Ticks do too much damage and can jump ridiculous distances.
I would improve them buy reducing their jumping distance and making them do less damage, and also by making it so that an EMP will permanently disable it, considering their size that would be logical. I would also make it so that if multiple ticks jump at you at the same time there is reduced damage to make it a little bit easier to deal with multiple ticks at a time. By reduced I mean, if one tick jumping at you is 20 damage, then 2 jumping at you is 30 instead of 40.
That is how I would improve the ticks to make them fairer.
True say @CoDCrafted , it seems like they don’t have a vertical limit on their attack as you can be on top of a building yet they can still reach you somehow. i think if the runners cant reach you two stories up the ticks shouldn’t be able to either. Apparently there is a massive patch on the way, in the livestream i believe they said there were like 200 fixes so far, so fingers crossed ticks got a small rework in there.
The ridiculous jump, the gigantic area of attack for their slice’n’dice attack, and the amount of damage that attack inflicts definitely all adds up.
As @Back2the80sFuture says, they can be more problematic than considerably larger enemies. Perhaps the problem is how I envision them? Basically, I see them as either: on stand-by in houses and bunkers ready to launch opportunistic attacks, or dropped from larger machines in order to interfere with the player’s attacks.
Instead we’ve got a frenetic whirlwind of explody death that’s pretty much more dangerous than anything except Hunters.
What do I do? I toss a flare and hope that the timers on their suicide attacks run out before the flares do; or at least make them all congregate in the one spot for a turkey shoot. I, personally, never enter a new bunker without ten flares.
But back to @CoDCrafted’s original post, I love the idea of EMPs permanently frying them. I wouldn’t be adverse to a little diminishing returns-based maths going on behind the scenes, either.
You know if you’re careful you can actually sneak up on most of them. Full kit for minimal noise/visibility plus perking into the skills that reduce visibility and noise and you can easily get with a dozen or so meters of one while crouching provided you don’t approach it from the front or top (they seem to notice people above them way more readily than on the same level), more than close enough to one-shot it with your weapon of choice.
Agreed though that they really should get nerfed, especially early game (first encounter with a group of them in Vesslan was the first time I actually died, I got jumped by three at once and before I figured out what was attacking me I had less than 10 HP left).
My main gripe is that there isn’t very much you can do about ticks unless you have a very powerful weapon. You shoot them and then they immediately lunge against you. Instead, I think that they should be stunned for a second.
I agree that the Ticks do way too much damage relative to their specific type of attack, their size, and the damage their attacks inflict comparable to the ranged weapons attacks of the other machines. Getting sprayed with bullets from a Dog will reduce my hitpoints on a direct hit in increments of 20-30 points. A Tick simply jumps on me and each attack knocks me back 25 hp on full dose.
Their attacks should be a bit more minimalistic in damage, perhaps more reasonably not to exceed 10hp on a direct hit compared to the 25hp they inflict currently (at least in my experience). In order to preserve their relevance as a potential threat of harm, perhaps dial down their cool down timer between attacks enabling them to jump at you more frequently. However, bear in mind that this same problem will present itself in a different way if the attack frequency is increased too significantly to compensate for any prospective damage debuff. There also seems to be an issue with the collision detection when you fire your weapon on them while they are charging at you. I have had direct hits with bullets on them that didn’t damage them at all while they were in full charge towards my avatar. Instead, I have seen the bullet appear to go right through them at what seems to be a direct hit arc.
Since we are on the subject of exaggerated damage scaling, I also noticed that when shot by a Dog with a shotgun setup attached, that the birdshot bullets (assuming that this is the ammo used if available for loot after its destroyed) does 60hp of damage per shot on a direct hit (and at a fairly long distance). Considering the birdshot ammo is the weakest of the shotgun ammo, I thought that the damage taken was a bit excessive. Especially, since damage from that ammo does not seek to equate when you use this ammo same against the machines. All in my experience, by the way.
I recognize from the survey the intent to add exo-armor. If this is some form of powered armor or what not, that would be awesome. I hope first and foremost that any form of armor is introduced into the game. However, I personally like to be light and quiet when moving, so it would be really cool to have various levels of armor protection from heavy for better protection at the expense of movement and stealth, and lighter armor components for better movement and stealth at the expense of better protection. My gameplay style has always been the latter over the former.
Ticks are annoying but i think they could be even deadlier. they should show up in more places and there should be a version with canister of that poison gas that releases it when they self destruct.
@kakarron
You know what would be just really bad?
They having a cannister filled with… NAPALM…
With a directional spray to the target.
A slow, burning death…
i second that. does the game currently have fire damage? i thought some of the clothing was listed as giving a resistance to fire damage but do not recall ever being burned in the game so far. able to stand in fires withe no harm done.
Ticks are just fine as they are. Just put some distance between you and them and you will be fine so long as you can one tap them or throw an EMP or standard grenade in there direction.
Imagine a squad of eight hunters with flamethrowers …
Also (off-topic) we need water guns that do 1 hp of damage, and literally nothing else, cause it would look freaking sweet taking on a tank with a water-pistol
Only problem i have with ticks is that midair turn and they hit you when they could clearly miss you.
Other thing i would love to have is ticks able to jump trough windows into houses, barns, etc. Make indoors less secure fighting places.
