[New Assassin] Lurker

[Kai]

"Don't run, I will track you down. I can smell the lingering scent of corpses around you. I am here. Get ready to be consumed."

 

The Lurker is the new Assassin hailing from the Infested Faction. Quite different from the other assassins that provides a Death Mark upon killing a Boss (Stalker) or joining sides with either Corpus (Grustrag 3) or Grineer (Zanuka Hunter). Death Marks received from the Lurker are specific to which Warframe you were using at the time of killing Lephantis, Jordas Golem or a Juggernaut and unlike the other assassins who are nice to inform you ahead of time of their random arrival, the Lurker will not provide you any direct means of its arrival. Only upon entering a mission will the player notice that the Lurker is coming by the presence of ghostly blue vein-like features around their screen which will disappear momentarily.

 

Like all other Assassins, the Lurker is a dangerous Infested capable of snaring, dragging and slowing down its prey with various organic attacks. As a penalty for losing against the Lurker, the player's warframe will be covered with Nano Spores that will continuously drain their health at the start of each mission. The first time you lose from the Lurker, the Lotus will provide you with a Decontaminator Blueprint (Reusable) that will remove the infestation from one of your warframes as well as giving you some extra Nano Spores for your future uses in the Foundry.

 

NOTE FOR ARTISTS

- I intentionally left the appearance of the Lurker as I want to see how our fellow Tenno will perceive an Assassin from the Infested Faction. If you have time to draw and post it up here, I'll definitely place it here so people can get a better idea of the Lurker.

 

[NobleParadox96]

an infested assassin... yay the last faction to complete! LOL

On a serious note: this idea is pretty cool, the mechanics of his presence and the consequences of the loss makes it more unique and to which I also like which gives a little reward when you actually get the spores off your frame. Will you add any custom awards if you defeat the assassin? Keep up the good work!

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

A suggestion for the appearance....  Rather than the blue veins that show its coming after you give the lurker a messed up but relatively human face and a super long neck (20-40 feet).  Then when it's appearing just have it stick it's head around a corner or through a vent and silently watch you until you look at it at which point it quickly retracts the head.  When you look at it the third time the main body falls on top of you from the ceiling knocking you over and starting the fight.  If you see the head twice in a mission and you miss or avoid the third head, it follows you to the next mission 100% of the time.

Bonus idea.  If you ignore it 5 missions in a row it attacks you in your liset.  You close the mission complete screen, turn around and the face is just looking at you from a foot away with the neck extending up from the lower deck. 

Edited June 20, 2016 by (PS4)Final_Dragon01
spelling

[Serafim_94]

Tyranids approve

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammer40k/images/b/b9/Tyranid_lictor_.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160306142541

[Urlan]

So like a retractable and extendable neck, like a slug's antennae? It would have to have a very flexible body type to fit into different zones and air ducts. What kind of attacks would such a thing have? Melee tackling and such makes sense but for something so mysterious, just Toxin clouds seems underwhelming for a creature coming after us. Maybe use Toxin or Gas clouds could obscure the creature during its patterns while its main attacks would be a mixture of melee rushes, trying to swallow us like a python, and shots of infested bio weapons similar to the Tysis, Phage, or maybe a new infested Bio Auto Rifle. It would be neat if to finish it, you have to rip the retractable neck and head out of the disabled body or it will start healing - maybe something similar to Splatterhouse would suffice.

[Popstupid]

48 minutes ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

A suggestion for the appearance....  Rather than the blue veins that show its coming after you give the lurker a messed up but relatively human face and a super long neck (20-40 feet).  Then when it's appearing just have it stick it's head around a corner or through a vent and silently watch you until you look at it at which point it quickly retracts the head.  When you look at it the third time the main body falls on top of you from the ceiling knocking you over and starting the fight.  If you see the head twice in a mission and you miss or avoid the third head, it follows you to the next mission 100% of the time.

Bonus idea.  If you ignore it 5 missions in a row it attacks you in your liset.  You close the mission complete screen, turn around and the face is just looking at you from a foot away with the neck extending up from the lower deck. 

