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Hi all. I'm new to the forums, but swat is probably my favorite wc3 custom game, and so I would like to help improve it. I had a crapload of ideas on how it can be changed or improved and this will probably be a very long post. You are probably going to disagree with a lot of them, but that is fine. I'm just throwing these out as ideas. Based on my very limited experience in wc3 maps, I will also specify how difficult I believe the change will be to implement.
1) Make it easier to escape from the Z menu: For most characters it doesn't really matter, but for those like the psycho who has to spam mind slay/rot, having to press ESC after using one of these abilities is a huge pain. It would be awesome if you would automatically escape from the Z menu after using an ability, so that you can use these abilities as hotkeys (ie. tapping Z+X to preform that move). This change should be easy to implement unless there's something about the Z menu that I don't know.
2) Change the droid model from marine to space orc: In my opinion, the marine model is overused in swat. Everything that is not a zombie is a marine. My idea would be to reserve the marine for human characters (players or umbrella) and to use the space orc model for the droids. Of course, the space orc's skin will have to be modified a little bit, as that a droid with a green face looks sort of strange. The orc's face color could be changed to chrome/metallic color. I was even thinking that his eye color could be changed to green/yellow/red to distinguish whether the droid is a mk1/mk2/LAD. Overall, this will not change the gameplay in any way, but will add a nice touch to the game. Instead of appearing like an android, the droid will now appear like a badass (and obviously skinless) Terminator robot. This will be moderately difficult to implement since skinning models can be a pain and looks like crap if not done right.
3) Change the model of the mutant: Same issue here. The mutant model is used for both the mutant and a boss. I was thinking to maybe change it into those purple corrupted ancient protectors. Again, this will just add a bit of variety to the game, but is not a very important change, and I don't really care too much about this one.
4) Give prowlers a lifesteal ability: Everybody loves vampires, and from what I can tell, people don't often chose prowler. So this change will simply make prowler more appealing. The added lifesteal doesn't even have to be that big. I'd say that 2% lifesteal will be like having a buffout if you're attacking. It also should probably not stack with skill upgrades, or else the sniper will heal like 20 per hit. This suggestion is designed to make prowler appealing without making it overpowered. It should be easy to implement.
5) Let the tactician chose a chaingun in addition to the assault rifle: The assualt rifle does not really take advantage of weakpoint like the chaingun does. Will this make every tactician switch to using the chaingun? Probably not. The choice of weapon will depend on what the team needs. I'd say that most people would even stick with the assault rifle. But it is nice to have this option open since there are definitely times when it can be useful. This change should be easy to implement.
6) Buff the psychologist's epic: People may disagree with me, but it always seemed to me that the psycho has a really lame epic. So I was thinking that maybe it can be improved slightly in a very interesting and fun way. Starting at level 50, mind rot, in addition to increasing in radius, can also have a chance to mind control the targeted zombies. It won't be a huge chance because then that would make the game too easy, but maybe +4-5% per level would be fun. There are all sorts of ways in which this feature can be balanced, but it doesn't need to be balanced too much because by this time in the game, it isn't really needed too much. This should be easy to implement. Depending on whether the psycho should be able to convert and gain control of the zombie or simply just confuse it, all you would need to do is set control of the zombie either to the psychologist or to the police.
7) Nerf the sniper's marksmanship skill: Ok, I'm going to get flamed for suggesting this, but whatever. At max level, the sniper has an 80% chance to pierce. Since this is a geometric distribution, that means that the average number of targets killed will be 5 (in a geometric distribution, the average is 1/p, where p is the chance of failure (20%)). In my opinion, such makes the sniper too powerful because now he is the team's best boss killer and the team's best cc. If the absurdly high 80% was reduced to 66%, then that would lower the average killed to 3. at 60%, the average is 2.5. However, to compensate for this loss, the sniper could in turn gain some other bonus in his marksmanship skill. I was thinking of maybe having an up to 20% chance of ministun. Ministun does not usually interfere with the attack of an enemy, but can definitely help a teammate if he's being chased by a boss. What's great about this change would be that it would put the focus of the sniper back to boss killing without making him too much weaker. It will also make him more of a team player for the reason described above. This should be an easy change.
