believe that the ability to block an Energy Sword's attack with nothing but a standard melee is fair? Please give valid reasons for your opinion: 'because it sucks' or 'because it's great' are themselves opinions, not reasons.

The DMR is a better weapon. It's more efficient in the way it uses ammunition, it's balanced to be more powerful against other general-purpose weapons, and it's effective at longer ranges than the Battle Rifle.

Just as an update, we're now three weeks in an the community generally seems to prefer the idea of pre-built maps at the expense of Forge sandboxes, with 20 votes to 14.

It certainly looked a lot more planet-sized in the ending cutscene for Halo 3. Also, I think they're actually saying if there is a second Ark, that it's just bigger than a Halo, so it could be bigger or smaller than the first one. That said, 343 Guilty Spark talked about the Ark, not an Ark, so it's unlikely that there's more than one. I'll be interested to see where this goes, though. Good spot!

I actually prefer the Needle Rifle, although it makes more sense canonically that if either of them are actually going to appear that it would be the Carbine. The way the Carbine fired felt too random. Even though the Needle Rifle was weaker, its accuracy just made it feel nicer.

. I've wanted to use that as a response to something for years.

The picture actually shows the Brute Army Commander from Halo Wars, rather than anything from Halo 4 - if you've played it, you may not recognise him as according to Halopedian he's the only one of the leaders who doesn't appear in the campaign - sorry to let you down. Anyway, welcome to the forums, we hope you'll enjoy it here!

I agree with Jester. The only real changes are to bloom, damage bleedthrough, and nerfing Armor Lock. Bloom works better now because players are more likely to win against spammers by pacing their shots than they were previously, as pacing was just too slow to the kill, regardless of how much more likely shots were to hit. Melee bleedthrough should have been shipped with the game to begin with. Frankly, it's a terrible idea that someone who has a single point of shield left should have the same amount of health in melee terms as their undamaged attacker. As long as we don't go back to the Halo 3 days where Every. Single. Kill. ended in a beatdown, this shouldn't be a problem. Armor Lock needed nerfing. Don't even bother contesting this. As for removing the sword block... I don't see how it's a problem. They have a weapon that works at spitting distance. You have a gun which can hit at any range. Just stay away from them, at the very least they're going to get hurt closing the distance. No other power weapon can be countered by anyone at all from the word go, and the sword has always been a high risk/high reward weapon. Cutting the reward and raising the risk just spoils the balance.

I remember the good old days, when the people who liked vanilla Reach gameplay actually considered 'just adapt' to be a legitimate argument. It's apparently a lot less solid now that they're the ones being asked to do it.

Weekly play dates would be really nice, provided everyone goes easy on me! Also, I think it'd be nice for people to stop using asterisks to mask swearing - if it actually deserves swearing then just say it, because we know you're saying something rude anyway. If it's not worth wearing over, then don't do it. It just bugs me when people don't seem to have decided whether they actually want to or not...

That's not a bad habit, that's justice.

Mine's based off my gamertag - which was itself based on my old username on another forum, 'Red*Rocket', which I chose because when I played Pokemon Red back in the day, I named my character Rocket - I forget why, although it's probably because I wanted to be a spaceman before I realised I wasn't nearly clever enough. You're not allowed anything but letters and numbers in gamertags, so that's why I wrote Star instead of * - '91' got tacked on the end as I was born in 1991, which oddly enough probably makes me one of the older members of this forum!

I fully agree. Making a weapon that is only capable of hitting at point-black range unblockable makes it disgustingly overpowered. If only there were some way of damaging opponents beyond melee distance, say some sort of 'projectile' weapon that could be used to hurt a sword user before they were in range! On a serious note, lowering bloom isn't a problem. Spammers still get punished, just people who pace their shots are more likely to be rewarded. If you're referring to the Zero Bloom playlist, then spam is irrelevant, because everyone can do it - noobs will not beat pros because it's suddenly about who is the most accurate shooter, not who is the luckiest with where bullets land. Also, playlist sizes don't mean a thing. Anniversary ones are smaller because less people have the maps than the regular game. The ones that were affected by the TU already had fairly small populations anyway - I remember playing Objective three weeks after Reach was released and seeing less than 300 players in it. Some playlists just aren't that popular, and considering how few people actually bought the Anniversary Map Pack, I think the populations are actually quite high.

I think the only acceptable time to quit is if you're the only person on your team. The worst quitters are those in Doubles, because you know you're leaving your team at a huge disadvantage beforehand.

Exactly - that's why it should be most accurate person wins, not luckiest person wins.

I swear and get angry way too much while I'm playing.

You're really not helping yourself here.

There's no reason why asymmetrical maps can't be balanced, they just make less competitive maps - Uncaged is balanced, for example, but it's a terrible choice for competitive gameplay.

There has to be a better way of telling if someone is AFK than just zero kills. I agree with you fully Absolute, nobody deserves to be punished just for being bad at something, especially when that something is incredibly expensive. Appeal system has my full support!

I did compare them, that's why I said: The top middle bit already had some pieces blocking shots, and the fact that they added more was a good thing as it made the map easier to get around. As for the map being squashed together, I have no idea what you mean, if anything Blackout actually feels bigger than the original.

I'd disagree with you there - from the top of my head, Synapse, Kingdom, and Select are all perfectly good competitive maps currently in matchmaking. They're fair to both teams, have a good balance between cover and open areas, and there are strong points and fairly located power weaponry - they all happen to be symmetrical too, which is my mark of a good team-based map. I'm not such a fan of Paradiso and Hemmorhage, actually. The first is really, really unbalanced for whichever team spawns on the Canyon side of the island, as they can be spawn trapped so easily whether they win or lose depends entirely on who rushes the hill first. Hemmorhage just doesn't have enough cover from the ledges on either side, and it's still quite badly balanced.

I'm with you there, Mystic - Blackout was great fun, I can't remember there being any real problems with its design that didn't already exist in Lockout. And if we're going for the 'Worst Remake' Award, then the winner is most definitely Pinnacle, a map so poor that it actually took me a while to work out that it was a remake rather than a joke. You're right about the DLC maps, too - I can't think of a single badly done one.

I agree entirely! The thing everyone overlooks when complaining about spam is that everyone can do it, and if there's no bloom and everyone has the same weapon then it really speeds up the pace of the game - and SWAT is supposed to be fast-paced and exciting!

No, it isn't like complaining about the power of the shotgun at all. You can make up for the shotgun's lack of range by switching to another weapon, charging at the enemy, or using grenades. You can see the shotgun and know to avoid it, or be cautious about going into enclosed spaces. From the front, you can't see if someone has Armor Lock, so you don't know to stay back. It means that your ability to melee attack becomes useless, so you are effectively losing a weapon versus your opponent. And since the spawning weapons are only effective at close range, don't even bother resorting to the argument of just fighting from longer range. Try and get an Assault Rifle kill without melee or beyond the length of three or four Warthogs and see how well that goes.

I don't know whether having set quotas of maps to be introduced are a good idea. That would mean sometimes there would be really good maps not getting in, and sometimes bad maps being included just to make up numbers. Bungie mentioned they had some sort of system in place during the 'Forgetacular' contest, whereby maps that were missing certain components that meant they wouldn't work properly were automatically filtered out of those they would manually test. It might be nice to have a similar system in place alongside the ability to submit maps whenever they were finished, or for 343 to recruit a group of players to quality test any submitted maps and filter them out before being passed on, so that they weren't just bombarded with submissions.