cyan flame
The purpose of rats is to slow games down but their design is poor. Right now, there are 3 outcome with rats:
- Fire/Explosives instant kill
- Ignore it completely
- Shoot and get downed
When the best scenarios are to interact with them as LITTLE as possible, it’s a bad mechanic. They’re simply unfun. There is no depth or complexity to a punishing “do-you-have-explosives?” check.
Also, in “good” scenarios where they are easily killed, rats trivialize the map and make gameplay worse because they despawn idle zeke.
Instead, I propose that rats swarm a player’s feet. They slow the player to crouch speed, deal modest damage over time, attract nearby zeke, be “shaken off” with multiple melee hits, and have lower bullet resistance. This also allows them to spawn with a large number of idle zeke.
This makes rats have more potential counterplay and depth.
Players will have to choose between shooting high-damage zeke or clearing the low-damage rats off them first at the risk of zeke catching up.
I think good balance would be finishing one full set of melee signature strike to take half the rats health and shake them off (stun them for 5s.) Two signature strikes to kill.
When being chased, rats will also force players to choose where to shoot. Aim high for zeke or low for rats. Players can’t just spray at head level anymore.
Finally, lower bullet resistance is necessary because teams should always feel like they have options to deal with them, with the trade-off being that nearby idle zeke are instantly alerted. Mechanics should be interesting, but not overly punishing on their own.
The sweet spot for bullet health would be around 3/4 of a magazine to kill rats for most weapons, aiming at center mass. Then there is some trade-off when deciding whether to use most of your ammo on the rats or zeke. There is also punishment for missing too many shots, but some leeway to still kill a lone rat.
solemn rover