General game balance suggestions

[Haxray 6 / 667]

(YEs, this is cpt.haxray. Im stuck for 2-3 hours a night going up to my grandmothers, and stupid ''confirmation features'' requiring a mandatory phone text prevent me from using my normal account right now.)

 

Most of the recent features(not counting scp-1730 map, which ive barely been able to play, and several special rounds) have gotten time to settle and for players to adjust. With this information gleamed, I would like to suggest several changes be done to several features, in order to sort out balance difficulties. While I lack statistics, the majority of these suggestions are gleamed from ingame experience as well as spectating entire rounds, and I feel that the following is accurate.

 

1. SCP-457 needs a health nerf

Im aware 457 was one of the worst scps in the gamemode originally. Currently, however, he is one of the strongest and nearly impossible to stop or deal with as MTF or any other class. The combination of his massive HP pool, sprint ability, and longer duration(and damage) from the fire have pushed him horribly over the edge. AS nerfing his speed would probably end up making him into a sitting duck again, and nerfing the fire would make him way too easy to beat up again, his health could afford to be reduced. Currently its around 1.8k or so, and it could be reasonably reduced to the same HP as scp-049. This would make him actually possible to deal with while not rendering him too weak.

 

2. The Scrubs need fixes

I still love the scrubs, and I think they were one of the best possible MTF spawns added, alongside lambda-2 and the fire eaters. However, there is some painfully massive issues in regards to their gameplay that has to be sorted out. The 2 major ones currently, however, are the fact they're considered CI by the gamemode code, which allows them to escort d-class(This should not be a thing) and causes mass confusion. Secondly, with the fact friendly fire has been re-enabled, it also means the scrubs are now currently able to kill people again, and not just scps. This is a pretty major issue seeing as it can lead to confusion regarding MTF, foundation, and d-class, as well as a certain scp(035).

 

I would suggest changing them to either be a foundation role or be considered their own separate team(Albeit allied to the foundation, ala researchers and mtf). This would make confusion less of an issue, as well as sort out the escorting d-class issue. They are a mtf unit after all, not chaos insurgency agents. Additionally, I would re-add in the friendly fire clause specifically to them in order to better clarify what they are supposed to be doing.

 

Minor one, but the machine gun that the scrubs can spawn with is kinda awful, starting with no ammo and needing to slowly regenerate it while not packing much of a punch. Either buff its damage and ammo, or replace it  with another weapon from the weapon pack. There is quite a few fun options in there.

 

3. 610 is bad

Im aware 610 was a major scp release and a rather popular suggestion. I think I even approved of it as well with the original suggestion. However, after seeing it ingame, I have to say it is a rather bad addition. The lack of any indicator to being infected is less tense as simply frustrating, as nothing is worse than seemingly randomly dying. Combine this with the fact the minions are doomed to die eventually on a timer, and it is not a very entertaining experience. 610s normal attack even lacks any sort of animation or sound to tell you hes used it, adding to the frustration and confusion. 

 

Alongside this, there is constant problems with how the infection works. Even with the rules in place, the situation is awkward. Either you allow people to shoot and kill known infected people, at the risk of people randomly rdming anyone they think could be infected with no proof, or disallow it and cause issues of people being unable to do anything to prevent their upcoming death. Neither is fun, and neither is good for the gameplay.

 

Then you have 610s right click, which turns him into a magical space fungus tumor. This thing is the source of so many cheap deaths and frustrations. Nothing is more annoying than opening an elevator only to see one of these were inside. Youre fucked. you cant cure the infection, and you had no way of knowing it was in the elevator just waiting. This is different from an ambush situation as with an ambush you have a chance to react and the cause of the death is the other player doing something that directly affected you and you had some control over. With 610s right click or its dead minions, you lack any form of reaction, and there isn't much involved either from the other players imput. This just feels incredibly frustrating and isn't fun for either 610, who sits there waiting stationary to get some cheap kills and doing nothing in the meantime, or the people getting infected by it. THis isn't even getting started on the idea of being infected through particularly thin walls, or the sheer difficulty in clearing out these tumors with having no way the entire time to know if your infected or not or even if you are out of the radius.

