How should Turtle work?

[TheStrangerous]

Quake Champions, another fast paced game, has Clutch, and he uses a shield.

[RectalTerror]

IMHO, as a shield, Turtle’s ability would be purely useless. It doesn’t matter how big, it’s just that a shield would be as useful as a mounted gun, without the gun. The main problem is that it’s fixed, and that makes the guy(s) behind the shield the #1 target.

No, it’s really to block routes or protect objs that it’d be interesting, and most likely where its main problem is. Existing deployables are already a little used to block stuff.

Personally I’d like to see a flamethrower guy in the game. I don’t care if its range is very short and he has less health than a sniper, there are ways to make a balanced flamethrower & I’d love to use that. A flamethrower also acts (well, in ET and also TF) as a visual barrier, like smoke but more mobile, and is pretty useful when the character moves fast.

[DarenaBryant]

I think Turtle will need a combination of shielding abilities.

The dome shield idea is a good one, with limited HP of its own (can be popped), but can protect against ALL damage types; for example, enemies can neither shoot through it or throw grenades through it and it won’t allow for AoE damage or splash damage through it.

He should ALSO have the deployable Tower Shield which can be used to block some routes (again, with a limited, but much higher HP pool and an energy extender to make it almost impossible to leap over it, requiring some good parkour skills to just jump over), as well as being able to be used as a melee weapon (he would carry it in front of him and be able to advance slowly, shooting over the top or around the side of it, and be able to deliver a shield bash or charge once he got close enough).

I also can’t get over the cybernetic looking prosthetic he sports. I can see him being allowed to use that as a melee as well, straight punching people in the face as an attack. xD Maybe they could allow him to forego the tower sheild for body armor (thus the Turtle concept), and have some additional HP while wearing it? I’ve always been amazed at the lack of armor in this.

I can see him having a grenade launcher as a weapon, or a mortar even to hit people at range from behind cover; any kind of long range, support type weapon would be good. Considering the energy shield concept, and that orbital laser, maybe some sort of laser weapon as well with a continuous fire ability? It woudn’t insta-kill, but do a DoT effect; as long as it’s hitting you it hurts. In any case some sort of med-long range weapon for his main.

[Mr-Penguin]

@DarenaBryant said:
I think Turtle will need a combination of shielding abilities.

The dome shield idea is a good one, with limited HP of its own (can be popped), but can protect against ALL damage types; for example, enemies can neither shoot through it or throw grenades through it and it won’t allow for AoE damage or splash damage through it.

He should ALSO have the deployable Tower Shield which can be used to block some routes (again, with a limited, but much higher HP pool and an energy extender to make it almost impossible to leap over it, requiring some good parkour skills to just jump over), as well as being able to be used as a melee weapon (he would carry it in front of him and be able to advance slowly, shooting over the top or around the side of it, and be able to deliver a shield bash or charge once he got close enough).

I also can’t get over the cybernetic looking prosthetic he sports. I can see him being allowed to use that as a melee as well, straight punching people in the face as an attack. xD Maybe they could allow him to forego the tower sheild for body armor (thus the Turtle concept), and have some additional HP while wearing it? I’ve always been amazed at the lack of armor in this.

I can see him having a grenade launcher as a weapon, or a mortar even to hit people at range from behind cover; any kind of long range, support type weapon would be good. Considering the energy shield concept, and that orbital laser, maybe some sort of laser weapon as well with a continuous fire ability? It woudn’t insta-kill, but do a DoT effect; as long as it’s hitting you it hurts. In any case some sort of med-long range weapon for his main.

Dome shield is pretty standard across a lot of games (imo), but it can work in Dirty Bomb.

Second one sounds like Reinhardt’s shield from OW and I think that wouldn’t work in DB because it takes the user out of the fight and it can be easily flanked. Riot shields have been discussed time and time again in the Merc Suggestion section, and the general consensus is that shield bashing/charging doesn’t fit in DB- mostly because it would lead to swift death.

As for the arm, he’s probably just gonna have standard melee. Armor and armor packs have been discussed a lot as well, and ideas have ranged from overpowered to useless. My thoughts on that is that adding extra HP (or speed, for that matter) to any merc gives them too much of an advantage, as it breaks the HP/speed ratios that are set.

The fourth point- Turtle seems to be intended as a defensive engineer whose specialty is blocking incoming stuff. Giving him any offensive abilities make no sense whatsoever.

[Terminal_6]

I think a shield could be useful if it’s sized correctly. There are a lot of hallways that could be pretty effectively blocked, such as in Underground and the two flanking hallways at the 1st obj of Terminal.

The way his shield folds out to full size could make some interesting opportunities. Maybe he can have two different ways of deploying it instead of one, like @CyberVonCyberus’s idea.

[M4st0d0n]

Dome shields kind of already exists in this game with Aura’s ability, and it’s quite annoying. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with a Turtle/Aura combo. So yeah, I can get the design where this guy is blocking a frag somehow, but it should still be possible to flank him, and he should direct his shield with aiming for it to be effective IMO. Maybe catch bullets and reflects them back in burst like in Titanfall.

[TheStrangerous]

@M4st0d0n said:
Dome shields kind of already exists in this game with Aura’s ability, and it’s quite annoying. I wouldn’t want to have to deal with a Turtle/Aura combo. So yeah, I can get the design where this guy is blocking a frag somehow, but it should still be possible to flank him, and he should direct his shield with aiming for it to be effective IMO. Maybe catch bullets and reflects them back in burst like in Titanfall.

And this is why major balancing should be done, before releasing new merc.
Definitely Phantom should get EMP grenade, preventing deployable nests like that.

[doxjq]

They could simply make it that his shield is hand held, so that you can still progress through a choke point without taking damage or something (perhaps nades and things of the sort can bounce backwards off it?)

[JonBongNoJovi]

@doxjq said:
They could simply make it that his shield is hand held, so that you can still progress through a choke point without taking damage or something (perhaps nades and things of the sort can bounce backwards off it?)
Pistol in one hand shield in other ?

[Brycko]

The big problem with Turtle’s shield is that it doesn’t only block bullets, but it also blocks people, which is especially bad considering that DB is a very movement oriented game. Hence… I present to you the solution! Presenting REINTURTLE!

Queue abysmal photoshopping. Better design in progress maybe…

It’s cheap, its stealing from another game, but it works. Blocks enemy bullets, but not friendlies. I’d say if the shield is going to have a finite health, it’d be something like 600 hp (judged relative to how many grenades it’d take to destroy). Most importantly, enemies and allies can jump through the shield, so routes are never blocked.

It’d probably be better if the shield was coming out of his arm, but, you know, reasons.

Noticeable differences:
If he holds the shield in his right hand, his left hand can be used to fire his pistol through the shield, though he wouldn’t be able to reload (probably give him secondaries with large mags like the mp-400, m9 and selbstadt, empire or tolen). Also, unlike Rein, he doesn’t switch to third person with the shield, making it more difficult to fill spaces with the shield. Finally, shield has a time limit it can be up, i.e 15 seconds, so some noob doesn’t keep it up the whole match and ruin the gunplay. Alternatively, it could have a bar like Phantom has for his refractive armour, where damage decreases the time it’s activated for.

He could still get countered by Rhino, any of the fire supports, Fragger etc… so not too OP.

Alternatively, he could just deploy it, similar to the blockade from Hawken (if anyone remembers that game):

But people could jump through it. It’d be kinda boring though. Could be the other half of @CyberVonCyberus 's idea.

Thoughts?