BLOB THE *SUICIDE ROUND

Cheridan · Post by **Cheridan** » Thu May 26, 2016 11:03 am #180410

Holy shit is blob not fun. When people are suiciding in the tens as soon as they hear LEVEL 5 BIOHAZARD it's time to make some drastic changes before we end up just binning something that still has some potential in it.

Biggest issue is that it's just a goddamn slog. BUT LETS SEE WHY:

War of Attrition: Of course, this only applies to the crew. The crew requires limited medical supplies, limited guns with ammo supplied by a limited amount of rechargers, a limited amount of welding fuel tanks, and a limited amount of men to actually use all these things. Is there any reason that the blob HAS to delete things that it goes over? Just have it engulf things, and then the station can reclaim resources back from the blob. Make standard weapons like spears etc more effective. The reason people have come up with cheese strategies like rushing X-rays or buying dozens of laser guns from Cargo is because THAT'S THE ONLY THING THAT WORKS.

It's completely unsatisfying to just bash at this wall of goo and not make any progress. The health of the blob and the speed it regenerates means that people fighting it generally end up treading water.
One of two things needs to happen:
MAKE THE BLOB SLOW
Raising blob health and slowing its spread emphasizes the War Effort aspect of the blob. During our gloom server days, I had the chance to see a goon blob in action. If you're familiar with goon blob, it's... slow. A single botanist with a chainsaw was fighting against it, and wasn't really making any progress but he wasn't dying either. If it was our blob he would have been instantly killed by 50 blob stacks, had his chainsaw eaten, and turned into a blob zombie.
Right now, the blob is balanced around the entire station hitting it all at once with welders. If the pace of the mode was slowed, the dynamic could change to allow for a handful of people (Ideally Sec, since that's kind of their thing) at the front lines, with the rest of the station supporting them. Doctors could stay in medbay tending to wounded that arrive. Botanists could grow healing herbs, Engineering gets room to repair vital stuff that gets broken instead of just being the guys setting up emitters.
Probably not as fun for the blob player?

MAKE THE BLOB FAST
Lower blob health sharply and increase spread rate and chem gain. This emphasizes the tactical aspect of the blob, giving it a better tug-of-war. Crew pushing too hard in one direction? Maybe move into maint where they can't move as easily, or maybe try the other direction and cut off their access to a main hallway. Make the blob more dynamic and mobile. Give it a power that lets it call a blob-infested meteor to the station, randomly crashing into an area. Make the blob and the crew think on their feet.

Moving on, BLOBBERNAUTS. When they were first added they were just sort of a novelty if you had excess points handy to spend, but over time they've gotten crazy buffed especially with the addition of player-control. Since then they became the dominant strategy for blobs, though they've slowly been nerfed back. Regardless of how strong they are, THEY'RE NOT FUN AT ALL!!! They're just a standard shitty click-to-kill-things simple_mob, with high HP and melee damage and nothing else, awful to fight as crew and not even particularly fun to be. Mining mobs like Goliaths should be the design standard for all simple mobs going forward -- give Blobbernauts some special abilities like charge attacks, a slow-moving blob artillery projectile, a shotgun-spread of goo that acts like bolas.

WE DO NOT NEED TWENTY VARIETIES OF CHEMBLOB. We can have maybe FIVE types of blob before shit starts to get too confusing and hard to balance. Make each type very unique from each other, requiring different strategic approaches. Not "this one sets you on fire constantly" vs "this one poisons you constantly." There's some effort put in here like how EMP blobs take full brute damage but it's not enough differentiation to be meaningful.

onleavedontatme · Thu May 26, 2016 12:00 pm

All of your ideas are good but we could also probably get away with making the blob event more frequent and abandoning it as a mode.

The only thing I think you forgot to address is that no player sabotage stage as the blob made the mode very samey, since there are only a couple optimal spots to burst, and no variation to start up outside of that.

>The health of the blob and the speed it regenerates means that people fighting it generally end up treading water.

