ET: 2 useless skill rewards

(Borsuk) #1

Again, I doubt Splash Damage will do anything about them, but I’m going to try.

They are meant to be REWARDS, after all, and encourage certain behaviour. Those 2 don’t:

Level2 Heavy Weapons - cooling at double rate. Uhhh… does anyone have problems with cooling Mg42’s ? They are so powerful that even short burst can kill 2-3 enemies, providing that your aim is average or better. Especially stationary Mg’s tend to never overheat, even untrained soldier or other class can fire it as long as needed. And there’s never need to fire it for more than few seconds, because
a) people don’t like being perforated and like to avoid obvious Mg spots
b) long bursts betray your position, and, well, intentions of course. For instance, while using lower axis bunker Mg, you are as long alive as long you are sneaky. You’d want to wait few meters from Mg, preferably with Flamethrower (Curiosity killed the cat !), and jump forward each time you see enemy ahead of you.
As for mobile Mg42, they sometimes do overheat, but:
a) your problems with overheating are gone after developing average aim. Short, deadly burst mean you’ll never going to overheat your weapon.
b) fun of having mobile MG is to keep your position as secret as possible
c) you don’t want to waste ammo, do you ?

My suggested replacement for Level2 Heavy Weapons is extended field of vision while using mobile Mg’s. Now this would help a lot, even if it would be 30 or 60 extra degrees. DOUBLE COOLING RATE IS A PLACEHOLDER !

Level4 Covert Ops - Assassin

Instant kill with any backstab. Again a PLACEHOLDER. If you can suprise enemy from behind, he’s dead anyway. Normally, 2 backstabs are enough for everyone, but wait, how many times can you swing the knife per second ? 3 ? 5? No idea, but stabbing rate is INSANE. 1 or 2 backstabs, what’s the difference ? Most people prefer Satchel for attacks from behind, anyway.

Suggested replacement - Silent Footsteps (can betray you if enemies are cautious, but any player who can reach Level4 Covert is smart enough to bind “loud footsteps” command somewhere.)

Alternative: Improved Disguise (friendly nickname is shown even from short distance, but you still lose disguise when firing etc. That would help with backstabing much more, and much better reward overall.) My favourite. You are still not shown on enemy radar and can be identified that way.

Alternative: ability to use Thompson and Mp40. It would help against smart players, because they like to identify enemy Covert Ops by examining weapons they carry. Covert Op uniform isn’t always available !
Note: Thompson and Mp40 is much better at short ranges than both Sten and Fg42, so perhaps it’s not that good reward, because it would encourage triggerappy Covert Ops. Perhaps it should just look as thompson or mp40, but it doesn’t make much sense.

(tubbie) #2

Alternative: Improved Disguise (friendly nickname is shown even from short distance, but you still lose disguise when firing etc.

I believe this is already the case when you’re a level4 cvops. Only a level4 Fieldops can recognise a level4 Cvops, others can’t…

(Ragnar_40k) #3

And what is with First Aid Level 1: Medic Ammo? This is quite the same as Level 1 Light Weapons: Improved use of Light Weapon Ammunition (except for an extra grenade).

(DerKammisar) #4

Alternative: ability to use Thompson and Mp40. It would help against smart players, because they like to identify enemy Covert Ops by examining weapons they carry. Covert Op uniform isn’t always available !

Ran into the same problem when playing the banimod spy ages ago. The solution is to switch up what weapons your carrying. For that reason, I’ll commonly go around when moving as a cov ops with my pistol out, or even my nades hanging out in the breeze. :fiesta:

(uglok) #5

One thing that would be great is that once you reach Heavy Weapons Level 4 and decide to select a SMG instead of a pistol, is if your SMG was in slot 2 instead of slot 3, so you dont have to toggle between the smg and your special weapon.

(Ragnar_40k) #6

Level 4 Covert Ops - Assassin alternative suggestion:
Cov Ops can pickup !ANY! weapon. But they are limited to one magazin of ammo for non covert ops weapons and they cannot fire heavy weapons (like Panzerfaust) or use the alternate fire mode (e.g. rifle grenades).

(Riftgarde) #7

I was on some server where they had it adjusted where at level 4 heavy weapons your pistol got replaced with a SMG.

(ExPLiCiT) #8

Its the same on all servers.

(Riftgarde) #9

Guess I play medic and engineer too much, heh.

