- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
As everyone with eyes saw in halo 3, the battle rifle dominated every aspect of game play. It was by far the most effective weapon in the campaign, none of the other weapon even came close. In multiplayer it was a must have weapon if you had any hopes of winning, and the it was practically everywhere.
This was an inevitable result of bungie's lack of foresight (one would hope this wasn't what they were aiming for). For one, they completely crippled the starting weapon. Bungie made the assault rifle the way it is to get players to use grenades and melee more, to counter act the trend of doing nothing but dual-wielding the entire game. First of all, the main reason that anyone duel-wielded in halo 2 was because the starting weapon the smg, and even then people rarely duel-wielded any longer than the time it took them to get to a non duelable weapon. All bungie needed to do in order to decrease the amount of time people spent duel-wielding was to change the starting weapon to a non duelable weapon. They didn't need to make the it nearly completely dependent on grenades and melee.
this is why the battle rifle is so popular. it can perform with grenades and melee (aside from the more obvious reasons).
What bungie should do (if the assault rifle and battle rifle will be in reach, which they more than likely will be) is make the following modifications to these two weapons.
Assault rifle
clip size 45
effective distance increased
Battle rifle
everything the same except a smaller aiming reticle
This should improve the assault rifles ability to perform in both campaign and multiplayer, and it should make the battle rifle harder to use at close range giving players with a battle rifle a better chance of winning.
The pistol should be more like it was in halo 2 and should serve as a default secondary weapon.
Bungie, if anything please don't cripple any more weapons by making them dependent on grenades and melee. This does nothing but make that weapon less appealing to players and hurt the game as whole (especially if that weapon is the starting weapon!).