Goonhub
02-15-2019, 10:14 AM
This is a good idea expressed by Adhara and i'm sure others too at many points in the discord and elsewhere, so I'm gonna write it down here for you to poke at.
Identifying the problem:
Wraith is not very interactive.
The wraith has a specific interest in remaining out of reach of the crew, and does so with incredible ease.
In addition, most of the wraiths abilities either disable / damage department equipment and staff, reducing regular productivity to zero - or permanently eliminate players from the round, further giving them fuck all nothing to do.
This paper aims to propose fixes an changes in behavior that might make Wraith more than a single-player point-and-grief, as much as it is possibly one of the most enjoyable antags to play.
The pitch, part one:
Get rid of the body-destroying-for-points feature. Actively encouraging the antag to silently remove players from the server in order to do anything effective is really REALLY counter-interactive.
Replace that method of gaining points with something actually fun- ghost elemental mini-revenants
Here's how it goes:
- Wraith finds or creates a fresh body. A+!
- Wraith stands over that body with some sort of progress bar to convert it.
- Upon conversion, Wraith gets some WP as usual, but instead of the corpse smoking away, it returns from byond the grave. (original ghost is pulled back in, otherwise just give it regular peaceful monkey AI i guess?)
- Depending on the cause of death (let's just look at the highest of the 4 damage types maybe?), mini-revenant has some sort of AoE or other minor powers to use. Discuss that below I guess.
- Once a mini-revenant dies (its second death) it can go on to freely posess small objects for a shorter time and longer cooldown than standard wraith, just to keep things interesting.
It's like
To balance this out a little, every time one of these elemental things dies, that oughta hurt the wraith just a little bit.
The Pitch™, Part two: (bad warcrimes idea)-
To deal with the sheer exhaustion of a foe you can hardly hit and who can just keep making your department suck bigger and bigger eggs- I propose another thing happen during wraith rounds.
Death and severe injury ought to be temporary, if you can survive somehow.
Essentially, make the wraith NEED to finish the job in order to get more bodies on the floor:
- If a living person's damage (excluding oxy) stays stable for say, a minute or two, (i.e. they might be in crit accumulating losebreath and all, but you've stopped hitting them with your ghost locker) - that damage ought to start to get healed.
Passive regen for the crew during a spooky haunty bit where the more your friends die, the more you die, makes it a 2-way tug of war. If you can distract or incapacitate the wraith for long enough, you should have a better chance of regrouping and mounting an offensive against their crappy discount zombies.
This oughta make it less of an unwinnable trudge.
Identifying the problem:
Wraith is not very interactive.
The wraith has a specific interest in remaining out of reach of the crew, and does so with incredible ease.
In addition, most of the wraiths abilities either disable / damage department equipment and staff, reducing regular productivity to zero - or permanently eliminate players from the round, further giving them fuck all nothing to do.
This paper aims to propose fixes an changes in behavior that might make Wraith more than a single-player point-and-grief, as much as it is possibly one of the most enjoyable antags to play.
The pitch, part one:
Get rid of the body-destroying-for-points feature. Actively encouraging the antag to silently remove players from the server in order to do anything effective is really REALLY counter-interactive.
Replace that method of gaining points with something actually fun- ghost elemental mini-revenants
Here's how it goes:
- Wraith finds or creates a fresh body. A+!
- Wraith stands over that body with some sort of progress bar to convert it.
- Upon conversion, Wraith gets some WP as usual, but instead of the corpse smoking away, it returns from byond the grave. (original ghost is pulled back in, otherwise just give it regular peaceful monkey AI i guess?)
- Depending on the cause of death (let's just look at the highest of the 4 damage types maybe?), mini-revenant has some sort of AoE or other minor powers to use. Discuss that below I guess.
- Once a mini-revenant dies (its second death) it can go on to freely posess small objects for a shorter time and longer cooldown than standard wraith, just to keep things interesting.
It's like
To balance this out a little, every time one of these elemental things dies, that oughta hurt the wraith just a little bit.
The Pitch™, Part two: (bad warcrimes idea)-
To deal with the sheer exhaustion of a foe you can hardly hit and who can just keep making your department suck bigger and bigger eggs- I propose another thing happen during wraith rounds.
Death and severe injury ought to be temporary, if you can survive somehow.
Essentially, make the wraith NEED to finish the job in order to get more bodies on the floor:
- If a living person's damage (excluding oxy) stays stable for say, a minute or two, (i.e. they might be in crit accumulating losebreath and all, but you've stopped hitting them with your ghost locker) - that damage ought to start to get healed.
Passive regen for the crew during a spooky haunty bit where the more your friends die, the more you die, makes it a 2-way tug of war. If you can distract or incapacitate the wraith for long enough, you should have a better chance of regrouping and mounting an offensive against their crappy discount zombies.
This oughta make it less of an unwinnable trudge.
