crystal invasion event (cheese skellies)

[Ghilker]

Please give feedbacks on the new event, the crystal invasion. Don't just say is shit, because your opinion will not be considered.

[Ayy Lemoh]

Please give feedbacks on the new event, the crystal invasion. Don't just say is shit, because your opinion will not be considered.

User's opinion has not been considered for this post.

i thought it was called resonance cascade

[Darkhal]

As it is right now, the event feels like a round ender like meteors or xenomorph would be due to the extreme damages it does.


- Skellies still do too much damage on hit despite having less health
- 10 rifts might be a bit too much especially when they can spawn everywhere. The crew might not have AA (nor is it something he should need to deal with a random event) or feel like checking every single maints > make the event say where they pop out or reduce the places where they pop out to massively common areas and/or reduce the amount of rift spawning
- The guy who have to apply the stabilizing SM thing needs to stay in the chamber for quite some time, someone who isnt the CE is pretty much doomed if he isnt going in full health because of cold/rads/pressure damages coming in fast.
- Might be too many skellies popping from the rifts, maybe when diminishing damage it wont matter as much but this makes it very hard to deal with each rift


Currently quite an annoying event to deal with because of the massive crew and station damage it does all around, as well as the numerous things needed to clear it (a crew able to clear the rifts before stabilizing the SM with tools that needs to be researched and printed)

[cacogen]

My feedback is that I have yet to experience it but the name peaks my interest

[Armhulen]

It's 2020 and we're still making basic simplemobs that have no interesting traits.

[Stickymayhem]

It's 2020 and we're still making basic simplemobs that have no interesting traits.

They do have traits now

[stewydeadmike]

So after observing/playing a fair few rounds of this and from collecting other players opinions on it there's a fair amount of feedback I would like to give.

First off, THE GOOD:
-I like the mechanic of someone being able to sacrifice themselves to the SM to help the rest of the crew. I think it could lead to some really cool moments were someone nobly gives up their life so that the rest of the station can survive. Though it could probably use a buff since it's basically asking someone to willingly round remove themselves and the only thing it does is give more time(?) which has never really been an issue from what I've seen.

-I think the idea of a station wide invasion scenario that requires the crew to band together to stop it is interesting and could be very fun.

Now moving onto... THE BAD:
-First glaring issue is that there is basically no warning or time to prepare before you have three dozen skeletons dropped all over the station. Which makes the event very jarring and a bit of a cluster fuck as everyone scrambles to figure out what to do. That and combined with the immediate sense of urgency usually just leads to people grabbing the nearest weapon they can get and Naruto running into the skeleton hordes. Making it very hard to deal with unless the crew was well armed before hand.

-Second, the bosses are ridiculous in how strong they are. They shoot lightning balls, delimb, are fairly tanky, AND dust people in crit all while being surrounded by seven or so fodder enemies. It's a bit much and not fun to deal with, especially the dusting. Also the sprite for the boss makes it hard to differentiate them and the other dozen cheese drenched skeletons running at you, nor does it have the "OH FUCK THAT'S THE BOSS" energy that it should.

-Third, this one might just solve itself in time when people figure out the event more but I've noticed that a lot of people don't know that they're supposed to close the huge portals first before trying to stabilize the SM. resulting in some people just running straight to the SM and going "wat do?".

-Fourth, The event runs into the same issues that xenos do in that the crew will often just choose to call the shuttle and leave instead of actually dealing with the problem. leaving the people who actually try to do something to trickle in with mixed success while the other half of the crew just waits in departures. Though this is more of a broader issue, but just something to keep in mind

Also a few other minor things:
-sprites could be better.
-lacks a lot of variety in the enemies. they all just run at you and don't do much else except fire the occasional projectile or burst into smoke

I do think this has a lot of potential but it feels very rough in its current state and needs some more work

[Ghilker]

Thank you for taking your time to write this feedback, it is very appreciated!
Now let's talk about the bads.

-1. The no warning is part of the experience, nothing else gives you a warning that something bad is approaching, so i don't really see why this too should. For the people naruto running against the skellies, that's a learning experience that you should not engage them in a brawl battle since they are pretty strong in numbers even tho they die in a couple of hits. So the sense of urgency is not a bad thing imo.

-2. I agree they are strong, but the black portals can only spawn 2 of those and they easily die with a bunch of laser shot or fireguns, the trick here is to not engage them in a phisical battle, for the sprites i'll talk later.

