The State of Predators

[juliansl]

Gunning down at first sight a 7ft tall humanoid with scimitars and a cloaking device in a xeno infected colony is the most realistic, HRP, sane, common sense thing to do if you ask me.

And I say this as a whitelisted pred.

Yeah if I know there are hostile aliens around my first instinct on seeing a big fucking alien is to shoot it until it stops bleeding.

[Post Bologna]

My extent of seeing a predator is them spamming *laugh2 and thats about it. To call them an RP whitelist is heresy.

[SirMandrake]

I just wave at predators when I see them. Surprisingly, only one has ever challenged me for doing this

[RobBrown4PM]

I agree that a lot of the issues surrounding pred's atm stem from the lack of RP. Zero incentive is given for the Marines to RP with the pred's, and similarly, few incentives are given for the pred's to RP with the Marines. It is in my opinion that the shift to a more TDM style of gameplay has a lot to do with this.

[LordLoko]

Its interesting, i'm newer to CM (Some movies and just started playing SS13 CM) but I do notice the Predators, well, potato alot. stand around and troll. But I like the idea of them having objectives to work toward that would be in line with honor code. To my mind, the predators are there TO hunt. not observe passively and troll dumb marines that cant understand a word they're saying.

Potential objectives include:
-a kill and recovery of 1 of each type of alien with exception of a Queen.
-the capture of Marine Dogtags. The higher rank the bigger challenge. Marine must be alive before and after tag secure.
-avoid detection by either side, this makes it so preds have to focus on stealth tactics and using skill to gain advantageous positions.
-the elimination of any Abominations with extreme prejudice.

These dont even have to be green text right away, but could be implemented on a trial basis and see where it ends up. It would also mean that the Preds as a primarily RP focused side faction and these objectives wouldn't swing fights too poorly one way or the other.

I like those suggestions a lot, as now, Predators are either trolls that spam *laugh, get ignored by Marines who focus on shooting aliums or ghosts but Roleplaying as honor-crazy aliens. I think Predator should be geared more towards to begin a minor "third party" that is hostile to both sides, the honor system was design to prevent them to go guns blazing into the Marines/Aliens but they became very passive.

[ChainsawMullet]

Its interesting, i'm newer to CM (Some movies and just started playing SS13 CM) but I do notice the Predators, well, potato alot. stand around and troll. But I like the idea of them having objectives to work toward that would be in line with honor code. To my mind, the predators are there TO hunt. not observe passively and troll dumb marines that cant understand a word they're saying.

Potential objectives include:
-a kill and recovery of 1 of each type of alien with exception of a Queen.
-the capture of Marine Dogtags. The higher rank the bigger challenge. Marine must be alive before and after tag secure.
-avoid detection by either side, this makes it so preds have to focus on stealth tactics and using skill to gain advantageous positions.
-the elimination of any Abominations with extreme prejudice.

These dont even have to be green text right away, but could be implemented on a trial basis and see where it ends up. It would also mean that the Preds as a primarily RP focused side faction and these objectives wouldn't swing fights too poorly one way or the other.

So, as a Predator, I'll go through these and give you my thoughts on 'em:

-a kill and recovery of 1 of each type of alien with exception of a Queen.

This is likely to play out as Predators just unga murderboning the first Xeno they see that hasn't been checked off their bucketlist, and will most likely remove the little RP that's present in hunting.

-the capture of Marine Dogtags. The higher rank the bigger challenge. Marine must be alive before and after tag secure.

I don't really see the point in this one. It's not a trophy if you never killed it or bested it, besides that I can see Preds just cloaking and trapping Specs and SLs that are walking by and pulling their tags off while they're stunned.

-avoid detection by either side, this makes it so preds have to focus on stealth tactics and using skill to gain advantageous positions.

What advantage is granted by stealth if you're avoiding detection and doing nothing? Not only that, but it's probably the most unfun way for anyone to interact with a Predator, being randomly ambushed with no rhyme, reason, or warning.

-the elimination of any Abominations with extreme prejudice.

This is already an "objective", Predators are honourbound to ignore whatever they're doing in order to eliminate an abomination. However they are excessively rare and require admin memery or a stupid Predator to get captured.

Don't get me wrong, I like the idea of Predators having proper objectives, as I'm sure most people do, but they have to be designed with gameplay & the enjoyment of people who aren't the Predator in mind. I don't think many people would be happy with objectives that borderline force Predators to just unga murder people with no interaction.