Audley's Workshop: Balancing an FPS Sandbox

A while back, I did a blog on having certain weapons appeal to multiple playstyles, referring to the horribly vague MtG archetypes Timmy/Johnny/Spike to label the players to whom those weapons would appeal.  It focused on having weapons in Halo be both fun and competitively viable.  I mentioned the Halo Reach Grenade Launcher as the pinnacle of success for designing weapons for all players, then pointed out three examples of weapons that appealed to two archetypes and failed to meet the standards for the third.

Today, I'm revisiting Audley's Workshop with a focus on tweaking some weapons from the Halo series to make them more viable competitively or more appealing to the broader player base.  There won't be any focus on Timmy/Johnny/Spike here, just strictly on some weapons that get overlooked in Halo for either being shoved too far into a niche, being too unreliable, or simply not having enough identity on their own to be embraced by the players.

The Needler.  Everyone knows the pink mist.  Or, in a strafe battle, the pink missed.

Halo 3 and Halo 4 had decent incarnations of the weapon, but even then its niche was very difficult to abuse and relied heavily on flanking and catching players by surprise in order to get kills with.  By the time a player had time to turn and react to the first needle connecting in H3, the others were already locked on and tracking to set up the super combine.

But as we move into Halo 5, where the Thruster is readily available, and players are going to be able to quickly break those lock-ons, how does one make the Needler more useful?  Hell, the weapon already had trouble keeping up with any side-to-side motion, whether strafing or simply running in a straight line perpendicular to the wielder... so where is the Needler missing power?

While you may think, "Hey, the Needler's tracking could just be improved to make it harder to dodge!" -- reducing counterplay isn't a wise decision for a weapon that is theoretically a very fast kill weapon between time-of-engagement to time-of-death.  While the actual travel time of the needles makes the kill time long, the actual time to react from being shot is substantially smaller.  Reducing post-reaction counterplay is not the way to go.

"Well then Audley, I guess you have an idea?"  I do, and I've mentioned it on forums in the past.  You know what weapon the Covenant never had a true successor to in Halo, despite having plenty of CQB weapons?  The shotgun.  What if, instead of a standard melee, using the melee with the Needler unleashed all of your needles in a uniform cone ahead of you?  If seven, or eight, or whatever the arbitrarily chosen supercombine number happens to be managed to lodge themselves in the target, you get the insta-kill as usual.  Suddenly the Needler is a much better weapon in CQB, which immediately improves its definition in the sandbox.

This also improves the Needler's options versus a player running perpendicular to you; instead of simply praying the tracking decides to work at your range, you lead your shot and unleash.  If they aren't terribly far away, and you angle your shot (melee) correctly, enough needles will land in their side to score a medium range kill with the Needler.  (Audio cues will be necessary for this "MULTIPLE NEEDLES INBOUND" situation though.)

Voila, the Needler is now the best weapon in Halo history.  You're welcome, Bung343.

Oh, nice, the Plasma Rifle.  A weapon that gets praised in Halo: CE for fitting well into the sandbox with its hitstun and quick camo uses.  Hardy LeBel did a wonderful job with this gun and making it useful in Hal-oh, wait, you're telling me outside of HCE no one uses the Plasma Rifle?  Because it's a shit generic automatic weapon with no niche or role at all?

Well, we need to fix that!  No weapon should be useless.  Let's talk about how to make it better, without treading down roads been walked before, such as the hitstun method which limits counterplay potential.

As a visible projectile-based automatic weapon, the Plasma Rifle is a weird beast.  Players can literally dodge the shots (unlike the hitscan incarnations of the Assault Rifle) and see where they need to move in order to stay ahead of their opponent's reticule.  This is good, it offers counterplay.  The slower projectile speed compared to most weapons in the game makes it difficult to use.  It leaves us with an unreliable weapon, especially at longer ranges.

In non-Combat Evolved Halo games where the Plasma Rifle is available to be used, its most common role is for a quick couple of shots followed by a melee.  A pretty shitty niche as other CQB/melee weapons outshine it in that role, and other automatics (SMG/AR) outshine it in gun roles.  As a gun, the Plasma Rifle is pretty shit.  Its other common use, in H2A's case, is to put a couple of shots in, back down into cover while you switch to your BR, and finish with a headshot.  A role where it is outshined by a Plasma Pistol (outside of Warlord, where there is no PP).  Uh oh, looks like we have a weapon that isn't very useful in its intended niche.

