Heroes & Generals is looking good

[jomni]

Gah! People move too fast like "hyperspeed Counterstrike".  Didn't remember this to be the case before.

[ArizonaTank]

I have been playing the game off and on for almost two years (been in beta a long long time). 

I agree the game has drifted into the more "gamey" twitch-fest column in that time.  I was playing the other day, and hit a guy in the chest two times.  Despite being hit, he ran away very quickly, dodged behind me, and killed me with three shots from his M1.  The only thing missing is the space bar hopping that goes on in some twitchers.  As someone mentioned...it is starting to feel like BF1942.

I don't mind the need for fast reactions in an FPS, but there has to be some realism there.  Arma and the "realistic mode" tank battles in War Thunder are good examples of what I like. 

As it is...I probably won't be back to Heroes and Generals.

[MengJiao]

I have been playing the game off and on for almost two years (been in beta a long long time). 

I agree the game has drifted into the more "gamey" twitch-fest column in that time.  I was playing the other day, and hit a guy in the chest two times.  Despite being hit, he ran away very quickly, dodged behind me, and killed me with three shots from his M1.  The only thing missing is the space bar hopping that goes on in some twitchers.  As someone mentioned...it is starting to feel like BF1942.

I don't mind the need for fast reactions in an FPS, but there has to be some realism there.  Arma and the "realistic mode" tank battles in War Thunder are good examples of what I like. 

As it is...I probably won't be back to Heroes and Generals.

Apparently, I'm going to be in HG for a bit.  It's like an improved BF1942 in many ways.  All of my old BF1942 reflexes are coming back, but with the better terrain, I expect to be wiping out Germans at an incredible rate.

  All of my old BF1942 rules work about like they did: come in fast at an unexpected angle with grease gun (was a tommy gun in BF1942, but same principle) and use the whole clip on anything that moves, leap over walls etc. and when you are out of your double load of modified ammo, switch to grenades and steal a bicycle (no bikes in BF42 of course).

  And other basic principles that worked in BF42 and Some Red Orchestra mods: get deep into Jerryland and set up so that they drive or run past you to get to the latest firefight.  I think I even blew up a Kubelwagonload with a grease gun last night.  I certainly hit it with a whole clip and it definitely exploded.

   Of course a lot of things are horribly annoying: grenades throw people dozens of feet into the air and getting run over triggers the same flipopnig animation.   But apparently for the moment I'm relishing this whole world of silliness.

[Tinkershuffle]

Bike tactics ftw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHfGKz9XQw

[MengJiao]

Bike tactics ftw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHfGKz9XQw

   The bikes are pretty fun.  I tried lofting over a wall into a few Germans, but something went wrong.  The tank battles look fun.

[MengJiao]

Soooo... is this another "battle arena" like WoT?  Or is it closer to a remake of Battleground: Europe (WW2 Online) or whatever the name changed to?

  It's interesting (sort of, I guess), but while the game is not all that much like WW2 online in many ways, the same overall dynamic for the campaigns has carried over: there are more Germans and more funded stuff for Germans in all timezones except the US.  The imbalance should get even stranger since apparently there are US servers (ie in the USA) with good ping for the US troops and bad for the Germans.  So if you play USA on the USA servers, you usually see (say somewhere around 2/3 to 3/4 of the time) the Germans getting steadily beaten.  Moreover, when the Germans win on a US server, they win in 5 minutes or not at all, so say 90% of the time or more on US servers you get a hilariously relaxing time choosing how you want to shoot or blow up Germans.  Plus things may get even worse for the Germans on US servers as US players graviate to Campaigns (there are multiple campaigns) where the US is winning.  Meanwhile, on 3/4 of the planet, the US gets very quicky and systematically annihilated in the Campaigns (as usual -- that was typical in WWII Online too).

[MengJiao]

Soooo... is this another "battle arena" like WoT?  Or is it closer to a remake of Battleground: Europe (WW2 Online) or whatever the name changed to?

