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I've had something on my mind for a while. I think Atrash might agree with me the most, considering I found out he made this, and most of what I had in mind was there as well.

First post is just a rambling, not the real first suggestion I had in mind, so feel free to ignore it. Or agree. Or disagree.

Val thinks the game needs to be Flashy. That's true, it might need. But I also think it needs a lift up somewhere else. Battling in general needs to be less... Boring!

The ring system isn't bad. I love it. The way stamina and the regen rate work as a limiter and an incentive to take mid battle breaks works in perfect unison to freedom to choose as many attack and healing rings as we want.

But, unfortunately, there isn't much diversity to go with it. To sum up what I think is the root of the problem: Monsters are both too predictable and too weak.
Case in point: Get a crew of 6 people and give them these exact rings for attacks: Mantis, Hack and Fire Rain. Add some buffs and some healing. Now send them to battle. tell me of one situation, in the current game, where they wouldn't win, except if they did something stupid.

Ranged Rings are pointless, and most variety of attacks doesn't do anything, because for most of the game, the animated's behavior is as follows:



Even special effects such as debuffs, cc's and healing are coupled to the animated's Spam of attack. What happens with this is that they become sources of DpS who stand in place unless they need to step closer.

The most variety we see on this are clutches, who run away for a bit if they are getting nearly dead. However, they gain nothing from this, because after going to another screen for a while, they come back with just as much Hp and ready to die in one hit. And these fragile things are the only animated who such this behavior.

All animated in game can be either taken out easily by simply reaching to it and, pressing ~/Q, pressing G and spamming your attacks keys in a spectacular display of death. There's no incentive to be any less mindless than the animated attacking us. As long as you attack them, you're stepping closer to easy victory with no associated risk.

So yeah, I want to spice up combat. I want to see the game have a multitude of animated who can't just be taken out in certain ways. Animated who should get priority target and who mingle within other mobs to survive misguided AoE. Animated who react to being attacked by certain rings by performing actions far more drastic to the players than if they fought normally. Animated who at the very least, know how to stay out of the way of needless harm, specially if they're ranged... I'll get to each.

Of course, demanding too much coding into the game would be unrealistic of me, so first, I'll focus on suggesting stuff that are already present in some form and SHOULD be worked more often than it is.

So... first stop of spicing the game up: Gillroy.

General Gilroy Types:




arrow Type A Gilroy (Balanced)
The Generation A Gilroy is Strong and has quite a lot of Hp. Generation B Gilroy are common to the area they appear in.

This is your cookie-cutter Gilroy. This is the original Gilroy. To defeat it, you just fight it normally. People who know what's coming will probably not daze from these.
In numbers, they will often not give much of a change to the game plan. It might be a good idea to spam AoE and a few focused attacks at the same time, in a way to kill the first Generation B Gilroys at the same time as standing generation A ones.

arrow Type B Gilroy (Buff)
The Generation A Gilroy is very strong, and can often dish out a lot of damage, as well as packing an incredible lot of Hp. In opposition, the Generation B Gilroy are easily dispatched in comparison, either being a common monster to an area or being even weaker. The generation B Gillroy can be far more numerous than a cluster of 4.

It's basically a tank type monster made of several smaller monsters. When their mega structure fails, they decide to attack each on its own. Think of a Tank full of evil Kikis. When the tanks stops operating, the crew driving it comes out and starts slapping player a** on their own.
The Tank does NOT use its Gilroy as the battle mechanic. It is a powerhouse on its own, and the fact it splits itself is merely a way of it being more menacing than most other tanks mobs.
In numbers, its far easier to focus on one at a time, until its generation B of the first is taken care of, than to do both Gens A at once.
The purpose is to differentiate what rings to focus on and when. First you use single target rings on the monster, and then you use AoE, meaning a good balance of the two types of attacks is a good idea.

arrow Type C Gilroy (Balloon)
The Generation A Gilroy is very feeble. It's purpose is to blow up and spring forth several specialized Generation B Gilroy. These Gen B can do a variety of undesirable effects in masses: AoE, Status Effects, Lag... I'll get to it in a bit...