-3. That issue should solve itself, since i added a bunch of flavor text both as centcom message and examine message that will tell people what to do (like if you examine the crystal while it has the shield, it will say that you have to close the main portals first)

-4. That's a player issue, i had the idea of making the event similar to blob, where the shuttle will not leave untill things are fixed, but that was a bad idea.

Now the core of things, sprites, the sprites sucks i very much know that. The problem is that i'm not a spriter nor i can draw anything, i asked many times if someone wanted to make some better sprites for the event, but nobody answered the call. I'll be very glad to see all the sprites replaced with something better but i'm not the one that will since i can't draw.
For the lack of variety is half true, each mob has a unique quirk (minions burst into smoke, others have a dodge ability and a short range blink, assassins are fast and shoot a freezing ray to slow you down, another can destroy walls, and then the boss shoots lightings), but i agree that more variety could be added, also differentiating each mob would help.

If you have ideas on how improve the event furter just ping me on discord! name's there is Ghilker

[stewydeadmike]

I agree that the sense of urgency is good but I can't really think of any other event that hits the station as hard or as fast as this one does except for maybe catastrophic meteors. I don't think the crew really needs that much time but just a minute or two to organize and gear up would help a ton while still keeping things frantic. Alternatively the portals could ramp up over time so that the initial wave is, while dangerous, gives the crew enough breathing room to get their bearings.

Honestly I just feel like the dusting is a bit overkill. Like getting nuggeted is already pretty brutal and a good enough reason not to get into melee with them imo. getting dusted alongside that just feels like salt on the wound.

Also I'd be happy to provide the sprites for the enemies. Just give a brief description of each enemy and I'll cook something up.

[cacogen]

Are there cheese skeletons?

[saprasam]

you've left me quite discheesed

[Kassori]

Since you're disregarding any feedback saying this shit is shit, here ya go.

Fighting respawning NPCs is not fun. Period. Adding teslas, dodging, ice beams, gas clouds and fucking dusting does not make it fun.

This is probably the most destructive event in the game, bar Warops, which get 15 minute warning to get techs, but and print guns. This gets nothing, it gets a bunch of portals in random fucking locations that nobody has access to and a shitty neutralizer that you can't use without the CE hardsuit and clapping the cheeks of every portal first.

On Manuel, I have seen 5 rounds with crystals, all have ended in complete shitshows with the shuttle leaving with -20% of the station pop alive.

Really, at this point I just want this shitshow removed because I've had to deal with 6 crystal rounds in the last month and ZERO rev or Families rounds. Like fuck, seriously. If you want to completely fuck and end a round, at least have players involved. let ghosts be crystal bosses or something.

[BrianBackslide]

After seeing this event happen at the thirty minute mark, it feels WAY overtuned. Our few sec officers couldn't arm the crew fast enough to overcome the constant tide of cheese skeletons. I think that it's even MORE destructive than warops or a fireball+jaunt Wizard.

I see that there's a pr to make this a delam event, but that has other problems. Namely you probably won't see it unless the Engineers are deliberately doing it and it would also probably be considered murderbone on Manuel.

[nulladept]

The walls of text that CC sends are sent too quickly and are pretty hard to read. Also all the ZK-CLASS-EVENT OOOOH [REDACTED] [REDACTED] stuff sounds very dumb and uncool..
scp is lame.......

[Ziiro]

Needs a minimum population requirement. Popped up on a lowpop bagil round and killed all but two players - who were AFK in lockers.

[thehogshotgun]

Ya’know, not to brag or anything but I feel I was the originator of the “cheese skelly” name with my post on the implementation PR, one that was quite popular with a whopping two laughing react-oh yeah I got off track, have the sprites been improved yet cheese skelly loses it’s charm after awhile

[jortsandshirts]

Really awful feature that doesn't vibe at all with the people playing the round.

[wesoda25]

I think it's a very intrusive event, it grabs the server it forces them to deal with it. Which... doesn't seem tasteful. Or fun, if you aren't in the mood to fight simple mobs (which at least for me is often).

As for easily improvable feedback, all of the announcements have terrible grammar and border on spam, and I think it could benefit from improving in those areas.

