Drop Loka Healer "Death" Squads for proper Loka agents (or period, and maybe fix the others as well)

[houselyrander]

Syndicate Death Squads are generally terrible because they're annoying, worthless in a fight, never go away, and give nothing worthwhile. They're essentially an infinite punishment for grinding out finite rewards. The New Loka squads are especially terrible because they're massive bullet sponges that are so buggy that they'll frequently turn invincible and then refill their health to max while milling about like you're invisible. Even if they do attack, their offensive power is so pathetic I'm genuinely unsure if they can actually do damage and not just knock you down. Fine design for regular Healers since they're supposed to be in small numbers supporting other Infested, crap design when fighting a bunch of just them.

There have already been plenty of cases showing that humanoid assassins work (Stalker, Nightwave Zealots, etc) and with the new railjack bringing Syndicate agents back in to the spotlight, it just seems like plain sense to drop the terrible Death Squads for groups of humanoid agents like them, and maybe give decent drops as well. Or, yanno, scrap them because they serve no real purpose and break the lore of about half of the Syndicates.

[taiiat]

inversely, i think the New Loka death squad is the only one that's any good at all. because it's the only one that is relevant, at all.
those special Ancients that get to overlap their Auras(no, normal Ancients do not do this, this is unique to the New Loka death squad) is something actually different, and something that's actually harder than just "a handful of generic Enemies".

i'd love to see the other Factions be more like New Loka, in that regard.
which also if that did happen, could encourage Digital Extremes to allow them to give you more than just a lump of XP and in some Tilesets some Railjack Resource drops. the Chance for Specter Blueprints could be way higher for starters, and then perhaps some other Rewards too.

[OmegaVoid]

5 hours ago, houselyrander said:

they [...] break the lore of about half of the Syndicates.

It's not the Syndicates lore which is challenged by the nature of the Death Squads.

Lore-wise, the Syndicates aren't stupid -- they know if they sent their people against a Tenno, their people would just die uselessly. So they send Death Squads which they consider expendable.

How the Arbiters of Hexis control their Corrupted is unexplained, but nonetheless explicable (you'd presumably need a Neural Sentry and Orokin control codes).

How Red Veil and New Loka wrest control of their Infested from the hive mind is less easy to explain, but still doable within the limits of extant lore.

6 hours ago, houselyrander said:

They're essentially an infinite punishment for grinding out finite rewards.

It's quite possible to get out of negative standing with all the Syndicates, though you'd lose some Ranking if you did it quickly.

(It's mathematically possible get max Rank with all the Syndicates simultaneously I believe, but incredibly fiddly in practice. You'd ruin it if you spent any of the Standing, of course.)

[PollexMessier]

11 hours ago, OmegaVoid said:

It's not the Syndicates lore which is challenged by the nature of the Death Squads.

Lore-wise, the Syndicates aren't stupid -- they know if they sent their people against a Tenno, their people would just die uselessly. So they send Death Squads which they consider expendable.

How the Arbiters of Hexis control their Corrupted is unexplained, but nonetheless explicable (you'd presumably need a Neural Sentry and Orokin control codes).

How Red Veil and New Loka wrest control of their Infested from the hive mind is less easy to explain, but still doable within the limits of extant lore.

It's quite possible to get out of negative standing with all the Syndicates, though you'd lose some Ranking if you did it quickly.

(It's mathematically possible get max Rank with all the Syndicates simultaneously I believe, but incredibly fiddly in practice. You'd ruin it if you spent any of the Standing, of course.)

The only unique thing they drop (and you're able to just buy from the syndicates) pretty much just explains this.

They're specters.

I think what they mean by going against the lore is the implication that some of the syndicates are opposed to violence. but the syndicate missions also break this anyways

I would love if they were things more unique to their respective syndicates though.

[PollexMessier]

I do think their kill squads should be something a bit more tied to them than just some random enemy specters.

Even if they don't do that, perrin sequence, red veil, and ESPECIALLY steel meridian's do need a serious overhaul.

