Shot's a relative term. They could have increased the frames it required for the shot, so the gap in kill times wouldn't have been as large but still in the BRs favor. Now, I obviously haven't played Halo 4 but I also haven't seen what they've done to make the DMR any more difficult to use at close range. Given the way Reach preforms with the DMR, it's still gonna be useful in close to medium range, plus have a gigantic advantage over the BR at long range (which literally all but like one of the maps has tons of and 5 of the maps are actually massive). The BR has has to hit 15 (or at the very least 12+1 headshot, as I'd assume shields pop after four bursts) bullets to the DMRs 5. The small increase in skill required to hold the weapon on a moving player for the entire burst vs the pull the trigger, instance damage of the DMR should be award a little more. The only real award comes from that headshot being a little easier with the BR but I'm still not sure this outweighs the benefits the DMR has for long range. In short: I want any other primary to be BiC weapon other than the DMR.
It's quickest possible kill time. How would it work otherwise? If you only had to hit one bullet from each burst to get a 5 shot, then hitting every shot from every burst would mean it potentially kills in 1.666666 shots, which is stupid and makes no sense. The BR vs DMR dynamic is that the BR is burst fire which makes it a little easier to use, especially at close range, and doesn't have bloom so you can consistently use it at full RoF. The DMR is more precise but single shot which makes it a little less forgiving, and suffers from bloom meaning you'll sometimes have to fire slower than max RoF, raising kill times. But why have a 4 shot with lower RoF rather than a 5 shot and a slightly quicker RoF? Basically I don't see why you're focusing on shots to kill rather than overall kill time. I agree that it should kill very slightly quicker than the DMR when it comes to each weapon's minimum kill time, but Nexy's figures have been called in to question so it's possible that the BR does kill quicker. And hopefully the DMR is harder to use than Reach. It's not an inherent problem with a single shot weapon, as CE proves, it's just an issue with how it was set up in Reach. The issues with forgiving mechanics in Reach affected the Sniper too (hell, even the AR) but I don't see people saying that there are inherent problems with those weapons. The DMR was just unlucky in that it was introduced alongside these changes in the mechanics so it looked like it was problem, and since it was a utility weapon it was very much under the microscope for criticism. The opposite argument holds weight as well: burst weapons are more forgiving as they allow you to sweep and do some damage rather than a hit-or-miss scenario. Holding a BR on a player for a whole burst really isn't that difficult, and even the H2/3 fanboys in the competitive community generally accept that burst fire weapons are more forgiving (well, aside from the swathes of players who simply think "H2 did it this way and H2 was the best so this way is the best" etc.)
Yeah I'm basing that entirely off of nexy's figures you posted, but assuming they are even and assuming best case scenario (you miss no shots, start shooting at the exact same time) the BR should kill faster consistently at close-medium range. I won't enter much into the "which is harder to use" debate because neither have a skill gap that is that large. Improving your overall reflexes and aiming is going to help you with both. Yes, a lot of this is basing off the perceptions of the Reach DMR which is a smaller sample size than two games with the BR, but I still feel overall the skill gap with the DMR was smaller. If you got first shot, it was easy enough to consistently pace yourself out the rest of the shots, even in ZB. Now there are a myriad of factors that could play into this, such as movement/stafe, jump height, gravity, bullet magnetism, hitscan, netcode, etc, etc, etc. So, assuming the DMR is the Reach DMR (which I recognize it's not exactly, but how far removed from it I don't know exactly), my problem lies in that the Reach DMR was easy to use, effective at all ranges and felt like it lowered the skill gap. It was more about initial response (first shot) then containing your aim for an extended period of time. Yes, you could be screwed if you missed a single shot because it was a lot of damage, however I don't think it was easy enough to miss a shot, which made the weapon feel too easy and OPed. Again, this could be all because of other factors, but I can only base what I'm saying off my experience and with that experience it scared me that the DMR is so close to the BR in killing ability because I feel like with extended play it may solidly outclass the BR and I personally do not want to see another game with the DMR as king, largely because I hate its ridiculous long range abilities.
How would you feel if it played more like the CE Pistol than the Reach DMR? EDIT: also, one could argue that the lack of zoom-pinging in Halo 4 will help with this self perpetuating ranged kill issue present with the Reach DMR. If you can turn around and start shooting at someone far away who's gotten the first shot on you, but not be screwed over by not being able to scope in, then ranged battles should be a lot more open to coming back from shots down.
