Safeguard Game Mode

[83457]

Things that this thread needs:

1. At what point does the 20 second timer start when bleeding out? How many perks are left when it appears? In current solo games, the 20 timer starts immediately. But I've had 9 perks and no timer in mp games, 3 perks with a timer and i keep forgetting to keep an eye in this.

Edit: fairly sure that the timer just starts when you go down now.

2. Solo; between early rounds, after picking up a support drop crate, i got a ballistic vest. Why? What causes that in solo?

Edit: also random vests in 2 player games. Guesses: every 100 kills, or so many support drop crates.

3. List of what enemies come 21-40, on which rounds. And a 41-100 list as long as I'm asking... Edit: it seems that this changes per number of players. There are more rounds with dogs in a 2 player game than in a solo game.

4. Number of enemies on each round, per player, for at least 20 rounds, and total enemies. This makes it easier to tell when the round is nearly over. So players don't run out during a lull, thinking the round is almost over. Edit: done correctly for solo and 2 player, guestimated number for 3/4, awaiting confirmation if numbers. If anyone knows how many total enemies in 3 or 4 player games (watch out for suicide bots as they won't count), let me know.

So far;

Solo: 13 (through round 9), 16 (through round 20) 235 in 20r game.

2p: 16(9),19(10-20) 283 total.

3p: guess: 18(9), 21(10-20) 325 total.

4p: 20(9) guess 23(10-20) 347 total.

Edit: 5. Why getting a Support Drop crate of the gun you have gives various results regarding stun/ied; originally, it refilled my stuns/ieds. Then it refilled them minus any ieds i had placed on ground. Then it stopped giving any grenades/tacticals for weeks. Then, my last gaming session, it gave me stuns and grenades again, why? (this added as new post, later, to draw attention to it).

Thanks if you can help with any of these.

Happy gaming!

Edit: More information to original post.

Page 3; strategy thoughts by round for 1/2 player added to 'strategy by number of players' post.

Edited June 4, 2014 by 83457

[lead_psychopath]

What is the best way to work out how many of each type per round?

I'm just struggling to workout how to count the types without a theatre mode, got any tips?

[83457]

What is the best way to work out how many of each type per round?

I'm just struggling to workout how to count the types without a theatre mode, got any tips?

I was just wondering how many enemies in each round in total which can be done by paying attention at the end of each round to how many kills each player got since the previous round.

As for how many of each type per round? I guess one would just have to count them individually.

With no theater mode, one could film the screen with a digital camcorder/cellphone and watch the playback. But again, that seems a little too detailed. :)

[83457]

Feedback on explosives cheat/no hands glitch.

I'm just trying to figure this out.

There was a cheat where you held a sentry gun out as your minigun timed out, which would then give you explosive ammo on all of your guns, presumably until the next minigun went away, unless you repeated the cheat.

Well, they patched it, which is theoretically good.

Immediately after, i tried it 3 times (offline). The first time, it worked. The next 2 left me with a no-hands glitch.

I'm fine with anti-cheats except that this happened to me about 5 times by accident; just pulled out a sentry at the wrong time, just trying to play legitimately. You end up with the little remote in your hand, clicking away, unable to get packages or fire guns.

Yesterday, we were playing credited 2 man games. But after a recent playlist update, Stonehaven had not been seen on Safeguard in days. So we played a private match on Stonehaven. The reason i point this out is that I'm not sure if this was a credited game or one of the private games, but; my friend is holding out a sentry, i notice the 'explosive ammo symbol' goes away. I think 'oh crap, he will get the no hands glitch' (he wasn't trying to cheat, he is oblivious). But instead, when he set the sentry down, it brought up the minigun, although it had timed out, then immediately switched to a regular gun, no explosive glitch, no 'no-hands' glitch.

So I'm just putting this out there to point out either 1. There are various outcomes to this scenario, or 2. They properly hotfixed this to work correctly.

Hopefully the latter...

Edit: follow up; i accidentally did it again and i got the same result as my friend; it switched to minigun, then to regular gun, no glitches. So hopefully that means it is correctly hotpatched (unless this was in the update last weekish).

Edited May 13, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

I added this to the 'things this thread needs' post, but i also am making a new post to draw attention to it.

