Regarding IS-0091 and how it affects scientists

[Dalzombie]

So, the Leyak, one of the main causes of frustration in players late-game. Other players have discussed this point already but I would like do to my part as well since it's starting to very noticeably hinder my ability to enjoy the game.

IS-0091 - The Leyak

The Leyak is, on paper, an extremely interesting being. In practice, it is a mechanic that forces you to play as a neurotic schizophrenic as soon as you enter its containment cell, constantly looking over your shoulder, behind your back and around every corner. And in that regard, it's brilliant, but also exhausting. The fact you are never truly safe from it (beyond setting up X-Ray turrets on a static location), that you can never again idle in the game outside of your base even for a moment out of fear it might attack you, has been weighing heavily on some friends, myself in particular, as I seem to be its vastly preferred victim.

Multiplayer issues

One problem the Leyak seems to display is how it chooses its targets: tallying up its appearances in a co-op game of two people, myself and a friend, we have encountered it in intervals of 10 to 20 minutes approximately. Myself I've encountered it 15 times at the time of writing, while my friend has encountered it a total of 4, with me encountering it 10 times before he even got a glance at it. I understand RNG but there should be a limit to recurrent appearances as, though I understand it IS explained in-game that it focuses on one victim at a time, it is mentally exhausting for the victim themselves.
Additionally, its audio cues are not always clearly heard, and if you're talking with other players it is very easy for those cues to go unnoticed. While it would ruin this stalker aspect of the Leyak to have it loudly announce itself every time it hunts someone, the cues for its appearance could do with being louder, as I've had close encounters with it, in silence, without seemingly hearing anything at all from it.

Countermeasures

I understand that measures to counter the Leyak are available, but they are all reactionary, meaning it is a constant threat anywhere X-Ray turrets are not deployed, which is about 99% of the facility, with your only other option being an X-Ray lamp you shine at it after it has appeared and is already hunting you. There is nothing proactive the player can do at all to manage the Leyak except for consuming greyeb fruits, which make it appear more often.

Suggestions

As a player, I'd appreciate a revision to how the Leyak interacts with the player. Perhaps it being a distant observer most of the time, and only sometimes coming in close to attack, to harmlessly stalk players and build up tension? This in turn encourages the consumption of greyebs in order to obtain its essence, allowing players a bit more control over this mechanic. I would also suggest it being kept from freely wandering the entire facility, rather it being limited to the labs sector, but the presence of X-Ray turrets has me imagining that this is not what you have in mind for it. Perhaps a trinket that repels it, avoids it hunting you at all, or maybe a consumable that simply prevents it from targeting us at all for X amount of time could be more in line with the direction you want to go with it? I'm just hoping the Leyak isn't a permanent hinderance for the remainder of the game, as I would find that to be extremely and unnecessarily frustrating.

[Bunny]

TL;DR for my post: The Layek requires a permanent solution for its containment that allows players to free it or capture it at will at some point after its initial intro.

----

The Layek AFTER its initial introduction becomes nothing more than a nuisance-- another aspect to manage comparable to eating, drinking, sleeping and using the bathroom. X-Ray turrets help when you're in your base, and the X-Ray attachment helps with ridding the blasted thing anywhere else.

However-- and I'm only taking a guess here-- I doubt that the developers intend for the Layek to follow you for the remainder of the game. Not without first implementing a permanent solution to contain or release it as the player desires, whether to gather the creature's essence or to simply reintroduce it as a mechanic within your single-- or multiplayer-- experience later on.

That being said, yes, the Layek needs more than a couple of tweaks. In my world, he'll show up every 4 hours as intended, then at other times it'll completely vanish from my world and I'll be left wondering where it has gone and why I'm not hearing its moaning at all. Which is kind of scary by itself tbh-- when the Layek doesn't follow its usual behavior.

In multiplayer worlds I host, this SOB chooses me 80% of the time.

Anyways, a majority of the community's frustration from what I understand, comes from this constant threat that goes from spooky to annoying very, VERY quickly. Once the Layek is active in your world, nowhere is safe. It's persistent in its efforts to kill you and there is absolutely nothing that can stop it save for locating it once it spawns in, and staring at it for less than a minute...

... over...
... and over...
... and over again...

It's not an inherently "fun" mechanic. In fact, it gets in the way of the fun that you're attempting to have, in whatever form the word "fun" takes for you in this game. Almost nobody wants to devote near a minute of their time to stare at a monster that can easily tear you to shreds whenever it decides to show up, when you were busy having fun doing something else.

