I like to command myself from time to time. It's fun and rewarding sometimes, but others it's just a pain to watch. Marines not following orders, not building stuff, not covering each other, name it.
Sorry to say, but my "aim" at droping medpacks is weak, and i end up spaming 3 or 4 medpacks on a marine that needs healing. It's a bad use of resources but i think it motivates the marine if he knows i'm trying to watch over him.
Most of the time i use sentrys to help a push. Drop a armory and some sentrys near a hive push and the marines can retreat near it and be a bit safer. Help with some macs for the armor repair.
On the other hand i'm always forgeting to get the advance armory weapons. Most of the time my team is sitting with a3w3, shotguns, welders, jetpacks, and exos, when someone calls for gl or flametrower.
I don't get mines. I don't like them. 15 tres (i think) to research + 15 pres for 3 mines that don't even kill a carapaced skulk... When we can get a shotgun for 20, and the shotgun can be recovered when they go near it.
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't get mines. I don't like them. 15 tres (i think) to research + 15 pres for 3 mines that don't even kill a carapaced skulk... When we can get a shotgun for 20, and the shotgun can be recovered when they go near it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
1 mine mauls a skulk, and if placed properly picks off retreating lurks/fades and they will have paid for themselves in spades.
Seriously though, mauling a skulk as it runs for a key bit of base equipment can be the difference between wining and losing. For example, PG's and tech-point Obs are both items that can cost you the game if not defended, and 2 or 3 skulks nipping at one while the marines stream in can just one-shot the rines and get back to nomming... but if a single mine goes off and either kills or mauls a skulk, the rines have a chance to make it a fight.\
Anyway, mines don't always work, and they don't always kill when they do work, but going from full health skulk to crippled skulk should not be discounted in the great scheme of things. Playing marines is about buying time to overcome mobility problems... mines help buy you that time.
On topic : At least take the time to consider the comments of the angry players. But if they are casting about for some excuse as to why a plan failed, just take that in stride and put it behind you. A lot of times everything is on time and in place for the team, and things are going well... and then some player goes on a hot-streak and it all comes tumbling down. The only way to combat that kind of thing is with heavy investments in infrastructure that you often can't afford... so the real heavy lifting has to be done by the marines on the ground. That means they don't get what they want all the time, and when it starts to go south, they start looking at what might have worked and blame the com for that.... could be SG's, or better PG placement... or some early game pre-cog kind of ability to predict what direction to send the bulk of your resources to. Ultimately, if they can't kill skulks, and fail to defend the investments that can be defended, no amount of command ability can save that game.
Rofl, I just got blamed for a loss as Aliens because the players were admittedly too bad at skulking to be able to use regen effectively. Someone want to explain to me how the ###### that's my fault?
I told them to deal with it and I got celerity up for them ASAP, and they continued to do things like go AFK in the hive-room and ###### at me instead of helping the team. Admins were on the server making regular comments towards people idling in the RR but did nothing about the ###### that was happening in-game.
And this is why no one ever wants to com. Bring back the NS1 gorge ffs. The alien team is like a dike, and I'm tired of being the little boy that has to put his finger in the hole that was made by forcing the Khammander into the game.
<!--quoteo(post=2047055:date=Dec 17 2012, 09:24 PM:name=Apocalipsus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Apocalipsus @ Dec 17 2012, 09:24 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047055"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->I don't get mines. I don't like them. 15 tres (i think) to research + 15 pres for 3 mines that don't even kill a carapaced skulk... When we can get a shotgun for 20, and the shotgun can be recovered when they go near it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Getting them early game and in the hands of someone who actually thinks where they place them helps out immensely. Don't discount mines
<!--quoteo(post=2046944:date=Dec 16 2012, 10:34 PM:name=current1y)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (current1y @ Dec 16 2012, 10:34 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2046944"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Telling your team why you lost and telling them they need to aim better does 0 to help the situation other then make yourself feel better and makes your team do worse.
Had a comm today who downing us like this and I actually (first time ever) actually muted the comm. No more then 3 min later (while we still had 2 tech points mind you) he rage quit...
Some people just shouldn't comm.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd--> So what am I supposed to tell them when they ask why I'm not expanding as much as we should? Or why we're losing our res nodes over and over. Should I just pretend everything is butterflys and tell them they're doing great! Or should I expect them to not be children and instead of ######ing and being butthurt, realise they need to focus more.
