Taking the goals we’d established for a new Warzone boss, we mapped these onto the mech and started playtesting in Warzone Firefight while we got to work, building out all of the required content for a character in record time. As issues came up during testing, we made some changes:
- Initially, the mech’s slow movement speed made it too easy to kite, so we added a faster, forward-only run, letting it cover ground much faster and chase down players on foot or in slower vehicles.
- Having the cockpit exposed encouraged players to shoot the grunt itself, and rather than ignoring that urge, we opted to cover him with a shield canopy, encouraging players to break it to get to him.
- The armor justifies high health, but we made it progressively break off, helping to convey damage state, give hit feedback and reveal some weak spots.
- Trying to address targets on foot with power weapons in addition to in vehicles, we retuned the Dual-Needler needles to be fairly easy to dodge on foot, but lethal if they hit, however against vehicles made them hard to dodge and deal massive supercombine damage, encouraging cautious vehicle use around the mech.
- Most enemies can’t effectively threaten multiple targets, and will ignore dangerous targets from time to time, so the needle barrage can target up to 8 players simultaneously, requiring all players to actively dodge, but also to be present in the battle – if there are fewer than 8 players, it will hit some targets with multiple needle bursts, with lethal results.
- The needle barrage is pretty hard to avoid if you’re not watching for it – we’re shipping this (but may make adjustments later)!
- We found that players could safely hang back in a vehicle or on a ledge, and added the ability to jump long distances – up to 200 feet at once – to close distance.
- Most enemies don’t have a good response to ramming attacks from a vehicle, which players exploited in early playtests, so we changed the Mech’s anti-vehicle brace into a close-range area-of-effect EMP attack.
From Warzone firefight preview. My thoughts is it doesn’t sound like much fun, but i reserve judgement time being.
im interested to see how effective this needler is. that will be the determining factor i think. if it can shoot at 8 people at once, is fast, and is a 1-2shot super combine then that may be a little concerning. I’m gonna be annoyed if this is another WZFF boss where people all just spawn scorpions halfway across the map and line up to fire at it.
I like the sound of it and am looking forward to fighting it!
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> im interested to see how effective this needler is. that will be the determining factor i think. if it can shoot at 8 people at once, is fast, and is a 1-2shot super combine then that may be a little concerning. I’m gonna be annoyed if this is another WZFF boss where people all just spawn scorpions halfway across the map and line up to fire at it.
I think that would actually be funny to see, that 8 players would have to spawn 8 Scorpions to attack a sing Grunt.
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> im interested to see how effective this needler is. that will be the determining factor i think. if it can shoot at 8 people at once, is fast, and is a 1-2shot super combine then that may be a little concerning. I’m gonna be annoyed if this is another WZFF boss where people all just spawn scorpions halfway across the map and line up to fire at it.
The second-to-last bullet covers this; the goblin can jump 200 feet to close distance and presumably use it’s EMP and/or heavy needler to fight back. Depending on how good the AI is and whether it can recognize the need to do this before it gets shredded by scorpions, this is a pretty helpful mechanic for avoiding vehicle spamming like that. I think it also depends on how good the mob/adds are that are defending it. If you get a few grunts or jackals with plasma pistols that can EMP vehicles, that makes this scenario a bit more difficult for players, which is a good thing. You should have to coordinate add-control with your team to avoid getting wiped while fighting the last boss.
imo when not jumping or charging it should behave a bit like the Hunter. Sure you can get behind him by running or thrusting, but it could use something like a radial sweep backwards or sideways to take care of pesky Spartand trying to run past him or jump over.
sounds like you need some sort of intelligence and reaction time to take it down… Im all for it
I like it, it’s an odd change of pace from the Grunt we all know and love.
we will know more about him and how he attacks us on 4 days
So…who wants to bet a few hours after warzone firefight releases we will have a few threads with people complaining about how OP he is?
The Grunt Goblin doesn’t sound really that OP, you just have to move right and never sit still.
However, the Goblin will most likely be in Round 5, that means dying to him will bring more than 25 seconds to respawn. The static 5 second timer increase is lazy as Yoink!, it should be dynamic depending on how often you die already throughout the whole thing.
It really depends on the needler, it will make or break it. If it’s too powerful (Easily destroys vehicles and a large number of players need to engae it on foot to stand a chance) then it will be game breaking. Too weak (Doesn’t do enough damage to kill more than two or three people or can’t take out a warthog in a reasonable ammount of time) then it will just be a bullet sponge.
> 2535468547991460;2:
> im interested to see how effective this needler is. that will be the determining factor i think. if it can shoot at 8 people at once, is fast, and is a 1-2shot super combine then that may be a little concerning. I’m gonna be annoyed if this is another WZFF boss where people all just spawn scorpions halfway across the map and line up to fire at it.
Definitely not a 1 shot. Probably 3, I also think this because we see a Dead Spartan with 3 needles lodged into him. I think 1 Needle to combine is just too OP. Other than that, I want to see this Mecha jump 200ft.