Time Attack targets for the average player

[SLON]

I've been playing cmode for about 9 months now. In that time I've played with some true hard-core players. Players with times of under 3 hours. Now in order for them to get those times, they have played for hundreds if not thousands of hours. Not only that , but those players are willing to play a good map over and over again to find high-percentage damage/hit weapons, until they find them (eg for 10 hours!).
Much as I love playing cmode, I find this a bit excessive. I've ruled out ever getting under 3 hours for myself, but I still have my own targets, and one of these is getting all my characters under 4 hours.
The following times just happen to add up to 4 hours. For the average player who enjoys cmode, I think all of these times are acheivable with a bit of effort; some of them are easier to get than others, but you won't need to play any of them 1000 times either!

C1 : 10 mins
C2 : 25 mins
C3 : 25 mins
C4 : 25 mins
C5 : 25 mins
C6 : 31 mins
C7 : 30 mins
C8 : 30 mins
C9 : 39 mins
Total 4 hours

TA can be fun, and it needn't be an obsession.

[Sitka]

Thanks Slon,

This is quite helpful.

I remember a post like this several months ago when I was playing c-mode and I thought 14 minutes was decent for stage 1 - I got blasted pretty well back then.

I think my best stage 1 time is now closer to 7 minutes (awesome map, good team), but all of my characters have some pretty shitty stages that I would like to improve upon and your post gives me a better idea of which stages to attack.

It's pretty hard to TA on xbox now as there are very few even average c-mode players, let alone hard core TA folks. If we can get four people, one of whom kinda remembers the maps and the other three kinda knowing their roles, we feel blessed.

If there was a way to get four solid xbox c-moders together for a weekend, I'd clear my schedule and run straight for 48 hours just to have the chance to give TAing a serious go. Any takers?

Thanks again for your post.

[Nai_Calus]

Heh. Most of my best times are close-ish(less than two to about 8 minutes off) to these, and C1 goes under. http://pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif ...Too bad my best times are on three different characters. >_>; But maybe this month I can try to improve some of my HUcaseal's worse times, since she has my best on the annoying Caves stages, and I want to at least get her under five hours(5'05"02 right now). ~_~ Under 4 probably won't happen, Math has removed all possibility of having that much free time this semester. XD Oh well, time to start getting up early and lurking around Alcyone 6 for teams.

[rena-ko]

pretty much fitting times, neat work.

with a little genkai, which is easy for 1c1, you can get 9 or lower with a few tries.

35 for c9 too, or under 30 for c7 and 8 with a little bit of luck with the waves.

good TA for 1c2 however is around 20. try 3 or more fonls.

that'll take care of that nifty '3' infront of the total time.

[haruna]

Under 4 hours is still pretty hardcore. One of the best c-mode players I met had a HUct with a total of about 3h 25m.

When I first boarded the TA train, I had times around 5'20" of just A-ranking-playing for weapons not TA. I'd hack off 5-20 min per staged TA'ed until I hit about 4'20" with a FOnl and HUcl.

All of a sudden, improving a stage time by 5 minutes seemed impossible. There were times I'd just shave off about 30 seconds but still was happy about it.

Have fun, be happy, don't tear yourself apart over time.

[rena-ko]

believe me, seeing three people joining with total times of 2 hours something for ep1c each is pretty much discouraging...

[Nai_Calus]

On 2005-01-24 12:13, rena-ko wrote:
believe me, seeing three people joining with total times of 2 hours something for ep1c each is pretty much discouraging...



X_x And I thought 3'xx"xx times were discouraging, heh. XD

Well, at least I've finally got a time under five hours... ^_^; Had to get up early today, so I spent some time on Alc6, joining random games to help. Got my best C8 yet(Still not very good... ^_^;) and lowered my HUcl's time to 4'58"20. ^_^v Bad-ish map, but free of nasty things almost completely(Lots of Dimenians and multi-spawn rooms, plenty of Delsabers, but only three Bringers), good team, and good drops(70d65h Gigush)... Funfun. And everyone but me needed a C8 clear on the chars they were using. ^_^; So at least that was good? http://pso-world.com/images/phpbb/icons/smiles/anime2.gif Hehe, time to get to work on BB, I guess...

Now, if only I can decide between HUct, HUcl and FOnl for a permanent 4th char on BB for random c-moding...

[rena-ko]

fonl if youre good enough (with TP householding, knowing the maps, all the spawns and - to a fonl - deadly stuff)

huct if youre playing mostly ep2 and later ep1 and like to be TEH DEALER OF DAMAGE, tho sacrificing some ata.

hucl if you want to be TEH teamglue and allrounder - useful for any stage - taken aside epsilon.

[SLON]

It's not easy to get under 4 hours, but it is not impossible. I think it is a realistic goal for most players interested in cmode. Once you are under 4 hours it becomes very much harder to get a better time, which is why I can't imagine aiming for under 3 hours unless you are really dedicated, and willing to play with hard-core (and often, unforgiving) players.
As for Episode 2, I am a complete newbie, as I'm sure you will remember, Rena-ko, from when we played an E2C2 game together, hehe! So I can't make comments or give advice about Ep2 cmode, really.

[rena-ko]

a time of under 3 hours for ep1c or under 2 hours of ep2c (yes, ive seen that already) is basing on a few things:

-complete devotion
-a fixed teams of devoted people
-lots of time to replay any given stage over and over again
-a network of hardcore cmode freaks and other teams who develope the perfect way between start end exit for each map.

understanding / speaking japanese helps since the chance to find a few hardcore players is way higher in that community than in the western ones.