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2) THE ILLUSION OF A RESPECTFUL/COMPETITIVE KILL…this is a transition for point 1.B, but focuses more on the semantics of ‘respectable’ and ‘impressive’ kills, and how is has nothing to do with being competitive, but more so just being flashy or style points when used outside of the innate strength of a weapon. a) So first off, lets talk ranges. Every gun has an optimal range. When you are using a medium-long range weapon, inherently the weapon has to be precise, because it has to hit targets that are far off. When you kill within a precision weapon’s optimal range, nothing is special about that, because it’s doing what it is supposed to do. Then there is outside of your optimal ranges. Some weapons work differently outside of their optimal ranges. Weapons that have far ranges have the capability of killing at any distance within it’s range, even if it’s not it’s optimal range. For example, the Sniper Rifle’s optimal range is to be at a range where Precision rifles / DMRs cannot reliably de-scope them, being outside of the DMR’s optimal range, while the DMR is within the Sniper’s optimal range. The Sniper has a huge advantage under these circumstances, so if the DMR user were to kill the Sniper when the Sniper has the advantage, it would be deemed ‘impressive’ or ‘respectable’. Now lets go to the other side of the coin…If we are using a CQC weapon, they are designed to have more firepower or stopping power without a high requirement of precision, because in close quarters you don’t have the advantages that space/range give you, which is time. When you do not have time, you cannot easily be precise, so they are designed to save you time by not requiring you to line up shots, hence why SMGs and Shotguns are excellent hip shooters. If a shotgun or SMG were to go against a DMR within their optimal range, they are expected so have a significant advantage. If the DMR use wins the engagement in the Shotgun / SMG’s optimal range, that would be impressive or respectable. For both of these examples, the vice versa is also true. The impressive or respectable kills are usually the kills where you are either slightly to majorly disadvantaged, but it’s a matter of weapon match-ups and positioning, not that some weapons are inherently respectable while some aren’t. Sniper Rifles can at least no scope up close, but a shotgun cannot reasonably kill at a Sniper’s range, so while precision will always be more skillful, the non precision weapons don’t have the possibilities that the precision weapons do when playing outside of their range. So we cannot demonize shotguns and autos for doing what they are supposed to do, and praising DMRs and Snipers for what they are not supposed to do, and then make that outlier the standard for ‘respectable’, which is super subjective. So basically any weapon that can’t kill outside of it’s optimal range is considered to kill in a non-impressive or non-respectable way. Respectability is important in competition, but it is a subjective term, and the HCS’s definition of what is respectable and not is unfair to the inherent nature of certain weapons. A tiger cannot help it was born a tiger anymore than a shark cannot help that it is a shark. Both are killing machines with different advantages and disadvantages, and those things aren’t going to change for their whole existence. A tiger wouldn’t be wise to fight a shark in the ocean, and a shark is definitely not even going to make it near the tiger’s jungle. This doesn’t mean the shark is without dignity and respect, or the tiger lacks in sophistication and style. b) There are two sides, the pro sandbox and anti-sandbox, but because the majority of pros are anti-sandbox, they and most of their anti-sandbox supports act as though the pro-sandbox supporters are generally casuals, and while the definition of casuals may vary, it is typically a derogatory term, because their are people with competitive spirits that believe that expanding the sandbox will be healthy for competition, not hurt it. The anti-sandbox camp basically calls anyone who doesn’t agree with them a ‘casual’, as if to say they only care about fun and goofing around. ‘Casual’ is more of a mindset, not a skill set. There are skilled players who want a bigger sandbox, believing that it will make it more competitive, which in turn makes it even more fun. Halo tried to get away from being a sandbox shooter for H4 and Reach, and neither the Pros nor ‘casuals’ liked that, if we are counting the majority, because of course some people did like that, and those were still good games in their own right. However, the majority of the community begged for Halo to return to its roots and become a true sandbox shooter once more. Well they did that, but now the Pros are ripping most of the sandbox out of the game for ranked players, and HSC entertainment. What’s going on in HCS right now is hardly Halo in it’s fullness. If I wanted to show a friend a competitive representation of a sandbox shooter, this current one is not it. The Pros say they they understand the difficulty of balancing for the pros and casuals, trying to make it an issue that it’s not, when really the issue is how HCS pros view what is competitive or not, having nothing to do with being a casual or Pro, which I talked about earlier. 3) SHOTGUNS…The idea that a shotgun should become less lethal in close quarters is asinine. At what point does nerfing a gun become too much? The Heatwave is literally the most difficult shotgun to use in all of the Halo games, and they GA’d it. If they make shotguns tickle, and reduce spread, they are basically turning them into SMGs and ARs, but y’all already have an issue with those weapons, because they aren’t precision based, so the shotgun can’t win in anything, and if the Pros were to get their hands on balancing, some weapons would evolve into completely different categories of weapons, and shotguns as we know it would go extinct in Halo. In a good amount of shooters, the shotgun is made to be a trash representation of their real life counterpart, because shotguns in real life are evil guns in close quarters, but Halo has allowed for strong shotguns in all of their games, and considering that there are shields in the game, that makes them ‘fair’, even though ‘fairness’ and guns shouldn’t exist in the same sentence, developers should try to make them fair to some extent. If shotguns are to be considered power weapons on power weapon pads, they should get a buff, because right now they are good, but not that good. Which will lead to my next point, but I went on a tangent with the shotgun to say that the Halo community does like shotguns, which might come to a shock to some Pro players. Did y’all forget how much the community had been clamoring for the double barrel brute sawed-off with a mini grav hammer attachment??? Did y’all forget how much the community hated the Bulldog, because it didn’t have that 1-shot lethal range that Halo’s classic shotgun had? Some of you ‘pros’ have requested for a weaker shotgun, which is why the classic shotgun doesn’t exist in the game, which I’m not completely in disagreement with, only because it shat on the energy sword to an extent the sword didn’t exist in a healthy close quarters power weapon triangle with the Hammer and the classic shotgun (due to bulltrues), but now some of y’all conspire to to move the shotgun into extinction in Halo all together. Y’all are out of touch with the sandbox and the community’s wishes when it comes to entertainment, although I wouldn’t want to stain competition with the needs for ratings and entertainment, I believe there is a healthy balance in which both exists at high levels, which I will touch on later.

