[Rework] Wraith

[awfulworldkid]

I hate the idea of the Ghostbusting Kit because the gun/goggles are meant to be rare and hard to get. This would completely change that.

EDIT: Also, how to be a near-unkillable Wraith 101: Wait ten minutes, then go to the asteroid next to the Listening Post, then turn off your internals and suffocate to death. Not technically suicide and doesn't gib you, so you can still be a wraith, and makes your body nearly impossible to find while still being on the z-level.

[YoukCat]

While yes, that works, the Ethereal Tracker will also find it rediculously easy as it's an arrow pointing towards the body. Plus, it's pretty impossible to defend with no items whatsoever around it to use.
We should disable people inside the Listening Post being Wraiths, though, to help prevent people with Agent Cards wanting a wraith chance (biodome nerds with nothing better to do/really ambitious traitors)

Also, I agree with the Ghostbusting Kit actually. Maybe we'll just use Ghost Items to laser the wraith to death or something.

EDIT: Among with that, one of the most powerful abilities a Wraith has is Strider. The Wraith can't use it when stuck like that.

[Berrik]

Because it doesn't have enough ways to fight it. This introduces several new ways, with the requirement of having a body.

The wraith also doesn't have many ways to actually be particularly dangerous unless it has a body.

[YoukCat]

(I assume you meant that the Wraith has a hard time finding bodies)
This also fixes it, by forcing the Wraith to have a body, the wraith will always have an improved Revenant at hand: Their own body. They'll likely want to retreat it into some hidden shelter after they use it, or back it up with it's powers whilst waiting for cooldown. Along with this, a max-level wraith has heavily improved powers that will wreck havoc. Skeletons that never fucking die like the Wizard has, longer-lasting stuns from the Decay, and tons of minions taking control of items to end the lives of others.

[atamusvaleo]

Wraith Spawning

What if instead of starting as a wraith, you spawned as a hard-mode traitor with a death wish objective (die in a glorious fashion with some flavor text to let them know they'll become a wraith upon death)? This gives you the opportunity to bring a few folks down with you and give you some bodies to work with. It works into the whole gruesome death/evil spirit idea as well.

OR

Ghostly Remains
This addresses the current lack of means to fight the wraith. The classic Hollywood trope around evil spirits is that the bones/corpse of the specter are/is still somewhere in the haunted house. The protagonist has to find and burn the remains to cleanse the house.

The idea is similar to my previous post, you start as a staff assistant and can use your wiles to make you way into a dark corner or closet and suicide. Your corpse has a distinct flavor text along the lines of "there's an evil aura to these bones" and is immune to the wraith's powers (no making it a skeleton or revenant). If the crew is able to find your body, they can burn the remains to force the wraith to be summoned to the corpse and become corporeal, and thus able to be fought.

[This part, I'm unsure about]
Perhaps if the wraith isn't killed before the corpse burns completely, the wraith goes back to it's normal state?

Maybe it remains corporeal but has a new ability to become ethereal for a short period of time? I favor this option.

[YoukCat]

I like that, Atamus.
Perhaps give the wraith's body Human Torch, and once it's on fire start it at max health. If it survives for 3 minutes with it's current strider level then it will go back to being a spooky wraith.
Also, if we do this, perhaps remove the whole Strider power and just give the Wraith the respective powers based on it's level.

So if you burn a level 3 wraith, you have to deal with a revenant. Hope you brought friends and weaponry. This would result in 3 ways to kill off a Wraith.

[Sundance]

Some hard light on this:

I feel after reading your 4-5th "rework" thread, that it kind of fails to meet the criteria on WHY something needs to be reworked, and doesn't really take into mind the effort that it would undertake.

Like with wraith, it's universally well received. Sure one could argue that there's a little unbalance when wraith enters the later stage, and that salt being the only common hard counter is probably not the best, but for the most part it glues well. That wouldn't really require a rework in the full though.

