Critter Gauntlet suggestions thread

[Xavieri]

So, time for a suggestion thread. Post about what should be added/removed/fixed about this terrible VR thingy and maybe Marq will do something about it.

Here's my two cents:

Merge booze and scalpel drops. Both are pretty much useless without the other for their intended use; as in surgery if you have a bad case of spiders.
Remove the starting crowbar and just re-add the fire extinguisher. It deals less damage than even the starting laser gun when used in melee.
Also, guns should be more common. There's a lot of nasty critters that you just CANNOT melee, as that would spell death. Just look at spiders and zombies. Would also mean more friendly fire and that's always good, right?
Add more drops to the list: Drugs, genetics injectors, purgatives (calomel, hunchback), decoy monkeys, thermals, light sources, hats.
More clothing would be nice as well. People seem to use the medal achievements for this already, why not streamline it?
Melee artifacts do not damage critters, at least to my knowledge. Also maybe add bigger artifacts, as in healers and damage field ones. Do you activate the artifact for a chance of free healing, even if it could block off part of the arena if things go south?
Limbs from meat things do not dissapear when the round ends. Maybe add the useless parts dropped from drones to the list of things that should dissapear as well?
Hot zone to match the cold zone. Burn your lungs out.
With the addition of the blood system, bunch of the critters deal everlasting damage. Either remove bleeding from VR or give us supplies to fix bleeding at startup/as drops.
Make the ID cards display the highest level the player has reached, instead of games played. Seems buggy as it is, as I sure as hell have played more than three games of this thing. Maybe add a medal for reaching a certain level, I dunno?
Also, more critters. Space mice, malfunctioning medical borgs should be added for example.

[Ali0en]

Adds HATS for reaching certain waves. 30, 40, 50, whatever. Make the earliest one look ugly and the latest one look like something a badass guy would wear. This would be a nice way to show off.

Also giving each tier of hat a unique emote would be rad. Maybe the tier 1 hat would be you pulling it up and having spiders run out, where the tier 5 hat would have a void effect come out.

[Marquesas]

Add more drops to the list: Drugs, genetics injectors, purgatives (calomel, hunchback), decoy monkeys, thermals, light sources, hats.
More clothing would be nice as well. People seem to use the medal achievements for this already, why not streamline it?
Also, more critters. Space mice, malfunctioning medical borgs should be added for example.

These are the ones I haven't done yet. All the others should be in shortly.

Note on sutures: They will drop as a surgical tool. Let's see how that works out.

[Amuys]

Hey stop people from locking people out of the gauntlet

[Marquesas]

I'll try to somehow sort out the addition of new players between staging and game start, however, this is deliberate. If you do not want to be locked out of the gauntlet by someone playing, I suggest you organize yourselves.

[DyssalC]

I'll try to somehow sort out the addition of new players between staging and game start, however, this is deliberate. If you do not want to be locked out of the gauntlet by someone playing, I suggest you organize yourselves.

That's a bit difficult, as when in the critter gauntlet zone you cannot communicate with the outside world unlike in the normal VR zone.

[Frank_Stein]

Some kind of station announcement button would help to get any one that wants to joins attention

[Amuys]

Yeah right now, you just hop into the chute expecting to have some fun VR fun but then all you can do is glumly stare at a few nerds hitting through an impassable barrier

[Sam Guivene]

Aren't the malfunctioning borgs invincible? This seems like a bad idea, also I can see problems with artifacts being added of a larger variety, perhaps random ??? mutation injector should be added (shouldn't be that hard to code, just spawn X mutation injector off the list and make it have ??? for a name, who knows, you might give yourself seizures or fire immunity, telepathy or telekinesis, blindness, muteness, deafness, or some other horrifying mutations, it can only cause chaos to the arena, and we love chaos.

[Xavieri]

Aren't the malfunctioning borgs invincible?

Hardly. They might ignore hits from ranged weapons but they are not immune to being whopped with a fire extinguisher or any other melee weapon. Baby ice spiders and security zapbots already work like this as well, and both of those are way more terrifying than the humble medical borg. Only problem I'm seeing is getting knocked out by another critter and the medical borg goes wild on you, but that can happen with almost any critter mix already, like mimics and meat things.

Speaking of communication, there's an intercom in the lobby already, next to the entrance door. Maybe it should be broadcasting by default?

Also, more suggestions from me:

Maybe add a blocking mechanism to the start button so you cannot jump in VR 1 minute into the round and start the game. Maybe 5 - 7 minutes before you're able to start it would work?
Reset button to the lobby. Give us a way to reopen the lobby doors if someone starts the game up, but then someone happens to jump out of the disposals outlet just as they do it.
Maybe a way to remove the bigger artifacts if you don't want to activate them. Could a timer that removes it if not activated work? I dunno, maybe a beaker of acid?
With the addition of purgatives, stuff like venom is not such a huge problem anymore. However, calomel drops in pill form, and that contain something ridiculous like 30+ units of calomel, when 5u is more than enough. Maybe replace those with the emergency-injectors Haine added recently?
In later levels, a huge waves of mimics, killer tomatoes, meat things and such, all at the same time is horrifyingly difficult to handle, if you were unlucky enough to not get good drops like advanced laser guns or better melee weapons. Something for crowd control, maybe grenades?
Staple guns as drops if you do add grenades.
I already suggested this in-game but might as well add it here: A list showing the current monsters in the arena.

[Xavieri]

So uh, apparently if you're frozen into an ice cube while playing solo, you count as dead. If you break out, you can drop your items, suicide and then return for another game with all your stuff still there on the ground.

[Marquesas]

Implementing most of this stuff right now.

[Sam Guivene]

What about... a literal critter gauntlet, that you can wear on your hands...

[BaneOfGiygas]

Not necessary, but it would be really cool to have an intercom in the arena hooked up to some frequency or other that lets observers and/or the station in general hear the gloating/crying/agonized screams of the contestants.

[Xavieri]

Okay, few things.

The little black spiders are absolutely terrifying. They take way too many hits for how small they are and their ability to stun you until you just die is bullshit, as they ignore crit. Those things show up from level 1 onwards, so eh. They are also kinda hard to see against the floor.
Drone drops are bugged, arms to be exact. Robot arms are needed to build medibots, and at the moment they disappear with rest of the drone stuff. Proxy sensors still work as they should.
Speaking of drone drops, phasers do jack shit against critters. Mods for them do not help either.
Some people have expressed concerns about the arena floor hurting their eyes.