Generally speaking your best bet is to talk to your team. I used to do tech support helping people fix computers over the phone. Theres one thing you should learn pretty quick. People will usually be happy/ok if they are able to follow what is going on. Its not about telling them what they did wrong, or ordering them around. Just tell them what you are trying to do, and what you want to do so that if they do have issue they can comment before you do it, and they understand what is happening. 'Comm sucked' usually means i don't know what he was trying to do so i assume it was his fault.
If you tell them what you are trying to do then it helps tremendously, and if you tell them in advance people can offer feedback. Maybe people would prefer exos tech'd before jp's. Usually just explaining what you are trying to do people understand and won't complain. It can be frustrating to know the comm wanted a JP rush but didnt say anything, if he had i would have tried to get a ninja-gate near a hive (which is less useful if he was going exos first).
TLDR: If you lay out a strategy then do it they probably wont complain, will better understand where/how it failed, and better work to contribute to the team. If they don't know what you were trying to do, then it may look like you had no plan.
Problem with most Commanders is that they are deadset on getting their way, like "keep pushing pipeworks, we need pipeworks!" 5 minutes later without any med/scan/ammo support and an hive in Pipe the Comm still keeps on babbling about "pushing pipe! get to pipe!" while ignoring the whole other side of the map with Marines waiting in Smelting/Conduit wanting to push Turbine where there is barely any Kharaa defense.
It feels like too many Commanders do not adapt to how the round plays out, they have some imaginary "perfect plan" that needs to be executed regardless of circumstances. Even if that means that 3 Marines on the right side of the map won't get a PG because the Commander rather wants his PG on the left side of the map where there is constant Kharaa pressure and not a single Marine. Often it feels like the Commander and the Marines are playing totally separate games. Marines are usually good at finding/going places where they can actually survive and reach. Commanders on the other hand often do not consider such things, for them most locations boil down to an RT/Techpoint with an name, but they never consider how easy/difficult the location is to hold/take for the Marines on the ground.
These are usually the same kind of Commanders that horribly suck at dropping Meds or Ammo, they suck so hard at it that they will never actually do it and instead drop Armories all over the place. Then they complain about you dieing while building that Armory because you had been all out of bullets and couldn't kill that single Skulk rushing you, with your Axe.
Sure i love to do the Commander part myself, but i've gotten too tired of using voice and playing Comm without voice is all kinds of annoying. Because most Marines depend way too much on verbal directions and orders while ignoring Waypoints and Teamchat. Most Marine teams won't even move out of the Base to cap the 2 RT's next to the base until you tell them to. It gets worse when these same Marines die to single Skulks even with Scan support and Medspam, at that point i usually regret going Comm because there is nobody left on the field to do the killing.
Imho i'm still kinda sad that UWE didn't go trough with their "2 Marine commander"plan. It would be all kinds of awesome if Marines had something like an Sargent on the ground who has more influence/options than a regular Marine but not as much control as the Commander. Such an position could be filled by more experienced players to handhold new Commanders by doing some things for them to lighten their workload, maybe some limited scan/med/ammo abilities. Because that seems one of the main problems for new Commanders, they are so overwhelmed with all the stuff they have to do, they totally lose sight of what's actually happening on the map.
<!--quoteo(post=2047550:date=Dec 18 2012, 01:02 PM:name=rebirth)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rebirth @ Dec 18 2012, 01:02 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047550"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Imho i'm still kinda sad that UWE didn't go trough with their "2 Marine commander"plan. It would be all kinds of awesome if Marines had something like an Sargent on the ground who has more influence/options than a regular Marine but not as much control as the Commander. Such an position could be filled by more experienced players to handhold new Commanders by doing some things for them to lighten their workload, maybe some limited scan/med/ammo abilities. Because that seems one of the main problems for new Commanders, they are so overwhelmed with all the stuff they have to do, they totally lose sight of what's actually happening on the map.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Maybe it could be highly beneficial to the marine game if there were 2-3 sergeants (depending on player count) with squads of 2-4 Marines each. These players could be appointed automatically based upon overall game time. The players of each squad would always see their squad leader through walls and would have a "small" waypoint on him constantly.
