giving predators unique moving sound just like queen has one is actually a nice idea, too bad we don’t have coders to do that
3 Likes
This thread very, very quickly devolved into people arguing semantics, and is pretty much entirely the reason I really dislike predators and their current implementation. Some people will say that predators are easy to kill- And in some regards, they are. But they more often than not outright disrupt rounds just by existing, despite being told and directed to influence it as little as possible.
Their mere existence is enough to cause handfuls of marines or xenos on goose chases to deal with them. Once a marine or xeno is marked, it’s basically just a matter of time before they’re singled out and killed, be it by luck or a single misplay. And when they inevitably misplay and die? The SD explosion will likely kill more than just the one they were hunting.
Or the xenos get an abomination, and the predcord hears about it and slaughters them all.
They’re in such a bad spot that it feels stupid to argue whether they’re ‘easy to kill’ or whether they are super powerful god-levelled individuals who can only die by hivediving and SDing, because the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of CM13 players can’t beat a Pred in a 1v1. Seriously, ghost and watch a predator, and see how often they actually lose fights. The moment it looks grim, they’ll find a reason to cloak and heal, or they’ll get low and have 10 xenos jump in, or baldie mcmarine will start to unload on them.
Very, very, very rarely do these ‘honorable’ fights ever happen, and even more rarely do they ever finish that way. It’s just impossible in rounds with 100+ people that two individuals will be able to engage one another in an environment that isn’t being kidnapped to the yautja ship (which also disrupts rounds, I’ve seen them kidnap IOs and Comtechs and shit).
I genuinely think Predators, as a whole, need to be reworked. Not their abilities or anything, but their influence on the round and what is expected of them. Either include a hard cap on preds so we don’t get the meme 10+ Pred rounds that have happened recently, change the way the honor code works so Queens don’t randomly die in the backline (this happened recently too!), adjust how they’re supposed to hunt so they can’t just lolcloak plasmacaster retreat and heal 30 times, or actually respond to whitelist reports in a way that shows you care about player interaction instead of the arbitrarily written rules.
As it stands, a predator could literally ruin the round for a dozen marines, and it’d be handwaved because well they didn’t break the code. A predator could SD and kill 20 people, but they were fighting an honorable target, so really it’s the people’s watching fault. Ten predators could fight the xenos groundside and kill a dozen of them before hijack, but they were all honorable targets, so it’s whatever.
Forget balance- Predators suck to deal with, from an RP and an OOC standpoint. That’s how I truly feel.
6 Likes
A lot of people have been punished for this, it falls under the spirit of the WL.
They’re a third party antagonist faction, I don’t understand why people are confused about it.
It’ll be hard to make it so its challenging and easy, right now its in-between the two.
Do you mean honor duels?
We spoke about this and we’re adamant on punishing LRP.
That’s not allowed.
2 Likes
I think part of this comes from the fact that the average player has no idea what the honor code is.
Like, sure veteran players have gone to the forums and went HMM YES THIS IS EXACTLY HOW I CAN GAME THE CODE and also AH YES THIS IS REPORTABLE but unless you’re pred WLed most people don’t find it interesting to read rules.
Hell most players don’t read the server rules, letalone honor code lmao.
This leads to a complicated problem where only some of the more veteran players can make pred complaints or even know what to complain.
See: The like 900000000000000000 denied pred complaints because it’s intended gameplay.
I genuinely don’t think there’s actually a fix to this either, besides maybe spamming the honor code over ooc for like a week and hoping more players read it?
3 Likes
-A lot of people have been punished for this
A recent round including a recent WL report shows this to still be happening regardless.
-Third party antag faction.
Yes, they are. They’re still in a bad spot, because they have the effect of shifting a lot of focus onto them when it’s the opposite of their intended purpose. The reason I say they suck is entirely because of this; They DO shift the entire round. Marines and Xenos both immediately home onto them and it causes the course of the round to change wholly. See how many times skilled warriors such as NTF focus them down. See how many times a Pred SD will change things entirely and wholly.