 

This isn't really all that great of an idea. Why would an infested  assassin have a human face and long neck? It really makes no sense. So if you want to avoid this assassin, you have to avoid looking.... anywhere? No, terrible idea. Secondly, assassins are supposed to be rare show-ups (Not counting beacons anymore) so there's another problem.

Bonus Idea: You can't avoid it, every map has corners and you're going to see it eventually which is pretty terrible. And attacking you in your liset? What? That makes absolutely no sense. 

Good idea, bad execution

[Guest]

"get ready to be consumed"

[CrudShuzKong]

make it drop bladed rounds and argon scope and we got a deal!

I really like your idea and i hope that the infested get an assassin no matter how he will work in the end.

[BlackDiamondAce]

I'm thinking a MOA like shape, a bipedal runner, that can deploy lobbers and mutalist Ospreys.

 

what the design has is a set of appendages tipped with either scythes or hands.  A lurker with cloaking and quick pounce to harass a warframe.  This may seem a bit redundant, but a MOA that's corrupted by Alad, that evolved in a derelict of sorts.  Now tracks the player like a raptor.  

"At one point it must have been a MOA, but now is is corrupted beyond belief, rendering its original posture the only thing to identify it's past, take caution, the lurker is an excellent hunter who would rather ambush you than fight you head on." - Lotus

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

4 hours ago, Popstupid said:

This isn't really all that great of an idea. Why would an infested  assassin have a human face and long neck? It really makes no sense. So if you want to avoid this assassin, you have to avoid looking.... anywhere? No, terrible idea. Secondly, assassins are supposed to be rare show-ups (Not counting beacons anymore) so there's another problem.

Bonus Idea: You can't avoid it, every map has corners and you're going to see it eventually which is pretty terrible. And attacking you in your liset? What? That makes absolutely no sense. 

Good idea, bad execution

The infested consume their victims so it would be reasonable to say it's a twisted corpus face.  Secondly it should be a human face because it's creepier if it gives that it-could-happen-to-me feeling.

The long neck thing comes from a movie or show I saw a long time ago where there was this blob that slowly killed anyone it touched and it was also able to partially clone anyone it touched in the past.  There was this one scene where one of the protagonist is talking to another protagonist through a small window, and as he goes to open the door the camera angle changes to show that he was actually talking to the blob.  The blob had replicated the head of the other protagonist and extended 8 feet of bare esophagus to lift the head to the window.  It was one of the creepiest things I have ever seen, so I think a similar idea could be used here to make the infested assassin similarly creepy.  The ancients have long extendable tentacles so its not even a stretch to say the thing could have a head on the end of a tentacle.  

Here's the thing.  I want this assassin to be pure nightmare fuel.  The idea is that you are zipping along speed rushing a mission as usual, but then you see this creepy face looking at you out of the corner of your eye, but when you go to look at it is snaps back out of view.  When you go look there is nothing there.  If you finish the mission and you only saw the face twice you know there was a third face watching you and you just didn't see it.  This will happen since as a procedurally generated game its possible to somehow miss the sentients on the moon even if you are looking for them, and the same thing would happen with the faces.  Also, it's an assassin, you are not supposed to be able to avoid it.  But this is a game with explicit mechanics and eventually people would know where the heads spawn and just not look at them if they chose.  Which is why it would continue to stalk you like a lurker would.

I do not understand your comment about the assassin show up rate.  It would have the exact same rate as the other assassins but since it is possible to not fight it in the mission it appears, it continues to stalk you until there is a fight.  And I think this fits with the lurker theme, just as the other three assassins coming straight at you and forcing their fights fits with their themes.

And about the liset.  Why not?  

Spoiler

Stop reading if you have not completed the second dream.  After all the stalker came after us on out liset.

