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Parasite Review; Something on my mind
Topic Started: Jan 17 2015, 09:58 AM (325 Views)
b5whun13r
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Too damn old for this shit
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I have been pretty sick recently so I thought I would get this out as I have been thinking about Parasite a lot since I've had jack all else to do recently.

This will be mostly stream of consciousness so apologies if its hard to read.


While Parasite was an awesome mod (shit I dedicated at least a year to a fan version of it), it had some flaws in its overall design. This can be excused due to the fact that its original creator was not professional at the time and also due to the quality of Warcraft 3 maps at that time.
However, these flaws and issues still exist, so I get to point them out. (I will also be pointing out flaws in Parasite Resurrection)

1. Parasite to human strength:
During the time I played Parasite 2, there was an unofficial rule that the blood tester was not allowed and was destroyed or unused without anyone blinking an eye. I think during the entire time Parasite 2 was officially released, the mechanics of the blood tester were not changed at all. It meant that if you had a game with the recommended amount of players and most were competent (and agreed to use the blood tester), there was almost no hope of the parasite winning. The humans could split up, guard the tester and the power, test every player and then hunt down the parasite without issue. Unless the alien got very lucky with bombs, there was little chance of them winning.
However should the blood tester be removed, the alien suddenly gained so much more freedom. Portable blood tests took far, far longer to complete, you could get very lucky with them and you could pretty much afk as the alien and wait for people to start killing each other. I think the addition of the 'control' resource in games like Symboite, Metastasis and Phase Killer was an excellent idea, a resource that slowly lowered the longer the alien was in human form and would rise if the alien took its true form. Without such a mechanic, games of Parasite became very black and white when it came to the identity of the alien, you would either be using the blood tester or ignoring it entirely and waiting for the alien to make its move.
The next issue comes from the power curve of the alien. While the humans would remain at the same strength throughout most of the game (power only increasing when the alien reached its final form or slightly whenever they picked up a bomb), this meant that the final forms of the alien became more of an i-win button that you used to hunt down the remaining humans, rather then something that could be fought against. (Although you could upgrade and tend to the AI, but that usually felt kinda awkward)
While I don't have a problem with the alien being OP, I do have one with odds being so biased towards the alien. The only advantage the humans have at this point is that if everyone dies, its still a victory for the humans. This lets the humans use things like self-destruct features on the station to kill the alien (and themselves).
To balance this out, I think the alien should have had some sort of timer on them. Something like 60 or so minutes, after which everyone begins to slowly die or something. This gives the humans something to aim for after the alien has reached its final form and has taken over the entire map.
So my point here is that blood testing should have been changed (I liked the metastasis approach where you took blood samples from multiple people, put them in a test together and it would reveal if an alien was among them, but not who the alien was), that lategame alien should not be lazily mopping up the humans and that the alien should be under more pressure to get stuff done throughout the entire game.


2. The Binary nature of certain items: Another issue I had with Parasite (that might actually not be an issue, it might be part of the game) was how items interacted with each other. The gadget vendor had 3 very powerful items. The EMP device, which silenced a target for more then 10 seconds, the Absorber which acted as a close range dispel and the Thermal Shield which gave spell immunity and immunity to an entire damage type. (including bombs!)
The Thermal Shield was probably the most problematic of these items. The advantages it gave you were insane. Even when it came to fighting
physical aliens, you would still pick up a Thermal Shield thanks to how well rounded it was. If someone was trying to kill you, a Thermal Shield could stop it pretty damn easily. (helped that the Absorber was very hard to hit)
My issue with Thermal Shields is that quite a lot of Parasite was balanced around this item. Things like auto-turrets, imba mind aliens, stun bombing someone were all balanced by being countered by using a Thermal Shield. This isn't fantastic design as if you mess up using a thermal shield or dont have one, you are a sitting duck. I prefer some level of leniency when it comes to combat and I dont like having to always keep an item in my inventory so I don't die.
If I was to remake Thermals, I would remove the spell immunity, maybe give it a dispel on cast, along with spell resistance and make it reduce the duration of certain debuffs on the user. (its possible in wc3, dw) With that done, I would then reduce the effectiveness of other things in the game (bombs, spells, turrets) and possibly add another item into the game similar to the energy shield in metastasis. (a short lived personal shield that takes a lot of damage, like 75% of the starting human hp)
I would also tweak the absorber and the EMP device after changing the Thermal.


