jazz wrote:Thx for the feedback.
When taken in context of this pack being a continuation of 'first day' it should make sense. The player has just wasted a Skaarj teleporter with hordes of Skaarj and a couple of bots for support. This is really no different from the end of the level in which the name 'Ambush' suggests. You also have a 50 cal, keg of health, body armour and four health packs to keep you going.
Eh I'm not saying the fight is thematically out of place or anything like that. I understand this is a direct continuation after a major escalation in the previous couple of maps in First Day. I'm saying the arena is not designed for the volume of enemies you face with the weapons you have, regardless of when it occurs in the gameplay timeline. UT weapons cannot kill that many Skaarj fast enough to not get you completely overwhelmed unless you nail every single one of your shots, which is really hard. Every other fight previously was either in a larger area, had better cover, more provisions, or a combination thereof.
The .50 cal is nice, but it has so much less ammo than you'd need to make it actually useful. At first, I thought the gun was the main gameplay set piece for the fight, and you were meant to stick to it and just hose everyone the fuck down, which would be fun and a reasonable mechanic to use in a small area with loads of enemies. Having a few hundred rounds in it would have been enough to cover probably the entire fight, and it still wouldn't have been easy. But it wouldn't have been unreasonable at all. I think it has, what, 50 rounds right now? Enough to kill MAYBE five or six Skaarj if you are really good at scoring headshots from a turreted weapon which hides your crosshair?
Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a challenge. This one just I think wasn't well thought-out for how tight of an arena it is and for how many Skaarj you get (at once, and over time). It becomes less of an endurance fight and more of hoping the RNG gods are on your side, especially with the friendly bots often being more of a liability than an asset. It's also nearly impossible to get the keg during the combat sequence without taking damage, so unless you notice it right away, it's not going to help you much (or it might make things even worse).
Another thing about the health packs: since they are placed close together, you have to be careful you don't grab both of them by accident if you don't need all 40 points of HP right then and there. So you can accidentally screw yourself later on if you wind up grabbing two at once when you had 79 health. If they are more spread out, you can choose which ones you get more easily (and not have to be careful, and can thus dedicate your attention to the fight). I think it's fine to clump ammo together, since the worst thing that can happen when you grab too much ammo is you wasted some potential shots, but grabbing health prematurely can really cost you in a protracted battle, especially when it's generally scarce.
Consider also that some players may enter the combat environment without full health or armor, and thus stock up immediately on what's in the arena rather than use it during the fight. People can get careless and make little mistakes that add up, and given the rest of the map is so low-key, it's easy to get careless and take damage from tentacles or slime pits or what have you, to the point where by the time you face real opposition you are actually seriously in need of replenishment.
I'm certainly not trying to be an asshole, just pointing out the (very few) things I am not as big a fan of so far. Everything else has been top notch, and most of the battles in First Day were quite well balanced, to the point where you could get through them in a few attempts at most. This one I tried at least 10 times before I gave up and god moded it, so it seems unbalanced.