8) Nerf the HO's droid ammo upgrade skill: This is another balancing suggestion that many people will hate me for suggesting. Currently, for only three skill points, you can increase the average damage of the HO's droid by 12. I believe that this is a broken ability and is overpowered. If you have 5 droids, then a mere three skill points will increase your damage output by 60 per .62 secs. The HO's chaingun weapon skill increases the damage output by 50 over 16 levels, so clearly there is something wrong. I may also be unaware of why this skill is so overpowered, and there may be a very good reason, so feel free to correct me. But anyway, I was thinking of balancing the droid ammo upgrade such that it would match the HO's incremental damage increase if the HO has two or three droids out. Your average HO can usually have 3 droids pretty easily, but I'd imagine that it's more like 2 droids in nightmare (though i've never played HO in nightmare). So plasma rounds on average increases your damage by 50/16 or 3.125 per skill point. For simplicity and to compensate for the slight gain in agility that the HO gets, let's say that this number is +4 per level. For two droids to get a total of +4 per level, each droid would +2 per level, and the exact numbers for this skill could be +1-3, +2-6, and +3-9. So if a HO puts a skill point into droid ammo, then his overall damage output will increase by the same amount as if he were to use plasma rounds, assuming that he has two droids. However, if he has more than two droids, it will increase by more, and so this change will still give him an incentive to keep his droids alive. The other option would be to optimize this skill for 3 droids, in which each droid would get +4/3, +8/3, and +4 average damage per level. The damage range increase for this could be +1-2, +2-3, and +3-5. Just to serve as a base of comparison, I did the calculations for if this skill is optimized for one droid, and in that case, each droid gets average damage increase of +4, +8, and +12, giving a damage range increase of +1-7, +2-14, and +3-21. These numbers are close to what the skill currently is at. Implementing this change will be easy as that it is simply changing numbers.
9) Air strike ability: This is a suggestion for an innate ability of a new character, maybe the watchman. This suggestion only really matters if you're looking for ideas. If the watchman already has all of his abilities laid in stone, then forget about this. Anyway, the air strike will be different than the ion strike or nuke strike in that its focus would be to disable, not to kill. Control of the ability will be to click four times, one for each wave. The first three waves each will have a cobra helicoptor (gnome chopper) come in from offscreen and blast a small area with cluster rockets. The fourth would be to have a bomber (goblin zepelin) come in and drop a napalm that will molotov a gigantic area. Again, this is just an idea. Implementation will be moderate in difficulty because though cluster rockets and molotov already exist, the whole thing will be a pain in the ass.
10) Boss ideas: This game has plenty of bosses, but it might be more fun if it had more bosses. Here are four ideas for new bosses that i don't really care if they get included or not. a) An umbrella tank that will sometimes spawn instead of the commies. It will use the same model as the APC but will be four times as big and will be guarded by several umbrella soldiers as well; b) use the slime beast model to create a boss that can slow people and also splits into pieces ever time it dies up to a certain amount of recursion; c) use the faceless void's forgotten model as an imobile boss that spawns in the park. since he's immobile, he's optional since you don't really have to go into the park. he can tentacle whip you, etc; d) kobold model, spawns in graveyard, very slow, practically immobile, uses his shovel to dig up zombies and boulders to toss at you, etc.
Whew... what a long post. So yes, I do know what redskull is on vacation, so you don't have to tell me that. This post is based on the faith that a new version will eventually come, as he stated before. Also if you don't like an idea, i don't care if you flame, but keep in mind that flaming is a waste of your time, not mine.
I like your first idea lol.
There is a post for bosses and other suggestions btw.
Tact with chain gun seems weird to me, I would probably still use rifle.