So the commander tell the squad leaders what to do and the squad would be more likely to follow its leader compared to a command by the "anonymous" commander. You could also make it possible to leave your squad if you really want to rambo down rts/ups but for the new players I think this would be a very good mechanic to learn the marine play from more experienced players.
Well afaik that had been one of the original plans, having squad bonuses and similar things. In beta we had this really awesome looking "autosquad"thingie that would paint colored bubbles around Marines that are close to each other.
Now we don't even have any real squad mechanics left, as group binds seem to be broken all over the place. I also blame the subpar performance of Marines on the lack of a "YOU are squad 5!" audio cue ;)
Imho the Comm should be the one just promoting players to Sargents, that's way more fair then just automatically promoting people based on "time played". Promoting on "time played" would just lead to people pushing their played time by idling in the game so they have a higher chance to get the promotion.
Yeh, some kind of GUI tools to organize the team in subsquads or similar in a more visual way, and that allow the Commander to issue orders in a more organized way would be great. Not a replacement for a mic obviously but it would help tremendously the commander´s job.
At the moment I typically organize squads verbally over the mic, but that is very suboptimal. Some players get confused or simply missed my statement which leads to some actions or pushes being undermanned or overmanned etc as the case may be. Subteams visual cues and commands would help a lot and could be a lot of fun too!
Just a nice to have though, what with all the performance and balance issues and what not around...
I try to name them outloud as i give commands. I find players respond alot more to orders when their names are invoked, i'll see 4 players and name 2 to head the other way and they'll generally turn around at that point.
However, when i say that i need 1 to defend an rt (say ventilation or skylights) nobody goes, and it takes too to track someone nearby, so i'll just have the next spawning player head there. Next spawn go!
How well did squads work in the beta? Don't people die too much?
<!--quoteo(post=2047594:date=Dec 18 2012, 02:38 PM:name=Csae)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Csae @ Dec 18 2012, 02:38 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047594"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->How well did squads work in the beta? Don't people die too much?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
They never really got around implementing it properly, besides looking cool the bubbles did nothing. Another thing that dropped off the radar have been "Mission type waypoints", Charlie showed off a screenshot of that at some point. Basically the Commander would set a waypoint with an required number of Marines. Marines could look at that waypoint and "accept" going there, then their name would show up next to it.
Tbh it's kinda sad that NS2 didn't do more to make Commanding more newbie friendly and easier to organize. Imho the perfect goal should have been to allow Commanding without the usage of voice at all. Missiontype or Area waypoints could have done that in an really awesome way. With those the Commander could have basically painted the Map with stuff to do and Marines could just pick what to do and where to go, could also have added Equipment requirements for those kinda like "Defend/Attack position with Grenade Launcher".
That way people would be constantly aware about current objectives without the Comm having to babysit every single Marine with constant new orders. Probably would also help new players to get into the game way easier. Instead of just having a waypoint (or none at all most of the time) new players could just look around and see "Ahh that place needs defending, that one needs welding, that one needs attacking. Mmhh i guess i'm gonna go there!" which would also show them that their Commander is doing stuff without requiring him to constantly jabber into his mic.
Less voice usage is the better voice usage, too much of it makes the Marines job harder. Nobody likes getting eaten by a Skulk he didn't hear approaching because the Commander just had to inform everybody about his latest bowel movement..
Theres a single commander on the team, theres very little reason to make him newbie friendly, and boring as ###### to paint the map with objectives. Voice commanding brings the team together and if your commander is talking about his bowel movements, eject them.
Out of all the videogames currently out, none of them bring people together like NS2, i don't know if its that we're an older age crowd currently (ns1 fans aged) or what, but the voice commanding and having to actually shut up to listen to the comm works out really well. In games where the commander doesn't talk theres alot of ######-talk and arguying going on between players, making them near worthless.
The Kham has several type of waypoints he can put out on the map and can spent alot less time talking, and even with drifters and whips and all the jazzy buildings, it can get boring without communicating with your team.
Well go and play public to see how well it all works... it does not, especially not with Marine teams that are stacked with new players. Those kind of teams require way too much hand holding to get them to do anything meaningful. The waypoint and command system barely improved compared to NS1, when it should have actually improved to make the Commander an "easier to get into" job.
Instead Commanders most of the time have worry way too much about setting fresh waypoints and explaining to people what he wants where and for what reason. What suffers from that is everything else the Commander should pay attention to, like enemy movement, map control and actually supporting his Marines.
