Difficulty of new monsters

Fro13 wrote:

Unless your sick like my and like to try and make the biggest swarm you can and just before you die, throw a deemer at your feet.

So when a super swarm sweeps trough the level and kills everyone we'll know who to blame.

ECHO wrote:

supertoast wrote:

At lower levels, more then one is more or less insta-death. Without quickfoot you can't outrun them unless you already have a trans set somewhere. And then added to how hard they are to it... It's fun, but a little too hard.

I say keep the gnats as they are, that'll teach Toast to not play his pseudo-engineer! (bwahaha! jk!)

I've noticed one of the gnats favorite foods is turtle soup as well.

supertoast wrote:

I've noticed one of the gnats favorite foods is turtle soup as well.

Blasphemy!

ECHO wrote:

supertoast wrote:

I've noticed one of the gnats favorite foods is turtle soup as well.

Blasphemy!

Who can resist a nice hot bowl of turtle soup.

Okay, most of the time I think that the red flies aren't really as bad as some people make them out to be. "They are tough, especially for an early wave monster, but not that tough." Well, I think I might be leaning the other way after

what happened today. Many of my faithful compatriots who were there would probably prefer this embarrassment be hidden away, but I think it stands as evidence that there may be some tweaking of the Red Fly Menace needed.

Or it could be just the wrong map with the wrong monsters (admittedly both of my deaths - my ghost and then my real death - were due to trying to get some distance on the little buggers to hit them with an avril, and then falling off of an edge).

"GASP" 3 100+ level players lost the map on wave 8, and I'm not counting Count since he probably came in on wave 8!!!!!!!!!! Those gnats are getting out of hand. Where's Szlat, I have the rope, who's got the tree and horse?

Don't feel bad Bot. I ghosted while playing Conduit, and they followed me to the ghosting destination and got me.

supertoast wrote:

ECHO wrote:

supertoast wrote:

At lower levels, more then one is more or less insta-death. Without quickfoot you can't outrun them unless you already have a trans set somewhere. And then added to how hard they are to it... It's fun, but a little too hard.

I say keep the gnats as they are, that'll teach Toast to not play his pseudo-engineer! (bwahaha! jk!)

I've noticed one of the gnats favorite foods is turtle soup as well.

How 'bout a little toast w/ honey?

(DC)DEMONSLAYER wrote:

"GASP" 3 100+ level players lost the map on wave 8, and I'm not counting Count since he probably came in on wave 8!!!!!!!!!! Those gnats are getting out of hand. Where's Szlat, I have the rope, who's got the tree and horse?

Don't feel bad Bot. I ghosted while playing Conduit, and they followed me to the ghosting destination and got me.

Who needs a tree... just get three more horses! Preferably all four of them being big ol warhorses, like Percherons, Belgians, or Clydesdales. Then again, just get four stakes, some leather, a bit of water... slower that way. Of course, if we summon some of the vamp razor flies...

I too have seen that problem with them following you as you ghost, just to nail you. And then, there are the times you get nailed by some bug that freezes you, like those new skarrj, and you are a smorgasborg to the razor flies. Next thing you know, you are looking at several of them.

Ok. The majority of talk in this thread has been about the Vampire Gnats, even though they are only on 3 waves. I have now submitted a nerfed version which may be more acceptable, once it makes it onto the server.

What about the other new monsters:

Null warlord. I suppose comment really needs to wait until Dru has finished it

Poison Queen. Only on the last wave. Too powerful? Nice, but should be kept to just the last wave? Null for longer?

Shell Gasbag. The gasbags that fire flak shells on waves 5 and 11. Has anybody noticed? Not worth bothering with? Needs to fire more often and do more damage? Needs to fire less often and do less damage?

Beam Warlord. The yellow/green one. Slightly weaker attack than a normal warlord, but doesn't miss quite as often. Should it be stronger, hit harder and/or have a magical attack? Should it fire more frequently?

Also what about the general wave mixture and content? Waves 6 and 14 are titan. Wave 10 skaarj. Wave 12 mainly warlords. Waves 13 and 15 slightly easier to give you chance to recover.
Is any particular wave too easy or too difficult? Are the gnats on the wrong waves? (I put them on waves 2,4, and 8 as I didn't expect them to be this much of a problem!)
Any monsters you are not seeing enough of, or you think may be in too many waves?

Any feedback gratefully accepted, and is necessary to get the balancing correct.

The poison monsters and vampire gnats do damage based upon the health of the player. This means they would tend to hit higher levels players for more than lower level players, as higher levels tend to have more health. Is this good?

Szlat wrote:

Poison Queen. Only on the last wave. Too powerful? Nice, but should be kept to just the last wave? Null for longer?

Last wave, very few of them (though the current number is probably good), shorter null. Null is almost insta death on last wave. This is what concerns me about the null warlords ...

Slzat wrote:

Shell Gasbag. The gasbags that fire flak shells on waves 5 and 11. Has anybody noticed? Not worth bothering with? Needs to fire more often and do more damage? Needs to fire less often and do less damage?

