Skulk Ideas.
Papayas
Join Date: 2010-07-01 Member: 72219Members
Join Date: 2010-07-01 Member: 72219Members
<div class="IPBDescription">Upgrades and Changes for skulk.</div><u>Skulk Parasite Change:</u>
I find that it is sometimes quite hard to parasite someone so I just thought of a better way to make it easier to use (And it will be better).
Basically, I think that the parasite should actually be a shotgun type of fire so it would be easier to parasite someone and it would also be better if you are against multiple people so it would allow you to parasite some (All of them if you are lucky) at once. One of the parasite bullets(?) will act the same way like it does now(So you can aim accurate shots).
This could also be an Alt-fire of parasite (But all would not be accurate).
<u>Skulk Upgrade:</u>
Just thought of an upgrade for the skulk to make it more effective late game.
Well, Parasite bite will put a parasite on the Marines and Structures that you bite. It will be a late game upgrade so it isn't overpowered early game but it will be useful late game and would make people play skulk more late game instead of evolving constantly.
The normal parasite would still be useful because it is a range way to parasite someone.
I find that it is sometimes quite hard to parasite someone so I just thought of a better way to make it easier to use (And it will be better).
Basically, I think that the parasite should actually be a shotgun type of fire so it would be easier to parasite someone and it would also be better if you are against multiple people so it would allow you to parasite some (All of them if you are lucky) at once. One of the parasite bullets(?) will act the same way like it does now(So you can aim accurate shots).
This could also be an Alt-fire of parasite (But all would not be accurate).
<u>Skulk Upgrade:</u>
Just thought of an upgrade for the skulk to make it more effective late game.
Well, Parasite bite will put a parasite on the Marines and Structures that you bite. It will be a late game upgrade so it isn't overpowered early game but it will be useful late game and would make people play skulk more late game instead of evolving constantly.
The normal parasite would still be useful because it is a range way to parasite someone.
Comments
Parasiting Bite: Great idea. Skulks usually don't have the opportunity to switch weapons in combat later on, as the game pace becomes so frantic. It would definitely make the Skulk more useful.
An idea of my own:
Redemption: After being killed (does not activate on suicide) and a short delay (~3 seconds), Skulk can use primary attack (left click) to revive with 50% health, at the place of death. This will increase the "up time" of Skulks late game, as they spend less time travelling back to the front line after death, and makes them more dangerous to Marines. Marines can double tap on "corpse" to ensure Skulks do not revive.
An idea of my own:
Redemption: After being killed (does not activate on suicide) and a short delay (~3 seconds), Skulk can use primary attack (left click) to revive with 50% health, at the place of death. This will increase the "up time" of Skulks late game, as they spend less time travelling back to the front line after death, and makes them more dangerous to Marines. Marines can double tap on "corpse" to ensure Skulks do not revive.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Yeah, I think that the range could be a bit too long and would make too easy.
Redemption:
It sounds pretty cool actually, it would add quite a bit of jumpiness when you think you kill a skulk walk past it and then get bitten to death from the skulk you just killed. I suppose it would be a bit like the Dead Ringer in Team Fortress 2.
Or do you mean that you properly die as a skulk and respawn at the place of death?
Idea for Skulk (inspired by twiliteblue):
What if when killed, the player emerges from the Skulk's body as a Babbler (you get to play as a Babbler)? The Babbler is like a weaker Skulk, it can do most things a Skulk can but cannot leap, parasite or evolve to higher lifeforms (lower health as well, perhaps with faster move speed). Babbler form is temporary like the ones from a Crag, the player takes damage instead of regenerate health so eventually he will have to respawn from an egg.
Probably as an upgrade at Hive 2 :3
Idea for Skulk (inspired by twiliteblue):
What if when killed, the player emerges from the Skulk's body as a Babbler (you get to play as a Babbler)? The Babbler is like a weaker Skulk, it can do most things a Skulk can but cannot leap, parasite or evolve to higher lifeforms (lower health as well, perhaps with faster move speed). Babbler form is temporary like the ones from a Crag, the player takes damage instead of regenerate health so eventually he will have to respawn from an egg.
Probably as an upgrade at Hive 2 :3<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That seems pretty cool as well but it would require them to make a whole new class.
