Hiya, I’m your 
loved newly elected senator for the Yautja whitelist.
I’d like to use this thread for opinions, feedback, suggestions, questions and complaints about the predator whitelist.
11 Likes
Can you add Christianity to the WL? It would be really cool if the Predators could see the Lord’s Way and spread His message of love throughout the galaxy thanks.
In all seriousness, one, congrats on the Senator position!
Two, I’ve got no real complaints about the Pred WL. You guys are, for the most part, all wonderful. I just wish there was a bit more interaction with marines aside from the usual duels and aggressiveness. It’s been a while since I’ve seen thralls being taken in. I understand thralls are usually just PVTs getting roped into shenanigans, but maybe we could extend this to victors of a Pred duel too (thought this probably doesn’t happen too often)?
12 Likes
Hiya, thank you for your concern for the whitelist.
I, along with the council have realized this issue and it somewhat relates to hellhounds as well.
Thralls and hellhounds are iffy, as there is no honor code, guidelines written for them.
What are we gonna do about it?
-
Make them apart of the honor code, give them a specialized “ruleset” to follow.
1a. Give predators guidelines about thralls, a direction to take them in. -
Make thralls playable by modifying their armor and equipment
2a. Thralls are sometimes expected to fight, this rarely can be done because:
A. They barely have any armor
B. They can’t see in the dark.
C. They only have melee weapons.
3b. Give predators the ability to explode hellhounds/thralls at will.
A short story on why I never take thralls anymore:
On a round of LV-624 I saw a new player wandering around, being curious about predators. One thing led to another and I took them as a thrall, I gave them their equipment and etcetra.
After showing them the battlefield and gaslighting them that their friends have turned on them, and will kill them on sight (a half-truth) I was injured and focused on healing.
In the span of two minutes that I stopped paying attention they wiped the FOB with only a sword and blew themselves up inside it with a fueltank.
I’m sure you can see a problem with this.
17 Likes
What a legend
14 Likes
This is hilarious. Though I feel like this may have been more so an issue of wording their new relationship with the corps, though, lol.
That being said, I do see how big of issue it can be to give such powerful tools to essentially random strangers. In which case, I can see why you proposed to add a self-destruct button for the thrall’s pred master to use. However, if this is the major issue with thralls at the moment, then once the self-destruct is added, thralls are added to the honor code, and the thrall’s kit finally gets more armor and some lighting (or thralls get night vision helmets or something like that), then there should be no real issue taking in thralls, no?
4 Likes
I wouldn’t see any issue with it no, the concerns I shared were also shared by the members of the whitelist.
Thrall masks sadly do not give NVGs (for some reason)
Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is giving them no slowdown on weeds, although I’d love to hear opinions about it.
Suggestions are very much welcome too, about thralls and otherwise.
6 Likes
This is easier said than done, but one issue I note is whenever any pred tech/corpses end up on the Almayer, you will suddenly get half a dozen Predators spawning in to go fight on the Almayer.
It can be engaging for the Predators, but for the Marines having an endless stream of overpowered monsters with instant killing plasma guns becomes excessive. Especially since in some instances it may well seem you will never be able to defeat the Predators as they keep coming.
Would there be any consideration to a limit on predator spawns? Or any other kind of systems to tackle this issue if it is even perceived as a issue?
Edit: This is also a issue that there is no end-game to recovering pred-tech, marines can’t offload the stuff so there is no real reward, just punishment.
8 Likes
What I think I see as a problem with preds is that there is that ignoring them is a lot more rewarding than interacting with them.
If you duel them as a marine and win 1v1 you can get a piece of equipment which is really cool.
BUT
If you kill a pred as a marine, get its equipment, only thing you are going to get is thwei (not too useful and you can find it in vials) and a dozen of suicide bombers on your ship.
If you cap a pred as a xeno, you are going to get a dozen of suicide bombers in your hive. Abom is cool and all, but getting abom is only viable when you are already safely winning (and don’t really need an abom), if you’re on your last legs, getting abom is a death sentence since you’ll now have to fight predators too. From my experience 9 of 10 rounds when xenos get abom ends with abom being killed along with several xenos (I recall preds just activating SD in the hive and calling it a day).
I think overall this is not too bad (and I bet it’s very fun for preds), but I wish the suicide bombers wave was tuned down somehow. While I was typing this message, @Steelpoint also brought this point.
6 Likes
What about religion?
I’ve been iffy on applying to pred WL both previously and now, and wanted to create a more religious predator. However, there is minimal lore to go off of… Is the religion section of the predator coming soon, or should applicants be expected to create their own interpretation?
2 Likes
Just play as a Christian pred duh. Why do you need another God when already have the best one standing right there?
