My guess (or hope) is that they'll nerf the effective radius for stickies. It was damn hard to stick people in CE; they've tinkered with the area of effect ever since, and I'm sure you've noticed a bunch of times in Reach that you throw a sticky only somewhat near a guy, and it suddenly flies sideways to land right on him.
I doubt most players will spawn with frags over stickies, though if we take invasion as an example I would be a bit scared for the warthog. I doubt whole teams will always spawn with Plasmas though, so I doubt it will be so bad.
That's the problem. The whole game will turn into elite slayer, or at least slayer pro before they changed the warden grenades to frag.
LOADOUT NAME: 2 PRIMARY: DMR SECONDARY: Magnum GRENADE TYPE: Frag ARMOR ABILITY: Thruster Pack/Pro Vision TACTICAL PACKAGE: Mobility SUPPORT PACKAGE: Stability
LOADOUT NAME: Defensive PRIMARY: Light Rifle SECONDARY: Bolt Shot GRENADE TYPE: Pulse Grenades ARMOR ABILITY: Auto Sentry TACTICAL PACKAGE: AA Efficiency SUPPORT PACKAGE: Dexterity
I don't think so, in this case it is a player's personal choice to have frags or plasmas. Personally even knowing the destructive potential of plasmas against vehicles I don't want them all the time. Also remember that you can't pick up other player's nades without a special secondary doohicky that lest you, so the field won't be flooded with plasma grenades like Elite Slayer and Invasion. Oh Invasion, how I will sort of miss you. Oh, and I am going to have like 50 of those loadout configurations, so I see no point making one. And responding to Zeph's post a long wile back, I don't know what I was thinking when I suggested the whole rock-paper-scisors thing. Good call.
I've never noticed that. I think I vaguely remember something like that in laggy games in H3, though. Of course, we can't know until after a month or two after the game comes out whether spawning with plasmas are as viable, or what effect they'll have on gameplay. As Flyingshoe pointed out, it depends on what people want to play with, as opposed to what could be the most effective if used in certain situations. [camo tangent as an example] BTB would be a lot more frustrating if skilled players constantly used camo, but skilled (as well as other) players want to use their full mobility to get their aiming skill back in the action; unless people are constantly walking into their sights, trying to crouch-DMR-snipe in camo would be a comparative disadvantage, because they're not taking pressure off of their (possibly less skilled) teammates to their full potential. Regardless of a skill or team perspective, it's simply not usually as fun. I think the same could be said of plasmas. One could develop tactics and a loadout around trying to stick enemies at close range and survive, and practice that as much as they would practice frags or the utility rifle till it becomes reliable, but that doesn't mean that any significant fraction of players will do that. Actually, I checked all of the options, and thruster pack to get away from stuck enemies or make it easier to stick enemies seems like the only clear decision, I can't see an obvious one for the other settings unless "grenadier" lets you spawn with three plasmas. If you used plasmas like a shotgun, extended motion sensor might help for crouch-walking at just the right time.
I have seen that more times than I care to remember. But what really grinds my gears is when you throw a sticky and it goes through their gut. You know it hit and should have stuck but doesn't and ultimately gets you killed.
I know I'll go frag. They are more versatile (throw around corners) and have a bigger AoE. Stickies are great anti-vehicle, but not worth being a starting weapon in my view. Instead, I do think they should be pick-up only. However, I'm interested to see what they are like this way.
Tactical and support packages should be (from the point of view of the designer) evaluated both individually and amongst each other. Where do I start? Well, I would hate to be someone who would have to decide the amount by which "Explosives" reduces damage taken from grenades. Do they eliminate a fraction of the damage? Then the damage eliminated would either have to be negligible when standing on the edge of the blast radius, or really large when standing right on top of the grenade (certainly to the extent that you wouldn't be one shot). The former possibility would make "Explosives" useless to players who are decent at moving towards the edge (or not walking into the center of) a grenade's blast radius, and the latter makes it way too forgiving for players who can't avoid the center of the blast. Either way, the small damage around the edge of the blast would still be significant because it either prevents your shields from recharging, or brings you from a (full-shields) 5 DMR shot to a 4 DMR shot with bleedthrough. Neither of the two mentioned possibilities would make it reasonable to ignore avoiding grenades, or move through them either. Because this version of Explosives wouldn't allow you to play differently, you basically have to know that you are bad at avoiding the center of grenade blasts to know that you could maximize its benefit. This is drastic skill-gap lowering. Then there is a possiblity that "Explosives" eliminates a constant amount of damage. Still, finding the right, balanced amount is difficult. Eliminating the smallest amount of damage that a grenade in Reach could do would be useless; no one would choose Explosives then. Eliminating a DMR shot (1/4 of shields, possibly 1/5 with bleedthrough) would be a recognizable amount, one that players could think of as a consistent benefit. However, this would often eliminate 50% to 100% of the damage that cautious and aware players usually receive from grenades, which would mean that not only would "explosives" be an obvious choice for maps like countdown, guardian, or adrift, but it would also compromise the viability of grenades at relatively high-level play. That is, the number of