How about if you only revive/babbler when you are on Infestation. That way it would make another bones for being on your territory and increasing your territory.
Xenocide would also be a must have for late game. But that is only a matter of time before they bring that out :P
Having parasite be a shotgun though, no.
How about if you only revive/babbler when you are on Infestation. That way it would make another bones for being on your territory and increasing your territory.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
I don't know what it is, but I really like this idea in general.
They are already planning to make the babbler asset and animation, so it would be a matter of hooking it up so players can control one.
I would make it a "babbler host" upgrade that all aliens can take. The alien dies and the babbler soon comes out like a maggot from a dead corpse. Player can use the babbler to enact revenge on the marine that just killed him, or (even better imo) run away and use the babbler as a way to get back into the game quicker. This means I WOULD allow the babbler to upgrade into a higher lifeform. Restrictions could be placed so that babblers can only upgrade on infestation, and/or the gestation takes a bit longer than normal.
This could be in addition to a redemption idea for skulks (though I would find a more alien/biological name for it).
Edit: the babbler one would make a good replacement or addition to Xenocide.
A better thought is, if you allow the babbler to not die after a duration, is for it to be allowed to re-evolve into a skulk after a set duration and/or after a kill. This gives both the incentives to either Fight or Flight, so both ways, the player can win back his skulk form.
Idk if this should work with xenocide though...
I would also like parasited marines can be see on mini-map, this way alien commander can track parasited marines and other aliens at quick look can spot where the parasited are heading.
I do agree with your other statement though, alien commander should be able to see parasited and detected marines.
I swear in NS1 you could parasite a gun and whoever picks it up would be parasited.
Wail: The Skulk would be capable of releasing a high pitched, psionic cry that targets the marine's nervous system. Frontiersmen would experienced almost total paralysis along with momentary deafness. This would be a very close ranged attack that would deal no damage, instead it would disorientate the intended target by decreasing a Frontiersman's movement speed along with momentarily removing his/her ability to sprint. The Frontiersman's vision could also warp in and out of focus (and possibly shake in the initial assault?) and also lose his/her sense of hearing for a few seconds. Only one Frontiersmen can be affected at a time and the Skulk would expend allot of his adrenalin when using this attack, this ability would also have a slow adrenaline recharge rate. Would be used either as an ambush tool against lone Marines, or to throw off pursuers, allowing the Skulk a small amount of time to escape. Researched at the Shade.
Rage: An upgrade purchased when evolving, would cause a Skulk's attack strength and speed to increase in correlation to its health. For every X% of damage suffered, attack strength and speed is increased by X%. These effects are reversed when the Skulk is healed.
What if the ability worked on a cool down timer? This would mean that a Skulk would have to wait for maybe 10-20 seconds before he could use this ability again. The Skulk could also suffer a penalty of some kind that would come into effect after the ability is used. This penalty could be a large increase in the amount of adrenaline that is used for every attack, along with no adrenaline recharge whatsoever for a short amount of time. This would hopefully make adrenaline costs more of an issue for the skulk when using this ability, even for bite. The Skulk's movement speed could also decrease for a few seconds, giving the targeted marine a chance. The marine would still be able to move at a decent speed anyway, he wouldn't be completely immobile and he would still be capable of fighting back and killing the Skulk. This ability obviously wouldn't effect exosuits in anyway whatsoever, and Frontiersmen with jetpacks would counter this easily. So it wouldn't be too rage inducing, not like Devour :/
People need to get away from this "stun/snare" concepts for weapon fire, they will never be a good idea for game play, they will always be hated, and they will always cause problems. People hate being taken out of control of their character then getting killed, it makes them feel they have no chance. A player will take getting ambushed from behind by a pair of skulks where he has no real chance to survive over being slowed by a single skulk and then dying. It's just the way it plays out in peoples minds.
People need to get away from this "stun/snare" concepts for weapon fire, they will never be a good idea for game play, they will always be hated, and they will always cause problems. People hate being taken out of control of their character then getting killed, it makes them feel they have no chance. A player will take getting ambushed from behind by a pair of skulks where he has no real chance to survive over being slowed by a single skulk and then dying. It's just the way it plays out in peoples minds.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Good points here, personally i think the Skulk has enough abilities anyway. Oh well back to the drawing board.