3 Likes
Definitely agree with the suicide bombing being an issue, as a solution I think an offical clan Taliban could be created so we know in advance. Abom is also massively underwhelming as a reward for capping a pred but equally it’d be a bit problematic for marines if suddenly marines get some T4 equivalent as a result of something entirely out of your control. It also feels like Preds are just given carte blanche to go on an epic frag fest when an abom is spawned which massively derails the Xeno vs marine dynamic. I’m generally more pessimistic about how to fit preds into a round as well as the nature of the WL itself and how accountable it all really is but I think interacting with preds should be more of an opt in thing. For example I had a round on hybrisia where I was talking to a friendly synthvivor pre round and a pred appears telling me I have to kill the synth or it’ll kill me, I get preds are antags or whatever but I wasn’t interested in fighting one i just wanted to fight marines.
Maybe a cap on pred numbers in rounds could be worthwhile but certainly from a xeno perspective in their current format I find preds a nuisance at best and round ruining at their worst
Appreciate the opportunity to give feedbck as well! I think more transparency and community involvement with the WL in general makes a big difference and it’d be good to have more going forward.
7 Likes
You’ve convinced me, I’m going to try and proselytise Protestant Christianity to the next predator I see, and perma when they beat the absolute fucking crap out of me and take my skull for being a heretic.
But yeah, I agree with what people have said about rewards on predators. For marines this is kind of less of an issue given the chaos happens shipside most of the time (anyone who loots a pred is doing so knowing they have just brought doom upon themselves and everyone around them, and it’s admittedly funny having half the WL come after your ass), but for xenomorphs- It’s usually just fucked, because you tend to lose sisters.
Marines are necromancers and tend to only die during shipside invasions if they get nuked by SD, whereas xenomorphs don’t really have that luxury. Capping a predator is already painful enough- Everyone just presses F+E immediately to pick up and equip their clan mask 0.1 picoseconds after an attempted hugging, PLUS you have to keep them alive while slashing the shit out of their mask to get it off. On the extremely rare chance you do, there’s only a fraction of a chance you even get an abom, and after that another fraction of a chance the ensuing predcord demolition squad doesn’t murder the abom + half the hive. It’s just not worth it.
I wished it would be toned down, especially for aboms. Pred rounds are already rare enough at 20%, and I think aboms being more viable (instead of a gimmick in which experienced players with thousands of hours have seen viable aboms a handful of times) would be more fun for everyone involved instead of the death trap it is now.
Besides that, I think predators are in a decent place right now. The WL has improved a lot since ye olden days, and I suppose with the recent armour buff they’re no longer squishy.
Congrats on the Senator position!
5 Likes
Pretty much @ihatethisengine nailed it with the biggest flaw in my eyes about pred gameplay interactions. I am too bald to kill one as marine or xeno and that’s ok, they are supposed to be some supermen in the movies as well, one issue I find is that in my experience very few preds (still greater than zero) try to make encounters interesting, 95% of the time it feels like just some space bully that gets to blow you up if you look at them funny with no forseeable reward in engaging with them; if they wordlessly kill you, you are just dead, if you manage to kill them you doomed your whole faction. I know very little of the honour code but I have seen surprisingly many times a pred that gets mauled in a 1v1 duel against a T1 even and they get to turn invisible, run away and heal up and after when the said T1 tries to run away they get chased and killed, this applies to pred v marine as well. I struggle to see how this is beneficial to the server and not just a way to satisfy some power-fantasies of a handful of players to the detriment of everyone else.
About the moral integrity of the WL council I wait to see the result of Nimbus342 - Whitelist Report: Elite Qor'jok Teer, Weapon usage but was generally undermining the spirit of the WL to determine if such a thing exists.
3 Likes
I feel like RP standards have gone up regarding the whole wordlessly murdering people thing. It’s not perfect, but honestly? Nowadays, if a Pred is wordlessly murdering you, it’s probably because you or some other people began wordlessly shooting them, and you just got lumped in with them. I find that if it’s not a chaotic gangbang, most Preds are kind enough to deliver your corpse to FOB or some medics, or relent from landing the killing blow on xenos.
But yeah, definitely still a lot of room for improvement. I hope there’ll be more scrutiny & emphasis on predators enhancing the gameplay experience for everyone in the spirit of the WL. Maybe one day we might even see the public perception change away from power fantasy murderboners.
5 Likes
maybe u shouldnt be talking to synths?? 
YOU!!! ARE!!! A!!! XENO!!! KIIIILL IIIIT
5 Likes
On the issue of Xenomorphs and the Abomination. I feel there is literally no reason to aim to get one.
My last round with an abomination while I was playing as a Xenomorph, we spent the entire hijack being hounded by a pack of Predators who would continually rush in, via cloak, and unload HPC and Plasma Rifle rounds into anyone and everyone in the area. You’d force one Predator to retreat, only for the next one to return to repeat the process.
