Lerk Bite Discussion
Commie Spy
Join Date: 2009-07-02 Member: 68008Members
Join Date: 2009-07-02 Member: 68008Members
<div class="IPBDescription">D:</div>"Discussions about lerk bite vs. spikes and his view model. I think he's going to end up with short-range spikes and no bite. "
Thoughts?
Lerk for me was my favorite class after bit was implemented. I loved bite! Coupled with gorge heal lerk bite would be able to provide a nuisance to marine structures and you could even lead attacks. Spikes were really limiting because in critical moments when aliens really need to push, spikes forced the lerk to stand in the sidelines and spike people. That is fine, but dear god was it boring. The bite/new flight really forced you to swoop in be aggressive. FUN FUN FUN. Maybe the short range spikes will be good!
UWE... I TRUST YOU <3
Thoughts?
Lerk for me was my favorite class after bit was implemented. I loved bite! Coupled with gorge heal lerk bite would be able to provide a nuisance to marine structures and you could even lead attacks. Spikes were really limiting because in critical moments when aliens really need to push, spikes forced the lerk to stand in the sidelines and spike people. That is fine, but dear god was it boring. The bite/new flight really forced you to swoop in be aggressive. FUN FUN FUN. Maybe the short range spikes will be good!
UWE... I TRUST YOU <3
Comments
Old Spikes took seven years to kill anything though.
We also discussed that we didn't like how the spikes in NS1 allowed the Lerk to just sit and spike from a distance. While we may end up adding bite back in, we are first going to try and make spikes work in a way that is much more active and fun, forcing the lerk to be diving and swooping above and amongst the marines, more like strafing runs, rather then sitting back and spiking.
--Cory
--Cory<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
awesome awesome and awesome :) thats the perfect lerk if you ask me!
How about this big jaws shouldn't they be for biting =D. Anyways I love lerking and all I do is play aggressive
Cool, I mentioned this in the tweet thread. So how are you going to implement motion for the lerk so he can do this?
Then have bite as well, so it works in tandem
A good lerk can snipe marines from a distance, then fly in and kill them in their weakened states with bites.
But having a short range spikes to prevent long range sniping. Why not have something as an alt fire, such as a longer range spike, with a lower Rate of Fire and expends a little bit more energy. That way a lerk can have that ability to pick off an enemy if need be without ramming its face into the marine. It can even be a projectile weapon sort've like how the huntsman is in TF2.
But having a short range spikes to prevent long range sniping. Why not have something as an alt fire, such as a longer range spike, with a lower Rate of Fire and expends a little bit more energy. That way a lerk can have that ability to pick off an enemy if need be without ramming its face into the marine. It can even be a projectile weapon sort've like how the huntsman is in TF2.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Chargable?
*Make it so that the projectile of the spikes inherits velocity from the lerk (Like in all Tribes games). Therefore:
-Lerks standing back and shooting fire relatively slow projectiles (easy to dodge, yet effective cover fire).
-swooping fighting lerk fire fast effective projectiles.
-The feel would be a mix between strafing runs and bombing runs.
-Alternatively spikes could be affected by gravity making the slow spikes shorter ranged.
-[[Yet another alternative is for the spike damage to be proportional to speed.]]
*On Another note would be super cool if the Lerk could somehow tilt it head/aim while flying. Although I'd be hard pressed to imagine how that [[control scheme]] could work with keyboard/mouse.
-Maybe a button that allows the lerk to move around his/her crosshairs while flying straight (a bit like the mouse aim in MechWarrior 3).
-This would be a totally skill based ability. Non-essential to newer players, Hard to master, Nice payoff if you do master it.
[[EDITS]]
* Shooting spikes that are only short range seems a little strange. Will they vanish at a distance or just fall to the ground? If the former that's just weird gaming magic at work, and if the latter then that would make them look like they're not being fired with much force, which makes it look odd if they're doing much damage. Grenades have a short arc because they do damage by exploding, but spikes have to be fired with some velocity to penetrate something far enough to kill. Not a huge deal though.
* Hitting marines with spikes while flying means flying in a straight line towards them. That's a serious problem for the Lerk. For that to work the Lerk needs to be able to do damage in extremely short bursts. Maybe make the spikes really powerful, but they drain a lot of energy so you can't fire them longer than half a second?
I think the main ways to reduce the sniping from afar and promote in-your-face spike action:
*1*Limit Range of weapon
----via gravity drop-off
----damage reduction at distance
----Hard limit: projective simply disappears/explodes after a given max distance
*2*Reduce weapon effectiveness while standing still or moving slow / Increase effectiveness when moving fast
----via gravity drop-off
----damage increase with speed
----Hard limit: Lerk can only fire spikes while flying. (I don't like it but it's an option)
What other abilities (both new and old) will the Lerk have?