  It's interesting (sort of, I guess), but while the game is not all that much like WW2 online in many ways, the same overall dynamic for the campaigns has carried over: there are more Germans and more funded stuff for Germans in all timezones except the US.  The imbalance should get even stranger since apparently there are US servers (ie in the USA) with good ping for the US troops and bad for the Germans.  So if you play USA on the USA servers, you usually see (say somewhere around 2/3 to 3/4 of the time) the Germans getting steadily beaten.  Moreover, when the Germans win on a US server, they win in 5 minutes or not at all, so say 90% of the time or more on US servers you get a hilariously relaxing time choosing how you want to shoot or blow up Germans.  Plus things may get even worse for the Germans on US servers as US players graviate to Campaigns (there are multiple campaigns) where the US is winning.  Meanwhile, on 3/4 of the planet, the US gets very quicky and systematically annihilated in the Campaigns (as usual -- that was typical in WWII Online too).

  To continue:

  There was one battle last night (I've made it to Rank two and the big Assault maps with armor on them) that started out much like a typical German capture of an allied town in WWII online:  German tanks swarming around the allied spawn point.   I was pretty resigned to having it turn out badly, but of course fighting to the tedious end -- because you can try lots of nutty strategems under those extreme conditions.  BUT a number of things are critically different in this game:
1) You are invisible for a few seconds after you spawn
2) the spawn radious is fairly big and random
3) there's an infinite supply of panzerfausts inside the main spawn house
4) there are other AT weapons (big grenades and gammon bombs)
5) the Germans can only have a limited number of tanks on the map at a time

So the US Army cleaned up those 3 (not as swarming as I thought at first) tanks -- only PZ KW I and II anyway and after 30 minutes, got a win.
Which was pretty refreshing.  I haven't hit a tank with anything except BAR fire yet...shooting at the commander in an open hatch -- no hits.

Which brings up another comparison:  early on in bf1942, the BAR was the ultimate weapon for me.  It is perfect for me at this stage in this game as well: good hitting power, good accuracy, reasonable ROF and the sights are so good that when you get the sight mod -- it's just the sight you already have.  Good to know.  I got a headshot (one-shot kill) at about 200 meters last night -- purely by accident -- I was shooting at a small mob of doomed Germans and one of them happened to get hit in the head.
My other memorable kill was two Germans on a bike.  The driver apparently was dead set on pedaling right up to where I was standing on a hill.  I was horrified myself and blasted off the last few shots of a clip without aiming and maybe got one or two hits.  While I was frantically reloading, they pedalled up next to me and started getting off the bike.  I thought surely it would be the end -- they must have some crazy instant-kill move up their sleeves or why a) pedal right at me b) get off right next to me?  Frantically, I shot them to bits.  I was much relieved and pretty incredulous, but when it was over they definitely were dead.
Now apparently there are all kinds of "ribbons" you can earn or buy that do things like make you aim better or give you extra hits -- so maybe they both had monster hit ribbons or something.  Fortunately -- if that was the case -- a whole clip of 30 ought 6 at two feet will overwhelm a lot of costly mods.

[MengJiao]

Bike tactics ftw.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwHfGKz9XQw

   The bikes are pretty fun.  I tried lofting over a wall into a few Germans, but something went wrong.  The tank battles look fun.

   And how did the Jeep thing turn out?

   Basically it is more trouble than it is worth.  You can't spawn them as needed and in a crowded rank 1 battle (smaller battles, more inexperienced players, more death more chaos) and in the larger battles, a bike is a much better ATV.  In a jeep you bounce crazily over rocks and ditches,on a bike you can avoid such things and its quieter.

   The LMG is basically useless and a magnet for people who just want to continually shoot it at nothing at all.

   BUT, I'm going to load up with panzerfausts and go tank hunting in the rank 2 battles.  Rank 2 battles so far have seemed less chaotic and I've been able to drive the jeep without much trouble.  So maybe I'll take one and go practice with grenades and panzerfausts in a quiet area of the battlefield.

[jomni]

For the jeep to spawn, I believe you have to be assigned to a squad with vehicle spawn points left.
If you are assigned to pure infantry, you can't spawn your jeep.
The spawn point selected may also have something to do with it.  Some are just pure infantry.

I filtered out the Training missions so that I just join the Normal mission (those that have an impact in the strategic map).

[Nefaro]

The few games I played a couple months ago were okay.  A bit fun and not overly complex.  I had just graduated to the big maps when I stopped playing, however.  So I've not experienced the wider variety yet.  The smaller beginner map had become rather repetitive so it couldn't have happened sooner.

