I had this hades division melee focus character idea
His name is Shanzhai (copycat in Chinese) and he looks like this kabuki ninja looking melee fighter
His abilities are his superior procedural and photographic memory that allow him to learn the fighting style of any chatacter just by watching them, he can then detect the opponents next attack
Ability: photographic reflexes : shenzhai can mark an elite or a raider to study them, if the marked target uses melee in line of sight,
shenzhai gains the ability to use their melee style+their movement speed+their finisher animation for 10 seconds
if shanzhai engaged the copied target in CQC within those 10 seconds, he can
jump out of a grab throw from a copied target once
reduce damage done from copied character strikes by 50%
inflict 50% of the damage from a failed strike to the copied target
Weapons: shanzhai uses a collection of classic flint lock rifles that fire rounds that explode in a small radius and explosion damage falls off over radius distance
headshots won't cause a damage fall off in the explosion radius
What are his downsides? His weapons falls off over distance
And if he copies a council elite or raider he gains reduced movement speed
The target also has to be in line of sight and use his melee once for him to be able to copy the target
I think it's a step in the right direction ( :
Shanzhai's ability's parameters make him more balanced and you've also better described how his gameplay would work too.
The limited duration of the ability and the decreased movement speed pressures the player to engage in combat. Furthermore, trying to use the ability while on low health, can be risky, this can give the Shanzhai a higher skill ceiling.
- If you need to hold the ability button down in order to start copying and your engaged in combat, then would you still be able to use CQC moves, in order to avoid strikes or counter grapples?
- Also does the copying only have to work on strikes or can it also work on all CQC moves? I can see how it can create mind games, but that's just how CQC works in general, I don't think this will add mind games to CQC any more than their already are
- If Shanzhai can only copy one enemy at a time, then would the copying process be like Sooma's ability, in the sense that she has to move her crosshair's over her teammates in order shield them, but instead over enemies; or would it be more like Shae's weapon targeting, in that the enemy closest to her crosshair's is targeted?
- I had a great idea for mind games! What if Shanzhai's CQC ability was weaker, but in return he had two abilities, like Iune. His second ability would be to create an identical clone of himself that automatically moves in a direction. He could summon this clone forward toward an enemy so they could strike it, giving him an opportunity to use his ability on them. Maybe their could be a character talent that allows the clones to scale low-walls and ledges, follow the nearest enemy or have increased health
[li]What if he had a rifle that fired smoke bombs or one that could be charged up to fire a volley of throwing stars?[/li][/list]
I thought of a character trait and backstory for Shanzhai, I based it on his ability of 'photographic reflexes' and how it wears off after 10 seconds; It was also inspired by elements of the character 'Task Master' from Marvel
https://www.marvel.com/characters/taskmaster/in-comics under 'photographic reflexes,' last paragraph, and someone by the name of 'Mad Jack'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZRVpYPFOl0Premise: Shanzhai was a war veteran, like Hans and Lycus, except he had experimental neuro-cybernetics implanted in his body that allowed him to precisely mimic other peoples movements down to their smallest gestures--at first.
Part 1: His origin began when he was orphaned by Lycus Dion: One day, when he was 8, he was on a trip with his mother to surprise his father at work on his birthday. Shanzhai was pretending to be asleep to avoid talking to his mother about his father, because whenever she talked about him, she felt frantic, distressed and was keeping her guard up, this reconvinced Shanzhai that his parents were going to get a divorce a little bit more each time.
They were taking an old train from the early 21st century, she told him that she use to ride it with his grandfather when she was a little girl. The train sloped downward, descending into a tunnel, stopping midway through and creating a shearing noise with bright, flying sparks visible from his closed eyes. Suddenly an explosion destroyed half of the road: the lights turned off, even the backup power wasn't working. Shanzhai looked around to see what was happening, he looked out a window on the left side of the train and suddenly an explosion burst through the tunnel on his right
There was a side-effect soon after the surgery: When he first activated it as a demonstration to his superior officers, the cybernetic enhancements worked as designed, but he soon experienced muscle spasms and retrograde amnesia. The engineers and doctors stabilized his condition, but failed in treating the newly developed symptoms: he could no longer use this ability automatically and had to concentrate in order to activate it. Every time he activated it, he developed tunnel vision while it was active, afterwards it would trigger a form of short-term, procedural memory loss.
He was considered a failure of the project and stationed to a low-level military base at the South-Eastern coast of Japan: an old nearly abandoned military base first founded after new initiatives were took to protect