Cold Peak: Head Shot Heaven

Spearhead is challenging and wildly entertaining. Teamwork, playing well and playing your class properly are important. Accuracy and headshots take on the profound importance they deserve to.

Accuracy matters

One of the best things about Warface is the fidelity that it shows to its origins: a shooting game that richly rewards those who take the time to learn the skill of accurate shooting is simply delightful. Accuracy culminates in the delicate art of headtapping - that every decent shooter finds org-asmic. Survival mode moves this skill from luxury to necessity. While it may be possible to finish Spearhead without paying attention to accuracy, it is highly unlikely. No amount of res coins can bring that terminal back to life. Money is required to fix it. And while money can be found in boxes, there are not many of those and most must be obtained from kills.

One can only smile in quiet amusement at all the desperate calls about 'how fragile the terminal is' to 'we need a hacker on the team'. Misunderstanding steals all kinds of fun and exhiliration from those too lazy to think and to learn. Completing missions, winning games and gaining achievements like the Head Tapper by using aids and cheats is as empty, meaningless and unsatisfying as watching pornography when what you really wanted was the experience of steaming hot sex. The only way to get REAL satisfaction is to do it yourself - though not BY yourself.

Survival mode makes it IMPERATIVE to play WELL, to play as a TEAM and to play your role - your CLASS.

Awards

Resources - coins - are awarded in Cold Peak for each action completed by a member of the team.

Kill Type	Coins	Chain Total
Face or body shot	1	1
Head shot	6	6
Skull Hunter	12	18
Head Crasher	18	36
Brain Smasher	24	60
Brain Annihilator	30	90
Combo Kill	36	126

Slides add a +5 modifier, so that a regular slide kill nets 6, and a slide headshot 11.
Melee adds ZERO advantage: 1 for a body kill, 6 for a headshot.

Mathemagic

Most people are way too lazy to do the math, so allow me to do it for you.

If a team of five people each shoot 1 enemy, the team gets 5 coins.

Just 5.

If they each take the time to manage a headshot, the team gets 30 coins. That is SIX TIMES as much.

If one shooter kills the same 5 with headshots in quick succession, the team gets 90: SIXTEEN TIMES as much as the losers who only do bodyshots and THREE TIMES as much as the team that each play for themselves.

The sixth shot adds even more, taking the total to 126 for the third team, compared to the measly 6 that the spray-and-pray run-and-gunners score. There is no reward for doing Survival missions in less time, so rushing literally just throws prospects and rewards out the window.

In games, as in all aspects of life, the maxim to adapt-or-die always holds true. Survival mode calls for a different attitude, with greater care, consideration and discernment and it richly rewards those that comply with its request.

After 12 enemies are down, the first team have 12 coins, the second 72 and the third: a magnificent 252! Of course, none of us are that good, or that lucky that the chains always and consistently line up to allow those enormous numbers, but six is still a LOT better than one and the difference only grows, the closer one gets to that goal.

Team 3 need only 50 kills to net 1000 coins - a total that team 1 will only reach after 1000 kills. If there were that many bots, a team caring that little about skill is exceedingly unlikely to survive the encounter.

This scoring progression is a simple reflection - almost exactly the same - of the rewards in Co-op missions and even Versus mode. Strangely, there it is more difficult to convince most players of the obvious sense involved, although all rewards depend on it. In Cold Peak it becomes entirely foolish to deny it.

Good Warface is like Good Sex

Teamwork and class behaviour is of clear importance in Survival mode. Medics and Engineers are not designed for precision shooting. I pride myself on my accuracy, and on a good day I can get 70% headshots as engi or med, but then at a much slower pace (and much less comfortably - pistols have small clips, and ammo runs out) than I would as rifleman or sniper - those classes are the ones designed for shooting. Survival mode makes it important to PLAY YOUR CLASS. Medics are great for sliding - and a slide headshot will net the team a momentarily impressive 11 points. Stringing together even two of those quickly enough to earn a skull hunter is unlikely and doing it consistently an entirely unreasonable expectation. The same applies to defibrillator kills.

