I like commanding but...
Frothybeverage
Join Date: 2003-02-15 Member: 13593Members
Join Date: 2003-02-15 Member: 13593Members
The in-game community leaves a lot to be desired.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes there are really great games.
Something I've noticed(I'm probably not the only one) is that people have a lot of preconceived ideas of what strategies are optimal, and if you attempt to deviate from that, you get ridiculed, or they eject you.
To be fair, ejection is a rarity, but I have had people refuse to play because I went Crag/Shade first instead of shift first.
"OMG WE NEED CELERY!"
You guys on the forums on the other hand, even if I don't agree with you, don't seem to have as many hang-ups about doing something besides shift first, or playing defensively as marines.
I guess that biggest difference between the two factions is that playing the alien comm is pretty much frustration free, that is, assuming your team is competent enough to protect your extractors from lone marines axing them down.
Sometimes, commanding on the marine side seems like an exercise in futility.
Barring a handful people, most marines don't listen and/or ignore waypoints, and ask for exos 5 minutes into the game.
Trying to get the teeming masses of micless, headsetless marines to head to the same areas is like trying to herd a bunch of cats that someone just threw a bucket of water on.
Yesterday was the first time I actually had a streak of fantastic games commanding both sides, that is until the server died due to some new guys team stacking(Three guys throwing up 20+ kills each).
The point I'm trying to get across is:
I wish more of the in-game community could think outside the box, had headsets(or at least a decent pair of headphones), and listened to their team.
I could give two shits if they listen to me, as long a they listen to the rest of the team.
If there's three to five people saying "Phase to Sub-Sector", and you decide it's more important to go to Topographical and ask for the RT that the commander has said he is not dropping because the alien team started in pipeline, and they're just going to murder it over and over again, you probably need to re-evaluate how you play the game.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes there are really great games.
Something I've noticed(I'm probably not the only one) is that people have a lot of preconceived ideas of what strategies are optimal, and if you attempt to deviate from that, you get ridiculed, or they eject you.
To be fair, ejection is a rarity, but I have had people refuse to play because I went Crag/Shade first instead of shift first.
"OMG WE NEED CELERY!"
You guys on the forums on the other hand, even if I don't agree with you, don't seem to have as many hang-ups about doing something besides shift first, or playing defensively as marines.
I guess that biggest difference between the two factions is that playing the alien comm is pretty much frustration free, that is, assuming your team is competent enough to protect your extractors from lone marines axing them down.
Sometimes, commanding on the marine side seems like an exercise in futility.
Barring a handful people, most marines don't listen and/or ignore waypoints, and ask for exos 5 minutes into the game.
Trying to get the teeming masses of micless, headsetless marines to head to the same areas is like trying to herd a bunch of cats that someone just threw a bucket of water on.
Yesterday was the first time I actually had a streak of fantastic games commanding both sides, that is until the server died due to some new guys team stacking(Three guys throwing up 20+ kills each).
The point I'm trying to get across is:
I wish more of the in-game community could think outside the box, had headsets(or at least a decent pair of headphones), and listened to their team.
I could give two shits if they listen to me, as long a they listen to the rest of the team.
If there's three to five people saying "Phase to Sub-Sector", and you decide it's more important to go to Topographical and ask for the RT that the commander has said he is not dropping because the alien team started in pipeline, and they're just going to murder it over and over again, you probably need to re-evaluate how you play the game.
Comments
In general being assertive certainly is a good thing, explain the choices you make or don't make, often players have a poor understanding of the RTS side of things and will get angry not realising you simply don't have the t.res to drop that harvester they're waiting on. As for build choices (omg shade noob), I often just explain I want to try something different (let's be honest, cele or cara first every game is freaking boring if you comm a lot) and want them to try it too.
To be fair, Crag/Shift first takes less skill to play well than Shade first.
From the commander's view:
Crag is not really all that different than Shift, barring forward spawn points.
Not to mention that a good marine commander will counter shade hard.
Silence/Carapace, or Camo/Carapace is doable as a fade/lerk.
People also don't know how to use camo, and don't realise how awesome silence is.
I honestly believe that silence is a better all-around evolution than camo.
Camo is hard countered by observatories/scans.
I've been able to get right into the marine base and eat people at the armoury with silence, I've never done that with camo because of the obligatory observatory.
Shade is pretty good for Fades. Take silence and suddenly the screaming sound from shadowstep/blink wont give your position away from halfway around the map. If you are fast, you might even be able to cross their line of sight and hit them from behind before they realize what happened. All in all it makes a HUGE difference, much more so than either shift upgrade at the very least.
Shade is good for lerks too. Silence lets you set up in a corner and snipe things with relative impunity. Camo is fairly useless though, it only works when gliding at low speeds or clinging to a wall, and generally encourages the lerk to camp which doesn't help the team.
Shade is pretty good for every evolution except for Onos.
Camo/Cara Lerks are annoying as hell.
Camo/Cara Fades can be phenomenal at harassing groups of marines.
Silence/Cara Fades can obliterate solo ninja-marines.
