Holoparasite deals too much damage. (and is otherwise generally overtuned/unhealthy)

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1

It can gib someone in like 20 seconds, round removing them with no ability to fight back, that’s waaay to fast for soemthing that has no warning and minimal counterplay. There is no fighting back against a holoparasite, you just lose. It doesn’t even let you cry for help because you are dead before you can hit T and type enough to get a ‘hurk’ or ‘ow’. See around the 30 to 35 minute mark of round [78918] on lizard in the main engineering lobby, where I, Tryl, was blitzed so fast I literally couldn’t fight back in a public area, gibbed, and then brain stolen or ate by either them as a lizard or the mouse they dropped. That’s not okay. That’s not story, or intrigue, or good gameplay. About 10-15 minutes later, the 50 minute mark, same thing again with the CE. No counterplay possible, the CE was just dead, gibbed, and brain mouse munched.

I was just removed from the game, for no reason than to check a green box. It didn’t make the game fun for me, fun, for sec, fun for medbay, it just said I was not allowed to play. That’s not okay. It should take time for a holoparasite to spawn, you should be able to tell who is spawning it, so that the victim has feedback on who to target and an opportunity to react a response. Grenades have timers! Bombs beep! Holo Parasites just kill you, gib you, and your not allowed to play, and the person who bot it gets to go away scott free. In the sample the only reason he even gets caught is because they meme over comitted to playing helper for other peoples objectives. Otherwise it woulda just been, nothing. None of the intrigue that antags are meant to generate to tell fun stories of antics and shenanigans, just power gaming murder with no recourse.

2

You literally just hit them and it will damage the owner.
antags have access to plenty of weapons that can kill you before you can react. The holoparasite is just one of them. And it is not silent either unlike the cobra nor deals as much damage against armored targets.

So yes, an holoparasite will beat you simply because it is a weapon. It is also harder to use as it requires the cooperation of 2 players.

And if you think that is unfair, just wait until you see the other antags like wizard or nukies.
Tip of the day. Don’t wander in secluded parts of the station if you want to live.

3

It’s never in a secluded station, they’re usually soloing (or well, duoing) medbay, or engi. Nukies and Wizard are far more fair in their overtness and intent: Being station wide threats actively intended to be fought by the entire team. holo parasite are not silent, sure, but they also have no distinct sounds, its just punches. Yes, I think nukies are more fair, yes I think wizard is more fair, because they are meant to fill a different role and present a different narrative. Nukies set the station to red, Holo sets the station to blue, MAYBE, IF IT EVER GETS CAUGHT, cause it is undetectable until deployed, once deployed, your dead before you can evil toggle harm, or type even so much as ‘;he’.

A random search is not going to find a HoloPara like it would a Cobra, or any other weapon, it does not take time to draw from the bag or pocket or whichever, like a weapon, it does not show as a sprite to give you a response at all. You just have a monster sprite instantly appear on you, hug you until your dead and gibbed in record time with the same imprint of someone swinging a toolbox.

4

x wrong. if you are playing your cards right. you should have a sstorage implant most likely and they aint searching that shit.

5

unless they patched it, it doesnt ignore the users armor which on top of its 35% damage resistance makes hitting the holoparasite basically worthless

6

As of the latest patch it does ignore the user’s armor

7

In the most recent patch hitting the Para does ignore armor now. Still has the base resistance though as I understand it. Still plenty to slaughter an unarmed department with ease consider you have 250 HP of fighting health points between the two of you (The math gets really screwy there and interpretations vary), deal double+ dps to most people, and have an INSANE element of surprise and obscurity over other options. It takes 5-10 seconds for ANYONE to react to a holo para, which is enough time for them to down 2-3 people, and in the next 5-10 seconds, any witnesses while that are maybe starting to act out their responses.

Okay so who are you generating interesting gameplay for as the antag at that point? What is the point of playing antag if you’re just going to power game to win for the sake winning, and not for generating good gameplay for the community? (this isn’t even going into how over-tuned implanters are in the current patch because they took away the only counterplay they had)

Mentality aside, this still has other perks going for it over Holo para. It’s at the least a sprite change that you have to take time to put in your hand. Guns are also very loud and make very distinct sounds recognizable as a universal ‘oh shit’ that people can readily identify as a threat, (or are one offs cause you only have finite ammo Conveying information to the victim and other players, giving them feedback to what is happening is critical for generating a satisfying experience for all parties involved.

Let’s look at another Syndie melee option, and one that when I look at it, I question why Holoparasite was ever considered a good idea outside of JoJo’s memes: The E-Sword. The E-Sword does right everything Holo Parasite does wrong.

