Halo 4 developers 343 Industries yet again addresses the current state of weapon tuning in the latest Halo Bulletin.

Ever since Title Update 3, the multiplayer team behind Halo 4’s War Games have been able to tweak weapons on the fly, making testing a much more streamlined process. This meant good things for the Halo community, as their feedback could be implemented quickly and changes could be made swiftly.

Early last month, 343i announced that they would be taking a much more in-depth look at weapon tuning, specifically with the primary weapons used in Halo 4’s War Games like the DMR, Battle Rifle, LightRifle and Assault Rifle. Further updates arrived mid-month and today, we get yet another look at the current state of weapon tuning.

Check out what the team had to say about the Battle Rifle, DMR/LightRifle, and Assault Rifle below:

Battle Rifle

We announced last week that we’re investigating the feasibility of a 4-shot Battle Rifle and saw a lot of interest regarding how many bullets it takes to kill an enemy. There are indeed complications that exist around a BR that takes exactly 4 shots (or 12 bullets) to kill, and most relate specifically to latency and online play. 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. 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.

We had also mentioned the reduced rate of fire on the BR. When we brought the BR to a 4-shot, the weapon was dominating at all ranges. To balance it out, the fire rate now matches the DMR exactly in current testing.

DMR and LightRifle

We’ve slightly reduced the range at which the reticle turns red for the DMR, and once again matched the LightRifle to this 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.

Assault Rifle

The current Assault Rifle kills in 16 rounds, making it technically possible to kill 2 players with one magazine if not a single shot is missed. Our current balance testing reduces the rounds to kill by 2 or 3 shots, making this feat a bit more achievable. However, a significant reduction in auto-aim makes this quite difficult and demands a bit more skill from players who wield the AR. Our current tests bring us to an optimal kill time range that lies between that of Halo: CE’s and Halo 3’s Assault Rifles.

343i added that a release schedule for the new weapon tune is currently in the works and that more details should be available next week.

In addition, new join-in-progress settings went live this past Monday in order to keep things as fair as possible during matchmaking. Check out the details below:

• 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.

What do you guys think about the current state of weapon tuning in Halo 4?