Yes, they are a third party antag faction. That’s a large reason why they’re awful to interact with; Because they’re not MEANT to be interacted with on a large scale, but the gamestate often revolves around whether or not they decide to be a nuisance. And a nuisance they often are.
-Pred balance
Not what this thread is about, but yeah. It’s in between the two. Some people lose instantly to preds. Some people think they’re easy. The fact it’s being argued at all makes me dislike this thread immensely.
-Honor Duels
Negative. What I mean is when a predator chooses an ‘honorable’ prey and goes after them. Very rarely does it EVER become a 1v1. More often than not, the hive or other marines will join in. It’s part of the ‘not impacting the round’ sort of thing. Predator attacks someone and marks as honorable, but it will never be an honorable 1v1 because either it’s going to be a baby marine or xeno, or the fight will go on long enough that others join in.
The honorable prey code states that almost anything or one can become honorable prey (barring a few individuals, but that is what it is), and that alone makes it almost impossible to interact with predators when the only real dealings with them will either be them insulting you (and god forbid you insult them back, or…) or you have to fight them and potentially die to them. There’s very, VERY rarely any other nuance.
-Cloak, plasmacaster, heal not being allowed.
Better start opening your eyes, then, son. Whitelist Reports channel also showcases that this is scarcely punished.
1 Like
I sincerely disagree. Someone was warned for accidentally blowing people up with SD.
Secondly, whenever I or anybody else has actually been in a duel with a pred, I think 80% of the time it remains a 1v1.
1 Like
People break rules, they get punished. Just because rulebreaks happen doesn’t mean we should stop punishing.
show me
2 Likes
i wrote out a whole post in response but lol slowmode ate it
The point I’m trying to make is simple, and I do genuinely hope it doesn’t just seem like mindlessly screaming about nothing:
Predators ARE a driving force in the round. The fact that so many people are talking about how to kill them and how strong they are showcases that they’re constantly engaged in fights. That’s a good thing, by the way. That’s what they’re meant to be doing.
But I think we either need a serious re-write of how targets are marked as honorable and how predators should act in game, or we need to embrace them as being a true third party force and not pretend they’re something that both sides don’t actively aim to deal with, ESPECIALLY since rounds are starting to become very common where there’s 10+.
As for the rest of the stuff, I feel like we’re arguing semantics on very minor points of the honor code and clearly you and I have differing opinions on how they should be followed. That’s fine, of course- But if it’s meant to be the norm, then it, in my opinion, doubly showcases how centric predators can be to the flow of the rounds.
(the whitelists being separated from normal admin activity also makes this VERY FUCKING DIFFICULT to deal with, as many ahelps are met with ‘make a report so the whitelist council can deal with it’)
1 Like
Am I awake or am I dreaming? This report Nimbus342 - Whitelist Report: Elite Qor'jok Teer, Weapon usage but was generally undermining the spirit of the WL - #16 by stalkerino got resolved in a sensible way??
I really hope this is a step in the right direction, one of the main complaints that I have is what I perceive as a sense of immunity and entitlement from the WL especially when an abomination is born. Hopefully we are moving away from the “an abomination is born, time to murderbone and grief half the server I guess, oh you are a T1 5 screens away from the abomination? Well, I will just plasma cast you to hell lol, write a report and see what happens, bitch” attitude I have witnessed way too many times.
Curious to see if enforcement against this behaviour will be consistent.
1 Like
Overall most of my interactions with preds have been pretty positive. Nothing quite like managing to score a kill in melee with a xeno and having a pred present you with the skin, mocking you because you left another marine to fight a pred alone or just generally being a little spooky making sounds in the distance then when you investigate nothing is even there. It’s an absolute blast most of the time.
So while you do get some preds who go ham against the abomination or SD in a bunch of marines from time to time I think it’s easy to overlook that a lot of preds are good sports, only handful of times have I gone perma from a pred and to be fair for some of those it wasn’t even their fault. Hell I found as soon as I show a general disinterest in fighting most preds just go off elsewhere. Which really as an antagonist is pretty chill of them.