[cacogen]

I think I encountered this today. There were golden skeletons and they were making the floor gold too. It reminded me of Minecraft for some reason. Anyway, I went AFK and came back to one beating me to death in crit after having been culted while AFK and Centcom had made an announcement saying they were disappointed in us because the skeletons had won. It was garbage.

[Timberpoes]

Then uh, you know. Don't delam the SM to the point of explosion. This event now has a chance to trigger past a certain power threshold, increasing in chance up to the point a tesla delam would happen, at which point tesla delam takes priority.

[cacogen]

Well, I didn't. I just saw them between medbay and research in the central hallway on Delta and never understood why they were there or what the point was.

[Timberpoes]

They were there because the SM delaminated and was about to explode, with more power than a regular delamination but not enough to cause a tesla. But instead of explode, it gave the crew one last chance to salvage it.

The point was to complete the event and through this restore the SM.

[CrazyClown12]

I like that a new SM delam was added, but I don't like the crystal invasion at all.

Whenever the SM delams now we get a crystal invasion. I've never done this kind of delam, but it seems to be happening every delam which suggests to me that it's too easy to do.

Onto the event itself. You are required to get up close and personal with the skeletons to close the portals. Being up close and personal is also a very bad idea because they can delimb you easily, leaving you a cripple.

Its also not easy to dodge them, because as soon as one dies there is smoke everywhere and you are unable to see anything. Finally, when you inevitably die because a skeleton dusted your legs in a smoke cloud, you then get dusted.

Basically it seems like an easy way to cause mass grief and its not really worth even trying to fix it instead of red alerting and leaving asap.

[Man_Shroom]

port the /vg/station secret bluespace delamination

[SkeletalElite]

I'm not entirely sure how it works but I don't like the RNG of the event I'd prefer if there was a condition and it was obvious it was happening.

Like if it required tesla and singulo delam at the same time or something

[cacogen]

We had a round of this where we were all trapped in arrivals on Delta because between the skeletons and the fires the rest of the station was untenable. That was quite a fun survivalist experience and my favourite type of SS13 round when the station descends into chaos and people are dying left and right and only by being one of the few people to actually pick up items off the ground and search corpses can you survive with the wealth of other players' inventories at your disposal. Sadly, even with a large amount of survivors concentrated in a small area we either had no idea how to overcome the skeletons or couldn't actually and only two people escaped on the shuttle and I'm not sure what happened to the rest. I took a break in space outside of the station and somehow a fucking skeleton got there as well and killed me while I was AFK. I'd gone to mining where there had been a bloodbath for reasons unknown and found a space suit which I was going to use to become the lesbian from Prey, if not for the going AFK thing.

I think it should be more clear A) What the fuck is going on (e.g. why are there skeletons? what is their purpose?) and B) How to defeat them/win.

[Tlaltecuhtli]

why do you go keep going afk during sm event?

[Qustinnus]

simplemob spawning events arent interesting.

[pugie]

This event screams lazy sorry, it's just the sprites look like something cobbled up in 30 seconds on ms paint using the bucket tool and the mobs aren't even interesting, with little variation except health and one of the mobs that looks slightly different than the others being able to dust you.

Also they appear literally everywhere it's just frustrating, seems very amateurly done and is so quantitative it just warrants immediate shuttle call instead of trying to nip the threat in the bud even after the delamination. There should be some goal to work towards, maybe a machine to be built that can quickly put an end to the event which would complement the trashy parts of the event which will be overhauled to actually be good and not walking custard men.

[cacogen]

why do you go keep going afk during sm event?

Can't remember but each time it was for more important reasons than this game (i.e. anything)

[remanseptim]

the skeletons can gamer your limbs off in a matter of unavoidable hits even in syndie hardsuit

[Horza]

After a few times of this event kicking off:

• The crystal skele event gets triggered on pretty much every delam.
• The skeles are surprisingly tough, and trying to melee them is suicide.
• If you end up being ganged up by 2-3 skeles you'd better hope they don't RNG dismember you, your only hope is running away to the other side of the station.
• The intended way to fight them is using ranged attacks, but the crew has no real access to ranged weapons, so it's dependent on sec being competent and alive.
• The spawning points are too many and appear too fast. If they're close to departures or in a busy hallway then the station is fucked.
• Skeles teleport outside windows and then start to bust in, creating lots of leaks that basically never get fixed.
• This is a round-ender for everyone and the shuttle gets red-alert called every time if the comm consoles are still alive.
• Nobody knows how to fix the rifts and the crew always decides to give up and hide in departures rather than fix the situation.
• People getting their limbs dusted in a single hit is unfun. Getting entirely dusted removes them from the round entirely with no hope of being revived. This can often be done in just a few hits.
• The formatting of the event announcements is unlike any other major event, and the grammar is poor overall. It feels like an admin is pranking the station or something.