Gun + Support Drop crate of same gun = varying results on stun/ied stash, why?

Originally, getting the same gun from an SD upped the level, filled ammo, gave max stun and ied.

Then, it gave level, ammo, stuns, and ieds minus any ieds i had on ground.

For weeks now, it gave no stuns, ieds ever.

Last gaming session, it gave max stuns and ieds.

1. Not ammo crates, but sd gun of same gun in hand.

2. Is it tied to the gun type? Like iar gives stuns/ieds, but the vepr didn't. Did they randomly forget to change it on a couple of guns?

3. Random glitch? Sometimes one result, sometimes another.

4. Depends on round? Higher rounds give stun/ieds?

5. Glitch. Picked up iar (with iar as secondary) while holding Wild Widow...

Anyone know why these results vary?

Is there a reason that I'm missing?

Edit: last gaming session; barely used mtar, used: iar, wild widow, vepr all night. All credited games, no private. Some regular safeguard, some devastation playlist safeguard (in case that matters). So, these are the same guns that I've used for months, so that rules out the 'depends on gun' scenario.

Thanks.

Edit: needs more testing, but it may be; (edited once so far) 1=gun/few mags, 2=level up, ammo full, 3=level up, ammo, 2 stuns, 4=level, ammo, 2 stuns, 2 I.E.D.s minus any on the ground currently (otherwise it may be 4 gives 1 ied, 5 gives 2...still researching possibilities).

Nope, still getting varying results... More testing...

Edited May 16, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Wishful Thinking Post: this is my thoughts on possible tweeks to the mode. I know this thread is one of the easiest Safeguard threads to find on the web and that it is a good, informative thread, so hopefully it gets seen by IW employees looking for feedback. I'm not holding my breath though.

Edit: fix the goddamn glitch that makes only one sentry and one vulture load per loot round. You guys hacked the bots strength way up AND killed the loot rounds. One or the other would have worked, both together hurt the game mode. Loot was cool to get, so i vote for leaving the enemies hard, but make sure that 2 sentries and 2 vultures load on loot rounds. At the very least, adjust it for 2 player games or adjust it so that more good stuff comes at high rounds over 20. Getting to 36 in a 2 man game, then getting 1 vulture and 1 sentry on the loot round is quite shitty. Also, add at least 5 seconds to the loot rounds already. I will not play this mode anymore until it is fixed properly. This was my favorite mode in ghosts, so please do the right thing.

Me: i love ghosts, i play it a lot, mp, bots, extinction, and lots of Safeguard; I've won 22 of the current 24 maps in 2 player games. I've been a gamer and read quite a lot on game design and balance. I'm an adult who has gamed since the 70's. I try to be smart about it and so i offer some thoughts on Safeguard improvements.

---

Challenge awarded minigun; i can't tell you how many times that i have been battling multiple dogs, then suddenly start switching to this at the worst possible times, and it is really slow so you can't get away and you can't switch it away fast enough.

Fix: Award the explosive ammo, need to manually switch to minigun.

Have minigun appear in hand without wasting 4 seconds pulling it out.

---

Guns: Assault rifles need more ammo. They are worse than the shotguns and smg's that come earlier in game. Taking ammo for 2 ieds is better than grabbing an assault rifle usually. Since the Loot and Support packages load so spread out, one must keep a pistol for it's high movement rate, so holding 2 assault rifles is not an option to fix the ammo issue.

Fix: increase reserve ammo.

Chain Saw: Unusable due to 8 second reload.

Fix: decrease reload time by at least half (not counting Sleight of hand).

As is: vepr, mtar-x, iar-27, wild widow are the only playable guns. The start pistol is okay, usually kept for movement rate to get packages until ww can be had.

Fix: Tweak guns as mentioned, or add some decent ones. Even a combat knife option for the super fast run would be welcome over half of the Safeguard guns.

---

Perks: i get that worse ones load at first. It makes sense from an initial design standpoint, but in actual gameplay, it's a disaster. Too many times, early round sd packages are 3 stalker, or 3 ready up. So basically they may as well be blank. Perks like that exist in this game simply to 'cap' useable perks, so even the option of 'take them now so you won't see them again' is a stragedy. If you try to change them, it's usually the other perk you won't use yet, or a nearly pointless shotgun, then ammo that isn't important because the pistol regenerates ammo.