I'm guessing that the amount that you're thrown off when you're hit in scope is easier to manage than having to scope back in (after sweeping your reticle too far); otherwise they would have kept zoom-pinging and just created the non-ping mod instead of disability. Of course, the logical reason might not be accurate, considering how the DMR's bloom is negligible at medium range (from the videos I've seen and a 343 video commentator), which would mean that the DMR doesn't seem to be worse than the DMR in any significant way. This would be an example of how they do not use logic in all of their decisions. In any case, they still wanted the first shot at distance to give an advantage. The rifles all have a high ROF; even the smallest adjustment to your reticle per bullet, especially if it's in a random direction, would be hard to deal with. I suspect that they might have made this change so that the stability mod wouldn't be too powerful. Back to the BR vs. DMR: Don't forget about the BR's recoil, which they did not mention about the DMR. It could be easy to aim at the body and let it automatically recoil up to the head, but if your opponent jumps, you will have to adjust vertically and compensate for that recoil. The BR's ability to land one or two bullets per burst (when you missed the first one) when swept is significant (you may remember trying to switch between the BR and pistol in H3), but those fractions of a burst will not be useful in high-level play. Landing 3 shots per burst is ALWAYS harder than landing a single DMR shot. Unless the BR does in fact require only 13 bullets to kill, the DMR is usually better than the BR, because for every shot that a player misses with the DMR, that same player would have missed a 3 shot with a BR. That means that a player would have to be horrible at landing the first bullet per DMR shot/BR burst to be better with the BR. For Reach players, missing the last shot in a BR battle is going to be more likely than missing the first shot. I'm skeptical of Nexy's numbers. First of all, he uses the phrase "shoots every x frames", and then multiplies by the number of shots for a kill. If the number of frames (x) was the time interval between shots, the kill time would be: (# of shots)(x-1) There are 4 intervals between 5 shots, 1 interval between 2 shots, 0 intervals between 1 shot. If the kill times are accurate, he would have to have calculated the frames per shot from the killtime incorrectly, by dividing the killtime by the number of shots. Otherwise, (if the frames between shots are accurate) the kill time for the BR/DMR would be 1.28 seconds instead of 1.6 seconds. EDIT: The ZB 5-shot DMR kill time was 1.63 according to the "statistical analysis of DMR bloom" (after the TU), so 1.6 seems possible if the BR's ROF was that of the ZB DMR (really fast).
so you accuse me of trolling, then confirm half of what i said? what? so me saying "the more aware player wins" was also bullshit? do you know what trolling means? and did you see the idiocy i was replying to? frankly, that was quite presumptuous. please stick to criticizing posts that don't add anything to the conversation. like this, you're free to call this trolling if you want. i like the more washed out armor. it's less power rangers, and more reasonable. in a trained simulation the opposing team should look more like your own guys. don't train soldiers to shoot the vividly different colored guys, even in the future. the odds of the british in their bright red outfits attacking isnt exactly common.
Are we referring to the comparison picture posted earlier? If so, I'm more of a fan of the washed out colors. No concrete logic behind this statement, but rather mere prefernece (BF3 fan). To cater to both preferneces, lets hope that the state of the saturation is dependent on customization options and not on some variable beyond our control. Could the possibility exist that one of those images might be merely photoshopped? (Please excuse me if these questions/statements have been posted prior). Edit: Picture in question: Spoiler
The washed out look is seen in all TEAM gameplay after E3. The darker saturation picture is taken from the first vidoc showing gameplay. Your FFA look will still be pretty vivid and saturated, it's really only Team Blue vs Team Red games. I think it's silly since it's only team games. Why make only team colors washed out?
I didn't specifically call out you, but it seems anymore that any little thing there is to find about Halo 4 is turned negatively. A lot of what has been said in this thread has been constructive and good, but a hell of a lot of it has been people picking out every little thing that could possibly be wrong with it. And I've heard at least a few people in here the line that they are considering canceling their pre-orders because of one of those dumb things. Maybe I shouldn't have posted that, but I'm a bit frustrated after 2-3 months of people complaining about Halo 4 when most of them have not played it or even seen very much of it in it's final build.
I remember people complaining about the colors being to bright and saturated. People will complain about everything, it's best to ignore it.
see: just ignore it man. if some people decide they dont want to buy it anymore because of something dumb, then who cares? it doesnt affect you or me.
Discussing their decision to modify the color of the spartans I will be staring at for the next 489149031 hours is a valid discussion. I'm not complaining, I'm stating an opinion that I preferred their first design better. It'd be cool not to be lumped into the people who are cancelling their orders over nothing.
Never really understood this argument. Isn't the whole point of a game's advertising campaign to convince players that the game will appeal to them? Why buy a game if you find looking at its gameplay disturbing? Who here actually pre-orders games that they know little about and don't look interested in just so they can formulate their own opinion after they've burnt through $60?
White Plastic? Black Metal Grills? If there's a human forge theme that makes peices look like Portal Test Chamber objects, I applaud.