Enhanced attack Welder vs Khaara
rofldinho
Join Date: 2009-07-25 Member: 68259Members
Join Date: 2009-07-25 Member: 68259Members
<i>Edit: changed the original post as a more diverse set of ideas looks to be better than the original one.</i>
There's a ton of possibilities that could be done with the welder to make it more useful and more "relevant" to the hostile environment than the standard welder in the first NS. Such as:
- Hoover+filter facility to remove Lerk gasses.
- Stun gun attack, as per the developer's idea earlier on this year. Alternatively, since this is a welder, you could have a bolt-action type nailgun attack, that will shoot a heavy duty nail (similar to the one at the end of the Arachnaphobia movie) and pin Skulks and Lerks to a wall for 1-2 seconds. This would make sense for a welder since firing a large nail is what you'd use in construction.
- Modern Warfare (or Aliens the movie) style alien "heartbeat" sensors. When you have the Welder selected, you get a mini radar on the side. I know we have scan and tracking, but that's for the whole team and for moving aliens - this might be more useful for alien structures for example and for an individual who is leading a small group of marines to act as a spotter (without the commander spending too much res on scan/tracking).
- Medpack style injection to heal teammates, or like in Left 4 Dead 2, adrenaline shots that give temporary HP to the teammate. So you can weld teammates, but it will also have lets say 2-3 injections to boost hp (either permanently or temporarily). This would make it a strategic alternative for the commander, so instead of dropping medpacks to teammates you give the enhanced welder to someone which would reduce the overall need to spend res on medpacks.
- Close quarters alien armour remover. Primarily a counter for an Onos rush.
etc etc.
I'm sure you could find flaws and balance issues in all of those ideas, but then it's just an idea - as with any idea, the finer points can always be adjusted by the developers. I appreciate that some will argue that a welder should only be to weld, and that there's no need for additional functionality, but again, the welder is there, upgrading it should be easier for UWE than designing a whole new weapon that would take up one of the other slots, and it'll just add additional options and usefulness to the welder itself.
There's a ton of possibilities that could be done with the welder to make it more useful and more "relevant" to the hostile environment than the standard welder in the first NS. Such as:
- Hoover+filter facility to remove Lerk gasses.
- Stun gun attack, as per the developer's idea earlier on this year. Alternatively, since this is a welder, you could have a bolt-action type nailgun attack, that will shoot a heavy duty nail (similar to the one at the end of the Arachnaphobia movie) and pin Skulks and Lerks to a wall for 1-2 seconds. This would make sense for a welder since firing a large nail is what you'd use in construction.
- Modern Warfare (or Aliens the movie) style alien "heartbeat" sensors. When you have the Welder selected, you get a mini radar on the side. I know we have scan and tracking, but that's for the whole team and for moving aliens - this might be more useful for alien structures for example and for an individual who is leading a small group of marines to act as a spotter (without the commander spending too much res on scan/tracking).
- Medpack style injection to heal teammates, or like in Left 4 Dead 2, adrenaline shots that give temporary HP to the teammate. So you can weld teammates, but it will also have lets say 2-3 injections to boost hp (either permanently or temporarily). This would make it a strategic alternative for the commander, so instead of dropping medpacks to teammates you give the enhanced welder to someone which would reduce the overall need to spend res on medpacks.
- Close quarters alien armour remover. Primarily a counter for an Onos rush.
etc etc.
I'm sure you could find flaws and balance issues in all of those ideas, but then it's just an idea - as with any idea, the finer points can always be adjusted by the developers. I appreciate that some will argue that a welder should only be to weld, and that there's no need for additional functionality, but again, the welder is there, upgrading it should be easier for UWE than designing a whole new weapon that would take up one of the other slots, and it'll just add additional options and usefulness to the welder itself.
Comments
<!--quoteo--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->As an alternative, if devour is still in the game for the Onos, maybe the advanced/enhanced Welder could have some facility for instantly releasing a marine that has been swallowed. This could be done in a number of ways - maybe an injection or poisonous dart attack from the Welder into the onos that causes it to release the contents of it's stomach (through the mouth of course :P).<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
then it's not really a welder is it, welder's should be for welding by definition (metal binding/etc). also, there's no word on devour making a comeback so there's little use for it.
then it's not really a welder is it, welder's should be for welding by definition (metal binding/etc). also, there's no word on devour making a comeback so there's little use for it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
You say Marine's advantage is based on range - that's exactly my point. This is a backup weapon for when you lose that advantage. What happens when for example there's an Onos rush at Marine base, or a fade rush, and you're pegged back in your spawn area and constantly being overrun by big aliens with moderate HP and high armour?