I've noticed them hitting me two or three times before I realize they're actually hitting me. The coloration makes them harder to spot, and without an avril, they can be a bit of a pain. But not on par with red skaarj, flies, or even ghost skaarj.

Slzat wrote:

Beam Warlord. The yellow/green one. Slightly weaker attack than a normal warlord, but doesn't miss quite as often. Should it be stronger, hit harder and/or have a magical attack? Should it fire more frequently?

Beam Warlord, if it is "weaker" and worth less xp/adren/score, is fine.

Szlat wrote:

Also what about the general wave mixture and content? Waves 6 and 14 are titan. Wave 10 skaarj. Wave 12 mainly warlords. Waves 13 and 15 slightly easier to give you chance to recover.
Is any particular wave too easy or too difficult? Are the gnats on the wrong waves? (I put them on waves 2,4, and 8 as I didn't expect them to be this much of a problem!)

Take the vamp gnats out of 2, put them on 6 or 10.

Szlat wrote:

The poison monsters and vampire gnats do damage based upon the health of the player. This means they would tend to hit higher levels players for more than lower level players, as higher levels tend to have more health. Is this good?

I don't know if it should be a direct correlation though, if you could adjust it as such. In other words, as health increases, the percentage taken from the player might increase as well. Or maybe not ...

Have to agree with Bot's thoughts. To me, the waves are very well balanced as they are, once the gnat problem is corrected.

Szlat wrote:

Poison Queen. Only on the last wave. Too powerful? Nice, but should be kept to just the last wave? Null for longer?

This is the one that shoots the same weapon the buggy in ONS does? I love them as they scare the hell out of me, and I have seen them cause a lot of deth amongst the higher levels by tying them down while the monsters take turns… But I don’t think they are overpowered.

Shell Gasbag. The gasbags that fire flak shells on waves 5 and 11. Has anybody noticed? Not worth bothering with? Needs to fire more often and do more damage? Needs to fire less often and do less damage?

Just fine as far as I care, their aim is spot on and they fire fast enough.. cause plenty of trouble for mr L25 (me)

Beam Warlord. The yellow/green one. Slightly weaker attack than a normal warlord, but doesn't miss quite as often. Should it be stronger, hit harder and/or have a magical attack? Should it fire more frequently?

It should fire more frequently but with less power per shot, it’s a nice balance for the nearly foolproof “stand still and they cant hit you” tactic often employed against warlords.

Szlat wrote:

Poison Queen. Only on the last wave. Too powerful? Nice, but should be kept to just the last wave? Null for longer?

Also what about the general wave mixture and content?

I wouldn't mind seeing queens(poison and regular) back in wave 12. Get rid of the skarrj and what not. They seemed pretty out of place. I kinda just shrug those guys off while I'm dealing with the warlords.

the null is definitely long enough on the poison queens. Bot says insta death, but I find I have plenty of time to trans away before the barrage of damage comes. It's like falling off the edge of the map, if you trans too late, you're dead.

I agree with just about everything Bot and Fro have said, but I'm not so sure about null warlords. They're a tough challenge even without the null code in place. Add in poison queens on wave 12 and whoa...
I'd say the queens would need toning down if they came in another wave besides 16.

The poison queen is pure death for anyone without high vamp, as far as I've played. As an LA I can't kill them when they put up the shield, and as I'm usually globing, can't get the adren to keep it up. As a medic I stand relatively little chance in general, since there's no hope to heal as fast as all the monsters around will hurt. Transing away helps sometimes, but not always. Got telefragged doing it once. The null ought to be a little shorter, I think. And maybe the null and poison shouldn't affect you when you're globing?

Flakbags aren't too bad. Good beaming material. Don't do too much damage, but are a bit hard to hit as a medic. As with all flying monsters, though. I think they're alright as is.

Beam warlord is usually no real problem. If the point is to make them weaker than the normal ones, then it's a success. Not too easy, of course, but easier.

On to the more general questions.

I personally think the skaarj are in a few too many waves. When I say skaarj, I mean the non-avril-able type, mixed with the lava and ghost sometimes. (In other words, ignoring the skaarj sniper and the one with a shield... and only partially referring to the lava and ghost ones.) Wave 12 used to be a bunch of warlords and queens, AKA: big stuff. Which generally make staying in a safer, not so central area alright, since the things don't move so fast to sneak up on you. But now, the skaarj come around pretty quick and find you. They're also showing up on quite a few other waves, and it just seems like they're around too much in general.

I think waves 13 and 15 have really lost any identity they used to have. Basically, to me, it just seems like a bunch of random monsters. Doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it. (Y'know, like the old 11.) 13 used to be fairly easy, with slow-moving brutes and giant gasbags. 15 used to be a little tough, with a lot of skaarj and not much else. There's no real predetermined strategy going into either of them, since you don't really know what you'll get.

ECHO wrote:

I'd say the queens would need toning down if they came in another wave besides 16.

Agreed.

I could probably go on forever about this stuff, but I think I've said too much already.