3. Bizarre items that are weird and make the game clunky. Also some that aren't:

Now that we've gotten the imba and game defining items out of the way, lets get on to the weirder items in the game and how they aren't used.
Barricades: Barricades are annoying and promote camping, which I don't think is the point of Parasite. Mechanics like Power and Oxygen break up camping, but they still annoy me, especially because they are hard to clear out when you are the alien. If I was redesigning barricades, I would reduce the amount in an item stack, double their size, increase hp / armor and put some sort of duration on them.
Oh and I would put in a mechanic that if you were standing next to one and someone attacked you from a certain distance/angle, damage would be reduced. Because cover is cool.

Tracking Beacon: Silly, stupid idea that hurts the alien. You can find out who the alien is by putting a tracker on someone and turning off the power. Dumb fucking mechanic. Furthermore the amount of sight this gives is far too much. If I was remaking it, it would ping the location of the individual similar to the alien's sense ability and would decrease with range. You would also have to use an autodoc to remove it, rather then an absorber so it wouldn't disappear the minute you entered battle.

Repair Kit: Nearly useless item, unless you love the A.I. I would remove the charges, maybe make it cost energy and increase its effectiveness on ships (It heals 1 ship attack per use, so slow). Maybe make it give armor or something when used on bio targets. Make it less shit.

Bomb Defusal Kit: Another nearly useless item. Very situational. Give it the ability to detect nearby bombs, definitely remove charges.

Thermal Flare: Situational item. Make it so when you flare a target, everyone can see it invis, not just you. Also make it give lasting truesight in the area you cast it, not just on the people you hit it with (Its a goddamn flare after all) and remove the ability to dispel the reveal buff.

Vacuum: Situational item. Possibly just remove the charge limit.

Oxygen Tank: Situational item. In Parasite Rez I made it so if you used Oxygen when you were on full oxygen it gave you a buff. Probably just tweak that mechanic.

Adv Medkit: Recovery item. In Parasite Rez I made it a channeling ability that you could use while in combat. I stand by that change. Also make it remove alien infection pls.

Autodoc: Probably just increase charge limit.

Adrenal stimpack: Genius item, probably one of my favorites. The extra 50% damage when you use this is insane and has gotten me killed several times. Adore this item, do not change every, put it in every map.

Healing stimpack: I didn't like the instant heal so I made it over a second and halved it. I also gave it damage reduction to compensate.

Sigma Strain Vial: Yay you turn into an alien. Only issue was the lack of a timer while in this form (it had to be removed due to the suit changing mechanic, I think)

Odesa Strain Vial: Awesome item, lots of little uses, very useful for the alien.

Parasite Buster: Destroyed alien armies in Parasite 2. I changed it a little in Para rez so it spread its damage across all nearby aliens. I also made it effect primary aliens and spawns.

Omega Strain Vial: Dumbest fucking item in the game. Useless effect on the main alien, poor effect on humans. Only purpose was to stop the imba Astronarch (the mind control alien) from jumping you. Dumb, poorly implemented mechanic.

Bombs: Awesome

3. Pacing of the gameplay: Looking back on Parasite, this is probably my biggest complaint.
Parasite doesn't really have any sort of pacing to it, aside from the blood tester, which as we established earlier, usually got blown up without any protest. This in my opinion is the biggest issue with the map. Newbies to it have no idea what they should be doing since it doesn't offer up any clues as to what you should be doing half the time. This is big problem as it makes coming to grips with the map quite difficult. I think maps like Symboite and Metastasis remedied this by adding NPC Parasites that the humans could kill, the control resource that forced the alien to transform and having multiple roles that were opposed to one another. All these things lead to more involvement on the part of the player and allowed them to interact more with the game, rather then just standing around waiting for either someone to do something or someone to die.
This lack of pacing also hurts newer players because from game to game, they couldn't really predict what would happen next. One game the alien might be super aggressive the entire way, constantly attacking individuals, spawning miniparasites and aggressively attacking others with them and creating full on panic and action the entire time. The next the alien might find a corner, go afk and watch videos on YouTube, only to come back and find everyone killed each other. While having options when it comes to playstyle is always good, having 'do nothing' be a legitimate playstyle is awful game design. The richness and fun of parasite comes from the interaction between not only individuals, but also between the two undefined teams of alien and human.

Also I'm not 100% sold on spaceships. I think Metastasis pulled them off alright, but I still think just added 'lolspaceships' to Parasite rather then actual gameplay depth.

