How to draw out marines as a skulk
Mortos
Join Date: 2006-11-28 Member: 58763Members
Join Date: 2006-11-28 Member: 58763Members
<div class="IPBDescription">...without parasite</div>Okay, so it sounds like the dev team is trying to brainstorm a method of drawing out the marines for the parasite replacement; and so I figured that's what this forum is for, so let's hear ideas.
Important considerations:
1. The ability should not in any way become a primary attack for the skulk. The skulk is designed as a melee fighter, and so he should remain.
2. The ability should provide the marine a legitimate reason for moving from his current location, either to pursue the skulk or some other reason
3. The ability should provide a detriment to the marine should they ignore it
Things that I feel this rules out, and why:
1. Spitting for small ping damage:
It encourages some (bad) skulks to just hang back and snipe (remember noob gorges spitting down marine buildings?)
Marines by an armory can just heal back up, removing any incentive to pursue
Kinda lame
2. Spitting goo or some sort of slowdown (or blinding) effect:
Once hit it makes more sense for the marine to retreat than advance (read: boring)
Marines can stay where they are safely, albeit slowly...
Too powerful
The best I've come up with is a small damage-over-time that eats away at armor for a few seconds after hitting the marine, and multiple hits just refresh the time it's on, they don't stack.
In this situation, the marine does get progressively more vulnerable to attack if he ignores it long enough. It also allows skulks to slowly eat away at an approaching heavy if they can avoid getting shot.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and hear other ideas as well.
Important considerations:
1. The ability should not in any way become a primary attack for the skulk. The skulk is designed as a melee fighter, and so he should remain.
2. The ability should provide the marine a legitimate reason for moving from his current location, either to pursue the skulk or some other reason
3. The ability should provide a detriment to the marine should they ignore it
Things that I feel this rules out, and why:
1. Spitting for small ping damage:
It encourages some (bad) skulks to just hang back and snipe (remember noob gorges spitting down marine buildings?)
Marines by an armory can just heal back up, removing any incentive to pursue
Kinda lame
2. Spitting goo or some sort of slowdown (or blinding) effect:
Once hit it makes more sense for the marine to retreat than advance (read: boring)
Marines can stay where they are safely, albeit slowly...
Too powerful
The best I've come up with is a small damage-over-time that eats away at armor for a few seconds after hitting the marine, and multiple hits just refresh the time it's on, they don't stack.
In this situation, the marine does get progressively more vulnerable to attack if he ignores it long enough. It also allows skulks to slowly eat away at an approaching heavy if they can avoid getting shot.
I'd like to hear your thoughts on this, and hear other ideas as well.
Comments
even with parasite lots of players will retreat because they know that wherever that skulk just went, they can see the marine coming.
the real reason baiting works is because players think they found a skulk all by himself and that it will be an easy kill as they run away. a player will hardly ever follow a skulk that just ran away for any reason other than to kill it.
if the marine was given a legitimate reason to follow the skulk (maybe the skulk stole his lunch money) then baiting would happen way too often and you'd have a lot of skulks waiting to ambush and not doing anything else for a while.
we've heard of this grapple idea many times, perhaps the skulk can grapple the marine and take their primary weapon, leaving them with only the pistol (taser/welder/knife thingy).
i dont know about you but if a skulk stole my gun i'd chase after him real quick.
And I would run away even faster and get a replacement. What makes you think that you get a better chance to skul without your main weapon ?
Stealing items is a good idea, but main weapon is too essential. It should steal other items, for example
- pistol
- unprimed grenade
- welder
- medkit (we don't know if marines will get portable medkits. Those from Tremulous do)
- mines
- part of ammunition
To make it more provoking, have the item land at skulk's position with a loud noise, so it's easy to locate. And to keep it from being frustrating, a marine can have only 1 of his items pulled out with the grapple.
*yoink* *chuckles*
maybe give it a really long cooldown/adren-cost and have it have a chance to hit the weapon the marine is holding
- don't call it parasite anymore
- do the same thing: sniper thing that does 10 damage
- this seems good enough for me
Not a blinding, deafening flashbang, but a little bit of monitor static with either a "PURGE" warning tone or audio static.
Like someone buzzing in your ear. It's an annoyance tool. Just tweak the cooldown so that people aren't getting nonstop overlapping buzzing, and it should be fine.
or they could bit down res nodes, because even if it marines don't come running, their com does.
