General Infested Changes (What You Would Like To See)

[SpiderWaifu]

I'm making this forum thread to gather information on what the community would like to see as changes to the Infested Faction. Discussion and debate on proposed ideas are welcome. If you're going to put down what changes you would like to see, it would be helpful if you put them under categories.

Current Mission changes

New mission ideas

Current Enemy changes

New enemy idea

Tile set and Atmosphere changes/ ideas

(other headings I may have not thought of)

 

The ideas I put in my OP may not be entirely mine, and are probably ideas taken from other threads that I really liked. If you see something that you first thought of, don't worry. I'm not claiming it as mine.

 

Current Mission changes

One of the obvious ones, would be a more infested-oriented Sabotage mission for the Grineer Galleon tileset. Instead of hunting down Mining Machines (that the infested are using...?) we hunt down hives, or whatever the hell causes the infestation to start and spread on the ship.

 

Changing the Capture mission type, once again, to something thats more related to the infested. Maybe something like... The Lotus wants us to capture an infested hive/spore/ whatever.

 

New Mission ideas

Purge: Escort a cleaning robot (or a player who carries something) through an infested ship while it eradicates infested biomatter. Of course, while you are fending off hordes of infested.

To me, this idea seems like a true mobile-defense mission... Where the thing you have to defend is, well, you know, actually mobile. A problem I could think of with this mission is, how it could possibly be tedious if the mission lasts for too long. Or on the other hand, it could be boring if the Purge mission type had the same map for every playthrough of it.

 

Current Enemy changes

Ancient Disruptor: Instead of his melee-attacks draining your entire energy and shields, I propose something that has a bit more depth to it.

The AD will start an animation, that will destroy any lights in the area, and begin to drain your Warframes Shields and Energy at a slow rate at the start, but the drain steadily increases over about 4 seconds, then it reaches its peak, but continues to drain. (Similar to how the Gorgon and Cestra have to spin up, to reach their max fire rate.) Staggering the AD will end its drain. It cannot die while it's draining (don't lose your heads just yet, I'll make it more fun.) When the AD is either staggered, or reaches near-death (I'd say 5% hp during the drain) while it's sucking everyones Energy and shield, the drain is over, and then the AD will get a shield (equal to how much it drained), and damage boost (equal to 50 or 25% of the energy it drained.)

 

Charger: Not as big of a change as the AD, but I still feel it's nessescary. Make the charger, actually able to charge. It spots you, and it makes a sudden dash in a straight line at you. It won't knock you over, but it'll hurt like hell if it hits you. If the Charger hits terrain while charging, it ends and takes damage and gets stunned for a bit. If it knocked you down as well, I feel as though it would be too similar to the Leaper.

 

New Enemy ideas

Ancient Charger: Lets get a really big, beefy charger. No special powers (besides maybe an improved Charge as mentioned in my Charger change.)

 

Infested: Lets get a cannon-fodder style enemy. Weak, low hp, but they come at you in packs ahead of the more specialized infested units.

Possible problem caused by them, too many things on the screen could cause frame rate drops for not-so-good computers. High-precision weapons would become even more ineffective against the Infested faction, due to an increased volume of enemies.

 

Infested Parasites/ suicide bombs: The basic idea, lets create infested rollers (or whatever those tiny things the Grineer Seekers toss at us are called.) They roll/ scuttle towards you and latch on to your poor helpless face then explode. Fun stuff. They could naturally spawn, or be spawned by enemies mentioned later in the thread.

 

Wall-mounted Icky stuff: Lets get clumps of everyone's favorite Meat Moss, and give them an assortment of weapons. Scythes, acid spitters, whatever you can think of. One variation of them could spawn Infested Parasites indefinitely until they're destroyed.

 

Spitter-things: Lets get some infested, give them mouths that can spit out an assortment of elemental nasty-blobs and attach them to ceilings and walls. Maybe they can also spit Parasites at you.

[Brynslustafir]

Take away the ancients ability to knock you down with a well timed slap even if they didn't see you coming. 

[SpiderWaifu]

Take away the ancients ability to knock you down with a well timed slap even if they didn't see you coming. 

 

If their Knockdown is removed, they would need something else that would give them better Crowd control options, or ways to combo Tenno in to a place of pain and misery.

[TennoSimons]

I'd like to see some flying infested...

[SpiderWaifu]

I'd like to see some flying infested...

 

I'd like you to expand more on that idea. Show me your imagination, show me the evil and cruel ideas you have for flying infested units!

[Haldos]

Just going to throw out some basic ideas so bear with me.

 

I'd like to see Ancient's melee attacks have more variety. Currently Disruptors remove shields and energy, but Toxics and Healers just sort of stun and don't do much damage. I was thinking about Toxics melee attack becoming more like Golem, in that if you a struck with it's arm, it pulls you into its body. Of course, it's range is only the length of its arm as it is now.

