Revenants

Lumbermancer · Fri Dec 25, 2015 10:38 pm

>Be at good health, slightly burned but fine
>Get knocked out
>Be asleep
>Revenant appears and starts to drain me
>Almost instantly Chemistbro starts punching revnant and dragging me way
>I die from 2 second drain anyway

Who designed this shit, and why did he think it was a good idea? Revenant is one of the most baffling fucking things on this server. It's just a fucking annoyance for the sake of annoyance. "You got attacked by tator, laying in crit, waiting for help - well fuck you here's Revenant to end you". "You popped out of cryo cycle and are sleeping - well fuck you here's Revenant to end you".

It will always get a drop on you, and there's no reasonable way to counter it. Unlike other meme antags like morphs or abductors. It's obnoxious. It has to go, in the current form.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 10:40 pm #142796

Blame cryo sleep for being retarded and killing people.

Alex Crimson · Fri Dec 25, 2015 10:44 pm

Half-finished antag that should be disabled. Doesnt have enough abilities to be fun, doesnt have enough counters to be balanced.

Post by **NikNakFlak** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 10:54 pm #142799

I love being a meme ghost for this reason. Being punched doesn't even seem to hurt you and if you are good at dodging, you are invincible. I drained like 4 people in the brig once in front of mehki and his duel wielded lasers all missed. Was hilarious.

Post by **MMMiracles** » Fri Dec 25, 2015 11:16 pm #142801

Revenant is good for harassing medbay's cryo and genetics for sweet absorbs. Fart EMPs all over the armory and RnD for maximum rage.

EMP the little bots for maximum hilarity. Emagged beepsky and an ED unit working together to stun/laser crew for the saltiest souls you'll ever absorb.

DrPillzRedux · Fri Dec 25, 2015 11:26 pm

As a common revenant player they're very rarely lethal and very easy to kill. They've been nerfed pretty hard.

ChangelingRain · Fri Dec 25, 2015 11:31 pm

Lumbermancer wrote:>Be at good health, slightly burned but fine
>Get knocked out
>Be asleep
>Revenant appears and starts to drain me
>Almost instantly Chemistbro starts punching revnant and dragging me way
>I die from 2 second drain anyway

If you got dragged away, you shouldn't have died; even moving you a single tile next to the revenant will break, or should break, the drain.

Post by **MMMiracles** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 1:56 am #142842

Anonus wrote:
Lumbermancer wrote:>Be at good health, slightly burned but fine
>Get knocked out
>Be asleep
>Revenant appears and starts to drain me
>Almost instantly Chemistbro starts punching revnant and dragging me way
>I die from 2 second drain anyway
If you got dragged away, you shouldn't have died; even moving you a single tile next to the revenant will break, or should break, the drain.

If the drain progress is about half-way complete, it doesn't matter if they drag you away because it'll still finish and the revenant gets the points. I've done it multiple times to people.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:00 am #142843

It's just how BYond ticks work, not really a fixable bug.

J_Madison · Post by **J_Madison** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:03 am #142845

Revernants from what I witness is a salt producing revenge machine.

Aside from fucking everyone's shit up (you want fight traitor? 2bad I shock u) to flat out grudge machines.
I recall one round a chemist killed his target and disposed of the body really well. His target became a revernant and followed the Chemist exclusively the entire round to metagrudge his death and narrowly killed him.

Honestly it's a really shitty feature when rounds are shortened because an invincible ghost emps cloning and apcs, then drain crits everyone. There's almost no way to stop them and all they really serve is to fuck up the round.

Post by **MMMiracles** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:06 am #142846

Fun fact, holy water makes it impossible for them to go over tiles. Spray them with holy water when they reveal themselves to feed and laugh as they're locked in a small box of holy water.

Null rods also do a fuck-ton of damage to them, they will NOT survive if a chaplain starts bashing their shit in with the null rod.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:08 am #142847

Defile removes holy water from tiles so it won't last forever. Also yeah the null rod does like 100 damage it's fucking insane

Super Aggro Crag · Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:45 am

how do you apply holy water to floors anyway? i keep getting conflicting answers

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 2:46 am #142853

Bless a water tank, fill a fire extinguisher with it, spray on floor.