A slide headshot nets more, but it is clearly not worth disrupting the shooters' headshot chains to get that. Six unchained slide-headshots still bring in only 66, just over half of the total for the single shooter combo-kill. Which draws our attention to the importance of teamwork also between shooters - who need to coordinate - focusing on a specific sector, so that they do not interfere with one another either.

Heroes are not girls or guys who rack up higher scores than their mates, they are the ones that move the team closer to the goal, by doing their part and doing it well. The medic who judiciously throws the smoke at the right moments - and in the right spots, keeps her mates healthy and shooting instead of waiting till they die and still manages to pull off mostly head shots, and that without disrupting her shooters' chains: SHE is the heroine.

There is a time and a place for prancing medics and engineers - that is part of the charming versatility of Warface - but survival mode is not it. You may think it boring to be 'just the medic', but then you miss the point completely - because that role is CRITICAL to the survival, the success and the wealth of the team. One that gains no satisfaction from this role may prefer a less intelligent or sophisticated game - of which there are many out there.

Admittedly, we play Warface because we like SHOOTING, and this does put a damper on the enthusiasm to take on the role of the humble healer. One satisfying solution is to have a buddy that you swap with: one round I am the medic and she shoots, the next round we swap. That way we both get to get our guns off, and we both get to practice our more compassionate side too. Amazingly similar to the satisfaction obtained in intimacy, your reward is always directly dependent on the good that you give...

Many players whine and whimper about how difficult Survival is, how complicated it is, how fragile the terminal is. They immediately want to 'glitch' something, or recruit hackers into the team. Utterly pathetic behaviour for would-be soldiers. Where is their courage? If you are only playing to finish, or get some arbitrary, nonsensical reward, you will probably enjoy bowling better. Precisely in the same way that this kind of attitude permanently bars one from experiencing the wonders and delights of sensational sex. It is a sharing thing.

It is the doing that is the fun, and this game is about SHOOTING. It is not hard, it is GREAT FUN, when you approach it correctly - and take the time to get better at it. EXACTLY like sex.

I look forward to seeing you out there in the Warface world - and when you take care to give good h... (excuse me), to hit heads, you KNOW that folks like me will be taking notice and appreciating the art that you work.

Semper Fidelis

[ThomasX99]

you can say it`s like good sex about almost everything

[Grey]

Thanks! and no problem. I agree with your strategy as well, I just wanted to make sure we both will share the correct answer, whatever it is. But I do want you to know I wasn't just guessing :) I spent hours watching gameplay frame-by-frame to find the point rewards, while only one person was killing. That being said, I could have made a mistake, and I will also look into it. Just to be clear, I believe those melee bonuses are only for combos (butcher, bloody butcher, hellbutcher), not for individual melee kills. I will PM you if I find anything.

[FehrLiss]

Thank you for the kind words Grey!

I like your guide, but I cannot agree with your numbers. I have watched a good deal and done specific testing, after which it seems clear to me that a slide adds only +5, to give one 11 for a slide headshot, and in my testing I cannot find any evidence that melee adds greater bonuses.

Recorded scoring can be deceptive because one is watching only one player’s feed while 5 may be scoring. A considerable amount of dissection may be needed to get to the details, that’s why we do testing and why I feel confident about the numbers quoted above.

My purpose is simple: to point out that striving for headshots is always better. I am aware that there are guides such as yours that do a good job of describing all the other alternatives available to players, and it is not my intention to replicate that.

Your comment about assists does bear exploring further. I did not think that one received any coins for assisting, and will amend accordingly.

[Grey]

You have some good points, but I would double check your "award" payouts. Points vary and you should view more footage to get a good idea of actual payouts. They give you bonuses for what seem to be assist points. Skullhunter: 10 Headcrasher: 15 Brain smasher: 20 Combo: 30. Also: you get bonuses for knives if you get butcher, bloody butcher, etc.

You can check my guide and use what I found, but it may not be perfect. Pls mention me if you decide to borrow my stuff. (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=352301863)