CE Pistol: High skill curve, 12 shots, nonhitscan so you had to lead shots, 2x, little aim assist (idk how many times this has to be said but not even top tier pros can land consistent 3-4sk's on LAN), the only midrange utility weapon in that game, balanced by a powerful supporting sandbox and its difficulty of use.
The CE Pistol was the most balanced utility weapon of any Halo game, not the most broken. On paper and in the short-lived life, un-mainstream exposure it had, sure the Pistol may have appeared broken but it really wasn't. Halo 1's weapon sandbox is so fun and rewarding, how can so many people have such fond memories yet complain about the Pistol as if it was the death of Halo multiplayer? It always blew my mind how resilient people were to accepting a well-rounded weapon like the CE Pistol. If the shots-to-kill bothers people so much, make it a 4sk, but the shooting cadence and the battles with that weapon are something 343 should be revisiting for Halo 5.
I never said the Pistol was unbalanced to the point of being
broken, I simply said it was overpowered. It wasn't a disaster, there was just plenty of room for it to be more balanced, so that it didn't dominate the sandbox in the way that it did.
I strongly disagree that the Halo:CE sandbox or the difficulty of use balanced the Halo:CE pistol, because neither prevented the Pistol from dominating 90% of every match. Pistol duels were the order of the day - not because you spawned with them, but because even when you came across another weapon, or the weapon dropped by your opponent, 9 times out of 10 you were keeping that security blanket, because none of the other weapons were as versatile or even close to as valuable across so many potential battle situations.
I'm sure a top-tier Halo pro would have trouble consistently nailing 3-4 shot kills over LAN... cause they're generally playing against other top tier players, who are every bit as good as juking and jiving and using the map terrain to their advantage. But if a top-tier player encounters another top-tier player brandishing the pistol, which weapon do you think he wants at his side for the battle?
I do wish we had Xbox Live stats to look at the worldwide numbers, but I can't, so all I can go on is anecdote, which is corroborated and reinforced by wide-spread sentiments that echo my own experience (the bolded), spoken across the internet by Halo fans the world over.
Yes, lots of people have great memories of Halo despite the Pistol. It's a relatively small group of players that romanticizes an endless cycle of circle-strafing pistol-duels as the high point of the experience though. I've certainly never heard anybody say 'You know what the best part of Halo was man? Using the same weapon for 99% of a match, and having 99/100 battles be pistol-on-pistol duels. I thought my 10,786th pistol duel was the best but naw man, the next one was just as good! That was AWESOME!'
Most of the great memories from Halo: CE - at least in my experience - recall the social atmosphere of LAN parties, the emergent gameplay that came about from the infantry/vehicle interplay, the team-work that came together in CTF matches, the come-from-behind victories in Slayer, etc. I've never heard ANYBODY (outside of a forum discussing mechanics and balance) saying 'DUDE, using the pistol was so damn fun! Especially for the whole match, every match!'
You ask (perhaps rhetorically) how so many people can feel the same way about the Pistol... well, they're either all crazy, or maybe, just maybe, there's something to it, and the Pistol really wasn't as balanced as you think it was.
DMR: Much more aim assist so lower skill curve, 14-15 shots, hitscan so where you aim is where your shot hits, 3x (as we've scene that is a huge difference between 2x, especially for BTB), bloom didn't stop it from being dominant because people still spammed and got lucky (we saw the fan backlash because of luck/chance with bloom over consistency/skill), not anymore balanced than what you think about the Pistol. Not as fun or rewarding.
I don't really disagree with any of this. Well, except to say that I had fun with the DMR in Reach. But to your points:
1) Aim assist is not a problem with the DMR specifically, it's a problem with the sandbox as a whole. I'm all for limiting aim assist throughout the sandbox in future Halo games.
2) I hate hit-scan in general. Get rid of it on all weapons.