Fix: most perks won't break this game mode, so throw something better at us at first. FHR, marathon, speed, stuff like that that will be useful, but not game breaking. Marathon/speed would help mitigate the Loot/Support drop time/spacing issues that currently hurt this game mode.

---

Maps: the maps in the playlist keep changing. Some maps constantly show up, some have disappeared from the line up. Some that stay have pile up glitches, i don't know why others were removed. But basically, let us pick the map in credited games (like private match allows), or maybe make a few playlists with specific maps in them, like 5-8 maps listed in each playlist . I get that this is not an easy fix, but having 20 in one playlist, 4 in another is annoying when trying to beat certain maps. Watching the same dlc1 map show up 3-4 times in a row out of 20 possible maps, while you are trying to skip it, feels stupid. Maybe keep each dlc in it's own playlist? Then only 16 in the random playlist.

Fix: ? Not sure, just mentioning this is less than perfect as is.

Strikezone: sd packages sometimes land above pro shop.

Freefall: many packages land on the 'roof' if you hold the east end. Bots shoot through the sideways doors and a few walls.

Bayview: trolley eats sd packages. Gives 'no hands' glitch if you were getting that package. Dogs/shield guys often get stuck somewhere, need to be hunted down. They can get stuck on the trolley, then vanish until you go to the far end of the trolley track, then they reload, usually after making a dying noise for the glitched/missing ones.

Suicide bots: occasionally on Stonehaven, often in the pit on Fog. Probably others.

Pile up glitches on some maps.

---

Loot Rounds: these need improvements.

First off: needs more time, I'll say this a lot because it simply is true. For 3/4 players, given the limited loot, the time is fine. For 1 and 2 player games it is not enough. Since solo, 2 player is harder, this should not be the issue that it is. This is poorly balanced, to be fair.

Some maps are fine, but many load the packages so far away from you and each other that something absolutely needs to be done. Running from my spot to care packages and getting 0 or 1 is bad design. Also, the packages drop and then there is 3-5 wasted seconds before you can even see what they are, that delay should not exist or more time needs to be added for solo, 2 player.

Several fix options:

At the end of each non-loot round is a 15 second timer unless the next round is a Loot Round. Add that 15 second timer back on, before and after, so we have a chance to spread out before loot drops, get back to camp after.

5 more seconds, plus losing the delay to see what came up would be a decent fix.

Load them all near players would work.

Sometimes you can run up to a package while holding x and it will pick up. Often it will not, releasing and holding x again does nothing. Make this consistent; holding x while you approach will give you the package. That's just sloppy as is. Getting to a package with 2 seconds left and not being able to pick it up makes the game look poorly programmed. Improving this would help.

Load packages on the same plane? Climbing to a package 10 feet away takes too much time. Again, simply adding time is the most intelligent fix. Forced time limit only hurts 1,2 player games unnecessarily. There is no game benefit to this timer. Giving a full minute, to fetch packages, get leftover sd packages, get back to camp site, would greatly improve the game and attract more players. In no way would it break the game or detract from gameplay. It would simply enhance the game experience in every way.

°

Helo Scout: before i get negative, understand that i play this 1-4 players, i am one of those people who will play with everything, i will make the bad shine as good as it can. I try to find purpose in the poo. That said, HS is garbage. I've even tried to use it as an escape pod if overwhelmed. Frankly, the game would improve if you simply removed this. Often 2-3 come every Loot Round, basically turning the loot rounds into 5-6 packages instead of 8. We used to regularly get 2 sentry guns, occasionally 1, rarely 3. Now, usually it's 1, occasionally 2 and we usually see 3 unusable HS. That's not acceptable.

Fix possibilities: remove it. Increase even just the trinity missile.

Place other items instead; maybe once per game k.e.m. shows up. Maybe rare ammo crate for a little gun shake up. Rare Loki with sd packages instead of killstreak packages, maybe Odin? Dog? Rare extra squadmate with shield?

Buff it: it is shit. Maybe double the ammo capacity per magazine and have 'oracle' glow around enemies, so you know where they are. This is a smart, easy fix that still leaves it as the worst killstreak.

