"Redemption" to replace Feign Death
Imbalanxd
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
Join Date: 2011-06-15 Member: 104581Members
<div class="IPBDescription">though less redeeming</div>So most people don't like the current Feign Death upgrade, and I don't like it either as it has several glaring flaws which make it a bad fit for NS2.
<ul><li>It's "utility" makes it almost entirely useless, up until a certain point when it becomes very very powerful all of a sudden. Its uses are limited almost completely to a get out of jail free card, after all, it only triggers moments before you die. This makes it pointless for any lifeforms not worth saving, so out go skulk and gorge.</li><li>The mechanics behind the feign make it so that only lifeforms which can move very quickly very suddenly could ever possibly benefit from it. This pretty much only applies to fades, and a little bit to skulks, as not even Lerks can fly fast enough to make use of the feign. Gorges and Onos are right out.</li><li>Due to the need to convey information to the player, it becomes obvious when a unit is or is not really dead. As long as the entire focus of the ability is to fake death, its true goal will never be achieved. Not without severely confusing the player in an undesirable way.</li><li>The hard trigger on feign (when you get to zero health) makes for very predictable and boring play. Players will actually wait for it to trigger, in order for them to know when they should leave, taking away a lot of the dynamic aspects of combat.</li><li>Worst of all; its utility is just bad. It can never actually help you in combat, it can only ever help you get out of combat.</li></ul>
In my opinion, the foundations of feign death are adequate, and suit the shade tree well, but a few criteria need to be met in order for the upgrade to be useful and beneficial to gameplay.
<ol type='1'><li>An upgrade should be useful at any time, not only at extremely specific times</li><li>An upgrade should try to add elements to combat encounters, or at the very least not subtract any</li><li>The upgrade should scale for lifeforms</li></ol>
So here is the idea I have for a feign death replacement, which has some of the favourable aspects of redemption from NS1.
Firstly, the triggering for this ability is not based on the players current health. Instead, it is based on the amount of damage the player has taken over time. As a very simplistic example, the trigger threshold could be set to 25% over one second. This would mean that, if the player took an amount of damage equal to 25% of their total life, in less than one second, the ability would trigger. This would scale to all values however, so if the player took 12.5% of their health in 0.5 seconds it would also trigger, and if they took 50% of their health in damage over 2 seconds, the same would happen. This means that the ability could trigger at any time, whether you were at 70% health, or at less than 5%. Most importantly, it means that it would trigger at the moment that you needed it. In my opinion, feign death would be best suited to breaking periods of very high incoming damage. Not in order to suddenly run away, but in order to reposition yourself in a less vulnerable location. What this change would also mean is that taking feign death would not automatically get you out of dodge. If you don't take more than 25% of your health in damage a second, whether you die or not, the ability would not trigger. It would still be up to you to decide when to stay and fight, and when to run for your life.
Secondly, the effect of the trigger would not be as it currently is. I think that the current feign death effect provides absolutely no combat utility, and only serves to make the ability exclusively for rapidly moving life forms. Instead of slowing you down, the effect would increase your speed by 20%, and would make you invisible and invulnerable as it currently does. This effect would last for one second, and at the time of it triggering, would reduce your energy to zero, at which point it would immediately begin to regenerate. Only movement actions would be able to be performed during this time, like normal running, belly sliding, flying, shadow stepping and charging. Once triggered, all active abilities (left and right mouse button) would be deactivated for 0.5 seconds, or half of the duration. During this time, attempting to use active abilities would do nothing. After 0.5 seconds, the player would still have another 0.5 seconds of invisibility and invulnerability, during which active abilities can be used. However, using an active ability would immediately cancel the invisibility and invulnerability.
Here are some ways I envision this ability affecting specific life forms:
<b>Skulk</b>
This ability would actually be viable for combat use to skulks. Due to the low health pool of skulks, one could be relatively certain this this ability would trigger in almost every fight. Once it had triggered, there would be a second long period during which the skulk can dash towards his enemy, either trying to get a cheap shot in as he leaves feign mode, or using the entire duration to escape or better position himself. The skulks inherent speed would also mean the 20% boost would be extremely potent.
