Goonhub
05-16-2022, 02:17 AM
(This post was last modified: 05-16-2022, 02:19 AM by zhagsten. Edited 1 time in total.)
Hello, I was reading recent PRs and found this project interesting, but I have a couple concerns.
The first is about Trickster's mass emag ability. I fear it's a bad idea. The effects of emag are very specific and work well with an antag who wants to work their path to an objective, but may cause more complicated chaos than confusion if used by an entity that doesn't care about actually emagging things, particularly if it's on an area and not a specific target. It's a Pandora box, with effects as benign as opening doors and others with a lot more consequences like freeing a cyborg. Some with tangential effects that may have unforeseen consequences in the way people play it, like I don't know emagging hyposprays. It's probably more tricky to balance than a summon that attacks spessmen.
The second is the possession ability. I think it's a dangerous idea to make a player lose control of their character and force them to watch it. There are some really strong "crowd control" effects in the game and they can be frustrating already. But they are short and so there's timing that the controller may miss, so you can hope to get out of it, and if not, your fate is sealed rapidly (death/thrall/absorbtion...). How much time is "awhile"? I think the difficulty to use the ability (long casting time) shouldn't be a reason to remove player control for too long. I think it should actually be short, pushing the wraith to think quickly on how to capitalize on it (venting the character, attacking others with their available weapons, destroying a counterplay item...).
Finally, I would like to add another idea for the Trickster, more in the idea of confusion : the ability to change the appearance of an object. Maybe something like first you use it on an object to store its appearance, then later you use it on another object to make it look like the previous one. Or swap the appearance of random items in an area. There may be restriction like a held item for a held item.
Good luck with the project.
The first is about Trickster's mass emag ability. I fear it's a bad idea. The effects of emag are very specific and work well with an antag who wants to work their path to an objective, but may cause more complicated chaos than confusion if used by an entity that doesn't care about actually emagging things, particularly if it's on an area and not a specific target. It's a Pandora box, with effects as benign as opening doors and others with a lot more consequences like freeing a cyborg. Some with tangential effects that may have unforeseen consequences in the way people play it, like I don't know emagging hyposprays. It's probably more tricky to balance than a summon that attacks spessmen.
The second is the possession ability. I think it's a dangerous idea to make a player lose control of their character and force them to watch it. There are some really strong "crowd control" effects in the game and they can be frustrating already. But they are short and so there's timing that the controller may miss, so you can hope to get out of it, and if not, your fate is sealed rapidly (death/thrall/absorbtion...). How much time is "awhile"? I think the difficulty to use the ability (long casting time) shouldn't be a reason to remove player control for too long. I think it should actually be short, pushing the wraith to think quickly on how to capitalize on it (venting the character, attacking others with their available weapons, destroying a counterplay item...).
Finally, I would like to add another idea for the Trickster, more in the idea of confusion : the ability to change the appearance of an object. Maybe something like first you use it on an object to store its appearance, then later you use it on another object to make it look like the previous one. Or swap the appearance of random items in an area. There may be restriction like a held item for a held item.
Good luck with the project.