Change it to the Helo Minigun from Behemoth.

°

Trinity missile: this should load over you or over the enemy or over the middle of the map. As is; it frequently loads outside the map with no indication of which direction the map is in.

Fix: Load as i stated.

Have enemies appear immediately with red boxes on screen, so you know which direction to steer it.

Have minimap onscreen during use, so you can steer it onto the map from it's derp load location.

°

Sentry Gun: basically touched in this above. They show up less. This was a bad balance tweek. 3/4 player games won't notice as much that it was reduced, because the game is easy enough with more players. Again, this simply hurt the 1, 2 man games without giving a decent replacement. Increasing the chance of getting Helo Scout is unacceptable as a solution/balance tweek.

To be frank: sentry guns aren't breaking this mode, but taking some away hurts our enjoyment of the game, which is detracting from the attraction to the mode. The last thing we need is to drive players away from Safeguard for an arguably bad balance tweek. This certainly was not a warranted tweek. While sentries can make an easy camp easier, they also allow hard spots to be 'doable', they are a necessary staple.

Change should be made in a game when something is obviously problematic. The stabbing in this game MUST be fixed. Sentry guns in Safeguard should never have even been talked about while these other issues exist.

°

I.M.S.: no real complaints, but could we lose the time-out? Or double the time? It only gets 4 canisters anyway...

°

Vulture: No issue. Request that second could be called in, like Hind, to free up inventory. It would show when the first died.

°

Hind: No issue.

---

Ghost Squad: the enemies can follow me anywhere and quickly. So why is Ghosts Squad so stupid? I run back to camp spot, GS runs toward the enemies to die. Camping a building, he jumps out the window to fight 5 dogs below, even though he can barely fight dogs. Make him stay within 10', no more running halfway across the map in the opposite direction from where I'm heading. He needs 'stay with team' to be a higher priority than 'run away from team towards certain death'. He also needs 'revive player' to be his top priority. So many times, he is right next to me or my downed friend and walks away to fight enemies, rather than reviving me/him while we protect him. Those precious seconds cost us hard to find perks or he dies and it's game over when it should have been a simple revive, or he simply let's you bleed out when could have easily moved 3 feet and picked you up, rather than fight that 1 enemy 100 feet away. Teach him cover, he loves to stand in the open and get killed.

---

Health: if you play extinction, you get hurt, screen is red, you heal up and look fine. But you look at your health bar and you are at 45%, despite looking fine. Same in this mode, but there is no health bar. You appear to be healed, but die in 1 stab/shield hit, which makes the game seem poorly programmed. Give us a visible health bar, or leave some red until you heal.

---

Knife: in every mode of Ghosts, the knife is awful. Offline, split screen, a Ravager is shooting my teammate, i stab him in the back, but fall down dead. It seems that my stab does nothing, and he stabbed me with his ass while shooting my teammate (offline, no latency). Too many stabs don't connect in this entire game.

Bots have always stabbed you in this game, before they do the animation.

The first time that i played this game, i was appalled at how awful the stabbing works and looks. I assumed a patch would remedy it. How is it still this shitty (in every mode)? If you want it embarrassingly shitty in online mp, that is one thing, but it should just connect in extinction/safeguard if you are in range and facing them when you stab, but it usually does not. Like the dog; it looks normal in Safeguard, but not in mp, online nor offline versus bots. Make the knife normal in Safeguard.

Extinction: stand next to the drill, 5 stabs to a cryptid on the drill, right next to him, not moving, 2 count, eventually. Really, that seems fine to yous? Make it connect.

Play mp bots: bot walks in room, i die, killcam shows him come in room, i die, he runs over and stabs corpse. That's shamefully bad.

Online mp, killcams. You die, then they stab you. Always stabbed from 10 feet away, just like dogs always kill you from at least 10 feet away. Except in Safeguard mode, where the dogs actually hit you. Even offline bots, the stabs and dogs are incredibly far off. This really needs to be addressed.

Plus, the 'accuracy' is around 60%. This basically translates to what you see in games; if you stand next to a non-moving player and stab them. You have only a 60% that the stab will connect. What is this, a Trollarch game? This needs to be addressed.

Online: i grab a guy, stab him, throw him to the ground. I have an assist. No kills, no deaths, 1 assist. That is trash programming.