So how do we make the Plasma Rifle more reliable at range, or stronger as an automatic?  How about we do both at once -- by removing the limitation that each shot fired only has one particle, instead splitting it into two?  To make the weapon more effective at range, the plasma could feature a dissipation effect -- where the plasma spreads out, becoming able to hit a wider area at range.  This would still have significant damage versus shields, but be relatively useless versus player health.  The damage would still degrade at range based off how much of the spreading disc of plasma hit the player, but the focus here is to soften shields.  The second part of the damage would remain in the center of the disc, increasing focus on hitting your shots accurately as a player gets low on health (in line with Halo's core combat philosophy across the series where you body shot until a player is low/out of shields), then headshot.  The central portion of the Plasma Rifle's bolt could convey headshot bonuses, as well as pack a substantial punch to health any time it connects to an unshielded player.

Suddenly you've got a weapon with nuance for use (do I focus on aiming accurately or just try to drop shields as best as I can, do I have teammate help?) while it still has potential to stand on its own as an automatic, due to having a centralized point of increased damage for penetrating health and finishing off players that have had their shields dropped by the high energy plasma.

But let's not stop there; I've only been talking in 4v4 so far, there's another niche the Plasma Rifle was absolutely overshadowed by its UNSC counterparts...in BTB, versus vehicle health.

It makes zero sense to me that UNSC vehicles are so resistant to plasma damage.  That shit should shred the fuck out of vehicle health.  C'mon now.  Bump up the UNSC vehicle health damage from Plasma-based weaponry.  UNSC vehicles are built to withstand other UNSC vehicles' weaponry, not Covenant weaponry.  UNSC ARs/Magnums/Rifles should not be stronger against vehicles (outside of rifles versus weak points) than Plasma Rifles.

Okay, now we've buffed the Plasma Rifle to viability.  Who are we looking at now?

I'm afraid I don't recognize that weapon.  I don't think I've ever seen anyone use it.  What is it?

Oh, that's the Carbine?  I thought that thing was just a myth made up by those bastards that played playlists as Dinos and ran around shouting "wort wort wort" to be funny.

Here we have an example of a weapon that is perfectly capable in its own right (usually, I think in H3/H4 they intentionally made it weaker than the other options just so they'd never have to bother worrying about it.) but which rarely gets used apart from a pick-up to hold as a sidearm in case you run out of ammo in a power position you don't want to leave.

The Carbine has no role of its own, it's simply the "harder to use Covenant BR"; I say harder to use because it's single shot, versus the BR's burst.  Mistakes are punished more, and it's high shots-to-kill leave plenty of room for mistakes.

So how do we give this thing a role?  Sage Merrill had a pretty good idea once.

But if this blog is to jerk myself off--err, challenge my own design mind, I need to explore a different avenue.  One that doesn't involve "oh just aim for the body if you can't aim and you'll get a flashy kill; it'll be sweet I swear."

First let's examine the canonical design of the Type-51 Carbine.  By design, it is meant to be a riflesque version of the Type-33 Light Anti Armor Weapon...also known as the Fuel Rod Gun.  The Carbine literally fires supersonic radioactive projectiles at the target.  It's most often wielded in campaign by Jackals, the "snipers" of the Covenant military.

So using this knowledge, what can we do to the weapon to give it some identity?  Looking at its Big Sister counterpart, the Fuel Rod Gun, we know that the fuel rod "deploys" after being fired a certain range -- making it move much slower and explode upon the next target it hits.  Thinking about this, Carbines could do the same after a certain range.  Within their intended range (max red reticule range or whatever) they could still fire the standard method that ultimately operate like any other rifle in the game, but as you extend beyond that range, the fuel rod "decays" turning the bolt into an explosive projectile.  This could make it useful for pinging targets behind cover in long range skirmishes, damaging light vehicles as they attempt to flee, or packing an extra punch against smug DMR wielders who think their superior range gives them safety.

Ultimately, this change gives the Carbine a unique role as a dual-threat weapon; a rifle in standard ranges with some potential for splash damage or anti-armor potential in extreme ranges (hello BTB crowd!).  Suddenly the weapon has flavor that allows it to stand out from the other weapons of its niche, and you may actually remember it exists!  (And hey, making the Covenant Rifle explosive isn't that farfetched, we DID have a Supercombining Needle Rifle.)  And for those of you who can't visualize how I imagine the longer-ranged Carbine bolts to work...just imagine the Phoenix from Perfect Dark.

