Yeah you roll a Doctor and forget how to do surgery lol, makes no sense RP-wise as well, if I roll a specific role it’s because I want those skills, or if you roll something like a Doctor you wanna do surgery on the ship ect. It’s no fun nerfing skills when you barely have any compared to the marines in the first place, unless you pick a specific role for specific skills.
Did you read what I sent?
Have you tried roaming with 0 firearms and endurance skill before? I find it pretty difficult to roam when you are at a lack of any skill, shooting a shotgun basically becomes impossible, and you are completely incapable of doing the role you signed up to do, be it doctor, engineer, or security officer.
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Will CLF, PMC, UPP inserts still work the same way? As they’re more combat-focused and allow for some fun and unique gameplay, I can’t see it as impossible for this ‘mode’ to happen sometimes, and other times we can retain the existing gameplay of faction inserts - it allows people to not lose survivor as it is entirely, and still have the majority of the rounds being adjusted to this. Although some people might not be happy when they don’t roll the insert.
I think this would be a good idea IF marines have a reason to recuse survivors INTEL points,Survs doctors/engies, or something ELSE to make sure they even get recused.Second survivors skills other then firearms/endurance stay the same after the bunker drops(unless your role depends on it cmb,sec,clf,co,and some other combat role i forgot)
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I made it clear that I don’t want lockerhiding to be the only, or even a good way.
I imagine it as it was in Alien: Isolation. Extended hide and seek where you move around the colony avoiding xenos, not hiding in a locker forever. Some kind of “survivor” sense that lets you know xeno approaches alongside civilian/makeshift MD to avoid X-ray-less xenos and only occasionaly hide in a locker, or any single spot for extended period of time.
Please, read entire post before replying.
Then don’t play reworked surv, instead play PFC, or xeno, the intended 24/7 combat roles. Do you want to waste your CL round talking for an hour straight?
If they want to do it as a marine, or as a rambo surv, then nobody calls anybody a powergamer.
If you complain that there will be an option to RP in safety and you call it “15 minutes of AFK” then hell yeah you are a powergamer.
" Powergaming (also known as power gaming , min maxing , or optimization ) is a style of interacting with games or game-like systems, particularly video games, boardgames, and role-playing games, with the aim of maximizing progress towards a specific goal. Other players may consider this disruptive when done to the exclusion of all other considerations, such as storytelling, atmosphere, and camaraderie. When focusing on the letter of the rules over the spirit of the rules, it is often seen as unsporting, un-fun, or unsociable. This behavior is most often found in games with a wide range of game features, lengthy campaigns, or prize tournaments such as massively multiplayer or collectible games."
Textbook example of powergaming.
They have PFC and xenos to choose which are designed to fight and nothing else. Yet they choose survivor, because they can’t be bothered to spend 15 minutes prep time/drone tax time.
I stand by my opinion that comparing RP in safety to “just AFK time” is toxic.
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Would be cool if bunkers started out to be one. And would only surface from the ground at a time. Only surv know where it spawn because they get a compass leading to it. Once a surv is close, it surface or timelimit. Same would happen to the next bunker. Xeno meta gone pure rng. Remove xeno xray until marines arrive sounds great. need long sunset for the bunker survs
Although you’ve novel idea to turn survivors into Alien Isolation simulator when xenos are known to use observe roles to communicate hiding survivors (xeno uav), I would like to get your point straight.
So you, who I’d assume barely played survivor role (If not, please do tell me your IC character’s name, mine is Sergey Petrenko) want to fundamentally change a role that has been like this for years by players who has been doing it for just as much time to your own personal liking.
Do please tell me, why should we reform a role that has been known for a long time to be very combat heavy into RP one, when there’s plenty shipside RP roles as is. I just don’t understand you people who barely played survivor role, keep trying to change us fundamentally even though we never asked for it and were overall content with it.
Improve already existing fundamentals? Sure. Tweak balance to make it fair for everyone? Of course. (cough cough even though 80% of the time we all die anyways) Just saying survs shouldn’t be a PFC just because this role is able to shoot xenos back is not an argument.
Reason why survivors don’t play PFC is because the atmosphere is completely different, marines won’t care about you as much if at all and cohesion goes completely out of the roof. It’s the high octane gameplay that Thwomper has mentioned that attracts survivors to play this role.