4) WEAPON PADS / RACKS…I can tell that based on some of the pros who have videos up on the GAs and why they support them have also eluded to deeper rooted issues that have nothing to do with the weapons themselves. This makes me think that the GA’s are really just temporary bandaids for issues that will take more thoughtfulness in fixing. Some have mentioned that the bad timings and pad tiers need refining or rebalancing, and I can agree with this. The power pad and red rack weapons have too much uptime. I won’t go into too much about what I think they should do, because I haven’t given it as much thought as the other points, but I think I know where they should start looking. I think they should consider increasing the downtime of all weapon pad/rack tiers. I also think that the idea reflected in a 3 tier weapon pad/rack system doesn’t reflect the weapon tiers in the sandbox. There aren’t 3 tiers of weapons: power, semi power, and common. Some of the most common weapons are the strongest ones, and some of the red rack weapons are equal to some blue rack weapons in killing efficiency. I think there is this idea that weapons that hit harder per shot are power weapons, when dmg per shot isn’t what matters as much as TTK. I think that in truth, there should be an extra tier of pad/rack. The pads are more in the open and more fairly contested than wall racks, so instead of adding a 3rd rack, like an pink rack, or whatever color floats your boat, they should add two tiers of weapon pads, which one of the pros mentioned putting some of the red rack weapons on pads in the middle of the street. I think if the Pros were willing to incorporate a minimum of 80% of the sandbox ( I know the Hammer is BS), they should get executive power over the weapon tiers, weapon pad/rack timers as a trade off, as long as no power pad timer is over 7 minutes, but the weapon would have to get buffed or nerfed (within reasonable means as to not ruin the identity of the gun) to reflect the power pad level. 5) OBJECTIVES AND SANDBOXES…I do realize that the game objectives trump the importance of sandbox battles over weapons, and that is why some pros would find getting plunked by a shotgun to be annoying, because they cannot realistically play the game objective and fight for weapon ctrl / denial at the same time all the time. Some times map control for the objective will allow map control for the sandbox, but more than not, this is not possible, which is probably the primary reason the Pros had the sandbox reduced. As I mentioned in my last statement, I think Pros should have more say in weapon respawn timings. I do think that there should be intervals of time in between objectives that allow sandbox control to become the focus. In some game types, like King of the Hill, or extraction, where there is a point scored between a new objective rotation, there should be a 2 minute interval that allows Pros to fight for map control and sandbox control. This would justify an increase in weapon pad timers, increasing certain weapons downtime, and increasing average game length in order to make fighting over the sandbox important, and making that catapult success for the game objective rather than lowering success for game objectives. I also think they should consider that power weapons spawn 3-4x later than they currently do for their first spawn, so that fighting over them doesn’t get in the way of the game objective, and that capturing or scoring an objective will either reduce cooldowns on weapon pads or increase / reset downtimes in such a way that the game objective and sandbox objectives don’t interfere too much with one another. There should obviously be overlapping times, where getting a hard fought over objective, the power weapon can be the deciding factor, or maybe it’s what gets you off to a good start on the next objective 2 minutes later, if it’s a stronghold type of mode, and where conserving power weapon ammo becomes a strategy in order to save it for game objective dominance on the next point. I may have seemed to be speaking negatively against pros for most of my points, but something I do think the Pros are very in touch with, more than the rest of the community, is understanding and feeling objective and weapon timings, and map control, since they coordinate on a higher level. On these things I think they should have a lot more say on and that the Devs should listen to them a lot on.