Yeah pretty much. It often takes the entire crew wailing away for at the blob core for several minutes to dent it, even if that's the only thing left.

>player blobbernauts

This is what really tipped the scales towards "may as well suicide if I'm not a guy with a gun" for me.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Thu May 26, 2016 12:48 pm #180435

Kor wrote:This is what really tipped the scales towards "may as well suicide if I'm not a guy with a gun" for me.

Pretty much. Why play on the losing side when I can bite my tounge and get free antag to punch nerds and break shit?

Okand37 · Post by **Okand37** » Thu May 26, 2016 12:56 pm #180436

I agree that it definitely has potential, and I think trying to implement the slower-paced but wall of mass blob along with lower chemicals and changed blobbernauts could be just what the gamemode needs to get back to players actually wanting to play it every once in a while. Personally I am indifferent on the lack of sabotage, as while you could do more or less damage with sabotage, being plopped down where you want it can give you very optimal places to success.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Thu May 26, 2016 1:27 pm #180443

Why are player Blobbernauts even a thing? They suck ass to even play you take eons to regenerate and your nowhere near capable of destruction as an old blobbernaut was

Gun Hog · Post by **Gun Hog** » Thu May 26, 2016 3:35 pm #180468

Removing the ability to start as a human player infected blob was an awful change, and needs to be reverted. Bring back pre-blob sabotage!

iamgoofball · Post by **iamgoofball** » Thu May 26, 2016 4:10 pm #180474

Bombadil wrote:Why are player Blobbernauts even a thing? They suck ass to even play you take eons to regenerate and your nowhere near capable of destruction as an old blobbernaut was

Saegrimr wrote:
Kor wrote:This is what really tipped the scales towards "may as well suicide if I'm not a guy with a gun" for me.
Pretty much. Why play on the losing side when I can bite my tounge and get free antag to punch nerds and break shit?

This is why I had Split Conc. Instead of player blobbernauts.

Player blobbernauts encourages "why do i care i win anyways"
Split Conc. Isnt something you're guaranteed to get as a player, so you actually fight to win.

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Thu May 26, 2016 4:39 pm #180485

Spamming blobbernauts as the MLG Pro strat was a really bad change. I liked it better when they were a tough simple mob that could punch down walls and I could sort of use them to goad into attacking walls that I don't have to waste chemicals on, or send them off after the crew and know it'll keep them tied up while I expand forward to the emitter nest - now they're unable to survive for very long off of blob tiles, can't break down walls and there's no guarantee they'll listen to you since they're player-controlled.

I guess I'd be fine if they Blob didn't delete objects it engulfed but I think I'd prefer a faster blob. That or we could scale the chemicals back and have chemicals affect the rate of expansion - more complex chemicals require more resources to put down but are tougher and simpler chemicals are quick to produce but break apart quicker.

Post by **Armhulen** » Thu May 26, 2016 4:43 pm #180486

Anonmare wrote:Spamming blobbernauts as the MLG Pro strat was a really bad change. I liked it better when they were a tough simple mob that could punch down walls and I could sort of use them to goad into attacking walls that I don't have to waste chemicals on, or send them off after the crew and know it'll keep them tied up while I expand forward to the emitter nest - now they're unable to survive for very long off of blob tiles, can't break down walls and there's no guarantee they'll listen to you since they're player-controlled.

I guess I'd be fine if they Blob didn't delete objects it engulfed but I think I'd prefer a faster blob. That or we could scale the chemicals back and have chemicals affect the rate of expansion - more complex chemicals require more resources to put down but are tougher and simpler chemicals are quick to produce but break apart quicker.

I really don't like them dying away from the blob, I want to run off and be a blob refugee after the blob dies

Remie Richards · Thu May 26, 2016 4:46 pm

iamgoofball wrote:
Bombadil wrote:Why are player Blobbernauts even a thing? They suck ass to even play you take eons to regenerate and your nowhere near capable of destruction as an old blobbernaut was

Saegrimr wrote:
Kor wrote:This is what really tipped the scales towards "may as well suicide if I'm not a guy with a gun" for me.
Pretty much. Why play on the losing side when I can bite my tounge and get free antag to punch nerds and break shit?
This is why I had Split Conc. Instead of player blobbernauts.