The E-Sword is a powerful melee weapon that is easily concealed in your pocket, sure. If I get jumped in deep maints by an esword, am I dead before I can really react? Sure. But the E-Sword is loud with a very distinct audio profile, it’s bright and flashy, it shows up on the sprite. Someone getting away with an E-Sword kill is either lucky to have their target well away from everyone else, or do a solid job of luring out their victim, or using other tools efficiently to disable or otherwise isolate them, or embrace going full Sith combat mode and show their combat prowess against the station (or at least, sec).

Even then still presents itself being a ‘semi fair’ fight. I’m not good at fighting, I’ll admit that, but an esword I might actually get a swing in where the holo para, nah you’re just dead. eSword also can’t gib, which is great for it, you need to figure out an alternative means of corpse removal if you are going to RR.

Oh look, a minibomb is 6 TC, and an Esword is 8. Holoparasite is 10x better for the same price because its safer, nigh on undetectable, more powerful. It’s borderline a nukie tier tool. Heck, A syndie team going all holoparas are probably more likely to get the disk and nuke the station than the Nukies are, considering each holo para can just blitz its own department handedly.

On a, different note, Holoparasite could use a name adjustment because it has no reasonable shorthand. HP is going to get misconstrued as HoP (Head of Personel), Holo could mean, anything (pad, fan, sign…) and Para is Paramedic. Holoparasite itself is too long to reasonably type even as a witness, let alone a victim. EtherParasite? Iunno. Secondary thought I had that’s less a balance issure overall but a 'for being something you need to type fast, that is not something you can type fast.

8

5-10 seconds to react? I think youre vastly underestimating reaction speeds. If a ghost pops out of someone and starts pummeling my boss to death, I’m going to be doing something within a second or two, not staring blankly for ten seconds. The same reaction time I’d have for a gun or sword. And sure, a holoparasite can probably take an unarmed department in a straight fight, but its not going to be able to stop someone from getting away and reporting it or calling security, at which point the user becomes a fugitive.

9

Holoparasite deals 20 blunt damage per punch, 1.8 punches per second, hold button to attack continuously.

Holoparasite will crit an unarmored player in 2.8 seconds from full health. It will gib the crit player in the next 8.4 seconds. That is 11.2 seconds from full health to a pile of organs.

If you’re a regular security officer, armor vest provides 30% blunt resistance, so it would take 4 seconds to crit.

This is just the time to kill, even receiving a single second of punching will mean massive movement slowdown + bleeding damage for the target player.

It’s not balanced in the slightest.

10

Holoparasite is a 14 TC item that is meant to be strong. It’s one of the more expensive weapons a traitor can buy and is comparably strong to northstars, an e-sword or a gun which will all crit in a similar amount of time or less.

An e-sword will crit you in 3 hits and gloves also have insane blunt DPS at 32 DPS gibbing in 12.5 seconds. Both are 6 TC cheaper than a holoparasite and aren’t lost forever if you die.

A tider buying gloves of the northstar and a webbed vest is going to be tankier than a holo user and will have spent less TC. Same goes for if they buy an e-sword.

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11

‘Competitively’ strong as a separate entity on it’s own. You still also have a full you to work with, and even if you don’t have a middle end Syndie ‘core’ available due to the cost, adding even basic improvised weapons takes what is already on it’s own one of the most lethal ‘weapons’ in the game into the problem that is the focus of this discussion. It hasn’t happened to me yet, but your TTK if you supplemented your buddy with an E dagger would be ludicrous. (Though I will acknowledge it to be very, VERY spooky and require decent Left Click discipline on both your parts.)

The inverse of the lost forever argument is actually why I prefer North Star and E-Sword, because they can also be lost without you dying. They’re required to be equipped and you can be slipped or alternatively disarmed, they’re something that can be found when searched, etc. Also if you’re dying with that tier of contra anyway, you’re probably never seeing again as is, so the loss on death is kinda, irrelevant?

North Star being that cheap and gibbing that fast on something that also uses generic punch sounds also sounds really bad and sweaty though. I’ve just never seen them personally to attest to the victim experience, but getting in a full on melee does generally feel better than hugged by the Stand.

While I did make the damage of Para the focus point in the title, I will say I think it’s allowed to be powerful, but it needs drawbacks because right now it has none.

