Rework to Chargers (Running on Walls!)

[(PSN)Crixus044]

Infested are a unique faction. They're essentially the zombies/plague of warframe. Because of this, how they function is much different than traditional enemies. They're brawlers with all out close range offense and very little defense (Auras aside). Because of this, some of their mechanics are strong against certain player mechanics, but weak to others. The main thing that zombie type enemies are weak to is elevation. This is a very popular video game and fictional tactic. In warframe, when it comes to elevation, players have this for free with parkour and maps arrangement. For years, this caused an imbalance with the difficulty of infested and the ease of camping spots and what the community calls "cheese". It is true, any akkad back in 2016 was full on Wisconsin.

How DE dealt with this? They introduced a booger spitting mechanic to infested chargers and runners for enemies that they can't create a path for. Infested that cannot reach players would charge up a booger that would auto target players. While in concept, this would've fixed the camping issue, it was horribly bugged, clumsy, and felt wrong for an infested enemy. The bugged aspect was that enemy AI is rather complex, but sometimes not logical. Since infested need a path of attack, any elevated movement like bullet jumping, double jumping, or wall latching, or even standing on top of another enemy will break the path for that split second, which automatically charges up the booger. Sometimes, the target doesn't even need to move to be not in the enemy path. I've personally seen runners constantly spitting at a cryopod for an entire round until put them out of their misery. Also, how much sense does it make to see chargers leaning back and then spitting at you just because you jumped in front of them? This was always a placeholder mechanic that is rather buggy and can be replaced. By what?

In a recent devstream, DE showed Venus open world enemies, mainly spiders. As creepy as they were, I loved their mechanics of being able to climb and run on walls. This is something I've been asking from infested enemies for years. I have an old topic about this from 2 years ago. Specifically, the charger. How amazing would it be if you'd see chargers coming at you from the walls, diving off the walls to tackle you? It'd feel like a real menacing horde coming to take you on. With this mechanic, not only is elevation problem solved, but it adds a certain verticality to the game that can really make use of all our parkour mechanics. Anyone who's done dueling knows just how cool it is to use parkour to have aerial melee combat. Imagine doing a spinning aerial back kick with your obex against a charging diving off the wall, or using Wall Attacks for enemies actually on walls. I usually have to use vauban to get those cool aerial shots in captura. This is a 3 bird-1 stone solution. Fixes elevation with Infested AI, adds a menacing visual to the infested, and makes use of so many underused warframe mechanics like aerial melee, wall attacks, and vertical bullet jumps.

I look forward to the feedback from the community on this addition.

Edited February 28, 2018 by (PS4)Crixus044

[(PSN)WINDMILEYNO]

Im not sure how long the infestation takes to convert a victim, but iv always wanted different stages of the infestation to be wandering around. Also, some more bosses. A smart one who chases you down in a flickering abandoned corpus ship, a corpus tech turned infested who is themed after pyramid head...a grineer manics who swing off of the ceilings and watche you like planet of the apes...stuff like that...

[INight00]

A bit like just getting Xenomorph and throwing it in.
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/926341-infested-enemy-concept-taken-from-corpus-spiders/_{^{white text}}
More gimmicky enemies is a good thing.Ghouls is one thing, but they are too... flat. Horizontal.
Fast acrobatic enemies to keep up with the warframe parkour would be great.
A bit like the player vs player Stalker capturing player thing they did.

 

[Orblit]

49 minutes ago, INight00 said:

More gimmicky enemies is a good thing.Ghouls is one thing, but they are too... flat. Horizontal

Someone hasn't been shot out of the air by a ghoul...somehow.

[INight00]

22 minutes ago, Orblit said:

Someone hasn't been shot out of the air by a ghoul...somehow.

I have not. In fact, I put them in the air. Make them float with Titania, then launch them with Sibear.

[(PSN)Crixus044]

On 2/26/2018 at 5:28 PM, INight00 said:

A bit like just getting Xenomorph and throwing it in.
https://forums.warframe.com/topic/926341-infested-enemy-concept-taken-from-corpus-spiders/_{^{white text}}
More gimmicky enemies is a good thing.Ghouls is one thing, but they are too... flat. Horizontal.
Fast acrobatic enemies to keep up with the warframe parkour would be great.
A bit like the player vs player Stalker capturing player thing they did.

 

agreed, though I would not like them too fast. Chargers are plenty fast, especially if they are diving at you.The main ideology about enemy and parkour is not to have enemies made to catch up to players, it's to have an enemy that PLAYERS need to catch up to.

[VoxGray]

Infested need an overhaul in general, and I think this could be a nice touch. As it is, they aren't intimidating in the slightest. They're candy-colored wads of flesh that sprint at you like their legs fell asleep. Anything to improve upon that is welcome.

[INight00]

25 minutes ago, EmissaryOfInfinity said:

Infested need an overhaul in general, and I think this could be a nice touch. As it is, they aren't intimidating in the slightest. They're candy-colored wads of flesh that sprint at you like their legs fell asleep. Anything to improve upon that is welcome.

Like having an angry baby covered in colourful sprinkles charge at you.

[BahamutKaiser]

A new infested unit that crawls walks would be cool. Maybe a grappler that holds you to the floor too. Not in a downed state though.