have you played the game before? NO, it was in firefight, silly. Rocket attack on beachhead? ever see either of those things in multiplayer matchmaking? no
Ahahaha, you'd be surprised if I told you who those teammates were. We didn't sacrifice the game, we actually won by quite a bit.
Was it an MLG pro? If so, I can see why you booted him. Successful troll is still successful, no matter who he is. What kind of crack are you smoking?
How is he a douche when he didn't do it? He just thought it was funny when his friend did it. And it is funny.
I have a policy: Be a douche to me, and I'll happily spend the rest of your game ruining it for you. I play online for fun. Unlike some people (and I HATE these kind of people), I don't think everyone better than me is a try hard, I don't think anyone worse than me sucks, and I don't go into rage mode whenever I'm killed by anything other than a headshot. I don't t-bag, I don't spawn rape if the enemy has a smaller team than myself, and I don't betray over random items. I play online with as much dignity and sportsmanship as I can. But I don't try to play like that. I play the game for my entertainment. But while I do that, I, unlike many people, am also aware that there are others out there who play for their entertainment also, and I don't want to be the one who ruins that for them. Its just dickish. However, when someone decides it's funny to do that kind of crap to me, I don't whine about it, or ask them to stop. I DO something about it. Angry I picked up a Sniper? Betray me and get kicked. Follow me around de-scoping me because I picked it up? I'll turn, look at you, fire every shot inside the thing straight over your head, and drop the weapon at your feet. Pissed I took the wraith? Plasma pistol happy? No, I'm not getting out. Long story short, if someones being a **** to me, and that includes assassinating when you REALLY shouldn't (when Im being assassinated and you wait until I'm dead so you can also do the animation), I'll get you to betray me. I've met many many idiots in Matchmaking that have one time or another pissed me off. And in the end, they walk away pissed. Long story short, it's only making the game less enjoyable for them if they do it for me.
Oh man, I am the exact same way. If someone betrays me for a weapon and I don't get to boot them (which is frustratingly frequent), I'll spend the rest of the game just annoying them. Following them around, pinging them with a DMR or pistol, just being a pest. Usually I can get them to betray me again and then boom, justice is served. But if not, I will at least annoy them so much that they don't get to enjoy the game. And I'd encourage others to do likewise. People would be less likely to betray for a sniper rifle if it meant they were barely going to get to use the thing.
<3 However, out of the incredible amount of times I've done this to people, they've nearly always betrayed, so I usually don't have to go out of my way to get it done. And if I don't get the message first time around, there's always more betrayals.
i don't find it funny. accidental betrayal, boot right before the game ends? i can't think of a douchier move than that.
I once met a d00d in BTB that was on the enemy team and had the biggest amount of Banshee kills of all halo players. I saw him accidentally once in halocharts a week ago and saw he had 2.5 Banshee kills for every DMR kill. And yes he was a no-life and a stupid banshee bomb spawn killer. I somehow kept spawning in the open and he killed me like 40 times. Ever heard about 'a life'?
Spawn killing = No life apparently. and you probably were playing invasion or Bro slayer. Everyone can be a douche on reach. Like today i picked sprint, ran, Jumped into a low flying banshee on our team, died, and booted the dude. I lul'd, and when and grabbed the banshee when i respawned and went 31/12.
Also, people who get lots of kills with the DMR have no life, people who get lots of kills with the shotgun have no life, and people who get lots of kills in the tank have no life. The whole "No life" thing just because someone kicked your ass is so freaking stupid. Everyone who talks like that ALWAYS sounds like a damn idiot. He's good with a Banshee. So he uses the Banshee. Alot. If I'm good with something, I'll happily use it. And if he spawn kills you because of it, that's your fault FOR getting spawn trapped. And in the occasion where you are actually trapped, you need to realize it takes effort to force someone to spawn. Let me ask you this: If you were in a Banshee at the enemy spawn, and someone spawned in front of you, would you kill him? Answering no means you're a liar.