Sorry that some of this sounds harsh, but this should have been taken care of by now.

Again, love the game, but it needs help. Remember, I'm one of your fans, but I'm not gonna sugar coat turds and call them candy. I'm gonna call them turds until they get fixed.

Someone in this game decided that the hardware store window in Warhawk needed to be nerfed, but the knife and dogs (even offline, no lag) are still this shamefully programmed? Look up the word 'priority' and share it around the offices. It is clear that some there have not grasped the concept.

Thanks for reading and happy gaming!

Edit: ghost squad when down; could pushing right simply call him in? Instead of trying to call in a sentry, then being told that you can't call it in when down. Given how inconsistent cod controls are, this should just auto-highlight GS when you are down. Alternately, make him 'push left on D-pad'. That or make the controls less inconsistent as pushing down once and pushing right shouldn't make it go down twice and then try to call in a sentry...but that's cod for you.

Edited June 28, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Glitches:

My friend went down while picking up an SD. I revived him, he had the no hands glitch. No guns, couldn't stab. He could drop ieds. Well, i told him to try to get an SD gun, which would not be possible in the past with this glitch. But he was able to take a gun which undid the glitch, he had his pistol back as well and could stab.

So it seems like whatever patch they introduced to help with this glitch worked somewhat to remedy it, although not stopping it altogether.

Rare glitch: this has only happened to my split screen offline friend, three times now;

He revives me, his gun turns into ak-12, like the Ghosts Squad bot has (players can get it too).

I think that each time that this happened, we had a Ghost Squad in play, but my friend got to me first.

I think Ghost Squad comes over to help revive, even though he can't do anything to help while my friend is reviving me, then the game glitches and gives him an ak-12.

I wouldn't be surprised if this could be exploited to give a player an early ak-12. But generally, neither of us would want a gun with less than a third of a rounds worth of ammo.

I called in a Vulture, it disappeared from inventory, never appeared in game. I guess that makes up for my free Hind from another game.

Edit, more: one that we keep getting in split screen, online and off; one of us goes down and gets revived. Then the announcer starts saying things twice ('team restock, team restock'). Shortly after that, the voice is gone for the rest of the game.

In local, there is no 'beginning of game' timer; if you don't pick your class fast enough, you'll be missing the Loot Round.

I had a Vulture live twice as long as normal.

Freefall was added back to the line up, but still glitchy: Support Drop packages land on the roof in several spots. Occasionally this happens at the pro shop in Strikezone.

Edit: Cool story, bro; so I'm playing Safeguard on Fog, it's like 10:30, my sweet pops her head into the room and she's beaming, saying 'I've got to go', now it's pretty much her bedtime, so I'm like 'where're you off to?' And she's like 'Hackensack hospital, my sister's having a baby!'. Off she goes.

Loot round starts, we're gathering, she comes back; my friend is parked behind her...I say 'game over' as my friend grabs a third loot item, my gf is dancing in place with anxiousness, so my friend just sets his controller down and leaves. It's just a game, no biggie.

I go in the back corner to camp with the extra Vulture that I called in. I figure I could hold the round and he will respawn next round.

Well, I hear the Semtex thingies. So I say F'it and head out to try to protect him. He is on the hill, by the path, in front of the Grainery (main house). The vulture takes out the left crowd, i start on the crowd of 6 coming up the path in front of my friend, the vulture helps, then is destroyed. I fight the guys to the right, revive my friend who had gone down, chase down a guy past my friend, then find just one guy trying to Semtex my buddy. I get away a bit, grab his controller, get him to the camp spot, grab my controller as the Semtex guy starts semtexing me and my friend walks in the room, his jaw drops because he is safe at camp and only lost 2 perks, still had all of his loot items.

We won that game.

Also amusing: destroyed Strikezone, trying new spot at edge of Pro Shop. End of round 4, I'm trying to jump on the railing...right over it, into the death pit. Round 5 starts. Halfway through, my friend goes 'where are you? Are you dead? How the Hell did you die?'.

Derp. Well i came back on the loot round and while we did okay, a pair of shield guys ruined our game.

So i still need a win in Struckzone and Freefall. So close to both yesterday. Edit: beat Struckzone.