 

I'd like to see a more unique Infested tile set. Their main gimmick is that they consume and take over wherever they go so having their missions take place on ships and established bases is fine but a look at where the Infestation is coming from would be neat. I'd also like to see the infestation inhabit new creatures such as Skates. Personally, I don't like the idea that this disease is only affecting humans.

 

As stated in the Wiki, "In lore, the Ancients are described as being hundreds of years older than the Corpus, so their deformed shape could also be attributed to years of infestation and mutation". With that in mind, I like to believe that the Ancient Infested aren't simple mutations over centuries, but are actually a completely different alien race that has fallen to the disease and made it's way back to our solar system (Thanks to Corpus trading), which is the main reason the faction exists today. Perhaps the new tile sets I suggested above could be the ruins of these alien civilizations, which would keep the idea that the infestation don't have a true home and just blanket whatever they touch.

 

I'd also like to see Infested maps become darker and use flashlights as a more important role. Just to throw it out there, I'd kind of like to see that zombie-like enemy that was shared from a very early build in the Anniversary live stream make a comeback in some way. Visually, I thought it looked interesting enough.

[SpiderWaifu]

Just going to throw out some basic ideas so bear with me.

 

I'd like to see Ancient's melee attacks have more variety. Currently Disruptors remove shields and energy, but Toxics and Healers just sort of stun and don't do much damage. I was thinking about Toxics melee attack becoming more like Golem, in that if you a struck with it's arm, it pulls you into its body. Of course, it's range is only the length of its arm as it is now.

 

I'd like to see a more unique Infested tile set. Their main gimmick is that they consume and take over wherever they go so having their missions take place on ships and established bases is fine but a look at where the Infestation is coming from would be neat. I'd also like to see the infestation inhabit new creatures such as Skates. Personally, I don't like the idea that this disease is only affecting humans.

 

As stated in the Wiki, "In lore, the Ancients are described as being hundreds of years older than the Corpus, so their deformed shape could also be attributed to years of infestation and mutation". With that in mind, I like to believe that the Ancient Infested aren't simple mutations over centuries, but are actually a completely different alien race that has fallen to the disease and made it's way back to our solar system (Thanks to Corpus trading), which is the main reason the faction exists today. Perhaps the new tile sets I suggested above could be the ruins of these alien civilizations, which would keep the idea that the infestation don't have a true home and just blanket whatever they touch.

 

I'd also like to see Infested maps become darker and use flashlights as a more important role. Just to throw it out there, I'd kind of like to see that zombie-like enemy that was shared from a very early build in the Anniversary live stream make a comeback in some way. Visually, I thought it looked interesting enough.

 

 

I like all of these ideas, and I completely agree with your stance on Ancient attacks. The Toxic-pulling would add another dimension of danger to them, and probably prevent melee users (like myself) from just standing outside of its cloud and hacking away with long melee weapons.

 

I do agree that the Infested maps need to be darker, and I sort of touched on a way to do that with my reworked Ancient Disruptor, having his AOE drain exploding lights that're inside it (simmilar to Volt Ultimate.)

As far as making them more 'infested' simply adding more Meat Moss everywhere wouldnt do it. I'd like to see it more ruined like you suggested.

[SpiderWaifu]

Shameless self-bump

 

New Enemy idea

Flying Infested: They would work in a simmilar way to how the Grineer Jetpack guys work. They've got some sort of ranged attack, and they will fly around to evade enemy attacks.

On the other hand, they could be a flying melee creature, and use their speed to quickly close the gap, and escape. A possible feature for these guys could be that they retreat from combat often, and have rapid hp regeneration when not being attacked. Similar to how Mutalisks function in Starcraft.

 

Burrowing Infested: Once again, an idea from the Arid tile set. Let's make a sort of assassin-type infested unit that can burrow underground and crawl about. To differentiate them from the Arid sand-manta thingies, they could look like little crabs, with pincers that annihilate armor. You dont want to be hit by these things.

And this possible feature comes from my mean part of my brain... Give them a hook like Grineer Scorpions and they pull you in to them a certain distance (albeit, slower than the Scorpions pull.) If you're very close to the crab-infested, he'll try to bite you when you're pulled, instead of clawing.

[Paradoxbomb]

I think you read my mind with the suggestion to change the current infested missions, having us destroy hives and nests during sabotage would put a twist on the whole "go here and destroy this mining machine" mission, and capturing unique strains of the infested during Capture just makes logical sense since we don't want it to breed out of control.

 

I also can't help but like the ideas thrown around for changes to the Ancients, with armor 2.0, an interesting new tactic of the Disruptor could be that it could generate an organic "shield" for all nearby infested, similar to shield ospreys, meaning you want to kill it first since it's unlikely you'll have a high impact weapon on hand (or at the very least change it so that it's attacks don't completely drain you all at once). My suggestion for Healers is to change them entirely, instead of just healing nearby units, give their pulses the power to reanimate nearby infested corpses, making them more of a priority since you risk fighting previously defeated enemies again when one's around.