*Spores?
*Umbra?
*Primal Scream?
Not weird gaming magic.. nanites!
They dissolve the spikes in mid-air as they fly.
Heck, if it can be programmed in, it would be an interesting game mechanic to have spikes fly further in infested areas than they do in non-infested areas. Almost a defensive balancing mechanism.. alien offensive moves would need to be more up close, but playing defense would give the lerk more range.
I picture them working the same way. Like you can shoot 1 spike every 0.1 seconds but I'll drain your energy bar in about 1 second.
hmm... perhaps the spike energy bar will recharge faster when the lerk is flying? (lore-wise not sure how to explain that one, except that shooting spike heat's up the lerk and flying cool him down)
I'm thinking some kind of burst fire weapon, either shotgun style or semi-machine gun. I'm thinking many spikes with low damage each, maybe the projectiles could look like chunky mosquitoes (minus the wings) and stick into objects maybe even exploding. Although this is sounding a little like the hornet gun from Half-Life.
Personally I've never liked bite, it goes against practically all of the Lerk's other abilities, bringing a rather frail alien into combat is never good. I swear half the gameplay of the lerk consists of ###### your pants whilst flying away from a bite attack gone wrong.
Really liking this guys
If the spike worked kinda like a shotgun blast or a machine gun burst as already mentioned i think that would look very nice indeed.
Keep it up guys!
use spikes as an alt-fire to bite
spikes should have a low fire rate but high damage, if they're fired like a machine gun that takes your focus away from evasive flying
One way to implement spikes, as one of the suggestions above, is to have the damage decrease as distance increase. So after a certain distance, it is of no use. But there comes a big problem. How do newbies tell, that shooting the RT 20 feet away is not doing any damage at all?
Ah, but that's not necessarily true!
<!--quoteo(post=1722325:date=Aug 12 2009, 05:26 PM:name=NeoSniper)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (NeoSniper @ Aug 12 2009, 05:26 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1722325"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->*On Another note would be super cool if the Lerk could somehow tilt it head/aim while flying. Although I'd be hard pressed to imagine how that [[control scheme]] could work with keyboard/mouse.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
In point of fact, the old Lerk flight model (pre version 3) allowed the Lerk to fly in one direction while looking in another direction with no problem. Aiming spikes with that flight model was easy even while dodging. What WAS a problem was the lack of any way to dive, so Lerks tended to get caught on ceiling architecture a lot -- but that could be fixed.
The new flight model is a definite upgrade for a Lerk with Bite, because his total agility is increased and he can move more precisely overall. But the drawback is, as a few people have noted, that the new flight model requires you to look and move in the same direction. That doesn't work really well for long range attacks like spikes, even if they're changed to be only medium range. So I hope UWE considers rewriting the Lerk flight model to match his new ability set.
Bite Lerks are extremely useful in support situations. Gassing marines to weaken them until the skulks arrive. Then as soon as the marines attention is taken by the skulks, swoop down and chomp them. It's just more aggressive support.
Spikes were boring and i think any decent marine will have far less trouble killing a Lerk on a 'strafing run' than a Lerk swooping around like crazy biting them. The logic behind this is simply that doing strafing runs will require the Lerk to fly directly towards the marine in a straight line. As a result, they become an easy target.
However, i'm not ruling out spikes.... if you could only fire 1 spike every 2 seconds or so which did about 50 damage at a fairly short range, that would be acceptable, as Lerks would still be played quite like bite Lerks.
You wouldn't fly in a straight line towards them because the weapon has a short range. You would swoop and dive to get close to them, maybe make your final maneuver a flanking move and then hit them with a spike.
I have to say, I'm intrigued by this idea because it sounds to me like you guys are redesigning spike to have similar functionality as the current bite.
I do agree with your conclusions about NS spikes, but Zek is also 100% correct. If the Spike design requires the lerk to track a marine at range, then it will be incompatible with the current flight system.
Allmost all aliens are rather "in your face" types, the old lerk had been rather a sneaky little annoying ###### (silence lerk spiking the ###### out of marines oohh how i miss it). Some people maybe found the spikes boring, but i rather enjoyed it because it had been a good change of pace compared to the other aliens gameplay.
I like the idea about spikes damage increasing/decreasing with range from target. That way it would offer both kinds of gameplay, aggressive strafing flying between marines and the old "sitting in a vent sniping marines" kind. Just have to find a sweet spot of damage so both strategies could be viable. But overall i like that idea because it would offer choise in gameplay: Trade offense for defense (sit in a vent with cover but deal less damage because of range) or trade defense for offense (fly on the outside between marines but deal more damage).