[ Merc idea! ] Silence

(SweetGenocide) #1

HP : 90

Speed : 450

Gender : Female

Class : Recon

Nationality : Italy

Backstory : Silence was an undercover agent from the “Carabinieri” (Italian special forces), She had the job to investigate and to interogate, and when she did that, she did that with force, nobody almost lied to her, for her braveness, she got her hands on the MK3 Tracking Device. After that, she decided to quit the job because it was too boring for her taste, and decided to sign up to the MercSEV, now she roams the battlefields as a recon, ready to interogate any suspect.

MK3 Tracking Device : Silence activates her decive, with is a small camera that can analyze the enemies footprints, it lasts 10 seconds, if Silence tracks the footprints, the allies can see them,

Primary Weapons :
-Tolen MP
-MP400
-Empire-9

Secondary Weapons :
-Sebstalt. 7
-Caulden
-M9

Melee Weapons :
-Beckhill Combat Knife
-Stillnato Stilleto
-Cricket Bat

Advantages :
-Great for tracking enemies
-Can find multiple tracks, so other allies can go together to find the other enemies
-Can give lots of information to her team

Disadvantages :
-While she’s tracking, she only has acces to her secondary
-When she’s scanning, it will emit a loud beeping sound.
-Can’t go alone while attacking.

(So yeh, another idea from me, hopefully it’s not that crappy. <-<;)

(MisterBadmin) #2

Let’s go down the list:

Stats:

HP : 90
Speed : 450

Seems reasonable, identical to Proxy. Maybe a little too close to Aimee, but there’s nothing explicitly wrong with having similar stats in the same class.

Backstory:
Just a minor note, but the mercs are mercenaries for hire (from MERCserv, as evidenced by ReV). Having one sign up for a specific side doesn’t make exceptional sense, especially when played on the other side.

Ability 1:

Crimson MK3 Heat sensing Glasses : Silence puts on her tactical glasses, scanning the area for once, if an enemy is atleast 10-15 meters close to the scanning area, they will get spotted for atleast 5 seconds, if they have the augment “Enigma” it will get reduced to 3 seconds. (50 Seconds cooldown) While she’s scanning, she’s highly vulnerable, so an enemy can catch her by suprise.

I’ll need a little clarification on this before I come to a final judgement. Is it a targeted area (a la Arty/Kira) or a line-of-sight area (a la Redeye, the original one-eye)? Does it show through walls? Does it restrict movement or turn rate?
I’ll assume it’s a Redeye style thing, as being glasses, that makes more sense.
It seems really similar to Redeye. Like almost identical similar. It also seems worse than the original. “Vulnerable while scanning” tells me very little about how it is meant to be used. Is equipping weapons possible while scanning? Is it a short call-in time (a la Arty/Kira) that takes a snapshot of an area then puts the glasses on cooldown? I’m afraid I don’t understand the ability well enough to comment.
The one definitive thing I can say about it is that the 50 second cooldown is crazy high. The only thing with a comparable cooldown is Skydad’s Airstrike. That has the capacity to take out every clown on the enemy team and drop the EV. The other Spotters in game have very high uptimes. Vassili and Aimee can almost always have their sensors up. Redeye has much lower uptime, but more utility in it to make up for that (also smoke). A 10% uptime for spotting is atrocious. I could be missing something about this, and if I am please do enlighten me.

Ability 2:

(Passive Ability) Interogation : When an enemy is in a downed state, Silence can decide if she wants to interogate the target, the interogation takes about 15-20 seconds, while doing that shes highly vulnerable, if the interogation is succesful, 3 enemy mercs will get spotted for 10 seconds. (the choice is random.)

This seems to break gameflow in the worst ways possible. (I’m going to assume it requires Silence to interact with the target for the duration, correct me if I’m wrong.) The 15 seconds channeling time is WAY too high. The spawnwave timer will almost always tick over in that time, meaning they can break out of it. Even if the timer doesn’t, the target can still tap out. If you remove the ability to spawn and tap out, then you break gameflow for the target, preventing him from getting back into the fight. Abilities should create interesting situations with counterplay, not restrict some players just because another guy has an ability to. (I’m by no means saying that every ability does this, just that designing with this in mind results in a better suggestion.)

Primaries:

-Tolen MP

Okay, going for a Sparks-style Agent with MP’s as primaries. I don’t think it fits without having come kind of offensive compensation (a la REVIVR), but whatever. I’ll finish this out.

-MP400

Alright, trend continuing, Empire-9 comes next.

-KEK-10

STUNNED SILENCE
I’m going to assume this was an error, otherwise this might be the most egregious balancing suggestion for this merc. The Tolen and MP400 are machine pistols, emphasis on PISTOLS. They are not primary weapons. The only reason Sparks has them as primaries is that she HAS to have bad weapons because of the REVIVR being a pocket rifle.
The other spotters (not Recons because Phantom) have Sniper Rifles and Assault Rifles. If you want to commit to the Agent gimmick, there needs to be some offensive (read: damage) potential from the ability, otherwise the merc can’t compete in a firefight.

Other Weapons:
Standard.

Overall:
Needs work. A merc in this state would not hold her own in any regard. Ability 1 seems to be inferior to existing spotting mechanisms. Ability 2 seems to be poorly thought out. Primaries are an absolute mess.