Generation A Gilroy for the Balloon type can come in a variety of forms themselves. These can either actively try to blow up, by spontaneously doing it on their own if you step too close to them or by running toward you in a kamikaze run; or they can just just stand in one place inactive (egg sacks, see below) or come at you doing minor, barely hurting attacks trying to force you to attack them (or to deflect damage to them). Also, the act of blowing up can either damage the players or not.
They can be an egg of another creature, like a Hive World's Alien Egg Sack, full of Shockroaches, Deathroaches and Lighting Bugs, if not more types, either clustered together and mixed, or in particular sacks of a specific strain. They can also be a suicidal kamikaze puffer fish of sorts with a goofy look, who keeps poking you for attention which bring a herd of piranhas with very high accuracy stat from withing the moment they blow up.

The obvious use of the balloon types is to deny AoE in an area. Using AoE would blow up all balloons, bringing maximum monster rape to the crew. Even eggs would deny this, as they could be guarded by ranged attacking monsters which wouldn't move from the space and be too close to them for AoE to bring forth all the nasty critters inside. Mixing the ranged guardians with the "step close, we blow up" balloons, would even completely force the use of ranged rings!
Also, such eggs could also be connected, meaning blowing up one would affect an entire small cluster of them.






General Annoying Generation B Effects:

If a monster is going to spawn several other upon death, there must be a reason why it will do so. The ability alone grants the monster an added level of complexity, meaning it can force new fighting styles upon players. Now the question remains on how to turn this step 'unique', and along the way, how to make the monster more dangerous or simply more of an obstacle to the players. Most times, it's not the larger monster that decides this, but what comes out of it. Next is a few ideas of what kind of effects the Generation B can use to make themselves rather effective or simply undesirable - Annoying.

arrow Exploding
The smaller clusters of monsters will go in a suicide run against whoever killed the monster that spawned them, ditching lots of damage, catching new players by surprise, and forcing older players to be ready for the blast

One of the nastiest surprises you can find inside a monster, is a couple more monsters that will explode and possibly knock out a crew in an heartbeat. In groups, these might prevent AoE against the Gen A, or at least avoid destroying all at once, given that bringing out bombs can be far too dangerous for the crew, however, the twist is that AoE is likely the solution to avoid most of the blast damage from the Gen B.

These can come in a variety of flavors, depending on their ascension, but a likely common trait among exploding Gen B is their lower health. Given that their mission is to die upon attacking, they also ought to be stopped with one or two attacks easily.

A somewhat interesting idea behind this concept is making the Gen A itself also an exploding Balloon, but a very slow moving one, while the Gen B are fast moving. The explosion of the Gen A, while much more deadly due to its power coupled with the close spawning Gen B, is very unlikely to hit anyone. The fast moving Gen B on the other hand, will cover the distance between the first explosion site and their target. This is only a way of forcing the players to ready themselves before killing the larger bomb with a ranged attack, and not necessarily a challenge - it is still, however, a much more dangerous bomb than a simple Cherry Fluff.



arrow Stabbing
The Gen B, put simply, can damage more than the Gen A

Meant to come with either Type A or C of the Gen A Gilroy, these are regular monsters that in a larger mob, can be troublesome to handle. Making the Hate points from the Gen A be transfered to Gen B on spawn will likely prevent a single player from being the top target of all of the mob, as the sudden spawn from multiple Gilroys would mean a flood of damage to that poor player.

One characteristic these may have is an exceedingly high Accuracy stat, making them less likely to miss attacks and more likely to boost their own DpS trough Critical hits. Also, these can stack DoT on their targets, which is a rather incapacitating effect with mortal danger if the crew is low on stamina even after the mob is defeated.

These aren't meant to be the most annoying or most ground breaking of Gen B Gilroys, of course. In a way, these are just regular enemies.

arrow Disrupting
Capable of Crowd Control Effects, Debuffs and Destroying Buffs

One way to make sure you don't want to Explode that balloon just near the entrance on screen when there's sharpshooting animated on the other side of the screen, is if the stuff inside the balloon will just prevent you from reaching the ranged foes, thus rendering you an easy target.

