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373 Plasma Pistol kills and counting
I posted a thread on Forgehub on how Battle Rifles should be more rare. I'll link it and C/P it here because there is no way I'm writing it again.
Posted by:ME
I've been hearing a lot of complaints about recent Sandbox map submissions. The maps are nice to look at, and they are well built, but the gameplay always feels so dry. Like a cat slept in your mouth kind of dry.
I looked at the more recent submissions (10 pages back. Yes, I was bored today because I was off work) and noticed a bit of a trend. Almost every single one of these maps has 8 or more Battle Rifles. This is absolutely ludicrous, most times the Battle Rifles make up more than half the map's weapon total.
I have several problems with this.
1. First of all, if you want everyone to have a Battle Rifle, put BR starts. This prevents spawn-killing. If there is almost enough Battle Rifles for everyone just laying around, you're all shooting eachother, basically it's all fun and games, until someone dies. Then they spawn with a piece of -blam!- weapon and cannot defend themselves properly. Let me say when this happens it is absolutely retarded.
When you die in a first person shooter, you are punished by having your weapons and equipment taken from you and you have to start over after a set time penalty. You should not be further penalized by having to start with a weapon with which you are incapable of defending yourself with. When 9/10 players have a Battle Rifle, and one guy is running around with an Assault Rifle, there is no way he is going to get kills. He is going to get gunned down easily, and on the off chance he manages to get close to killing someone, God knows some -blam!- is going to headshot his shieldless victim and then finish him off for an easy double kill.
2. The Battle Rifle is a very powerful weapon and should be treated as such. By making the Battle Rifle semi-rare, such as having two in a small map, and four to six in a very large map, the game will still have plenty of viable tactics and strategies with which a player can achieve victory. When everyone has a Battle Rifle, you have no choice but to gear up and grab one for yourself, either that, or camp behind some corner with a Shotgun like a total noob.
Halo's weaponry is split into three distinct camps. You have the long-range weaponry (sniper rifles and beam rifles), the medium-range weapons (BR, Carbine, and maybe the Magnum). Then all the other weapons fall into the close-range category, which is basically a nice way of saying they can't hit anything outside 10 feet. When the Battle Rifle is so abundant, you immediately render all of the close-range weapons obsolete, because a smart BR user can keep his distance and pick his opponent off with relative ease. The only worry he has is maybe the odd spike, bullet or plasma blob somehow sneaking outside the magical 10 foot bubble. Long-range weapons are more difficult to use effectively as well, thanks to the Battle Rifle's ability to ping scoped in Snipers with it's fairly accurate burst. This forces all but the most skillful and tenacious snipers to give up and grab a Battle Rifle, adding to our problem.
3. Most of these Sandbox maps are very ill-prepared to handle a Battle Rifle firefight of this magnitude. Many have small corridors and huge barren spaces that make the fighting boring and repetitive. When you have tiny corridors, there is no where to strafe so it basically comes down to who pulled the trigger first, as well as the damn RNG. Wide open spaces means no cover, and eventually players catch on to this and refuse to venture outside. Anyone brave enough to go into the open gets a nice helping of bullet bukkake. This basically ensures matches degrade into taking pot shots at one another from the safety of your bases, which I'm sure we all agree isn't exactly thrilling to play.
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Go back and check out any Halo 2 map. There is a maximum of FOUR Battle Rifles on the very largest maps. Most have TWO. Fewer Battle Rifles ensures that the Battle Rifle is accessible but somewhat limited, so not everyone can have one. This encourages other strategies such as dual-wielding, sniping, close-quarters combat and more. By over-saturating the map with Battle Rifles you are suffocating other styles of play and making the game very repetitive. Battle Rifles are very fun... to a point. When every single goddamn match is just Battle Rifles Battle Rifles Battle Rifles it doesn't matter who's map your playing on, it will be the same old tired gameplay that you get on nearly every Forgehub map posted in the last month.
If your map desperately needs mid-range combat options, put some Carbines and Magnums on the map in high-traffic areas as well as a couple Battle Rifles at strategic locations. The Carbine is actually a bit more effective than the Battle Rifle and fits in nicely with the Sandbox theme. The Covenant alternative will at the very least add a different mood with it's unique sound and lime green tracers. The Magnum has the same rate of fire as a Battle Rifle but takes five shots to kill and has no scope. This makes it a poor man's BR of sorts. You can make the Magnum common and easy to find and it can help fill the void in mid-range combat that the reduced amount of Battle Rifles creates. However, the Magnum will not easily outclass other weapon alternatives. Plus Magnums are badass.
If you want exclusively Battle Rifles on your map go post it in the MLG forum. You can have a competitive map with other weapons too you know.
/RANT
[Edited on 06.22.2009 11:11 PM PDT]