6) ENTERTAINMENT VS COMPETITION… I want to use an example that most of us probably will understand. The NBA all-star game used to be an exiting game to watch, but when statisticians, who sometimes lack much context of the game, got involved to create bumps in rating and revenue, they actually ended up ruining entertainment value, because they didn’t understand what the fans really wanted. They say that statistically fans always got the most hyped for 3 pointers and dunks. Another dynamic around the all-star game was that championship pressure was greater than ever, and players had to stress more about their legacy and rings, so they valued sitting out the all-star game or playing with minimal effort, so as to not get injured. Although the latter has nothing to do my Halo HCS point, the decision that the league made in order to create increased rating did. The league decided they could make everyone happy by telling the players to play minimal defense, allowing players to hit uncontested 3s and dunks without resistance. This led to a steep decline in ratings. What the statisticians ended up finding out is that fans enjoyed watching players use their skill full handles to get past good defenders for dunks, or use their athleticism to dunk over/on defenders. They enjoyed watching contested 3s go in a lot more than wide open 3s. They found out that the game was fine as it was, and that they didn’t need to manipulate the game to make it more exciting. So the reason I mentioned all of this is to say that if I talk about making the game more entertaining, I am not saying to do so at the cost of competition. I believe that the higher the degree of competition, the higher the quality of entertainment, and the more ratings and revenue the HCS will bring in. So, when I talk about the need of having weapons excel at their innate abilities, like a shotgun in close quarters, that is because it is a defensive weapon made to defend objectives, and that the players trying to take the objective will garner more excitement by outplaying the shotgun, whether it be by positioning and coordination to flush him out, or by raw mechanical skill with strafing and headshots, it will be more impressive. I believe that most of the sandbox offers good dynamics for attacking or defending objectives that increase the mechanical and strategical requirements, and in turn increase entertainment value. I really gave the shotgun as a defensive example, but imagine the Ravager’s charged shot flushing out a guy with a shotgun holding a tight angle…isn’t that a glorious example of how the more of the sandbox you incorporate, the more dynamics can be at play. Now like I said, I may have a different idea of competition then most pros apparently, but I do have a competitive spirit, and do think that there is a way everyone can win, except for Pros and non pros that want to remove certain weapons just because they have a hatred for those types of guns, regardless of the weapon’s potential contribution to competition.

To add to this ; I think 343 is afraid that gameplay would be too slow without power weapons through a spectators standpoint. Halo infinite is pretty fast with no power weapons regardless

I still love watching the HCS, and understand a lot of the previous GA's but this is silly and stale.

100% agree with Skewer and Sentinel Beam.