I've never had any trouble with any of their kill squads. The moas and chargers are just weak across the board, and the rollers.... dumping a bucket of marbles under our feet would be a bigger inconvenience than them.

in contrast. New loka's ancient healers are notoriously the most problematic. Arbiter's are the tankiest out of the lot and are better at dealing damage than the 3 garbage ones combined. and suda's drones just mercilously assault you with a wall of bullets. I think I've died to suda's more than any other one.

[OmegaVoid]

2 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

The only unique thing they drop (and you're able to just buy from the syndicates) pretty much just explains this.

They're specters.

lol, oh yeah. Duh! 😆

2 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

I think what they mean by going against the lore is the implication that some of the syndicates are opposed to violence.

It's only the Perrin Sequence who say that they are opposed to violence, but it's just the publicly-acceptable face of a regime which is implicity totalitarian, at least as far as trade goes.

Mutual prosperity through co-operation sounds fine in principle, but any conflict of interest has the the potential to be divisive and devolve into violence unless somebody enforces peaceful negotiations. In Ergo Glast's vision, Perrin Sequence determines what's a "fair trade" for everyone, and if you disagree, you're "bad for business" and suffer the consequences.

Of course, Perrin Sequence acting as the arbiters and middlemen in any negotiations would come at a price -- they are a splinter faction, but they are still Corpus. Any colonists attempting to trade directly, to avoid paying tax to the Sequence? Unacceptable -- those colonists benefit from the peace which the Sequence enforces, and should pay the price for that benefit like everyone else! Or suffer the consequences.

Any colonists trying to arm themselves for protection? A threat to peace! Fortunately, Perrin Sequence (alone) would have the firepower to "remove" this dangerous element, and restore the comforting knowledge that violence won't be tolerated.

(Of course, Steel Meridian would never consent to lay down their arms and entrust the protection of the vulnerable to another faction. So they have to go.)

Colonies which sign up to the Perrin Sequence's scheme will prosper -- at first, anyway -- as they will be the shining example which persudes other colonies to join the scheme... but once enough of the Origin System falls under their control, who's to say that the Sequence won't start to crank the taxes up? 🤔

If you see any other way Perrin Sequence's objective of "shared peace bringing shared prosperity" could actually be realised, I'm open to other interpretations, but "lets all just be nice to each other" simply isn't enough, and Ergo Glast must know that -- he's no starry-eyed dreamer.

And Ergo's vision for the Origin System plainly can't include the Grineer, because it relies on everybody being motivated by prosperity and wanting to pursue it peacefully -- the Grineer don't care about that, only about serving the Queens. And the Queens' top concern is their own security (from that PoV the Grineer Empire looks like one gigantic meat-shield), which is best served by conquering the whole system.

So the Grineer have to go. Hence Perrin Sequence's alliance with New Loka who want the Grineer gone on genetic principle. It's an alliance of convenience -- they have so little else in common it's fair to assume either one would turn on the other if they ever became powerful enough to think they could afford to.

What about Suda's "abhorrence of destruction"?

She'd fight tooth and nail to prevent humans going extinct to the Infestation, but she'd fight equally hard to prevent the Infestation from being eradicated. A few unremarkable Colonists getting Infested is no more a concern than the death of a heap of unremarkable Chargers -- there's plenty more where they came from.

Suda cares about diversity and novelty. Her voice-lines make it clear that she doesn't care about individuals unless they affect her interests. And helping the genocidal tree-huggers of New Loka is sure to provoke her ire. You are not sufficiently unique to be worth preserving.

Of course a truly unique individual would be worth cataloguing and preserving, hence her alliance with the Arbiters of Hexis whose devotion to self-development stands a chance of producing such novelties. And access to Suda's knowledge can help the Arbiters in that goal, so their interests naturally align.

And although the Arbiters objectives are entirly inward-looking, in order to persue their "new truth", they cannot be subject to any imposition of conformity, hence their punishment of anybody attempting to advance the causes of the Perrin Sequence or Red Veil, both of which are implicitly totalitarian in some respect.

[houselyrander]

On 2021-03-21 at 4:57 AM, taiiat said:

inversely, i think the New Loka death squad is the only one that's any good at all. because it's the only one that is relevant, at all.
those special Ancients that get to overlap their Auras(no, normal Ancients do not do this, this is unique to the New Loka death squad) is something actually different, and something that's actually harder than just "a handful of generic Enemies".

i'd love to see the other Factions be more like New Loka, in that regard.
which also if that did happen, could encourage Digital Extremes to allow them to give you more than just a lump of XP and in some Tilesets some Railjack Resource drops. the Chance for Specter Blueprints could be way higher for starters, and then perhaps some other Rewards too.

