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Why do YOU hate ground combat? Take two!
hypl
Member Posts: 3,719 Arc User
Because it's such an icky disease that must be avoided at all costs! :P
With New Romulus and the possibility of more adventure zones in the near future, the pure space players have lashed out, expressing their discontent about stepping foot outside of their ships for ANY reason. They want more space content, and I somewhat agree. But I also don't mind braving the surface of a planet in pursuit of progressing in the game.
So let's have another round. Do you like ground? Do you hate ground? What do you think could be improved? Should Cryptic just remove ground sections of the game entirely? Do you dip your toes onto a planet's surface and immediately scurry back into your shuttle? Will you forever forgo any future ground-related content added to this game?
With New Romulus and the possibility of more adventure zones in the near future, the pure space players have lashed out, expressing their discontent about stepping foot outside of their ships for ANY reason. They want more space content, and I somewhat agree. But I also don't mind braving the surface of a planet in pursuit of progressing in the game.
So let's have another round. Do you like ground? Do you hate ground? What do you think could be improved? Should Cryptic just remove ground sections of the game entirely? Do you dip your toes onto a planet's surface and immediately scurry back into your shuttle? Will you forever forgo any future ground-related content added to this game?
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i prefer space, but i still like ground.
edit - i wish boffs had been easier to control, like you would in say baldur's gate or dragon age, as i usually just leave them be and let them do their own thing as its too awkward to issue them commands and fight myself, but its not a huge deal.
But after playing though the game for the Nth hour..
I find ground to be just as fun if not more than space combat.
Ground missions can be such a challenge, keeping an eye on your surroundings, ducking for cover at the last second, and being a badass tank in a sci skilled for tanking and maco mkxii armour
Pvp ground is MUCH more entertaining than space in my opinion... but sadly more broken to high hell.
Ground pvps pace is so much faster than, buff attack, wait, buff, attack, wait, watch cross healing, get spammed with pets/'op' consoles,
There is something satisfying about the fact that ground pvp is limited to your captain/choices, rather than ship synergy. You have sci, tanky or controlly, tact VERY dangerous and unfair 1hitkos, and engineering.. 'oh look he's clos... *BOOM*' ^^
As for controlling boffs, I don't bother. They seem to know what they are doing better than I do.... lol.
The only issue I know is some spacers are whining about it.
What I find very very funny is spacers spend hours learning, tweaking, and buying better gear for space.
Then they don't put the same effort or resources into the ground efforts and complain its hard.
It's the same as buying a new ship and playing the STFs with default gear.
Let's just say what you put in you get out.
Except for getting stuck in ground. Having my boffs stuck in ground. Except for doing exactly the same missions over and over again. Double the amount of 'templates', and it would release a little of the boredom trying to get the explorer accolades.
Much better control of the boffs would improve things a lot. As it is now, i use two tactics, either have them all focus on one enemy before rushing ahead (click once), or let them attack at will (no click).
Actual exploring in a wider area, perhaps even some npc interaction would be awesome.
Some missions where some optional task are at hand. If being an engineer, it would be nice to actually do some engineering (beyond reading datalogs from some consoles).
Random chains would be welcome. (Ref: doff chains)
Missions of exploring abandoned ships would be welcome.
When you're a lowbie you're mowing down herds of NPC enemies to level through the missions. No intelligent dialogue or dramatic tension there, just kill em. I can forgive that in an MMO. But then you do it ad nauseam which is very MMO but very not Starfleet. Ah well.
Most of the blame comes from the ground STF missions, and prior to that, the full STF missions. That is to say, a lot of this is Gozer's fault and indirectly Dan Stahl's for signing off on his terribad game designs. With those long mission times, being stuck in bad PUGs, having to mow through trash mobs who just wouldn't die despite firing on them a million times, trying to light those stupid ground towers in The Cure...then when we got the short ones, the million runs you had to do for Mk XII, and now reputation grind...just gave people nightmares. Who the hell wants to spend hours fighting that army?
The other thing is the stupid Fleet Actions like Breaking the Planet and especially The Big Dig. Why do the enemies constantly respawn?
Ways to fix it:
That is true... though I do think that its funny a basic sword (received from completing 'arena') usually works best against the enemy than a 'powerful' energy weapon (purple grade)...
Otherwise it's nice, I really don't have any problems with it myself.
How about creating ground missions with fewer shots and more story and puzzles?
The ground missions with several possible endings would be interesting.
The missions in space with multiple possible endings would be interesting too.
To add to this, I'd love to explore more. As in search a derelict ship, etc...