[MengJiao]

For the jeep to spawn, I believe you have to be assigned to a squad with vehicle spawn points left.
If you are assigned to pure infantry, you can't spawn your jeep.
The spawn point selected may also have something to do with it.  Some are just pure infantry.

I filtered out the Training missions so that I just join the Normal mission (those that have an impact in the strategic map).

  I got the jeep thing working.  I usually don't take it since I prefer the bikes for sneaking around, but if the enemy has tanks, I get the jeep and try hunting them.  Hasn't worked so far, though I have shot about a dozen panzerfausts at PZ I and II at around 100 meters or so.  No hits.  but they haven't hit me either.

   I just take whatever missions the system can find that match my ping.  So my Ping is usually okay, but all the players seem to be inexperienced US steam players just like me.  Which is okay, though it makes for lots of odd moments -- for example -- I got on one map just as all the Germans were leaving the game.  I guess the US Army was close to winning so the Wehrmacht decided to leave.  So there was an immense region of open cap points.  I went on cap point vacation and just took them one after the other while sight-seeing in the jeep.  there was one German in that game.  He was right behind my jeep when I spawned in initially.  He shot me up real good -- though for some reason at pointblank range the whole process took a while.  I got out of the jeep and was about to shoot back when he got me for the last hit just as somebody gunned him down.  I wish I'd gotten to know him better when he was alive: he looked strangely absurd and pathetic laid out in his overcoat in an immense pool of blood, but then it was off to respawn and my jeep was still there waiting for me though Mister German was evaporating and taking his uberkleinschnousserpissoleausfarhungsgeberietheit and odd post-mortum presence with him.  I got in the jeep and checked the map (which is a very cool set up in this game -- there's a full animation for holding up your map on a clipboard); it was a beautiful afternoon -- we had places to go!
   So that was weird.
   And it was only the beginning.
   I played 5 maps last night and the US Army won very throughly on all of them.  It was all very odd as anyone who has played WWII online can attest -- when the Germans turn up in equal numbers, you're dead.  But there they were -- perfectly balanced in numbers by automated machinery.  They acted like WWII Online Germans -- they sniped from any high place, hid under anything, drove around like crazy -- but something was missing (though of course they killed me as usual like clock work -- I got run over 3 times by Kubelwagons -- and I even killed myself jumping off a tall building -- one floor no damage -- 4 floors -- instantly dead).  The US Army players were incredulous -- why were they winning?  It seemed impossible.  The US side was demonstrably underequiped most of the time (eg -- no US tanks vs at least a few potential German tanks), but they just won steadily and solidly and slowly and unstoppably.  Meanwhile, every 3 minutes human waves of wildly shooting, crazy swarms of Germans would rush down the same narrow routes to get into odd places: under huge pipes, or small boxes or modest shrubs or even their own kubelwagons.  Their primordial urge to be under something was always uppermost in their priorities.  At the first sign of trouble (I observed this a lot since I generally spent most of these games shooting at long range at the German migration routes) they would sprint toward the nearest large object and try to get under it.
Generally, after this sort of thing had gone on for a quarter hour or so, the US Army players would begin wondering what was going on.  It was puzzling.  All of the German behaviors were pretty much the same as in WWII online, but they just didn't quite work in HG.  I suspect it was because the basic WWII online logic of favoring low pings by extrapolating the low-ping path so has not to be hit at all ever by anything of a higher-pinged source just was not working and it was essentially suicidal to run directly toward your high ping, non-Germanic foe accumulating hits from a huge 400-yard arc of concentrated automatic weapons fire focused on you just to hope for the best when you got into SMG range on a single target.

[jomni]

Are you implying WWII Online people are in the game? Seems logical.  I haven't played it to notice.

[MengJiao]

Are you implying WWII Online people are in the game? Seems logical.  I haven't played it to notice.

Seems logical, but maybe there are a limited number of ways of having Arcadey WWII battles with tanks and planes and jeeps and trucks.  It's wierd but I saw various russian (?) vehicles in the game just now.  I myself have some monster Russian AT grenades.

[jomni]

Oh so I see Germany won the war!  ;D
Buy I can't join any new one.   :(

[MengJiao]

Oh so I see Germany won the war!  ;D
Buy I can't join any new one.   :(

  Servers seem to be on the blink.  Steam seems to have unleashed quite a load onto the server system.