This assassin is about tracking you down from the shadows, so it would be easy to say it can smell and track you even while your ship is invisible.  Or it just hitched a ride on your landing craft when it picked you up from extraction.  It attacking you on your liset is a decent way of forcing the fight even if you managed to or accidently avoided it in the missions.  It would also be a great little Gruge style jumpscare if you were not expecting it.  Maybe change the lore around a bit and say

Spoiler

(Again second dream spoiler.)  it was stalking your Warframe to find your operator to make them another lurker.  But because you saw it stalking you in the mission three times it attacked you in the mission.  I think if it attacked your operator on the liset and you lost the cost would also be much higher.  It could be your operator gets infected with the lurker virus and has interrupted transference and can't use focus until you build the cure.

Point being that there isn't a reason it cant attack you on your ship.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

6 hours ago, Urlan said:

So like a retractable and extendable neck, like a slug's antennae? It would have to have a very flexible body type to fit into different zones and air ducts. What kind of attacks would such a thing have? Melee tackling and such makes sense but for something so mysterious, just Toxin clouds seems underwhelming for a creature coming after us. Maybe use Toxin or Gas clouds could obscure the creature during its patterns while its main attacks would be a mixture of melee rushes, trying to swallow us like a python, and shots of infested bio weapons similar to the Tysis, Phage, or maybe a new infested Bio Auto Rifle. It would be neat if to finish it, you have to rip the retractable neck and head out of the disabled body or it will start healing - maybe something similar to Splatterhouse would suffice.

No I was thinking more like a tentacle with a head on it, kinda like the Goliaths out of borderlands 2 after you blow their hat off.  And the head would be quite fast.  The idea is that you just kinda see it as you are going along your mission but it snaps out of view when you go to take a look at it.  Mechanically speaking, the head would retreat in to a vent or whatever and despawn since the boss's main body would not show up until you saw the last head.

In terms of the main body, I would give it a large slow moving main body maybe 1.5 times the size of the juggernaut, with 4 heavy legs.  It also however would have many long fast moving tentacles that come out of the mass supported by the legs.  It would attack you by lashing out with this tentacles, and after maybe 10 hits it would have a special attack where it bites you with the face.  If you ever played fallout 4 the special attack by the face would be similar to the attack where the giant mosquitoes grab you and then stick you before sucking you dry.  The gas and toxic cloulds would just be other things the body is doing while attacking you with the tentacles, but the main threat would be the tentacles and the special face biting attack.  Also, if you choose to run away, it would jump back into the ceiling and land on you again elsewhere.

Frankly the infested have plenty of quick charging units, I think making the assassin's body slow and tanky would be a good chance of pace.

And i love your idea for finishing it.

[Kai]

After reading through the list and how people actually want this thing, I'm starting to get an idea of the type of Lurker you guys actually want. My main thoughts on Lurker's appearance was supposedly purely Infested, not an Infested Corpus or Grineer. Akin to Boilers and Ancients that are somehow truly Infested to a degree. But now I have a different idea that you people might enjoy.

The Lurker capable of hiding and have a face, a full time nightmare fuel? Here's an idea. So before I edit the first post, I need your opinions:

The Lurker is in fact, an Infested Desert Skate, with the infestation covering its entire body with infested tissues that is now capable of blending with its surrounding and is no longer limited to just sand. It moves rather slow but is capable of ignoring terrain all through out as it is rather capable of gliding. Additionally, while not mainly chasing you outright with that "face" trick, it will silently position itself where the players are most likely to come (Narrow Corridors, Behind Doors, etc) and if avoided, it will move around and try to re-position itself somewhere in the map (Perhaps a large dark shadow appearing above you regardless if there was a ceiling or not and you will never be able to find it by looking up.).

and I'm thinking of having the Lurker have a sneak attack like it protrudes teeth on its back which then snaps at the first player that approaches it before shedding its skin and leaving the player trapped until it is defeated.

[Schregger]

1 hour ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

It would also be a great little Gruge style jumpscare if you were not expecting it. 

Oh for God's sake... WHY!?

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

9 minutes ago, Schregger said:

Oh for God's sake... WHY!?

