A neat and simple idea

Okay, so you just stared a new game in The Thing and you spawn close to another person. You meet up with this guy and he kills you instantly. Now your like "shit, I just wasted my time. Didnt even get to enjoy this." You had that happen to you? Of course you have, its happened to ALL of us. Im sure everyone can agree that this isn't fun and something should be done about it.

Here is my suggestion. A simple one. Just make everyone the same color, and make people who kill others who are not the Thing turn a different color than everyone else for a short duration!

How does this solve the 'Team Killing"(TK'ing) problem? Well since the gameplay revolves around trust and forming bonds, a natural punishment for aiding The Thing in killing the other players would be to ostracise them from the rest of the survivors. Naturally there should be no punishment for killing a TK'er. But not only would this change enforce communication among the survivors, and discurage TK'ing, but it would also give the Thing a better chance to escape/join larger groups.

Being The Thing is fun and challenging, but there are also situations where The Thing has no chance for victory at all. This instance is when all the players join a group without him. How is the Thing supposed to win at that point? He has no other option than to try and break them up, but its a very futile effort when he is horribly outnumbered. Even if he did escape from an encounter with a large group, there is an even lower chance of him being able to infiltrate it again, as they can just tell that he is a different color from anyone else in the group.

HOWEVER! If you simply made everyone the same color the Thing would be able to split a group, then find an opportunity to change back and attempt to blend back in with a croud. This would allow the Thing to approach large groups much more boldly, rather than just running away and trying to find a good place to burrow and HOPE he does not get spotted. He would also be able to change from Thing form back into Marine form much more efficiently, as he would not have to go through two different command screens just to pick what color he wants to be. He can just change back into a Marine with one click. This change would be beneficial in aiding the Thing with escaping larger crowds.

Overall this change would.

-Force players to communicate more in depth.
-Discourage "team killing"(TK'ing).
-Aid the Thing in escaping/joining larger crowds.
-Remove the second command screen for the Thing when going from Thing form back into Marine form.

Please give the idea some major thought, as I would love to see this map succeed and grow on the aspect of communication which is the catalyst of the games success in my opinion.

WHO TOOK MY NAME!?

This is the real Corm by the way!
>_<

Razamata wrote:
Overall this change would.

-Force players to communicate more in depth.
-Discourage "team killing"(TK'ing).
-Aid the Thing in escaping/joining larger crowds.
-Remove the second command screen for the Thing when going from Thing form back into Marine form.

Please give the idea some major thought, as I would love to see this map succeed and grow on the aspect of communication which is the catalyst of the games success in my opinion.

Okay, let's talk.

More in-depth communication? It's hard to talk in this game.
How will it discourage team killing? With everyone having no way to establish trust so quickly, they'll just kill anyone who doesn't know the super secret password.
Although I'm not against the Thing joining/escaping large crowds, I don't think he really has a problem.
I might just add a feature where tapping Y twice will turn to a Marine of his color.

-"How would this discourage Team Killing?"

As I said before, you make them stand out among others. Let people be able to see with their own eyes their guilt, and decide for themselves if they want to trust this individual or not. The Thing would also turn different color if he killed some one in Marine form. He could just turn into Thing mode then back again to go back to the neutral color, or wait out the duration.

-"More in-depth communication? It's hard to talk in this game."

Talking is the key to success for the marines. You want the players to be chatting up a storm, forming alliances and questioning others. That's half of what makes the game so fun. Not ever being 100% sure of where and or who the Thing could be. HOWEVER there have been cases where I and a larger group had no fear for the Thing, because we encountered him in his Thing form and knew none in our group where the Thing, so we just gunned down anyone else we met just going off our colors. There should never be any situation in this game where a player does not feel vulnerable. That leads me to this.

-"Although I'm not against the Thing joining/escaping large crowds, I don't think he really has a problem."

This I believe he most certainly does have a problem. In many cases if the Thing is not in a larger crowd, it means GG. He has no way to approach them. No way at all. His only option here is to run away/burrow and hide. Especially when the large group knows the Thing is not among them. THERE IS NOTHING THE THING CAN DO.

Perhaps to even further discourage TK'ing on top of the color change, also make him visible to the Thing on minimap for the duration. This would let the Thing know where fights are breaking out, and where a potential kill may be. This could also lead to the Thing forming an alliance with the TK'er, or him just killing him for the extra hp. Although I could see this making the Thing a bit overpowered, but it would definitely make people think twice before killing some one for no reson.

Okay, I plan to implement this for one version to see how it will play out.

My problem with this is that no one has a good form of identity. But they will rely on passwords and such for an average sized group, which probably increases random TKing.