Hive chat was a crutch for unrobust players to call for assistance every time they got caught, now you have no crutch
Winning as antag should not require to you to be a super robust McGyver player.
In a 40+ minutes round playing as antag, you are going to make at least one mistake. And you can die because of it. That doesn't make you a shitty player.
Wow its almost like changelings are supposed to be kind of stealthy or something. Do you have that much trouble getting a taser/prod/egun after absorbing a sec or hop?
You're nearly invincible, immune to stuns, have an on-demand space suit, armor, and armblade with a huge knockdown bonus (PROTIP: AIM FOR THE FUCKING HEAD)
Can also instantly fuck over any borgs trying to rush you down, something traitors don't have an easy time doing, plus you can wreck a whole room's capacity to function with the other shriek.
But lordy no, you don't get an instant win sting so the entire gamemode is trash! Put some effort into it.
Are you people following the Red Army
"Not one step back!" guideline or something like that ? Are you really able to question a turn in policy you decided, or do you see it as some sort of unremovable stain of shame to just question some coding you've done and thought it was fine back then ?
How useful are those defensive skills when the changeling reputation and server high population, pretty much nullify them by giving the ling ZERO chance to make it alive once exposed and surrounded ? You're gonna get swarmed by every player on the station and overpowered. No matter your defensive abilities, people are going to surround you, put you down, cuff you, and continiously bash your head with a fire extinguisher out of fear of your regenerative abilities while they drag you to cremation.
The armblade (And the shriek) is a dead givaway that you're a ling, and is not an incapacitating weapon. It carry a knockdown bonus but it's not designed to KO your opponent. It's a damaging close contact skill you can easily replace by an alcohol bottle smashed on someone head for a knockdown. This is like saying you can remove the ebow because the esword KO you when aimed at the head anyways.
I'm not supposed to use artisanal means to compensate for the missing features of a changeling the coders butchered. Every other antag or combat role has the means to accomplish his mission, incapacitate it's target, etc. Except the changeling.
The wizard has the magic missile. Apply EI NATH for death and maximal efficiency.
The traitor have the ebow, the nuke ops: the FN F2000-like assault rifle (C-20R) that downs you immediately, syndie borgs, LMGs, the huge mechs. (All this compensate the risky nature of their mission)
The ninja, i do not even need to say what he's capable of.
The security officier have a taser, a pepperspray, a flash, a baton, etc.
Every head has the mighty egun that is probably the most safe weapon in the game. Stun the fucker, switch mode, laser him to death while he lies helpless on the ground.
The changeling can try to cryo you and whack you in the head with his super obvious Resident Evil-like armblade while the victim yells and yells, and yell while trying to reach a populated area. (Because well, good luck if you want to cryo, hit, mute all at once.) Then security and armed volunteers comes, follow the blood; The guy got absorbed ? They'll know if someone pretends to be him. The guy is just dead ? He's gonna get cloned and tell every detail about what you did.
And like i said; You can't allow yourself to be exposed as a ling.
Why do you think greentext became a rare occurence, especially in changeling rounds ?
Either people try but see their cover blown, get swarmed and lynched.
Or they just know this is useless, and spend the round having a "fun" and gimmical changeling round, which involves no risky absorptions, and basically stinging people with the transform and LSD sting to bring some sort of chaos and rage among the crew.
The changeling should be an absolute horror in combat; but since it's no longer the case, people play it as a clown with chemical abilities.
I made several suggestions on how to improve this; Stun/Knockdown ability, and an additionnal DNA slot for every absorbed DNA.
And the only answer seems to be some kind of trashtalk, implying the problem is the players, those bunch of lazy fuckers that refuse to use assistant improvised weapons to compensate for the removals the coders made.