 

I think Runners could use an overhaul as well, now that the new damage system has made them a joke. I say make them significantly less common, but actually make them deal heavy damage to anything near them (allies included) when they explode, as Suicide units should. This would actually make them a threat, but at the same time you could set them off in the middle of a mob of infested to knock them over and hurt them, giving you a tactical advantage. There could even be variants that have elemental explosions, that proc on everything in the blast radius.

 

As for new infested, I can think of a few ideas:

 

Infested Metopin: Basically a smaller version of the Phorid, Metopins are red chargers with their back legs infused, making them slow moving tripodal units with several large stalks growing out of their carapace. Unlike chargers, Metopins are much slower and generally poor melee combatants, and instead prefer to stay in the back of an infested crowd and launch psychic bolts from their stalks, which seek out the player and deal significant damage. Allow their ranged attacks are powerful, there is a long delay between barrages, and Metopins are very vulnerable in close quarter combat.

 

Infested Scouter: Everyone's favorite infested wall growth, now latched onto and partially overriding Grineer Informers/Regulators. This floating blend of techno-organic matter serves as an infested version of a surveillance device, and once a player walks into range of it, it will admit a distorted signal that will cause infested to spawn in large, possibly endless hordes until it is disposed of. To make matters worse, they still retain their ability to buff allies, making all nearby infested much faster and stronger. Although Scouters are pretty flimsy, they are mobile and more durable than their uninfested counterparts, and can actually lob organic proximity mines at the player as a means of offense.

 

Adept Infested: Infested that are on their way to reaching ancient level strength, these units are a mid-tier unit that is more durable than light infested, but not quite as tough as ancients. They are basically legged versions of crawlers, and similar to Closed Beta infested, it is possible to reduce them to crawlers by severing them with a slash weapon.

 

--Adept Walker: Standard adept unit, functions similarly to Leapers without the leap attack, preferring to run straight up to the player and perform melee attacks. Not particularly threatening, but can randomly spawn with their former host's armor or shield still in tact.

--Adept Shocker: Legged version of the Electrical Crawler. Runs abnormally fast due to it's charged state, and deals constant electrical damage to any enemy within close proximity, on top of being able to melee you (all attacks deal pure electric damage).

--Nauseous Adept: Once it spots a player, it charges them at the same speed as a charging ancient, and proceeds to unleash a vomit attack that can slow movement speed. Unlike their crawler counterparts, their vomit won't completely stun you, but it has significantly longer range in this form.

--Toxic Adept: Two versions of the toxic adept, one of which retains the Lobber Crawlers ability to throw organic grenades, and the other simply charges you and uses toxic melee attacks. Both can be severed into their respective crawler form, and can leave poison clouds on death.

[OblivionNecroninja]

Infested no longer have a 'capture' mission. Something needs to replace that.

Infested Assasination Alerts need to be J3 Golem, instead of defaulting to another mission type.

Infested Codex Entries should explain SOMETHING about the nature and history of the infestation.

The Poison Shotgun mod needs to be moved from Electric Crawlers to Toxic Ancients. 

Infested rescue missions should replace the jail with a makeshift bunker (the rescue target isn't a HOSTAGE, they're stranded on an infested ship)

 

I quite like your idea for changing around the Infested Asteriod Sabotage mission. 

Edited December 1, 2013 by OblivionNecroninja

[SpiderWaifu]

I also can't help but like the ideas thrown around for changes to the Ancients, with armor 2.0, an interesting new tactic of the Disruptor could be that it could generate an organic "shield" for all nearby infested, similar to shield ospreys, meaning you want to kill it first since it's unlikely you'll have a high impact weapon on hand (or at the very least change it so that it's attacks don't completely drain you all at once). My suggestion for Healers is to change them entirely, instead of just healing nearby units, give their pulses the power to reanimate nearby infested corpses, making them more of a priority since you risk fighting previously defeated enemies again when one's around.

 

Interesting idea for the Disruptor, but I feel as though that could be a different type of Ancient. IMO, the Disruptor should stay as the infested's Anti-shield and Anti-energy unit.

For the Ancient Healer, a problem could arise if there were two or more Healers at once. On the other hand, it could lead to some difficult and fun situations.

I think that these changed or new Ancient types would need an AI tweak, so that the Shield Ancient and Healer would stay back and avoid being killed.

 

New Infested idea

Phalanx: Your idea of a shielding Ancient gave me an idea.

A heavily armored Infested with powerful, slow and straight-forward piercing attacks. If Ranged-Infested units were added, they could react to them in a simmilar way that the Grineer do, and hide behind the Phalanx.