For the immersion. And for the fact you had 5 chances to stop it, so you deserve it by that point.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

31 minutes ago, Harowing said:

After reading through the list and how people actually want this thing, I'm starting to get an idea of the type of Lurker you guys actually want. My main thoughts on Lurker's appearance was supposedly purely Infested, not an Infested Corpus or Grineer. Akin to Boilers and Ancients that are somehow truly Infested to a degree. But now I have a different idea that you people might enjoy.

The Lurker capable of hiding and have a face, a full time nightmare fuel? Here's an idea. So before I edit the first post, I need your opinions:

The Lurker is in fact, an Infested Desert Skate, with the infestation covering its entire body with infested tissues that is now capable of blending with its surrounding and is no longer limited to just sand. It moves rather slow but is capable of ignoring terrain all through out as it is rather capable of gliding. Additionally, while not mainly chasing you outright with that "face" trick, it will silently position itself where the players are most likely to come (Narrow Corridors, Behind Doors, etc) and if avoided, it will move around and try to re-position itself somewhere in the map (Perhaps a large dark shadow appearing above you regardless if there was a ceiling or not and you will never be able to find it by looking up.).

and I'm thinking of having the Lurker have a sneak attack like it protrudes teeth on its back which then snaps at the first player that approaches it before shedding its skin and leaving the player trapped until it is defeated.

I actually like the idea that the Lurker is purely infested, but maybe has created a lure that kinda looks like a Tenno operator.

I like the desert skate idea, but would there be a tell at the ambush spot beyond the shadow?  Maybe make it mimic like? Have either a downed tenno or a rare loot crate(noise and all) sitting on top of the shadow and it attacks when you go for the revive or try to destroy the crate.  Also when it appears maybe do a bit of a Jaws thing where the shadow moves under the player three times before posting up at a door.

The only thing that really concerns me is that if it is slow moving, how does it attack Tenno who are aware of the lurker's behavior?  It seems like it would be easy to just back up and shoot it.  As @Urlan pointed out it would be a bit of a let down if it's only ranged attacks are clouds or little gooey projectiles.

[BlackDiamondAce]

My opinion is more raptor like... Perhaps like an infested sentient of sorts?

 

i mean besides ancients and boilers, the infested we see is mainly corpus, with mutalist moas, Ospreys, Chargers and explorers, and lastly lobbers.  The only grineer infested is the charger.

 

the idea pool open: sentient, feral, Orokin, flora, and machinery. 

[Schregger]

4 hours ago, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

For the immersion. And for the fact you had 5 chances to stop it, so you deserve it by that point.

The only reason Stalker was on the orbiter in the second dream quest (is that a spoiler now? I dont think so...) is because DE wanted him there, it was part of a cinematic quest, one of the first for DE. The orbiter is a safe haven for players, where they go to rearm and restock. Its also the home for our little buddy in the back, which would raise another question: Why would this "Lurker" wait for you to turn around from the galaxy map, when the actual you is a defenseless little morsel in the back of the ship?

We also have enough freaky-ness with the Infested, without throwing in an Infested Rokurokubi into the mix.

Plus, the question needs to be ask as to what determines its "face" being seen. If we are going by something as abstract as, "you catch a glimpse of it, but turn around and see nothing there." there are going to be alot of encounters in the Orbiter. And doubtlessly lots of peeved players. There's a reason why the Stalker and likely other hunters (havent encounter the Zanuka/G3 yet to confirm) announce their presence to the player before actually showing up. Its to give players a chance to ready themselves, and if in squads, give it time for the squad to form up. Not to many players are going to enjoy getting blindsided because they were focused on the missions and not checking every freaking nook and cranny for this guys ugly mug...

 

Also, 

Give it high movement speed and toxic claws, with the Infested Moa's tar shot ability to slow you down.