Not to mention that the current waypoint and Commanding system is utterly useless for any kind of multitasking, you can't effectively give out 2 or more different things to do. That's why the only organized Marine tactic you will encounter on publics is the "big marine blob"...
Having these kind of tools would stop nobody from still using voice, but it would make the job easier for people who prefer not to constantly talk over voice and would make multitasking/having different objectives at the same time way more manageable.
<!--quoteo(post=2047376:date=Dec 17 2012, 10:00 PM:name=hus)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (hus @ Dec 17 2012, 10:00 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=2047376"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Getting them early game and in the hands of someone who actually thinks where they place them helps out immensely. Don't discount mines<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the tip. It's just that when i play alien i find it so easy to avoid mines completely. And a gorge spit kills one ine 3 atacks, or a lerk spikes.
Theres a single commander on the team, theres very little reason to make him newbie friendly, and boring as ###### to paint the map with objectives. Voice commanding brings the team together and if your commander is talking about his bowel movements, eject them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well I guess it is not an "all or nothing" issue. A bit of both worlds is, imho, the right place to be. Mic and voice is paramount, no doubt, but also a bit more than what we have today wrt command GUI and visual orders interface.
I mean, ns1 had no auto-way points at all. NS2 does have them for building things which was the most mundane of commanding tasks, things like defending, attacking, are so dynamic that i can't see how you could automatize them at all.
And i play Alot of pubs, its harder on the 24p servers, but on the official 16p its quite easy to split people up and get em to go where they're supposed to.
The two most common things i have to say as a comm to new players "Press Q if you want a myst." "Build the power before the RT" Things like that could be tipped off towards in tips, and i think some already are.
I think i didn't quite imagine what you had in mind, when i'm thinking more of it now, i do wish i could do area waypoints like "Warzone 1" "warzone 2" "defend this area" "escort" etc
Comments
It's fun and rewarding sometimes, but others it's just a pain to watch. Marines not following orders, not building stuff, not covering each other, name it.
Sorry to say, but my "aim" at droping medpacks is weak, and i end up spaming 3 or 4 medpacks on a marine that needs healing. It's a bad use of resources but i think it motivates the marine if he knows i'm trying to watch over him.
Most of the time i use sentrys to help a push. Drop a armory and some sentrys near a hive push and the marines can retreat near it and be a bit safer. Help with some macs for the armor repair.
On the other hand i'm always forgeting to get the advance armory weapons. Most of the time my team is sitting with a3w3, shotguns, welders, jetpacks, and exos, when someone calls for gl or flametrower.
I don't get mines. I don't like them. 15 tres (i think) to research + 15 pres for 3 mines that don't even kill a carapaced skulk... When we can get a shotgun for 20, and the shotgun can be recovered when they go near it.
Those types don't give you useful information that isn't available on the mini-map.
Either way, I love this game having a 'mute' function. Best addition <i>ever</i>. You won't miss anything they have to say.
1 mine mauls a skulk, and if placed properly picks off retreating lurks/fades and they will have paid for themselves in spades.
Seriously though, mauling a skulk as it runs for a key bit of base equipment can be the difference between wining and losing. For example, PG's and tech-point Obs are both items that can cost you the game if not defended, and 2 or 3 skulks nipping at one while the marines stream in can just one-shot the rines and get back to nomming... but if a single mine goes off and either kills or mauls a skulk, the rines have a chance to make it a fight.\
Anyway, mines don't always work, and they don't always kill when they do work, but going from full health skulk to crippled skulk should not be discounted in the great scheme of things. Playing marines is about buying time to overcome mobility problems... mines help buy you that time.
On topic : At least take the time to consider the comments of the angry players. But if they are casting about for some excuse as to why a plan failed, just take that in stride and put it behind you. A lot of times everything is on time and in place for the team, and things are going well... and then some player goes on a hot-streak and it all comes tumbling down. The only way to combat that kind of thing is with heavy investments in infrastructure that you often can't afford... so the real heavy lifting has to be done by the marines on the ground. That means they don't get what they want all the time, and when it starts to go south, they start looking at what might have worked and blame the com for that.... could be SG's, or better PG placement... or some early game pre-cog kind of ability to predict what direction to send the bulk of your resources to. Ultimately, if they can't kill skulks, and fail to defend the investments that can be defended, no amount of command ability can save that game.