(SweetGenocide) #3

@MisterBadmin Okay lets start with the 1st ability, i mean’t vulnerable, she can’t use any weapon, it’s like redeye abit, i was going to make it a heart beat style, but i didn’t really want to, it isn’t really like Redeye, Redeye’s duration is pretty long for spotting, the 2nd Ability, welp i didn’t think about respawn time and tap out, i really don’t know how to fix it, maybe, to not destroy the game, instead of tapping out/respawning, the target will let out a brutal scream, alerting every enemy mercs to come to his/her location. I was gonna give her a KEK-10 because i didn’t want to steal Sparks’ type of weaponry, i mean, she already has a tool that is technically like a sniper rifle, but Silence dosen’t shes a Merc designed for spotting or something like that, but if that’s the case then i’ll try to fix it, probably by creating a new weapon.

(HunterAssassin5) #4

glasses: so…um…heartbeat sensor? like a really bad version of it? it’s not as far as the eye can see like redeye, nor is it in a sphere and more than once (and through walls) like the snowball, you try to combine the two and in my opinion got a pretty bleh compromise between the two.

interrogate: im pretty sure i would k-out if someone tried this on me assuming the respawn timer doesnt tick all the way down before he’s done. and just 3 random enemies for 10 secs? excusing the proposal for even more RNG in the game, i’d much rather stick to the existing spotting abilities which let me know enemy positions at a point of interest, like the objective areas or a potential flank route rather than relying on RNG to MAYBE get me useful info for 10 seconds. remember that the snoballs’ and SNITCHes’ cooldown ticks down right after the last thrown device deactivates itself, so if they arent destroyed by enemies, you could probably be spotting enemies the entire game.

(BushWanker) #5

So many errors with this suggestion .
Revised version.
HP:100
Movement:430
Primary:(Stock)Crotzni
Kek-10
SMG-9
Secondary:(stock)M9
Caulden
Deagle
Melee(stock)Beckel
Stiletto
Cricket bat
Ability one#1:Inva-red scanner that does NOT make you more vulnerable, and you can use your weapon.
It detects enemies for you and your team.
You get 10xp every time an enemy gets spotted

INTERROGATION
It takes as long as there is left on the spawn timer to interrogate the enemy.
So it can be 1or28 seconds and than it detects friendlies for your team, BUT only for as long as you were interrogating for.
Interrogation animation: Slowly inserts a knife into the enemies neck causing blood to slowly drip down his neck.
And the enemy yells out cries of pain notifying the enemies were you are.

(SweetGenocide) #6

Alright, i changed it, abit. <-<;

(MisterBadmin) #7

Once more, unto the breach:

But first, please go give this article a read. As far as I’m concerned, it should be required reading for any player in any beta. (It only came out yesterday, otherwise I would link this thing to high heaven.)

With these thoughts in mind, we return:
(Ignoring many things that weren’t changed, removed entirely or changed in minor ways, i.e. backstory.)

Ability 1:

MK3 Tracking Device : Silence activates her decive, with is a small camera that can analyze the enemies footprints, it lasts 10 seconds, if Silence tracks the footprints, the allies can see them,

So Witcher vision? It seems interesting, but again, I’d like a more detailed description of exactly HOW it functions.
Let me give an example, in the form of Vaseline’s Heartbeat Sensor. (Note I don’t play Vassili, so numbers in brackets are what I think they are, but are probably wrong.)

Ability 1:
Heartbeat Sensor:
Vassili throws a white, softball sized sensor in an arc. When it lands and settles, it will deploy and send out a scanning pulse in a [14.4] meter radius every [1.5] seconds for its duration of [15] seconds, or until destroyed. The pulse can detect through terrain and walls. Any enemy hit by the pulse will be spotted for [1] second. The Heartbeat Sensor can be destroyed by any source of damage, or by walking over it. It has a cooldown of [15] seconds.

See all of the numbers included in the above? It has everything you need to know about using and countering the HBS.

For the record, this is the description of the HBS in game:

Vassili can throw a Heartbeat Sensor that emits a wave of energy that detects nearby enemies and displays them on the Mini-Map and HUD of all allies.

This is alright for getting an idea of something that is playable, but when giving suggestions, it’s better to be even more detailed.

Primaries:

-Tolen MP
-MP400
-Empire-9

With this kit, she doesn’t have any way to kill effectively. One of the main design points of Dirty Bomb is that everyone, and that means EVERYONE, is combat capable. Every merc has the capability to murder every other merc on the battlefield. Take Sparks and Rhino. Sparks would be destroyed over and over again by the Rhino in a 1 on 1 firefight. Sparks has to take the engagement differently, picking away at Rhino with the REVIVR, outside of his range, and running when he starts closing distance.
With the current design, Silence is just an objectively worse Sparks. Same weapons, with a trade of +10 HP and the ability to spot for mini-packs and the REVIVR. Unless that spotting targets everyone on the enemy team with a 100% uptime (That is insane, never suggest something like that.), there is absolutely no reason to take Silence over Sparks.
You mentioned creating a new weapon in your initial response. Consider doing that, or handing Silence a 3 SMG combination that isn’t used already. (Blishlok, SMG9, Hochfir?) Maybe consider giving her machine pistol secondaries as well.