We've all seen many, many bloom threads. From Bloom is broken, to bloom is was in all halo games. There is a fallacy in both arguments. It's not bloom, i.e. the expanding/retracting reticule that is questionably flawed. it's the bullet spread. Bloom is simply the visual representation of that bullet spread. So when bloom supporters say, [i]"Bloom as been in every halo game"[/i], they are both wrong and right. Bloom, the visual indicator, has never been in in previous halo titles. Bullet spread has. For better or worse, bloom and bullet spread are now tied together as one mechanic. Control the bloom, control the bullet spread. (Supposedly) Recoil and muzzle walk/climb. Halo 3 had recoil and muzzle walk/climb on nearly every weapon but it was dependent on the weapon. For instance, the sniper rifle relied almost exclusively on recoil while other weapons, most notably the SMG, relied on muzzle walk/climb. Let go of your thumb stick, hold the trigger down and the recoil from the fully automatic SMG would cause your reticule (muzzle) to "walk" upwards. Compare that to the sniper which relied on recoil. After firing a round your reticule wouldn't be resting where you aimed, it would be slightly higher, not much but it was noticeable. The difference between halo 3's Bullet spread and Reach's is that the respective visual indicators, recoil and/or muzzle walk/climb and bloom, weren't tied together. Meaning that Halo 3's bullet spread wasn't very dependent on controlling the muzzle walk of a particular weapon. In reach it is. Reach has some if very little recoil or muzzle walk/climb. From what I can tell based on my observations it's nearly non existent and has little influence on each weapons bullet spread. So what's the point you might be asking? 1. Bloom, as it's being referred to by both sides on this forum, isn't the problem. It's the bullet spread. 2. Both games (if not all previous halo titles) had [i]bullet spread[/i] not bloom. (please correct and clarify if I'm off on that one) Some believe that bullet spread or "randomness" can be bad. I'll try to keep my personal bias out of this next statement the best I can. If I loose DMR/pistol/whatever duel, I'd rather it be because the other player out-shot/out-aimed me and not because he got lucky with the pre-programmed bullet vectoring algorithm that allowed his kill shot to be "more accurate" than mine. However, I can see what bungie was attempting to do with the idea of controlling bloom = controlling bullet spread. So now the question I've been asking myself is this; What's more "skillful" Timing shots and controlling reticule bloom? Or Timing shots and controlling recoil/muzzle walk? Honestly I don't know. While recoil and muzzle climb are much more realistic but we're talking about a video game. Thoughts? [Edited on 03.07.2011 4:22 PM PST]