One last Halo weapon before I delve into my "bonus" topics...

"Audley, I didn't play Halo 4.  What the fuck is that?"

Don't worry, it's not a morning star.  It's the Pulse Grenade.

I encountered a poll on GameFAQs asking what the most useless weapon in Halo 4 was, and the #1 answer, with 40% of the vote (passing the Suppressor, Storm Rifle, and the Gravity Hammer) was the Pulse Grenade.

In my experience, this wasn't true.  Melee+Grenade throw was an instant kill with Pulse Grenades active...sharing this knowledge even convinced Eric "Gh057Ayame" Hewitt to include Pulse Grenades on-map in his Team Throwdown settings which were used for competitive tournaments during H4's lifespan.

So, if I'm so convinced Pulse Grenades were one of the strongest CQB weapons in all of Halo 4...why do I feel the need to talk about them?  It's all about player perception.

When you see the Pulse Grenade's animation, and its name, you expect it to be a sort of delayed-explosion that deals a ton of damage.  In reality, the Pulse Grenade's damage is front-loaded.  It takes place instantly in the giant circle of doom you create.  Add in Halo 3's Power Drain animation to a player's knowledge base, and you expect the Pulse Grenade's giant orange doomglobe do also deal significant damage over time.  Nope, not the case.

Literally the only good uses for the Pulse Grenade were to finish off players who were severely weakened -- the delayed effects were negligible at best and completely avoidable at worst.  But the instant burst of a well-thrown pulse grenade (or, in the primary usecase, a pulse grenade thrown at your feet immediately after a melee) was unavoidable, and made the pulse grenade a potent option as a finishing tool.

So, to reiterate clearly after all that jumbled rambling...

The Pulse Grenade needed nothing more than an animation fix to better clarify it's purpose to the users.  It was an instant burst tool, not a delayed-damage like most grenades, nor an AoE drain like the Halo series' past tool, the Power Drain, which carried a similar animation.  Clarity of design is just as important as unique flavor and potency, otherwise your users simply won't grasp how good it actually is.


That's all for my Halo weapons to rework...Now for two bonus guns.

Perfect Dark - Reaper.

OH DEAR GOD THIS THING WAS A MONSTER.  Viscerally, it was one of the most fun weapons to use in the history of FPS.  But in terms of viability...dear god, the weapon was ass.  It wasn't really intended to be a serious use weapon from what I can gather; hell, in game canon terms, humans aren't even supposed to be able to wield it, only the Skedar are.

If you didn't play Perfect Dark and are wondering what the fuck a Reaper is...  Imagine you took the bottom of a blender or food processor and made it the size of a chainsaw.  So you have a giant rotating fan-o-death that can shred people to death.  Got that in your mind?  Okay, that's just the SECONDARY fire mode of the Reaper.

Now imagine, for the primary mode...  That each of the tips of the "fan blades" can fire bullets, and as the fan spins faster, your rotating death fan of doom and despair fires faster as well, and is essentially the fastest firing machine gun in the history of anything ever.

Got it?  That's the Reaper.  Don't got it?  Here's a video.

With great fire rate comes great inaccuracy.  Dear lord the thing was inaccurate.  Unwieldy.  The melee secondary fire mode was fun, but mostly useless unless you had a really good corner to hide in for ambushes.

In terms of fun factor, the Reaper was fantastic.  It was a weapon you'd pick up just to watch it spin as you were hypnotized by murderous glee.  Unfortunately, there was just no way to reconcile its RoF with its accuracy to make it work for players...or was there?

The Reaper's kill time was surprisingly fast, when bullets actually hit.  Myself, I'm not a fan of randomly making bullets miss because you arbitrarily want to limit a gun's power.  Drastically reducing the damage per bullet and increasing the accuracy could've gone a long way to making the Reaper a bit less farfetched as a tool -- and as a cost for the increase in accuracy, tuning the recoil to actually RECOIL (rather than again, just being a random spread of bullet trajectories).  Alternately, taking the Halo "ripped-off-turret" approach of reducing the player's movement speed could also curb some of the power given back to the player by more consistency in the weapon itself.  A final route, though probably too ahead of the technology curve for Perfect Dark's day could've been to greatly increase the magazine size (from 200 to 1000) and add the potential for the gun to overheat as it approached its faster RPMs, leading a player to want to micromanage the heat and avoid spinning too fast.


