Staff of animation objects are too deadly

[Amnestik]

So full disclosure, I just came from a round where I died 2 minutes in in a station full of corpses due to a bunch of animated grilles following people around and murdering them. This isn't a new problem though. This staff has been this way for years. It's very easy to wipe out an entire station with it. It requires minimal effort to create unlimited simple mobs that will chase and attack anyone who comes into their view range.

So what do you think? Is the SoA overpowered? Why/why not? Should it be nerfed? If so, how?

[TheNightingale]

The solution: make the mobs attack the wizard too. Do they do this already?

E: Or make an animated object turn back into its original item after a few minutes. This'd be good for those rogue vendors too.

[Scones]

These are where the melee armor nerfs hurt the worst, in such an oddly specific situation

[RG4]

These are where the melee armor nerfs hurt the worst, in such an oddly specific situation

That''s why I said the armor nerfs were so fucking stupid because all instances where Mining RIGS,Riot suits,etc are useful are incredibly specific situations.

[Skorvold]

You have every advantage over an animated object, access to ranged weapons, speed, intellect, etc.

In no way are they "overpowered".

[MMMiracles]

You have every advantage over an animated object, access to ranged weapons, speed, intellect, etc.

In no way are they "overpowered".

Grilles have around 50-60 hp and hit pretty hard, even with security armor on. Range doesn't mean much when 90% of the crew doesn't have access to any ranged weapons and then you realize every window on the station wants you dead for some reason.

[Cheimon]

Yeah, they're pretty powerful, it's a shame melee resistance got nerfed. About the only effective way to clear out a set of grilles is with lasguns (or any high damage gun) and wirecutters (for when they go still).

[Amnestik]

These are where the melee armor nerfs hurt the worst, in such an oddly specific situation

Why would the majority of players be wearing armour?

You have every advantage over an animated object, access to ranged weapons, speed, intellect, etc.

In no way are they "overpowered".

Seriously?

[lumipharon]

>ranged weapons
Except everyone who isn't in sec

>speed
Until you've taken a few hits and you're now slow as, or slower then the objects

>intellect
>implying the average spessman is smarter then an animated grille


Objects de-animating after a while would be ok.

[Amnestik]

The reason for the incredulity in my previous response is because as Lumi has said, most players don't have ranged weapons, and one hit from an object is all it takes to make you move slower than them. As for avoiding them: most people don't have maintenance access, and all it takes is a few animated objects in central primary to prevent people from going anywhere without being attacked. As an area denial weapon, they work really well. If you fire the staff off in medbay 6 or 7 times, anyone who goes there to seek treatment is immediately be mauled by grilles.

Forgive my shitty tone, I need to go to bed.

[Falamazeer]

Yeah, you can kite them pretty well, and easily take them out, Assuming you got full mobility, but you might accidently back into another mob of them, which is likely considering how spamable the staff is.

A time limit on animation would be reasonably helpful for this.

[DemonFiren]

Maybe a cap on how many things can be animated at once?

[onleavedontatme]

Staff of Animation has been OP as shit since the day it was added. It always annoyed me at a personal level as well because it was added shortly after Soulstones/Staff of Change, and it's vastly superior to either of them in spamming monsters while failing to bring other players back into the round/spread the fun to other people.

I'm sure the armor nerf made it worse but 90% of the crew doesn't have the armor to deal with it anyway, and sec doesn't even have the guns to deal with it because their guns are attacking them.

That and there is no fucking air because all the grilles ran off.

[Scones]

"grille come back i need you to hold that air in"

"haha no"

[Incoming]

Grilles don't hold in air, the windows do. Unless they're electified the grills are just useless pieces of trash that make the windows look better and mildly inconvenience your attempts to break down windows.

Also yeah the staff of animation is crazy powerful, even moreso after I added the statue synergy (to be fair, that had to be a thing).

I had a thought of objects losing health rapidly if the wizard left the room, so that the objects would be more "help me fight/block shots" in a skirmishing sense and less "let me just animate everything everywhere and let them kill the crew for me while I run away scot free.

But running distance checks for dozens of items every tick has struck me as probably costly.

[DemonFiren]

Statue synergy being?

[Incoming]

Statue synergy being?

If you take flesh to stone and staff of animation, you can animate the statues you make of people to create player controlled super mobs that literally cannot die but can only move when no one's looking.

They revert back to humans eventually, but 4 byond minutes is a long time.

[onleavedontatme]

Grilles don't hold in air, the windows do. Unless they're electified the grills are just useless pieces of trash that make the windows look better and mildly inconvenience your attempts to break down windows.

Must be the grilles smashing all the windows as they run to attack people I'm thinking of then

[PKPenguin321]

leave staff of animation alone, animation station is a gimmick that requires almost all the wizards spell points to be put into it and therefore should be really powerful, not to mention there ARE valid counters (ranged weapons, not walking into things that will kill you like a retard because you can outrun them)

[Not-Dorsidarf]

Statue synergy being?