Luke Cox · Post by **Luke Cox** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 3:55 am #142877

Revenants should spawn automatically when people die in quick succession, in addition to the random events. Give the people who died to trigger it priority, and let them have full memories of their past lives.

Also, Revenants need to fuck with people more. Talk to them, make sure that they know you're following them and that you're going to die. Make it a proper haunting.

Alex Crimson · Sat Dec 26, 2015 4:10 am

Transmit is where most of the fun comes from when you play Revenant, rather than powergaming your way through it. To think, some people wanted to remove Transmit.

Lumbermancer · Sat Dec 26, 2015 11:30 am

Luke Cox wrote:Make it a proper haunting.

Why not make it more of a poltergeist then, without ability to to interact and directly hurt people, just fuck with them? You know, make it more about fun, not another murderboner enabler?

Super Aggro Crag · Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:41 pm

Zilenan91 wrote:Bless a water tank, fill a fire extinguisher with it, spray on floor.

does it make an overlay? I don't see anything when I do that.

Post by **Shaps-cloud** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:46 pm #142985

Revenants should be able to throw objects a la buildmode throwing, to spook people (obviously toned down from what you can do with full buildmode, add a delay and restrict it to normal items and below or something)

Alex Crimson · Sat Dec 26, 2015 6:51 pm

Shaps wrote:Revenants should be able to throw objects a la buildmode throwing, to spook people (obviously toned down from what you can do with full buildmode, add a delay and restrict it to normal items and below or something)

RIGHT?! Remove that Blight rubbish and give them more spooky ghost abilities. Like throwing items around or interacting with airlocks/buttons. We need a coder to just go play Ghost Master and copy the abilities from that to Revenant.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:40 pm #143014

Shaps wrote:Revenants should be able to throw objects a la buildmode throwing, to spook people (obviously toned down from what you can do with full buildmode, add a delay and restrict it to normal items and below or something)

Or we could do it goonstyle where they show up as a decayed, dead humanoid ghost and haunt people for more resource gain. Then eventually once they get enough they find a dead body and suddenly gain incredible murder powers and kill everyone because their anger knows no bounds.

DrPillzRedux · Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:47 pm

Goon revenants are far more deadly (like most goon things). Though once one takes control of a dead person it doesn't last long, takes a metrict fuckton of points and has a long cooldown to do.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:49 pm #143019

Yeah but goon wraiths aren't limited by the amount of corpses for their point regen like ours are, so they can get a truly ridiculous number of point regen if they don't die and keep at it for long enough.

DrPillzRedux · Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:54 pm

I had something like 120k points when goon rev first came out. It was hilariously broken. Honestly revenants here need more powers. They're in the same category as morphs but far less annoying or deadly to anyone but people wading in plasma or in crit.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Sat Dec 26, 2015 9:55 pm #143022

I wish we had goon wraiths or at least something similar. The spooky and the murder all in one.

callanrockslol · Mon Dec 28, 2015 7:57 am

Revenants should have to do a full siphon thing and if it stops for any reason they die instantly.

Chiefwaffles · Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:00 am

I DED PLS NERF
In a round that just ended, I was a traitor AI. After a ton of waiting and build-up, I get a borging machine and my borgs were pretty good with getting new borgs.

BUT THEN, OUT OF THE BLUE, A REVENANT APPEARS. The revenant has an intense desire to target me+my borgs and only that. So what can they do?
1.) Chainstun my borgs. Malfunction power EMPs them and stuns them for a very long period that leaves the borgs inactive until a few seconds before the revenant disappears completely. This is on top of damaging my borgs each time.
Furthermore, I had around 5-6 secborgs in the cramped experimentation lab with my borging machine. Guess how much hits my borgs got in? A single stun baton hit. Even if they did hit the revenant, it could run away and heal.
2.) Ignore any blockading methods I have as AI. My number one power as AI is more or less bolting doors/shutters/firelocks. Guess what the revenant can do? Fly through anything.
3.) EMP any other things I may be able to use against it. Turrets? Haha, no. They're EMP'd.