I told them to deal with it and I got celerity up for them ASAP, and they continued to do things like go AFK in the hive-room and ###### at me instead of helping the team. Admins were on the server making regular comments towards people idling in the RR but did nothing about the ###### that was happening in-game.
And this is why no one ever wants to com. Bring back the NS1 gorge ffs. The alien team is like a dike, and I'm tired of being the little boy that has to put his finger in the hole that was made by forcing the Khammander into the game.
Getting them early game and in the hands of someone who actually thinks where they place them helps out immensely.
Don't discount mines
Had a comm today who downing us like this and I actually (first time ever) actually muted the comm. No more then 3 min later (while we still had 2 tech points mind you) he rage quit...
Some people just shouldn't comm.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
So what am I supposed to tell them when they ask why I'm not expanding as much as we should? Or why we're losing our res nodes over and over. Should I just pretend everything is butterflys and tell them they're doing great! Or should I expect them to not be children and instead of ######ing and being butthurt, realise they need to focus more.
'Comm sucked' usually means i don't know what he was trying to do so i assume it was his fault.
If you tell them what you are trying to do then it helps tremendously, and if you tell them in advance people can offer feedback. Maybe people would prefer exos tech'd before jp's. Usually just explaining what you are trying to do people understand and won't complain. It can be frustrating to know the comm wanted a JP rush but didnt say anything, if he had i would have tried to get a ninja-gate near a hive (which is less useful if he was going exos first).
TLDR: If you lay out a strategy then do it they probably wont complain, will better understand where/how it failed, and better work to contribute to the team. If they don't know what you were trying to do, then it may look like you had no plan.
It feels like too many Commanders do not adapt to how the round plays out, they have some imaginary "perfect plan" that needs to be executed regardless of circumstances. Even if that means that 3 Marines on the right side of the map won't get a PG because the Commander rather wants his PG on the left side of the map where there is constant Kharaa pressure and not a single Marine. Often it feels like the Commander and the Marines are playing totally separate games. Marines are usually good at finding/going places where they can actually survive and reach. Commanders on the other hand often do not consider such things, for them most locations boil down to an RT/Techpoint with an name, but they never consider how easy/difficult the location is to hold/take for the Marines on the ground.
These are usually the same kind of Commanders that horribly suck at dropping Meds or Ammo, they suck so hard at it that they will never actually do it and instead drop Armories all over the place. Then they complain about you dieing while building that Armory because you had been all out of bullets and couldn't kill that single Skulk rushing you, with your Axe.
Sure i love to do the Commander part myself, but i've gotten too tired of using voice and playing Comm without voice is all kinds of annoying. Because most Marines depend way too much on verbal directions and orders while ignoring Waypoints and Teamchat. Most Marine teams won't even move out of the Base to cap the 2 RT's next to the base until you tell them to. It gets worse when these same Marines die to single Skulks even with Scan support and Medspam, at that point i usually regret going Comm because there is nobody left on the field to do the killing.
Imho i'm still kinda sad that UWE didn't go trough with their "2 Marine commander"plan. It would be all kinds of awesome if Marines had something like an Sargent on the ground who has more influence/options than a regular Marine but not as much control as the Commander. Such an position could be filled by more experienced players to handhold new Commanders by doing some things for them to lighten their workload, maybe some limited scan/med/ammo abilities. Because that seems one of the main problems for new Commanders, they are so overwhelmed with all the stuff they have to do, they totally lose sight of what's actually happening on the map.
Maybe it could be highly beneficial to the marine game if there were 2-3 sergeants (depending on player count) with squads of 2-4 Marines each. These players could be appointed automatically based upon overall game time. The players of each squad would always see their squad leader through walls and would have a "small" waypoint on him constantly.
So the commander tell the squad leaders what to do and the squad would be more likely to follow its leader compared to a command by the "anonymous" commander. You could also make it possible to leave your squad if you really want to rambo down rts/ups but for the new players I think this would be a very good mechanic to learn the marine play from more experienced players.
Now we don't even have any real squad mechanics left, as group binds seem to be broken all over the place. I also blame the subpar performance of Marines on the lack of a "YOU are squad 5!" audio cue ;)
Imho the Comm should be the one just promoting players to Sargents, that's way more fair then just automatically promoting people based on "time played". Promoting on "time played" would just lead to people pushing their played time by idling in the game so they have a higher chance to get the promotion.
