by confused rock » Tue May 07, 2019 3:43 pm
#492565
In order of shitness, simple issues that I easily recall:
-medullary failure is and will be unfair, no matter the form. Even if it were point blank, it’d be a more unfair version of a death-sting. And no, having a buddy isn’t a counter(and not required in ANY OTHER MODE) since most won’t even RECOGNISE the heart failure-even doctors-and if there’s not a defib, I think I’m one of a half dozen people who know to use shocked grilles and doors to restart a heart, and that usually isn’t viable (try telling the AI to shock a door on asimov so you can throw someone at it)
-neural shock is just as bad- effectively just a parasting, makes cult stunarms look balanced.
-mind control just as unfair for same reasons
-you literally fucking stand still to convert people it’s boring as fuck, at minimum extract dna sting is a better option- could be like that.
-all pinpointing tracker skills are godawful- not only do they only work at a range for no good reason, but it constantly fucking switches targets and I never know what I’m tracking. Not knowing what I’m tracking is a HUGE problem when it jumps around so often. Biggest problem that isn’t frustrating for other people, but for the host. Only network invasion is useful, because the tracker is so vague I never know if it’s *really* a hive so I directly network invade it first.
-bruteforce shouldn’t exist. Implant breakers were the most reviled part of gang for a reason, and bruteforce is super easy.
-chaos induction is awful- the objective should always be set as “obey (hivemind here)”but I’ve used it plenty and never more than 2 people responded because it’s near impossible to notice and you never know who it effects.
-induce panic and distortion field are just obnoxious and usually just get used in escape to be a dick. They don’t add anything to hivemind they’re just obnoxious.
-circadian shift’s minimum is eight seconds of koing everyone in escape. MINIMUM. You could probably hijack in that time if there are few there. Wizards would ejaculate at the thought of magic missile stunning for that long while being instant and unavoidable and koing. As a reward for standing still on the same screen as 20 people I don’t think that’s fair.
-did I mention every hive is inherently far powerful on highpop?
-the forcewall is one of their fairest abilities of hivemind, it’s a shame that the best they have on offer is a changed wizard skill.
-Repair protocol also seems fine, though it isn’t clear how much brain damage it does, or if the hive should care. The problem there is..
-hives have no way to survive sec tasing them. All effort has been put into making them harder to track. Two things must be recognized:
1. There are a ton of hiveminds in one round. It shouldn’t be too hard for security or hives to track other hiveminds.
2.hives don’t need to be hard to track. They need to be harder to keep down.
Currently, hiveminds are like an airlock charge. “Balanced” in an uneven way. It isn’t fun to assimilate people and it isn’t fun to have a random heart attack. But as for their survivability, hives need SOMETHING. I would give hives a mindswap at any range on a very long cooldown. If hiveminds were made less unfair to track it’d be reasonable, so long as the swap is random. Maybe actually interesting. Better then “an asspain to track but an assistant with a toolbox can win sometimes”
-hive sight is the one thing I have zero problem with- combo with mind control or medullary or shock make it unfair, but those skills are already unfair.
-the one mind sound is irritating
Don’t get me fucking started on one mind. It feels like hivemind is at a weird spot between “hiveminds should rely on their powers” and “hiveminds should rely on regular weaponry” and worse still, in a spot between “hives should go full genocide” and “hives should never do crime”. It feels that, up until the one mind, hives have no reason not to avoid doing any antag shit- sec has no reason to suspect them until then (sec having “tase and implant anyone at random” promoted is another problem) and so if all a hivemind does is kill the other hives (which would be super easy if tracking wasn’t retarded so you rely on who stands still the most) it won’t feel fair for sec, but that’s the optimal way to play, and sec won’t know which purple guy to detain either.
This isn’t everything and I didn’t go into full detail on onemind and stuff I thought obvious, but that’s what I think, mostly. Too many powers doesn’t make the mode deeper, but it makes it worse if all the powers are unfair. I maintain my position that the only reason people should want hive is the sunk cost fallacy. Gang, shadowling,(both are better than hive at what it tries to do honestly), neither got this second chance, and neither had this many flaws. What’s worth salvaging here?
