Improvement: Happy Medium - quick-knife, assassinations and knives...

[Ratstomper]

We had a discussion thread on this, but it just turned into alot of arguing with no real improvement. So, I'm reposting this post from there to here because noone wants to even look at the other thread (understandably so) and it probably belongs in the idea thread anyway. I write this under the assumption that people will look at the topic logically, provide feedback and opinions and be willing to entertain the idea (at least temporarily) without this degrading into an argument thread.

Compromise for making knives fun for the most people possible:

1) Essentially have a quick switch button specifically for your knife instead of a quick-knife. Map it to an easy to reach key so that it quickly draws your knife and lets you use it as a standard equippable weapon. Press the key again and it switches back to your previous weapon. This makes it so that the knife is quickly accessible to someone who may want to finish off a wounded opponent who they've rushed or have gotten close to for some reason.

2) Adjust delays so that unsheathing is fairly quick, but resheathing takes a bit longer (if you've ever quickly pulled a knife out of a sheath and then put it back, you'll understand that this makes a lot of sense). You've whipped out your knife and finished someone off, but you've got some time before you can switch back to your previous weapon (1 or 2 seconds, which we've seen is pretty long with the current TTK) and if he's got buddies who've probably noticed you knifed their friend, you may very well be hosed.

3) Adjust damage values to reasonable levels. Allow knives to do moderate damage (30% sounds good to me, but may need tweaking) on all infantry (no MAX units/vehicles) from all sides. This means that if someone wants to run in rambo style with a knife, they will probably die. You'll have to be smart about when you use a knife, because you'll die before they will if you charge someone straight on with it.

4) Allow all infantry to cert into a knife tree that will allow one-hit assassinations if attacking from behind and using the knife's secondary mode. This will most likely be for infiltrators, but can logically be used by regular infantry (no MAX units) in guerrilla fighting and ambushes. Make it so the "kill area" is relatively small so you don't run into "Facestabbing" issues. Along with the sheathing delay, this adds additional commitment to someone who wants to assassinate someone with a knife and gives any nearby enemies at least some chance to respond to whats going on.

5) Make the secondary modes subtley give position away. In PS1, using secondary knife modes meant the knife made noise or glowed. I think for PS2, all knives should give off a faint sound when turned on. This acts as an audible cue to be on your guard and gives someone a bit of a fair chance before getting one-shotted.

6) (goes without saying) Adjust all values to a balanced state: Damage (standard and secondary modes), delay (sheathing and unsheathing), swing time, secondary-mode volume and range. Test and balance. Test and balance.


- TL : DR -
1) Give knives a quick-switch button instead of a quick-knife button.
2) Make it so that putting the knife away takes longer than pulling it out.
3) Allow knives to do moderate damage with standard attacks (no 1-hit kills)
4)Allow a certification that allows assassinations from behind while using the secondary mode on knives.
5)Make secondary modes for knives give off a faint sound to give somewarning to potential assassination targets.
6)Test and balance to make sure all values produce a desired and fun knife mechanism.


Lemme know what you guys think; constructive criticism, opinions and improvements welcome.