[(PSN)Final_Dragon01]

10 minutes ago, Schregger said:

The only reason Stalker was on the orbiter in the second dream quest (is that a spoiler now? I dont think so...) is because DE wanted him there, it was part of a cinematic quest, one of the first for DE. The orbiter is a safe haven for players, where they go to rearm and restock. Its also the home for our little buddy in the back, which would raise another question: Why would this "Lurker" wait for you to turn around from the galaxy map, when the actual you is a defenseless little morsel in the back of the ship?

We also have enough freaky-ness with the Infested, without throwing in an Infested Rokurokubi into the mix.

Plus, the question needs to be ask as to what determines its "face" being seen. If we are going by something as abstract as, "you catch a glimpse of it, but turn around and see nothing there." there are going to be alot of encounters in the Orbiter. And doubtlessly lots of peeved players. There's a reason why the Stalker and likely other hunters (havent encounter the Zanuka/G3 yet to confirm) announce their presence to the player before actually showing up. Its to give players a chance to ready themselves, and if in squads, give it time for the squad to form up. Not to many players are going to enjoy getting blindsided because they were focused on the missions and not checking every freaking nook and cranny for this guys ugly mug...

 

Also, 

Give it high movement speed and toxic claws, with the Infested Moa's tar shot ability to slow you down.

Well the reason the head is watching the Warframe as you get up from the galactic map is because the main body is at the somatic link and is trying to pry it open.  Given the connection between the tenno and the infested it would make sense that the lurker is after the operator.

I get that you don't like the possibility of the lurker making it to the liset, but there was a reason the Lotus kept the Tenno hidden so it makes sense that you would have to protect yourself from time to time.

I completely disagree with the infested being freaky enough already.  I have been killing infested for more than 2 years now, and while the infested corpus machines added a couple new things to the bag the infested always either charge and melee or charge to close range and attack with status effects.  I think this assassin should break the mold a bit and show us something new about the infested rather than being a slightly stronger clone of what already exists.

The face entering the center 70% of your screen would constitute looking at it.  The face showing up is the warning that the lurker is coming, so you and your squad would have plenty of time to group up.

Yes, the G3 and the ZH as well as all the fricking death squads all show up in the same way.  It is for precisely that reason the lurker should break the mold.  That was one of the main points Harowing made when he made the topic.  Veteran players are so used to the assassins show up by this point it would be nice to see some variety.

Also, you don't have to look for the heads the way you look for medallions, they would appear in your path the same way arc traps do based on the objective waypoint system.  Heads that you miss would despawn and reappear elsewhere so that it would take either an extraordinary act of will or and incredibly lucky series of accidents to miss seeing three heads in a mission.  That by it's own nature would keep the orbiter attacks to a minimum.

Not to rain on your parade but the assassin you described is more or less a charger standing next to a toxic ancient with a moa turret on it's back.  There are already things like that in the game, and I don't think we need stronger clones of what already exists.

[BlackDiamondAce]

Ironically ^ this guy just described J3 golem and Phorid...  Anyway, most infested is bulky and deformed.  The only two real exceptions are ancients and brood mothers and their smooth bodies. Seeing something sleek and nimble compared to the standard charger.  Shape wise, we have bulky and twisted humanoids (and what's left of them), robots that are controlled, and ancient organisms that are sleek and smooth like plants.  Again, raptor like creature...

[Cenat]

On 21 June 2016 at 0:41 AM, (PS4)Final_Dragon01 said:

A suggestion for the appearance....  Rather than the blue veins that show its coming after you give the lurker a messed up but relatively human face and a super long neck (20-40 feet).  Then when it's appearing just have it stick it's head around a corner or through a vent and silently watch you until you look at it at which point it quickly retracts the head.  When you look at it the third time the main body falls on top of you from the ceiling knocking you over and starting the fight.  If you see the head twice in a mission and you miss or avoid the third head, it follows you to the next mission 100% of the time.

Bonus idea.  If you ignore it 5 missions in a row it attacks you in your liset.  You close the mission complete screen, turn around and the face is just looking at you from a foot away with the neck extending up from the lower deck. 

Woah calm down satan