Reworking Threat Levels?

[Chogathmainop]

I think in a number of cases, the threat level doesn't accurately reflect the danger that abnormalities present. My scale:

Zaiyn: Cannot kill you or break out under any circumstances (One Sin, Old Lady, Old Faith, etc.)
Teth: Can kill you, but only if seriously mishandled. Breakouts start here, but probably won't kill anyone. (Forsaken Murderer, Beauty and the Beast, Bloodbath, etc.)
HE: Agents are going to start dying if you're not careful. Possessions start here. If one of these breaks out, you can throw a few high-powered agents to solve the problem, but you might lose someone. (Scarecrow, tin man, etc.)
WAW: If this thing breaks out, this will require your attention or people will die. (Big Bird, Queen of Hatred, Alriune, etc.)
ALEPH: If you don't already have a plan in place for this thing breaking out, just reset. (Nothing There, Blue Star, etc.)

Following this, I think that there are a few abnormalities that aren't properly labeled. A few examples:

1. Old Lady: The worst she can do is stun someone. Zaiyn.
2. Fairy Festival/Wellcheers: Can kill you, but have no penalties for not interacting with them. Teth.
3. Void Dream: I'm on the fence between Teth and HE because it can instakill and break out, but if you leave it alone it goes back into it's box.
4. We Can Change Anything/You Must Be Happy: Teth at least.
5. Teresia: Zaiyn. As long as you have agents with white weapons, being driven mad isn't that big of a deal.
6. Little Red: Given her speed and damage as well as her conditions for breaking out, she might be on the verge of being an ALEPH.
7. Melting Love: Annoying to work with but easy to contain. If it was turned into a WAW, I wouldn't be surprised.

Etc.

Thoughts?

[Fire Guardian]

Melting Love should not be downgraded to a waw since her gimmick can very easly kill full departments if not the facility itself if not handled correctly. that alone is worth an aleph rank i would say. (however i could see mountain of smiling bodies or silent orchestra be waw since they cant bring ruin to your facility as easly tho im not sure on those two)

i would also add singing machine and warm hearted woodsman to waw personaly since they can quite easly kill agents and need specialists to be worked on(i also just hate the "overtraining haters" type abnos with all my being)

but besides that its a list of changes that arent bad

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

Melting Love should not be downgraded to a waw since her gimmick can very easly kill full departments if not the facility itself if not handled correctly. that alone is worth an aleph rank i would say. (however i could see mountain of smiling bodies or silent orchestra be waw since they cant bring ruin to your facility as easly tho im not sure on those two)

i would also add singing machine and warm hearted woodsman to waw personaly since they can quite easly kill agents and need specialists to be worked on(i also just hate the "overtraining haters" type abnos with all my being)

but besides that its a list of changes that arent bad

Melting Love: By that same token, her infection is easy to contain. Typically I only have one agent working the department armed with a black weapon to kill any clerks as needed (assuming I don't just ice them myself). If I was going to suggest any changes that would firmly cement her in ALEPH, I'd suggest that anything killed by Melting Love or one of her minions becomes a minion as well, a la Queen Bee. As it stands, I'd put it about on the same level as Parasite Tree - doubly so since if her cell does melt down, you can just use repression work to calm her down without infection unlike Parasite tree who is an absolute drama queen.

Singing Machine and Woodsman are good where they are - the advantage with both is that their effects only trigger if you work with them, to the point that even if you let them melt down, nothing is going to happen. Even if they do activate, I don't consider either of them to be on the same level as Naked Nest, Parasite Tree, Alriune, etc.

Specifically in regards to singing machine, I think it would be fair to view it as a more punishing version of The Red Shoes.

[Fire Guardian]

for melting love it may be a diffrent view of waht makes an aleph. to me it means "you need to change your playstyle for it to not punish you" and she fits that the way i see it. but i can see your point if you normaly kill clerks anyway(i dont ever do that aside from melting love departments so it forcefully changes my way of play)

as for singing machine and woodsman, i simply hate the concept of instakilling agents for being trained. the rest of their abilitys are fine(i would be fine with them if it was "kills any agent with sayd stat at level 5" but 3 and up is just alot of work for little payoff) but sayd instakill gimmicks would feel more worthwhile if they had better e.g.o gear(thus making them a waw for waw gear)


also naked nest is very harmless all things considerd, only time its effect triggers for me is when select the wrong work type by mistake it just sounds scary(parasite tree and alriune are correct tho)

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

for melting love it may be a diffrent view of waht makes an aleph. to me it means "you need to change your playstyle for it to not punish you" and she fits that the way i see it.

