Reload while sprinting

I'm not saying that they shouldn't do it just because it was never that way before. But I will say that as Respawn chases mechanics intended to speed up gameplay, they're tinkering, I think, with a very fundamental aspect of the game, and a very sensitive one. I spent 18 years in Halo watching it get twitchier with every single new version of the game. It was never an improvement. It finally got bad enough that I abandoned my beloved franchise for a game that rewarded thought as much as reflexes. And I hate watching that critical characteristic being slowly eroded. Is sprint-reloading the thing that will push the game too far? Probably not. But it certainly would be a sign of everything moving in the wrong direction.

Halo hasn't really gotten twitchy though. I can see where you're coming from, but Halo Infinite failed on PC for a couple of reasons. The movement wasn't that good or interesting. The slide mechanic was one of the most uninspired iterations I've seen for any game. The other issue being Aim Assist being so over-tuned, that any self respecting MnK player would not stick around for that torture. On mouse, you had to be well caffeinated, fully concentrating, and having a good day to play well against some controller player just casually locking onto you. There's an argument probably for Halo 5 doing what you're talking about, but I personally never played it, so can't say too much.

One thing to keep in mind about movement speed and how "twitchy" games have become is one, bad network design. Lower tick rates, bad servers, catering to low ping and bad internet players. The second, bad implementation of mechanics. Like climbing/vaulting, your player sends out a ray trace to measure how far away you are from an object. If you're within a certain distance, it will teleport you to that object so that you can begin climbing it. Values are turned up so that it feels "good" to the player, at the cost of looking natural, accurate, or fair to other players in that lobby. Happens in so many games, and honestly baffled no one brings it up. 

What's the argument that it would have a negative effect on Apex exactly? Like I said, it caters to someone with a very particular skill set and just makes movement a chore because of it. There's a select few that probably really like it, but it's something that I found really annoying and really hinders movement for the average player. I'm tired of esports and catering to the 0.01% of players that demand this huge skill gap. Get over it. I'm here to have fun and enjoy the game, not practice some mechanic for 8 hours a day, then go into aim trainers all day... yawn, boring AF. Esports need to go away for a while so the industry can innovate. 

I'd argue with lowering TTK was a big step in the wrong direction. I want the game to feel good as well as feel fair. Being able to reload while sprinting would do that. Lowering the TTK goes against so many things that makes Apex fun and feel good to play. 

I  can't speak to Infinite because I've only used it for forge. And that mode is so buggy as to be useless so I can't imagine how messed up the gameplay might actually be. And I'm certainly not trying to say that "Halo failed because it got too twitchy." Halo failed for more reasons than I care to count, but far and away the whale on the list is Microsoft mis-management. But that's for another time.

I remember not long ago seeing a YouTuber who did a side-by-side of CE gameplay and Guardians gameplay. I knew intellectually what a dramatic difference it was, but SEEING it spelled out like that was like the scales falling from my eyes. Sprint took that game where it needed to go. Ground Pound took it somewhere else. And Clamber. And thrust, slide, and charge. It just became a chaotic messy **bleep**show that required any veteran player to throw away years of muscle memory and begin with a new and completely unintuitive control scheme. Spent decades getting your aim just right? Doesn't matter because some adhd caffeine binger fresh off of Quake will Spartan charge you and 343 will reward that trash with a kill. Because kids, I guess.

But I digress. Where I'm headed with all this, as always, is not to bust on any particular change. I could easily picture reloading while I sprint, and I don't imagine it would upset the fabric of the universe in any appreciable way. Except, again, that it represents a subtle disturbance in the force. Yesterday it was opening bins while using an Ultimate Accelerant. Today it's reloading while sprinting. Tomorrow it's some insane combination of activities all happening at once so that an opponent witnessing it can't even tell what's happening much less where to shoot. And, to add insult to injury, it will be some insane combination of activities that every PC player on the planet will macro, making them even harder to compete with than they already are.

In general, things that speed up pace-of-play are bad. Things that slow pace-of-play are good. I want to be able to THINK about what I'm doing, not just REACT to what someone else is doing. You get to a certain age and a game had better test more than just my reflexes. Because those aren't what they used to be.

Oh, and you're 100% right about the way bad net code and garbage servers interact with gameplay. It's a disaster, and people should be way more wound up about it. Good call. And also, yes, the current season's gameplay is not good. Not good at all. Far too twitch, imo.

I think being able to loot while healing just gives you ways of weaving actions together that can make the game more fluid. It's little stuff like that I really appreciate. It doesn't really effect gun play or engagements, just QoL stuff IMO. Also, being able to get rid of something in your inventory while doing another action is great as well. 

The problem with games being twitchy, and think people struggle to articulate this, is that it doesn't feel fair. I play a lot of BF2042 right now, and a lot of "top" players look like they bounce around. It's because the server can't predict where they're moving quick enough, their client is accurately updating, and so on. Bottom line, they're somewhere else at almost any given time other than where their character model is. Until they stop moving for 100ms or whatever. The people that like that are usually people that are super hyper naturally, and I agree, I like to see what I'm shooting at. My eyes need a few ms to digest what's happening. I'm a twitchy player myself, but its frustrating to be on the other end of it. There's nothing to learn or take away, other than you need to constantly move around to abuse that peekers advantage. Every game seems to keep moving in that direction for whatever reason. Controllers, aim assist, and twitchy games with low tick rates, the kids love it!

So I totally get where you're coming from. Tarkov added momentum to their game, and I've always thought that would be something that could help with players warping around. Unfortunately, EOT also has a huge cheating problem, so I can't bring myself to play it. We need games with higher TTK and with more predictable movement. 

Regarding macros on PC, stuff like I just mentioned would make that less of an issue as well. The lurching in Apex is such an understated issue that adds to that unfair feeling. Those are the things Respawn should be tackling, sure you might lose a couple of sweaty players that are just terrorizing the rest of the population, but screw them. Grow the casual base back up and cater more to them. I hear people say this in such a round about way, they just can't articulate it. It's like they get caught up thinking they're inferior or something because they don't want to admit they want a more casual game. In competitive games, there can only be so many top players. I'm over that, and has been nothing but pure toxicity for FPS games.