At the moment I typically organize squads verbally over the mic, but that is very suboptimal. Some players get confused or simply missed my statement which leads to some actions or pushes being undermanned or overmanned etc as the case may be. Subteams visual cues and commands would help a lot and could be a lot of fun too!
Just a nice to have though, what with all the performance and balance issues and what not around...
However, when i say that i need 1 to defend an rt (say ventilation or skylights) nobody goes, and it takes too to track someone nearby, so i'll just have the next spawning player head there. Next spawn go!
How well did squads work in the beta? Don't people die too much?
They never really got around implementing it properly, besides looking cool the bubbles did nothing.
Another thing that dropped off the radar have been "Mission type waypoints", Charlie showed off a screenshot of that at some point. Basically the Commander would set a waypoint with an required number of Marines. Marines could look at that waypoint and "accept" going there, then their name would show up next to it.
Tbh it's kinda sad that NS2 didn't do more to make Commanding more newbie friendly and easier to organize. Imho the perfect goal should have been to allow Commanding without the usage of voice at all. Missiontype or Area waypoints could have done that in an really awesome way. With those the Commander could have basically painted the Map with stuff to do and Marines could just pick what to do and where to go, could also have added Equipment requirements for those kinda like "Defend/Attack position with Grenade Launcher".
That way people would be constantly aware about current objectives without the Comm having to babysit every single Marine with constant new orders. Probably would also help new players to get into the game way easier. Instead of just having a waypoint (or none at all most of the time) new players could just look around and see "Ahh that place needs defending, that one needs welding, that one needs attacking. Mmhh i guess i'm gonna go there!" which would also show them that their Commander is doing stuff without requiring him to constantly jabber into his mic.
Less voice usage is the better voice usage, too much of it makes the Marines job harder. Nobody likes getting eaten by a Skulk he didn't hear approaching because the Commander just had to inform everybody about his latest bowel movement..
Theres a single commander on the team, theres very little reason to make him newbie friendly, and boring as ###### to paint the map with objectives. Voice commanding brings the team together and if your commander is talking about his bowel movements, eject them.
Out of all the videogames currently out, none of them bring people together like NS2, i don't know if its that we're an older age crowd currently (ns1 fans aged) or what, but the voice commanding and having to actually shut up to listen to the comm works out really well. In games where the commander doesn't talk theres alot of ######-talk and arguying going on between players, making them near worthless.
The Kham has several type of waypoints he can put out on the map and can spent alot less time talking, and even with drifters and whips and all the jazzy buildings, it can get boring without communicating with your team.
Instead Commanders most of the time have worry way too much about setting fresh waypoints and explaining to people what he wants where and for what reason.
What suffers from that is everything else the Commander should pay attention to, like enemy movement, map control and actually supporting his Marines.
Not to mention that the current waypoint and Commanding system is utterly useless for any kind of multitasking, you can't effectively give out 2 or more different things to do. That's why the only organized Marine tactic you will encounter on publics is the "big marine blob"...
Having these kind of tools would stop nobody from still using voice, but it would make the job easier for people who prefer not to constantly talk over voice and would make multitasking/having different objectives at the same time way more manageable.
Don't discount mines<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Thanks for the tip. It's just that when i play alien i find it so easy to avoid mines completely. And a gorge spit kills one ine 3 atacks, or a lerk spikes.
Theres a single commander on the team, theres very little reason to make him newbie friendly, and boring as ###### to paint the map with objectives. Voice commanding brings the team together and if your commander is talking about his bowel movements, eject them.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Well I guess it is not an "all or nothing" issue. A bit of both worlds is, imho, the right place to be. Mic and voice is paramount, no doubt, but also a bit more than what we have today wrt command GUI and visual orders interface.
And i play Alot of pubs, its harder on the 24p servers, but on the official 16p its quite easy to split people up and get em to go where they're supposed to.
The two most common things i have to say as a comm to new players "Press Q if you want a myst." "Build the power before the RT" Things like that could be tipped off towards in tips, and i think some already are.
I think i didn't quite imagine what you had in mind, when i'm thinking more of it now, i do wish i could do area waypoints like "Warzone 1" "warzone 2" "defend this area" "escort" etc