Making the Shacklethorn loud escape less unpleasant

[Strider]

The escape sequence on the Shacklethorn Auction, coupled with the number of bags available to move around is just pure hell. Firstly, there are 30+ bags that need to be moved to the escape area, of which there are two potential areas - a helicopter on either side of the balconies of the mansion. There is no indication visually or through dialogue which side Bile will be arriving on so players will have to put the bags on either side of the balcony and pray for the best. Furthermore, no matter which balcony the helicopter lands on, both of them have spawn points positioned directly on them, meaning cops will continuous get in your way as you move the bags to the helicopter. I would like to suggest a few possible changes to make this escape sequence less unpleasant:

1. The easiest route that requires little effort - record some lines for Bile or Locke indicating which side the helicopter will land on OR putting a marker where the helicopter will arrive. This is similar to Reservoir Dogs where Locke indicates to the gang which side the van will arrive at on day 1.

2. Add another objective to the heist - placing a flare to let Bile know which side you want him to land on. Doing so will help players be able to move the bags closer to this balcony in advance before Bile's arrival. Many other heists do this, for example Bomb: Dockyard where you have to light a flare to indicate which side of the dock you'd want Bile to drop the C4. More recently, Henry's Rock does this to a lesser extent, albeit just indicating to Bile the ONLY helipad to land on. However, this also allows players to control when they want the escape to arrive.

3. Create a zone on the roof where the cops rappel down from, where they actually can walk around and shoot from. This is similar to the scenario in Hotline Miami day 2, where cops spawn CLOSE to the escape but not directly on top of it, where they would have to rappel down to continue attacking.

4. Remove the spawn points for whichever side the helicopter lands on. Once Bile does actually arrive, cops should stop spawning at this side of the balcony in order to ease the flow of movement. The infinite assault is still in place, and cops are still able to land as near as the spawn point across the room, which still poses enough of a threat to players.

5. Reduce the number of spawn points on the balcony. I'm not entirely sure if I'm correct on this but the balcony currently appears to have 3 different spawn points, each spawning a group 4 cops each including specials, all of which can operate simultaneously. Removing the spawn closest to the middle of the balcony where the helicopter lands would remove some resistance in moving the bags and prevent cops from immediately slapping players when they rappel down.

6. Ease the spawning of cops on the balconies in general. At the moment, whenever one batch of spawned cops are eliminated from the current spawn point, another batch immediately rappels down to replace them. This kind of ridiculous spawning speed needs to stop.

[Sep]

From my personal experience, the helicopter usually land on the balcony whereby the asset usually is.

[Strider]

Originally posted by Silas:

From my personal experience, the helicopter usually land on the balcony whereby the asset usually is.

You mean the ladder asset?

[「La+ Darknesss ⸸」]

Originally posted by Strider:

Originally posted by Silas:

From my personal experience, the helicopter usually land on the balcony whereby the asset usually is.

You mean the ladder asset?

The medic bag, ammo bag, body bag and grenade case

[Strider]

Originally posted by 「Hinaomi」:

The medic bag, ammo bag, body bag and grenade case

Huh interesting, never noticed that. So they all spawn on one side and that side is where the helicopter lands? Cool. But the rest of my suggestions still stand though.

[lexilogo]

I personally think OVK should experiment with giving spawnpoints cooldown periods. Putting a 10-25 second cooldown timer on Shacklethorne's balcony spawnpoints each individually and seeing how that works out.

It feels as if after Prison Nightmare, a heist that was generally recieved positively as being probably the best overall infinite heist (I mean, its competition is the likes of White Xmas or Lab Rats so it didn't have much competition), OVK decided "okay, what players want are spawnpoints, and lots of them, so players get lots of action" but failed to take into account that Prison Nightmare is not only a heist where players are constantly on the move, but also one where there's regular "kill all cops on the map" triggers.

As a result, OVK have been applying the spawnpoints everywhere philosophy to maps like Henry's Rock, while failing to take into account that it means players get surrounded 24/7 and results in unfun, unfocused combat.

Anyway, one thing that I can definitely get behind that doesn't involve hypothetical screwing around with central game mechanics is making sure players know which side the chopper spawns on, without having to rely on obscure map trivia.

[The Least Interesting Chibi...]

I feel like 90% of the difficulty of this and other recent heists, are due to poor enemy spawn location and the insane maximum number of enemies allowed. Both are tied to each other and ultimately this becomes an issue of pacing which, lately has felt as 100% action all the time, straight from the start. And that's bad. Movie, books, and pretty all forms of narrative understand this.

Altering the maximum number of enemies will help with this across the board, and better spawn placement will help with individual heists. Buuut... not that any of this will happen. They obviously have a set vision for the game (even though historically similiar attempts having done well over long terms).

p.s. They could just release a proper map editor, and let modders like Finale, Hoxi, et al. fix it like they appear to do with so many other features.

[UnknownMerc]

they need to space the spawns out

not every freaking surface of a map needs to be a spawn point

of course they also need to lower the ridiculous spawn caps