Player blobbernauts encourages "why do i care i win anyways"
Split Conc. Isnt something you're guaranteed to get as a player, so you actually fight to win.

Excuse me, why YOU had Split Conc?
*I* added that.

Cik · Post by **Cik** » Thu May 26, 2016 5:19 pm #180504

tbh i pretty much agree
blobbernauts fucked the mode, they are a terrible monster and make it nigh unwinnable unless you are essentially standing on the core when it pops.

i like it as a mode that requires field engineering, but just "apply welder, repeat x999999999" needs to go tbh

iamgoofball · Post by **iamgoofball** » Thu May 26, 2016 7:44 pm #180539

Remie Richards wrote:
iamgoofball wrote:
Bombadil wrote:Why are player Blobbernauts even a thing? They suck ass to even play you take eons to regenerate and your nowhere near capable of destruction as an old blobbernaut was

Saegrimr wrote:
Kor wrote:This is what really tipped the scales towards "may as well suicide if I'm not a guy with a gun" for me.
Pretty much. Why play on the losing side when I can bite my tounge and get free antag to punch nerds and break shit?
This is why I had Split Conc. Instead of player blobbernauts.

Player blobbernauts encourages "why do i care i win anyways"
Split Conc. Isnt something you're guaranteed to get as a player, so you actually fight to win.
Excuse me, why YOU had Split Conc?
*I* added that.

fuggggg

Incomptinence · Fri May 27, 2016 2:36 am

Blob is great. Blob remove bad player cheridan. Even better.

Praise president blob.

Fri May 27, 2016 2:56 am

blob is fun it just gets stale real quick
make each consecutive blob round cause the next round to have an extremely low chance of being another blob round

ShadowDimentio · Fri May 27, 2016 2:58 am

ShadowDimentio wrote:
ShadowDimentio wrote:Blob is fun. I love blob. Blobbernauts are a fundamentally flawed idea though.

ShadowDimentio wrote:Personally I think blobbernauts are fucking dumb.

In theory it's good, but in practice it makes a cycle where every blobbernaut is a catatonic crewmember corpse, and the more of those there are the harder it is to fight the blob, which in turn makes more blobbernauts which make more catatonic corpses and so on.

Capping them won't fix this. Hell, it'd make it worse because then instead of the crew all playing blobbernaut, they'd just be ghosting around, hoping a blobbernaut dies so they can play one.

I'm going to keep stacking these quotes until someone finally listens

A3STH3T1CS · Post by **A3STH3T1CS** » Fri May 27, 2016 3:07 am #180710

Leave blob alone and stop whining about blob.

If you make the best game mode shit I'll piss on your cat.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Fri May 27, 2016 4:51 am #180728

I think blob would be more fun if Blobbernauts alone got a rework. They should be very weak, very slow, and have a ranged goo projectile that hits people through the blob.

Incomptinence · Fri May 27, 2016 4:57 am

PKPenguin321 wrote: make each consecutive blob round cause the next round to have an extremely low chance of being another blob round

Good idea but do this with more rounds than just blob.

Fri May 27, 2016 5:03 am

Incomptinence wrote:
PKPenguin321 wrote: make each consecutive blob round cause the next round to have an extremely low chance of being another blob round
Good idea but do this with more rounds than just blob.

it doesnt work well with antags like traitors though since you can meta that. "it was traitor last round so it probably isnt traitor this round"

Incomptinence · Fri May 27, 2016 5:06 am

Wizard needs it badly to feel more special though.

bandit · Post by **bandit** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:20 am #181946

Kor wrote:All of your ideas are good but we could also probably get away with making the blob event more frequent and abandoning it as a mode.

With a different playerbase this might be a good idea but as it stands I 100% guarantee it will result in "LEVEL 5 BIOHAZARD CALL THE SHUTTLE."