::thumbs up genreal warhammer::
the local reveal would prompt nearby aliens into action, and give the comm a heads up. now, i dont know how theyre handling having the alien commander take care of scouting, which i think they said in the skulk reveal, becasue it seems strange to have an invisible force do the dangerous work of scouting with no reprocussions...unless they mean for him to tell people to go to a certain location, and have him mark players with a parasite type reveal. still, this poses the same problems: that the marines cant hinder the parasiteing because its coming from some omnipresent god force...lame
edit: oh, and no stealing. youll hardly ever be able to pull it off (from melee range) and it wont really affect the marine that much...as much as say, killing them.
and grapple sounds kind of fun, but the more i think about it, the less interesting it sounds. the plus is that it discourages rambo marines, and it makes it easier for an alien to take out a single marine (hooray?) the downside is, it sounds SUUUUPER BORING. the fun of being an alien was that adrenaline pumping ambush moment where everyone is feaking out and you have seconds to spaz around and wildly tear into the marines with that satisfying visceral chomp they have in NS1. so, to jump in and grab on with a slow damage over time kill or immbolize sounds like exactly the opposite of this. you jump down and grab onto the marine! you sit there....doing nothing for few seconds while you wait for him to kindly die. the marine realizes hes been bit! he knows no ones around and he starts to contemplate the meaning of life, patiently waiting for the inevitable...
really? this doesnt sound anything like the fast paced twitch action that was so characteristic of natural selection 1.
and to further debunk the argument that it discourages rambo marines is the fact that you would still have to get close enough to bite the marine. waht made it (sometimes) effective to be rambo in NS1 was that a lone marine could often kill a skulk BEFORE engaged in melee range. secondly, when the skulk did get close enough to bite the marine, the marine would often be able to out maneuver the skulk (which was another problem in and of itself, though of course player skill is integral to that, it shouldnt be quite so easy to dodge an alien, as the design (as far as i can tell) was that marines have advantage at range, aliens have advantage when close up. these advantages balance each other by their very nature, and the marine shouldnt be better at getting out of melee range, as they have guns to keep them from ever having to be in melee range. i guess thats just a bunnyhopping issue)
ANYWAY
the point was, ramboing worked becasue they could kill the skulk before he could get to them, so grappling wont change that, but it could make it easier because you only have to land one bite, but hopefully in NS2 it wont be so hard to land two bites.
and grappling takes control away from both players, making it no fun for anyone while its going on.
in conclusion, be creative and think of someting else, no L4D cloning.
You mean like the marine commander?
Marines probably won't get marked at all.
That said, I've already suggested that I think it would be interesting if the parasite on the marine did the following:
1. That marine becomes susceptible to friendly fire. (group annoyance)
2. That marine can not be selected by the commander, nor does the commander have any inidication of what the marine sees. (rambo/ninja annoyance)
3. The marine becomes a valid target for marine turrets. (base defender annoyance)
4. A very small DoT effect is applied, as the nanite layer of the marines no longer protects him fully from the bacterium. (marine incentive to pursue)
5. The skulk who shot the parasite, and only that skulk, gets the wall-hack view of the marine. (skulk incentive to apply)
These effects last until either the marine dies or the skulk dies.
A marine can only have one parasite on him at a time, with only the last parasite applied counting.
Item 5 may be optional. Perhaps the annoyance factor should be incentive enough.
touche, i actually dont remember how the marine commander scouting works, so :P
oh, and to clarify, i meant that the alien commander would parasite a marine, and i dont think the marine commander has the ability to mark a specific alien. (though with motion tracking, he can kind of mark them all...) so maybe its a moot point
and i like some of your ideas, with the parasite being an annoyace by opening up the marine to friendly fire. could be interesting, and difficult to balance, but interesting!
im not necesarily sold on the idea, but it sounds like more fun than grapple, so :)
With a little work it could turn out like this
"skulk jumps on a marine and they both fall to the ground, with a split second reaction as the skulk goes to bite with his two arms pinning his body down the marine zaps the skulks nose but misses as the skulk rips open his throat and a pool of blood splurts out"
giving the marines a chance to react, the tazer moment is an example could be an excellent way to do that. If anything the biggest incentive to draw out marines as a skulk would be the fact it is getting closer to you, giving it a short distance sprint can let it go corner to corner and know that if the marine doesnt react the skulk may get him from behind while he's moving.
Leave the ranged strength to the gorge imo. or as i have heard wit hteh comm he has a buffing /support role, maybe he can activate a beacon on the skulks that radiate Infestation which provides a bonus/hurts the sector of the power grid so killing the skulk would be advisable.
Possible lures could be noises or sounds. For example, if the skulk had the ability to lay some kind of noise generating blob of goo that would churn to the sound of gorge footsteps. You might have some fun with that.... (Pictures a group of 3 marines, 1 inexperienced marine hears the noise and chases, the other 2 "ITS A TRAP" and proceed to chase after him so he doesn't get killed... killing all 3 in the process.)
Thats just one idea, but really noises can initiate alot, most of the time thats what marine players are doing...listening to their surroundings.
Another would be if the skulk could plant some kind of object in a desired location that would grow into something bad for the marines if they let it last too long. Mini Babblers!? Small egg containing tiny babblers could make alot of noise, attract the marines... and if they don't rush and make it in time, it could hatch in their faces.
I don't really think the skulk should be laying eggs or anything like that, but these are just different examples of lures.
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBI0ggeidOA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBI0ggeidOA</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBI0ggeidOA" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBI0ggeidOA</a><!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
IIRC that's what the glowies do.
what if instead of parasite it's just a small(temporary) patch of infestation under the marine's feet? I don't know what this would do tot he marine exactly, but it's a starting point