Oh, I'm quite aware of that, believe me. Pegasi and I have been some of the board's biggest proponents of the "bloom is random and random is bad" argument, which is why I've played almost nothing but TU gametypes for the last few months. However, bloom *on paper* is a skill mechanic, and 85% bloom is remarkably close to skillful simply because the bloom is decreased to the point that the randomness factors in far less often. The bigger your reticule the more random bloom becomes; 85 is a pretty good middle ground where a little pacing is beneficial (especially at long range) but your target rarely expands enough to introduce the baffling and frustrating levels of randomness present in full bloom.
I hate going back to 85% after having played 0% though. It's better compared to 100% but in the end bloom just ruins so much in Reach.
I can't get on board with ZB. Outside of MLG or other environments where the gametype and weapon palette (and even the maps, ideally) are tailored to it, it just changes the game too much, and 343 didn't do enough to adjust the sandbox to the change. Basically, the thing some people complain about with 85%, I think is much more of a problem in 0%. The meat of the issue is this: in ZB slayer, I'd rather have a DMR than any other weapon - even power weapons. The DMR is as effective as most power weapons in the majority of situations, and I don't have to put myself at risk by going into an open or contested area. Now if you're the kind of guy that's cool with non-stop DMR-only shootouts, then this probably doesn't bother you much. But it does bother me. I still want to use a needler or plasma pistol from time to time, and feel that there's a reason to do so. I still want power weapons to be powerful. And I want to be able to briefly move through open areas, when an enemy sees me but is far enough away, and make it through alive. Also, when you get down to it, I don't mind a small amount of bloom and a small amount of forced pacing, especially at long distance. I've said all along that on paper, and within reasonable limits (that Bungie exceeded), bloom wasn't a bad idea. It's just that the execution was poor and overdone.
I'm not saying it necessarily works in the entire sandbox, but I do think the DMR on its own plays a lot better without bloom. 2v2s with the zero bloom DMR are glorious by the way.
I could see that. I think I dislike ZB the most when there are more people - team-shooting really amplifies the basic problem I have with it.
Since you like using other weapons, what do you think about the fact that bloom (previous post) makes the DMR more powerful at close range than long range? Here's something I didn't type before: If there wasn't a chance of hitting a target when the reticle was larger than the target (the flaw of bloom in short), or if someone just wanted pace, it would be best to completely spam at sword range or completely pace, even if the target was just outside of sword range. Why? Think about the headshot that you'll need to pull off in a roughly fair duel. You can wait only till the reticle is eclipsed by their body (this is what allows for a conscious change in the rate of fire), or you can wait till it is eclipsed by a part the size of their head (basically fully reset) for your second, third and fourth shots. If you choose the former, you are only delaying the time that you will need for it to reset to head size till after your 4th shot, but if you choose the latter, you will experience that delay just as many times (once), but for your 3rd and 4th shots you would have a more precise reticle, which helps if its center was on the edge of the target, because a larger reticle in the same place could miss. So basically, if bloom wasn't flawed, or if someone trusted it, adjusting your rate of fire would prolong imprecision. However, completely spamming (bloom might as well be absent) at sword range would avoid much of the reset delay. Memorizing the pace rate or cheating it while introducing randomness are the best options. Does anyone else want to try to defend bloom? With sprint, you'd have to turn almost 180 degrees first, so if you only try with a shotgun when you're in range, they'd have a better chance of backing up and firing. Moving forward is only slightly faster than moving backward, so if you're not an inch from one or two or shot + melee range when they see you, you can get shot to death while they move back. Using sprint with a shotgun (in which case improving it is too much) would be much more likely to happen. Edited by merge: Kind of ironic how right after I posted (paraphrase) "I hope no one associates really fast kill times with ZB just because they designed a weapon with a max rof kill time that wasn't intended for all ranges and changed only the bloom without the damage or max rof". All you would need to do to realize that a fast kill time is not an inherent property of ZB would be to remember Halo 3. My point is, hope for a 6sk DMR, not 85%, and you would get the same weapon balance and kill times (well, close, anyway) as 85%. The fifth interval in a 6sk DMR multiplies the ZB time by 5/4. From the statistical analysis of DMR behavior (type it in google), the average pacing time for 100% bloom is 2.262 sec, and for 85% it's approximately .85 times that- according to the study it's 1.981 sec. These are averages of sets with ranges of .2 sec; he used a fram counter and converted it to seconds. It would make sense that paced shots should always take about the same time. For the spamming data, the 5 shot kill time was always 1.635 or 1.638, by a difference of one frame, and for 6 shots it was always 2.035 or 2.069, about an increase by a factor of 5/4. So, if precise 85% is 1.981 and 6 shot ZB is 2.035, both are about 2 sec.
