I think it’s because no heavy weapon is all-around. With flamer you have to either camp somewhere or sneak your way thru tight corridors. Mortar depends on ammo heavily, and isn’t very useful on EVERY map, it is also impossible to use effectively without +mapexpand. Panzerfaust forces you to take cover after each shot, unless you have level4. And about Mg - it only works well in certain places, otherwise you are easily killed from behind or simply perforated by smg’s.
People generally don’t like heavy weapons, because they are harder to use. I often see obvious newbies using Panzerfaust (half of shots "vaporized himself’), or choosing flamethrower and shooting LOooong bursts + running on them… all this outdoors, where they are easily owned. After checking those 2 weapons they switch back to smgs… Mortar looks so scary they don’t even bother, and undeployed Mg42 really sucks :/.
This is the reason for the smg soldier.[/quote]
Heh. Why not go field ops then -> basically unlimited ammo to practice with?[/quote]
Because someone new to the game won’t know what a Field Ops is, and may get pestered by people who want ammo… ?[/quote]
And would that be sooo bad? If they are FO, there is the chance that they come across the ammo packs by scrolling through their weapons and learn something new. Why allow soldiers to choose SMG’s just to not confuse other clueless people? Call for ammo - if you don’t get some concentrate on playing. The amount of confusion is minimal and doesn’t impact gameplay. Pestering a random FO (who might be a n00b OR might charge for artillery OR might have spilled their drink over their keyboard etc.) -> waste of time.
Last time I checked you don’t design gameplay mechanics around the behaviour of people who didn’t get it yet (people who “pester” FO’s) and don’t even take the time to read the manual (SMG soldiers). Might seem n00b friendly, but in my books it isn’t. If you disallow soldier/SMG you effectively make new players learn the game quicker, you kinda force 'em to.
If you allow it, some people might just like being able to “shoot at things” and having no responsibilty towards their team so much that they STAY soldier/SMG. All in all I think the way it currently is does more harm than good.[/quote]
I 100% agree with Coolhand,
I can remember the fist time I played RtCW (Christmas 2001)
I had not really played on-line FPS before, and found it very daunting
to join in, I understood the classes, and what they were supposed to-do,
but for the first couple of months I played as a soldier with an smg,
because I had 0 responsibilities & I could just get on and learn how
to play the game… I think giving soldiers smg’s is an act of genius
by developers who understand how daunting it is to play this type
of game for the first-time.
Hewster
oh, and I’ve no comment on the Venom as I never really used it in
RtCW, but I do use the Gatling in WildWest from time to time
This is the reason for the smg soldier.[/quote]
Heh. Why not go field ops then -> basically unlimited ammo to practice with?[/quote]
Because someone new to the game won’t know what a Field Ops is, and may get pestered by people who want ammo… ?[/quote]
And would that be sooo bad? If they are FO, there is the chance that they come across the ammo packs by scrolling through their weapons and learn something new. Why allow soldiers to choose SMG’s just to not confuse other clueless people? Call for ammo - if you don’t get some concentrate on playing. The amount of confusion is minimal and doesn’t impact gameplay. Pestering a random FO (who might be a n00b OR might charge for artillery OR might have spilled their drink over their keyboard etc.) -> waste of time.
Last time I checked you don’t design gameplay mechanics around the behaviour of people who didn’t get it yet (people who “pester” FO’s) and don’t even take the time to read the manual (SMG soldiers). Might seem n00b friendly, but in my books it isn’t. If you disallow soldier/SMG you effectively make new players learn the game quicker, you kinda force 'em to.
If you allow it, some people might just like being able to “shoot at things” and having no responsibilty towards their team so much that they STAY soldier/SMG. All in all I think the way it currently is does more harm than good.[/quote]
I 100% agree with Coolhand,
I can remember the fist time I played RtCW (Christmas 2001)
I had not really played on-line FPS before, and found it very daunting
to join in, I understood the classes, and what they were supposed to-do,
but for the first couple of months I played as a soldier with an smg,
because I had 0 responsibilities & I could just get on and learn how
to play the game… I think giving soldiers smg’s is an act of genius
by developers who understand how daunting it is to play this type
of game for the first-time.
