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Ground combat - More of a chore than any fun
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Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
At the moment I dread ground missions, they drag on and on for ages and now I am fighting Romulans they take even longer than before. THe Romulan Commanders are the msot annoying, taking around 5 minutes to kill just one of them since they keep recharging their shields every 8 seconds or so which is barely enough time to get any hits on them.
I also find that msot of them just involve killing legions of enemies to get to an objective, I find this very boring and just stray off the road and find my own way to the objectives, even with this work around I still spend just as long trying to get all my BOs successfully through all the plants and rocks without getting stuck.
Some of the non-combat ground missions can be quite interesting but they are very rare and instead I always end up with these missions where I have to go through so many groups of enemies that it just gets extremely boring and repetitive, espeically with these Romulan Commanders and such that appear and take forever to take down.
Sure you can say that some of these things are meant to add a challenge, but to be honest it's just the same challenge over and over again but with a few tiny differences.
This is just my personal view on Ground Combat at the moment. Improvements I, personally, would like to see is more non-combat missions that arn't just 5 minutes long and more ground combat missions that don't take me up to half an hour and beyond to complete.
I also find that msot of them just involve killing legions of enemies to get to an objective, I find this very boring and just stray off the road and find my own way to the objectives, even with this work around I still spend just as long trying to get all my BOs successfully through all the plants and rocks without getting stuck.
Some of the non-combat ground missions can be quite interesting but they are very rare and instead I always end up with these missions where I have to go through so many groups of enemies that it just gets extremely boring and repetitive, espeically with these Romulan Commanders and such that appear and take forever to take down.
Sure you can say that some of these things are meant to add a challenge, but to be honest it's just the same challenge over and over again but with a few tiny differences.
This is just my personal view on Ground Combat at the moment. Improvements I, personally, would like to see is more non-combat missions that arn't just 5 minutes long and more ground combat missions that don't take me up to half an hour and beyond to complete.
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That is not to say that I particularly like ground combat (50% more of 4 is just 6)....
I could not agree more.
When i do exploration missions, i leave unexplored systems if i even see a planet or a faraway base. I will not enter into ground combat voluntarily. It's boring. It's tedious. It doesn't require skill, it requires time.
i know it's impossible to change now, but i'd love to see a more FPS style ground combat system. have to use cover, everyone has very little health.
But this doesn't work when every attack hits. Feh! i hate ground combat. Worst part of the game by far, for me.
More area to explore, not necessarily being able to always pick up contacts on the map. Surprise is a good thing sometimes.
Basically I just dance around in circles while my away team does most of the work with "Focus Fire" command.
Though since I got to commander and I can us more abilities with my BOs, they seem a little more interactive though still seem slow to react. Yes I know they are not human (well living players) so it is to be expected.
I have come across a couple of planets recently with really decent or eye catching terrain. It doesn't seem as cartoonish as some of the earlier planets and they often remind me of TOS away team encounters.
Dude for serious we may as well as just do an orbital bombardment most times, we ****ing kill a 1000 guys per mission anyway, klingons called kirk a great warrior but he got's **** all on us, we're death incarnate, I've probably killed more people than have been killed in all the series put together.
I completely agree OP, I too dread ground it's out and out the worst part of the game, and then just to spite us, cryptic makes it take forever to get through those missions.
Please if we must kill so many cut their hp in half and double basic attack damage(don't bother saying that'd be too easy, I've died bloody twice to remans+server lag, and a perma hold in a group mission, I take on entire rooms at once sometimes), it's just so lame I've got phasers and disruptors yet it takes 198352 shots to kill someone without an expose.
Aye, as an Engineer it takes me ages to kill certain mobs, such as the Romulan Commander I mentioned above. Turrets I've given up on since they're pretty useless in PvP and PvE. PvE they become public enemy no. 1 to any bad guys around and in PvP they do too little damage to be of any use anyway.
I just hope we get a lot more variety in these content patches we'll get in the future and not end up with more extremely long ground missions.
Yeah it's a little better with science tricorder scan but I don't put points into ground, not like I'd do a ton more damage anyway and I hate ground, going with engi and sci boffs seems to allow me to just let them do everything though and alt tab out, but playing thru is sooo boring and frustrating(from length and seeing an objective to kill even more enemies).