The point is that it'd be a good weapon to use in a defensive situation where close quarters is inevitable. Furthermore, it's a teamwork orientated device - you say it's a bad idea because a gun will do more damage so it's better to just shoot, but that's why I've said this should have some sort of bonus to make it worthwhile - i.e. a significant reduction in Khaara armour as an example of that. Therefore, your teammates will have to actually kill the kharaa, you're more like a support class helping your team to take down the bigger aliens quickly. As for marines blocking teammate fire, given that this is primarily something that would be useful vs an onos (which has significant amounts of armour), I'm not sure this would be all that big an issue given how big the onos is.
I mean, based on your post, why bother even having a knife then? Clearly melee is part of the game, and it's not encouraging people to run around with a knife or with an attack welder because any half-brained gamer will know that they'll merely die easily if they do this.
As for what makes this worth the time and effort, the fact that you have a welder in the game already makes this worthwhile, and you do get good players often resorting to melee (even welding) as a last ditch form of attack. So it would only add further options for marines whilst being an enhancement of something that is already in the game. On the face of it, it'd be pretty easy for UWE to implement, as it's just a different skin for the weapon plus increased stats on the attack vs alien armour.
It's an upgraded welder, it would still weld just like a normal welder (hence why by definition I called it a "welder" - if you're that much of a stickler for names, then call it something else if that pleases you).
I'm merely saying as an additional idea that it could have a secondary attack that would be useful in specific situations only. IF devour were in the game, maybe it could have a mechanism for extracting the marine. If devour isn't in the game, then something else as an additional attack might be useful. Possibly even the tazer gun feature the NS developers mused over earlier.
I just feel the core of the game should be focused on before a last ditch fun item that really has no use beyond the average pubber who wants to have fun suiciding (yes, I did say pubber, but trust me people who care little about the team as a whole and are in it for only personal enjoyment and not the team's will suicide with equipment. Add the fact that marines can buy their own stuff now, expect this to only make them waste more res doing fun stuff that's detrimental to the team). Yes, I don't want to deal with my teammates using the weapon in the wrong manner because that's how people will use them, go look at TF2 where an engineer will seldom use his shotgun that gives him range and more damage and will stick with his wrench and get himself killed because the wrench also heals the sentry and it's the only weapon most people use. I think it's important to think of the failures when people get a weapon and will choose to use it for the logical use but in terrible situations just because they have it.
Anyways, something I'd like to point out is there is very little cost to implement it, perhaps some model tweaks to make it noticeably unique (color changes?), and some game code, but otherwise the base welder is there to use.
However, I do agree that it doesn't feel economically sound. Last ditch for those frantic few seconds of usefulness? I don't see it. And yes, the knife is almost useless in actual combat except against Skulks.
Besides, we have other melee-ish weapons already. Assuming the flamethrower is still in for infestation clearing, then that fills in this gap nicely as well.
Unless this is a serious zomg armor reducer, I'm not seeing it be economically feasible, and simply being another distraction for new players to get confused about. However, applying some kind of armor weakness, so for say 10 seconds they take double damage to their armor, THEN this might be useful. You're still almost assuredly dead, but your buddies can help take down the enemy. Granted, I'm worried this will make people try to Leroy into melee range when for a Marine melee should be a last resort.
Now, if you want to suggest some other kind of melee weapon, please be specific. However, you'll be fighting against the extra modeling cost then.
I mean it's already generating huge amounts of electricity, not unreasonable to think they might include the ability to zap aliens with it.
Maybe instead of a swiss-knife-like welder, lets give marines a chainsaw. That'd tear any armor or any living thing apart.
Another idea I find more feasible is to a) make every welder automatically upgraded or b) marines spawn with welders. This is kinda off topic, but it'd promote teamwork a bit more with everybody being able to repair each others armors, but would make aliens have a much harder time killing marines in general because they always have access to them. The welder upgrade should cost at least 20 res though and be semi-feasible to use likes cat packs.
