Does anyone actually like hugger combat?

[immaspaceninja]

Just wanna bring it up

I just dont see anything fun in how it is currently. There is no other word than 'aids' for describing it.
As a marine, if you get hugged, you either get captured or you spend 20 or more minutes going back to the ayylmayer, getting a snek removed and going back down.

And as a beno, you might get unlucky enough to be watching over nested hosts, which is probably the second most boring thing after waiting for a needed upgrade or evolution a.k.a you just go to youtube.

Also carrier. Yes, that guy.
I know some people enjoy that 'HAHAHA, YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!' feeling, but i'd rather be playing any other combat caste and actively killing people.
And i dont think anyone actually likes the kind of scenario where you land on the planet/prison and step on a resin trap that was hidden behind an empty bag of cheetos or a fence near the LZ. Same with trying to finish off last few xenos while having to hover your cursor over every single tile because some carrier is on the loose and there are empty magazines all over the place. Oh, and screech + combat hugging.

It might sound like too much, but i'd rather give xenos more free larva/cut the ammount of larva that dies with the queen or something and comepletely remove both carrier caste and hugger combat, while making it impossible to escape from nests AND only allowing to place nests n eggs in a certain radius around the queen. It would be a win-win for both sides.

[solidfury7]

The amount of effort that goes in to front line hugger combat is a fair amount and its super damn risky.

I exclusively play combat drone when I'm xeno, and it's super high risk. I consider myself one of the best combat drones but I sometimes get absolutely fucked.

Combat drones rely on poor supply lines and disorganised marines.

80 percent of the people who combat hugged generally don't get taken by xenos unless they're being routed.

I doubt it's very much fun, the same with resin holes, but in the same breath, being one shot gibbed by the tank off map isn't much fun either.

Oh and I'm sure hugger combat would drop drastically if they actually buffed tackle RNG. Its actually broken currently.


I don't think we will ever get rid of nests and huggers. If you're not a fan of the slim attempt at escaping, suiciding or trying to kill some xenos before you burst, you can always ghost.

Swings and roundabouts as we say in jolly old England.

[Steelpoint]

The issue is less the huggers and more the fact that, in my opinion, taking control away from the player for an extended period of time is a poor design decision to make.

Forcing people to spend upwards of twenty minutes trapped in a nest in a near hopeless situation where rescue or escape is extraordinarily unlikely serves to aggravate the player and turn a already bad situation (being captured is a bad thing to occur as you are now feeding the enemy team respawns) even worse as now you cannot even play the game until you die.

Of course, you can just ghost, but the issue there is that you will no longer be 'resisting' the Xenos so they can ignore having to guard your body. Furthermore by ghosting you utterly deny any possibility of escape or even being rescued by other Marines, however unlikely that may be. So you are heavily incentivised to NOT ghost and to remain in your body as ghosting simply further advantages the Xenos.

Ultimantly, hugger combat is shit not of the hugger mechanics but because the game is designed around captured Marines being held hostage for upwards of twenty minutes and them being disincentivized to simply leave their body.

Imo the solution would involve reworking the nesting mechanic to force ghost the victim in a fair way that cannot be abused to frontline 'combat nest' marines and force ghost them on the spot.

[ThesoldierLLJK]

This is why when I play PFC I always try to keep two grenades in my armor.
If you are captured you can resist when in the nest and make a last stand with those grenades.

I ended up killing a queen before dying one time because there was only one xeno watching/guarding.

[GenericUsername]

Here's how you do fun "hugger combat", learn with the master:

1 - Grab an egg and use the vents to get to the outskirts of the main battle, where lone baldies scout
2 - Plant the egg in a room where you are sure no one will go to. Make sure to calculate if you'll have time to hug someone before the hugger dies
3 - Grab the hugger and run towards the nearest loner to hug him; this requires some skill, specially if he has a shotgun. Frenzy pheromones or having a runner with you helps.
4- Take the capture to the nearest small room and secure nest it.
5- Back to the Queen and repeat

I just find it fun to kidnap marines as a drone and leave them in the dark, away from their squad. It's a lot like the movies where the marines are picked one by one, plus you might get a larva out of it.

TL;DR you gotta be sadistic to hugger combat

[carlarc]

also if you ghost you dont guarantee turning into the xeno when you burst. half the time you cant even prime two nades because of nest and click delay before a xeno spits on you, and you get stuck in paincrit because of the single grenade (other gets melted)

[Herac]

I mean hugger combat is kinda like the xenos equivalent of dual buckshot no armour.

The fact that one drone can instantly KO two players with just a few clicks is a bit much, but as others have said there's a risk that goes with it.

IDK how you could nerf reasonably though, because I don't think drone as a caste is broken at all. Maybe if getting shot whilst holding a hugger causes the hugger to drop, get stunned, something like that.

[Nimiety]

With the tackle nerfs it's the only viable way to abduct marines for larva.
I think resisting out of nests shoudl just be removed and allow people to re-enter their corpse if they are released from a nest.

[Chaznoodles]

Old hugger combat was far better than current state, honestly. At least you had a fighting chance.

[Butlerblock]

It’s not really op, it barely hits the line of viable, because a skilled lurker/runner can do more damage than a drone can, along with using less resources. Only reason why it’s being used currently is what solid said: tackle sucks ass

[Renomaki]

Old hugger combat was far better than current state, honestly. At least you had a fighting chance.

If you mean when helmets used to block huggers, it was more annoying than anything.

