Yellow barrels can knock down any enemies for a few secs, cool. They can also send players flying to instant death.
Red barrels can burn a few mobs, cool. No significant damage unless they are walkers you are burning. Does it matter? No, it doesn’t. We can take care of those without the damn barrels. But how much can they hurt players? Very significant.
We are supposed to hit the barrels at the right condition where we can “kinda” benefit the most from them and don’t hurt teammates. Does it happen? Rarely ever freakin happen. Because enemies “can walk” so they move to you, thus people don’t hit them until a teammate is next to hit. Why? Because a lot of mobs gather there. And what happens? It burns the teammate.
So what do I do to avoid things that could go wrong? Just kill all the barrels to disable them as soon as I see one. Doesn’t matter if there are enemies or not.
That’s not the worst part. There are red barrels placed in a corner of a room. What should you do with them? Lure all the enemies to the corner to corner yourself with enemies, ignite the barrel, and kill yourself with it.
Beside being an amazing tool to troll other players, it’s just another useless tool in the game.
I suggest maybe we can have circuit breaker boxes instead. When we hit it, it will send electrical shock (like Surge staff) to nearby enemies to stun them.
We could have traps from the usual zombie games, like puddles of water with electricity switches near them, flame pits blah blah. Would encourage drawing mobs to certain places on the map instead of just holding ground and hammering away until someone wins.
I like the idea of a shock trap map entity.
That would at least reliably go both ways, and could be utilized by players.
I think explosive barrels could be improved by applying brittle to nearby enemies. Say, 20% for stagger duration + 2.5 seconds? That would grant them an extra niche.
Tbf, the barrels in VT2 weren’t overly popular, either, but at least the flame barrels had a point.
I’m not a fan of this in the slightest.
I have played with people who do this and while they clear the map for themselves, they are blocking me from positioning myself because now the floor is fire.
I have also been thrown off a map once, but I assume he did not see me near the barrel.
To be honest, I don’t like the idea either. But when I go melee builds , I have to pressure them (group of elite gunners) to release range pressure for the team. And I don’t know why, it’s gonna be that one guy who feel funny and just blast me with the barrels. So I rather just get rid of them before my team kill me.
But yeah, totally agree, the fire can really limit our space and put us in bad position.
If you don’t experience the negatives or rarely do, good for you. I’m talking from my experience and I think many people have the same. Even if the rate is 50/50, the positive cannot outweigh the negative impact they do to players. Of course knocking down Ragers is useful, we all know. But how often do you utilize it? Or how often do the conditions allow you to do it?
This post is about how we can make it better. If you think it’s perfect as is and it’s players’ faults, it’s totally fine. Thanks for your input.
It really is all about awareness.
I can make use of barrels multiple times per mission, but only get harmed by a barrel (more than just losing ~10hp) maybe once in 20 missions.
Unless i play with @Nurax . Sometimes we blow each other up with every barrel we see.
I don’t mind the idea of traps as long as it’s meaningful and worth our time luring them there.