I'd argue that describes almost all abnormalities in this game - with a few exceptions, each one has their own rules and will punish you in their own ways, either by killing a single employee or turning your base into a warzone until they're suppressed. I have said on a previous post that the line between WAW and ALEPH is a pretty fine one, to the point that while something like - say - Little Red or the Queen of Hatred can really ruin your day, in my mind they don't qualify as ALEPHS.

Given that difficulty in this game is a pretty apples to oranges deal, the reason why I think Melting Love should be WAW is because she shares a lot of traits with Queen Bee - although I think that Queen Bee has the edge in terms of danger. Unlike Melting Love, Queen Bee will 'breach' in the form of turning your clerks into drones, which will spread throughout your base turning victims into drones as they go. As far as a basewide pandemic, I think Queen Bee does it better than Melting Love, and would have a far higher chance of overwhelming your base if left unattended. Given that Melting Love's minions can't spread the virus post transformation, the only way for the pandemic to spread between departments is if you move infected agents (which the game clearly marks) from department to department. She's annoying, sure, but given the rules for spreading the infection as well as how easy she is to take down if she breaches (plus she has a counter of 3 and won't infect you if you repress her), once you understand how the gimmick works she's far easier to deal with than something like the parasite tree or any of the magical girls.

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

but i can see your point if you normaly kill clerks anyway(i dont ever do that aside from melting love departments so it forcefully changes my way of play)

Eh, even setting aside clerk-loving abnos like MoSB, Clouded Monk or AiB, given that some abnos can gain benefits from kills (Queen Bee, Scarecrow, Woodsman, Parasite Tree - kinda), I find that in many cases the most dangerous thing in the base isn't the breach itself, but rather the small army of idiots with pea shooters who want to pretend they're cowboys.

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

as for singing machine and woodsman, i simply hate the concept of instakilling agents for being trained. the rest of their abilitys are fine(i would be fine with them if it was "kills any agent with sayd stat at level 5" but 3 and up is just alot of work for little payoff) but sayd instakill gimmicks would feel more worthwhile if they had better e.g.o gear(thus making them a waw for waw gear)

While I certainly agree that Singing Machine's EGO is terrible, I don't think that either of them warrant being rated as WAW - given that you need to interact with them to trigger their abilities and have the ability to make sure the agents you send are within the skills required, putting them on the same level as something like Snow White's Apple or Alriune feels like overkill. They're annoying, I agree, but annoyance doesn't necessarily correlate to difficulty.

But yeah, Singing Machine needs the mother of all reworks. That said, the Tin Woodsman's ego is pretty solid.

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

also naked nest is very harmless all things considerd, only time its effect triggers for me is when select the wrong work type by mistake it just sounds scary(parasite tree and alriune are correct tho)

The big problem is that - much like Wellcheers - it's still luck based, even if you pick a skilled agent to perform instinct work on it. Admittedly the chance is pretty small under most regular circumstances, but that doesn't mean zero - that said, I'd say for me the naked nest is about 10% actual danger and 90% paranoia.

[Fire Guardian]

playing lob corp many abnormality mods may have twisted my sense of balance a bit on the risk level spread but i cant deny that from a vanilla perspective your probably right.

however i do want to ask if you think that mountain of smiling bodies or silent orchestra are actualy worth the level that they are as they are on the weaker end in terms of dps/health of the alpeh group

silent orchestra is still annoying but sort of just a more tanky Alriune that wont move

mountain is just a dps check thats probably the simplest to supress of the alpeh tier
(thats how i see them anyway)

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

however i do want to ask if you think that mountain of smiling bodies or silent orchestra are actualy worth the level that they are as they are on the weaker end in terms of dps/health of the alpeh group

MOSB I'm on the fence about, but given that I recommend both execution bullets (to kill any potential food) and slow bullets (this guy is surprisingly fast), I'm going to agree with him being an ALEPH.

As many people have pointed out before, MOSBs initial state is a solid WAW - it's a big stupid eating machine with a self heal that can run rather quickly. What really pushes this over the edge is the main gimmick where if it escapes and eats more bodies, then you'll have a snowball of death on your hands that could give Nothing There a run for it's money. Like I said up above, you need a strategy to handle this thing or your base is history - it's not a hard strategy and can be planned around, but it doesn't take much for things to go from bad to worse. Doubly so given that it's almost more likely to run to a different department to look for something to eat as it is to fight your employees (which without slow bullets, it might just outrun).

To make matters worse, one of the conditions for breaching is too many employee deaths. Given that things thing could very well breach when you have your hands full with something else (an ordeal, queen of hatred, whatever), I think that's enough to land it firmly in ALEPH tier.