Uh.... the changing of models is probably not going to be done because swat is a pretty big file and it doesn't have that much room left to add stuff. Models take up more space than coding so I think not probably....
Hi. Welcome to the forums.
squishable wrote: |
1) Make it easier to escape from the Z menu: For most characters it doesn't really matter, but for those like the psycho who has to spam mind slay/rot, having to press ESC after using one of these abilities is a huge pain. |
Just make the ESC key a reflex. It isn't that hard. But this is probably the most practical idea here.
squishable wrote: |
2) Change the droid model from marine to space orc: In my opinion, the marine model is overused in swat. Everything that is not a zombie is a marine. |
I like this idea. But the LAD is already distinguishable with its distinct brown colour.
squishable wrote: |
3) Change the model of the mutant: Same issue here. The mutant model is used for both the mutant and a boss. |
They're pretty vastly different in size. I'd think they were easy enough to differentiate.
squishable wrote: |
4) Give prowlers a lifesteal ability: Everybody loves vampires, and from what I can tell, people don't often chose prowler. So this change will simply make prowler more appealing. |
Two things don't work about this. Lifesteal is an unstable ability that can cause the game to crash. Blizzard broke the ability long ago. Second, Prowler is plenty appealing. If red were to take away the Agility and leave just the Night Vision, that would not make the Prowler trait much less appealing. Besides that, how would you leech life using bullets in a SciFi setting? If it's Fantasy, it's workable, but not SciFi.
squishable wrote: |
5) Let the tactician chose a chaingun in addition to the assault rifle: The assualt rifle does not really take advantage of weakpoint like the chaingun does. |
Eh, why for? He does fine with the Assault Rifle, and it's also for flavour reasons. He's not strong enough to lug around a heavy Chaingun.
squishable wrote: |
6) Buff the psychologist's epic: People may disagree with me, but it always seemed to me that the psycho has a really lame epic. So I was thinking that maybe it can be improved slightly in a very interesting and fun way. Starting at level 50, mind rot, in addition to increasing in radius, can also have a chance to mind control the targeted zombies. |
The game is set up to support this idea with minor tweaking. If you've ever used a maphack, you'll see that there's a lot of abilities which are just placeholders or markers, with no commentary. Further, his Epic bonus is fine as is.
squishable wrote: |
7) Nerf the sniper's marksmanship skill: Ok, I'm going to get flamed for suggesting this, but whatever. At max level, the sniper has an 80% chance to pierce. Since this is a geometric distribution, that means that the average number of targets killed will be 5 (in a geometric distribution, the average is 1/p, where p is the chance of failure (20%)). In my opinion, such makes the sniper too powerful because now he is the team's best boss killer and the team's best cc. |
The Sniper needs some 40 skill points to achieve this effect. Other guns can come close with a lot less than 40 skill points.
squishable wrote: |
8) Nerf the HO's droid ammo upgrade skill: This is another balancing suggestion that many people will hate me for suggesting... The HO's chaingun weapon skill increases the damage output by 50 over 16 levels, so clearly there is something wrong. |
Plasma Rounds isn't just damage, it is also a slowing effect. Slowing effects are highly useful.
squishable wrote: |
9) Air strike ability: This is a suggestion for an innate ability of a new character, maybe the watchman. |
I think this idea has been suggested and shot down on at least seven previous occasions.
squishable wrote: |
10) Boss ideas: This game has plenty of bosses, but it might be more fun if it had more bosses. |
You need to identify a role for this boss first, then design a boss designed to fill this role, and then sell it to us.
well the super mutant point is sorta useless since theyre supposed to be the same only that the boss is waay bigger and more badass....
u think redscull will be mad that u mispelled his name T.T
some good points in there nonetheless... always good to see improvement idears
Pierce isn't overpowered at all. First of all you need to kill the target within the same shot, and since you can't use aim with that, the only sure way is with a crit. That more than half the chance to 1 shot an enemy and the chance that 5 guys would be perfectly lined up in such a way it would pierce to them doesn't happen with every shot.