I mean it's already generating huge amounts of electricity, not unreasonable to think they might include the ability to zap aliens with it.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Which functionality do you speak of? The rumored arc of electricity? Or the even more rumored stun? Or just the zomg decon buildings powers.
<!--quoteo(post=1772293:date=May 25 2010, 10:20 PM:name=brownymaster)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (brownymaster @ May 25 2010, 10:20 PM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1772293"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->Another idea I find more feasible is to a) make every welder automatically upgraded or b) marines spawn with welders. This is kinda off topic, but it'd promote teamwork a bit more with everybody being able to repair each others armors, but would make aliens have a much harder time killing marines in general because they always have access to them. The welder upgrade should cost at least 20 res though and be semi-feasible to use likes cat packs.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
An upgrade to auto-equip welders to the whole team? Would be kinda cool, but then what's the point of ever buying one yourself? Unless the research is expensive, at which point you only would get it to save costs at Heavy Armor (i.e. instead of spam entire team w/ welders, buy upgrade once, entire team has welders!). Maybe another idea would be a comm castable (i.e. spend res each time you want to use this power) to give the entire team welders. I can think of some awesome times to do this. Forward push team, running low on HP and armor, bam welders for push team they can heal everyone up! Or a cost-reward analysis for ninja-ing a welder to that one guy in the corner (rest of team didn't really need the welders, but meh).
If there's a "better" welder, I assume any upgrade research will auto-propagate to all and future welders. Having two types of welders running around would feel kinda lame imo. I mean, assuming it's not even worth a new model, and it will be a better version of a welder all around, why keep around the lame older version?
Any/all.
Just saying that rather than having a tazer, incorporate it into the welder, if the features are balanced but people don't want to lose the knife/pistol then a bigger, bulkier welder could probably accomodate them while looking a bit more reasonable and not sacrificing the current sidearm.
you dont wanna screw with that too much - having said that, if the aliens have some sort of counter - e.g. grab/latch onto the marines back , this might work
I don't quite get why you've chosen this line of arguing. IRL? What is "IRL" about Natural Selection? These aliens don't exist as far as we know, and we're not in space fighting a race of them like you do in the game. Nor do some of the weapons exist. I'm not sure getting unlimited ammo from a dispenser is possible in real life, or having medpacks and ammo drop in front of you out of thin air thanks to a commander guy sitting in a little cubicle somewhere else in the building. And do people in real life have HP? Is that how it works IRL? So if you get a gash in your forearm in real life, can you just use a medpack to heal it instantly because the medpack adds +50 health points back onto you?
Get where I'm going with this?
If you dislike the idea and think it's crap, then fair enough. But trying to put forward your version of what you think would suit "real life", or what you consider a "welder" by definition to be in rea life, is irrelevant imo. Not only is it based on your opinion which seems to be limited by your lack of imagination or openness to other ideas, but it's just not relevant to a game where many things aren't true to real life, because if they were then the game would be no fun. I don't want to play a game where I twist my ankle after a small land from a jetpack, but that would be more true to real life. Regarding "lack of imagination", do you really think such an advanced "army" in the future would have welders that do no damage, or have on other uses? Surely in the "real world" such an item would have additional uses because if a marine has to carry it, why not include other features?
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What he's trying to say that for all practical uses of the weapons in the framework of NS1, you almost never got out your Knife unless you had no ammo (at which point why isn't your comm dropping more ammo?) or were knifing a building. Heck, I'd often try to reload my pistol instead of whipping out my knife. So, btypicallysically, no one as a Marine in NS1 ever wants to get into a melee battle with Aliens since that's their domain. Instead, they'd use ranged weapons even at close range, hoping to stay just far enough away to avoid melee attacks and shoot on the approach and the retreat.
<!--quoteo(post=1772338:date=May 26 2010, 07:30 AM:name=rofldinho)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (rofldinho @ May 26 2010, 07:30 AM) <a href="index.php?act=findpost&pid=1772338"><{POST_SNAPBACK}></a></div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->There's a ton of possibilities that could be done with the welder to make it more useful and more "relevant" to the hostile environment than the standard welder in the first NS. Such as:
- Hoover+filter facility to remove Lerk gasses.
- Stun gun attack, as per the developer's idea earlier on this year. Alternatively, since this is a welder, you could have a bolt-action type nailgun attack, that will shoot a heavy duty nail (similar to the one at the end of the Arachnaphobia movie) and pin Skulks and Lerks to a wall for 1-2 seconds. This would make sense for a welder since firing a large nail is what you'd use in construction.
