Posted by: RC Clone
An explanation of medium range weapons and their use
Why the Pistol and BR were good
These two implements were highly effective at this task of killing other players in a quick manner. From a technical standpoint though as Halo games have progressed the absolute fastest they could kill was made longer and longer.
That is besides the point at the moment though. These weapons have a high accuracy meaning that when you miss a shot this is because
1. You weren't aiming at them.
This is the first most common reason someone misses with the Pistol or BR. Your ability to accurately aim the weapon is just not good enough to hit the enemy. That isn't to say you never hit them, but you are missing when you shouldn't be.
2. They strafed to avoid the shot.
This is the second most common reason for missed shots, but this is only relevant at high skill level gameplay. I will explain what strafing is and its importance in it's own section.
Skill expression through the Pistol and BR
These weapons and their effectiveness in the right hands made for extremely controlled and skillful gameplay. When a player was better than another player they would win in most situations when all other factors are equal because the weapon in their hands is consistent and reliable in it's ability to kill other players. Consistency and Reliability are important for these weapons because it means that when two players face off against each other, it is the more skilled player that wins a duel.
The Pistol and BR were able to fulfill this role handily. High skill gameplay in CE, Halo 2, and to a slightly lesser extant Halo 3 was decided by which of the two players was the better one in terms of ability to aim, ability to strafe, and ability to put themselves in positions which were advantageous to assaulting enemy positions.
Why speed is good
Remember when I said the speed with which one could kill opponents in a duel was important?
That is because the moment you start a duel with a single player, in a team game, their teammates will be moving from unknown positions to attack you and help their teammate. The ability to get in a duel, win the duel and take minimum damage after it, is needed in order to survive the second and even third duels you will most likely get into after you have killed your opponent. Assuming the player you just killed wasn't completely clueless, you will have taken some damage and the ability to make sure that amount of damage was small rather than large is important, because the reinforcements will show up at full health leaving you at the disadvantage considering you have been damaged.
With a reliable weapon and more skill than your opponent, you can still kill these reinforcements.
Why the Default DMR is bad
The first noticeable difference between a BR and DMR is the fact that the DMR is a single shot weapon. This is unimportant.
The more important second difference is the extreme inaccuracy build up that was added to this weapon.
After three trigger pulls the DMR raises it's inaccuracy level to the point that perfectly aimed shots can miss at a 5 foot distance to an enemy player. The counter to this gameplay change is to wait without shooting to allow the accuracy to reset. This change is extremely detrimental to high skill gameplay because it introduces randomness that has the ability to counter even the best player's inherent skill and the only counter to this gameplay randomness is to slow down their shots.
This forces players to make a difficult choice.
Choose between a quick, but random decision of who survives the duel or a slow skill based duel.
At this level the speed of the kills is the more important factor because, as I said earlier, as soon as a duel starts you are going to have reinforcements show up to help kill you.
A difficult choice
The problem with this choice is that, should you choose the fast option because you are worried about the other player's teammates, you will be forced to play a game of chance that no longer factors in your individual skill. Perfect shots can become misses and missed shots can become hits.
A detrimental effect of this game of chance is that after the game decides who won randomly, the surviving player is most likely in an extremely weakened state in which their shield is down and their health is most likely extremely damaged making them an easy target when the reinforcements show up. This is even worse considering the fact that strafing in default Reach is no longer an option.
The second choice is even more problematic.
Choosing to slow down your shots in order to make sure they hit leaves your opponent alive longer and and gives more time for reinforcements to show up while you are still busy fighting a single player. Should teammates of your opponent arrive before your duel is done you will most likely be unable to survive because the slowed speed of an accurate DMR can not keep pace with two accurate DMRs being fired at you.
In the past a situation like this could easily be resolved with the ability to aim well and the ability to strafe.
Since strafing is no longer an option and the DMR is either accurate, but slow or inaccurate while fast, a 2 on 1 situation will almost always lead to the 1 dieing.
These changes make the DMR an inconsistent and unreliable weapon. These are attributes which should not define the main medium range weapon.
Strafing
A strafe is movement a player makes to attempt to throw off the aim of opponents. Strafes are usually characterized by a back and forth movement that is used to attempt to get out of the way of an opponents crosshair.
The ability to perform a strafe is important at high level play because most of the players that are at that level have aim that is good enough to quickly kill someone that is not performing a strafe.
When two players find themselves in a l on l duel the winner should be the player that performed a better strafe and countered the other player's strafe with better aim.
Strafing was most prominent in Halo 2 because the movement system had an extremely steep acceleration curve giving players precise control over their movement and allowing a high degree of control over a strafe. This means that as soon as you change the direction of the movement stick, your spartan will also almost immediately change direction.
CE and Halo 3 strafing are less effective because the acceleration curves of these two games are less steep. Despite strafing is still possible and can be effective, just not as effective as it is in Halo 2.
Reach Strafing
Strafing in default Reach is completely ineffective because the acceleration curve is the least steep. Compared to all previous Halo games, changing direction takes the most time in Reach. This means that movement is dulled and less responsive to player input and because it takes so long to change direction, attempting to strafe is almost equivalent to not doing anything in the first place in default Reach.
Movement Speed, Jump Height, and the Addition of Armor Abilities
On top of the dulled movement caused by the long time it takes to begin moving, the top movement speed and jump height are much slower and lower.
The movement speed and jump height in previous Halo games allowed players to take short cuts on maps through clever use of level geometry and its interaction with the high Halo jump height. This became called trick jumping. Trick jumping made it possible to speed up movement across a map when taking these types of built in shortcuts to move to disjointed areas. Trick jumping also allowed players to place themselves in advantages positions to set up ambushes or assault the other team's location.
Trick jumping in Reach
There is no effective or useful trick jumping in Reach that can be done at the default movement speed and jump height without the use of Grenades or Armor Abilities. yea i agree thx for the help btw, default is so boring