- long siege rounds (king/nuke/stims) (1.30-3 hours long)
- shorter skirmish rounds (ob/flank/hellpush) (0.30-1.30 hours long)
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voters
What do you prefer and why? Recent dchat talks got me curious.
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skirmish. easier to fit them in w/o some of the difficult logistics of having to leave a role early in a siege when the ds may not be cycling, etc. i like map rotation often enough too, it’s nice if i get to play two different maps versus a very long round on one map like LV
I put my vote on the shorter skirmish rounds in terms of how its described, but I do prefer the longer end of that timeframe, up to 2 hours.
Instant wipes can be fun, but they seem to happen pretty often one way or another. I like FOB siege, but not instant siege—Looking at you NV (I love you, but I don’t know what’s wrong with you). I don’t enjoy the King/Nuke/Stims section of a round as much in terms of mechanics—they seem to be unsatisfying ways of simply ending things before they go on to become 8 hour ICE is NICE rounds. I don’t feel that the game has to be perfectly balanced, either, but it does play a role in extending the gameplay a bit.
I think rounds need time to develop. This is a roleplaying game at the end of the day, and situations require that development to have satisfying conclusions.
I’ve noticed that the time available to do anything has been tightened to the point where there is a lot less time to interact with people. The expected skill ceiling on all players has been heightened. A certain level of robustness is required to generate moments of advantage where one can speak—there are plenty of hotkeyed canned statements and orders on macros out there for a reason. I don’t really want to think of what the New Player Experience must be like, especially on lowpop. Briefings generally consist of a canned acknowledgement of what people expect to do anyway, rather than directions tailored to any given round or personnel (How many times has Bravo been given FOB with no ComTechs?). It feels a bit like going to the principal’s office, but the principal is already late for lunch. The rules-mandated briefing becomes something to quickly suffer through to quickly recover FORECON so marines have more Tier One operators to fight the Xenos—a threat that is presupposed in the RP, and taken for granted for simplicity’s sake.
Things just feel a bit rushed, is all. Apart from ICE is NICE memes I don’t really miss playing a single round per day because a doctor permas you with cigarette smoke infection in an 8-hour round. Things have come a long way from that, and it’s still very fun. I do feel the ticking clock in a round as I play, though, in a way that feels like the round wants to end regardless of what is currently happening. It would be nice to have just a little more downtime to eke out character moments between the frantic frags.
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IMO any round where marines evac or xenos have effectively lost (queen dead, finishing off stragglers) before the 1 hour mark is pretty boring. You’ve spent close to half an hour preparing for a fight that lasted less than the time you spent getting ready for it, where’s the fun in that? Yes, nuke/stims/king might not be ideal, but at least there’s gameplay. Rounds go back and forth, cool stuff happens. Shipside gets time to rp, etc. Usually the best rounds are around 1:30-2 hours imo.
It also makes your death a little more meaningful if you’re playing fewer rounds. Yes, it might suck a little more, but it makes you more thoughtful about how you play, which adds a lot to the overall game for everyone.
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Assuming every 1.5 hour+ round is a siege hellhole is rather disingenuous, I prefer long form rounds that have relatively fluid gameplay. Skirmishing and back and forth pushes to deny one another’s round-killers over the course of a long slog where attrition seriously comes into play is fun.
I heavily dislike how stupidly short rounds have gotten. The number of rounds that are decided within 10 minutes of drop is just too damn high- Attrition doesn’t matter, ammo consumption largely a non-factor, and you just spend LESS of the game having fun.
A half hour op is one where both teams spent 80% of their round doing nothing- Give me a long op any day.
9 Likes
This. It’s a shitty feeling knowing that you’re going to win or lose 5 minutes after you make contact. Then you’re stuck for 30 minutes of finishing off the enemy, then another 5 minutes for the round to actually end, then 5 more minutes before the next round starts, then 20 minutes before you actually drop. The game was interesting and competitive for 5 minutes and now you need to wait an hour for that to happen again, if you even have the time.
3 Likes
Wow. 50/50 vote.
I love long rounds.
2 Likes
Longer rounds are great but there’s a lot of times when CIC straight up prolongs a short round into 3+ hour slop rounds.
For example, front gets wiped, there’s only 30 marines left vs 30 xenos and they hold FOB for an hour. Half the server are ghosts, and marines finally kill xenos once they get stims. In a round like that, I think its in the best interests of CIC to call it “quits” and announce an evac, instead of holding fob to the last man as it happens way too frequently.
Though, I do really love FOB sieges in large scales, along the lines of the queen routes the marines back to the FOB (without actually wiping marines). I like FOB sieges in general, but the sort of fob sieges that suck are the ones where 80% of the server are dead ghosted as CIC tries to somehow cheese a round for a win.
I do enjoy rounds that last from like 80+ minutes, there’s a lot of time to fight at the front. Short rounds sometimes feel like a waste since a lot of times you spend 20 minutes prepping to only spend 10 minutes of combat and the round ends at 00:40/50. Thats just boring.
When I used to play XO, that was always a factor I considered in the back of my mind when FOB sieged. I was more likely to announce evacuation if I knew that a lot of players were ghosted since I knew it was just plain unfun for them and the marines ground side.
2 Likes
Personally, 3 hours round can be fun if you are alive, specially if you are someone who can help alot like a SG and spec, but as PFC and others it can range from decent to fun, as PFC with stim it is pure fun, but holding the FOB for over an hour is hellish.
Overall i seem to enjoy rounds that end around 1:10-1:30, not too long nor too short, as a spec i did alot of stuff as a FTL or PFC i could used cas,mortar and shoot alot of xenos as QM and ASO, i could process alot of intel, deliver all the crates i wanted and did some rp shipside even as CL it is not a bad time but as researcher i usually hope for a 1:30+ round so we can actually pump out a stim or green xenos