Hewster
oh, and I’ve no comment on the Venom as I never really used it in
RtCW, but I do use the Gatling in WildWest from time to time ;)[/quote]
This is the reason for the smg soldier.[/quote]
Heh. Why not go field ops then -> basically unlimited ammo to practice with?[/quote]
Because someone new to the game won’t know what a Field Ops is, and may get pestered by people who want ammo… ?[/quote]
And would that be sooo bad? If they are FO, there is the chance that they come across the ammo packs by scrolling through their weapons and learn something new. Why allow soldiers to choose SMG’s just to not confuse other clueless people? Call for ammo - if you don’t get some concentrate on playing. The amount of confusion is minimal and doesn’t impact gameplay. Pestering a random FO (who might be a n00b OR might charge for artillery OR might have spilled their drink over their keyboard etc.) -> waste of time.
Last time I checked you don’t design gameplay mechanics around the behaviour of people who didn’t get it yet (people who “pester” FO’s) and don’t even take the time to read the manual (SMG soldiers). Might seem n00b friendly, but in my books it isn’t. If you disallow soldier/SMG you effectively make new players learn the game quicker, you kinda force 'em to.
If you allow it, some people might just like being able to “shoot at things” and having no responsibilty towards their team so much that they STAY soldier/SMG. All in all I think the way it currently is does more harm than good.[/quote]
I 100% agree with Coolhand,
I can remember the fist time I played RtCW (Christmas 2001)
I had not really played on-line FPS before, and found it very daunting
to join in, I understood the classes, and what they were supposed to-do,
but for the first couple of months I played as a soldier with an smg,
because I had 0 responsibilities & I could just get on and learn how
to play the game… I think giving soldiers smg’s is an act of genius
by developers who understand how daunting it is to play this type
of game for the first-time.
Hewster
oh, and I’ve no comment on the Venom as I never really used it in
RtCW, but I do use the Gatling in WildWest from time to time ;)[/quote]
There’s another thing an SMG soldier can do very well- if you’re playing on a server with heavy-weapons restrictions, and other people have taken all the panzerfausts, pick SMG. Then when they spawn, TK them and take the gun you really want!
(I’m joking, but this would really work. And it could even help your team, if the people with the rocket-launchers are newbies who don’t understand that there’s an objective they should be targeting)
<u>Regarding the idea that SMG-soldier is a beginner’s class:</u>
Yes, it has the fewest controls to learn, and can be a teaching tool in that regard. But to learn how the maps work, you’d want to stay alive as long a possible. And you’d live longer with more health- like the mediic has. Plus medic has regeneration, so he’ll last even longer, even if he doesn’t know how to eat his own packs.
The only problem with making medic the default spawn for newbies is their low amount of starting bullets. If the team includes a Fieldop who places ammo by spawn, this won’t be a problem. But otherwise, he’d run out of bullets quickly.
The best class for a newbie to learn would be like a cross between the medic and the soldier: call it the “Ubermencsh”. The ammo loadout of an SMG soldier, but a medic’s high hitpoints and regeneration. Maybe even a sprint bonus and faster regeneration than a medic gets- that would make the class somewhat attractive for experienced players who need a doc-runner (or gold-runner, or parts-runner…)
If I understood that correctly, it took you months to “get” how to move, aim, shoot and throw grenades, use MG42’s, use switches, reload, sprint … uhm I’m just realizing there IS a lot of stuff you kinda forget about once you learned the game… you get the idea… but exctly because there is so much stuff to learn at once - and even if you didn’t learn it yourself it doesn’t stop other players from using it! - it’s silly to assume you can “really get the basic stuff down first” -> I play since RTCW mptest1, and maybe it’s just because I suck but I STILL don’t have the “basic stuff” “completely down” yet, and I doubt I ever will!
You see, how to throw ammo/health packs, airstrikes, call in artillery, use the panzerfaust etc. is all a piece of cake compared to what in your eyes is the “basic stuff”… reviving for example might take a bit longer to master, but I “got that down”… while there is NO end in sight regarding movement and tactics (!) -> when you play as SMG soldier for months (whaa? this is scary haha… shrub? bani? server option for serious games???), even then you will sooner or later notice “when A happens, usually B happens” in certain maps, and simply because you want to survive you have to learn that too, if you want or not.
GET THIS NOW. If you don’t at least try to get this I won’t bother to reply anymore, all the stuff is written up free to read and understand, and you’re you just repeating the same puny arguments while completely sidestepping mine. And I even get accused of being unfriendly to noobs because I waste all this beautiful summer time trying to explain what I mean… blargh.
It is much easier to understand how the airstrike works by throwing one, than by getting killed by it 5 times.
You can get killed by the panzerfaust gazillion times without even seeing where it comes from. Fire it twice, and you will know how it slows you down, takes a long time between reloads, makes that whining noise and has a delay before firing.