Silence on skulks is brutal too, especially at armour 0, where it only takes a skulk looking at a marine wrong for them to fall over.
For the random people doing what they want, a small tip - calling out people by name on the mic is pretty effective. Wakes people up.
Shade is a tuff hive, because the team needs to know what to do with it, instead of "kill marines mode", as with all the other hives. With shade/camo you need to A: get it early - B: take and hold 3 bases - C: use it correctly (1 kill per stealthing, run away if you can restealth, don't stealth all the time, etc, etc...
That's alot of stuff to do right with camo, and even though it isn't rocket science, it's still a whole lot more than with any other hive.
Yeah, but then there's people like my RL friend who you can call by name(In game, or real name), and he ignores you.
Dude's got a serious case of tunnel vision.
Shade is a completely different playstyle than rushrushrush all the time with Celerity.
Camo is completely overrated, and Silence is underrated though.
Celerity is pretty much useless except at the very early part of the game.
It doesn't work in combat.
Adrenaline is better for Leap Skulks, Fades(In general), and arguably for Onos.
Celerity gets you into combat faster, that's it.
Adrenaline gives you staying power.
It's up to the ground forces to give the commander advice as well. You can see everything when in the Chair or Hive. It's nice to have one or two vocal ground troops that can help direct the flow of force. These are players who look at the map often and are competent, some skills lacking from most players. When you have good players on your team the position of Command is rather easy. There have been rounds that I've only had to say a few words because I had a team that communicated and could shoot. All I had to do was make sure I dropped structures at the right time and focus on ARC assaults and building MACS.
To be honest, I find it annoying playing for a COMM that yells at their team and dishes out criticism. WHY ARN'T you hitting the power node when you're getting attack by a Marine? Things like that.
I also hate commanders that refuse to research a particular upgrade because they don't use it. I understand that the COMM must conserve resources and use them strategically at the beginning of the game, but when resources are available and people are requesting an upgrade it's the COMM's duty to follow through. I've played games where the COMM refused to research grenade launchers even though we had 160 resources. He said that they're useless and the Aliens had too many whips. I'm not an Idiot, I know not to shoot directly into a base full of whips. I like to use grenades to protect a group of Exos from skulks and as a deterrent to Onos. I'm personally a lot better with the grenade launcher than the flamethrower. When I explained this the COMM told me shut up and muted my mic. Another example was when a player requested Regeneration. I personally don't use REGEN often, but I know quite a few players who love it on their Fade and Onos. I explained to the COMM that just because he doesn't use it doesn't mean he shouldn't research it. Some players are extremely effective with it. The entire team tried to explain it to him but he just sat there disregarding our request. He ended up being booted like he deserved though.
Yes.
They whine when you don't play defensively.
As in, if you take containment instead of pipeworks, they call you an idiot.
Personally, implementing some form of squad system with squad spawning would be huge in helping organization and teamwork.
Yea I sort of wanted squads of players united together while seeing members of your squad labeled on your map. Maybe spawn the players to the ip closest to the other squad members. Then again people might just do their own thing unless being in a squad gives you perks for staying together to both aliens and marines. Maybe going as far as rewarding these squads perks for doing stuff the commander asks and accomplishing goals. Who knows but it would be interesting rather than just having everyone run around doing their own thing in pubs.
Mute is your friend and run your strats to the end. If your on a rookie server, who cares?
What ticks me off is poor admining. On a clan server, the clans split between teams, one team stacks (non-clan stacking) for 3-4 consecutive games, on the same faction, and the clan does nothing about it. The games aren't fun for either side, unless the winning likes playing Combat in regular NS2. I just don't understand it. When had servers, clans, etc, I made sure my clanmates/admins monitored that crap, because I want players to have fun and keep coming back.
the shade isnt really all that useful the element of surprise with whips only lasts the first time, then you have ink which is hit and miss. camo is decent if you managed to gain map control otherwise its not useful when the marines have obs everywhere.
It's arguably better than celerity.
Camo is great, when used properly, but most people walk around the map with it active.
Not really that effective at map control, unless you've got them contained to a few locations.
Silence is great because the marines never see you coming, and in pubs, they don't see the red dot on their map.
Most of the time you can get in 2-3 bites before they even react.
While I will concede that shifts help aliens get map control, if you're getting egglocked you're probably dying too much, or you're on a 24 man server.
And whether or not I go shift first depends on who's winning the initial engagements.
If we're winning, I go crag first usually.
If I'm rushing upgrades, I go shade first, again depending on how well my team is doing.
It's cheaper.
You can plop out camo AND silence for the same price as celerity or carapace.
If you only do one, it doesn't hamper your early game economy.
Again, the problem is that some people don't know how to play shade.
Silence is great for ambushing, where as celerity allows you to close the distance with them.
Hell, once you have leap, other than lerks and gorges(arguable), nobody really needs celerity anymore.
Adrenaline is the only real draw I have to going shift first, and that's only because you can get adrenaline around the same time as your second hive is dropped.