<b>Fade</b>
This is the lifeform which will probably be most affected by a change to feign death, because of how reliant fades can become on the current version of it. I think that, with the correct tweaking, this altered version of feign death could become a tool that only benefited the fade during times of incredibly spiky damage. A fade who takes an average amount of damage over an average amount of time should not have his ass saved by this ability, and should still be attentive and alert so as not to reach zero HP. However, for fades who blink in only to suddenly take an entire shotgun shot to the face and to be left on 50 health, the ability would allow them to redeem themselves. I also think the energy dynamic will make players choose between a few quick shadow steps while in feign mode, or a prolonged blink as soon as they are able.
<b>Lerk</b>
I think this version of feign will also be very useful for lerks to reduce spiky damage. For lerks who took a wayward gun blast to the face as they were drifting through an area, escape should be relatively smooth as they can keep on gliding. However, for lerks who were in active combat when they took too much damage, they could find themselves suddenly grounded with no energy, and struggling to get airborne again quickly enough.
<b> Gorge and Onos</b>
Honestly, these two lifeforms do not exude illusive and deceptive qualities, and so are rarely largely benefited by shade upgrades. I think the gorge will be able to belly slide away if suddenly encountering too many marines, or attempt to find a corner and heal spray up a bit before being hit again. The Onos may be able to use the brief speed increase to purposefully run headlong into a large number of opponents, and quickly reposition somewhere more advantageous and he provides a distraction for his teammates.
<b>Considerations</b>
Thing which would need to be closely looked at are
<ul><li>The duration. If the duration is too short, a lot of the complex choices that need to be made quickly may just turn into one big cluster ######. While 1.5 or even 2 seconds may sound better, it could be too long and allow too much energy regeneration. I also think that one second is a deceptively long time.</li><li>Threshold trigger scaling. Life forms would probably need to have specific health threshold amounts. 10% health is a completely different story when considering a skulk compared to an onos.</li><li>Time delay limits. There would need to be a more complex system in place for determining the shortest amount of time that could pass before the ability was triggered. For example, if a skulk instantly takes 95% of its HP from a shotgun blast, the ability should trigger right away. However if a single pistol shot does +-15% of a skulks health in damage, you don't want something like that to trigger it right away.</li></ul>
<ul><li>It's "utility" makes it almost entirely useless, up until a certain point when it becomes very very powerful all of a sudden. Its uses are limited almost completely to a get out of jail free card, after all, it only triggers moments before you die. This makes it pointless for any lifeforms not worth saving, so out go skulk and gorge.</li><li>The mechanics behind the feign make it so that only lifeforms which can move very quickly very suddenly could ever possibly benefit from it. This pretty much only applies to fades, and a little bit to skulks, as not even Lerks can fly fast enough to make use of the feign. Gorges and Onos are right out.</li><li>Due to the need to convey information to the player, it becomes obvious when a unit is or is not really dead. As long as the entire focus of the ability is to fake death, its true goal will never be achieved. Not without severely confusing the player in an undesirable way.</li><li>The hard trigger on feign (when you get to zero health) makes for very predictable and boring play. Players will actually wait for it to trigger, in order for them to know when they should leave, taking away a lot of the dynamic aspects of combat.</li><li>Worst of all; its utility is just bad. It can never actually help you in combat, it can only ever help you get out of combat.</li></ul>
In my opinion, the foundations of feign death are adequate, and suit the shade tree well, but a few criteria need to be met in order for the upgrade to be useful and beneficial to gameplay.
<ol type='1'><li>An upgrade should be useful at any time, not only at extremely specific times</li><li>An upgrade should try to add elements to combat encounters, or at the very least not subtract any</li><li>The upgrade should scale for lifeforms</li></ol>
So here is the idea I have for a feign death replacement, which has some of the favourable aspects of redemption from NS1.
Firstly, the triggering for this ability is not based on the players current health. Instead, it is based on the amount of damage the player has taken over time. As a very simplistic example, the trigger threshold could be set to 25% over one second. This would mean that, if the player took an amount of damage equal to 25% of their total life, in less than one second, the ability would trigger. This would scale to all values however, so if the player took 12.5% of their health in 0.5 seconds it would also trigger, and if they took 50% of their health in damage over 2 seconds, the same would happen. This means that the ability could trigger at any time, whether you were at 70% health, or at less than 5%. Most importantly, it means that it would trigger at the moment that you needed it. In my opinion, feign death would be best suited to breaking periods of very high incoming damage. Not in order to suddenly run away, but in order to reposition yourself in a less vulnerable location. What this change would also mean is that taking feign death would not automatically get you out of dodge. If you don't take more than 25% of your health in damage a second, whether you die or not, the ability would not trigger. It would still be up to you to decide when to stay and fight, and when to run for your life.
