Partly my point. It seems like theyre just changing for the sake of change. Banshee boosting isnt a big deal with all the power weapons to take it down and wasnt a big deal before that. Wraith always had a short burst iirc. The limited boost doesnt acfually help anything, they just did it to change or standardize things. Mostly it doesnt matter but occasionally it ruins a bit of fun. Same thing can be said with flag. These new changes dont solve any real problems, yet create potential new ones. Tl;dr 343 stop changing things that work just so you can say you changed them.
I agree totally about factions developing, but I guess I consider the alternative to be losing a lot of the hangers on as the game changes and shifts practical focus to a certain extent. I kinda consider myself to be one of them, not because I'd actually stop playing if it weren't for the variations that options allow, but because the results are something I still really appreciate. @chrs: Overall I agree, but I feel that the broken splatter mechanic is a big factor. Splattering is way too easy and I think they felt a boost nerf was therefore required, whereas I'd have been happy with good ol' neither. They both buffed and nerfed the whole vehicle sandbox in certain ways, but I think they fell short of recreating a similar position of vehicles in the overall sandbox.
Peg - Agreed on that 2nd point, definitely. I hope they find a superior middle ground in Halo 4 where vehicles are both less vulnerable and a bit less powerful. In Reach they all seem like fragile murder machines (except the warthogs, which are simply fragile) and it's frustrating to me as a vehicle- and BTB-lover.
A question for you guys, would the auto pick up be such a problem if you were able to drop the flag again? Yea you can make an argument for the loss of fighting from picking up the flag, realizing you did and dropping it again, but if the pick up zone is as small as they say then that shouldn't be too big an issue. I reckon if they just put dropping the flag back in then it would not be such an issue.
CE had auto pick up but dropping. It was still annoying because the time lost by accidentally picking up the flag and dropping it again still impacts upon a battle, potentially really badly. CE proved that it wasn't the best solution, so I see no reason to do that even as a compromise. Right now I can't think of any reason for auto pickup.
As far as I can see auto pickup/no drop is really only in the game to put emphasis on the whole pistol feature. They were like "hey we added this cool magic pistol now lets force people to use it so it gets more face time". Their changes wont make people any more focused on getting the object. Honestly, it'll have an adverse effect and people will be more likely to avoid flags altogether. That's the most annoying part of this: they broke a perfectly fine mechanic some a crappy gimick.
The pistol is just a balance because flag carriers move drastically slower than the people sprinting after them. It's not a bad idea by itself. Auto pick-up, while unnecessary, isn't instantly a horrible choice. Not being able to drop the flag, however, is without a doubt the dumbest in-game change that I've heard 343i announce.
Okay, I have two thoughts on CTF to share. 1) Assault will be the new flag game. In customs you can just switch the team settings on the bomb spawn/plant objectives so you have to go grab a bomb in their base and bring it back to your to detonate it. Gametype settings can be adjusted to instantly detonate or you could use Grifball - as it no longer blows up there. No flagnum action, but you get flag juggling 2.0 with the throwing mechanic, and auto-pickup just means you can force a teammate to catch it even if they're not paying attention, making objective movement more interesting. It's not perfect, but it's better than not being able to drop it. 2) I think Exile is probably the biggest map that will feature CTF, judging by the number of maps they're indicating they'll be using. I'm thinking maybe it's sort of a worst-case scenario to see how the general public feel about handling the flag in that way under the least flag-friendly conditions. Smaller maps or maps with less LoS dominance would be less frustrating for the flag carrier. A really small map like Adrift would actually make the flag carrier pretty powerful. I mean, OHKO melee and the magnum are actually a pretty powerful CQC combo. The Magnum is a lot better than a lot of people are indicating. I tried it, albeit on the E3 build at FanExpo, but it's definitely more accurate than Reach or Halo 3's magnums, and the fire rate is nice and smooth. I was able to get a couple nice clean kills with it. 5SK I'm 99% sure. I wasn't counting, but I'm pretty sure it was pop-pop-pop-pop, pop. I'm a Magnum nut, and I'm happy with it. Hated H3 mags, and wasn't a big fan of Reach's either. CE was my favorite. That thing felt like a ****ing MAGNUM lol - Halo 4 isn't that powerful, but it feels... efficient. So yeah - flagnum might actually be sweet on smaller maps. Exile might not even make the rotation for all we know.