So I have an invisible antag that can fly through walls and chainstun-murder anything. And this invisible antag feels like hunting me and only me down. First they kill all of my borgs with the chainstun and damage from Malfunction, then fly to my core and do the same there. I can't stop it. At all. My turrets don't work, atmospherics doesn't work, doorbolting doesn't work, borgs don't work, nothing works. Traitor round completely destroyed by something that I can do nothing about.

Really I just think that the EMP in Malfunction is a little much for the costs of performing Malfunction. It's a hard counter to Silicons that when combined with something that is invisible and flies through walls, ends the game for any silicon unlucky enough to be the target of a revenant.

TL;DR NERF MALFUNCTION (EMP)

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:01 am #147249

People removed the EMP from malfunction at some point but I think someone added it back in. No idea who. Sorry for rekking you.

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:13 am #147252

EMP would be fine if it'd only work on the cloner and beepsky and silly shit like that but revenant shouldn't be able to kill borgs with 0 effort, that is a bit too much influence on the round for something that's practically untouchable if it pays attention.

Malkevin · Post by **Malkevin** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 1:23 pm #147270

Super Aggro Crag wrote:
Zilenan91 wrote:Bless a water tank, fill a fire extinguisher with it, spray on floor.
does it make an overlay? I don't see anything when I do that.

overlay got removed because of lag

Cik · Post by **Cik** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:48 pm #147273

these and swarmers are impossible to deal with, IMO

if the player has two braincells+ they are uncatchable and really fuck things over.

Actionb · Post by **Actionb** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:51 pm #147274

Revenants only exist to grieve the crew. Why are they even in the game? What would we miss out on if they were removed..?

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:28 pm #147277

Antags also only exist to grief the crew.
Same for clowns.

If you want those gone, then let me quickly whip out my Bay strawman.

Lumbermancer · Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:49 pm

And Revenant is a Clown with a license to kill and ability to walk through walls.

Cheimon · Post by **Cheimon** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:06 pm #147279

Revenants are a strange antagonist, to be sure. They don't have any real weaknesses (even holy water can bypassed, and they regenerate all damage done to them). Their powers are mostly annoying, but not lethal (the exception is blight). Mostly, they don't seem to have an obvious goal. A lot of revenants just wander about irritating the shit out of people, which is all very well but not fun for anyone but the ghost.

Having said that, the 'transmit' function of the revenant is excellent. It allows for genuine roleplay between the revenant and players (since the revenant is basically untouchable) and that can create some excellent situations: the revenant can push players to go to further extremes, to kill, it can team up with others and provide helpful information, it can trick people into deadly scenarios, and so on. And the other revenant tools are really helpful in supporting that.

I think revenants would work better in an environment where their roleplaying was more strictly required. That's not likely to be /tg/, but they're not an unpromising antagonist by any means. If you did want that on this server, you'd probably want to start by making revenant transmissions visible to ghosts (to encourage other players and create something enjoyable to watch) and also providing them with some stricter roleplaying objectives ("be a spooky ghost" does not count, "trick some crew members into killing each other" might be).

Lumbermancer · Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:31 pm

Well that would be entertaining and unique without being obnoxious and powergame-y. We can't have that.

Drynwyn · Post by **Drynwyn** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:53 pm #147287

I have literally never gotten to play revenant and I'm super salty about that.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:21 pm #147288

Me neither, but I still believe that yes, revenants need RP objectives and higher standards in that respect.

I almost fear we might have to

Spoiler:

them otherwise.

Lumbermancer · Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:35 pm

We had objective based Revenant, he was called Space Ninja.

DemonFiren · Post by **DemonFiren** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:37 pm #147290

I was referring to RP objectives.

Ninja has actual objectives in addition to those.

M0nsoon · Post by **M0nsoon** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:16 pm #147297

Drynwyn wrote:I have literally never gotten to play revenant and I'm super salty about that.

