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+--- Thread: Curse artifacts feel overtuned (/showthread.php?tid=23702)
Curse artifacts feel overtuned - RubberRats - 03-12-2025
As-is, curse artifacts feel arbitrary and unfair in a way even things like devastating artbombs don't. In a recent round, I stood next to one and then spent the next fifteen minutes being administered medbay's entire supply of blood meds, only to die anyway. Anecdotally it seems like every time one shows up in a round it inevitably kills at least half a dozen people. From my observation, I think this can be traced to a handful of problems:
- Unlike the other this-will-definitely-kill-you artifacts, it hits everyone in range when it activates, not just the poor scientist who touched it. This means that instead of avoiding it being "don't go poking random artifacts", it is "don't exist in the vicinity of random artifacts".
- How to break the curse is not 100% clear. I had a blood curse, and had assumed that it would deactivate once it had consumed 600 units of blood, like the tooltip suggested. I was later informed out of game that the blood had to be fed to the artifact directly.
- Breaking the curse requires access to the artifact. If you don't realize you've been cursed until later, and whoever had it ran off, you are SOL. The fact that the cure is convincing other people to touch the extremely dangerous artifact does not help.
- The sheer number of people than can be affected. As the number of people cursed increases, the amount of coordination required to break it rises sharply. In the case of the blood curse, the 600u tribute is needed for each individual person affected.
The fact that cursers are an incredibly dangerous artifact type isn't a problem. But right now, I think it is way too easy to get cursed relative to the difficulty of treatment. An ideal compromise for me would be having it simply curse people on touch, like similar artifacts of its type.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Lord_earthfire - 03-13-2025
An active curser is between an activated firesurge artifact and an activated artgen artifact. Dangeous to the sorrounding but not insta-gibbing. And i think that was an empty design space which this has filled. The only comparison to that were rare chem artbombs, e.g. ones spewing out clouds of uranium or cfl3.
So overall, i think that is a fine place to be. They are really rare.
I would rather look at other artifacts which are too "fair", e.g. chembombs which have a too high delay fir low impact or artgens and borger, which you can identify by examining them.
Scientists right now don't need to read the informations given by their machines and can mostly safely identify the artifacts -after- they have been activated.
That would also solve that problem with the curser. Don't activate, but identify it.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - RubberRats - 03-13-2025
Artgens are loud, stationary, and don't require knowledge of how they specifically work to stop them. I don't think they're really comparable. The problem isn't that they are killing scientists, the problem is that they are killing everyone around them when they drag one into the halls. I don't want to have to tackle every artifact researcher I see outside of their department in the off chance that their new toy is going to going to murder a bunch of bystanders. If you really want to punish people for not identifying them, make them work like borgers.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Lt487 - 03-13-2025
AOE random extreme hurt without much warning just cuz some goober touched an artifact does not sound fun. Keep it just to the person who touched the artifact or maybe make it curse the person who touched, warble the artifacts sprite or something then AOE curse people, if the AOE curse is something that wants to be kept it needs at least a little bit of warning to get away/push the art away
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Kotlol - 03-13-2025
In my opinion cursed artifacts should curse the artifact user, not anyone else. Or atleast give a warning like: "RETURN MY PRECIOUS" being heard. Or something to tell you: "This artifact has an AOE curse"
Heat haze is already annoying but mostly is restricted to bystanders. If a curse goes through walls it's just unfair for anyone in science to the point every other scientist will OUTRIGHT forbid artsci to be done due to these curses!
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - TDHooligan - 03-13-2025
(03-12-2025, 07:32 PM)RubberRats Wrote: Breaking the curse requires access to the artifact. If you don't realize you've been cursed until later, and whoever had it ran off, you are SOL. The fact that the cure is convincing other people to touch the extremely dangerous artifact does not help.
single handedly the biggest case for something needing changing here. getting flicked by an AoE as you waltz by. now you are tethered to an item you can't identify, locate or possibly even understand. and if you dont you are Dead.
at least explosives have the courtesy to kill you dead without the chore on top
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Lord_earthfire - 03-13-2025
If locating the artifact is a problem, I feel that can be easily solved by giving the cursed one a tracker for the artifact after some time, just like deaddrops for sleepers.