Now airstrike sounds very farmiliar to another skill.... hmmm plasma grenades, no no. Ahh i got it, mini nuke
Life steal wouldln't make much sense with bullets nor does HP have a drastic effect, not as much as mana.
Plasma rounds is plenty balanced, it cost mana and requires a lot of skill point investment. Mana the droids doesn't have and skill points the HO needs to invest in both plasma rounds and droid skills.
Sry if you feel flammed but this is the nature of the forum. As this is a forum, there is always somebody to shutdown ideas. At least were not like big companies who would just ignore you.
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squishable wrote:
7) Nerf the sniper's marksmanship skill: Ok, I'm going to get flamed for suggesting this, but whatever. At max level, the sniper has an 80% chance to pierce. Since this is a geometric distribution, that means that the average number of targets killed will be 5 (in a geometric distribution, the average is 1/p, where p is the chance of failure (20%)). In my opinion, such makes the sniper too powerful because now he is the team's best boss killer and the team's best cc.
The Sniper needs some 40 skill points to achieve this effect. Other guns can come close with a lot less than 40 skill points. |
And you always reach level 50 by Nemesis , where the REAL swat begins.
What people like and want about the sniper is consistency, consistency, consistency. People like the fact that on average it will kill 5 zombies and every single other damn thing. People don't like flame and giving it ammo cause to be consistent, you need more zombies and it has shit range. Rocket has the same thing cause for 120-310 that's 200 damage difference and near end zombies have 1k hp. so that's on average a 5 shot kill, it could be 10 or 3 people are scarred it's 3. For sniper it's 1. That's how people lose to nem. cause they are really shit at controlling the mob. That's how easy it is on solo.
Problem is that in the context is that, the sniper does everything it's not fair.
The high damage combined with range means aim+crit is WOW. Imo a Dragoon Mav with 6 ammo could get the same output for CC but people want their boss killing power. WHORES!
Change the Demo bonus to LAD. Makes no sense. Claymore? cmon..... Have it have gear-mod into it's system!
+1 armor, +16% dmg and +16% regen?[/u][/i]
A dragoon Mav can't even come close to a Sniper in CC since it doesn't have perma aim-5 seconds. Without the range from Pierce or the ability to cam you're basically not even a fourth of what the Sniper brings to the team.
I smell NotD or something like that.
of all the points made i like the first, since even after playing swat for so long, i still mess the keys up after using the z hotkey. and i'm so used to hitting z then something i need it's kinda annoying when you use packrat cause if you are already in the menu, hitting the z key will activate the pouch and not just be inactive.
i don't smell NotD, i smell warhammer 40k that is
yeah, these responses are mostly what i expected. i did see some confusion though, which is not surprising because i explained some of the things pretty poorly. so as clarification:
the space orc already exists as a model in WC3 and i've seen it in plenty of custom games. skinning it will be the only real change to make
i guess that lifesteal is a bit silly and i figured that it would be unnecessary. however, the argument that it is not sci-fi is incorrect. if nanites can construct spy cameras, then of course they can also rip off chunks of enemy flesh, process them, turn them into beef jerky, and feed them to your marine. anyway, the prowler trait isn't very sci-fi to begin with. getting stronger and faster during the night sounds like fantasy to me
to answer the question of "when will zombies be lined up five in a row?", well, if you walked around the map correctly such that all the zombies are behind you, then the sniper will be very cheap. i suppose that the sniper is only good for priority control early game, so this may be ok, but his superior cc ability still makes the game a lot less fun for the dedicated cc units
i was not saying that plasma rounds were inbalanced, but rather the droid ammo skill was. consider the tanking HO and the cc HO. the tanking HO can invest all his points tanking skills and then put a mere three points into droid ammo. where as the cc HO puts his points into plasma rounds, droid ammo, and other stuff. the end result and comparison is that the tanking HO will have nearly the same cc ability as the cc HO just from the measly three points into droid ammo. it's true that the droids don't get the slow effect that is obtained with plasma rounds, but the droid ammo skill is still really cheap
at least this is my opinion, but whatever, swat is still a great game whether or not these units get balanced
Well lets see...
