Some critiques and ideas on abilities

[The Power Is Yours!]

I've been playing for a bit and wanted to make some suggestions on how some abilities/mechanics could be better.

For witches: As far as mechanics the pin point precision required to turn into things becomes a liability when under pressure. A possible solution would be the ability to "charge" shapeshift so the targetting reticle is larger and more generous.

Broom flying works and is good where it's at.

Mushroom is pretty good until you run into someone that macros. I've seen a couple that plow through the cloud unflinching to snipe me with taters at a distance claiming they have a lot of practice. My ass they do. Steam controllers and I'm sure other solutions can be used to invert your movement while under the influence of shrooms, counteracting its effects. Possible solution is to make each axis of movement invert and switch back randomly at different times so magic buttons can't kill the effect.

Decoy still sucks. Now it not only narrows down your location, but tells the hunters what prop you are disguised as. My proposition is to make it so you can remotely control props in your line of sight, complete with witch grunts when it "takes damage"

Possession is cool until you realize the ability seems to lock up when you take damage and can't use it for escaping reliably. The giant purple fog trail it leaves behind would be more bearable if it didn't cause the objects to shake when you possessed them while moving. If you possess something and then jump to something else again, it deletes the item. Maybe make previously possessed objects remain when you jump so you can better use it for escaping.

Hunters new melee patch makes it very hard to search for witches. Where previously you could check areas somewhat quickly with melee attacks, you struggle to do it without a chicken. Being able to flip objects is great, but not worth the loss of quick melee attacks. Taters are still machine guns. Now hunters are bad at close and long range, but still super strong at medium range. Maybe put the built in cooldown on tater spam and have a charge mechanic to increase the velocity of taters to improve their long range game? Don't know for sure, but I know that the melee change makes the witch finding part way harder than it already is.

Chickens are the only way to detect dug in witches who are hidden in unconventional and weird places. Can't search the usual places AND find the crazy spots in the few minutes you get, except maybe with 4 or 5 hunters. This winds up being the only one worth taking most of the time. Possibly add some sort of subtle hot cold mechanic baseline to hunters that isn't as good as the chicken, but helps the other abilities detect witches.

Magic block would probably be too strong if and when the chicken problem is addressed. If that happens maybe nerf the duration or radius? Otherwise it's pretty good when there are a lot of hunters.

Grappling hooks are a liability with a low number of witches and ok with a large number much like magic block is.

AOE melee attack would probably be pretty decent if it could be used more reliably. The slightest incline or object under your feet blocks activation. If the hop and stomp happened in one press it could be more useful.

Overall hunters are in this weird place where they are at a disadvantage when they are small in number, but have the advantage in large numbers. Reliance on chickens and the dps of potatoes are the main culprits I think. In smaller matches hunters have to rely on chickens and simply won't be able to find all the witches. If they do find one, it's super easy to juke the hunter if you get distance on him. Large number of players in a game winds up with hunters covering the map very quickly and witches get blown up from all the taters flying at them at once.

Anyways great game and a cool take on prop hunt. Hope some of it helps.

[DesertMoonGW]

Originally posted by The Power Is Yours!:

Mushroom is pretty good until you run into someone that macros. I've seen a couple that plow through the cloud unflinching to snipe me with taters at a distance claiming they have a lot of practice. My♥♥♥♥♥they do. Steam controllers and I'm sure other solutions can be used to invert your movement while under the influence of shrooms, counteracting its effects.

Except that its incredibly easy to play regularly with reverse controls, and the only difficulty is when it changes between being reversed and not. It really is just the case that remembering that all controls are REVERSED, not RANDOMIZED. S moves you forward and moving your mouse down makes you look up, it's really simple. No macros needed.

I agree with you on basically everything else though.