(03-13-2025, 06:18 AM)Kotlol Wrote: If a curse goes through walls it's just unfair for anyone in science to the point every other scientist will OUTRIGHT forbid artsci to be done due to these curses!
Thats a bullshit claim. Sci and its sorroundings blows up fairly regulary by artbombs and people dont suddendly shut it down. And well, toxins exist.
Given that curser artifacts are so rare you almost never see them, while devestating artbombs are disposed like every third round, i feel that scenario is very far off
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Silent Majority - 03-14-2025
The one that summons the invisible monster seems to coincidentally get activated in crowded areas alot
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - FlameArrow57 - 03-17-2025
The blood curse not being lifted upon reaching 600u of blood is currently a bug
Also to address some wrong info:
-Blood curse 600u blood requirement is shared among people, meaning once 600u is given it is lifted from all affected
-Blood curse is satisfied from blood being drained naturally, donating blood through touch is optional
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - SnugglyCactus - 03-18-2025
Yeah, I wish cursers didn't affect everyone in the immediate vicinity. It's really annoying to die because some idiot kept touching the shiny thing.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Kotlol - 03-19-2025
Lets recap why people do not like ArtSci doing stuff:
- 1 Art bombs (Who have a LOUD ALERT GOING OFF, POINTING TOWARDS GETTING RID OF IT)
- Heat Hazes (but it mostly burns only artsci)
- Gravity Artifacts/Noise/Emote artifacts (very minor annoyance)
And now...
- Cursed artifacts.
The problem with artifacts stems from you cannot safely analyze em for certain effects unless you got a key.
In my opinion... if we keep making artifacts larger and more game impactful that antagonists go: "I don't have to do my job."
It just makes people less willing to allow it to continune.
I litterly had a round of antagging end cause someone didnt eject their art bomb.... A beginners trap.
I litterly had a round where I was an antag and the blood curse was disrupting everyone even me.
While curses are rare... the fact they can POTENTIALLY hijack a round like an admeme. Tells me they need to be downtuned or some how... need to be able to be found out BEFORE you activate the curse.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - NOOT - 03-19-2025
Curser artifacts are identifiable by scientists on sight / activation if you know what you are looking for. non-antagonist scientists should be labelling these up and shipping them off without touching them. Anyone who doesn't either doesn't know what they are looking for, or sees the other identifiable sign and gets greedy.
Is it very conspicuous, and does it look like it has something inside when it activates? Dont touch the damned thing.
That said, nothing makes me wants to weld the artsci door more than random scientist who walks past 15 minutes in and touches everything in the room on their way past.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - Skotcher - 04-17-2025
I wanted to pop in and add my two cents to this discussion. I think curser artifacts need a warning or build up, even if it's a relatively quick one. The ability to AoE hit others with a curse is fine in theory. Plenty of mechanics in this game can hit you from seemingly nowhere and knock you out of a round or ruin the plans you had, and that is part of the game. However, without any warning, the amount of attention a curser demands, and the consequences of a curse, can be infuriating in many cases. I think this could be solved just by making an accumulating status effect (similar to nausea) that results in a curse if you fail to address it.
My idea is this: When activated, the player responsible for activating the curse is guaranteed to be cursed. All players caught in the AoE receive a status effect that causes them to be cursed if they are still within that initial range of the curser artifact when the status effect expires. All players with that status effect then have a large arrow (similar to the ones you get from using a pinpointer) that points directly to the artifact in order to alert them to the artifacts location. All players caught within that initial AoE blast get a warning in their heads in very large ominious text that tells them to leave the area or be cursed for meddling with a greater power.
Another idea: When activated, all tiles within a distance of x where the curser was activated begin flashing colours briefly. Any players caught within those flashing tiles after a few seconds are cursed. Ideally, you should see the flashing tiles and your immediate instinct is to sprint to a non-flashing tile. This way, it's a very quick visual clue that screams "Get away or bad things will happen".
The timer doesnt have to be long, but it should be just long enough that if you hesitate to get away, you'll be cursed. I think that something like what I said would leave people with at least a sense of being able to respond and take action themselves to prevent being cursed rather than it just happening and them having no ability to address it.
RE: Curse artifacts feel overtuned - glowbold - 04-17-2025
i think a 2-4 second "bad feeling" status effect before the curse activates if you still have line of sight would cover a lot of situations.