Edited by b5whun13r, Feb 25 2015, 11:00 AM.
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Kuthe93
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Hey BSW_Hunter, it's been a long long long while. It's Jezza/WNxJezza/Kuthe/Eroned
Randomly searched up WNxJezza and found this old forum, and much to my surprise saw you'd only recently posted, and good old purple stealing Dark Prince also posted last month, and here I was thinking this place had been dead for years.
I've added you on battle.net, but I'm going to barely be online for the next 6 weeks.

Now onto your text box, although I haven't played a full house game in over 6 months, due to all the hours we played back in the olden days, I can remember and agree with everything you said.
Metastastis did a great job of the blood tester.
Now I can't remember how often games lasted, but if you think 60 mins would have been a good time, maybe after that the oxy-machine breaks, and humans rely on oxy-tanks from vendors, and by that time a clever parasite would have destroyed as many as they could.
Honestly Thermal Shields became such a staple for us, I honestly think it would be a bad idea to remove it, it provided useful benefits, for both humans and the parasite. Especially against people trying to TK you with bombs (good old sonic suit).

But yeah, that's all I have to imput with now.

Get well soon!
Edited by Kuthe93, Jan 19 2015, 05:24 PM.
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zeph
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The Overmind
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To be honest I kinda liked the rock-paper-scissors combat that items like the thermal shield and absorber and emp provided, and how the aliens couldn't be fought normally by the time they evolved to top tier (or like twice if they took the physical route). The latter kinda swapped the dynamic of the game from an alien having to use trickery and subterfuge to survive, building up an army and biding their time, to one where the surviving humans had to do the same to take out the alien (along with themselves if necessary).
Some of the most fun I had with the game came from running laps around the ship when the alien was fully evolved, not even wearing a suit, until I could lure them into a bomb/nuke trap or somesuch.

Balance was an issue, but rarely so much that I felt it was unfair or frustrating, rather than challenging; I haven't played many games since that captured the feeling of outplaying someone so well as PS2 did, and part of that I think was due to how the game was imbalanced, but not overly so.
Though, the form 1 mental was pretty ridiculous on the offensive; it was arguably easier to just spend the game two shotting people and using items than to actually spend time evolving, and things like getting possessed, stripped and taken into a ship were also pretty cheesy.


I do agree that the blood tester mechanic made the game very black and white, and it was consistently more fun when it was destroyed or unused. Also, I found most of the items in the game fell into the really niche category. After the staples of suits, speed boosters, healing, and thermal, there were only a half dozen utility items that I used with any sort of regularity.


One last thing I'd note: thermal shields not providing spell immunity is fine, but making you immune to bombs (and bombs being as good as they were) provided a significant portion of the entertainment that game had, imo. Surviving a nuke point blank via a thermal and having to fight my way out of the rubble while the room was on fire was something that I still remember half a dozen years later, and setting up the situation so that even if they shielded the knockback would set them up for another bomb or fling them somewhere dangerous was amazingly rewarding, and I think the game wouldn't have been nearly as fun if you couldn't block a bomb, but the explosions were kinda lackluster.
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DarknessPrince
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Pretty crazy that this clan was started up 7 years ago and 4 of us are still around, talking about the game that inspired it. That's awesome.

Do we all still have access to WC3? Because I think a couple games of para should be a thing some time in the not too distant future.



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zeph
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I think I still have access; it's a shadow of its former self though. Considering how long it took to get a para game back in the glory days, I doubt we'd have any luck nowadays.

And yeah, it is pretty amazing that people are still around. Sure goes to show how much fun it was.
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DarknessPrince
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Well, I still have contact with Darv... and Sheepcoats, obviously, being my cousin and all. They may be interested in a pareunion. (omgz see wut I did thar, iz liek para and reunion, still as sharp as evar!)

So that's 6, which if I remember correctly was the bare minimum for a half decent para game.

Do any of y'all still have any contact with anyone else?
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zeph
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Just you, kuthe and bsw really- the people who still look over the forum once in a while.
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DarknessPrince
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Shame.

Oh Darn I just remembered I have Lord-Dread on the fac-e-book. I also just remembered that my internet currently hates me and won't connect to any kind of game server.

COMMANDER ZEPH, FIX IT NAO PL0X!
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Kuthe93
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I'm literally 1m away from Dugong atm, so yeah I know him.
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Kuthe93
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And I was on WC3 a couple of weeks ago and found multiple metastasis games that were getting to 10-12 players, so it's still possible to fill games up, maybe...
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