‘Oh just hit the Para’ is not an adequate response due to the massive amount of reasons that people probably can’t between Pacifist, lack of armaments, lack of reaction time, lack of awareness, lack of vision, etc. Because Holoparasite is WAY too subtle. Especially since they’re usually blue and blue is usually friendly. (though I’ve also seen a red one? Not sure what determines the color but they should just always be red considering Syndi)

If you wanna keep the damage on your Option/Stand high, you could, iunno, slow or root the Para user while its manifested, put a big glowy red line or field of the parasites projector to the user so people can readily identify the high risk threat target, make it so parasite takes half a second or a second to actually manifest fully/start attacking. Implants by nature are intended to be strong stealth until revealed, but being amongst the strongest weapons in the game cause it isn’t even really a weapon, should not be allowed to be -stealthy- in activation and usage. It should be the exact opposite, in everyway. It’s a fucking JoJo’s stand, why is it perfectly silent past basic punch sounds when in use? It should FWOOSH and NYOOM and MUDA. Be active and fun and spectacle! Menace!

Instead its just a quiet, sweaty, corner gib machine and medbay slaughterer. Now, I’m not saying all people use it like that, but it seems to be the going theme. Now don’t misconstrue, I’m not saying do ALL of those things, but one or two would go a long way to making it more inline to its price relative to its competition, and most importantly, a better experience for the the rest of the players who have to respond to it.

Especially newer ones, because a strong new player experience is important for new players to develop into veteran players, and SS14 kinda sells itself on a degree of absurdity and shenanigan; big bombs, light sabers, clowns, a little Clue on the side is what the game is about, and the Stand could definitely fit in this niche if it was a little more overt, and dealt maybe 2-3 less damage per hit, bring that down a threshold, it’s still a boatload of damage, but gives a smidge more wiggle room for typing help. (thanks Changeling for getting hard numbers because I had no idea where or what they were.)

12

Indeed, a combination of multiple cheaper items with a higher total cost can almost recreate the function of a single holoparasite injector. It’s a good thing you pointed out how underpriced and versatile the holoparasite is.

Then there’s the stun immunity of a holoparasite and that it’s a separate actor, where a player has free hands to do additional actions simultaneously with the holoparasite. Then there’s the innate armor of a holoparasite which essentially increases the effective hitpoints of a holoparasite user.

Honest mistake on your part, I’m sure. :^)

13

14 TC is not a small amount of TC and I wouldn’t call that underpriced.
With only 6 TC left your options for covering your weaknesses are much more limited compared to an energy sword or gloves.
If I were to do the standard loud loadout of Webbed Vest, No-Slips, Holo, I would only have 1 TC left. Not enough for a weapon or medicine or anything.

On the other hand if I bought a webbed vest, e-sword, and noslips, I’d have 7 TC left, enough for an EMP implanter to combat stun batons and disablers and a combat medical kit or just save the 5 TC for something else.

On the other hand if I wanted to go loud with a holo and buy a syndicate weapon, I’d be limited to something that is 6 TC or less which doesn’t give a whole lot of good options for a real fight with security and it is going to be a fight because a Holoparasite is one of the few things that is an unambiguous reason to lethal someone. You’re also probably going to be going into this fight unarmored if you’re getting a weapon in addition to a holo.

Holo having armor doesn’t increase the effective hit points of the user because the health pool is shared. And it’s nearly DOUBLE the cost of other melee options so I would expect it to be better and more useful.

Also as mentioned both gloves and e-sword don’t dissapear when you die, meaning you can hide them or stash them in a storage implant if you really need to. A holo is permanently tied to you and is permanently lost if you die.

In addition, not mentioned by you but northstars can’t be disarmed and the energy sword has a 5% disarm chance so you’re not going to be disarming anyone using either of those weapons.

I don’t know why you assume I’m being dishonest by leaving out everything a holo can do. A lot of the discussion was about round removal and if it’s balanced in that regard. If your issue with holoparasites is that they round remove you too quickly as an assassination target, nerfing them will just mean other round removing items get bought. Minibombs, Northstars, Sus toolboxes.

I could spending no TC, make a bola, stunprod and cuffs and take someone’s headset and round remove them without spending any TC. With very little counterplay, and if I wanted to remove counterplay I could buy thieving gloves or a radio jammer to prevent them from using their radio or have their coords be off. I’ve done this before as a challenge and not gotten caught more times than not.

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14

I don’t care enough about this topic to read such a wall of text, however the first few sentences you seem to be just repeating yourself and then I assume you repeat yourself yet again in a more verbose manner. So I will just point you back to my previous post.

15

they have to keep explaining in more detail on why holoparasite is balanced cause you wont get it throught your skull that it is balanced. so we have to give more and more examples of setups and cost in a attempt to explain it.

16

Mostly off topic, but i was said lizard, at full price a holo is balanced, i had it on a 50% discount iirc and am mute, was actually pretty fun trying to tell my holo wtf i wanted it to do with only emotes