Stalkers are flawed

[babuk.fracal]

So I've come to a bit of a realisation about stalkers design, how players need to interact with it, ect...

It is unironically like the team Fortress 2 Spy
But not just your regular Spy

A part of it is like the dead ringer Spy.

The whole hear the sound cue and look for your surroundings to find it
Thats good
And it shouldn't change.


What is ultimately wrong is the part where you do find it.

You can either :

A, shoot it immediatly to force it to burrow

B, ping it to create an opportunity to damage it but creating a risk because of its speed boost when spotted

C, use an option that guarantee the kill (freeze, hyper prop, most burst damage,..)


The issue that end up happening with B (the most common option) is that the stalker can end up using brute force to damage a player.

When a stalker is spotted the only regular mean to stop it is damage.

However what is problematic is that the stalker only need to hit you once (which it definitely have the means to do so when you combine its speed with its melee range that is one of the longest)

While you have to do a lot of damage to not get screwed.

And the stalker is given a safety

The ability to burrow

So not only can it just rush you and still get what it want, it also barely has any consequences for it.

And what is even worse is that after that its very easy for a stalker to keep at it.

After burrowing, a stalker will immediatly rush to another player.
Sometimes even spawning on a player and getting a free hit.
Which can end up in the same player getting hit multiple time in a short period
Or multiple players getting hit after hit


Similar to how dead ringer spies tend to just brute force through an enemy team and use the advantages given to them to get a few stabs despite the opposite team being fully aware of what is happening.

And its somewhat even worse, because at least a spy is supposed to stab you in the back to get such significant damage
And since its PvP there are multiple factors that can help.

While here, the stalker can damage you from anywhere and the help you can get from your team is limited.

Not helped by the fact that pinging a stalker doesn't always make it aggro the pinger which can result in another player getting hit for unfair reasons.

That stalkers are immuned to stun

And the fact that if multiple stalkers spawn at once, there is nothing to know it.
The sound cue is exactly the same no matter how many there are.



TLDR :
Searching for the stalker is good
The reward for finding it isn't






EDIT :

All the suggestions for the stalker made during this thread :

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Oh what if :

Pinging it once fully stun it (making use of that X2 stun duration)

But
Pinging too many times in a row enrage it.

That way people are encouraged to ping threats once
But discouraged from ping spam

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

The whole "Doesn't aggro the pinger" thing is a good point, but it behaving that way is necessary for balance reasons (I.E. pinging a stalker that was across the cave targeting someone else, forcing it to run, uncloaked, across the entire cave). Maybe a good compromise is to make the stalker 'flinch' for about a second whenever it's revealed? That way, whether you reveal it yourself (on purpose or by accident) or whether a teammate reveals it for you, you have some time to react and get some damage in to force it to reposition.

Originally posted by kestrel:

i almost wonder if the reactions of the stalker getting revealed are the wrong way around. it feels like marking it should cause it to slow down whilst attacking it should invoke the speed boost. right now there's no reason to mark stalkers, it just makes them exponentially more dangerous and you're not dealing damage to them in the process

frankly, i dont think it should be able to attack at all if you spot it first. that should be the punishment for the enemy. it's already quite tanky and able to sustain 1-2 cycles against certain builds so it has plenty of chances to attack. this is fine, except on H5 (and especially H5+ aggressive enemies) where it can just zerg rush its target upon being revealed

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Personally I like the Stalker, maybe it just needs to be communicated better to the player that they shouldn't be pinging it; like a few voicelines?

Originally posted by IEatCats:

Should at least reduce the shield debuff duration after the stalker is killed if anyone is hit by it

Pinging it should increase the time the stalker stays unburrowed rather than a straight up 'this is a bad thing to do' which is counter intuitive to normal game mechanics

Originally posted by AyyDimitri:

I love it as well, but I would argue that it could make more proximity noise, especially on spawn, potentially activate heightened senses to those unfamiliar with sound cues and have some reveal that is a tad more telling prior to being attacked, such as an 8m self reveal range when in proximity...

Tbh I really wanted this thing to have pheromone over shield drop, potentially have a ranged pheromone spit attack. The thought of becoming a priority target for shooting foes and exploders is not done as frequent as I thought it would be considering how effective the boomer from L4D can be on a blindside...

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

It would make more sense if being trigger happy delay the stalker while taking the time to ping opens a window to kill it.

And I personally think it would be more healthy for this community to encourage them to use their ping tool on threats.

Originally posted by Bookslayer10:

Really, the best change would be so that pinging the Stalker DOESN'T make it uncloak. That way, you can share the information with the team and track it through walls without needing to deal with it's high uncloaked movement speed. If you want it to be uncloaked for whatever reason, shooting it also uncloaks it. This would making pinging it much more useful, and not a punishment.

