Advanced Gorge Movement
ThatOtherOtherGuy
Join Date: 2010-11-29 Member: 75340Members
Join Date: 2010-11-29 Member: 75340Members
So I was thinking about a few fundamental facets of NS2 that have been carried over from NS1 and I was figuring it'd be a good idea to think about them while we're still in beta.
One of those facets is obviously the fact that the gorge has no advanced movement abilities (no wall-walking, blink, flight, etc.). Now, this made a lot sense for NS1, The gorge is supposed to be a little slow in the first place, and besides that the fact that the gorge couldn't take alien-specific shortcuts was balanced in that: he didn't need to use them since he wasn't really supposed to be attacking anyways, finding a way into them to make bases was well rewarded from a tactical standpoint, and the gorge had no abilities that would have worked in conjunction with an advanced movement ability.
Now a lot of that has changed in NS2. Gorge is no longer responsible for putting down chambers. This means there's no longer a big reward for a gorge making it into a vent or otherwise special position. More importantly, I think, is that he does now have an ability that would work well some sort of special way to get around: hydras! Smart hydra placement is the last building responsibility left to the gorge, and the fact that they can be placed on the walls and the ceilings and whatever which way (as opposed to chambers, which couldn't) leaves a lot of open room for intelligent players to be creative and inventive with hydras. This is sorely hampered, however, by the fact that the gorge really has no way to reach and take advantage of all the new and detailed geometry in the maps now.
So this is idea in conclusion: I think it'd be a good idea for the gorge to have a way to use map geometry in conjunction with his hydras more easily. To this end, I propose that the gorge have wall-walking <b>on infestation</b>. The gorge would still be severely hampered by his speed when attacking, but when he is defending his base he will have a much larger set of options and tools to do it with. This would make the gorge a little more exciting to play and increase his skill ceiling while raising his skill floor barely at all.
Yay, nay? What do y'all think?
Just realized this should probably go onto the Ideas and Suggestion board. Whoops. If a mod sees this and thinks it too should be there, would you ever so kindly move it over? Sorry.
One of those facets is obviously the fact that the gorge has no advanced movement abilities (no wall-walking, blink, flight, etc.). Now, this made a lot sense for NS1, The gorge is supposed to be a little slow in the first place, and besides that the fact that the gorge couldn't take alien-specific shortcuts was balanced in that: he didn't need to use them since he wasn't really supposed to be attacking anyways, finding a way into them to make bases was well rewarded from a tactical standpoint, and the gorge had no abilities that would have worked in conjunction with an advanced movement ability.
Now a lot of that has changed in NS2. Gorge is no longer responsible for putting down chambers. This means there's no longer a big reward for a gorge making it into a vent or otherwise special position. More importantly, I think, is that he does now have an ability that would work well some sort of special way to get around: hydras! Smart hydra placement is the last building responsibility left to the gorge, and the fact that they can be placed on the walls and the ceilings and whatever which way (as opposed to chambers, which couldn't) leaves a lot of open room for intelligent players to be creative and inventive with hydras. This is sorely hampered, however, by the fact that the gorge really has no way to reach and take advantage of all the new and detailed geometry in the maps now.
So this is idea in conclusion: I think it'd be a good idea for the gorge to have a way to use map geometry in conjunction with his hydras more easily. To this end, I propose that the gorge have wall-walking <b>on infestation</b>. The gorge would still be severely hampered by his speed when attacking, but when he is defending his base he will have a much larger set of options and tools to do it with. This would make the gorge a little more exciting to play and increase his skill ceiling while raising his skill floor barely at all.
Yay, nay? What do y'all think?
Just realized this should probably go onto the Ideas and Suggestion board. Whoops. If a mod sees this and thinks it too should be there, would you ever so kindly move it over? Sorry.
Comments
I'd like to see bellyslide move faster and work up hills/stairs (costing no energy) and for gorges to always have the damage soaking ability available (costing energy). A good gorge will be able to slide about effectively to be where marines are not à la TF2's medic, while a worse gorge would get caught and have to use energy which would otherwise be able to heal on using the damage shield.
Essentially encouraging in-combat healing rather than hydra farming.
I'd like to see bellyslide move faster and work up hills/stairs (costing no energy) and for gorges to always have the damage soaking ability available (costing energy). A good gorge will be able to slide about effectively to be where marines are not à la TF2's medic, while a worse gorge would get caught and have to use energy which would otherwise be able to heal on using the damage shield.
Essentially encouraging in-combat healing rather than hydra farming.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While I agree with you about infestation only abilities, I think the situation is different here given that this is inherently a pure buff. The only "nerf" here would be that the gorge would be mostly stuck at his pre-buff levels of movement when attacking. Mostly I say, because remember the gorge can spray infestation anywhere. If he's moving forward past the infestation and he wants to climb up into a vent he can simply spray infestation on the wall to climb up on.
As far as the damage shield you propose goes, though, wouldn't that mean a gorge could never really attack? If taking damage costs energy and attacking costs energy then his offense would be sorely lacking, more so than it should be. Or maybe I'm just misunderstanding you, and you mean that the gorge could at anytime select an ability like any other weapon that'd passively turn the damage shield on? That'd fix my objection.
I like the idea, maybe this could be turn into an upgrade for the gorge (need to search it and buy it)
Yeah I don't really know what happened to that ability. It was being talked about by Flayra at least back when the gorge was revealed: <a href="http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/2009/8/gorge_reveal" target="_blank">http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns2/2009/8/gorge_reveal</a>
"One new ability we're giving the Gorge is a armored protection ability (name pending). By holding crouch, he can drop his cushy paunch to the ground, extend the armor plates on his back. Doing so will mean that he takes damage off his energy instead of health, as long as he can do so! Energy is like the equivalent of alien ammo, but it never runs out and is always replenishing itself. So if he goes immobile, he can soak quite a bit of damage without getting hurt. At some point though, he'll run out of energy and he'll need to be saved by other players or will need to get up and shuffle away. You can see this ability at 0:32 in the Gorge video."