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

mountain is just a dps check thats probably the simplest to supress of the alpeh tier (thats how i see them anyway)

Yeah, more or less. When it comes time to do Geb's missions, my top three picks are MOSB, CENSORED and ML. I think in the case of all three if you have a team ready to take them out upon breaching, you'll have an easy time of it. Even under the worst circumstances a ML breach is annoying at worst, but CENSORED is probably the worst of the three in general.

Originally posted by Fire Guardian:

silent orchestra is still annoying but sort of just a more tanky Alriune that wont move

Oh god on high no. While the gimmick is similar, the difference is that while Alriune can only affect one hallway at a time, Silent Orchestra can affect the entire department - and possibly more, it's been a while since this guy breached my base.

While he's breaching, anything in the area of his song will take an incredibly amount of WHITE damage, and depending on his movement he'll only be vulnerable to a single type of damage. While he does have the courtesy to go back into his containment unit once his song is over, letting him do so will result in all your energy for the day being drained followed by a mass instakill for anyone in the area of his song with less than half sanity.

If anything, in terms of overall damage Alriune is close enough to the queen of hatred (a slow moving game of hit-and-run with one invulnerability) that I think it fits nicely into the WAW category. Silent Orchestra is very much an ALEPH, no questions asked.

[Zilloy]

in lore it explains that the rank is assigned by the energy production of the abno and it just so happened that most of the time the danger level correlates with energy production.

i'd argue that melting love does NOT belong in WAW tier. employee that works with ML can spread slime infection which can wreck your entire facility (including insta-killing agents (unlike bee, who's spores can be resisted with shield bullets)) if not dealt proactively. ML's counter lowers on bad AND normal work, once counter reaches 0 she insta-kills employee with a heart and breaches. also ML does... make minions out of killed people??? not to mention the (-1.0) RED resistance.

[Grim Xzag]

yeah like, idk what he means. Melting Love is Queen Bee but she can breach containment to spread the infection. On top of this, if you get her in Asyiah, the infection spreads to the whole entire layer if you don't kill the clerks, causing her to breach rly easily.

probably beats her up flawlessly without anyone dying to know that she too has the gimmic. The only thing that is bugged about her is the lesser slimes not being able to spread it after transformation.

[Chogathmainop]

Originally posted by Grim Xzag:

On top of this, if you get her in Asyiah, the infection spreads to the whole entire layer if you don't kill the clerks, causing her to breach rly easily.

Given that clerks can't leave their department and the slimes can't spread the infection, the only way the infection can spread is if you move your infected agents from department to department.

Originally posted by Grim Xzag:

Probably beats her up flawlessly without anyone dying to know that she too has the gimmic. The only thing that is bugged about her is the lesser slimes not being able to spread it after transformation.

Doesn't that just reinforce my point? If she goes down so easily that you have to tell me about being able to produce more slimes upon breaching, that should suggest that she's rather easy to manage. Now, if the bug were fixed so that her minions could spread the infection a la Queen Bee, we might have a different case on our hands. As it stands, she's a watered down version of CENSORED - now, with some tweaking I certainly agree she'd fit nicely as an ALEPH, but as it stands I think her gimmicks pack the punch that they should.

[Grim Xzag]

Originally posted by Chogathmainop:

Originally posted by Grim Xzag:

On top of this, if you get her in Asyiah, the infection spreads to the whole entire layer if you don't kill the clerks, causing her to breach rly easily.

Given that clerks can't leave their department and the slimes can't spread the infection, the only way the infection can spread is if you move your infected agents from department to department.

Clerks from Asyiah use Information teams elevator to go up and down Training Team, Safety Team and Control Team, so yes, they do leave their department.

As for the rest, I do kinda agree, but only to some extent. She has -1.0 Red resistance and she can heal from eating her own slimes and is fully healed when the big slime dies (activating phase 2 sorta speak).

We can make her harder by simply changing her resistances
her resistances for reference: -1.0 R / 1.0 W / 1.5 B / 0.8 P
CENSORED's also for reference: 0.6 R / 0.8 W / 0.4 B / 1.0 P

What we can do to make her harder is that in Phase 2 or if the Lover doesn't exist, she takes reduced damage, probably half everything, just like Nothing There
her resistances cut in half for reference: -0.5 R / 0.5 W / 0.8 B / 0.4 P

We can also add a "retreat mechanic" in Phase 1, when she is low, causing her to leave the room in order to heal (coding this is easy as its just an HP check and then you have the abnormality run away).

