Mutator idea - "Revenge"

[favorito]

When you die, rather than respawning, you lose your corporeal form. In your ghost form, you float about (think perpetual jetpack, however you move more slowly), partially translucent, and armed with a modified Insta rifle (the "ghost gun" -- grey-blue in color; still instant kill, but the delay between shots is much higher, and it's harder to use).

Living players can see you, but cannot harm you. To respawn, you must kill a living player. When that happens, you take over where they die and regain your corporeality, and they become a ghost. You only get frag points when you're alive.

Think "Revenge" in Bomberman. I've never seen this done in a first-person shooter, but I think it could work really well if it was done right.

Thoughts?

[riidom]

I'd change one thing: As ghost, you get the weapon you got killed by. Since it can't be insta then, I propose to let it at default values first. If this turns out to be too hard to get back, there can be things like infinite clip size or damage adjustments (global factors like 1.5x or so) be introduced.

There are two different ways to die: Be killed by a living player, and be killed by a ghost.
Being killed by a ghost means, both players swap roles. Being killed by a player means, there is one more ghost and one less living. Can this lead to a point where only one player is alive and the rest are ghosts? Maybe I am overseeing something here.
Also there is suicide, we would need a way to balance this thing back, but that is a task for the next person posting

[TheLastProject]

My interpretation of this idea:
- If you get killed, you turn into a ghost, and the killer gets one point
- You can only kill living players as a ghost

Pretty quickly, there would be only one player alive, and the game would become impossible.

Because of that, I propose the following "fix":
You get 1 point for every second you are alive, instead of for every kill you make.

This will make sure that the game stays competitive as you have to try to survive, but you are still supposed to kill players at the start so that they do not gain too many points. For this to work, this is how I would think about implementing this:

- DM-only mutator
- In Instagib, ghosts get a slower-firing version of the rifle (otherwise staying alive against like... 7 others for even a second will become absolutely impossible)
- In "normal" (what we call arena in 1.3.1), ghosts will keep their normal weapon, but will have a lower firing speed
- In "classic", the weapons will also be slower for ghosts, but they'll have to pick the weapons up.
- Ghosts get a slight slowdown (to make it more possible for the living player to escape)

I don't think you can really balance this in any other way, but of course, I'm open to suggestions (as I'm only throwing ideas around anyway).

[favorito]

Hadn't thought this through very well for other modes. Would probably have to be an extension of Last Man Standing, or it will get pretty complicated.

If there's one person left standing aka everyone else is a ghost, they win the match. I think that answers the problems you guys are pointing out. Obviously this wouldn't work with objective based modes like CTF, etc. though.

[riidom]

Doing it round-based would fix it, but it would be nice to have a "continuous" solution, I think.

We just need additional ways for ghosts to get back to the living.

E.g.
Be a good ghost. Assuming that ghosts can be an obstacle to the projectiles fired by another ghost, and also assuming that it is technically no problem to figure out if a ghost projectile that hits a ghost, would have hit a living otherwise, ghosts can shield livings and collect virtual damage this way (the damage, the living would have received otherwise). Collect 100 of this, and you earned a free ride in the world of flesh and blood(spawn at an usual spawn place). This could be a nice twist in team-based games, where you have to avoid to hit enemy ghosts then.

[favorito]

I think we should try and keep it simple.

How about we just leave the respawn timer in, but set it to something much longer, like a couple/few minutes? You would still be incentivized to come back in as soon as possible, as you can't get points as a ghost.

And if there are still issues with one person walking around alive by themselves (the first idea might be auditing enough though), then we could simply have everyone respawn if that happens; a kind of virtual round system. Give the "last man" some bonus points.

[quintux_v]

I think we should try and keep it simple.

I feel like Sauerbraten (@ Quadropolis, that is) had some ideas on something like this, it was something about a single player who was a hidden killer and killed everyone and everyone else had to figure out who it was. Or something like that.

[wowie]

Now I'm thinking of the (in)famous highlander quote:
THERE CAN ONLY BE ONE!

Another way to fix the "everybody dead" issue: Last man standing wins an X point bonus and another round starts. Seems simple enough.