Edit: one more; So we beat Whiteout in the SE by the snowmobile and the docks. SD packages drop. My friend vaults over the railing...into the water.

When he comes back, he sees his crate and literally looked like he was going to jump into the water to get it. I'm like 'that won't work, ya know?'.

I think he finally got another gun, but mostly had the pistol that whole game.

Edited May 20, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

After extensive solo/2 player testing, it has become clear that a certain number of enemies in some rounds will be randomly chosen.

Never saw dogs on 13 until yesterday (during the test period).

Sometimes rounds 4, 9, 14, 19 have dogs, sometimes not. There is some randomness, despite certain enemies being predictable on certain rounds.

Happy gaming!

Edited May 26, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Updated first post a lot recently to be clearer.

Today, I edited it regarding player revives and i wanted to draw attention to it:

When you revive a player, your screen corners turn green, similar to a ballistic vest (like the support killstreak), but it is not a normal ballistic vest that hits away in 1 bullet.

What happens is either 1. that you gain the ability to heal very quickly for the remainder of the round, or 2. Your vest reduces the damage to the point where you seem to be able to heal faster than most damage is inflicted. Either way, the end result appears the same.

Your screen corners remain green until the yellow corners appear at the end of the round.

This ability may also have a time limit, but isn't normally reached before the round ends. /speculation.

Happy gaming!

Edited June 3, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Recently, there was a title update that caused the game mode to become glitched; at loot round 1, there is only 1 sentry and 1 vulture dropping.

Obviously, there should be closer to 2 each loot round as it was originally.

Clearly this was an unintentional glitch as it only hurts the playability of the game and the last thing we need is to drive folk away from this mode. As it stands, the mode is unplayable.

Edited June 16, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Help!

I was looking for a way around this game breaking glitch; i tried to not sign in and only play local, but I'm getting the same glitch; only 1 sentry and 1 vulture on most loot rounds.

So, would deleting the title update get rid of this glitch?

The mode is unplayable as is, so if i can't fix it, I guess i'll trade in ghosts.

Edit: Yes, deleting the title update is required to avoid this glitch.

Unfortunately, you can only play local and only solo or 2 player split screen. So no leaderboards. And if you want to switch to multiplayer, you need to do the update.

Obviously this wasn't an intentional change, but how long do we have to deal with this glitch before it gets patched? I'm trying to be patient, but this is my favorite game, or at least it was...

Edit: facts and frustration:

Searching all patch updates, this bug is not mentioned as a balance tweek (good to know that they aren't that stupid to do it on purpose). Clearly it is a game breaking unintentional bug.

Contact activision? This brings up a 'contact us' link that asks what platform (360), what game (ghosts), then has 10 questions that have nothing to do with contacting them. Muddling through this disturbing cache of nonsense, i finally found a chat link. Even though it was during the chats listed hours, it was offline (hours adjusted for time zones, I'm not stupid) and had a message that you may have to wait a long time for a response (but again, it was offline, so there was no chat for them to respond to).

After extensive research, i found email links to activision and iw. All of which return 'invalid link' or 'an error occurred'.

I joined the official call of duty forum (shittiest forum in the world). First, they told me both of my main emails were already signed up (false). So i used an ancient email, signed up, confirmed the email. The forum shows that i am logged in, but i can not post nor reply. A simple search reveals that there are quite a few posts going back 5+ years asking why they can't post or reply and there are no official responses to why their forum is useless.

So, clearly the game became corrupt during a recent patch and there is no way to report it after 5 hours of intense research.

So i have to hope that someone at iw is aware of this bug and gets it patched soon.

If you know if any official bug reports, please leave the link below for me to report this.

Thanks for reading. I have tried to talk up the good points of ghosts and be positive, but this is a big blow to my enjoyment of ghosts. Extreme downer.

Edit: i forgot that the challenges were also glitched; usually only headshot challenges showed up, rarely do other challenges appear.

Obviously 2 sentries and 2 vultures need to load every loot round (at least solo/2 player), so hopefully they can properly patch this Loot issue.

Re edit: hmmm. After extensive testing, we still keep experiencing this glitch. It seems that deleting the title update is the only way to return the games intended functionality. As is, the 1 sentry/vulture issue has hurt the game to the point of unplayability for 2 players.