- Modern Warfare (or Aliens the movie) style alien "heartbeat" sensors. When you have the Welder selected, you get a mini radar on the side. I know we have scan and tracking, but that's for the whole team and for moving aliens - this might be more useful for alien structures for example and for an individual who is leading a small group of marines to act as a spotter (without the commander spending too much res on scan/tracking).
- Medpack style injection to heal teammates, or like in Left 4 Dead 2, adrenaline shots that give temporary HP to the teammate. So you can weld teammates, but it will also have lets say 2-3 injections to boost hp (either permanently or temporarily). This would make it a strategic alternative for the commander, so instead of dropping medpacks to teammates you give the enhanced welder to someone which would reduce the overall need to spend res on medpacks.
- Close quarters alien armour remover. Primarily a counter for an Onos rush.<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Lerk gas filter... not really a fan. Especially since they don't really need more counters. The welder already partially counters it by healing back the armor lost.
Personally I'm always against stun features in my FPS games. Really the only incapacitation attacks that work are some kind of flashbang in a tactical shooter or L4D where they are strictly enforcing teamwork on the survivors.
The heartbeat sensor idea would be kinda cool, but doesn't fit the theme of the welder as well. Plus, there's been many other idea to employ local beacons to act as a local Motion Tracking device.
The adrenaline/temporary hp booster is actually not a bad idea. It amplifies its primary role, healing, and lets you be useful even with low armor upgrades. I think a temporary boost would work best like the pills in L4D and some kind of feature to prevent spam. Either it takes time to boost (like NS1 armor welding) or there's a cooldown after a large injection. We can explain it away as nanites....
And lastly, again, I'm not liking trying to get Marines to a melee fight intentionally.
Another decent idea was to re-use a taser ability. Perhaps the arc of electricity could come back. Kind of a charge and discharge deal. Charge it up, and on release it stays up and has larger range based on charge time. Would provide a mid-to-melee combat ability and help support your team against large numbers of Aliens, but ineffective/not efficient against only 1. However, since the ability set was originally kinda hazy, I don't know how far we should take this line of thought. It's a bit hard to divine what the devs had in mind.
Nothing big, just enough to annoy the alien losing 3 to 5 hp every 3 seconds even after it's killed the welder.
No last ditch effort, no economic problems, totally irrelevant to gameplay, so minuscule i doubt the idea would go anywhere. go me!
the mini rechargeable med kinda sounds good actually.
Could even make it so that like in L4D, the player getting healed is forced to stand still for 1-2 seconds (not too long) whilst the injection is being administered from the welder.
This "forced pause" would therefore almost be like a balancing act for both sides, because from the Khaara point of view, the downside is that an enemy marine is being healed, but the upside is that you have two marines being static targets for a second or two. Might interfere with the speed of NS gameplay though.
no point in standing somewhere and not being able to react / being held down against your will.
It's a welder because it's primary function is to weld, and it's currently in the game as a welder. Just because it might have additional functionality or attachments doesn't stop it being a welder. A gun with a grenade launcher attachment is still a gun, is it not? Or does adding a crosshair to a gun turn it into "a crosshair device"? I'm pretty sure all those attachments in Modern Warfare for every gun doesn't change the name of the gun itself (e.g. ACR with shotgun, nade launcher, sniper scope, thermal, etc etc), or stop it being an assault riffle. Exact same concept applies.
Furthermore, this is just an idea - why are you getting bogged down in names? "Enhanced Welder" isn't exactly a creative name, is it, so the obvious implication is that I'm not bothering about the name, just the functionality. If you're so uptight about it being called a welder when it might have additional functionality, then by all means come up with a name that will satisfy you, because I'm not bothered about names in this thread. Call it a MediWeld maybe. Or ArmWeld. Or "Welder v2 Introverted Dispenser Edition". Whatever.
Hence what I was getting at in my post. It doesn't seem like you're genuinely debating what was suggested - just finding anything and everything possible to shoot down an idea that you disliked, including silly things like what you consider to be a welder or what a welder in the real world does.