 

Its not particularly fun to play as 610 either, as you are incredibly slow and lack any form of instant attack. This can lead to you losing massive amounts of your HP pool to someone you already infected who just so happened to be fully loaded and has time to kill(literally). Its not fun to infect people as there is no real sense of impact or accomplishing something, or any form of feedback at all. Hell, half the time you yourself only know if someone is infected by attempting to infect them again to get the text poup message. As I mentioned before, his right click isn't particularly fun either due to the mechanics being "you now sit in place for like 30 seconds-40 seconds" with no way to cancel out and no form of direct control over what happens(Or even knowing if you infected someone).

 

sadly, I dont think there is any real way to fix his concept either without bringing him way too close to scp-049 or adding more RNG into the mix by giving only a chance of infection(Which also isn't fun). I think the best option is to remove 610 and instead replace him with another scp, which sucks due to the amount of work im sure his coding took to make.

 

If removing him isn't an option, letting scp-500 cure the infection, giving some kind of visual or warning when you are infected(Even simply a chat text message), and adding a animation or sound to infecting people would go a long way in improving the experience in regards to this scp.

 

4. Gate breaking has caused serious issues.

Before gates were breakable, there was the problem of scps or other players being stuck in the facility due to the doors being closed and having no way to actually open them, without waiting for a specific time on the clock or having a scp that can use keycards or open them directly. Making them breakable has, however, opened up more issues of its own. Specifically, the sheer ease a lot of scps have in simply bumrushing the gates. MTf struggle to do anything to the vast majority of scps who  sit in the room before a gate and sit there breaking it, as its difficult to enter  without getting instantly killed or teleported away. While this isn't a problem with certain scps(017 comes to mind due to how long it takes for him to break the gate and having a cooldown on his attack), this is a serious issue with many scps and is constantly the best tactic. The worst offender is 106 by far, followed by 457, due to how close they spawn to the mtf or entrance zone and how easy it is for them to break the gates and escape, ontop of the fact their normal way of attacking either rarely kills or dont provide them point credit at all, while escaping on the other hand does give point benefits.

 

Even increasing gate HP didn't prevent this from being the main tactic and easily exploitable. Increasing it even further wont do anything to fix the issue, as the core problem is how difficult it is to prevent scps from simply camping there and breaking the gate. Either they will keep on doing that, get bored and attempt to play normally, or they will get so high of a HP breaking it would be nearly impossible for scps as a whole, reverting it back to effectively before the change was even made.

 

My proposed solution would to put restrictions on certain scps, give them a goal they need to accomplish in order to escape successfully. This was already done(somewhat) with the design of scp-079, who requires serpent hand members to reach his cell and escort him in order to escape. Having something in place to prevent scps from simply escaping instantly and giving them another goal could help to negate the gate issue and give MTF more of a fighting chance, while also making gameplay more interesting for these scps. Additionally, providing MTF with some form of frag grenade or explosive that allows them to punish scps camping in the small rooms infront of the gate would also be a good idea. The current grenades are incredibly lacking for this purpose.

 

Example of restrictions: SCP-106 cannot escape until he has reached a certain amount of kills. AS he is the main source of bleed, outside of scp-079, I think it would be reasonable to count any death by bleed as a kill for 106. Additionally, letting him kill people who are bleeding when he attacks them instead of simply teleporting them back into the pocket dimension would be an interesting dynamic and provide a way for him to kill people more successfully. Possibly add a right click ability that warps him into the pocket dimension(and teleports him back to where he was when he activated it 10-15 seconds later to avoid abuse and round delays) as well. Kill count for him, for example, could be 3-4 kills.

 

Other scps that could really benefit from some kind of goal before being able to escape:

682

457

966

049

 

SCPs that are fine as is and dont require some kind of goal addition:

096(while camping the gate with him is still annoying, he still has a period of down time inbetween en-rages, and its difficult to think of a objective requirement for him that would make sense.)