After deleting/updating, i played solo and seemed to be getting at least either 2 sentries or 2 vultures, but as soon as i played 2 player, the game was glitched again.

So, I've stopped playing safeguard until they can patch this. So sad, i really loved this mode.

Edited June 18, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

The mine carts of Goldrush will eat support drop packages, be careful as they do tend to land on the tracks. They also land extremely spread out.

Edit: where i beat the game (2p) in the sw, they were fairly easy to get to. The carts also eat loot drops.

Edited August 11, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

Minigun (minor cheat) strategy.

If a round ends and you have the challenge-awarded minigun, pull out a sentry/ims, or pick one up and hold it between rounds.

This time will be subtracted from the mingun's total time until it times out.

I play split screen often with a friend. I was checking this out yesterday, and my minigun would last 10-15 seconds after his timed out by using this method (they should have timed out at the same time).

I need some more testing, but i think picking one up works best.

Happy gaming (on a dead game mode)!

Edit: i did this in a game, i had more time left when the new challenge was completed which took my minigun away when it gave them to everyone else.

Serves me right for cheating. Ha.

Edited August 12, 2014 by 83457

[83457]

(just after dlc4)

Currently, most online Safeguard games on the Goldrush map glitch; at some point the round will fail to end even though all enemies appear to be dead.

Maybe some load on the skybox or under the map, but none show with the recon ability.

Coincidentally, and perhaps related, friendlies (including ghosts squads) tend to show the orange Recon halo. So maybe the game thinks that they are enemies and the rounds won't progress?

I have not encountered this issue offline in split screen.

I have not encountered this glitch in any of the other new maps.

I have only made it through 20 rounds once without hitting this glitch.

Just fyi.

[83457]

Some minor changes that i noticed after not playing for a while (since they tried desperately to kill this mode off with terrible changes):

Usually I'm not having an issue with sentry gun/vulture anymore. There is usually 3 crates between the 2 of them each loot round, though i had a loot round yesterday solo that had no sentries nor vultures, which was odd.

Vultures last much longer now. Instead of lasting 3/4 of a round approximately, you get 1.5 rounds, 2 on smaller maps.

USR will now headshot kill in one shot. It had always taken 2 headshots before, so it is slightly less crappy if you have no other choices. The start pistol is still better than it, but in some situations I have used it for a round or two.

As mentioned in one of the last posts; holding a sentry from inventory will pause the timer on the challenge-awarded minigun so you can use it longer. You must do this before the explosive ammo icon begins to flash or it won't work. (I'm still figuring out details, forgive if i get something wrong). (edit: doesn't work by holding an ied out, my mistake).

As previously stated, be careful at the start of a new challenge round; if your teammates quickly earn the new challenge it will take your minigun away, which seems like a fair, balanced risk.

So the mode has improved slightly in the right direction.

Ghost squad seems to care less than ever about reviving you and with the huge increase in enemy damage, he really could use a tweek in our favor.

Maybe;

1. Make him take a little less damage.

2. Be more efficient at reviving.

3. Make him stay 'guard dog' close as he runs too far off (plus he needs a little speed boost so he stays with you).

4. Grant us one each 20 rounds again.

Happy gaming all.

P.S. Get in a lobby of Showtime Safeguard, it's a pisser.

Edit: almost forgot; for whatever reason, they decided to bring back spawn killing in the July patch. Well, it affects this game as well.

1. Stand in a corner of the map with 20 feet open behind you and you may suddenly have 3 shotgunners appear behind you, shooting you in the back.

2. Call in a trinity missile while by yourself, a crowd will load next to you and kill you.

I still can't grasp why they ruined the spawns since the spawns were the best in any cod since waw. (disclaimer: when the game launched, the spawn killing was as bad as mw3 or bo2. Then they were fixed beautifully for about 6 months. Then, in July, they made them almost as terrible as they were at launch; but a little more intermittent/clumped. You may suddenly get spawned killed 5 times in a row or even load right next to enemies that have just loaded. So stupidly done...and for no reason; i don't remember anyone complaining about not getting spawn killed for those 6 months that it was working well). Sigh.

Edited August 16, 2014 by 83457