(Carcifier) #10

Instant kill is actually very useful, I find. When I am playing covert ops and I don’t have it, I am annoyed by having to stick someone TWICE with the knife. WHY?? For a few reasons…

  1. People usually only stand still for one knife attack anyways.
  2. The more times you use your knife, the more likely you are to lose your disguise. With one use of the blade, you almost always maintain your cover.
  3. Having your knife out is a sure way to blow your cover. You want that sucker out of its sheath for a quick jab. No need to stir any suspicion. Hard enough being covert ops. :slight_smile:

Let me give an example that adds to this, that happened to me tonight…I’m on the “blow up the gun controls beach board”. I go undercover, go out command post back way. I make my way down to the beach. There, the entire enemy team is held up returning fire. I see 2 enemy snipers on the rocks in the water. I decide to target them first. One problem, they both are standing right next to each other and I do NOT have INSTANT KILL. I decide to go for it anyways. I knife the first guy, takes two stabs. As I finish the killing blow, the other guy notices me before I can stick the knife in his back. OH CRAP! I got the blade out, he jumps off the rock and is pointing his sniper rifle at me. Fortunately, the damn thing doesnt fire in water. I panic anyways, switch weapons and accidently fall in the water. My weapon won’t fire. I float to the top, and open fire just as he does. I killed him because my machinegun fires faster than his does. He shot me at least once though. I’m positive, had I had INSTANT KILL, I would have taken both of them out before either knew what was happening.

The other thing about multiple stabbings, is that you will try not to do them. If it only takes one, that’s all you want to do, for many obvious reasons. So, there is sometimes a delay on the second stab. That creates issues. :slight_smile:

(Pamper) #11

Many players would scream at you for this. “Don’t go down to the beach!” “They’ll take your pants, and we’ll be screwed!”

You should’ve used a satchel. It makes an explosion big enough to kill them both, and gives you more XP too (5 per victim, vs 3). And it’s guarranteed to be Covert XP, instead of light weapons. So you’re 10 points closer to getting that insta-knife-kill you crave.

(Wraith2k3) #12

“They’ll take your pants, and we’ll be screwed!”

lol, so thats why they take your pants :wink:

(Borsuk) #13

You should have used Satchel instead of knife. I would use Handgrenade, because it’s more fun :slight_smile:

(Borsuk) #14

VERY good suggestion.

(Carcifier) #15

Many players would scream at you for this. “Don’t go down to the beach!” “They’ll take your pants, and we’ll be screwed!”

You should’ve used a satchel. It makes an explosion big enough to kill them both, and gives you more XP too (5 per victim, vs 3). And it’s guarranteed to be Covert XP, instead of light weapons. So you’re 10 points closer to getting that insta-knife-kill you crave.[/quote]

  1. The first part is obvious. However, the situation I was in, was a rare one. My team was dominating so much, we held the command post the entire game. We had 5 or 6 guys holding the back alley. There was no way in hell anyone was getting by them. Knowing that, I decided to risk it and head to the beach.

I figured it was the ONE time, I would leave base and risk giving the enemy a uniform.

  1. Using a satchel(with the sole intent of killing someone) is generally a very bad idea. Forget the extra Exp, the satchel gives away your cover 100 times more than using the knife. Personally, when I hear the sounds of a satchell, I immediately go into “find the enemy covert ops and kill him” mode. It is SO EASY to hear the satchel, even before it explodes it makes a very loud noise. There is NO WAY I would ever use the satchel over the knife, unless I have no choice. Many times you can knife someone, and people close by won’t notice it. Explode your satchel, not to mention just equip it, and you will have lots of people lookin your way. That was the last thing I wanted, on a beach full of enemy, even though I was in the water.
(Rippin Kitten) #16

I agree, that one hit knife kill is incredibly useful when you’re trying to shank an entire sqaud of bad guys. The one hit knife allows you to sprint up behind someone who’s moving and kill them before they have a chance to spin around and reduce the damage of the second stab. Get four bad guys running in a group and you can dispatch all of them in a little over two seconds. Didn’t use any ammo, looks pretty cool with the death messages, and it places you at very little risk from your target.

Allowing the covert op to carry standard SMGs or keep their alias at close range would defeat, in my opinion, the role of the disguise. Its not supposed to let you blend in seamlessly with the opposition. You should be nervous of close range encounters. You should be paranoid as to if that bad guy noticed you’re a medic carrying a sten. Besides, if the disguise was too good you’d have much more TKing as players will shoot anyone suspicious, complaints will be flying back and forth, and all sorts of negative mayhem will ensue.

RK

(Pamper) #17

I just came from the other side of that- and I can promise you, the satchel works very well in that exact situation. I was a sniper on a rock by myself, working on getting BestCovert+BestAccuracy, when somebody satchels me from behind. There was nothing I could do about it… by the time you hear the whistle noise, it’s too late to escape the blast. And if he swims away before detonating, you can’t even hear anything besides the explosion. Against two snipers concentrating down their scopes, it would be even more perfect.

The knife, on the other hand, is NOT actually a silent weapon. It counts as silent for keeping your uniform, but the stabbing noise is very very loud, even if you completely miss. If a sniper hears a “stabbity stab stab” noise coming from next to him, he’s gonna jump up and look at whats going on…

Then there’s the rest of the team to think about. Chances are, nobody is staring at their own snipers- they keep their eyes on the enemy. But if that worries you, you can check the commandmap to see if anyone’s pointed towards you anyhow. That’s where another benefit of the satchel comes in: you only need one single fraction of a second to kill both targets. WIth a knife it takes at least two attacks (or many more, as you learned). If anybody randomly glances towards you during the attack, you can lose disguise. That’s 2x more likely if you make 2x the attacks.