Back then, ANY xeno could carry two huggers that had infinite life, while most helmets could only resist a single attempt before being made worthless. It made melee combat with xenos suicidal, and if you got pounced it was instant death most of the time due to how most xenos would just rip your head off while you were stunned. And even if your friends did save you, ripping the hugger off your face tended to deal damage, and in some cases you'd PULL THEIR HEAD OFF along with the hugger.

Also, huggers were WAY more plentiful, where a mobile queen could probably lay 200 eggs in a single round more or less with ease. Marine helmets? Well, you couldn't ship those down until the first hugger encounter, and even then it was a hassle to march your ass to the armory to empty out all the helmets you can and ship them down into a crate. Hell, I think helmet requests where the biggest request of them all due to how many helmets tended to be broken in a single round. And chances are most of those helmets won't ever see a marine head.

Old Hugger Combat was a crutch for bad xenos. Modern hugger combat? Far more difficult, what with the 30 second timer every hugger has and the fact that the only castes that can effectively use them are carriers and drones now. Hell, placement of eggs is more important than ever, and I seen a lot of bad hives just spam all their eggs in a single place rather than spread them out all over the hive, which of course leads to a lot of struggle to capture marines due to a lack of eggs on the front lines, eggs which now only trickle out of a queen during her stationary form rather than shat out as quickly as it used to be.

If anything, you have more of a fighting chance fighting a xeno armed with their sharpest claws than a xeno covered in huggers that can easily pin you down and infect you without so much as a fight.

[Recounted]

Old hugger combat was far better than current state, honestly. At least you had a fighting chance.

said by no one who actually experienced the old hugger combat gameplay

[Grubstank]

There are other mechanics that also remove player agency -- eg tank gibs from offscreen. Two wrongs don't make a right but to address huggers as the isolated problem would be a mistake.

My opinion is pretty in favor of hugger combat overall. There are numerous limitations in place to make it strategic.

[Chaznoodles]

said by no one who actually experienced the old hugger combat gameplay

Been around since Xenoshack, was an admin for a while way back on the Sulaco, when we had Logistics. Old hugger combat was bad, but at least you knew what the enemy was doing, had a fair chance at pulling the hugger off if you secured your guy in time, could luck out and block their last hugger with your helmet, and didn't spend an eternity unconscious thereby removing your player agency.

Compare that to surprise hugger to the face resulting in 3ish minutes of blackout with zero fighting chance.

[RedsPro]

Im actually so happy with current Hugger Combat. Fun fact your helmet used to stop one hugger. Another fun fact is every xeno could throw huggers at you and lurkers jobs was to smack huggers on you. The game used to be only hugger combat. This is awesome

[Recounted]

Been around since Xenoshack, was an admin for a while way back on the Sulaco, when we had Logistics. Old hugger combat was bad, but at least you knew what the enemy was doing, had a fair chance at pulling the hugger off if you secured your guy in time, could luck out and block their last hugger with your helmet, and didn't spend an eternity unconscious thereby removing your player agency.

Compare that to surprise hugger to the face resulting in 3ish minutes of blackout with zero fighting chance.

The combat now is more fair towards marines with a surprise hugger trap you can have enough time to shoot it before your hugged. The last hugger combat, ANY caste could pick up huggers and drop two on you if you weren't rolling B18/squad lead and get put out of the game cause they often slashed you to death whenever they done that to you.

[misto]

the main thing i dislike about hugger combat is that my clicks seem to hardly ever land when im rushing at someone with a hugger in hand

[Grubstank]

the main thing i dislike about hugger combat is that my clicks seem to hardly ever land when im rushing at someone with a hugger in hand

I thoroughly empathize with this

[kooarbiter]

Just wanna bring it up

I just dont see anything fun in how it is currently. There is no other word than 'aids' for describing it.
As a marine, if you get hugged, you either get captured or you spend 20 or more minutes going back to the ayylmayer, getting a snek removed and going back down.

And as a beno, you might get unlucky enough to be watching over nested hosts, which is probably the second most boring thing after waiting for a needed upgrade or evolution a.k.a you just go to youtube.

Also carrier. Yes, that guy.
I know some people enjoy that 'HAHAHA, YOU JUST ACTIVATED MY TRAP CARD!' feeling, but i'd rather be playing any other combat caste and actively killing people.
And i dont think anyone actually likes the kind of scenario where you land on the planet/prison and step on a resin trap that was hidden behind an empty bag of cheetos or a fence near the LZ. Same with trying to finish off last few xenos while having to hover your cursor over every single tile because some carrier is on the loose and there are empty magazines all over the place. Oh, and screech + combat hugging.

It might sound like too much, but i'd rather give xenos more free larva/cut the ammount of larva that dies with the queen or something and comepletely remove both carrier caste and hugger combat, while making it impossible to escape from nests AND only allowing to place nests n eggs in a certain radius around the queen. It would be a win-win for both sides.

being captured by beanos or the almayer medical institution isn't fun, but nothing stopping you from deciding you'd rather stay and fight with your brothers in arms, as long as you tell them to shoot the bastard when it pops whenever the time comes. also while hugger combat is unfun to fight it is hella satisfying

[RobBrown4PM]

I think the problem is, is that hugger's don't have any AI, well, not much of any. There for I suggest huggers be given the ability to independently scamper and give out free hugs.

[Dolth]

I think the problem is, is that hugger's don't have any AI, well, not much of any. There for I suggest huggers be given the ability to independently scamper and give out free hugs.

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