Nerfing Apparitions

[BurgerBB]

Here is the intended purpose of Apparitions:

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"Apparitions are supposed to provide cult with some extra power so they're not shutdown easily by security. Their high health and high damage output makes them viable for roleplaying with other crew."

Here is what happens with Apparitions:

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Cultist A sits in the corner of <INSERT HIDDEN LOCATION HERE> and spams 4-5 Apparitions. Apparitions then proceed to murderbone the crew because "well if they resist in any shape or form, they're hostile, which means I can kill them" and there is literally no consequence for anyone that round. They don't bother to convert, they don't bother to roleplay. They tryhard and practice their combat skills because they want to "win" when there isn't really a prize or condition for winning.

Apparitions are super tanky, the swords they spawn with deal an excessive amount of damage, and there isn't really any counter to it that a crewmember is supposed to know. They're powerful as hell and there is no fear of death for them since it's a ghost role. They don't roleplay at all, and if they do anything shitty they can just point to the person who summoned them and say "well they told me to kill so I killed" so there is 0 accountability.

 

Solutions to implement (pick one or more).

-1. Obligatory "remove them!!!"

0.  Obligatory "nerf their stats!!!"

1. Apparitions are meant to be magical cult beings with magical powers. They're supposed to be frail and sickly as they have an extremely strong connection to magic. Given this, they shouldn't be able to use weapons, but just magic abilities. They're like liches in a sense where they're too weak physically to hold heavy objects like claymores but they're mentally strong enough to use magic. (Remove ability to carry weapons.)

2. Apparitions should be harder to summon. You're creating a flesh golem out of your blood. It should use like 10% of your blood to create a being like this, not just a mere droplet that easily regenerates. (Summoning an apparition requires 10% of your blood.) 

3. Apparitions should only be a reward for conversions. Apparitions take little effort to summon, and you can summon as many as you want. The more ghosts there are, the more Apparitions you can summon. This literally rewards murder death killing over conversions because Apparitions are literally stronger than crew in terms of them having multiple lives and some good health for what they are. (Apparitions can only be played by ghosts who were previously cultists.)

4. Apparitions are controlled by the person that summoned them. Like similar reasons above, there is really no accountability here for who controls them. (Apparitions spawn as an empty husk that can be controlled by the living, like an extra body.)

 

Reminder that on most servers, there is a similar issue that players hate which involves the xenobiologist spending an hour doing nothing while they farm for adamantine golems and then make a cult army. On some servers, this is removed, but on the others people want this removed because of similar reasons people don't like Apparitions here.

[Peppermint]

The reason ghost spam has been more of a thing recently is due to the stun rune getting gutted. Now converting people is extremely hard, so people revert to apparitions.  Further nerfs to cult just continues to bury the gamemode when we already have a fairly limited selection. 

[BurgerBB]

6 minutes ago, Lemei said:

The reason ghost spam has been more of a thing recently is due to the stun rune getting gutted. Now converting people is extremely hard, so people revert to apparitions.  Further nerfs to cult just continues to bury the gamemode when we already have a fairly limited selection. 

Like legitimately. It's annoying that every time someone tries to touch gamemodes, there is someone who points out that x was nerfed.

It's not really my responsibility here to rework cult entirely or touch other features. I'm nerfing cult ghost spam. This thread is about that. If you want a cult rework or a buff, I suggest you make a thread for that.

[Naelynn]

Burger, I share many of the same grievances with Apparition spam that you do.

That said, there are few flaws with the proposed changes:

 

16 minutes ago, BurgerBB said:

2. Apparitions should be harder to summon. You're creating a flesh golem out of your blood. It should use like 10% of your blood to create a being like this, not just a mere droplet that easily regenerates. (Summoning an apparition requires 10% of your blood.) 

This doesn't fix apparition spam. Apparition spam works by having one apparition sac itself for the summoner on a heal rune fueling this cycle forevermore. 

17 minutes ago, BurgerBB said:

 

4. Apparitions are controlled by the person that summoned them. Like similar reasons above, there is really no accountability here for who controls them. (Apparitions spawn as an empty husk that can be controlled by the living, like an extra body.)

 

This... seems kind of meh. The idea to bring a ghost into the round is a cool thing, I don't want to see it removed. 

Instead of these two changes, here is what I propose - a single change that may very well completely fix all of this.

Make apparitions NOT CULTISTS and immune to conversion. 
Why would this fix anything?
1) No more cult armor+weapon.
2) No more using runes
3) Keeps an honestly cool feature in game.
4) If the apparition is geared up by idk, being summoned in armory, their gear remains where they were killed instead of having endless supplies.
5) You're some random ghost pulled into the realm of the willing probably against your will. Do you really want to be slaving away for some cultist? Yes, you are bound to obey their orders, but there's wiggle room like with laws for cyborgs.

[BurgerBB]

I'll be making 2 PRs. I like Naelynn's idea and I like my idea where only ex-cultists can be ghosts.

[BurgerBB]

https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/8133 PR 1

[canon35]

Naelynn's idea seems the best here. Keep the summoning, but they can't use cult runes. If you want to spam them, go ahead: But a armed force will be able to fight them off still, unless you yourself help them gear up. 

[Seeli]

I agree with Lemei, cultist has been nerfed a lot and needs to keep some handy tools for converting. I think Naelynn's idea is fantastic. Then it's not an army of cultists, it's an army of bodies, because that's all you are creating. A husk. I liiiike it.