I totally agree the whole 'no-life' criticising being misplaced, but I do feel that, if it were fair, it'd be more fair here than with a DMR. Think about it in these terms: even if you play SOLELY Invasion and BTB, how many of the maps in those playlists have a Banshee? Even within those, there's only ever one on the map with the exception of Breakpoint. Having 2.5 Banshee kills for every DMR kills is impressive only in the degree of bloody-mindedness it shows tbh, and if anyone can be called a '*****' with any shred of legitimacy then it's that guy. Also, I wouldn't put too much emphasis on how good you have to be with the Banshee to get that many kills or spawn kill etc. It's the single most OP thing in the whole game. Infinite trick spamming, an OP banshee bomb with an insane damage radius and even slight homing capabilities is one of the worst balance issues Bungie has ever made imo. If you've ever played non-Invasion gametypes on Breakpoint then you'll know what I mean, that map can't even be described as simply Banshee dominated, it's just straight up broken, which is a shame because apart from that I really like it. People say that the Sniper is too easy to use in Reach and they're right, people say that Nades/Rockets are too strong and they're right, people say that no melee bleed actually works against its purpose and puts more emphasis on melee in CQC and they're right. However, most people neglect to mention the most unbalanced aspect of Reach: the Banshee, it really is the ultimate flying death machine, so easy to use it's depressing.
But it shouldn't be. Look at the stuff that's on that map: - Sniper rifle (kills a banshee in just a few shots) - Rockets (with tracking, although an alert pilot will dodge them) - A second banshee - Spartan laser - Plasma launcher (again with tracking) And if all else fails, a full team DMRing a banshee in the open can take it from full health to smoldering wreck in under 10 seconds easily. The problem is, lots of teams of randoms don't bother to get or control the *FIVE* weapons and vehicles mentioned above, and aren't smart enough to realize that if there's no other option, you can all just hang back, wait for the banshee to expose itself, and chew it up with DMR fire. There's basically no reason for banshees to run riot on Breakpoint, except that people play stupidly. I think it's a bigger problem on Paradiso (the tanks usually die in the opening minute, and the banshee has a lot of cover from everything else if flown smartly).
Thing is, what you're saying should be the way it works out, but it isn't most of the time, and tbh I think saying that it's solely because people aren't smart enough does fail to emphasise just how broken the thing is. As for the counters, the second Banshee rarely works out like that. Either one team gets both (which, I agree, is down to lack of control on one team's part), or one of them loses the inevitable Banshee battle of start then the winner flys around uncontested. By the respawn, play is often so distributed about the map that both teams have a pretty even shot of getting the one that respawns. The fact is that, with a map the size of Breakpoint, and with a Banshee flying around that almost forbids you from making a successful push potentially half way across the map to grab a new Banshee spawn, controlling respawns really isn't the same proposition that it is with, say, Snipers on 4v4 Asylum. Not only does this apply with the power weapons too, in that even a semi-decent Banshee pilot can just keep you on respawn near perpetually. All the power weapons are (wisely in design terms) put reasonably far from the noteable respawns areas with a large area of open ground between them. If the Banshee driver realises this, which most do, they can almost forbid you from getting those power weapons in the first place. In terms of easiness to get to, Rockets are top of the list since they're inside and can be reached from D-side spawns with least exposure. But they're also the least useful tbh. This is where my issue with the infinite tricks comes in, since someone who knows how to abuse the Banshee will just spam tricks over and over, making getting a lock so difficult it's not even true. This also makes using the Laser more difficult, albeit less so. But tbh I find the Sniper by far the most useful weapon in taking down Banshees, which not only seems just a little stupid, but also negates much of this 'you have plenty of options' talk I often get in response to this complaint. As for a team DMR, yes that is a good option too and does a lot of damage, but that requires A) players living for more than 2-3 seconds off spawn (which I've seen not happen for minutes at a time to near entire teams, no exaggeration) and B) all or most players working together. When this doesn't happen, you can call it players being stupid if you like, but you could also appreciate the fact that BTB is a casual playlist and rarely do people go in with full teams as a party, and plenty of people don't have mics/make no effort to communicate. If they did one of these two things would the Banshee be as powerful? Definitely not, but I think it's pretty damn unfair to expect such a high degree of whole team coordination