To me the Layek has become not just a monster, but a homie. If I don't hear my mans moaning after every 4 hours have passed in-game, I start to miss him and wonder where he's gone. I rue the day that I'm taking a ♥♥♥♥ on the toilet and this mfer rolls up on me, because that is the day I will actually fear this thing again.

[MechWarden]

Leyak not showing up after awhile is a glitch, and a glitch unsurprisingly many find welcoming. The workaround is to restart the game or server and it'll show right back up almost as soon as the game starts.

Also I heard that Leyak picks on the last person that slept when in Co-op, so maybe there is some pattern you are doing that leaves you as the target. I'm not too sure if that is the actual mechanic, but it does track that Leyak would stalk one person for awhile before changing.

And yeah, I hope there is a more stable solution to Leyak, because after awhile it can play out its effect. Also I don't need any more red and black glowy radiation balls!

Other wise, I would feel sorry for the timid or asthmatic sounding lung monster if it didn't try to shred me to death with its clawed tracheal tentacles when I get close. Damn thing acts like it has hyper social anxiety and lashes out at anything in a panic when it gets close.

[Sym Gryphon]

my suggestions for making the Leyak a bit easier to handle:
1. Make it spawn ONLY in the Labs sector, until the gate that requires 4 essences to unlock is activated; then it can spawn everywhere else.
2. Add a visual cue to its presence, such as a red status icon showing the central eye of the Leyak, with the text "You are being watched", so players with difficulty hearing or low volume will know it is nearby.
3. More anti-Leyak defenses, such as a piece of armor or a trinket that emits an xray burst if a Leyak gets too close.
4. Prevent the Leyak from spawning after it is hit by xrays 4 times in one session, requiring a server restart before it will return. Eating a Greyeb fruit will also allow it to spawn again, but only for the player who ate the fruit.

[Kai]

What if you can bait the Leyak into attacking a 'immortal' enemy that eats the Greyeb?
Like the co-worker.
You can X-ray them over and over again in a sense.

Two birds with one stone, give the co-worker greyeb to eat, make the Leyak come after him... But can't kill him. Then as a result seeing how the co-worker doesn't seem to care about his environment and walks over every single trap without a care, the Leyak will be always attached to him, just shine the X-ray on him or lead him into a X-ray tower and you'll farm the essence very easily.

Turn the greyeb item into a bait and feed a monster with it and over time they die to the entity.

[Kai]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Sym Gryphon:

my suggestions for making the Leyak a bit easier to handle:
1. Make it spawn ONLY in the Labs sector, until the gate that requires 4 essences to unlock is activated; then it can spawn everywhere else.
2. Add a visual cue to its presence, such as a red status icon showing the central eye of the Leyak, with the text "You are being watched", so players with difficulty hearing or low volume will know it is nearby.
3. More anti-Leyak defenses, such as a piece of armor or a trinket that emits an xray burst if a Leyak gets too close.
4. Prevent the Leyak from spawning after it is hit by xrays 4 times in one session, requiring a server restart before it will return. Eating a Greyeb fruit will also allow it to spawn again, but only for the player who ate the fruit.

Maybe your scientist will say 'I feel like I'm not alone here" as a cue?

[Sym Gryphon]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Kai:

Maybe your scientist will say 'I feel like I'm not alone here" as a cue?

Yes!
Also another idea... xray goggles that let players see invisible Leyaks, but add a monochrome filter and make other humans appear as skeletons, and makes everything else harder to see, to give incentive to NOT wear them all the time.

[napkil]

I think what helped me most with the Leyak was realizing you can just stare at it for 20~ secs, and it goes away.

First few encounters were frustrating, trying to attack the thing without doing damage. Probably died 3-4 times, and was getting upset about the durability drain. Would cause me to run away while exploring labs. I thought it was just another mechanic to handle while exploring far.

Then I found out crafting the X-Ray machine was the way to take it down. I got all the essence I needed, and one day my base was raided. Electro-pests blew up my X-Ray. Pretty upset there, but my fault for not really fortifying anything around it.

Luckily, this was the point I realized you don't need anything special, just be aware and look at it. Still haven't rebuilt the X-Ray, and don't feel like I need it anymore unless I need more essence.

I wonder what the point of the portable X-Ray is, does this actually kill the Leyak for essence? It reads like it's the same effect as just staring at it..

In singleplayer, as mentioned you can just pause the game from the escape menu to AFK. I haven't tried multiplayer yet, but I imagine its less annoying there since you may not always be the target.

It's probably the least dangerous entity you encounter late game. At worst it seems like you can't listen to something else while playing the game, since the sound cues give it away.