So yeah, you'd have to select to use it.
I'm just wondering if suddenly the gorge has suction feet or if the infestation is helping him up there, he's not exactly light looking really. (someone's got to think of a fluff reason for this too of course :p)
This idea has merit, I would remove requiment for infestation though since the OC's will die without infestation and if they are placed elsewhere gorge need to keep them alive anyway.
I'd say it's worth testing. My gripes are that it might look silly seeing a gorge on a wall and that it makes the skulk feel even less than it is now. Yeah that's it.
Then it'd just be the skulk's ability.. and the OC's will die without infestation thing is kinda the point.. gorge infest ability from the sound of it is going to become a perma thing if connected to the main infestation anyways.
I don't think there's such thing as a pure buff as you mean. Buffs at this development phase will indirectly lead to other things not getting buffed or even getting nerfed.
For example if gorge has a strong ability to position itself for suitable bbomb positions it may lead to design decision of not making bbomb as powerful as it otherwise could have been. The key is finding a good balance where things have both limitations and possibilities, but can be left powerful enough to be satisfying to use.
I think Starcraft 1 is my favourite example of such design done succesfully; many units feels nearly imbalanced good, but then again they're also extremely weak and vulnerable in their own ways. As a result they're extremely satisfying to use.
As far as fluff though, I was thinking the gorge would literally be climbing the infestation. That's just the picture I had in mind, though.
Also, Wilson, the only problem with that is that hydras need infestation to stay alive, so just spitting hydras would be useless. So you would need a hydra + infestation spitter, but that has its own problems. Sure you could spit hydras onto the roof, but then there'd be no way to connect infestation up to it or heal it. Spitting hydras would also change a lot of other things that the gorge could do. An alien team could gorge rush into marine start, spit hydras on the roof, then start heal spraying each other and the marines. Not a foolproof strategy, but given that there'd be X gorges with X hydras against X rifle marines. Shooting the gorges would mean you couldn't look at the hydras while shooting the hydras meant you couldn't see the gorges. Pretty bad situation, I think.
The idea is you can only put hydras where you wall walk and you can only wall walk in your bases. Spitting makes the ability to offensive in my opinion.
I like the ranged hydra placement too, Wilson, but there's the issue of getting infestation up there in the first place. Right now infestation doesn't spread up there unless the gorge can get up there.
Also it stops the gorge from being very vulnerable while placing a hydra, I actually like that vulnerability even being on the ceiling it would have to at least have to wander into fire to place them in riskier places.
edit: I also still like the idea of getting into vents maybe.. but it might not look fitting, pudgy as they are and small as those vents can sometimes be.
This.
Plus, I'd like to see something like air control for the belly slide (slide control?) to make it more useful.
<b> +1 !!!! </b>
Completely agree! I think it would tie in nicely with the 'gardener' role they are going with. Sowing/shooting seeds around the place.
In regards to having infestation to place it on say the roof- why not do the same thing and have the mini pustules a projectile? I often walk around as gorge and wish I could place hydras in all the lovely roof spaces. If the commander can only see top down and place infestation on the floor that way, why not make gorges able to make the room more alien hive cave like by allowing them to shoot pustules onto the places the commander can't? It would be a nice symbiotic relationship between gorge and commander.
I think this would make for some awesome looking rooms that can provide strategic hydra placement and give great atmosphere. If people are worried they wont be able to kill the infestation on the roof, as soon as the floor infestation is destroyed the roof will soon follow.
Also we could still use the pre hydra and pustule 'ghost' image (similar to the fade one) to ensure accurate placement.
At first I thought that it might have to be something like a separate weapon(have normal fire act like the current healspray implementation, and alt-fire would lob a projectile almost exactly like bile bomb) and simply have hydra alt-fire lob a hydra bomb with similar trajectory. But that could easily lead to having too many weapon slots taken up.
Then I thought that maybe it would be a good alt-fire for the bile bomb itself? Pros: requires research, preventing early game griefing at marine start. Cons: ? might be too late to be useful in hive defense.
One other point though about gorges rushing in to marine start and putting hydras on ceilings would be that
1) if they are on the ceiling they are probably out of reach of the healspray, making them rather vulnerable.
That limitation, and not allowing a wallwalk(which I just can't picture without laughing, I keep imagining the christmas gorge with suction cups on his feet and a funny look on his face) adds another layer to the strategic choices of hydra placement. Do I put my hydra in a better firing position where it is harder to heal, or do I put it in a more attackable position where it can be more easily covered by healspray and chambers? I love the idea of having that trade off, although it might not practically work out as I am envisioning it.
I also think that hives should at least start infestation above the hive itself.(I so can't wait for full dynamic infestation implementation!)
That is my two cents anyway, I think that projectile infestation at least should be implemented definitely(have you ever tried to re-infest on a dying hydra that you put high on a wall? It is way too hard. DI will probably fix it anyway but...)
What this might also allow for is some of the sneaky vent tactics from NS1 (that's a good thing, IMO). An alien player could put some time and effort into spreading a pustule network throughout the map's ventilation system, making Croach only a short distance from tactically significant points despite the marines thinking the hallways between them are clear. When that weird alien goo starts coming out of the walls, the marines really ought to start paying attention...
Love the image of that!
Also, the image of pustles and infestation on the ceilings would really make the khaara base feel alive and growing. I would love to see hanging pustles with their orange light glowing everywhere. /drooool