What I really hate is when you get a scan mission and then have to kill all the enemies too, just why? Is this the mirror universe starfleet? The only time ground is fun is when I can sneak around to activate objectives without fighting, as a sci officer it's not so easy as for tacs with stealth.
something that has irked me is the sniper shot on some weapons, why is that limited to the same range as the regular range shots. its a SNIPER shot, not a regular shot. and why is it that u can hurl a grenade 30 meters just as accuratly as 10 feet?
just somethings ive seen.
RedShirt.
I would love to flank enemies, but even if I command all my BOs to focus on my target, it seems I never lose aggro, so they are always facing me.
Personally, I think part of the reason ground combat can be quite tedious is people not putting skill points into ground skills - which IS a wise decision, as you would otherwise lack skill points for space since the skill point cap is so extremely tight. With enough points into ground skills, I can imagine it becoming much more fun and less tedious. The skill point cap is obviously at fault here...
My only problem with ground combat (I breeze through missions on the ground takes less time than space) is that you crouch, and if you have a 6'1" dude with wide shoulders you can't see! So I made a 5'9" female so that I could shoot....
I like being zoomed out and sending my pets (BO's) to attack and healing them, but the camera for crouch ruins it for me. If I coud JUST crouch and didn't have to see only my toon and nothing else, I would be happy.
the ground pve combat is really fun to me (space is losing me... when will it get hard??), I'm so sick of right-clicking ot auto attack in games and honestly no matter what they do it's still a lot of fun. The crouch camera sucks tho.
The NPCs just stand/kneel and shoot..........not very imaginative.
Not to mention the land here go there, scan this, kill that, scan this, get to point B beam up, rinse repeat etc etc
It is not "Oh wow I get to check out this planet" its a chore, because the limited area of exploration, and having knowledge of where enemy is takes the fun out of you don't know whats over the next ridge, rock, down in that ravine, around the next bend.
This is my biggest pet peeve on exploration missions. I fell for it the first few times, thinking it another one of those 'run around and scan five objects' mission, but then you get the message that some enemy beamed down. And they ->always<- have to stand on top of the objects which more than tripples the time it takes to complete the mission, without any extra challenge or fun at all. I can accept one or two roaming parties which may be avoided with care. But four static parties always right where you need to be? Ugh...
These days I always read carefully before I beam down and if there is even a hint of a possible enemy I just leave that system and try the next one.
Exploration missions are mostly a chore I do agree with this post in that regard.
I would rather them give us more ship/station maps than ground maps.... Trek just isn't usually about the ground, and if it is it's usually about a small area of it. On the other hand it would be nice to have a few planets that were all about exploring different areas of terrain.
Or they could just let us visit starfleet in san francisco for now to try out their city mapping
I say they should let it have the strategy game feel that space combat has, i see it having a MMO,RPG,RTS,3PS thing going on if they just let us stay zoomed out (even while crouching) and guide our BO's a little better through combat with obvious bridge officer controls. Then we can just have a tac officer run in and tank for instance or a science officer scan stuff (lol), depending on our playstyles (I believe that it is capable of this it's just not part of the UI).
I think that would remove a lot of the tedium from just mashing buttons and killing by yourself, then suddenly a "big" guy with shields appears... and your BO's are just doing their own thing.
I'm at commander 2 and I actually enjoy ground combat now. Hated it in open beta and headstart.
I know- I try to get as many enemies facing me so that my BOs can flank them. Works out rather well.
try running directly to an objective, putting up a cover shield around it (if you are an engineer) to block enemy fire, so you can use it
here is how i do ground combat missions
1) right to first fight
2) let go of mouse and keyboard and turn on xbox, put in a game, play game...
3) check to see if fight is finished, run to next fight
4) go back to xbox game
5) rinse and repeat
p.s. even if you die you continue to get skill points from your BO doing the mission and then they heal you after
i also agree for both space and ground combat i'd prefer less enemies but harder enemies that actually provided a challenge...
The main prob is, that it has absolutely no atmosphere, and zero Star trek-feeling, and it completly unrealistic.
everyone just crouches down right where he is and starts fireing.-Boooooring.
And the indoor desingn is mostly extremly poor. It just doesnt rock.
