Revenant Power Creep

[Tunder]

Firstly, I'd like to thank Xhuis for consulting the player base while designing a flavor antag that quietly absorbs the health of critted crew.

Secondly, I'd like to thank him for creating a feedback thread and getting public opinion on the revenant's balance before buffing said meme ghost to the point where it can see everything via ghost vision while talking to living beings, AOE oneshot multiple crew and disable or destroy all electronics or silicons with EMP.


It's an absolute terror on lowpop, and went quickly from sorta spoopy yet fun jump scare flavor antag to uncounterable avatar of validhunting. Please nerf it back to the realm of manageability.

[Steelpoint]

I was likely the Revenant you had to contend with.

If anything I rarely interacted with the crew, I spent most of my time scurrying around trying to find corpses, I only directly killed a single person and that was the Chef who did not react to my bolt attacks until it was too late.

Also most of the crew had insulated gloves, meaning my main method of attack was rendered ineffective.

Also the Chaplain did lay holy water, or salt or something, around places making it difficult for me to get to areas.

Maybe its a bit more powerful, but that's just my perspective.

[Xhuis]

I didn't add most of the revenant's new abilities. Rest assured a nerf is in the works.

[Tunder]

I was likely the Revenant you had to contend with.

If anything I rarely interacted with the crew, I spent most of my time scurrying around trying to find corpses, I only directly killed a single person and that was the Chef who did not react to my bolt attacks until it was too late.

Also most of the crew had insulated gloves, meaning my main method of attack was rendered ineffective.

Also the Chaplain did lay holy water, or salt or something, around places making it difficult for me to get to areas.

Maybe its a bit more powerful, but that's just my perspective.

You weren't the cause of this. I had been looking for a feedback thread for awhile, ever since revenants got a heavy buff, but your lowpop spree made me realize that if there wasn't a thread, there needed to be.

[Steelpoint]

I do agree that Revenant's should be akin to carrion eaters, picking the flesh of the already dead. Their powers could be useful in clearing a room or annoying people but they really should not be killing people (outside of general stupidity)

[Tunder]

I do agree that Revenant's should be akin to carrion eaters, picking the flesh of the already dead. Their powers could be useful in clearing a room or annoying people but they really should not be killing people (outside of general stupidity)

You oneshotted a guy I cloned after killing the morph into crit. He was at full health.

[Steelpoint]

I do agree that Revenant's should be akin to carrion eaters, picking the flesh of the already dead. Their powers could be useful in clearing a room or annoying people but they really should not be killing people (outside of general stupidity)

You oneshotted a guy I cloned after killing the morph into crit. He was at full health.

I think I shocked him about three time.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

That's deadlier than a slaughter-demon, especially since the shock is and AOE stun that you only risk yourself from reinforcements.

[Cheimon]

Revenants being able to shock everyone in a room with lightning bolts from the light tubes is a bit much, I think. It's annoying as hell and it doesn't fit with the apparent flavour of the antagonist, which I assumed was "stalks corpses, occasionally poses a danger to the injured, can't afford to confront a room full of people".

Instead, the main complaints about it seem to be that it's killing AIs and shocking everyone. That's not so fun. But the concept does sound like a reasonable thing to have (especially if it was able to detect corpses in morgue trays and lockers).

[Amelius]

The biggest problem is that revenants aren't spooky. Transmit is really nice for a pseudo-RP role, but everything just reeks 'look, I can be a massive annoying cunt and entirely fuck over/stalk antagonists at my leisure!'

For instance, there was one time where the entire station was in our gang. We had it in our pocket. We threw up probably fifty trlilion walls in cargo around the dom, with me standing on top of it to defend it if it were to be breached.

Lo-and-behold, with 30 seconds left to dom, a revenant comes along, EMPs it twice, destroying the dominator and forcing us to restart the entire process. Furthermore, you only get two dominators. Fortunately I managed to kill the revenant in the process because he used EMP on top of me, but it's really not fun when you can't prevent it from happening. Kinda similar to how you can wreck a malf AI as a revenant.

[Zilenan91]

Honestly, I would personally love replacing the revenant EMP with an ability that animated a single machine by using the ability while hovering over it. Granted, this would be abused by doing this in R&D, comms consoles, and the upload and borg consoles for maximum griff, but those could probably be added to a blacklist so that that kind of thing doesn't happen. Aside from that, a spoopy revenant shocking people in rooms while vending machines go and beat people up would be hilarious if also slightly OP due to how far the range is on their shock.

Speaking of their shock, it's actually fine. No really, it doesn't do a whole lot of damage UNLESS the engineers go hyper autism with power and put 999999999 watts in the grid and make it 2-shot anyone who gets hit due to the sheer amount of said power, with the stun just being annoying unless it dicks you over in front of a simple mob or antag. The range on that thing needs to be nerfed though, wow, it's ridiculous. I can spam out medbay to the point that nobody even comes in there, with it jumping between several people just compounding the problem whilst I sit in windows and spam my stuns. It's particularly bad when there are Xenos on station. Due to there being a light in surgery I just sat there shocking the doctors over and over again so the larva could pop in time and get out of the vents.

Going more in-depth on the EMP, fuck that thing. Really. Particularly dickish revenants will sit in the wall near the AI core and just spam it to death with EMP, with it being able to do nothing to save itself if the revenant isn't stupid and sitting out in the open for lasers to hit it. Other than that, it's okay, but the sheer griff is stupid, and I like revenants having an EMP in the first place, but it being usable on the AI core is not okay. A way to fix this would possibly be making the AI core tiles blessed as if via chaplain if you don't feel like designing and balancing a new ability for revenant.

One last thing, and sorry for the wall of text, but why do revenants put another player in control after one dies? I'm actually unsure if these are bugs or not, but I kept randomly dying as a revenant when low on essence (it isn't explained why you died, you just get an ear-grating noise then dedchat) and from there I was basically switching out with someone else for the rest of the round whenever one of us randomly died. The random dying appears to happen after you absorb one corpse then morph a power, where-upon you just die for seemingly no reason or damage taken because nothing is explained to you.