And the final gun... Quite possibly the most hated gun in FPS history...

The Klobb.

How could this have been fixed?

Just delete the goddamn useless piece of shit.




That's all for my random blog on FPS sandbox design, hope you enjoyed.

Why I support AR/Pistol Starts over BR Starts as the Competitive Option in Halo 5

Over on the TeamBeyond forums, there's been a debate raging for weeks now over what we believe the starting weapons should be for competitive settings in the upcoming game, Halo 5 Guardians. If you've been following the thread, you can skip to the section with bullets, because I'm starting off be reiterating some of my points made in the thread.

For a decade now, it has been whatever the game's best-suited headshot rifle was labeled (usually the BR). This has caused a schism in playlists, where “casual” gametypes (and some ranked, in TS playlists) would start with the game's standard automatic weapon and “hardcore” gametypes would start with a headshot rifle. We've heard counter-arguments during Halo 4 that in order to return to Halo's past glory we need to “keep it vanilla” – and while moving toward a more standardized weapon set across the whole of the game would help, it ignores the reasons we moved away in past games.

In Halo 2, there were three starting weapon options for UNSC weapons: SMG, Magnum, and Battle Rifle. Let's take Lockout for example. Say everyone starts with SMG/Magnum. One team gets control of Sniper tower and BR tower. The SMG can't really fight at a range from building to building capably in Halo 2. Nor can the Magnum (a shame it wasn't the HCE Pistol). And a BR spawns on TOP of the BR tower. In the high ground.

Let's move to Warlock. 4 BRs on the map. All on high ground, that can only be reached from two methods: Lifting up a slow lift and then jumping out into the open onto the platform, or walking up a ramp from one direction onto the platform. Very predictable methods where, if you don't ALREADY have a BR, but your opponents do, it's damned near impossible to grab one.

In Halo 2, the range discrepancy between the BR and the not-BRs was high. To exacerbate that problem, the BRs were often in places of optimal use case already, so once you grabbed them, you had little reason to move. Design-wise, this makes starting with not-BRs incredibly snowbally. But it's illogical to say “We did BR starts because the SMG can't fight the BR.” – the placement of BRs on map were equally at fault. (Let's skip the irony that Bungie intentionally stripped the Magnum of power from CE to 2 in an effort to gut skill gaps to force closer games and then set up maps in an absurdly snowbally manner.)

In Halo 3 we returned to BR starts again, although the range discrepancy of the weapons and their placement were much more sensible. (Granted, that range discrepancy was fixed by nerfing the everliving fuck out of the BR to the point that it was essentially useless on large maps, making BTB a nightmare.) The pistol was still useless. A desire to stay away from Spray and Pray anything fueled the decision to keep the BR as the starting weapon, and rightfully so.

In Reach, the Beta pistol showed promise, but at launch it was clear we had no option but the DMRNG. In Halo 4, an enormous debate arose over whether the BR or DMR should be the starting weapon (disregarding #TeamOrange who all believed the Light Rifle to be the superior skill gap weapon to use). Ultimately, the BR was chosen despite having random spread and being burstfire, when the mostly-cosmetic bloom and single shot of the DMR made more sense for a competitive rifle. Why? The DMR shot too far. It was too oppressive in the game, and would assist players in aiming over literally entire arena-sized maps. Despite very correct and well-articulated articles opposing the BR, the BR was healthier for the game and simply felt better. The Pistol was a lot better in this game, but it was still ultimately a lottery cannon.

With Halo 5, however, things have changed. Automatics now have headshot multipliers (they're more skill-oriented, and less spray-and-pray). They have the definitely-not-ADS-nope-not-one-bit Smart Scope to encourage using them at range. The Pistol is the fastest killing headshot weapon in the game, and had what we were told were bugs (flinch, recoil) that made it unwieldy. Additionally, the Pistol could fight at a range beyond two feet in front of you, already making it superior to the H2/H3 incarnations that we had to avoid like the plague.

So let me repeat that. THE PISTOL IS USEFUL AGAIN. And less importantly, the AR isn't a “let me camp around a corner and just shoot+melee you” weapon. It is also useful at range.

The reasons we avoided ARs and Pistols in previous titles are gone/heavily mitigated in Halo 5. We have good reason to try them out as the starting weapons from the get-go, and avoid separating the entire community into our we-don't-like-your-gametypes-we're-going-to-make-our-own...with-blackjack...and-hookers “hardcore” settings.