You realise this is sort of the entire point of multiplayer games yes? Their entire gimmick is that they don't follow sensible design decisions and build on predictable consistent gameplay, and instead elect to throw a random bunch of players at you, probably resulting in an entirely unfair death for one side due to being forced to fight against unreasonable odds.
If you keep players in control all the time, they end up invincible, because they can at any point exercise that control and choose to not-die or to kill all the enemies. Old fades kept the player very much 'in control' all the time, and so were incredibly overpowered because being in control of your character means being able to conpletely dominate the battlefield, because nothing on it impedes you. This is fine and good in a singleplayer game and is part of what makes them fun, but when the other people aren't AI and are instead other players, it makes the game kind of not-fun for them as they have to get shot a lot to fuel the main character's control fantasies.
Keeping one player in control means keeping them in control of other players, which means taking control away from them, which means not everybody can be in control.
It is very annoying for all concerned, and part of why multiplayer shooters would all be better as singleplayer games, but it is also apparently the main appeal of the genre to some people, so I don't think that's a very good argument.
Keeping one player in control means keeping them in control of other players, which means taking control away from them, which means not everybody can be in control.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Hardly quite the opposite, singleplayers can take away control all they like since player does not the frustrated due the lack of it, AI are made stupid and SP's mostly are just some immersive wannabe stories with a little pew pew. I personally rather lose a fight due lack of my own inability (to control) than pure unit strength.
In multiplayer lack control is just frustating since it only diallows creativeplays, uncommon scenarios and spectacular feats, assuming of course both sides have equal chance of winning.
Fade was hardly "invincible" it was indeed very balanced and rewarded players efforts. Only reason anyone would think this way was their lack of understanding importance of positioning and gamesense in general and no I'm not talking about combat fade which (with the every stupid addon) was very much imbalanced.
Saying something is bad because it 'takes control away' is silly, it moves control from the person being hit with it to the person doing the hitting, as does every single weapon in the game. You can't and don't control what other players do, if you run into an untenable situation then tough ######, you died because you were unlucky, you have no ability to control that whatsoever.
Arguing that you have 'control' in a multiplayer game is ridiculous. Control is the ability to decide the outcome of a situation and often how that outcome is achieved, which you can only do when the situatiion does not threaten you. If you are threatened your only choice is 'work towards the most efficient solution or die, actually you'll probably die anyway because it's a team game, but do it anyway'. There is nothing resembling control there, you do as you are required to do, no choice.
In singleplayer, as the game does not usually actively threaten you, you can choose how to solve a situation, because you have control, because you're the main character and therefore far more powerful than everything else in the game, in multiplayer however you cannot be far more powerful than everyone else, without being stupidly overpowered and therefore in a very broken game. Therefore you cannot have choice, and cannot have control.
I would also like parasited marines can be see on mini-map, this way alien commander can track parasited marines and other aliens at quick look can spot where the parasited are heading.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Afaik on Build 183 a Parasited building or Marine was always shown on Aliencommander Minimap.
The trick is how you create that control. No one minds the lerk doing his job as controller by spamming an entrance with spores to punish a squad of marines if they choose to go through it. This is because it doesn't actually affect the abilities of those marines. On the other hand, imagine if spores did zero damage but slowed marines down. There would be a great outrage about the travesty.
So what's the difference? The first example creates options for the aliens and disincentivizes options for the marines. A spore spammed entrance is not something marines want to rush through. In addition, the constant AOE damage plus reduced visibility means it's possible for aliens to punish aggressive marines they otherwise couldn't. The second example, however, <i>removes</i> options. The marines can no longer choose to go through that door. The first example may have made it a bad choice, but it was a <i>choice</i> all the same.
This is the key fact about all this: We are playing a game, and in games, people want to do things. This is why steamrolls aren't fun. This is why players complain about slowdown effects and the like. Even if all our options are bad, we want to at least be able to choose our fate, even if the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
Because people hope, and every once in a while, hope gets rewarded with just the right amount of luck. If you remove choices, players can no longer think, "If I had just done that..." or "If I was a little faster...". That's bad for the game.