(regarding your 2nd paragraph) This was true in H3, too. I think you can agree that players who both played CE or H2 a lot and are hyper-competitive should be expected to want something different. Like you said, CE had those 2 (what is now MLG and non-MLG). I think that trying to simulate CE MP gameplay in Reach,with a bloom pistol was kind of silly, given how different everything was from H3, on an unrelated note. As for your last paragraph, if you think that Bungie's goal in Reach was to keep players from every Halo reasonably happy, they did a terrible job of it. I stopped playing H3 half a year after Reach came out to buy Reach, and I was still quite a ways a way from the TU. Anyone who would have left Reach for any other reason than "it doesn't feel like Halo" (the lowest bar possible), would have left by then. They should have used H4's strategy of not pissing off anyone by including the BR in Reach, but not necessarily for use side by side, but rather alone. I've said it before: first in customs, but then probably in an MM playlist, much sooner than the update. This would have been trying to please everyone. If the classic gametypes at the start of Reach had a BR, they wouldn't be different from reach (other than aim and look acceleration, but with 110 or 120% speed). Your point is indeed weird and counterintuitive, but that's because it depends on how much they change the game. The "this is the game, deal with it" attitude is exactly what they have with the flag settings in H4, as I quoted from the Q and A part of the Bulletin. Of course you would rather have an option to keep it the same as before in that case. Of course there's a possibilty of splitting the MM population up too much with playlists, but they haven't even done a good job with sectioning off playlists. Does TU (Super) slayer need to have AR starts? No. 85% bloom makes the AR useless, and the pistol is still weak/imprecise. Those who like AL probably like ARs as well, because they are new to Reach/Halo. Does allowing AR start options allow more choice? Yes, in a way, but it also takes away map choice (variety) for those who want DMRs, and some choose ARs just for the map, or other small differences (such as sword block). [br][/br]Edited by merge: 1) Clever, but it will probably be assault, not grifball, because they said they were reducing the amount of data that grifball needed, which might mean weapons and other stuff (not sure). 2) If the flag carrier uses the flag like a shotgun, sure, just like before, but grenades could be more important on small maps. At best the tweaked flagnum is like a good rifle.
Assault CTF sounds really neat, but I can see flag 'Hail Mary' being too effective. Unless they have a way of limiting that, in which case flippin' awesome idea.
Slightly higher point cap (maybe 5?), and an instant respawn should the bomb/flag be dropped? That would make it an awesome, but risky, move, because you could move the bomb/flag way across the map... or lose all your progress.
Explosions are going to be annoying as hell though, and we won't be able to use Grifball unless they include a 2-ball option for it.
I would hope that you could toggle off explosions in assault... since they included the opinion in Grifball. I mean, we can't be sure until the game comes out, and it may or may not be likely, but it is a pretty cool idea.
I guess as long as the fuse is shorter than the disarm time you're good, right? I mean, players would have time to get away. I'd play it. Personally, I like explosions, so I don't even care about that. Obviously dying for every cap would kinda suck though..
Fuse time 5 secs and disarm time 5 or more and you should be fine. Just leave the base for a second. Worst case scenario, up player damage to 300% and resistance to 300%. Hopefully the bomb isn't counted as a player-based attack. These settings also stop fall damage in most cases.
Meh - call it CTB and allow the disarm/explosion. Just make it really short so it doesn't slow things down. 2 second defuse, 3 or 4 second fuse, instant plant, and run it to 5 points. That would be awesome IMO. I mean you can't really have CTF without a flag - this is just an assault variant that could fill the void. Hmm... Edit: Okay, gametype and map variant lol I might have to see about finding a lobby to try that out in.
VERY skeptical about all those changes, **** all that and **** grifball. they're paying way too much attention to this silly **** imo.