Enemy Abilities Idea

[slayingu]

Hey all, Slay here.

As you have read from the title I want to talk about the idea of enemy abilities. Now, i'm not just talking about enemies using abilities under certain conditions, but also about their own weapons.

Here's an example: You and ~10 people are charging an enemy tower and it can only hit 1 person (excluding its minions). It seems like a breeze for the other 9! Now what if that tower had a weapon that could pierce all tanks and damage them all? It eliminates those people who hang back and let others take the hits. I'm not saying that all enemies should have this, it would be a bit crazy if a drill had that.

Or how about when a tower reaches >15% health it starts a countdown. If you don't kill the enemy before the countdown reaches 0 then all of its minions detonate. That'll teach those people who directly attack the tower and disregard those poor minions

And my favourite, a tower that when it is bombarded with players and has health below 30% just explodes and spawns a plethora of minions (3-5 minions for every player within a certain radius).

Imagine all those new enemies that could be created with these abilities, imagine the evilness.

I would love to hear what everyone else's ideas for possible enemy abilities are. Come and create evilness!

[amitp]

It might be neat to see scouts, like our scouts but enemy ones, that can dart in and out of our areas, hitting people, then trying to lure them out into the open where they we get ambushed. But this would be rather newbie unfriendly

[hypevosa]

If it doesn't fire out of a gun, or have a strong visual cue, and it hurts players, I'm against it since you have to give players feedback to know what's going on, especially new players.

These aren't abilities so much as behaviors though, it's not like what players have where there's 4 unique triggers they cycle through.

Something I would like to see is an enemy who goes into stealth mode forcing you to deal with minions for a short while (at least). That would be cool.

[slayingu]

Well we could make it more newbie friendly by only having these enemies spawn outside of the origin and the 8 sectors connected to it or let them only spawn in certain coloured sectors. That way newbies can still play the game but won't have to face challenging enemies until they are ready. The map could show them in a different colour so they know where these enemies are so they can avoid them. These enemies could also be uncommon/rare depending on the behaviour it has. Think of these enemies like a mini-boss for players who are ready for the challenge.

Enemies don't always give feedback to players, it depends on the behaviour. If we could avoid the behaviors that give feedback then it wouldn't be a hassle, yes? Such as the enemy that shoots multiple players or maybe an enemy that has 2 health bars.

[quicklite]

May 13, 2013 13:21:14 GMT -5 hypevosa said:

If it doesn't fire out of a gun, or have a strong visual cue, and it hurts players, I'm against it since you have to give players feedback to know what's going on, especially new players.

These aren't abilities so much as behaviors though, it's not like what players have where there's 4 unique triggers they cycle through.

Something I would like to see is an enemy who goes into stealth mode forcing you to deal with minions for a short while (at least). That would be cool.

Now that you mention it, that would work really well. If a certain fortress had a set of (albeit basic) cyclable 'triggers' (shotgun, overdrive, cloak, asplosion), with a set indicator for some of the more powerful triggers to warn players (such as asplosion >_>) what is going on so they can dodge. Of course, it would only work on enemies with a decent amount of life that could effectively cycle through all its triggers, but it would still be pretty cool.

[lights]

Say if a green tower charges up and cycles through yellow and becomes red, then when it becomes red it gets ready to throw an aoe attack down, so that gives players some warning.