Control is a tricky thing, and what abilities players should have to control (pun) it varies from game to game. A smokescreen is an okay way to use control, because it doesn't remove choices, just a limited amount of information about them. A blinding effect is typically not okay, because it removes too much information and makes all choices the same. Slowdown can be okay in certain games, but I doubt it is right for NS2. Players just don't have enough health for slowdown to be a fun thing. When combat typically lasts just seconds at a time, the difference between running 3 feet and 2 feet is huge.
In a lot of ways, slowdown would actually be preferable, because it just makes you more vulnerable, it doesn't force you to move, if you're waiting for reinforcements it's almost entirely useless because you're quire happy to sit there, and if you're attacking it's probably less effective than cumulative damage because generally the distances you need to cover aren't that great, you have a lot more time than you do health, especially if you're moving in groups because a slowed group is no less deadly, a spore damaged group however takes a huge amount of damage, because spores do more damage the more people are in the cloud.
So I don't agree that things like slowdown and blinding effects are intolerable, I would actually prefer them to damage dealing effects a lot of the time, as damage is generally the thing I can least afford to take, especially as a marine. It's also something I can't recover from, whereas a temporary debuff is something I just have to weather until it wears off.
The ultimate loss of control is death, so things that kill you are generally the most annoying things to run up against, things that just slow you down or impair your vision are a much nicer thing to play against, I would rather fight a lerk slowing me down and a skulk than a lerk gassing me to death and a skulk.
Sounds like you unable to make a decision instead you fear the spore damage, you just simply lack the gamesense to make your move.
Spore is not restricting control, you can move any way you want even if its the bad one.
Spore is not restricting control, you can move any way you want even if its the bad one.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
If you go the wrong way you die, it restricts your choices to 'do the thing to avoid the damage, or die' which is kind of considered a loss of freedom in most circumstances.
Saying you can choose to kill yourself is kind of a silly argument.
Saying you can choose to kill yourself is kind of a silly argument.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
As is you should not die at all or death has no meaning, you need to sit 15 seconds in spores to actually die following spore trail thats enough time needed to run through tram.
You are trying to force something that is not really restricting you into something else.
You are trying to force something that is not really restricting you into something else.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That isn't when you encounter spores though, you encounter spores when you are already constrained by other things, when you are holding outside a hive to wait for ARCs, or when you're trying to clear an entrance into a heavily fortified room, or when you're trying to defend an area from other aliens. Situations where 'ignore them' is not an option.
Besides, it's present in lots of other things as well, take squads. In a squad, whoever is in front basically amounts to being a meat shield for all the other squad members, if you run into a fade or ambusing skulk or lerk, the guy in front is going to die, not really anything you can do about it, other than making sure you aren't the guy in front, but if everyone does that you don't get anywhere.
There are lots of situations where you have the option of doing a specific thing or dying/losing the game, running to defend a base from an attack, shooting enemy harvesters, you have no choice and no control over most situations in the game, complaining about debuffs is silly.
Aliens attacking the base? Do you go back and defend it or do you take advantage of the probably unprotected hive and trust your teammates to defend so you can do major damage against it?
See an alien RT? Do you attack it and hopefully damage alien res flow now while you definitely have the advantage of surprise, or do you push forward hoping to stealth your way to a more vital point, if not the hive then at least a valuable cyst?
Don't want anyone in the squad to die? Have the comm drop tons of medpacks and have marines armor up after every fight.
Dying is not a terrible thing to avoid at all costs. You respawn after all. Are you telling me that you have never thought to yourself in a game, "If I push forward/attack the objective/etc. I'll probably die, but I think it'll be worth the chance of killing/damaging/completing the enemy/objective."? If a team could control the game to the point where they could prevent an entire team from dying, down to a man, then the game is broken or the skill difference is simply too huge.
Yes, a lot of choices will end up in death for a single player. I don't see how that at all nullifies the idea of control for him or for his team.
I really don't see your point any more. There's plenty of room for players to exert control over the game state and the enemy team, and to fight back against enemy efforts to exert similar control. A single player cannot and should not be able to exert perfect control over a gamestate. However, a single player, and more importantly, a single player as a part of a team, can exert some control directly and indirectly.
But then again, it is certainly possible. I just can't think of anything. Certainly they should be considered, even if at a first glance they look like a bad idea.