Every time I post something like this, someone always chimes in about how they love Loka squads for being harder than the others. I don't think I'll ever understand what the #*!% they're talking about. The dumb heaps of biomass don't seem to even have attacks. They're barely a step up from Grineer Blunts (in interactivity anyway, in terms of coding they're a 50 story plunge). Do you just stack so many survivability mods that you can stand around like Oldkong so EVERYTHING is equally impotent? Not being facetious, I'm legitimately baffled by the differences in our user experiences.

22 hours ago, PollexMessier said:

I do think their kill squads should be something a bit more tied to them than just some random enemy specters.

Even if they don't do that, perrin sequence, red veil, and ESPECIALLY steel meridian's do need a serious overhaul.

I've never had any trouble with any of their kill squads. The moas and chargers are just weak across the board, and the rollers.... dumping a bucket of marbles under our feet would be a bigger inconvenience than them.

in contrast. New loka's ancient healers are notoriously the most problematic. Arbiter's are the tankiest out of the lot and are better at dealing damage than the 3 garbage ones combined. and suda's drones just mercilously assault you with a wall of bullets. I think I've died to suda's more than any other one.

This largely mirrors my experiences. I'd have to specify that Loka Healers are problematic for constantly bugging in ways that make them heal and resist damage way more than they should, but yeah, they're pretty much beyond hope of salvaging in my opinion.

In any case, I heavily regret even mentioning lore now. That's inviting a thread derail no matter what the fandom.

[taiiat]

10 hours ago, houselyrander said:

Every time I post something like this, someone always chimes in about how they love Loka squads for being harder than the others. I don't think I'll ever understand what the #*!% they're talking about. The dumb heaps of biomass don't seem to even have attacks. They're barely a step up from Grineer Blunts (in interactivity anyway, in terms of coding they're a 50 story plunge). Do you just stack so many survivability mods that you can stand around like Oldkong so EVERYTHING is equally impotent? Not being facetious, I'm legitimately baffled by the differences in our user experiences.

it's simply a matter of that every other Death Squad is Killed at the press of one or two Buttons within a few Seconds, and the Ancient Healer Death Squad, takes a bit longer to Kill.
that somewhat relevant EHP instead of the other Death Squads gives it a sliver of relevance rather than being "just a few more generic dudes that you were already fighting anyways".

back when the main 6 Syndicates was a new feature, many Years ago, i was also excited about the Ancient Healer Squad compared to all of the rest, because even then they were something interesting and different, unlike all the others which were exceptionally generic and redundant(well, the Rollers were pretty bad early on since Rollers used to have guaranteed Stagger - but that isn't something fun or challenging in any way).

[houselyrander]

1 hour ago, taiiat said:

it's simply a matter of that every other Death Squad is Killed at the press of one or two Buttons within a few Seconds, and the Ancient Healer Death Squad, takes a bit longer to Kill.
that somewhat relevant EHP instead of the other Death Squads gives it a sliver of relevance rather than being "just a few more generic dudes that you were already fighting anyways".

back when the main 6 Syndicates was a new feature, many Years ago, i was also excited about the Ancient Healer Squad compared to all of the rest, because even then they were something interesting and different, unlike all the others which were exceptionally generic and redundant(well, the Rollers were pretty bad early on since Rollers used to have guaranteed Stagger - but that isn't something fun or challenging in any way).

It's funny, that last bit about Meridian Rollers neatly sums up my feelings about Loka Healers. Even when they don't bug out and start milling about invincibly, the only thing they seem to have going for them is damage sponge-iness and the ability to chain knockdown me with their off brand Grineer Scorpion tether (which I can't really count as an attack since it doesn't seem to actually do damage). To paraphrase Penny Arcade on Lair, "it's not challenging, it’s difficult to play, and it’s taken many years but I’m ready to begin making this distinction".

EDIT: Sorry if this comes off as aggressive or bitter. It's not you, it's the damn Healers.