Plant dynamite once, somewhere way off, and you will roughly know how long it takes to arm, and maybe you even notice that you can defuse it too and/or that it blinks faster the closer the moment of detonation is (because you have time and nobody is around).
Okay this doesn’t apply to ET sorry, but, the Venom! It’s very useful to fire it a few times and then keep getting killy by it, no? Fire it in the sky, switch classes!
Go LT or medic, throw 4 packs, and BLAMMO! one anecdote less of “that n00b that should me because I couldn’t give him ammo or health”.
Geez, is that really so hard to understand?
You know how they write comedy and someone says “if it made one person laugh, it was worth the effort”… if disabling the SMG soldiers save just a handful of people playing for MONTHS ( :eek: :eek2: :eek3: :blah:) without trying anything else…
You talk about being no liability to the team, but you should really take that further and simply switch classes and/weapons as much as possible in the first games, until you tried everything once. By then you will have realized that it’s better to go Field Ops or Medic and don’t even THINK about soldier/SMG. You see, in regards of “amount of ammo for the team” a soldier is not better than a LT/FO who doesn’t give ammo, the same goes for the medic (who gives a team health bonus without doing anything…), do the math -> this argument is pure bullshit and doesn’t get better by repeating it.
I have a “friend teaching anecdote” too. He was forced to watch me for a while because I was too addicted and wouldn’t let him hehe (he didn’t have internet at home) - so he kinda got a quite good allround impression and he went straight to medic. He never bothered with soldier/SMG, the thought never entered his head. Watching me he had realized that once you started healing the ammo flows in, and so he could shoot at people with an SMG and died less, while doing some healing on the side. It’s like a “better” SMG soldier, no? As I said, there is no option to spawn with less health or no stamina either so why keep that other useless option, the SMG soldier?
Too bad that there won’t be any mods for ET - a Free For All Gametype along with some maps would have been THE solution for this “learning how to shoow at things” stuff. Because some people get stuck in that phase longer than they should, and this would make them aware of playing in fact a different game.
Indeed. And if you’re really interested in this, I have a suggestion for you: try switching hands. If you play mouse right hand, keyboard left, try playing the other way around. You may be surprised at how hard it is to do even the “basic” stuff that you already know how to do. Try playing as a soldier with any weapon other than the SMG… I bet you’ll find it’s a whole lot easier to mess things up for your team-mates.
Not only is it useful for new players to have the option of an SMG soldier, it’s better for the people they’re playing with too - and that means you and me.
To use your earlier analogy: throw them in the deep end and, yes, they may learn to swim - but they may also drown (and could even drag you down with them!).
I don’t see any value in disallowing the SMG-soldier. I disagree that it will make people learn faster. People will learn at their own pace. But the removal or persistent of the SMG-soldier is really a matter of opinion.
The first time I played RtCW, I selected the SMG-soldier. Not because I thought I would be a super-soldier, but because it was basic and simple and I had no experience in online multiplayer FPS. I switched to LT as my primary class in rather short order (within an hour or so).
I used my short time as an SMG-soldier to learn the controls and the basic weapons. I could have done this as an LT or medic. But in my mind, the soldier was the basic class. It was simple and had no other responsibilities. I learned to aim, shoot, and not run over barbed wire. In time, I expanded and tried the other classes.
I do not think that the SMG-soldier is a problem with the game. Therefore, it does not warrant any fixing.
Indeed.[/quote]Haha, that’s so weak it made me chuckle
And if you’re really interested in this, I have a suggestion for you: try switching hands. If you play mouse right hand, keyboard left, try playing the other way around. You may be surprised at how hard it is to do even the “basic” stuff that you already know how to do.
1.) So it boils down to they’re there for the left-handed? Why didn’t you say that right away then?
2.) This is what I mean about ignoring my arguments! I said very clearly that I put “basic” in quotes because I consider it NOT basic, but stuff you can never 100% master -> opposed to simple things like “the panzer has a delay before firing”, or “you have throw dynamite down, then arm it, then it blinks”. These are simple facts, which you digest once and then move on. The sooner you get a rough overview over the game, the more enjoyable the learning process will be for you AND your team.
Try playing as a soldier with any weapon other than the SMG… I bet you’ll find it’s a whole lot easier to mess things up for your team-mates.
Don’t treat me like a drooling idiot while not even bothering to read my post. You have to have those learning experiences. You imply that this means n00bs will run around with heavy weapons ALL the time doing nothing but teamkilling - while I’m just saying they should try everything once or twice and then settle with medic an FO for a while. Then the SMG soldier is useless.