On one hand, it really does feel like you're leading a Star Trek Away Team. You're the Captain in charge of a group of people, and you need to coordinate them with tactics, abilities, and weapons in order to succeed.
On the other hand.... it's a sopping wet mess.
When your captain is glowing in five different kinds of Super Saiyan, surrounded by neon (not very) nano machines, eight different flavors of bullets on the screen, smoke and fire effects, shields, turrets, and other miscellaneous effects, you can't see what's happening at all. This has resulted in not only unfair deaths, but many, many headaches.
(I imagine this is why so many people hate the Devidian Episodes)
Not only are the abilities too flashy, there are too many of them. I never work at maximum efficiency on the ground simply due to not having enough hands. This was something Guild Wars 2 did right. You're limited to 3-4 abilities and you have to pick your favorites.
While I can understand lots of abilities with your space ships, as you can have crews of thousands, but on the ground, you really shouldn't have more than four or five buttons to push. Right now it really gives an unfair advantage to those using RPG Mode, and RPG Mode is boring. Standing around until you die is no fun at all.
And finally, why are the mouse buttons mapped to the 1-2-3 buttons are? This removes 3 slots that could be used for (the aforementioned great many) abilities! It gets in the way when it shouldn't need too.
In short, map the mouse buttons to anything but the hotbar, subdue or just outright remove half the ability visuals, limit them to a handful, increase buffs to 5 minutes and the cooldowns to 7, the ones that aren't worth increasing, just remove.
What I don't like atm is the controls, it feels laggy, clunky, delayed, disjointed, sometimes button press does nothing, there is no good (gui-)feedback, you are jerked around a lot, one shotted, it doesn't really feel like you have a crisp, clear, clean control of your char.
The second one would be mass killings.
I enjoy hanging out with my carefully chosen officers (each of whom is an individual and each of whom is assigned to some missions)
And yes... I love dismembering things on ground....
My character Tsin'xing
As a science captain, I pretty much am limited to 3-4 abilities. My class abilities are on long cooldowns and are fire and forget. That leaves me with four kit powers and tricorder scan. Then my items and my Omega Force ground set active power. Much simpler than my space keybinds.
Fanfiction! ZOMG! Read it now!
kate-wintersbite.deviantart.com/art/0x01-Treachery-293641403
Exactly. That's too many.
Now, I still prefer space, but ground is... fine.
Except on my science officer. My DPS is so crappy, I feel useless, and everytime I use an AOE, the mobs run away so fast it was pointless.
On the other hand, my engineer is more fun on ground than on space. I seriously love the mines and the orbital bombardement.
On my tac, I love the damage, but I feel like everything is buffs and buffs. Also, the security team is BS, they use draw fire and die in 1 shot from borg, while doing almost no damage. Granted, they really looks like redshirt, but....
after i felt that i did well enough in space, i attempted to give ground combat another go. i did not regret that decision at all. i regret not giving it another chance earlier. just learning the different mechanics and powers my captain had available, i learned how to become very good in ground combat where i can deal damage, improvise, and survive effectively.
most of the veterans in my fleet were also avoiding ground combat on purpose because of the same reasons i did: a bad experience and a general lack of knowledge of captain abilities. with me leading a group, i dragged them through an easy elite ground stf (kage). they survived, listened to my instructions, and enjoyed a smooth run. it wasn't long before we started tackling cge and ige. soon after, they were becoming very effective, surviving, learning the maps/strats, and eventually improvising to the point where even i was impressed with their teamwork. now every time someone requests an stf in fleet, we see people shouting for ground combat because it's more fun.
Huh?
In space you have your captain abilities, plus 12 BO abilities give or take depending on your ship, and up to 4 device abilities. Not to mention any special weapons you may have equipped or special console abilities.
In ground, you have your captain abilities plus 4 kit abilities, and 4 device abilities. How does this translate into too many?
In space, I need a big tray of 3 rows to make everything available. In ground, I only use 2.
Ground is fine. In fact, I like the ground STFs. And I agree with the posters that say that a lot of hate is from those that don't bother to gear or spec for ground, so they complain it's too hard or too painful. Well, they would probably say the same for space if they went into an elite STF with white mark IX gear, and only 6 or less skill points invested in their space tree.
Come join the 44th Fleet.
startrek.44thfleet.com[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
This may be due to the fact I have the Borg Kit, which gives you six abilities rather than the usual four. But even still, 4 abilities + 4 device slots + 1 set power + 2 Captain powers + the Omega power is a lot of buttons to push.