What we could also do (it would be harder to implement, and I personally would not add it as she already uses Naked Nest and Queen Bee's mechanics along with a few unique gimmicks on top of it) would be to make the Lover/Big Slime be a unique abnormality with its own attacks, and have it be a support in order to keep Melting Love alive.
I would prob make the Lover weak to White and Endured to black, opposite to Melting Love.
resistances for reference: -1.0 R / 1.2 W / 0.8 B / 0.6 P

Anyway, I just feel like her resistances is the reason why she is rly easy, being weak to a Damage type that just has a ton of AoE and your gimmick revolves around a swarm of units isn't rly a good idea. Which is funny cause Mountain of Smiling Bodies is weak to Red, which has the highest DPS weapon in the game, with a measly 500 HP (which is why the "Overhaul" mod has it start at +1 attachment and forces you to drain all its HP to lose 1 attachment).

[lawjax]

I can agree with your points of 1 and half of 2. The Old Lady is benign and one of the first sanity-checkers of the game, which is the likely reason for her TETH classification. Fairy Festival requires a dedicated worker, just as Child of the Galaxy, and so anything that takes away engagement options is inherently dangerous if something were to happen in the facility - TETH makes sense. While WellCheers is capable of killing an employee, it also benefits the facility through positive works and can be incorporated into contingency planning; it is ultimately benign and is highly unlikely to kill anyone once its handling parameters are learned.

Void Dream is TETH; just because something can cause instant death does not make it inherently dangerous. It is self-suppressing and one of the more harmless breaching entities, and more importantly than any of that, it is easy to perform works with since it only locks out Temperance 1 employees. This same philosophy applies to the tool abnormalities you mention in 4: WCCA & YMBH. Works performed with them are optional, you suffer no damages other than some lost energy by not working with these under meltdown, and WCCA only requires a bundle of sacrifices once. Once you have it figured out, you never have to work with it again and it is essentially a free room. In YMBH's case, it is even simpler as it does not demand any sacrifices on your part - the very worst that can happen is that you continually debuff your employee or attempt to buff him before learning a hard lesson, and once you have the scope of the dossier of this entity you never have to touch it again. It is another free room in a department.

Teresia is TETH; anything involving time-based mechanics and manual interaction is a liability to your facility, because if you fail to remember you initiated a work with it during a large meltdown you will be punished for it. Teresia is among the most forgiving time-sensitive works, and is ultimately optional as it does not have consequences for not working with it like any of the tool abnormalities beyond energy loss; however, the final days of the game are all about energy acquisition, so taking any loss seems ill-advise, hence why you would work with Teresia at all once you have fully observed it.

Little Red Riding Hooded Merc. is WAW, but requires a strong team composition for her department and some preparation in the way of bullets. She is otherwise a friend with good benefits, but these come at a price. The most difficult aspect of managing her is that you will have to plan any missions based on breaching abnormalities around her; erroneous breaches will result in a headache, but she remains one of the easier abnormalities to suppress, especially so with Nothing There's EGO.

Melting Love is ALEPH; while Melting Love is easy to suppress and has a relatively easy gimmick to plan around, the real detriment is that you will start every single day the same exact way: consigning all of the clerks of its corresponding department to death. Any other abnormality in the facility that is an obituary-watcher is going to get a head-start on fulfilling their breaching conditions because of this, meaning that you have to account for those changes on top of whatever new intake you have from whatever new department(s) you are opening. It also detains the attention of whoever works with it for the rest of the day, so you will effectively lose that employee as you'll have to quarantine them for the rest of the day too. While this is not so terrible on its own, it makes tertiary conditions (such as Ordeals) more difficult to deal with, as you will not be able to freely navigate through the corridor occupied by this employee, nor will you be able to reorganize this employee into a damage-type/resist party to suppress other problematic entities.

I'm of the mind that the ALEPHs are all classified correctly, as if your attention lets even one of these slip out of containment they are going to hurt you by virtue of simply catching you unprepared; your entire workflow has to grind to a halt to reel them back in before things get worse, and all of them almost require their own contingency plan before the day even starts.

Gameplay mechanics stacking on top of one another, dividing your attention across your facility, meaning that you have to keep an eye on (or no eyes on) and micromanage every unique abnormality that comes with its own set of rules and handling policies are the real difficulty curve of the game. As far as scaling of danger presented by the entities and their classifications are concerned, I think most of them are fine where they are. It is never just 1 entity that ruins a day - it is a collection of abnormalities that all have their own considerations, from level-locking, to time-sensitivity, to preferred works, to special stipulations such as switching works or even having them visible (or not visible) on the screen that ruin days. Ordeals ruin days. Missions ruin days. Sephirah Core Suppressions make you work through an already ruined day.

Fortunately, life goes on.