If you take flesh to stone and staff of animation, you can animate the statues you make of people to create player controlled super mobs that literally cannot die but can only move when no one's looking.

They revert back to humans eventually, but 4 byond minutes is a long time.

Three of us teamed up once and killed a statue with fireaxes and toolboxes one time. Like, we were just standing there smashing it for like fifteen minutes while other people wandered past saying shit like "Just give up" and "Are you still doing that"?

[Oldman Robustin]

You have every advantage over an animated object, access to ranged weapons, speed, intellect, etc.

In no way are they "overpowered".

Not pushing for this nerf, but you realize magic missile is a thing right?

Getting MM'd and then destroyed by a grille before you can even get up is pretty annoying.

With the new Wizard spells that let them recall items, I feel like the staff might be a bit over the top but it only really get obnoxious in combo with other spells. Statue + SoA is even sillier with their AoE blind aka "Go on a killing spree once every 60 seconds".

[CPTANT]

Balance -> wizard mode

HA.

[Incomptinence]

A good reason the return to original armour values perhaps, imagine how bad rev can get by comparison were equivalent concentration of SENTIENT hostiles can bear down on you.

[Amnestik]

Balance -> wizard mode

HA.

It's a video game, so yeah, you'd expect there to be balance.

[Oldman Robustin]

Balance -> wizard mode

HA.

Unfortunately it's that attitude that's led to some pretty broken stuff. "Well wizard is a completely unbalanced mess anyway, why not add slaughter demons/animated statues/liches/free skeleton race change/etc."

I wouldn't mind if wizard wasn't perpetually #3/#4 in term of weighting. If you don't get traitor/ling, then chances are you've got a wizard incoming.

Wizard should be the occasional diversion from more standard gametypes, when it appears more often you really see how trash of a mode it is. 95% of wizard is him hiding in a maint locker. That's part of why I don't mind SoA's superiority, because at least it forces the wizard to actually stay on camera for a while and fight the crew rather than MM+*INSERT ONE-SHOT NOSCOPE 360 SUPERSKILL SPELL HERE*+JAUNT INTO AN ATMOS CLOSET OR SOME SHIT+REPEAT.

[Jacquerel]

The difficulty with Wizard is that it's a single player who is meant to be able to accomplish the same tasks as an entire team of nuke ops and carry an entire round by themselves, which makes for very swingy gameplay and is not very healthy to balance around.
Hopefully with antag datums that add minor wizards, and traitors during wizard mode, it'll be easier to tone wizards down a bit without then having the problem of their just being sort of useless, because at present a Wizard basically needs to be able to win any fight that isn't against a big group, but that's very frustrating for the other player who got caught out.

[RG4]

Why not just reduce the damage animated objects do? Shit like chairs,medkits,or fucking syringes being able to crit you with relative ease is fucking retarded. Do the same for Malf AIs and their really dumb ability to make doors and shit suddenly become alive and deal massive damage, least make smaller animated objects do like 5-10 brute and shit like vending machines doing 20 or so.

[Amelius]

> Most of the server wants the server to be deadlier.

> Complains about the server being too deadly.

Which is it? At what point is the wizard going to be shooting banana peels instead of firebolts?

[DemonFiren]

To be honest, a wizard with a reasonably cheap banana peel spell might just be fucking horrifying.

[oranges]

A time max on animation sounds like a reasonable idea

[Oldman Robustin]

> Most of the server wants the server to be deadlier.

> Complains about the server being too deadly.

Which is it? At what point is the wizard going to be shooting banana peels instead of firebolts?

It's that simple minded type of analysis that has held prevented so many good changes and let in so many bad ones.

You can want a deadlier station and still want to remove stuff like morphine blob/acid blob/etc. even though its the epitome of HARDMODE.

Part of it is that simple disparity. That some OP stuff can rack up a double digit body count in under 10 minutes and has no counterplay, while the average traitor/ling game goes on for an hour and results in more BRAINDEAD than ACTUALDEAD.

For the record I still think SoA probably shouldn't be touched outside of maybe nerfing the living statues so that the blind has a smaller AoE or goes back to being targeted with a shorter CD. I was laughing my ass off, but it really was disgusting just sitting in medbay surrounded by a dozen people near and far in a well lit area and every 60 seconds I would hit blind, kill two people, wait 60 seconds, rinse and repeat.

[Incoming]

To be honest, a wizard with a reasonably cheap banana peel spell might just be fucking horrifying.

Code: Select all

		if(3)
			for(var/turf/T in orange(2, get_turf(src)))
				if(!T.density)
					var/obj/item/weapon/grown/bananapeel/oh_banana
					var/honk = pick("HONK", "...")
					if(honk == "HONK")
						oh_banana = new /obj/item/weapon/grown/bananapeel(T)
					else
						oh_banana = new /obj/item/weapon/grown/bananapeel/mimanapeel(T)
					oh_banana.potency = pick(1,10,20,30,40,50)

(it's already coming)