Maybe the ARC should just go.
zeep
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3367Members
Join Date: 2002-11-01 Member: 3367Members
<div class="IPBDescription">And be replaced by upgraded sentries.</div>I'm a NS2 on/off player. Played NS1 a bit and NS2 since the beta. Also i hardly ever play alien, just marines.
To me the weird thing in game is the ARC. When i see that silly thing driving through the map, shocking animations and all, i mean it just looks silly. The commander can spawn objects all over the map but this weird buggy type weapon must come out of it's garage and drive all the way to where it is pointed to go.
Can't it just be replaced by a stronger / different type of sentry that the commander can place like he places other objects in-game?
Not to trash talk NS2 or anything, i like this game very much, but i find the ARC a silly aspect of the game. It's like the game is high tech, except that trolly. I understand the tactical use of the ARC, but not why it needs to exist in this particular state.
Your thoughts?
PS: Love is the message. Don't flame.
To me the weird thing in game is the ARC. When i see that silly thing driving through the map, shocking animations and all, i mean it just looks silly. The commander can spawn objects all over the map but this weird buggy type weapon must come out of it's garage and drive all the way to where it is pointed to go.
Can't it just be replaced by a stronger / different type of sentry that the commander can place like he places other objects in-game?
Not to trash talk NS2 or anything, i like this game very much, but i find the ARC a silly aspect of the game. It's like the game is high tech, except that trolly. I understand the tactical use of the ARC, but not why it needs to exist in this particular state.
Your thoughts?
PS: Love is the message. Don't flame.
Comments
Then you don't have to just keep the aliens busy while the arcs deploy themselves and single-handedly destroy their hive, but you must secure a location close to a hive in order to deploy and start arc'ing. And on the alien side you have the opportunity to fight and kill the marines and keep your hive as opposed to fighting the marines and regardless of the outcome losing your hive to the arcs.
(this was also discussed in the other arc train thread)
At this point I can't really see any redeeming features for keeping them in the game at all.
To me it actually felt immersive like we were escorting that one arc as it slowly took down infested areas. That one arc felt very important and it felt like a real escort mission. We didn't have a ridiculous clipping arc train even though we had plenty of res for it.
What about if we limit the game to one or two arcs per robotics factory? In doing that the armor for the arc can be increased and we can even add in as some suggested a building/deploying time.
And depending on the outcome of how res costs will be balanced you can increase the res cost of the arc so that it becomes paramount that it be defended properly.
CANNON.
THRU WALLS.
It is awesome. You simply do not "remove" awesome.
Seriously tho, just let Gorges 5-shot ARC's with bilebomb again and all the turtling/ARC-training problems melt away.
To me, spamming any units seems odd for marines. The arcs end up looking rather ridiculous when you have more then a few rolling to the same area. I feel like the marine tech should be somehow strong in quality rather than numbers, kind of like Protoss vs Zerg in SC (never really played it much, but it's like that right)?
I don't think twice when I see a swarm of aliens structures, though. It just seems natural in their gameplay.
I'd really like to see some good thought put into how these units are countering each other. Even though it's been said NS1 wasn't perfect, it became pretty standard to see a line of heavies equipped with welders...this was because you can't march a bunch of light armors in effectively. An onos, in turn, could take a heavy quickly out of play. Same thing with fades and shotguns. Webs and jetpacks. People tended to play using well known strategies. Maybe NS2 just needs the time for them to develop as well.
I wish I had some great suggestions to make it better, but I'm like everyone else who just knows that it's not quite what we want in gameplay.
I don't want to see ARCs go because I think they're awesome, but they should be limited in number for sure, maybe just 3.
(the gorge hive healing in ns2 is abysmal though)
I sincerely hope they reconsider this splash damage idea, because it's certainly not the right way to go about addressing the problem. Fix the underlying causes, not the symptoms.
The com put the arcs in the "deploy-mode" and an symbol for the marines appear.
Lets say deploying an arc need 10 sec. Now imagine an arctrain of 10.
You need marines to deploy and marines to defend the deployers. So aliens have more options to stop arctrains too.
I don't think i even understand how FF splash damage solves ARC train spam, why it was considered instead of all the other practical and useful solutions proposed by the community, and from where it came. Do they mean when firing, an ARC does splash damage around itself to presumably other ARCs in addition to the splash damage on its target? The tweet by itself makes absolutely no sense to me.
If its supposed to address ARC trains that contain so many ARCs that the only spare room left to deploy is next to the hive, isn't it blindingly obvious that the solution becomes trivial as the problem is spamming that many ARCs for incredible alpha damage in the first place? Does it matter if you lose 10 ARCS out of 100 if you one shot the hive and every structure in the hive room as well?
I think that's what they mean, that arcs will damage themselves and other arcs (and marines? marine structures?) in a radius more or less big, so if too many close arcs fire at once they'll kill themselves without a chance to repair.
And yes, it took some imagination to choose the one solution nobody in the forums proposed.
talk about intuitive!
However, as was mentioned in the other ARC thread, the commander should be able to repack them without marine assistance.
talk about intuitive!<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
^
+1
+1
What if you could only build sieges next to a robotics factory.... and they couldn't move at all? Damn, that might have been proven to work and make sense before... meh probably a better way to do it huh... *Sarcasm*<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
hehe
The times in NS1 when you're trying to set up a siege base next to a hive wondering when you'll be spotted and if the aliens can manage to knock the base out before those sieges go up or the hive goes down were some of the best and most exciting in the game.
In NS2 I usually make 5-6 arcs and send them off by themselves while I tell the rest of the team to go jetpack to a different hive to distract. Theres a bit of coordination but the overall siege experience has gone down the drain. The marines and the comm should be intimately connected... any time when you give the comm the ability to sit in base hitting z on the robo every once in a while isn't skill or team based. If it gets to this point the marines ought to lose the game. Or else it is just delaying the inevitable. Really the marines just have to put a few mines and turrents and armory block the powernode... sit and hit z on the robotics factory for about 10 mins... click next to a hive... deploy arcs and win.
<i><b>Stupid easy.</b></i>
The sad thing is that there is actually an EASIER route than this... arcs are simply for commanders who don't understand meta game correctly. You don't need to spam arcs to win a game... and if you have the ability to spam arcs then you SHOULD have already won about 15-45 mins ago with coordinated pushes, phase gates and nano spam. I don't see arc trains as a huge issue really because it just shows that the balance of the game isn't there yet. The issue is not with the arc spam... it's something entirely different. It's nearly impossible to end a game in 15 mins or less in this build due to how many alien structures can be spammed. Even if the marines have the res control and are destroying the aliens. It seems like the balance in the new builds is just delaying the inevitable. I've played tons of games that I knew the marines were going to win EVENTUALLY. But even though we already nailed the coffin shut we are forced to sit in spawn spamming arcs.
I'm just trying to see the overall picture.
In this build you are better off just spamming nano shields on jetpack marines in the hive room than spending hundreds of res on arcs. Nano shields and medpack spam... hundreds of times more deadly than arcs imo.
If you could only afford to send 1/2 ARCs at a time (like the original), then they couldn't be as useless as solo ones are now. The problem at the moment is that ARCs don't come solo, they usually roll around with their 10 other homies.
If they were well armoured, cheaper and more powerful we would see important battles over strategic objects. Rather than ridiculously messy fights consisting of a layer of cysts and infestation, a layer of ARCs and then a layer of aliens and marines that can't fight because they keep tripping on everything.
It isn't the fire power that is the problem, it is the time taken to destroy one ARC and move on to the next before they have killed the hive.
When did this game become about making sandwiches?