As for practicality and spellman's response, that's mere opinion and playing style. Spellmen will opt to reload instead of going melee. That's his choice. It's not the only way to play the game. I'm a decent player, I've been in decent NS teams, and I can assure you that plenty of good players resort to melee under different circumstances. Furthermore, this is an idea for different functionality in a game that is relatively complex. If you had a Heavy Armour rush vs an Onos rush, and not enough res to drop the last heavy armoured marine a HMG like you did for his teammates, then would it not be an interesting tactical option to give him an attack welder of sorts that is suited for close range heavy armour damage? If the rest of his teammates are capable of ranged damage, why not have 1 person running around significantly weakening enemy onos? Especially if you gave him a catalyst boost. Point is, there are numerous options for this sort of device. Even a welder that is better designed to take down alien structures quickly.
As for further scenarios where it might be useful, what about the group teamwork situations, where as a group of marines attacking you often have one person who is constantly welding everyone around him? This sort of suggestion makes it practical for him to continue welding instead of constantly stoppign and switching, because if something like an onos or fade gets close, he doesn't have to face downtime switching to a different weapon as it's still a viable option to do heavy armour damage (same applies if you're welding the CC). You might argue that it's better to just switch and attack, but then that's your playing style, there's nothing to say it's 100% better (for instance, you might switch and continue attacking with your HMG, which in turn sees your teammate (and then afterwards yourself) killed - if you had continued welding, the onos attacking you would have been taken down by your teammates and you would have repaired your teammate's armour in time to survive the next attack).
Now I'm not saying that idea of armour damage should be taken further, as I didn't know there was going to be a flamethrower in NS2 (is there?) which might suffice. I'm just saying that I find it a bit unreasonable that you'd argue that there is "NO WAY" a weapon like this could or should be used just because it's your personal preference to play the game a certain way or you cant see the scenarios in which it might be useful. There are different types of good players who will use different things to their advantage based on different playing styles - not everyone is the same.
1) As far as we know, there is a flamethrower to help Marines clear DI. However, it isn't officially released, but there have been no information about removing it. At the same time, the flamethrower doing extra damage to armor doesn't seem sensible on an intuitive level. Welders and grenades would work well against "armor", but flamethrowers imply more damage to regular health/organics. At least that's how most games with armor/hp dichotomy operate (see Dystopia, all explosive weapons deal bonus to armor).
2) Theorycrafting to create situations an idea <i>might</i> work in is typically frowned upon. Please avoid randomly throwing around ideas, it makes you look like you're desperate.
Anyways, your idea isn't strictly bad, but there are much better ideas and your original doesn't fit the typical paradigm. Sure there will be that 1 epic re-use, and yes different players will employ different strategies than the norm, but the generic use still needs to make sense for the majority of players.
EDIT: In terms of holding onto the name, the reason is we'd like to re-use the model/concept in place. Trying to make something too different will require a new paradigm in the game, and people are adversely hostile to major gameplay changes without a very good reason. See taser backlash. So, it's easier to think in terms of a modified welder.
And yeah, I guess thinking in terms of a modified welder is simpler, but I just think of it as why I don't have my pistol shooting rockets, lmgs shooting out slowing goo, grenades healing nearby marines, etc. I like things to fit in with the environment and the function, not two randomly combined features like a taser and pistol which serve two different purposes in my mind.
EDIT: I just want to make this analogy. In CS, the awp is an amazing weapon, but only if you scope and stay still when you shoot. However, a person can choose to shoot the awp when their running or try to no scope only. Who's going to do better 99% of the time? The scoping and still shooting awper. But if you've ever watched a random frag vid, somebody there gets a lucky no scope and random moving kill. They were rewarded greatly for a bad tactic just off pure luck because they aimed somewhere in that direction and the RNG had the shot come out on someones head. The knife in CS was rarely used except for fun, and you really will get nowhere trying to use the knife only at all (running speed was the only benefit). Putting an effort to make the no scoping awper do better sometimes or the knife only player being able to get a few more knife kills for a bad playstyle isn't worth working on. Players will choose to reload their weapons and take cover instead of running at someone with a knife while they're reloading. I know CS is pretty symmetrical compared to NS (not completely, but to a huge degree). However, I still think that most of the tossed up ideas aren't good, and you should try to brainstorm something that is useful at least 30% of the time during fights without hurting other aspects of gameplay (<b>limit negative externalities</b>, this you really need to do)
The Swiss Army Knife: Does anything and everything the marines happen to want it to.