017(breaks the gate incredibly slowly and has a cooldown on attacks making him an easy target)

372(while he can rush the gate, he also breaks it incredibly slowly, and has low HP ontop of spawning quite a distance away from the gates)

1471

076(Easy enough to kill or prevent from reaching the gates due to his incredibly low base HP and potential attack cooldown on failed throws.)

173(Him camping the gate is INCREDIBLY powerful, but he is also scp-173 and has obvious problems with his plan that can be stopped easier than other scps)

610(Because hes bad enough as it is)

939(Pretty easy to punish or kill if breaking a gate provided its not gate-b).

 

Also, it would be wise to make gate-b unbreakable for scps, as it is way too easy to break out of currently, even for scps that aren't a problem with the gate-a exit.

 

5. TTT Special Round  should be removed

I already complained about the hide and seek round previously to xy, but this one also deserves a mention. Outside of effectively just being a poor mans less polished and less fun ttt, this round is also wildly disliked, and causes countless RDM and other report issues due to the nature of the round in general. Even with reduced round timers the round tends to drag on, and it doesn't feel nearly as fun as TTT when being a traitor. I feel like removing this special round to let other special rounds have a higher chance of showing up would be fine with most people.

 

6. 05 Retrieval special round needs improvements

This special round is rather unique, and I still love it and am happy that it exists. However, the special round as it exists has serious issues in terms of gameplay balance. Generally speaking, it is incredibly easy for the o5 to make it to the gate or the entrance zone before the round even begins, allowing a quick and easy escape and rendering it impossible for the scps to even do anything .On the flipside, if the 05 player doesn't know the map very well or attempts to hide in a corner, the round quickly becomes nearly impossible due to the difficulty in the 05 surviving after the scps get to leave their spawns. Another major problem is rounds delaying or going on for a while as the 05 simply hides somewhere and the scps cannot find him for an extended period of time. There is also the problem of scps being able to escape, causing a lot fo players to simply ignore the 05, bumrush the entrance zone, and escape.

 

An idea I have in mind to improve the round is either put the 05 somewhere he cannot leave from until the round countdown timer begins and reduce the amount of scps to make up for this, or have multiple 05s spawn(5 or so) and require the foundation to successfully escort all of them, or a mix of both. Additionally, rendering the scps unable to escape(and giving some way to explain this to them) would solve a major problem.

 

7. Special rounds in general need to be explained better

When a special round happens, all players have to go off of is the round name. While this is fine for some of the simpler rounds (such as team deathmatch, or rounds where all of the scps are multiples of the same scp), this causes issues or confusion for more elaborate special rounds or ones that aren't instantly apparent as to how they work(Such as 05 retrieval, opposite day, or Malpractice). A possible solution is to have some kind of text box pop up at the start of a special round that explains in more detail how the special round works. While im aware a lot of people tend to ignore messages like that, this would still be a major help and step in the right direction. Adding a command to opt out of them showing up as wall could be a good idea.(The pop up should last the duration of the time before the round fully begins, in order to ensure people have time to read it or to encourage people to actually read it while not being in any instant danger).

 

8. Ci "reinforcement" spawn needs improvements

While there is nothing wrong with having the chance of CI spawning in instead of a MTF unit, they are rather predictable. Despite being disguised as a normal NTF unit on the scoreboard and nametag, they spawn in with the CI armor that makes them stand out drastically. This makes it incredibly easy to spot them and renders the point of their disguise almost moot. Even if they drop their armor it becomes incredibly easy to spot them, due to their unarmored appearance and the vests marked CI VESTS in the spawn area or around the surface. A single CI not taking off his armor also reveals the whole group rather instantly. In addition, as the only possible MTF spawn that can appear as CI is nine-tailed foxes, it means people are only suspicious or possible wary of ci spies when NTF spawn, and feel completely safe and confident for all other MTF units.