But before you rattle off all your reasons why you think the BR is more skillful or use reasons like “we've used the BR for a decade, why should we change now?” or “hodor hodor hodor” to try to dissuade me from continuing my support of the AR/Pistol... let me return to a rubric I've used in past Audley Enough blogs.

Riot Games' six core gameplay tenets they use for League of Legends. You know, literally the most popular PC game in the world, and the esport with the greatest success world wide in terms of viewership. I wrote about this six gameplay tenets as they relate to twelve of my favorite vehicles from Halo history in some blogs last summer, but now it's time to relate them to guns!

As a refresher, those six gameplay tenets are:

• Mastery – Mastery is essentially a constant ability to improve. In Halo, that can range anywhere from improving your shot, to route-taking, to map positioning; basically, any way you can get better at the game, there's always room to get better. In short: Mastery is your Skill Ceiling.
• Meaningful Choices – Meaningful Choices are where there are tradeoffs to your decisions made in game. Whether that means you have to mitigate weaknesses or simply take less risky plays, it means you're constantly making a choice that isn't already made for you.
• Counterplay – Counterplay means there is room for your opponent to outplay you with what they are provided. In League of Legends, this commonly gets confused with building certain items to counter things, when in reality it is focused on moment to moment gameplay and the ability to fight back regardless of build.
• Teamplay – Teamplay is where a team comes together to bolster their strengths, cover weaknesses, or simply work together toward winning the game. In League of Legends, this is focused around having team compositions need to provide certain roles to the game. Despite denial from pro players, this also exists in competitive Halo, where players' playstyles provide roles similar to a MOBA's “tank” “carry” or “support” roles.
• Clarity – Clarity is simply the presentation of information in a clear and precise way. Any important/relevant information should be communicated to the player. This won't actually be relevant for this discussion.
• Evolution – In Riot's definition, evolution more refers to their constant addition of new mechanics or rebalancing of old ones. For the sake of this argument, it will focus on how the weapons affect an evolution of a metagame.

So first, let's start with Mastery. It will be quick to go over. Regardless of the starting weapon, there's a clear skill set related to accuracy with a gun. I'm not going to argue either choice has an outright greater skill ceiling, but I will point out that, assuming the Pistol has a shorter red reticule range than the BR – then pistol fights at medium range (for example, health pack/BR to Carbine on Shrine) or longer become more about the player's dexterity rather than the game's assistance. Based off the H5 beta, the Pistol was capable at Medium range. Less so at longer. The BR, on the other hand, had aim assist across the entirety of Truth, leading to much easier time killing players who exposed themselves. While battles directly between the weapons in their intended range don't have much discrepancy, encouraging more skill rather than surefire kills in ranged battles is a good thing (see: Halo 3.)

Now, the tenet where I feel AR/Pistol greatly supercedes the BR: Meaningful Choices. If you spawn with a BR, you almost never have a reason to drop the BR. Your BR is love. Your BR is life. You almost never have a reason to swap to the Pistol, even if it kills faster. (Because why should I go into the range where Pistol is better?) The situations where a Pistol is better than a BR are outshined by situations where other weapons in the sandbox are better than the Pistol (why get a Pistol secondary for my BR when I could get an SMG?).

On the other hand, if you start with a Pistol, you have a much larger array of choices. Do I want to be more effective at range and sit back with long range support fire? Let me drop my AR or Pistol for a BR or DMR. Do I want to push harder? Let me drop my AR for an SMG. I can't push now, should I drop my SMG for something else? Because of the more limited range of engagement with your Pistol start (but again, still more than capable in most regards, especially once the recoil/flinch are removed), you have more room to shape your ability in combat. You have clear tradeoffs of effectiveness at long range versus effectiveness at close range based off which weapon you choose to pursue. The pistol is strong, and a very capable Utility weapon. But maybe you just like to play passive. You can bet players like Roy or APG are going to be in your face with their Pistol, though. Fuck your slow-killing BR!