I too would like to see better enemies but I like the shoot'em'up feel and just wish I had more bridge officer "command" abilities to make me feel like a captain/commander of troops. I'll take RTS over FPS any day of the week
1.) Players and NPCs have way too much HP. I like in space combat that once your shields are down, you're pretty much screwed. Players and away team NPCs have way too many HPs. I've made it to Lt. 1 now twice (once in beta, once live) and not ONCE have I been challenged by ground encounters. I never at any point felt that I was in any danger or could be defeated. It's even more impossible to die when I can make shield/health generators and have BOs with healing and shield restoring powers/items up the wazoo. I CAN'T die! Just for laughs earlier I ran ahead of my away team into a big room filled to the gills with Klingons and aggro'd all of them. I don't even think they depleted my shields all the way.
2.) Enemy HP way too high: Couple the fact that I can't die with the fact that enemies take FOREVER to kill and combat boils down to me just standing there tee'ing off on the enemies waiting for their HP to reach 0. Of course there's no risk to me, and they will....eventually...be defeated.
3.) Enemy spawn sizes are huge. Combat is boring enough as it is, the sheer mass of enemies even without a team, just makes every fight that much more of a snore fest while I stand there and press 1 and 2 until the tank like enemies that can't actually harm me fall over.
4.) weapons are boring: Maybe they improve later on, but so far every single weapon I've seen comes with a single target attack, a long recharging AoE or cone of some type, and the melee swing. This really limits the fun of weapons. Long recharges on the AoE attacks are pretty annoying, as well. Weapons should include the recharge time of their attacks in their descriptions, at least for AoEs. Having a DPS indicator for the AoE attacks is pretty useless, as that's calculated against a single foe so it's a useless statistic to show us
My solution would be to drastically reduce the HP of both players, away teams, and enemies. Leave weapon damage alone. This actually places a bit of urgency on keeping shields up and provides an exciting challenge knowing that I can actually be defeated. It also prevents the severe boredom that comes from taking 20 shots to defeat a single weak enemy. Basically, once the shields are down, it should only be a few shots at most to kill a standard enemy. Players should be a bit tougher, of course, but not nearly as tough as they are now.
You know the 5 minutes that it usually takes to kill those Romulan commanders? Takes less than 1. If your entire team is outfitted with Bat'leths in the endgame they will annihilate everything. No joke, ranged weapons absolutely blow in comparison.
Because enemy NPC [especially late game, borg especially] have insane shields, but average HP. So melee attacks, specifically bat'leth, own the TRIBBLE out of them.
funny huh?
Effects feels like they are happening about a half second after the animations. The easiest way to see this is when an enemy throws a photon grenade at you and it takes about a half second for the damage to appear, then a split second longer for you to actually be KB'd.
Clicking on powers doesn't feel responsive and clicking on targets can be extraordinarily difficult when there are a lot of targets on your screen. For example, the target boxes on things like shield gens and phaser turrets are enormous. Animations in general are clippy and weird, specifically a lot of sliding around the ground during KB effects and projectiles such as the big gorn thing's rock throw where the rock doesn't even show up in his hands. It's hard to explain but it;s the same way in champions. To me there has always felt like there's a weird but noticeable disconnect between issuing a command, the animation, and then the actual effect.
Then there are bugs such as the controls reversing themselves (back is forward, left is right) which seems to happen when the enemy manages to circle strafe around you. Crouching has some kind of screwy effect on the controls/camera.
Then there's the enemies that always seem to target you NO MATTER WHAT. They also have the tendancy to flat out bum rush you no matter what. The only thing that seems to take their attention away from me are fabricated equipments. Being an aggro magnet isn't that big of a deal though, when I can easily tank 10+ even level mobs with absolutely no risk.
ground combat feels so much like a chore sometimes that i put a cover shield around objectives so i am covered while i interact with them and run to each objective and do this.
right now its gotta substantially better, ive given my officers more expose powers, i think ihave 5 in total out of the 4 bridge officers and i have 2. then i have 2 exploit rifles and 2 officrs with exploit rifles.
i get lots of exposes. helps it go much faster.
it just doesnt seem right to be shooting one enemy over and over, te pacing of ground combat in mass effect felt much better, i thiknk sto cold be like ME, if they did away with the push 1-2-3 thing to fire....