Posted this on the community thread, but wanted to make sure the feedback thread got this as well:
I played some more matches last night and a few this morning before heading into work.
I think the pistol is a beast, however, I would like to see the pistol go to a four-shot kill instead of five. The rate of fire on the pistol is pretty much perfect. Also, I would like to see a stronger zoom on the pistol. Not as strong as the BR/DMR, but perhaps 2% more than what it currently is.
My reasoning for this is because when you do spawn and the other team has rifles, the pistol's scope isn't strong enough to really ping other players out of their scopes.
I did find myself rarely picking up the rifles though. The rate of fire on the rifles are much slower than the pistol, and to me personally, I can't stand slow-firing rifles, I wish they fired as fast as I could pull the trigger, like the pistol.
On the subject of timing power weapons and powerups, that needs to make a return. That is what made Halo a mental game. Like Quake, managing when a weapon drops and timing when you pick it up and when it will respawn again was one of the many fun things about Halo.
There's not much controlling of anything, if any at all in Halo 5 right now. On the midship map...there's a sword...yippee...that's not much of a power weapon. Where's the shotty to counter it? Where's the plasma pistol?
On the other map, there are two snipers...why isn't there a rocket in the center of the map? What about a camo? Overshield? I'd love to see the removal of the countdown of when the weapons drop, and leave it up to the players to manage it in their own heads.
Make it static, that's why it was so fun in HCE, knowing every 30 seconds a sniper would spawn, every 60 a rocket, etc.
Now onto the subject of the automatic weapons being OP or not. I'm really on the fence with this. After playing more and more last night, I used the AR a bit more. I honestly think nerfing the AR's power is a bad thing. Now nerfing its distance, I would be open to that discussion, because I think that's where the pistol should play a role.
In otherwords, for the CQC off spawn, the AR should always dominate, but when you get into the medium range distance combat, the pistol should always out play an AR.
Since the SMG is a pickup weapon, I think its medium range should be stronger than the AR's.
One of two things will happen if the AR gets a nerf. We're going to back to square one when Halo 3 came out. The assault rifle needs to play a role like it did in Halo CE. It should be a weapon that protects you off spawn in close quarters situations. The pistol should be the utility weapon that provides defense from ranged attacks off spawn.
If we nerf the AR, then we defeat the entire purpose of its existance in the first place. I think the main issue people have is with its ease of use, it's holding down the trigger and doing the typical spray n pray style gameplay...but is that not what it was in Halo CE, only it wasn't effective at medium range distances?
I am pleasantly surprised at how Halo 5 is balanced right now. I was seriously expecting a crap game, but I think 343 have really put in some thought as to how to balance the starting weapons. Those who call for BR start games...to be honest (and this is coming from a person who love HCE and BR start H2) it doesn't really need it, at least not in its current state.
If the pistol's power gets nerfed, then we can have the BR start discussion...because now the utility weapon is no longer present off spawn.
Also to be honest, I don't see a whole lot of weapon balancing needed, other than increasing rate of fire on the rifles and making the magnum a four-shot instead of five, but I don't know how that would affect the rest of the sandbox.
What I do think is missing from Halo 5 is the core gameplay of timing power weapons and powerups. If 343 were to put power weapons on static timers, e.g., every 30 seconds the sniper spawns (regardless of whether it's picked up or not, which means at 29 secs in, if you pick up the snipe, one second later, another one will spawn), I believe the game would become a deeper competitive game.
Also, bring back timed powerups. Put them near power weapons like they were in HCE. Rockets/Camo, sniper/OS, etc.
I think Halo 5 has a lot of potential to be one of the best Halo games since HCE. I can't stress it enough how awesome it would be to have the gameplay of timing powerweapons and powerups again. I really do think it adds a lot of value to the game.
Right now, slayer just feels like running around and fragging...not thinking about anything else at all. Even when the announcer says snipers dropping in 10 seconds, etc...it doesn't provide any depth.
There needs to be more going on in the game than just slaying...Halo CE provided that, it was not just about slaying, but it was also about blocking the other team from getting the powerups and powerweapons on the map....it was about total control of the match from controlling the map, controlling the spawns and controlling the items that spawned.