Some of these can be fixed or tweaked, but I legitimately can't think of a way to make it actually fun to deal with. Given how completely deadly and unwinnable the situation can get, it's also not popular with anyone. It really should have been testmerged or tested out by admins before being dumped into the game, because at least then there'd be enough good will left among the players to tolerate trying to improve and fix it.

[Jaredfogle]

ive never seen anyone have fun when this pops up, consistently every time people just get upset about it in both dead chat and ic.

juxtapose this with singulo/tesla: they're usually tense, deadchat watching as one and praying it causes a bunch of damage, and if the crew gets unlucky, they now must have to play to their new environment in ways they aren't usually required to. this is super interesting.

with the crystal invasion, this doesnt happen. you walk in the halls, you die to the boring simple mobs. dead chat isn't engrossed in anything, they just want the round to end. the only department that could possibly have any fun is engineering, but everytime i get this event as engineer it's just so unbelievably boring. simple mob combat isn't interesting

[Flatulent]

simplemobs are boring and annoying

[wesoda25]

Then uh, you know. Don't delam the SM to the point of explosion.

If you don't want to see this event, don't delam the crystal to the point it explodes or if you do, make sure it's filled with enough power to spawn a tesla instead. Simple.

I could use this rhetoric to justify adding a delamination that just insta deletes everything on the z level. Saying "don't let it happen lol" doesn't work because often 90% of the station is unaware that the SM is even delaminating until the final moments. At least tesla and singulo are an interesting struggle for survival, that actually require some amount of effort to achieve. This is far too easy.

[CrazyClown12]

It feels far to easy to create. Recently the AI forgot to set up 1 pipe when turning on the SM and it skele'd. There is literally no effort required.

[keepforgettingpw]

This feels like it would be better suited to being its own entire gamemode instead of game event.

[wabash]

The simplemobs are terrible to fight, don't scale with the station pop, and hit clown cars from the inside so even if you try to pull a heroic meme of running them over with the clown car they just destroy your shit from the inside. I think a chance to have threat jump up would be much more entertaining. PVE is boring, PVP is where it is at.

[oranges]

we don't really have the kind of AI code frameworks in place that lend themselves to PvE events because the game has been PvP for so long

[remanseptim]

we don't really have the kind of AI code frameworks in place that lend themselves to PvE events because the game has been PvP for so long

closest thing we've got is megafauna, but they're just as rote as simplemobs once you get a look at them. just patterns, i don't think they really change up tactics in response to the player.
are said patterns taxing to byond? if we started introducing more common non-megafauna mobs with mechanics unique to them rather than just instant-hit beams of arm destroy that'd serve adequately enough. goliaths serve an alright example.

[cacogen]

make simple mob fall down

[Jaredfogle]

we don't really have the kind of AI code frameworks in place that lend themselves to PvE events because the game has been PvP for so long

closest thing we've got is megafauna, but they're just as rote as simplemobs once you get a look at them. just patterns, i don't think they really change up tactics in response to the player.
are said patterns taxing to byond? if we started introducing more common non-megafauna mobs with mechanics unique to them rather than just instant-hit beams of arm destroy that'd serve adequately enough. goliaths serve an alright example.

good ai is just something that we haven't put a lot of work into getting right, as far as i know. floyd seems to be cooking something up though with the limtiations of byond in mind.

[MisterPerson]

byond has nothing to do with it. AI behavior is just a lot of boring work nobody wants to do. And unlike a lot of other places in the game, there isn't even a skeleton to build off of. All our existing mob AI code is 100% garbage that should be thrown out ASAP.

[oranges]

yes I don't think there's anything too taxing, pathfinding is the main thing, but there are architectural options there (navmeshes, jump point pathfinding etc). It's more what MrP said, there's just no existing frameowrk and you need to build some kind of decision tree or statemachine style frameowrk to create pluggable AI structures, so there's a vast gulf of space between a capable AI framework and where we are now and nobody wants to cross it.