So far the last four rounds of HvH I have played (most recently today; I play as a medic: Kolton Murphy) was ended by a combat synth running around and just annihilating the marine force.
It would seem to me, the Combat Synth is basically the embodiment of the reason that “main characters” are worked against with the experience. They are very diffiicult for marines to counter, and are bullet sponges. If you aren’t killed by the synth themselves - you are killed by friendly fire for marines trying to get the synth.
I can’t imagine this is fun for anyone - including the person playing the synth…
Most recent example today during the faction clash. The Combat Synth overrun the medical triage going on and killed four medics, then medical got hit and all the doctors went. Foxtrot was deployed by everyone was perma well before that got organized, in fact I think Foxtrox got mostly annihilated as well. In the last two HvH’s I attended, such as todays, there was a lot of enjoyment being had and RP happening - only for the super-soldier to walk in and kill everyone. To what end? I don’t even think it was interesting for the synth themselves.
I also feel it is a real shame because in the last two events I think they were otherwise run quite well. Good story, interesting lore, careful thought, and well managed only for a super soldier to run around.
It seems bizarre to me that discussion and debate happens around things like specs with scopes, or C4, when there are literal super-soldiers going to be running around. Additionally under normal play, there are very strict rules around synths and when they are allowed to be in combat.
I personally feel that a significant portion of HvH rounds end up ruined by the existence of combat synths - on any side. I think they have their place within special circumstances (ERTs, etc…) or highly coregraphed events - but I strongly think that:
Combat synths should be banned at a policy level from events unless approved as part of a scripted/coreographed event or ERT.
When constructing an event, it is appropriate to take into consideration the presence of a combat synthetic and the impact they may have. I’d argue a decent combat synth presents the same level of impact as a Tank would, arguably more since a Tank in HvH is a lot more vulnerable to being plinked to death.
Really this comes down to whoever is running an event to take into consideration the presence of combat synthetics and either remove them, alter their programming, compensate the other side or to make the event work with the presence of the synth taken into account.
Ergo I don’t really think a policy change is needed outside of just being considerate of Synth spawns during HvH events.
That’s some high quality cope given marines got like 4 scouts. And this is an event, it doesn’t have to be balanced. I don’t really think you can equate a synth to a tank, I think a synth equals like four marines. If you have several people shooting a synth, you going to kill it.
staff need to carefully consider when they spawn combat synthetics and they should be used sparingly in my opinion
they’re really strong and you can do a lot of damage with them ofc and yeah they’re still killable but it also isn’t super fun to get hit with the ‘you lose’ button in a 1v1 unless the event caters to it properly
if marines got 4 scouts though then the event was probably already getting hit with a lot of ‘you lose’ buttons
I believe there were three combat synths, from what I could see.
The round started with around 90 people.
There were a lot of ERT’s though, so it was hard to keep up.
I don’t mind the round being unbalanced (in fact I love that!) but a massive stack of medics and then doctors getting wiped to a single combat synth kind of just makes playing those roles pointless.
Totally understand that balance can be achieved by giving others special toys - but that doesn’t solve the issue of non-spec roles like Doctor or Medic and where they fit in with events. I only raise this because I love the idea of events and the hard work that gets put into them - but I’ve been unable to engage with all the events over the last few months due to these kinds of issues.
Just wanting to highlight as a medic main, I’m left wondering whether there’s a realistic way for me to actually properly participate with my character.
As an example, because of the sheer number of Combat Synths we ended up with I think about six waves of ERTs. It ended up, for me, feeling like a largescale thunderdome. Which I feel was unfortunate because the RP setting and the work into the event was actually really good.
Again, acknowledging the “skill issue” and balance sides - I’m more talking about where non-spec roles and where they fit in to these kinds of events.
If Combat Synths in HvH events are straight up “gaming”, going around shooting marines being slimes let the synthetic council/WL overseer know, same goes if there’s a Combat Synthetic survivor.
Their main focus should be roleplaying their role, it’s why they obtained the whitelist in the first place not to be a LRP terminator.
On the other hand it’s also completely the fault of the event overseer giving combat synth weapon usage when they can easily disable it.
EDIT: There’s special cases and every scenario is different. If there’s a reason why the combat synth is gunning marines down, (ex. cornered in a room, saving allies in a triage, preventing an objective being loss, moving with an allied group to an objective). But something slimey like hiding in the bushes abusing NVGs and killing groups of marines, again, let us know.
Not gonna lie, I was a combat synth last HvH (non-WL holder), and the only thing you have going for you is that you can take a hit, and walk it off. But the gun you get is so god damn rubbish you need to be in 3-4 tiles range to even be able to hit something.
The bigger balance issue was dealing with god damn 7 or so scouts, who all kept 1 shotting people with incin.
The biggest challenge for a combat synth is securing a decent firearm, far more so for the CLF.
@TheeBiggest last time I mentioned we had a CLF combat synth survivor practically wipe out groundside marines while being ignored by the xenos, no one really cared or thought it was an issue, at least when I brought it up.
The generally community belief insofar as I can glean is that combat synthetics are free game to do whatever they heck they want in terms of killing people, outside of at least trying to occasional aid their faction. To be fair though 99% of the time this is a ERT spawn and most of the other ERTs usually die off.
The worst part for me is that when OPFOR gets a combat synth, the marines needs a counter option to that combat synth. But staff usually just gives 1.5 scouts (or more) per combat synth, which is very much unbalanced, as the scout is A LOT better then a combat synth.