Counterplay. Now, this is where all the pro-BR supporters will chime in “HEY IF YOU SPAWN WITH BRS YOU CAN FIGHT ANY RANGE OFF SPAWN BUT IF YOU SPAWN WITH PISTOL YOU CAN'T HAHA, BR IS BETTER RIGHT?” But again, this is where you're overlooking the fact that... oh, hey, the pistol's actually decent at medium range. You CAN fight back off spawn. Even on big, open maps like Truth. I do have issue with the BR spawning P2 and DMRs in the bubbles, rather than being closer to the safe spawning areas to readily equip a player to fight back off spawn, but in general, the weapons are in positions where players can reach them without dying, and use the amount of maneuverability tools available in H5 to fight back. Granted, yes, BR starts are marginally better with regards to counterplay than AR/Pistol starts would be, assuming a situation like H2/H3 where one team has secured BR/DMRs and the other are all dead. This discrepancy is more mitigated by map design and weapon placement, however. Keep rifles out of power positions and the players in them have reason to move – whether it be that they ran out of ammo, or that they didn't already have a rifle. Imagine back to my Halo 2 example of Lockout's BRs spawned BR1, Elbow, and Top Blue instead, or Warlocks spawned at the bottoms of the ramps, rather than on the Plats. You've instantly better equipped the “losing” side to fight back. Combine that with the fact the non-BR weapons are already comparatively stronger than they were in H2, and you've brought the gap to a manageable ratio.

As I said in the bullets, Clarity doesn't really relate to this argument. The only relation to clarity would be for casual viewers who tune into a competitive stream and wonder “why are they spawning with different weapons than I spawn with in matchmaking?” but given Halo's tiny viewership currently, I don't believe this to be a relevant issue worth worrying about at the current time.

Now regarding the Evolution of the game. I've written in the past about how I believe movement to be the most important aspect of a competitive game. (That even applies to competive card games, where the only things moving are resources.) Longer range weapons promote more stale gameplay. We'll probably never see DMR starts ever again, but DMR starts on large maps in Halo Reach provided absurdly stale games, because players simply couldn't push anywhere without being melted. (Note, competitive people, I'm referring to BTB here, not MLG). Hemorrhage was a joke that relied entirely on Wraith and Sniper usage to get anything done, because they were the only things that could fight from outside the range of a DMR or without dying instantly.

How does that relate to the BR / AR+Pistol argument? Tangentially. Maps with more open sightlines (see: Truth) lead to slower gameplay when the player is more equipped to fight at range. If you can't poke out without being chunked, you don't want to move. If you don't want to move, the game becomes a stalemate. Stalemate games, while they highlight a different skillset than the faster paced variety, also give an advantage to the underdog. Take Pit TS for example in Halo 3. More upsets happened on that gametype than any other. Not because “oh, this team was actually better all along” but because stalemates make it easier to keep an advantage. If no one's able to manage a pick-off, the stalemate keeps going until a viable power weapon or power-up breaks it (Prophet's Bane not really good vs BRs, btw.) If you got a lead in Pit TS, you kept that lead until Rockets respawned unless you just fed kills to the enemy Sniper. If you got the next set of Rockets, you probably kept the lead and won. No one was going to push you while they didn't have rockets unless their Sniper got a pick-off.

With AR+Pistol, although the Pistol's kill time is faster, it requires more care and precision to get those all-the-way-across-map kills. (But in terms of base-to-tower, it's much more reasonable.) If you have the Prophet's Bane you can sprint and thrust and actually move from cover to cover without being melted from multiple angles. You're encouraged to move and push! With more movement, there's more room for in-the-moment decision making (more meaningful choices?!) and much more excitement factor spread through the course of the game.

Additionally, with regards to Evolution (off the topic of movement now), there's more room for player identity, tying back into the choices a player makes. Aggressive slayers like APG, Roy, or Ninja who like to rush constantly will likely prefer the fast kill times of a Pistol over the sit-and-wait approach of a BR. On the other hand, zone control-focused players like Ogre 2 will likely prefer weapons more equipped to fight at range. They find their comfortable corner of the map and position in a place where they can put shots on anyone anywhere they feel like. They'll go hunting for BRs or DMRs. Sniper players on maps without the Sniper may hunt for a DMR for the “next best thing” in marksmanship, disregarding their pistol entirely. This ties into the tenet I realize I skipped in my ranting... Teamplay. Individual playstyles have more room for “role” identification, and teammates may cover gaps created by a player's choice in equipment. The more open the sandbox is, the more the kids will get to play in it.

That pretty much covers all I wanted to say. AR/Pistol offers more meaningful choices and room for evolution as a whole and as an individual, with a comparatively small sacrifice to available counterplay (the main area that forced BR starts in past titles in the first place).

AR/Pistol Starts for Competitive Halo 5, Audley for Color Commentator 2015. Jet fuel can't melt dank memes.