Or changeling for that matter. Changeling never got reworked, the hivemind is actually just an addition to the lings powers. It was mainly used to tackle the pain of being suddenly killed in the round, while not nerfing/reworking the ling to satisfy this. It was again a universally well received addition that did not require a rework.

So where am I going with this? Zewaka recently said that we're quality over quantity, and while I agree to an extent, deconstructing game-modes, only to build them back up again without any progression onto what could be different and exciting, makes the game.. stale. Especially when certain thing feels perpetually unfinished; see pathology, material, etc. Which is what a rework of this kind is probably destined to become due to the lack of coder activity.

I feel if something like this was to have any standing, it would have to tie in with the existing mode, without changing it fundamentally, preferably as a new mode.
To give you an example, it'd be like having old nuke ops back in the mix. Doesn't actually fundamentally change the nuke ops in code, but having this old style of nuking the station put into rotation keeps players on their toes. Keeps it fresh.

tl;dr: No to rework, yes to a (far) less convoluted implementation to what you are suggesting as a similar tie-in gamemode that has a chance of occuring over wraith.

[awfulworldkid]

I just want to reiterate that I don't like the implementation of the levelup system for Wraith as suggested, since it lets them do nothing forever and then slowly build up to Level 5 without even using a power once. Also, everything Sundance said.

[atomic1fire]

I think it would be fun if the wraith death idea was converted into a revenant thing where a traitor could kill themselves in a comical fashion to determine what kind of nightmare they want to become. Of course I feel like Wraith is probably fine as is and goon really doesn't need an extra nightmare fuel ghost. Especially one constructed out of brute force, fire, poison, or suffocation. Although on the other hand, a ghost made of someone holding it in instead of going on a restroom break does sound kinda funny, but I feel like this would just result in people regularly not peeing on destiny for the chance to wraith.

effortposts are fun but they don't usually lead to anything unless people have sprites or code.

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I hate the idea of the Ghostbusting Kit because the gun/goggles are meant to be rare and hard to get. This would completely change that.

EDIT: Also, how to be a near-unkillable Wraith 101: Wait ten minutes, then go to the asteroid next to the Listening Post, then turn off your internals and suffocate to death. Not technically suicide and doesn't gib you, so you can still be a wraith, and makes your body nearly impossible to find while still being on the z-level.

Perhaps add a way to let the crew/chaplain make arrows out of salt/holy water/some other mcguffin that point in the direction of the body. Or like a general "creepy" sense that pops up when you're in a certain range of a wraith corpse. Something that serves as a hint.

I'd rather see Wraith corpse as a way for the crew to have something to beat up/set on fire, melt since we can't just punch a wraith. Like Freddy Krueger's corpse in that one movie I barely remember. Harm the wraith by stealing his corpse and dissolving it in sulpheric acid in the bathtub.

[Frank_Stein]

Honestly, all I would want from changes to Wraith would be:

1. Make the Wraith spend more time being spooky. Maybe they have to "haunt" an area for a certain amount of time before they can really use their better powers there. Or maybe haunting an area replaces corpse absorbing. Either way, being able to mess with the crew's sanity rather than just beat them with items would be nice

2. Give players more anti-wraith stuff. Holy candles that will turn into a blue flame when the wraith is nearby. Holy water that protects items from possession. Talismans and charms that can be placed or worn to ward the wraith away.

[Berrik]

What needs to change to fucking Wraith is making it appear more often.

[Nnystyxx]

1. More wraiths
2. More for wraiths to do
3. More for crewmen to do against wraith
Those seem to be the main issues, really

[Dr Zoidcrab]

I like the Idea of wraiths having remains the crew could find as a weakness but the other stuff like killing youself or having an ungibbed corpse to become wraith sounds kinda unecessary.

You could just have wraiths place their remains when they spawn, which would serve as the wraith's respawn point. As a balance the wraith could get some of it's abilities from it's other forms when it's in corporeal form instead of being completely helpless, like animate object, push, mass command and shockwave etc.

[Camnui]

Why not make holy water good for ghostbusting like it is on other servers? also ectoplasm on the floor should make the wraith visible but not corporeal.