You're still going to need 19 nanites for your droids to not get WTFOWNED.
You're going to need all 8 points into cells so you can make a fourth
3 droid ammo, at least 1 integrity, etc etc etc...
30-40 points invested should get you good CC. I'm not seeing the problem.
squishable wrote: |
i guess that lifesteal is a bit silly and i figured that it would be unnecessary. however, the argument that it is not sci-fi is incorrect. if nanites can construct spy cameras, then of course they can also rip off chunks of enemy flesh, process them, turn them into beef jerky, and feed them to your marine. anyway, the prowler trait isn't very sci-fi to begin with. getting stronger and faster during the night sounds like fantasy to me
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I know this sounds weird, but I was up late one night flipping through channels and I came across this Jason movie on the SciFi channel. Yea, doesn't sound like it would until Jason and the chick he's trying to kill get frozen and are restored way into the future. Well, one of the tech things the future had was these "nanite" like things, they created flesh and then repaired the body. (ex. Guy who had his arm cut off got it put back on by these nanites and it was good as new) In the end, Jason got pwnzored landed on the nanite table, and was healed till the point where no organic material could be implemented into his system. Smells like cyborg Jason eh? Yea, thats kinda what ended up happening.
Anyway, this idea doesn't sound too "fantasy-like" to me, maybe something along the lines of "life-steal thorns" would be more appropriate, but not necessarily for the prowler trait. *idea* maybe this can replace the controversy over the XCM or w/e for the borgie eh? Sounds pretty borgish to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. ;,,;
Realistic or not, vamp will not be implemented because blizzard fucked up the coding and it causes splits.
squishable wrote: |
i guess that lifesteal is a bit silly and i figured that it would be unnecessary. however, the argument that it is not sci-fi is incorrect. if nanites can construct spy cameras, then of course they can also rip off chunks of enemy flesh, process them, turn them into beef jerky, and feed them to your marine. anyway, the prowler trait isn't very sci-fi to begin with. getting stronger and faster during the night sounds like fantasy to me |
Eating lots of carrots and training in dark environments can and will achieve Prowler-like effects in real life, particularly with the vision. It's not Science Fiction, it's Fact. Spy cameras are mechanical contraptions, as are Nanites. That doesn't need any magical explanation. Nanites are just tiny little robots that combine to perform practically any necessary function. Nanites are a staple of SciFi. As for lifesteal... yes, that is a very reasonable explanation, and was in fact used for the Mecha Mutt until a patch broke Lifesteal. But you are forgetting one thing - the flesh needs to be returned to you. Mecha Mutt, this was pretty simple since he's a melee attacker. Unless the projectiles you're firing are boomerangs, the bullets are going to hit the zombie and stay on the zombie. Thus, no flesh is returned to you for processing.
squishable wrote: |
to answer the question of "when will zombies be lined up five in a row?", well, if you walked around the map correctly such that all the zombies are behind you, then the sniper will be very cheap. i suppose that the sniper is only good for priority control early game, so this may be ok, but his superior cc ability still makes the game a lot less fun for the dedicated cc units |
Even so, the Sniper Rifle still needs forty skill points to achieve such an effect. Other weapons require sixteen to achieve a comparable amount of pwnage. That is, the Sniper Rifle is far less efficient CC in terms of capability versus points invested.
squishable wrote: |
it's true that the droids don't get the slow effect that is obtained with plasma rounds, but the droid ammo skill is still really cheap |
Way back when, Mini-Droids were piss-weak. red needed a way to buff them so they'd really be worth keeping out. The Cells&Droids ability was his answer, and it has worked adequately without overpowering them too much. Yes, the Droid Ammo skill is very efficient, but players are destroying old Droids occasionally to reconstruct them with higher stats. This is an offset to the power offered by Droid Ammo.
dude, nanites are MAGIC
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