You can trade your antag for it, most if not all the admins will do the trade

Drynwyn · Post by **Drynwyn** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:18 pm #147298

M0nsoon wrote:
Drynwyn wrote:I have literally never gotten to play revenant and I'm super salty about that.
You can trade your antag for it, most if not all the admins will do the trade

i will hold you to that if I see you online

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:19 pm #147299

Yeah that's what I always do. And fun fact about revenants, the one described in Chiefwaffles' post was probably the most powerful revenant someone is ever going to see. I had 130 essence cap, and all the powers. That's a shitload of essence which is incredibly rare to get. The only reason I got so much was because I persuaded two people to sleep, who were then absorbed by me.

You'll sometimes have to do an ahelp for it instead of a pray because admins can miss it.

Cheimon · Post by **Cheimon** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:34 pm #147306

I'm not sure it's actually that hard to unlock all the powers you need as a revenant, or to get a good essence cap. You just need to persuade people to provide critted people for you. Various jobs are good bets: the geneticist and virologist are both able to make lots of dying humans fairly easily, the warden can often be pushed to execute a few more criminals than he otherwise might, and of course it shouldn't be too hard to find some antagonists either, and persuade them that you'll help in exchange for food.

Whitelists are a common suggestion when people don't like the way others play a role, but they've never been done to my knowledge. I wouldn't rely on it as a fix. They require more work from volunteer admins and they're very open to suggestions of metafriending and FNR bullshit complaints.

Kel · Post by **Kel** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 7:46 pm #147308

How to make a Revenant useless:
Holy water the main hallways, and medbay. the Revenant wont defile it unless he has some massive balls and is ready to get bashed in for the next 5 seconds. If for some reason he is uninterrupted, it still takes far more time to clear out the holy water one cast by one than just spraying a fresh coat over with a fire extinguisher.
Smash lights. This literally make his only viable offensive tool against humans useless. For some reason exposed filament with electricity still flowing through it doesn't arc lightning as well as just a turned on light.
Slap a bitch. Revenants are immune to punches and weapons that do punch-tier damage, but something like a toolbox, your oxygen tank, or even some rods on the ground will hurt them. Bonus points if you slap them with the null rod for an instant-kill
Don't sleep. Just don't fucking sleep.

All in all: Make broken lights still zap people please. Also fix blight or replace it. It literally just doesnt do anything half the time and is a serious investment in all ways (stun, reveal, unlock cost, cast cost)

Lumbermancer · Mon Jan 18, 2016 8:31 pm

Kel wrote:Holy water the main hallways, and medbay

Ye except no one will do that at shift start because it's tedious boring and mechanical. Chaplains SOMETIMES did that during old Cult rounds, but Revenant isn't even round antag. Also Revenant is most obnoxious when shits hit the fan, station is in shambles, people dead, holes into space - when no one will bother to bless shit.

Kel · Post by **Kel** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 8:58 pm #147312

Lumbermancer wrote:
Kel wrote:Holy water the main hallways, and medbay
Ye except no one will do that at shift start because it's tedious boring and mechanical. Chaplains SOMETIMES did that during old Cult rounds, but Revenant isn't even round antag. Also Revenant is most obnoxious when shits hit the fan, station is in shambles, people dead, holes into space - when no one will bother to bless shit.

If you hate revenants enough just ask the chaplain to bless the watertank and spread the holy water yourself. Revenant's entire purpose is to thrive off of other people's work. Follow around a traitor, take his victims soul, stun non-traitors so he can get easy kills. Revenant can do just about nothing alone. He can shock people and pick up some cheesy kills at medbay, but again, that requires people to just leave genetics and cryo completely alone.

Lumbermancer · Mon Jan 18, 2016 9:29 pm

How about you do it instead? Oh? You don't want to devote time to a thankless task to combat something that might not even affect you? I don't blame you.

leibniz · Post by **leibniz** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 3:48 am #147372

Here is the thing: I did it.
Rev can break the blessing with defile.

Zilenan91 · Post by **Zilenan91** » Tue Jan 19, 2016 3:52 am #147373

Yeah it can pull up floor tiles and that busts the blessing.