to be a pre-requisite for taking down a certain vehicle in a casual setting, nothing else in the game does. I go in with 1 or 2 other people pretty much every time I play BTB, and 3 people in a coordinated party who are communicating and trying to set up teams DMRs doesn't cut it against many Banshee pilots. I'm not saying that someone who gets in the Banshee for the first time will instantly get 20 kills with it, but they either die in under a minute or proceed to run riot for minutes at a time. It shouldn't go in extremes like this, strategy should be more developed and skill should be required, rather than just knowing the couple of tricks to be a successful Banshee pilot then having your run of the game. Having to be good with something to get the most out of it is a great principle, but realising the strategy required to use something, and not even that difficult a strategy tbh, shouldn't be a free ticket to kills like that. It shouldn't negate any effort of skill by opponents, and tbh the only surefire strategy to owning a Banshee slows the game down more than any bitching about AL even begins to talk about. It equates to: everyone hide in a building the second you spawn, and if you spawn outside then just dash for one and pray for your life, then pop out when you know the thing is too far to land a bomb before you duck back in and just put DMR shots where you can. Does it work? Yeah (but again, only if you've got the whole team on board, otherwise you're working with fewer DMRs and having to overcome the significant lead that Banshee has put up in the time it took you to kill it) but is it insanely dull and near gamebreaking in how it affects the flow of the non-Banshee related game? Also yes. And guess what, that took you a couple of minutes and another Banshee is about to spawn/has just spawned, rinse and repeat. People say that Snipers are powerful and can dominate, but at least the player using them is still only as hard to kill in pure damage terms as any other. The Banshee is like tank that moves insanely fast and has a goddamn jet pack. On Paradiso it's bad I agree, but on Breakpoint the area separation is significantly less and so a pilot can control a larger area on his/her own than is true on Paradiso. Even if you manage to take it down and grab the newly respawned one, it just turns in to a similarly Banshee dominated game but the other way round. Remove the damn things, or do what Bungie should have done and nerf them, don't really care, just stop people who have worked out the 2 or 3 basic principles of Banshee use (spam tricks, spam bombs, learn the main respawns) getting a free ticket to 10, 20 even 30 kills. I'm not saying it's impossible to kill, just too difficult even with those power weapons, and the combination of power/manoeuvrability just puts the reward gained way to high above the skill and strategy required to gain that reward when using it. /rant. Sorry, but the Banshee hacks of me off something rotten, especially on Breakpoint, though I do agree that Paradiso is really bad too, just doesn't get played nearly as often.
Don't get me wrong, I agree that it's over-powered offensively (which is why I use it whenever possible, ha ha ha). But it's also very fragile and can't withstand direct fire from anything for very long. I think it takes less than you are implying though. Mass coordination is not necessary. 3 or so players making a concerted effort to fire on the banshee *any time* they can see it, from *any range*, will kill it pretty quickly. I'd be happy to throw a video on YouTube to demonstrate the point, if need be. The problem is most players online don't seem to realize this is true, so lots of people play run & hide, or try to do other "strategic" things - when in fact if just half the team stood their ground and opened fire, the banshee would either get destroyed or be forced to retreat. I've done this a lot virtually by myself with just one or two guys helping out; I've also (as a frequent banshee pilot) been irritated into constant retreat by guys who understand this principle and will not. stop. firing at me whenever I appear in their field of vision. As for counter-banshee strategy after spawn, it need not be limited to the run-and-hide technique. You basically always have a variety of loadouts in the big team playlist. Armor lock is quite useful for obvious reasons, and a deft user can EMP the banshee if it gets too close while bombing, or even survive the bomb and move into a banshee jack - but at least it will let you survive a few seconds, fire off a few shots, and move around a bit. Jet pack is more useful because it's basically impossible to bomb someone who is off the ground, and it makes banshee jacking a realistic possibility - though a good pilot will use thrust or constant tricking to splatter some of these would-be pirates. Basically what I'm saying is - if you play enough big team and log enough time battling against banshees, they need not be game-breaking, unless your entire team other than you sucks. If you really do reach the point where your entire team is spawning in one place and getting raped by the bomb over and over, I contend that you lost the game well before you got to that point anyway.