PS. I went back to sniping from the same rock. Even though I’m a poor sniper, I had a good run for accuracy (it was a short match):

Weapon     Acrcy Hits/Atts Kills Deaths Headshots
Dynamite : 300.0    3/1        2      0
Satchel  :                     0      1
Garand   :  72.6   45/62      14      0         9
(Carcifier) #18

You are proving my points but indicating you are taking the opposing view. Noone is disclaiming the satchel’s ability to kill. The downside listed was that it is very much so a cover blowing weapon. More so, than the assasin knife.

If you are going to say that the satchel is quieter than the knife, you need help. :slight_smile: The satchel makes 2 noises, first of all. The second of which is very loud.

Not to mention that sometimes when you throw your satchel on the ground, there is a bug that switches to a weapon instead of the remote detonator. So, sometimes you have to choose the remote to blow it. Other times not. This leads to a bigger chance of discovery.

The biggest mistake rookie Covert Ops make is to equip their satchel and carry it around. It is very EASILY seen. You don’t want to equip it , unless you have to around the enemy. If you don’t think this is the case, try carrying your satchel out undercover, as opposed to carrying your knife. You will be shot tons of times more while carrying the satchel. Not that you should have the knife out all the time either. :wink:

You need silence and speed when killing discreetly. Experienced players NEVER let players get near them without identifying them. If I hear anyone approaching me from behind, I will make sure to identify.

As for your point about missing with the knife, the idea is you won’t. The assasin blow requires ONE stab, and you get an icon telling you when you can use it. If your target is prone, there is ZERO chance of missing.

The real point again, is sound. I don’t care about alerting the second sniper. I’d like not to. However, the real goal is to kill both of them, without alerting everyone on the beach. Using the satchel can be heard from very far away. Knife, not so.

(Pamper) #19

My view is that if you get behind 2 snipers and don’t have Covert Level4, you should use a satchel instead of a knife. You’ve proved this yourself, because you barely survived when you tried it.

The satchel makes 2 noises, first of all. The second of which is very loud.

And it sounds exactly like a mortar, panzer, or arty exploding. Which are very common noises on that beach.

Not to mention that sometimes when you throw your satchel on the ground, there is a bug that switches to a weapon instead of the remote detonator.

Only if you have auto-switch enabled. You can+should disable autoswitch if you plan to use satchel or TNT near enemies.

You need silence and speed when killing discreetly. Experienced players NEVER let players get near them without identifying them. If I hear anyone approaching me from behind, I will make sure to identify.

If a sniper zooms out and turns around each time a friendly soldier goes past, he won’t get many kills at all (it wastes all the time spent steadying your aim, for instance). A sniper on a rock can’t hear someone swimming up behind him. They usually are paying attention to enemies on the ridge, not blue blips on their compass. The people you were attacking were losing majorly, so we can assume they weren’t “experienced”. And, in the situation you described, you had already gotten behind them without being detected. The only question at that point is, “What weapon do I kill them with?” Either satchel or grenade would be a better choice than knife. Also, going to the beach near the lighthouse and sniping them is good too (if you had a a silent rifle).

The real point again, is sound. I don’t care about alerting the second sniper. I’d like not to. However, the real goal is to kill both of them, without alerting everyone on the beach. Using the satchel can be heard from very far away. Knife, not so.

No matter how you kill them, both players can text-message their team “an Axis is in the water at D5”. There’s no way for you to hide that.

However, there is one more reason that you should use satchel in preference to knife, above all others: satchel NEVER removes your disguise. Even if an Ally is looking directly at you, dropping and detonating a satchel will leave your disguise intact. Using a knife (or silenced gun) will destroy your disguise if an Ally happens to turn towards you as you attack, even if he can’t really see you due to distance and water. That risk of losing disguise (and suddenly becoming a red blip for any other Allied coverts to come hunting) is the largest drawback of knifing them.

(Rippin Kitten) #20

Obviously both weapons have their own uses and situations. It does come down to circumstance and style.

You switch away from the detonator and pull your weapon if you click the fire button before the detonator is “ready.” Same thing with the engineer and dyno/pliers. I’m guessing this is there so that if you panic and need to shoot a bad guy, clicking the fire key will bring up a weapon to help defend yourself. If you’re in a hot situation, just be sure that the correct tool is in your hands before you hit fire.

While I agree that the Level 4 Covert Ops award is pretty specialized and not tremendously useful, I’m not sure any of the awards you get for XP are incredibly powerful. They are nice and convenient, sure. But I don’t think the idea was to make any of the rewards “game-breakers.” Its the difference between this game and say the War3 mod for CS. Low level players are just as combat capable as high level ones, minus a few small advantages the high level characters enjoy. A Private’s MP40 does just as much damage as a 3-Star General’s. And while the General probably has the bonus 15 health from Battle Sense, that just means he can take one more round from a Thomspon. In a firefight, both players have a pretty equal chance to win, so skill is all that can seperate the two.

RK