Originally posted by SCamp:

The only thing I agree with is giving Heightened Senses interactions with Stalkers (from AyyDimitri). The passive alert is a given. I would go as far as allowing the active portion to be activated when a Stalker is within a certain radius.

Originally posted by SirCampalot:

How to balance the stalker? Here are some suggestions (pick any or all) :

Make it do only EMP damage and cripple a player but don't let it do HP damage.
Make it take time before it starts to burrow when it starts taking damage.
Make it get paralyzed when it gets powerattacked so people have the chance to kill it.
Lower its HP in general so actually spotting it is rewarded.
Lower its walking speed.

Any nerf to 1 or 2 of its traits should put it in a better spot.

Stingtail was nerfed for similar reasons.

Originally posted by AyyDimitri:

OK..
What if stalkers had a stun immunity for only in cloak, and an immunity window for 1.5s when exiting cloak and/or hitting a player...?

[SCamp]

tldr: Skill issue.

[Derpykat5]

The whole "Doesn't aggro the pinger" thing is a good point, but it behaving that way is necessary for balance reasons (I.E. pinging a stalker that was across the cave targeting someone else, forcing it to run, uncloaked, across the entire cave). Maybe a good compromise is to make the stalker 'flinch' for about a second whenever it's revealed? That way, whether you reveal it yourself (on purpose or by accident) or whether a teammate reveals it for you, you have some time to react and get some damage in to force it to reposition.

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by SCamp:

tldr: Skill issue.

Did I say at any point I was the main victim of this ?

Like people tend to learn classes by observing their teamates, you can also learn how to do deal with enemies by observing others mistakes and success.

Besides, anyone who says skill issue tend to be a testament of their lack of knowledge on the individual they accuse and their inability to offer anything constructive.

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

The whole "Doesn't aggro the pinger" thing is a good point, but it behaving that way is necessary for balance reasons (I.E. pinging a stalker that was across the cave targeting someone else, forcing it to run, uncloaked, across the entire cave). Maybe a good compromise is to make the stalker 'flinch' for about a second whenever it's revealed? That way, whether you reveal it yourself (on purpose or by accident) or whether a teammate reveals it for you, you have some time to react and get some damage in to force it to reposition.

On paper that sounds good
In practice you just end up putting your teamates in a bad spot.

Even worse when playing around the haz 5+ mutators, aggressive 2 stalker put everything I am talking about to an extreme.
Meanwhile with vulnerability 2, it straight up one shot you.

[MeGoodEnglish]

Stalker are easily spot by bullet that ricochet to it (bullet hell, magic bullets for example), or get feared. This makes it easy to kill it, as you can reveal it accidentally.

I agree with you that its pretty bad design.

Invisibility
Burrow
Burst damage

These three combined means you're gonna get hit by something you dont see (only hear), and it can easily kill you in one shot at higher hazard. Imo it just doesnt scale well, at all. Facing similar problems like the crawler in core stone.

Invisibility allows it to be undetected, burrow allows it to strike again if it fails, and burst damage is just straight up punishment.

I dont mind stalker being an armor remover + slow, but it had no business to down you in less than half health with one shot. Even cloaker from payday (I think its closest to comparison), that are pretty infamous for jumpscare and being lethal dont start out invisible nor teleport away in failed attack.

You know whats worse than a stalker attack? Two stalker attack. It can instantly down you with almost no warning, except sound.

Anyway, about sound cue, for it to be the only warning is just bad. There are many sound effects happening at once, and the sound can easily be drowned. How about people that play horde shooting games with music? Im betting a lot of people do, its part of the fun as well. Sometimes, I dont even hear sound cue at all (im guessing because the stalker burrows out right where I was standing).

Now its just a fact of life that you can get downed instantly, seemingly for no reason, and stalker is probably why. I've never had "what just killed me?" moments until stalker introduced.

Funny thing is, I found myself died to it more often at haz 5 and 4, than on haz 5+ swarms on max. It probably had to do with me leaning on using more fear and area damage build, revealing it more often, which imo just reinforce why its just not that good of a design since it is laughably bad against some build, and straight up unfair for the rest.

[King Fossil]

Originally posted by Derpykat5:

Maybe a good compromise is to make the stalker 'flinch' for about a second whenever it's revealed?

That'd be nice. Kinda sucks how you're sometimes effectively punished for spotting it since that makes it start sprinting. Or when you spot it and then it just burrows and goes invisible so you didn't even do anything, you just made it come back later.
Have to be careful since it'd be bad to overnerf it, but do something.

[armbarchris]

I just shoot it in the head. I've never had problems. Skill issue.

[babuk.fracal]

Originally posted by armbarchris:

I just shoot it in the head. I've never had problems. Skill issue.