Still, I like the ideas going around to contain it in labs, or maybe an ability to trap it semi-permanently.

[Aegis270]

On top of the more obvious effect when being targeted, the main thing I want is just a lesser time to make it back off.

For those who seem unaware (And that seems to be a lot of people in this thread), just sitting still and staring at it immobilizes it and causes it to eventually despawn. However, this takes forever, at least in my multiplayer server. Over a minute it at least one case, usually well over 30 seconds in others. This is far too long, and I've been fortunate enough to not be in a combat scenario when that happened.

Frankly, it's just boring. It makes it much less of a threat, and much more of a nuisance. Whenever it spawns, it's just a matter of finding it, look at it, then tab out until it buggers off.

Hell, I'd be OK with making it much more dangerous in exchange for a shorter required time before it despawns.

That, and a way to permanently recontain him. He was an interesting novelty, but even with tweaks to make him less tedious, the charm of having something hunting you 24/7 for the rest of the game is going to wear thin eventually. Make it a somewhat involved side objective in Labs, Involving repairing a set of high powered X-Ray emitters in a backup containment chamber and luring him in there with something more than just Greyab. This gives more room for adding other SCP-analogues with their own pressure on the player without it getting overwhelming.

[Jacques Ohff]

I don't actually think that noticing it or maintaining 'safety' is exactly too hard myself, but I also just don't like the idea that this thing is just...part of the core gameplay loop with no way to remove it in the long-term at present.

Firstly, I like how it's implemented in terms of it's sound cues and the clear danger to a player of able hearing. However, I would appreciate an accessibility feature for hearing-dependent entities such as this one. One day my headphones were recharging for a while and I couldn't actually make out it's sound cues over my speakers at all, and it jumped me twice and killed me before I could even react to it's first flurry of hits. I feel like this would be generally unpleasant for someone who's hard of hearing, especially since it only appears to one person at a time, meaning that other players couldn't even look out for their friend in multiplayer.

Secondly, to echo what I've seen in this thread a 'long term containment' option sounds like it'd be great, but the one thing that I would like to say is that I want more uses for it's essence. The core thing you get out of it. I don't believe that introducing it merely as a 'you have to deal with this now, and you need x amount for progression and one to make the item to deal with it' is a good idea. That makes it feel like it's just a mandatory loop that is quite frankly not very fun, and I can entirely understand how players get irritated. (It bothers me to a lesser extent than I've seen even in my own friend groups).

Third, I do not think making it more dangerous or adding a big 'screen flicker' is honestly a good idea simply because I feel like that would just make it more obnoxious and worsen the frustrations people already have with it. I don't feel like this thing really inspired terror, just mild anxiety. It's rather harmless if you know how it works and I think it's rather perfectly implemented in that very exact regard. I feel like adding a small debuff icon (as mentioned before) plus a 'you feel like something is following/watching you' would be a good idea. Either that, or just give it [Whimper] [Sigh] [Wheeze] subtitles so players with hearing problems would know to look around.

Lastly, while I agree that the handheld x-ray lamps are fantastic tools (and I hope useful for more than just the flying spaghetti monster in the future) I feel like the cost to make the x-ray lamps is a little hefty, and I've played through the game with a few folks at this point and very few of them organically figured out where you were meant to get the materials to build the x-ray turret. I feel as though it should be easier to build and not require lab-exclusive resources. I just feel like the biggest issue that I personally have is that it's rather costly to build (and power) x-ray lamps and it lessens the amount of areas where I can simply get up to go deal with my IRL issues while hosting.

At the end of the day, to summarize this as a TL;DR
It's not really all that threatening and it's easy to deal with (unless you're hard of hearing, in which case you're rather heavily boned), but it's boring to deal with and offers no real incentive to do anything with it past what you're required to do for plot and it's prevention methods.


Regarding the accessibility; I do want to re-state, I think this would be rather hellish for people who are hard of hearing. I muted a lot of the game's audio to kind of 'see what it would be like', and the lack of sound cues made it much more threatening because I didn't know when it showed up at all through any means, and it often caught me in positions where it quickly killed me before I could properly react. This made me play the game in a much more paranoid manner and constantly look behind my back, and for a creature that can be heard basically an entire sector away that feels incredibly uneven as an experience just because of the lack of even a subtitle indicator. If there are subtitles for it, they do not trigger for me. (This isn't a statement against adding something that would be visual-cue only and forces you to look behind you 24/7, I just think this makes the game particularly different for someone hard of hearing in a way that could be very easily remedied I feel to help balance out the experience)