If anything I see a lot of poor preds get screwed over as they start typing any sort of RP a marine will flame ‘em or suddenly that’s the time the warrior goes for the lunge. Poor guys try and get some RP going and only get slapped for it.
Only real feedback I’ve got for the whitelist is more thralls would be neat. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in all the rounds I’ve played. Preds handing out funny items to worthy folks even if they’re purely cosmetic would be neat too.
3 Likes
Step 1 would be resolving reports in time that you actually remember what happened rather than kicking it into the long grass (not that that’s on Stalkerino, he’s handled it the best he can in this case). But as a process I’d say my report was indicative of a lot of the frustration people have with preds- the council dismissed the report on grounds which made it sound like they hadn’t even read it in full after over a month since the initial report. I then had to contact a manager via discord to get the report reopened and it then took over an additional month to get it resolved with the report the council initially dismissed in fact being approved. The net result is a player who consistently abused the pred toolkit across the round continues to have access to all those same tools. Full credit to Stalkerino for being transparent and helpful with the resolution (and I understand that a warning was the only possible outcome after such a long wait) but I think that it’s stories like this which have affected people’s perception of the WL and I hope we’ll see swifter and fairer resolution moving forward.
2 Likes
to be frank, i was gonna fill out a form for pred whitelist, but then i made the mistake of lookin at other ones that had be submitted before hand, and me personally i have never been good at the hole rp thing, let alone talkin to peeps IRL or written out a detailed amazin story about this one character, I’ve always been a straight to the point kind of person.
but what im gettin at is the stage has been set that you have to be this god tier person who can hold a convo for hours without droppin the ball while in game all see preds do is a little funny here and there (im aware they do alot of talkin with other preds on there ship and at the hut by the lake, ive been a ghosty boy quite a few times cause i get ballsy as a foblit and think i can push a cade out a tad farther)
guess what im gettin at is on the application instead of askin them to write out a story and go off what others comment, why not give them events that they have to explain how they would go about it like the one with the marines attackin you and what you would do or the one were your mark gets killed by another pred and how you would go about dealin with it.
ill give an example and its one that happened in game and was by far the most active I’ve ever seen the preds be with building a story.
round start its me and two other IO’s, cap decided we were gonna do a split push on Kutjevo Refinery, two IO’s would deploy with Delta at the dunes landing sight while the rest pushed from the Aux landing zone, we land and start movin to the hydro dam to secure intel and power, me and 4 Delta marines decide to move towards the scrublands and link up with the rest of the lads at fob, at the building directly east of botany bridge we came across a gruesome display, flayed civs scattered everywhere there skin layin around, bodies hanging from the ceiling and in the distance, laughter.
threw out the op we would find altars with human meat on platers around the fobs or Yautja standing infront of memorial stones before disappearing without a trace, and if you were foolish enough to take something from those altars or memorial stones, you were hunted and killed.
i would rather read on the applications about how players would go about setting the tone and instilling fear into marines that come across there “artful” displays instead of it being solely about there backstory.
and with that, my rant is over, sorry for the long post and i hope yall have a good one
times ive retyped this = 12
4 Likes
short summary of this is, instead of focusing on cool backstory, give them situations and see what they do with them
The “cool backstory” exists so you can prove how well you can write and how well you can portray your character in writing; situations are secondary if not tetiary to the whitelist.
Predator roleplay is priority, the killing and “spooky” stuff is the least of my concerns.
The backstory is also for character development, it helps people imagine their character.
I’m sorry to say but it’s not going anywhere.
5 Likes
i wasnt sayin to get rid of it it was more of dont focus so heavily on it
1 Like
Real question. Is it LRP of a pred to partially skin a marine? Like making him go to the almost skinned state where he can technicly be revived.
1 Like
does that change the sprite at all?
1 Like
Yes.
1 Like
The point of that is to get a slab of meat from the cadaver, it’s not LRP; it’s quite intentional for that to be a thing.
1 Like
whitelist would be better with lolvax1 on council
1 Like