Goonhub
09-20-2013, 11:31 PM
Some adminchat brought up an unorthodox idea:
Why does the wraith have to be killable?
Bear with it for a second. Going back to my idea in the first post about a power pool/health combo for incorporeal wraiths, why not make it so zeroing out on that doesn't do anything aside from neuter the wraith for a while? Because it got its shit slapped around so badly, now it can only do really minor things until it gets its power back, so it had better be either extremely patient or extremely good with using low-cost powers to cause death. Another suggestion was that the wraith could use darkness to recharge its powers without waiting on deaths (if that is indeed how it would work), which would encourage flashlight brigades to try to flush it out and deny it spooky places to lurk. That might run into trouble with all the maintenance tunnels and shady side areas, though.
Overall, I had three ideas for wraith as a game mode, and it's these that I want to focus on. Anything branching up off them can be trimmed, reshaped, or removed, so long as the basic center of the proposed gameplay remains about the same. In rough order of importance:
1) Make the crew afraid of the station itself.
2) Make an antagonist type with a more indirect playstyle, and dealt with using techniques other than 'find bad man and shoot him a bunch'.
3) Give the crew a good reason to deal conclusively with bodies, preferably in more final, interesting manners than just gibbing or juicing them.
And yes, for objectives, I was thinking simply "here's a list of people who need to die, go bananas," same as what wizards get. If you want to be creative, you might have different escape objectives.
Escape on the shuttle while incorporeal
Escape while embodied in a revenant
Escape while inside in the body of a [job]
Escape while inside the body of [person] (pretty infeasible if rot is a thing)
Ensure no one escapes the station alive (would replace wizard corruption as that one objective nobody ever completes, though it is an interesting concept)
Why does the wraith have to be killable?
Bear with it for a second. Going back to my idea in the first post about a power pool/health combo for incorporeal wraiths, why not make it so zeroing out on that doesn't do anything aside from neuter the wraith for a while? Because it got its shit slapped around so badly, now it can only do really minor things until it gets its power back, so it had better be either extremely patient or extremely good with using low-cost powers to cause death. Another suggestion was that the wraith could use darkness to recharge its powers without waiting on deaths (if that is indeed how it would work), which would encourage flashlight brigades to try to flush it out and deny it spooky places to lurk. That might run into trouble with all the maintenance tunnels and shady side areas, though.
Overall, I had three ideas for wraith as a game mode, and it's these that I want to focus on. Anything branching up off them can be trimmed, reshaped, or removed, so long as the basic center of the proposed gameplay remains about the same. In rough order of importance:
1) Make the crew afraid of the station itself.
2) Make an antagonist type with a more indirect playstyle, and dealt with using techniques other than 'find bad man and shoot him a bunch'.
3) Give the crew a good reason to deal conclusively with bodies, preferably in more final, interesting manners than just gibbing or juicing them.
And yes, for objectives, I was thinking simply "here's a list of people who need to die, go bananas," same as what wizards get. If you want to be creative, you might have different escape objectives.
Escape on the shuttle while incorporeal
Escape while embodied in a revenant
Escape while inside in the body of a [job]
Escape while inside the body of [person] (pretty infeasible if rot is a thing)
Ensure no one escapes the station alive (would replace wizard corruption as that one objective nobody ever completes, though it is an interesting concept)