J_Madison · Post by **J_Madison** » Mon May 30, 2016 11:49 am #181973

antag ban players the next round if they braindead (more than 75% of time ingame), ghost, afk, suicide, or are die to non-traitorous actions within a set average of time.

If there are real life factors preventing gameplay, I don't think one round antag ban will affect them.

Failing the antag roll gives you a slight more chance. This way everyone (in a long run) has equal chance of being antag.

Turning antag options off gives you the points to prevent people turning antag off, stacking up antag points, then getting unfair chances to be an antag.

And those that try mental gymnastics not to play in the round i.e. get themselves lynched/killed don't deserve to play on the server anyway and might as well be met with a ban in general.

ShadowDimentio · Mon May 30, 2016 7:02 pm

JMad this is the second time you've tried proposing your antag points system and it still isn't a good idea. I'd rather have my odds of being an antag just as good as everyone else's via random chance than a buttfuck convoluted system for who has the most antag points gets it or something.

Lumbermancer · Mon May 30, 2016 7:06 pm

I think it's a great idea, but it would be hard to implement properly.

Cheridan · Post by **Cheridan** » Mon May 30, 2016 7:31 pm #182107

people suiciding as soon as they hear LEVEL 5 BIOHAZARD is a problem with the mode not being fun. we can fix it by making it fun, we don't need dumb punishments to force people to play unfun garbage like they're our little player-slaves.

onleavedontatme · Mon May 30, 2016 7:57 pm

bandit wrote:
Kor wrote:All of your ideas are good but we could also probably get away with making the blob event more frequent and abandoning it as a mode.
With a different playerbase this might be a good idea but as it stands I 100% guarantee it will result in "LEVEL 5 BIOHAZARD CALL THE SHUTTLE."

We could make the shuttle unlaunchable while the blob was alive same as now. Traitors would have to strike a careful balance while exploiting the blob situation unless they want to get stranded.

Or we could just let people evacuate if nobody wants to fight it, wouldnt be the end of the world.

Saegrimr · Post by **Saegrimr** » Mon May 30, 2016 8:03 pm #182123

Kor wrote:Or we could just let people evacuate if nobody wants to fight it, wouldnt be the end of the world.

I wonder if the new meta would be to pop in the bridge/captain's office or in escape.

Takeguru · Post by **Takeguru** » Mon May 30, 2016 8:37 pm #182133

Escape isn't far away from the current "Kill RnD ASAP" meta, so I wouldn't doubt it

Anonmare · Post by **Anonmare** » Mon May 30, 2016 10:08 pm #182156

If blob only becomes a late round thing, it's gonna need some buffs or else it's gonna get stomped by R&D and their six gorillion x-ray lasers armed by space-immune, self-healing cybernetically-augmented with x-ray vision army, with back-up advanced energy gun sidearms and backed up in as many autocloners as possible.

paprika · Post by **paprika** » Mon May 30, 2016 10:55 pm #182177

Blob just needs to be super powerful and replace xenomorphs as a 'round ender' and force a shuttle call

I feel like blob gamemode sucks because it 'ends' after the blob gets enough control whereas if it was an event it could LITERALLY eat the entire station

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:01 am #182575

The only reason blob was never made to not eat the entire station in the past was due to lag. We could probably make it eat the entire station now though.

Ezel · Post by **Ezel** » Wed Jun 01, 2016 8:28 am #182740

Zilenan91 wrote:The only reason blob was never made to not eat the entire station in the past was due to lag. We could probably make it eat the entire station now though.

Hello 2 hour rounds

Incomptinence · Wed Jun 01, 2016 1:43 pm

I don't see why the opinion of someone who openly just chooses to suicide in a particular round type would be relevant to to it.

I mean you could tweak blob to purr like a kitten and be fun for the entire family but it wouldn't help someone who suicides at the sight of it because they are now dead and thus will not experience the improvements.

Sort of self defeating really.