Point flew completely over your head and it’s hypocritical that you ask people to read your whole post when you havent offered the courtesy to others.
I am not opposed to survivors having the option to use a bunker as a safehouse. What I am against is making it so that going to the bunker is absolutely necessary.
Thats whats happening when the rework advocates for removing the ability to create barricades, and have survivor skills under the false pretense that by some reason being able to know how to use wires, make cades, or defiblirate people falls under the catagory of “powergaming”.
Have you maybe considered that certain people play survivor to have fast paced action against xenomorphs, and certain people play it with the intention of roleplay? You clearly dont, because you’ve just told me and others to essentially stop playing survivor and go play PFC instead.
What might be fun roleplay for you, might be boring for another person. Everyone has their own playstyle. People should not be discouraging roleplay, but they should not be forced. The generalization here is that people who want to play survivor to kill xenomorphs or have PVP action are incapable of roleplaying and dumb fragger robots.
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How about don’t ruin a role we’ve played for years and enjoyed, nobody asked or wants this. I’ve hundreds of Squad Marine hours already, I play Survivor for the challenge and thrill of fighting the whole hive without a billion marines to back you up, the thrill of I dare say “Surviving”.
Most people barely touch the role and have such strong opinions about it, it’s sad.
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Wouldn’t the problem be fixed by just going security surv? Because then you get to retain firearms skills. Unless you somehow wanna justify going researcher and having better combat stats than a rifleman.
Because as it stands in the HackMD, you only lose it after 5 minutes of the bunker being open. And if the bunker on average lasts until 00:20 (15 minutes), you only lose the endurance and whatever other unrelated skills at 00:25. And if you are either not dead yet, or marines haven’t saved you, you won’t use them for long anyhow.
survs never really needed any nerfs or buffs they were already fine. The RP is up to the player to make. It’s like making sure checkpoints on Almayer block everything even maints so that marines dont afk on Alamo. You can’t force people to RP which is what all these nerfs are trying to achieve.
The playerbase of survivors is quite litterally a bunch of people who want to fight and some people who want to rp
The main point for survivor players is to survive with all you got against an entire hive with no logistics or heavy weaponry.
For the xenos it gave them a high risk high reward because the hive doesn’t start of with T3s and if they manage to capture a surv in the past it’d give 2 larva’s which would be a good advantage as there’s around 6 surv slots but now it’s 1 larva still good which is why it’s high risk high reward.
Survs already died almost every round which is what devs wanted apparently (doom survivors at any costs, player enjoyability is optional)
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The problem is, removing barricades isn’t a survivor specific nerf - it’s a marine nerf too. Barricades are being reworked entirely and being nerfed heavily. So it’s not like they’re targeting survs in specific with it.
Absolutely agree, anyone who says “Why do you want to go rambo???” is like… that’s just disrespectful for no reason? What’s wrong with that at all, that’s fun as shit, this game is awesome and boiling people down is just kinda fucked up.
Different people enjoy different things and that’s fine, certain roles have a target audience and that’s fine, etc.
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I love the idea of Left 4 Dead survs but certainly make them be able to unseal themselves and make sure the “adrenaline crash” would only be for skills that we’re buffing for whatever reason— maybe upping endurance but lowering xeno evo time to incentivize bunker gameplay?
Then, once both sides get a little higher power early game fun in, hopefully survs have a kill or two and are in the bunker and the Xenos have a cap or two, and adrenaline crash takes them below superhuman levels but ultimately still allows them to redeploy or fight in a Hijack if they need to.
Is it a little odd RP wise for a military force to let a civvy back down? Sure, but the easiest angle is “IT’S MY HOME, DAMNIT!” and there’s something very Aliens about it to me.
The other day, I saw a mute survivor drag in a bug corpse, still twitching, to the FOB as we land then move right back out. In character, my whole squad went “DAMN, HE’S SEEN SOME SHIT!” so, in an odd sense, even that helped to spin a story— though I won’t argue that it’s a good thing it’s still a thing we can riff off of.