Not only is it useful for new players to have the option of an SMG soldier, it’s better for the people they’re playing with too - and that means you and me.
To use your earlier analogy: throw them in the deep end and, yes, they may learn to swim - but they may also drown (and could even drag you down with them!).
That’s ridiculous. You ignore my arguments, use an out of context quote, repeat stale phrases, and then argue “using my analogy” ahaha? Can you please explain what this “drowning” would mean in real terms in ET? That’s bullshit, that would mean they could never play the game again, and make me unable to do so too… if you’d really used my analogy that might have equalled having your head underwater for a few seconds, which is a helpful experience.
“had no other responsibilities.”
But this stems from the fact that it’s your first times of playing, not from the class you choose. You see, when I play the game I might “expect” others to give me cover or at least shoot at incoming enemies and not me etc… simply becaue I don’t have time to check the class and name. If I knew they were a noob with no clue but no ill intentions there is NOTHING they could do to make me anything but smile or even laugh. I don’t think - “oh, it’s an soldier with an SMG, the class with responsibilities whatsover because he is a n00b” - after all they could be teh pr0 gam0r with secondary SMG or have picked up one because they ran out of ammo.
The point is, on public servers you can’t expect anything. If I need ammo I ask for ammo, and if someone responds I react but I don’t delay or let it confuse me in any way. And hey, you needed only an hour, not months… there’s really not much harm you can do during the first few times of playing.
I claim that the “harm” by people getting stuck with soldier/SMG too long is bigger than that which would be caused by not having the option. I even claim that it would make learning the game easier.
Indeed we all learn at different rates, and that’s the beauty of it… it’s personal
choice & preference.
And Sniser, I do agree in part to what you say, some players may have
the ability to simply jump in the deep-end and survive, and in-fact it may be
the best way for some, but I think that is the minority.
Indeed if they have played other on-line FPS games, they will most likely
be ok, but I’m talking about those players who are NEW to on-line gaming.
If I remember correctly, I just spec’ed for several hours before even trying
to play… I could read all the harsh comments to the less experienced players
from the “urber” players, and this made me even more wary of joining in, cos
I didn’t want to mess up, let my team down and be called a pleb.
Soldier was my first choice, then I migrated to engineer, and then to
medic. Nowadays Medic is my favourite class, it suits my style of play,
and, even if I say so myself, I’m pretty good as a support class
I actually believe that the experianced players who give the new players a hard
time on pub servers, are to blame for games not becoming more popular.
Like it or not, if a new player gets harassed for not being instantly an elite player,
he/she may well give up and not return… players who might, given time, turn into
great players.
So leave the smg soldiers alone, there just having a bit of fun, and learning
what on-line gaming is all about. you never know, given time, they may turn
out to be a better player than you are
And if you can’t handle new players on a Pub server, join a clan, and play
against those of a similar mind set / experience to you on private server.
I did read your post, and I did not “treat you like a drooling idiot”. If you insist on behaving as though I did, then clearly it is a waste of time trying to discuss anything at all with you: I’m now left wondering why I even bother wasting my time responding to you. I suspect it may be something to do with the quantity of (excellent) beer I’ve imbibed this evening - there’s no other reason that springs to mind. Here, have one on me:
I think when youre a soldier with SMG, you’l learn better to concentrate how to shoot if youre a newb. If they Must be field ops and dont know what an airstrike is an trow it at your feat :s. Btw when i played Rtcw for the first time i didnt even know i could choos a weapon ad class :bored:
I think that the SMG soldier should be replaced with Assault Rifle soldier. Then it would at least offer something different that you cant get with medic or FO, while still being a “simple” class. An assault rifle would be more powerful than an SMG and more accurate.
I don’t know if my case is unique, but I see the reason for SMG soldier.
I usually play a soldier, and I usually play 6 or 10 map cmpgs. Depending on the first map and what team I’m on it can be hard to get lvl 4 Heavy Weapons on the first map.
After I get lvl 4 heavy weps I use my SMG almost as much as my primary weapons (in between panzer shots, while getting to MG spots, open areas with flamer) and once everyone on the server has lvl 3 light weps and you have lvl 0 or lvl 1 (if you got a lot of pistol/nade kills) it’s hard to get to lvl 3 because every reloads faster and shoots better then you.
So on the first map of a long cmpg I go SMG soldier and level it to lvl 2 or 3 before I level hvy weps because I find that leveling light weps after everyone else has exp is alot harder then leveling hvy weps after everyone else has exp.
as I never really used it in
