Something that I think the 'tide game format is missing that are impactful in older-style games are enemies who shoot ‘fireball’ type attacks. I don’t mean literally a ball of fire, but rather - a slower-moving projectile.
These serve in many games to limit player channels of movements, something which could be very impactful and interesting.
It would be easy for them to be too common, and 'tide games are not bullet-hell, but some enemy type, maybe a sorcerer who shoots slow snot-balls (not the fast ones like Burblespue Halescourge in VT2) could be interesting.
This is going in DT forum because it is the latest in the 'tide series, so it seems most relevant.
Since DT and VT 2 are (supposedly) entirely seperate teams, if you wanted something like that in VT 2 you should probably put a post on their side of the forums as well.
VT2 technically has that in 2 places, Belakhor’s skull that will spawn before fly at some speed toward the U5 and stunning them, and one of the lord had something similar.
I do think that having an elite (not a special) that can deal a lot of damage from long range with such things could be cool, Psyker as Elites (But also as special with other abilities).
Dreg having one that use Tendrils of Corrosion, Scab using a more Imperial looking ability
I don’t think these projectiles should be homing, or necessarily all that dangerous - but obviously you do want to avoid damage. The point should be positional pressure on players. It will encourage movement, and force players to understand their space better. Imp fireballs in Doom (well, many enemies shoot fireballs) are important for denying the player channels and forcing you to weave between them. If you ever watch an Okuplok-style custom map you get what I mean.
Brutal Doom adds a wrinkle to Hell Knight/Baron of Hell-type enemies, in that sometimes they will shoot a triple shot where the side two shots move in a V. This is also important so that simple side-strafing alone doesn’t render all projectiles harmless. These projectiles should be easily noticeable - it defeats the point almost if they’re not. Being slow-moving is even a bonus because it means that you have to wait longer for them to pass, denying you that space (or making you take a risk in using it) for longer.
This idea could be actually horrible in practice; I readily admit that. But it could also be key to upping the gameplay in a proven and fun direction!
I understand a bit more what you are trying to get at now. Personally I am not sure how well this would fit Tide style games. I guess it would be important to ask if they could move through enemies? Because there are times where it is hard or even impossible to move through a horde of enemies depending on your class or enemies, and getting lots of hp chunked would be awful (trappers can do this right now). Because either it might be really annoying, or they would just be completely threatless.
I also think at least with the newer Doom titles, we have almost no vertical mobility compared to the options in that game. So that is one method of “avoiding” projectiles that would not be available to us. With both new Doom and Brutal Doom, the style of arenas are obviously very different than in DT to facilitate the different type of gameplay and a larger prescense of projectile based enemies.
I’m not saying it couldn’t work. Just that it would have to be implemented intelligently. Maybe a sorcerer type enemy that shoots a large slow moving ball that passes through enemies and deals damage within it’s radius?
Also the last question I would want to ask, is do we need anymore area denial specialists? We have the bomber and the 2 flamers, alongside both gunners and the Reapers being somewhat area denial units.
The attacks would have to be able to pass through enemies to have any real threat, but being ranged attacks they could be dodged by sliding, so as long as the player is not completely boxed in (a death scenario in any circumstance) they should be able to avoid them.
Yeah, I agree. The modern Dooms have a lot more verticality and of course the classic Dooms had higher movement speed and much larger arenas. It would need to be adapted, but I think it could be interesting.
This is pretty much what I was thinking. They’re an enemy that would be kind of oppressive in the open if you had too many with a horde, but you could LoS them better than other enemies. They’d also be probably less frustrating than massed gunners, I imagine.
Maybe not? I do think these have a different/interesting wrinkle compared to other enemy types, because their denial area would be a channel or path, which is different.
Another way to think of it is like Mario, where each enemy has a very basic movement pattern. When those patterns are added together and begin to overlap you get an emergent puzzle that changes in real time - a 4D puzzle, as I like to think of it. I think this kind of enemy could just add a new element to it. Any time they appear the player will have to run a new calculation to figure out what is the current greatest threat and what they should do about it. In some times and situations it may be they need to kill the Fireball Enemies first, other times it may be that they need to ignore them in favor of other enemies and just accept the pressure.
Since Fatshark said they are going to add new enemies, I am hoping this means individual enemies tailored to add to existing gameplay instead of a whole new faction that would mostly just be rehashing “here’s the horde enemy, here’s the armored elite, etc”. Or worse, a temporary and annoying boss. I think the devs - and players - would get more for their effort it’s something that shakes up more moment-to-moment gameplay (though I would also advise that it be slowly introduced in a special event to gauge player reaction and for testing, rather than just releasing it straight into the game).