 

I would instead make it so the CI spy spawn of NTF still spawn with normal NTF armor, meaning that they can actually hope to blend in and determining if they are spies or not is a much more difficult and involved affair. This also makes it much more enjoyable to play as currently CI spies basically have little to no reason not to go in guns blazing if they spawn in as a reinforcement spawn as their identity is easily confirmed. Additionally, giving other MTF units a chance of spawning as CI agents would be interesting as well. While it would make no sense for the scrubs to have a chance to spawn as CI(The same goes for Dr.Clef), it doesn't seem too unreasonable to have fire eaters, mu-7, or even Omega-9(After all, ables only loyality to said squad was wanting a good fight and the bomb collar. It is not out of the question for CI to take over and infiltrate the squad) spawn as CI. Potentially even the mtf units that spawn with dr.clef could be made to be possible to spawn as CI, or individual members of a squad, but that would be a lot more difficult to code for Xy I imagine.

 

9. 1471 Is weak and might deserve to be removed

1471. even after the buffs it received, is the worst SCP in the game. Being incredibly easy to kill, not being able to break down gates or assist other scps in any way unless the person in question is already infected, not being able to pick who is infected, and a teleport that leaves them vulnerable(As well as being slow) is a bad combination. However, a major problem is that buffing 1471 could quickly lead to it being overpowered. Giving it the ability to kill people instantly wouldn't break it, but it also wouldn't help it out much as it already kills quickly if it is able to catch up to people and could result in cheap teleport deaths that are unfair to the receiving person.

 

A good idea might be to replace 1471 with the old 3d glasses scp. While im aware that one had its issues, I believe more could be done to fix it than 1471(or making 1471 act like the old 3d goggle scp). It was more interesting gameplay wise and had more ways to be buffed or improved than the current 1471.

 

Brief reminder of old 3d glasses scp:

Completely invisible to everyone except for the person with the 3d glasses

Only damaged people by bumping into them

Incredibly low HP

Damage was high with knockback.

 

I believe re-adding the old goggle scp and replacing 1471 with it, or making 1471 act like the goggle scp(Replace goggles with a cell-phone and you are good to go), with some changes:

Simply let them attack normally ablet with a super short range, removing the issue of the bumping or touching attack being unreliable. Attack would still have knockback on it and still do high damage, ableit with a short cooldown between attacks.

Slightly increasing their HP to 120 or even 150 from their old 100.

Requiring people to find the cellphone or goggles instead of simply randomly spawning with it. Item could spawn anywhere a normal misc item(Such as grenades or NVG) can spawn, albeit with a cap of one.

Require the item to be held as the equip item in order to see the scp(phone or goggles). This would make it useful for the player but not completely game ending for the scp and gives them a chance to react and adjust to it.

 

10. The Er-1 could use a stat increase.

While the krieg is already a scoped semi-auto weapon with a high power output(easily outclassing most other rifles, with only the aug being able to compare), the Er-1 is incredibly bad by comparison, lacking the stopping power or accuracy of the Krieg or Aug, and not bringing much in return. Simply buffing its stats isn't particularly interesting however, and it would be cool to give it a use in niche situations. A good idea may be to either make it do increased damage to scps compared to people, or make it ignore armor damage reduction. Both of which would result in it having some form of Niche use.

 

11. In a similar boat, the LMG the heavy uses needs a massive buff.

Due to how bad the LMG currently is(Its so inaccurate and its spread is so high its nearly impossible to hit anything with it, even at point blank range), and how rare of a spawn the heavy is ontop of their current armor, It is actually WORSE to spawn as a heavy than as a normal guard. Buffing the LMG to be less useless would be a nice improvement. I dont know how adjustable it is, but making it so while the person is standing still and crouched, the LMG has dramatically reduced or no recoil at all, and reduced spread, would be a good idea. I know weapons already get an accuracy increased while crouched, but this one would make sense to benefit more from it(simulating deploying and maing use of a bipod, and giving an unique play style to the LMG or heavy compared to other weapons).

 

Edited November 5, 2018 by Duc2000
Strike-throughed all the stuff I saw Xy added (You can revert if you want to, just thought it would be nice)

[VilhjalmrF 2,099 / 30,694]

This is great.

[Cpt.Haxray 774 / 13,610]

just quickly confirming this IS infact me.

[annoying furry 6,300 / 63,975]

Took some stuff from it:

 

 

Leaving open as not everything in here is fully implemented yet (or will be).