3) I said in my original post that a balanced
DMR would have a lower range and/or a lower rate of fire. I have no problem with reducing the range from 3x to 2x. The only reason I might consider not doing it is if the next game includes both the DMR and BR again. In which case, I would give the DMR longer range but a much reduced firing-rate, making it more ideal to mid-range battles and mid-long pestering/defense, while the BR would be equal at mid-range, but more powerful at short-mid-range and shorter range.
4) Bloom wasn't perfectly tuned, it's true. But you can seem the impact it had simply by comparing how much more overpowered the zero-bloom DMR in Halo: Reach and Halo 4 are to the original DMR. Bloom forced players to sacrifice firing-rate for accuracy at long-range, which prevented the DMR from scoring kills at long range as effectively as it does at mid-range. In Halo 4, that's not a problem - you can 5shot a guy as easily in 3x as you could out of zoom, leading to incredibly boring gameplay as people pinged each other across maps.
As far as in close, that's where bloom needed work. Instead, you just had people rolling the dice and hoping, which made for random, sloppy, close range DMR battles. That said, I personally was happy to see morons spam their DMRs at me in close... it made them very easy to tear apart with the AR or the pistol, or other close range weapons that I kept on hand. You'd think more players would have learned that the DMR wasn't a great close-range option and strategized accordingly, but in fairness, they had been conditioned to believe that the rifle that they leaned on at medium range should also be just as effective in close by 3 preceding games. Maybe people just couldn't break the habit.
And the H2 BR was not OP. And the H3 BR wasn't balanced, it was just trash. How can you describe a weapon as "but the remaining shots might not hit after the first shot" and think that's fun and fair? Players don't want balance by an inconsistent, watered down sandbox; they want the game to be balanced throuh skill and consistency, two areas where Halo 2 and Halo 3 were lacking. Not as fun or rewarding.
Well the Halo 2 BR certainly wasn't as overpowered as the Halo:CE pistol, but hit-scan (not to mention stupid glitches) ensured that it was still too versatile across all ranges.
As far as the Halo 3 BR, it's absolutely fun and fair. Because BR spread affects all players equally. Rather than hit-scan allowing a BR at mid-range and a BR at 2x zoom range to be equally effective and therefore overpowered, spread ensures that the BR is consistently deadly at mid-range, while ensuring it's pretty much only good for defense and pinging snipers out of zoom at long-range.
I, as the player, am empowered by choice. I can be an idiot, and attempt to force the Halo 3 BR outside of it's role in the sandbox, and attempt to battle people at long range where my weapon is less accurate and - by extension - less consistent. Or I can instead be smart and reacquire at proper range, or defend myself if need be, well enough to get to cover and re-engage as needed. The notion that there should be an imaginary wall whereby weapons go from consistently effective to consistently useless is rather asinine to me. There is a gradual, intuitive decline in the Halo 3 BR's effectiveness as range increases thanks to the logical impact of bullet spread... just as any weapon in the world works.
The CE Pistol achieves all of this, both on paper and in practice.
1) Check.
2) 2x zoom achieves this. You say the DMR is more blanced but it has a 3x zoom, is hitscan and has a lot of aim assist
3) Should be balanced by powerful close range weapons, which CE also had.
1) Agreed.
2) Again, as I said, I would be fine with either decreasing the range of the DMR or decreasing it's firing rate. In Reach, bloom ensured the effective firing rate at range was much lower than the firing rate at mid-range, making it useful pretty much only for defensive purposes or pestering. In Halo 4 (and in ZB Reach, for that matter), they did neither, and it dominated as a result.
Get rid of hit-scan on all weapons.
3) I agree that a selection of more powerful short-range weapons would solve this. Don't necessarily agree that Halo:CE really achieved that, but our disagreement over the relative balance in Halo:CE seems to be an ongoing theme. So long as the DPS at short range for the AR, Shotgun, Pistols and other short range weapons are greater than that of the utility weapon, then we're good.