Then you're using the sci wrong :P A sci should be outdamaging tacs on the ground regularly.. which AOEs are you using? If you use the Physicist kit, Exothermal (the fire) and spatial instability pretty much hit instantly. And if you couple that with a purple Geologist that gives you the ground gravity well, they turn deadly (and you can up the damage even more on bosses by hitting them with tricorder scan, nanoprobes and the dampening dome)
I love ground. I do wish there was some more variety (especially in the explore missions) and I will admit it has a learning curve, but it's no worse than space. There's a lot more strategy involved, and I like that.
I do agree that most spacers get frustrated because they want to enter a ground STF with inadequate gear and get constantly one-shotted (the remodulation is annoying, too.. I'll give them that) but it's no different than trying to run into the hive space elite with 3 points in energy weapons and default white gear... you'd get vaporized.
For the "too much time, not enough reward" crowd, I say that space PvP is worse in that regard: zero rewards other than dilithium, repetitive, boring maps, long, drawn out gameplay.
Cure ground is actually doable and easy, once you get the strategy down... finishing it is easy, getting the optional takes little effort. It's the Infected optional that's a real challenge.
No ground parts of the game should be removed whatsoever... upgraded, improved, sure. But not removed. Maybe make some episodes that aren't all about pointing and shooting (and please not like Of Bajor and Second wave! Lots of chores, very little story. The radio puzzle was nice, the rest is a lot of running around and clicking... yay!)
The AI for my BOFFs is idiotic, and frankly I do better without them. They need an always-available way to pause and micro-manage them and use their abilities better (Mass Effect comes to mind) so they actually help me, focus fire, and don't aggro everything in 3 counties. Then there's the brain-dead damage-sponge kamikaze mobs, who wade through a minefield unflincing while 5 people shoot at them, and still walk right up and 2-shot me, and my only real counter is to blandly burn all my buffs and hope he dies first for a change. Plus they have so many RNG-Says-F-You abilities that if they decide to use you're just debuffed and half dead and nothing you can do about it.
More thematically, I want it to make up its mind about what it is.
If its an RPG where I'm supposed to stand there and trade hits, then I'd love to know how I'm supposed to survive doing that as anything other than a Medic or constantly wasting money on hypos. Plus as an RPG I should be able to customize the heck out of my character, as much as I can my ship, building specifically my way to chain complimentary abilities together and select appropriate counters, rather than being stuck with just the 4 abilities in a few kits. Lastly, slow the heck down so I can think, plan, and execute, or give me that always-available pause button. Otherwise its just 'pop all buffs, hope he dies before you do.' If you want to be a full RPG, be KOTOR (the original) or Diablo.
If its an FPS, then do the exact opposite. Less powers to micro-manage in the middle of a fight, make mobility matter, make cover matter, make it so when I dodge I actually dodge. If I'm circle strafing, or using cover, or popping off headshots, reflect that. Don't have enemies shooting me through walls and completely ignoring all my attempts at suppressive fire. Play like a real FPS, not some clunky mess that pretends while still limiting you to all the keybinds and RNG nonsense. If you want to be an FPS with RPG numbers under the hood, be Borderlands or Skyrim or Bioshock.
I want to be in full control of the situation, I want the AI to have some actual intelligence, and I want the game to decide what kind of game it is. All it is now is a chaotic mess.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
The o3 - Killed you good
1. Have to press the revive button two times, because the 1st time makes your guy stand right back up.
2. There is no usable cover. Squatting down behind a crate doesn't work..I still get shot in the head and gun fire seems to travel through walls.
3. I can't jump over rails or simple boxes and sometimes I am stopped by 1 inch rise in ground terrain.
4. Enemy AI is dumb.
5. There are no planets to explorer, when beaming down. It's a square sheet where I have to zig-zag to each point of interest to either scan or fight...there is no diplomacy.
6. My squad AI is dumb.
7. Waypoints - this used to work where I could tell my own away team to "stand here" and you "stand there" in anticipation of a epic battle....or when there is a puzzle and I NEED one of them to stand in certain spot to operate a door.
8. Objective waypoints on your minimap are usually the same transparent color of the background map...making it hard to figure out where to go. Tricorder is useless and only wants to point you in the direction of scanable radiation samples.
My character Tsin'xing
I tried to duel them... with fists. Found myself eating the dirt instead.
As for ground missions, I do like them. I like stepping off my ship once in awhile. You can only look at bulkheads and a viewscreen for so long. They could use a bit of improvement though... like a "taking cover" mechanic.
"Hah! You are doomed! You're only armed with that pathetic excuse for a musical instrument!!!" *the Savage Beast moments before Lonnehart the Bard used music to soothe him... then beat him to death with his Fat Lute*