Secondly, the effect of the trigger would not be as it currently is. I think that the current feign death effect provides absolutely no combat utility, and only serves to make the ability exclusively for rapidly moving life forms. Instead of slowing you down, the effect would increase your speed by 20%, and would make you invisible and invulnerable as it currently does. This effect would last for one second, and at the time of it triggering, would reduce your energy to zero, at which point it would immediately begin to regenerate. Only movement actions would be able to be performed during this time, like normal running, belly sliding, flying, shadow stepping and charging. Once triggered, all active abilities (left and right mouse button) would be deactivated for 0.5 seconds, or half of the duration. During this time, attempting to use active abilities would do nothing. After 0.5 seconds, the player would still have another 0.5 seconds of invisibility and invulnerability, during which active abilities can be used. However, using an active ability would immediately cancel the invisibility and invulnerability.
Here are some ways I envision this ability affecting specific life forms:
<b>Skulk</b>
This ability would actually be viable for combat use to skulks. Due to the low health pool of skulks, one could be relatively certain this this ability would trigger in almost every fight. Once it had triggered, there would be a second long period during which the skulk can dash towards his enemy, either trying to get a cheap shot in as he leaves feign mode, or using the entire duration to escape or better position himself. The skulks inherent speed would also mean the 20% boost would be extremely potent.
<b>Fade</b>
This is the lifeform which will probably be most affected by a change to feign death, because of how reliant fades can become on the current version of it. I think that, with the correct tweaking, this altered version of feign death could become a tool that only benefited the fade during times of incredibly spiky damage. A fade who takes an average amount of damage over an average amount of time should not have his ass saved by this ability, and should still be attentive and alert so as not to reach zero HP. However, for fades who blink in only to suddenly take an entire shotgun shot to the face and to be left on 50 health, the ability would allow them to redeem themselves. I also think the energy dynamic will make players choose between a few quick shadow steps while in feign mode, or a prolonged blink as soon as they are able.
<b>Lerk</b>
I think this version of feign will also be very useful for lerks to reduce spiky damage. For lerks who took a wayward gun blast to the face as they were drifting through an area, escape should be relatively smooth as they can keep on gliding. However, for lerks who were in active combat when they took too much damage, they could find themselves suddenly grounded with no energy, and struggling to get airborne again quickly enough.
<b> Gorge and Onos</b>
Honestly, these two lifeforms do not exude illusive and deceptive qualities, and so are rarely largely benefited by shade upgrades. I think the gorge will be able to belly slide away if suddenly encountering too many marines, or attempt to find a corner and heal spray up a bit before being hit again. The Onos may be able to use the brief speed increase to purposefully run headlong into a large number of opponents, and quickly reposition somewhere more advantageous and he provides a distraction for his teammates.
<b>Considerations</b>
Thing which would need to be closely looked at are
<ul><li>The duration. If the duration is too short, a lot of the complex choices that need to be made quickly may just turn into one big cluster ######. While 1.5 or even 2 seconds may sound better, it could be too long and allow too much energy regeneration. I also think that one second is a deceptively long time.</li><li>Threshold trigger scaling. Life forms would probably need to have specific health threshold amounts. 10% health is a completely different story when considering a skulk compared to an onos.</li><li>Time delay limits. There would need to be a more complex system in place for determining the shortest amount of time that could pass before the ability was triggered. For example, if a skulk instantly takes 95% of its HP from a shotgun blast, the ability should trigger right away. However if a single pistol shot does +-15% of a skulks health in damage, you don't want something like that to trigger it right away.</li></ul>
Comments
Nanites, anybody?
Those are strictly utility upgrades, that is to say they don't involve objective numerical values. One could say that it does scale because an Onos being invisible is better than a skulk being invisible.
This suggestion could also be seen as "utility", but its more the way in which it triggers that needs to scale. There is little point in saving a skulk on 5 HP, after it takes 5 bullets, but saving a fade on 20 HP after it takes 50 bullets? That is a different story.