Between this and the Marines, there is literally no incentive for Xenomorphs to secure an abomination. If the abomination was as strong as the King, sure, but as it stands the Abomination feels weak, you are at the mercy of RNG if a “decent” player is taking control and the Abomination needs to kill a dozen Marines before it actually can become a threat. (Which is easier said than done since kill stealing is a huge issue and getting someone to stop attacking to let the Abom finish them off is almost impossible unless the hive is extremely coordinated)
Abomination is a trap.
7 Likes
On the topic of being thralled, one time on Solaris Ridge, I got thralled. Was RPing with the pred and then BAM, a runner came along and scored a decap since thrall armour doesn’t have head protection (or a helmet). It bit of a bummer.
2 Likes
I think that the cloak that predators has should probably be disabled if they are damaged with a 2 second cooldown just because disengaging with literally no way to chase you down other than super squinting
the predator healing surgery probably shouldn’t be able to be done while cloaked either
if a group of marines chase down blood droplets like in say the game Predator Hunting Grounds they can find you via a shimmer, the sound effects of your tools and the super big trail. Almost none of this exists here and it can result in you getting blown up if you do pursue.
the ultra liberal usage of cloaking is noninteractive by nature.
also I agree with steelpoint, the Abom should be king level because predators get to pull out the full op stuff to stop it
4 Likes
Kind of funny, but I still remember my first interaction with a predator as a marine(maybe in general as well, I seriously dont remember if I interacted with predators in my xeno purist days). It was a Sorokyne round, huge man with an axe rushed at a marine and I rushed at him with my Mk2, guns blazing, and then got my ass whooped real bad. Then I went on and changed my character description to reflect that encounter.
Anyhow, if giving actual feedback, then I have one huge point: There’s no reward in killing predators as neither xenos or marines.
Marines get ZERO rewards if they get a predator body and not just give it back to the predators to MAYBE get a mask from the defeated predator or something in return. Stealing a dead Yautja is actively sabotaging shipside, because what will happen is that research gets disrupted from making greenos\ubermegastimulant or at worst someone important gets gibbed or decapped. My honest opinion is that if you actively steal a predator corpse and researcher is able to do dissect it and put the gear in secure containment - there’s SOME reward to it. Maybe Weyland-Yutani sending an PMC team, or UA sending their own team to retrieve all items, and then give marines some kind of reward. Its not really that hard to kill a predator as a marine if you have the right weapons, but it should still be rewarding thing to do.
Xenomorphs get a reward upon capturing of a predator, being the Abomination, but it honestly feels incredibly weak before you get fed kills. I honestly think it needs a serious buff, like getting queen-level pheromones(very strong) and getting immunity to fire damage that isnt blue fire. Currently Abomination brings a horde of mostly robust players eager for action into the hive, usually destroying the hive and\or half of the xenomorph population, which is really bad if marines are actively pushing xenos into the hive or somewhere near it. As a way to balance this - add notification to marines about the abomination being born, something like “Powerful xenomorph entity detected on colony grounds due to death of [UNKNOWN] specimen. Exterminate with extreme vigilance.”, to actually let marines know there’s an abomination coming OOCly and make marines a little more on their toes ICly, alike to a King. When abomination reaches 8-10 kills - marines receive extra armor piercing ammunition or just alot of requisition budget due to “Powerful xenomorph entity growing out of control, High Command has demanded Armor Piercing ammunition be delivered via ASRS.”, or something along those lines.
Putting all those things aside, most interactions I had with predator players were pretty good and fun, even if its just a predator tossing a piece of human meat at me and suggesting I give it a taste, then running away laughing.
4 Likes
Double posting but since I am also a WL Predator I’d also like to offer my perspective from the Predator side in this Abom v Predator issue. I’m in the position where I have both played as a regular Xenomorph, Abomination AND a Predator during a Hijack fight with Predators versing the Hive during Hijack.
As a Predator, the issue I felt was not that the Abomination itself was a threat, as generally the person playing it is a XX, but that the entire hive will defend the Abomination. While a Predator does have access to powerful weapons, this is predicated that they have limited charge/uses and long reload times.
Even when going cloaked and firing HPCs and Plasma Rifles, all a Abom has to do is roar to disable your cloak and you are now playing a yakkity sax game against the entire hive.
Furthermore, even if you spam fire HPCs and Plasma Rifles, you are only wounding/killing xenomorphs, not the actual target, as it is literally impossible to get into a 1v1 with the Abomination. You pretty much need to kill the hive to kill the abomination or hope the xenos misplay and keep the Abom out of positon.
You have no hope of a ““fair”” fight when the Queen, four T3s and the entire hive are guarding the Abomination.
If my memory is correct, I’ve killed at least two Abominations. Both of them I killed due to either the Abom being distracted by another Predator, or the Xenos ran too far ahead and the Abom had been worn down by a lot of damage.
Basically Abominations die to attrition, and they take half the hive with them.
7 Likes