Last night, two survivors who were Wey-Yu goons were grateful to be rescued and taken up on the Alamo, but after some medical treatment, one acquired an Intel key because my I/O buddy had bonded with him, and both redeployed because “It’s our home— we want to help!”
Of course between considerations of roleplay LRP versus MRP and then the TDM nature of the greater mechanics it’s hard to fit in Survivors, but I really, really like them. Thank you for trying to find a niche for them.
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next person who makes a rude post is getting suspended for a week
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Been discussing this in private, objectives are the natural answer to a lot of the problems faced by the necessity of meta-strategies and stale holdout locations.
Ultimately though, I think safehouses are the most boring form of objectives possible and veer off from the scrambled desperation that the role seems to desire, from both a roleplay and mechanics perspective. I think the goal - and this is worth stressing because this is still in the brainstorming phase - should be objectives that grant advantages that are interesting, but involve more than enough risk so that survival isn’t guaranteed even if you succeed. A la the van.
The same way that the nightmare CLF, PMC and UPP inserts create interesting stories and narratives, objectives should create scenarios worth roleplaying over, because without either of them, ship roleplay isn’t all that fun. “Enhanced” objectives like this can range from something basic like;
hacking the sensors tower in order to:
- secure the location of a supply cache
- secure access to a more powerful holdout
- increase the range of motion detectors (if applicable)
securing the comms tower with intel on alternative frequencies to secure:
- limited use CAS (call in a single fire-mission to capitalise on)
- a supply drop in a random area around the tower
- a small ERT with the possibility of hostilities. Examples could be forsaken hive respawns that can choose to be hostile to all or ally with the dominant hive, to neutral/hostile forward PMC/mercenary/extra-colony survivor groups of 1-3 members. Scenario of which notwithstanding.
To more complex and involving ideas like holding out in a lab to complete the discovery of a bioweapon/wonderdrug that might just justify the destruction and turmoil of the colony to the colonists you’re fighting alongside. The liaison and scientist survivors should ideally be integrated into objectives as a system with adjusted skills to compensate, but each objective should be taken in account with the manpower and skillsets you have available to you.
The point of all these scenarios is that if you (for example) die in the middle of the lab huddled around a spinning centrifuge, a sprawling mess of blood and gore in the middle of a battle between two hives, or the unfortunate victim of the remains of a killsquad - all these scenarios, both in life and death, lead to more interesting outcomes than if you secured a bunker the way that you (practically) already do.
Not sure if I agree with the “adrenaline crash” idea, but I generally play research survivor, which generally roleplays as a civilian post-survival anyway. Though the mechanic existing would be an incentive to buff survivors in ways that allows them to roam, if the goal is to move them away from holdouts.
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I’ll admit I’ve got my doubts about the changes, roaming for long periods of time and actually surviving since feels really rough, I’ve seen it where one person gets a fracture they’re dead in the water since even if they get splinted there is no real recovery from it.
As it stands marines sometimes can’t survive the backlines so how 3-8 survs are going to manage against the whole hive, sometihng even the PMC nightmares struggle to do. Will have to see how it plays out in practice. I’m quite happy with how survs are now, I generally get enough looting, fighting and then RP afterwards depending on who’s around or situations at hand.
I’d be very interested in knowing what the ideal surv survival percentage would be. Like right now it feels like survs have a solid chance of surviving if they work together where as when I first started I NEVER even a single time saw survs make it. I didn’t even know it was possible till I started playing myself. Just hope it doesn’t just become a “well survs are supposed to die” thing because survs can be more than just set dressing.
Maybe the ‘adrenaline’ trait can give survivors a small resistance to slowdown from pain.
Perhaps survivors have slightly better night vision than marines while they are under the effects of adrenaline, being able to see an extra tile out. You can argue that the survivors have been on this planet so long, they are far more acclimated to the day/night conditions, plus the adrenaline which is making them far more hyper alert to their environment.
One idea I can see to encourage a combination of roleplay, and to give prep time, is to force the survivors to remain within 1 area/room for 60 seconds or so after the round starts before they are let loose into the colony, but in compensation you could restrict the xenos from evolving to drone by 60 seconds, or prevent the xenos entering the colony or an extra minute? The idea here is that the survivors are now allowed to spend a few seconds to see who they are with, take stock of their supplies, or engage in roleplay.