Yes but we're not getting another title update so any theoretical 6sk ZB DMR is immaterial. I don't think anyone would say that ZB is an inherently bad thing as that's effectively saying that every previous Halo has been bad, and kill times are obviously linked to available RoF. We are, or at least I am, talking in the context of the inescapable facts of Reach mechanics.
That's one of those things that sounds more accurate than it is. A long range weapon that can kill in an average of 5-6 shots is more powerful than a close range weapon that technically kills faster, but at the expense of putting you closer to people with sword, shotgun, melee, etc. Yes, it's a quirk of the bloom mechanic, but I don't see it as a problem, considering that sword, shotgun, hammer, and double melee are all as good as or better than the DMR at close range, even in TU Reach. You're incorrectly assuming that every single confrontation in Reach begins with both players facing each other, or that the only way to sprint away from danger is to turn completely around and go in the opposite direction. Neither of those things is true. As Pegasi stated, I'm not hoping for anything at this point; I'm picking the best option of the ones available, because it's highly unlikely that another one is coming. Reach is too old of a game and Halo 4 is too near to think that 343 will bother with another TU. I would be fine with a zero bloom game with more reasonable kill times and a balanced sandbox, but that's not what Reach is, and not what it will ever be, so why bother discussing it? I have been playing Halo since CE so I know very well that zero bloom can work just fine in a game - if the kill times for precision weapons are calibrated correctly and the other weapons are balanced to match. ZB Reach doesn't offer that, and won't.
I know that it's not going to happen, but we talk about the hypothetical merits and flaws with a Halo mechanics here and share our preferred mechanics because it's fun; other threads have been made for similar things, but I just decided to post about bloom because people found a way to relate what I believe is a misconception to the original post topic. Mentioning that changing the damage of the DMR was possible in a TU was only as useless as all other "I prefer" posts. I'm surprised that you didn't agree or disagree with the explanation of how adjusting the rof when firing is pointless.
True - but I think you'll find, if you keep talking to us, that Peg & I are both real worlders. We can't seem to help basing our opinions on what is possible or might be possible. I don't think either of us takes a lot of interest in improbable hypotheticals. It would be different if Bungie or 343 asked us for our take on how to build the perfect Halo game. But on this board, I'm mostly interested in dissecting why the game works the way it does and maximizing both enjoyment and competition within that framework. Before the TU I talked a lot about what it should probably do; now that it's out, I prefer to talk about what it did, and what game setup is the current best one to use. Out of those, I definitely prefer 85% over vanilla or 0%, for reasons already stated. But that doesn't mean I think TU Reach is the best possible Halo game; it's just the best one we have right now (and coincidentally, it's actually pretty good and enjoyable, if not as stellar as the original two games).
You're right, and actually I didn't mean what I typed when I typed "hoped"- I wasn't paying attention to how it could be interpreted because I was focused on the larger point. Much of my previous previous post though was thoughts on what actually happens. As for the shotgun, I didn't assume that every battle starts with opponents facing each other, but I will assert without evidence that most battles do, unless someone starts running away after a battle with a different guy, but that preemptive running away would be a justification to power up everything because the chance that he would start sprinting just outside of shotgun kill range is so small. If you haven't noticed this in your own experience playing reach I don't know what to say. I'd say that Countdown is probably the most likely map for using the shotgun more effectively than the DMR, such that an enemy that just escapes outside of shotgun range by using sprint isn't already dead once the shotgun is switched to the DMR, and then maybe Asylum. This is imagining that what you're saying is likely or viable. As for the DMR killing slower than close range weapons, unless you're surprised by a guy hiding around a corner, or sprinting around corners on countdown, you're going to have time to spam max rof at them when they are outside of their own ideal range. I suppose that that's tactical enough, though. If they were more powerful in comparison it would be frustrating. I suppose that the starting rifle shouldn't be powerful just because it takes skill, but because someone shouldn't get a free kill just because he walked over a power weapon (what Pegasi said), which in most matchmaking levels is by chance.
You'll have to take that argument up with Pegasi, not me - it really was his point. I was just explaining what I thought he was suggesting. For my part, I don't know if the shotgun range is longer than it was in Halo 3, and if it is I don't have inside information that tells me why. But generally a lot of things have been expanded in Reach (for instance the relative size of Hemorrhage compared to Blood Gulch), and sprint and evade seem to be the fundamental reason behind it. The blast radius of most explosives also seems bigger than in Reach's immediate predecessors, and if I had to guess I'd say that again, it's due to trying to balance sprint and evade, and not make them into automatic "get out of jail free" cards.
I agree with you, BTB maps are massive now, but power house, countdown, reflection, the cage and asylum have very thin walkways- they almost look miniature. Then they released the (non BTB) anniversary maps, which are even more miniature