EDIT: Ok, I typed out a massive long rant, but on second reading it's unstructured and didn't convey my points very well. It kinda drifted off in to putting my problems with the Banshee in to the context of the wider Reach sandbox and my issues with it, using the Banshee as an exemplar. Whilst I maintain this wider argument, my re-reading left me thinking that the points I'd made and direction I'd taken were not as relevant to this argument as I'd initially thought. Basically, I don't hate the thing in principle of how it works as a vehicle. I loved in H3 even though I never used it, because it would only dominate if the pilot was really good with it. Every time I tried to use the damn thing I'd get shat on cause I sucked with it, but in Reach the first time I got in the thing I went on a 17 kill spree. It's not just about how much it takes from the opponents to take it down, but even irrespective of this it should require a good degree of skill input from the pilot to get a large number of kills. Enemies shouldn't have to be that good to take you down if you aren't that good at using it in the first place. Most of the time in H3 a Banshee would be an aspect of the game, occasionally it would utterly dominate cause a Banshee pro had clearly gotten it. But in Reach it seems like most of the people who get in the damn thing are suddenly a Banshee pro, and from having used it I can tell you exactly why that is: bombs are too powerful considering basic evasive potential of players and tricks are too spammable. Nerf the bomb a little (both in terms of damage and that stupid homing property) and limit tricks to being included in the boost charge circle, bam it's fixed. Take the Tank, often considered the most powerful vehicle: I'd much rather have a Banshee simply in terms of how much damage you can deal and the amount of the map you can control with it. Even though the tank decimates the area it can control, that area is extremely limited in terms of second to second scale. The rest of the game can still continue on around it, albeit with a proper focus on the higher power vehicle it is, but the Banshee combines power with extreme manoeuvrability to take massive damage to nearly the whole map in under a minute. I'd argue that even though it is weak, it isn't weak enough to offset those two massive advantages, but it being even weaker in terms of surviving damage isn't what I want. Offsetting too much power with being too weak simply polarises the thing, whereas finding a middle ground in terms of average outcomes is a frankly more logical choice. Even f we accept what you're saying about good players keeping you hightailing it as soon as you enter FoV, isn't that a problem in itself? Isn't there something wrong with a vehicle that is either useless or dominates, rather than one which finds its place within a game but allowing the rest of that game to continue around it?
Man I'm so damn sick of armor lock being used in annoying as **** ways. In the last few games I've been playing, and it's been happening an awful lot lately, people are using AA the minute their shields pop, and then using it until it runs out. This does two things: Destroys gameplay flow, something the Halo franchise is renowned for. Makes me waste a lot of ammo. Halo C.E, Halo 2 and Halo 3 all had great flow, and that's one thing that really set them apart from other shooters. Reach just doesn't have that. Especially with Armor Lock. Now I have no problem with people using armor lock as long as they aren't being idiots, such as using it when someone grenades their feet, or fires a rocket, but using it EVERY time your shield pops just ruins gameplay flow. As for ammo, Armor Lock is overpowered because you regain shields if you aren't taking damage while in Armor Lock. While in Armor Lock, IMO, you should regain NO shields at all. And I really don't think anyone wants to shoot an invincible guy for 10 seconds so he wont have shields when he comes out of it.
I've complained about the gameflow thing a lot when it comes to Armor Lock. I don't mind it much when other people use it, as far as the alleged competitive advantage - I think my track record against AL users, especially once I know they have it, is pretty damn good. But it makes games stagnant rather than fluid, with multiple points in each game where several players (including the guy in lock) are just standing around waiting. I'm not sure how I'd suggest to tweak it but it needs something. I'm not sure using armor lock like that qualifies a person automatically as a "douchebag" though. They're basically just idiots hoping for a teammate to bail them out.