Since saying skill issue doesn't require any effort
I won't put much effort in my reply either
(also the weakpoint is in the eye)


Though perhaps you were looking for clowns ?

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Did I say at any point I was the main victim of this ?

Like people tend to learn classes by observing their teamates, you can also learn how to do deal with enemies by observing others mistakes and success.

Besides, anyone who says skill issue tend to be a testament of their lack of knowledge on the individual they accuse and their inability to offer anything constructive.

[SCamp]

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Originally posted by armbarchris:

I just shoot it in the head. I've never had problems. Skill issue.

Since saying skill issue doesn't require any effort
I won't put much effort in my reply either
(also the weakpoint is in the eye)


Though perhaps you were looking for clowns ?

Originally posted by babuk.fracal:

Did I say at any point I was the main victim of this ?

Like people tend to learn classes by observing their teamates, you can also learn how to do deal with enemies by observing others mistakes and success.

Besides, anyone who says skill issue tend to be a testament of their lack of knowledge on the individual they accuse and their inability to offer anything constructive.

If you can laser point a stalker, you could shoot it instead. Or you could ping the area near the stalker. Learning when you should/should not be pinging the stalker is the skill issue.

You can also set the stalker on fire and the fire will persist when they burrow back up.

[RUCKUS RELOADED]

i almost wonder if the reactions of the stalker getting revealed are the wrong way around. it feels like marking it should cause it to slow down whilst attacking it should invoke the speed boost. right now there's no reason to mark stalkers, it just makes them exponentially more dangerous and you're not dealing damage to them in the process

frankly, i dont think it should be able to attack at all if you spot it first. that should be the punishment for the enemy. it's already quite tanky and able to sustain 1-2 cycles against certain builds so it has plenty of chances to attack. this is fine, except on H5 (and especially H5+ aggressive enemies) where it can just zerg rush its target upon being revealed

someone who says "skill issue" in response to criticism of the stalker instantly exposes themselves as a haz3 main because that difficulty doesn't punish you for trying to advise your teammates of a highly dangerous enemy's position like H5+ does

[SCamp]

Originally posted by kestrel:

i almost wonder if the reactions of the stalker getting revealed are the wrong way around. it feels like marking it should cause it to slow down whilst attacking it should invoke the speed boost. right now there's no reason to mark stalkers, it just makes them exponentially more dangerous and you're not dealing damage to them in the process

frankly, i dont think it should be able to attack at all if you spot it first. that should be the punishment for the enemy. it's already quite tanky and able to sustain 1-2 cycles against certain builds so it has plenty of chances to attack. this is fine, except on H5 (and especially H5+ aggressive enemies) where it can just zerg rush its target upon being revealed

someone who says "skill issue" in response to criticism of the stalker instantly exposes themselves as a haz3 main because that difficulty doesn't punish you for trying to advise your teammates of a highly dangerous enemy's position like H5+ does

I don't want the stalker to get the stingtail treatment and be nerfed into irrelevance.

In all seriousness: If you can see it, shoot it.

Marking enemies isn't as valuable in Haz5+. Getting pings of most enemies that are being engaged isn't useful unless it's for Mole or Marked For Death. It's only useful for keeping track of enemies that aren't visible to the group because of terrain/movement... Which is grabbers, spreaders, turrets (when relevant) and the odd bulk/dread/nemesis.

Overpinging enemies isn't dealing with the problem. It is a problem. I know there's a Menace. It gloes blue. It's on the ceiling. And I know where it is because it's shooting at us. Stop pinging and shoot it. Stalkers punishing bad ping habits is great.

[Chibbity]

I'm gonna sort of agree with SCamp, as I think pinging enemies for the most part can be a valuable way to communicate with your team; but the Stalker is supposed to be the exception.

Pinging it is a bad idea, you get punished for pinging it, this is to teach players to not ping it; and instead engage it immediately.

Personally I like the Stalker, maybe it just needs to be communicated better to the player that they shouldn't be pinging it; like a few voicelines?

[Sokaku]

The only issue I have with the stalker is that I've had several situations where it has literally attacked with no sound cue, and instances where I have "caught it" and laid into it, still take the full brunt of its attack before it burrows away, which in a T4+ swarm is quite lethal.

[KingKickAss]

I hope stalkers don't become the new stingtail and get a bunch of nerfs because people don't shoot them.

[Kai]

I think it's kind of really silly how a little game design flaw that can definitely be touched up on to be more intuitive is a "skill issue" on OP's part. Fascinates me how people will always try to find a means to be insulting for no good reason at all.

[King Fossil]

Originally posted by Chibbity:

Pinging it is a bad idea, you get punished for pinging it, this is to teach players to not ping it; and instead engage it immediately.

I'm not sure teaching players not to ping things is a good idea. In fact I'm pretty sure it's not.
We ping everything else and it's good. Communication is good. I like communication.