Halo 4 has more details flowing in from the developers and this time 343 Industries has provided an update about how the company is working with its weapon balance tweak, alongside tweaks for the in-game Join-In-Progress feature.
The company states that the new tweaks have been planned in accordance with the release of Competitive Skill Rank (CSR). The official Halo Waypoint blog says that developers are currently testing a four-shot kill Battle Rifle compared to the current five-shot.
However, since each shot of the Battle Rifle fires approximately three bullets, 343 Industries is considering making the 11th bullet (not the 12th bullet) fired the kill bullet.
“While a 12-bullet kill feels good and rewards accurate players in a LAN setting, the vast majority of the game is played online, and the 11 -bullet kill provides a consistent online experience while still rewarding skill,” the company states. "Right now, we are testing a 4-shot BR that kills on the 11th bullet, which allows for a small margin of error in online play.”
Not only has the Battle Rifle’s rate of fire been dropped to match the DMR to prevent it from dominating at all ranges, the range at which the reticle turns red for the DMR has also been reduced. Now it matches the LightRifle's distance.
“This is based off some feedback we received last week that questioning whether or not it is currently too easy to engage people across the map. To maintain skillful long range battles, we’ve reduced this range slightly for this week’s testing. We’re also investigating slightly increasing the rate of fire on the LightRifle when zoomed, which increases its viability at range,” the blog adds.
As far as the Join-in-Progress update is concerned, players can now join games that are based on game mode and playlist. Below is the detailed list of changes in this department:
- Once a match has passed just over half of the total game time, Join-in-Progress is disabled across all game modes and playlists.
- Rumble Pit now has the smallest Join-in-Progress window, only allowing players to join during the first few kills of a match.
- In Slayer matches outside of Team Throwdown and Team Doubles, players will no longer join after one team has reached just over half of the score limit.
- In King of the Hill and Oddball, players will no longer join in the second half of the game in regards to score limit.
- In Grifball, players will no longer join single-round matches if over 3 goals have been scored by one team. We will be updating Grifball Pro to similar settings in the next update.
- In Team Throwdown and Team Doubles, players will no longer join after a small join window during and before the first moments of a match.
These updated parameters, according to Halo Waypoint, “is to ensure that players who join late will still have a chance to win the match, and that players will not be joining War Games Matchmaking matches too late to have a shot at winning.”