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Ideally, it’s unchanging from whatever it is right now, I asked Zonespace to develop some tracking tools so we can gather data on it for a baseline case before moving testing.
This is a good mentality to have. I’m hoping that the net change as a result of these changes is as close to zero as possible. Not trying to make surviving any harder, just trying to fit survivors in with cade changes.
The adrenaline trait can basically be whatever it needs to be to make the system work. Increased END+Firearms, stun resistance, neuro-resist, whatever, but you lose it when the pre-round is over.
You are essentially promoting it heavily with what you told us here.
I can already see two cliques of survivors forming from this simple idea: The Hiders and The Hunters. I read the entire post beforehand, but I boiled it down to essential information that would ACTUALLY happen in live gameplay, not just ideas.
The Hiders would essentially do what I already said will be done. Pick a spot, hide in different locker every five minutes and then if a xeno start checking lockers - run away as fast as humanly possible and lockerhide elsewhere. People will, how you put it, “Powergame” the ideal of the hiding mechanic one way or another and optimize it in a way which allows them to do what was already done before - sit in the same spot and afk in the locker.
The Hunters would use all the makeshift weapons they can to actually actively hunt down xenomorphs, including shocking doors like in the good old times, and “Powergaming” the inability of xenomorphs to heal outside of the hive to pick and\or make the spot they are holding out in the furthest most from the hive, thus allowing for easier securing of kills against the xenomorphs.
I can already imagine xenomorphs developing their own counter-plays to both, like the sentinel swarm that will check lockers in big groups and then try to pin down the hunters with neurospit spamming. To counter this you could give survivors superhuman endurance again, and it would actually push alot of people into the hunters from the hiders, but it would all just honestly be a watered down and more hardcore version of current survivor, where instead of holding down a point for 20 minutes - you scatter in all directions trying to hide from xenos until they lose awareness enough so you can gather in a group and hunt xenomorphs.
As others have said, survivor fills a niche that rifleman or a xeno cant fill. As a Survivor you are a man against the world, in a land completely taken over by an enemy, trying to reach out to the fellow survivors and make a final bid for survival against the inhuman and the alien threat that is Xenomorphs. You dont even know if Marines or anyone else is coming, but you do know that the hive was mostly dormant before the distant screeches started. Survivor is all about that hardcore aspect of being a simple man against an overwhelming threat.
You dont have Orbital Bombardment to annihilate a wave of xenomorphs, you dont have a Req to call in more ammunition, you dont have a CIC to blame once you die. You arent superhuman by any standarts, every single strike from the xenomorph can be the last one. You can spend an extra time to scavenge and can find a POWERFUL weapon to even the odds a small bit, making it more and more satisfying when xenomorphs get frustrated at their inability to assault and breakthrough barricades.
With all the marine debuffs over the years and survivor-aimed debuffs, the survivors themselves stopped being able to truly survive alone, thus making survivor a role about all survivors working together. If everyone works perfectly and xenomorphs are too slow - survivor holds are nigh unbreakable. If survivors get caught out one by one, or dont secure enough weapons and ammo - a hold is basically impossible.
Anyhow, I wish to finish my post by saying one simple thing: CM was never a HRP server, nowadays most people dont even engage in any kind of roleplay anymore, squad cohesion is low, xenos remained the no-RP faction they always were. I dont say that RP is bad and we should become LRP like other servers, but that we shouldnt FORCE RP down people’s throats, while others just do whatever they like(which is killing each other). Survivor is a hardcore experience, most people play it for that thrill of holding away xenomorphs while having nothing. Some survivors dont even go shipside for IFF and go with what they have to help marines kill more xenomorphs. Completely changing the entire role’s purpose on a whim is bad, is what I am trying to say.
Despite what people say or try to do - CM is past the point of shaming people for powergaming, it will keep happening. People will make the “best” new FOB with cades update, survivors will score kills until their hands get removed, marines will find a new weapon combo to instantly annihilate anything short of a queen, xenomorphs will find a new way to bait marines into a choke and then wipe them out. People will keep getting good at the game by cutting away things that arent useful or fun. They will write guides to share their experience and then everyone will do it.
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