situations which would be opportunities to throw an effective grenade would be greatly reduced. This might not be true if grenades happen to be so fast, and can be banked so far, that players can't end up avoiding the approximate center of a grenade blast, which has not been the function of grenades so far, because not being able to use movement/ cautiousness to your advantage would not be fun. Grenades are supposed to be avoidable by good players and not as often avoided by not as good players. They are supposed to be balanced optimally, which is why changing that with a perk results in less than optimal balance. Notice that the perk is does not by itself take any skill to use, which is why it is an advantage which tends to favor the less skilled (as opposed to power weapons, for example). Given the variable of how many shots of damage "explosives" will eliminate for its user from any given grenade, as well as the variable of how many grenades the user will fail to avoid, the user must rely on the package's effect on battles to average out. At least AAs and even other perks allow you to be proactive in using them and controlling encounters to some extent. With stability for example, you can choose to rifle someone from afar while scoped in more often than you otherwise would, but explosives is completely passive and quite unpredictable. This does not allow tactics or strategy. Players cannot ever be certain that other players have Explosives. Even seeing a player take damage from a grenade is not a very clear indicator of whether the enemy is using it in that life or not. Therefore Explosives does not give either the user or the opponent an ability to outplay each other, but instead it gives both uncertainty ("Is throwing a grenade better than shooting in this encounter?" as well as "Was this package the best one for this spawn, seeing as how I can't try to maximize its benefit"). Explosives also increases damage done by the user's grenades. Why is this in the same package? Is the player supposed to become specialized in grenade vs. grenade combat, where the player tries to get into encounters where only grenades are used? Aren't players who are good at throwing grenades likely to be good at avoiding grenades (both completely and partially) because of both practice and knowledge of how grenades can be used, such that the damage reduction part wouldn't help them as much? Should players only choose Explosives on the offchance that they happen to need to both unrelated advantages, or is there some sort of synergy between these two advantages? It seems like they're just throwing together advantages because they seem to be related in what is really an unimportant way. It seems like they don't have any reasoning for creating any of these perks. It would only make sense for the damage increase to be a fraction of the damage done (unlike for damage received); otherwise being accurate with grenades wouldn't be as important as it was before. As a less important note, it would be pretty strange if damage received (eliminated) was constant but damage dealt (added) was proportional, because a match where everyone had Explosives would effectively have less powerful grenades if blasts' centers were avoided.
I posted this on the H4 discussion thread, but it was too long and non-trivial to risk letting it be missed by the few who would care about it, seeing as how it would get buried pages back quickly in that thread, and reading every page of that thread takes too much time for most. What I didn't think about until now (probably because I have seen only one short instance of active camo usage) was how active camo has much less of a downside on BTB maps (where the radar jammer didn't give away your position) once you don't have to trade it off with (what is now universal) sprint. Even the base movement speed is higher in Reach, so players will no longer feel like their movement is inhibited with AC on large maps. AC and AL were the only non-movement enhancing AAs (besides hologram). Without extremely vertical maps like Boneyard, paradiso, or even spire (hopefully valhalla's tall mountain like rocks will remain slippery, as opposed to those of spire), there won't be as much jetpack usage in BTB. The jetpack itself has gotten a nerf, along with AL's conversion to hardlight shield. I don't know the range of PV, but it is now short in duration. Let's hope, then, that AC has gotten a considerable nerf in duration, so that you can't just wait in AC for someone to move far away enough from cover before you start firing, when enemies couldn't have provided covering fire, and your target doesn't immediately (within a full second) have an idea of where to fire back. Perhaps long enough to just get the first shot when peeking around a corner in the case that you already know the location of an enemy. You and an enemy see each other, you pop behind cover and crouch-peek out invisible from a slightly different spot, such as the other side of a rock or a bit to the side on a ridge, when both of you know the general area that each other will be at the time you peek out. A long AC would be plain frustrating. Predominantly used non-frustrating AA: fine Occasionally chosen frustrating AA: fine Occasionally chosen non-frustrating AA: power it up Often used frustrating AA: not fine You may think that all AAs are frustrating to play against. It's a somewhat subjective preference, and how frustrating it is depends partly on what Halos you've played before (what you would expect from halo), but I think that we can all agree that when usable for ten (or was it fifteen when staying still?) seconds with a ten (fifteen?) second charge time, it will be frustrating. PV, if it does see AC players at a distance, will be too relatively short to be helpful if AC is not shortened.
This is probably the load out i will use when i get halo 4 LOADOUT NAME: The Narfidian Super Loadout PRIMARY: Carbine SECONDARY: Boltshot ARMOR ABILITY: Thruster pack TACTICAL: Sheilding/aa eficiency SUPPORT: Stability