March MM update

I have yet to set foot in it myself, but speaking for me and all the guys I know who play squad, the original team slayer sucks due to armor lock and the many mediocre-to-bad forge variant maps in it (not all of them are bad, but many are). Assuming super slayer is basically team slayer with the TU applied, I'm still not interested in it, because it still has the same problems.

 

I still don't understand 343's logic: "hmmm... about half the community is content with the TU, the other is content with vanilla.....LETS NUKE THE TU'S MELEE SYSTEM!"

IMO, the bleedthrough was the majority of the TU for me. Sure 85% bloom is WAY better than 100% along with all of the AA tweaks, etc... but bleedthrough was the aspect that stood out for me and made gameplay much more fluent and rewarded people that didn't rush around double meleeing. Now, the TU is still better, but all of it consists of minor tweaks and NOW is when 343 decides to try and split the community in half even further.

 

Played a match of super slayer...absolutely terrible. I guess I will just have to stick with Anniv. BTB.

 

85% bloom is by no measure a "minor tweak." For plenty of people (myself included) that change was the primary focus of the TU, and bleedthrough was an afterthought at best.

I don't know why exactly 343 decided they "needed to" remove bleedthrough again, but it doesn't bother me a lot. Too many aspects of Reach were tailored to a game that didn't have bleedthrough in it, and the TU didn't sufficiently tweak those things to my satisfaction (or at all). I have yet to hear anyone make a good case for why it's better to be able to kill someone with a few bullets from an AR followed by a melee, as opposed to a double melee; I actually find the former far more annoying than the latter. The melee with bleedthrough is simply overpowered. And the melee health glitch (which I suspect is really why they nuked bleedthrough) made things worse. I've been killed in a baffling manner a bunch in TU games, situations where it seemed like I should have half my health left but instead I ended up dead; I'm pretty sure that three-quarters of those are attributable to the health glitch.

I also do still like the clear visual indicator of a popped shield in vanilla Reach. Shield popped = opponent is one shot. If the shield is up, they're not one shot. It's simple and effective.

 

What does everyone think about the heavy BTB variants? They give 2 points for almost every type of kill by a player on foot and only 1 for vehicle kills. To me, the problem with balance of vehicles is not that one player has more slaying capacity than a teammate, because that doesn't make the gameplay less fun unless someone plays a match but only gets satisfaction from the scoreboard at the end. The problem is being killed by vehicles too easily and not being able to destroy them quickly enough (no new idea there), so if one designs a map with a lot of cover and power weapons, one shouldn't need to distort gameplay so heavily by halving the points from one type of kill. I only found this out by checking the carnage report and noticing a discrepancy between kills and points and then looking at the custom gametype settings; not everyone is going to find this out quickly because it's not intuitive, even if it is reasonable. I understand that the scorpion's firepower can decide the outcome of a match depending on who uses it, but it would have been better if they simply reduced its rate of fire and perhaps its health a bit when the game first came out, because the MM scorpion seems more appropriate in the campaign. We all know that there is more than one way to nerf the banshee reasonably. Now the vehicles that were already risky to use in a heavy map, like warthogs, are mongooses in this variant. I don't mind it; It's fun and I have fun by barely using vehicles at all, I am just thinking that it would be hypothetically possible for them to avoid these issues by asking themselves, "what is the balanced role of this in MM if we are going to put it in MM?", whether they foresaw making heavy variants or not.

 

What about 'yellow lift room'?
Reach's memorable nooks and crannies aren't remembered for weapon spawns so much as they're remembered for they way they affect gameplay. Admittedly, the Reach default maps aren't as memorable overall, but 'Yellow Lift Room' will be a long standing reference to Reach. 'Sword on Crouchdown' will probably stick around too.

 

In fact, once Reach is in our rearview there will be a lot of memorable callouts people refer to: balcony and sword bridge/lift rooms on Countdown, yellow and red lift on Sword Base, the three "houses" of Powerhouse, sword room on Zealot, red snipe spawn on Boardwalk, etc. And I bet you anything that some of these maps will be spoken of much more fondly once we're no longer playing them every day. Just how it goes.

 

I really like what the heavy maps do for the btb playlist. Not only are heavies games generally fun and action packed, but they also balance out the playlist. People don't feel the need to play hemorrhage nearly as much because they can get their vehicle fix in heavies.

I have played about 6 or 7 btb games since the march update and every game has either been heavies or objective, which is good in my mind

 

I tried a few rounds of "Super Slayer"

I got forced Covenant starts.... Needless to say, I didn't like it, but I don't feel that really helps me judge the new gametype...

 

I forgot to type that the BTB heavies gametype gives only one point for destroying a vehicle (which I find ironic) and getting a body kill shot but 2 points for types of kills including a pummel.

I also think that it's a shame that they took evade away from BTB objective. I agree that slayer and the 5v5 team objective playlist were harmed by it, but BTB handled it the best- CQC and its weapons were infrequent, and evade was helpful for getting across large open spaces when 2 or 3 DMRs could kill you in a couple of seconds from a mile away. When someone evaded at a distance, that player didn't move far across your screen.

 

Hey 343, put Squad Slayer back in. Thanks in advance.

 

Tempted to submit every Squad map and game type to The Library.

 

Have they returned bleedthrough yet?

 

My Thoughts: bleed through removal was a good idea in my opinion, it made grenades and pro pipes overpowered as funk and the gliching made the system broke. i did a test by playing rumble pit (pre tu) and doing nothing but double mele's in an average of ten games i got 10.5 kills out of 25. it is not an effective strategy. if someone is meleing you then just keep shooting until the shields drop and then mele him. DO NOT mele him back otherwise he will win.

on squad slayer: i didn't realy play this playlist but i support those who are upset at its removal. they just should of left team slayer with no tu and leave it there.

on evade removal: i always liked that AA and i love to play using it but it is pretty overpowered. wish we could get this treatment with armor lock though...

on team objective: this one just baffles me, take the lowest played competitive playlist and give it MORE people? why would you think that to be a good idea?

on btb heavies: i like this, but i just keep getting idiot teammates. I looked through the boneyard varient. did you notice it was also still designed to work for invasion? i see the april MM update now, invasion heavies...

overall i liked this tu update and i hope to see more like it in the future

 

Wait, bleedthrough and/or bleedthrough removal affected grenades and rockets? This isn't the first time I've seen that typed- I'm confused.

 

bleed through affected all damage including splash damage. it made the grenades a lot more likely to kill people as the grenade damage bursts through shields and do more damage to a person with half or 3/4 sheilds.

 

Grenades already burst through shields; if I hear another person say that...


Also, SUPERSLAYEEEERRRRRRR

 

Agreed. How there can be so much (justified) bitching about nade damage, but at the same time this misnomer flies around so much?

Fail Slayer.

 

Yeah, like, thats the reason they were a pain-in-the-ass before the title update; they could leave you absolute if you stood on one. If you had 3/4 shields in the same position? Guaranteed death. They ARE incredibly OP'd, and STILL are... but bleedthrough has nothing to do with it! Explosions ignore bleedthrough! Otherwise, Rockets would've been unable to kill people in 1 hit before the TU.

Megafaicpalm