J_Madison · Post by **J_Madison** » Wed Jun 01, 2016 2:27 pm #182785

Cheridan wrote:people suiciding as soon as they hear LEVEL 5 BIOHAZARD is a problem with the mode not being fun. we can fix it by making it fun, we don't need dumb punishments to force people to play unfun garbage like they're our little player-slaves.

Except it's a 40 minute struggle of unbalance if the tides are equal. The nobody wants to play war of attrition especially when you have player controlled blobs walking over everyone.

It's just not fun to play against. There's no reward for those that play. Especially not when unstunnable highly damaging healing blobbernauts are controlled by players.

Ezel · Post by **Ezel** » Wed Jun 01, 2016 3:23 pm #182792

Port goonblob mechanics

HEAT shields and such

InsaneHyena · Post by **InsaneHyena** » Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:34 pm #185926

[youtube]h9CauXkzvZ4[/youtube]

mfw when I've noticed that blob has been removed from rotation

ShadowDimentio · Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:37 pm

WHAT?

WHO.

onleavedontatme · Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:43 pm

Should I bother trying to salvage blob (probably by making blobbernauts AI controlled again) or just let it sit out of rotation until it can exist as a datum antag thrown into traitor?

lzimann · Post by **lzimann** » Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:44 pm #185934

Maybe increase the probability of random event blob and keep it off rotation? We could test that at least...

InsaneHyena · Post by **InsaneHyena** » Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:45 pm #185935

Should I bother trying to salvage blob

ShadowDimentio · Sat Jun 11, 2016 6:49 pm

Kor wrote:Should I bother trying to salvage blob (probably by making blobbernauts AI controlled again) or just let it sit out of rotation until it can exist as a datum antag thrown into traitor?

Sat Jun 11, 2016 8:30 pm

Kor wrote:Should I bother trying to salvage blob (probably by making blobbernauts AI controlled again) or just let it sit out of rotation until it can exist as a datum antag thrown into traitor?

originally i was gonna revert all the player-controlled blob shit but then there were like 40 changes to it made in a week and i lost track ofwhat to revert so i didn't but yes, you should do this. AI controlled, give them wallsmash, shitload more health, kill a factory to create, give them spacemovement, make them faster, i think that might be it.

Incomptinence · Sun Jun 12, 2016 10:00 pm

From what I remember of AI blobbers the main thing they need is space movement penguin is right on that.

So many times engineers would just agro them and have them vanish into space forever. Or maybe they could move in space and were just too easy to bait and kill our there? Been a while.

Bombadil · Post by **Bombadil** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 1:53 pm #186436

Salvage blob. Make Blobbernauts AI again. Make them do the damage they did originally and the mode won't be so shit again. Everything was fine when we had Blobs with Mind Split.

Post by **Armhulen** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 3:41 pm #186469

Make blob great again.

InsaneHyena · Post by **InsaneHyena** » Mon Jun 13, 2016 3:44 pm #186471

Blob was never great.

firecage · Post by **firecage** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 7:45 am #186727

Cheridan. Eh, another issue might be the whole Chem Blob thing. Honestly, yes, you can switch Chems, but either the Chem is such a huge meme the crew rapidly crushes a blob, or it is so god damn OP the blob doesn't even need player blobbernauts to kill the crew. I miss old pre-chem blob.

Anywho, player blobbernauts can go out the windows and everything will be decent again.

onleavedontatme · Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:01 pm

Man there were so many balance changes related to blobbernauts I don't even remember what their stats were when they were still AI controlled.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:03 pm #186858

They were only slightly better than they are now. Blobbernauts got buffed, buffed, nerfed into the ground, buffed, then nerfed to where we are now in that order.

They were totally useless because of shit the AI was and how much they costed, 80. The only reason player blobbernauts are good is because they actually defend you unlike the NPCs which either fucked off to space or got locked in a room and never got out. If you ever made a blobbernaut you basically lost the game even if you were winning because of how bad they were.

ShadowDimentio · Tue Jun 14, 2016 10:29 pm

Can attest to that, I never made blobbernauts back in the ye olden days.

If rebalancing them is too hard then just scrap them. They are and always will be a bad idea.