CC is universally known to be annoying. These prevent you from moving, from attacking or even to tell your character where to go. Setting off these at the wrong moment is something to be avoided. Debuffs, can themselves be problematic. The most obvious choice is a Speed debuff, for the same situation as above. A group of Gen A Gilroys with certain characteristics, like a strong Knockback, can have their own Gen B further help their strengths, like ones which can greatly debuff Weight. This means that the fall of a Gen A will result in empowering their comrades. (That was my brother! You're a dead man! Lok'tar O'gar!)

Another effect, which I never got around to suggest, was the ability of animated to destroy a single of a single player's random buffs, once every relatively large amount of time. This is likely the worst, most annoying and most hateful effect any monster meant to disrupt a crew could be given to, and as such, one that given to a Gen B Gilroy, would effectively leave a player restless facing the correspondent Gen A.

arrow Supporting
Capable of helping other monsters, by either Healing or Buffing them.

In opposition to the above type, these would rather help the other animated on screen before focusing on the players. Bursting too many of this type of Gen B thus makes it Harder to kill the other animated.

Healing is very straightforward. As seen with Lighting Bugs and Labtech Jumpers, a mass of healing can be something very problematic for a crew, delaying the sought moment where there's nothing on screen and everyone can take a break. Too much of this can itself be the sole reason why a crew fails to get past a mob, either ending in a stalemate where both parties can't kill the other, or even leading to the player's defeat. Animated buffing themselves, on the other hand, is, like dispelling buffs from the players mentioned above, is something I also never got around to suggest: Giving particular new animated the ability to buff certain others would make even currently existing animated a place in the greater ranks of foes without resorting to increasing numbers or level, as well as their introduction mid-battle being a way of easily and suddenly increasing the difficulty.

The Gen A holding these can come in groups that do self empowerment. The idea is somewhat the same as with the "Weight" example above: When one of the animated dies, the rest becomes more powerful in response (That was my Sister! Your a** is grass! Clobbering Time!)
These can too, themselves, be placed in balloons, thus giving the players the 'choice' of whether or not they want to ruin their chances, depending on their knowledge of the monsters they're killing.

arrow Stamina Draining
With each attack, these Gen B can also remove a small amount of Stamina from the players, or diminish stamina gain in other ways

Remember when I said above that removing buffs was the most annoying effect any monster could have? I lied.

Introducing damage to stamina is the most horrific way a monster will become the epitome of hatred from the player's point of view. A small group of these, left alone, can easily render an opponent useless, and preventing him indefinitely of standing back on his feet.
A Gilroy that would spawn these is a condensation of what you could call, a player's natural enemy, and something to be extincted from the face of Gaia with utmost haste. Therefore, a remarkable addition to the game.

There's 3 ways of adding this effect, with increasing danger to the user.
1) Every time the monster attack, it also damage 1 point of stamina. Or more, or less, depending on how fast and how feeble the Gilroy are. Getting rid of the enemies will rid you of the drain.
2) When the enemy attack, it applies a debuff to your Stamina Regen. This means that, properly buffed, you can avoid the effects of the drain partly. However, the effect will last a moderate amount of time, meaning anyone affected will be in slightly subpar fighting condition.
3) After an attack, they also implement a DoT to Stamina in the decimal range. With stack, this effect can become increasingly dangerous. The benefit, to both sides of the fight, over the other two is that the drain is larger depending on how many attacks you sustained, and it goes away progressively over time, as if your body was slowly removing the toxins from your circulation.

arrow Gilroy
The Generation B Gilroy will itself spawn Generation C Gilroy. Possibly, leading to a generation D and E...



Adding yet another level to this mechanic allows for another turn in the design. However, this would most likely seen in monster that would split itself in smaller portions with each 'death' without adding any form of effects to the progeny. Effectively, this mechanic, as discussed with some other people, is much like playing Pang, where you often stop focusing on the larger orbs to deal with the infesting smaller ones, and possibly enough in itself as the Gilroy's offense tactic. You're better off defeating several of the smaller monsters before aiming for the bigger one again, or else you risk being easily swarmed.
Still, mixing around the powers of each Generation isn't completely discredited.

Also there's a much greater threat than the monster itself. If a renaissance poet was hired to try out bursting all of a Generation A and then all of Generation B Gilroy capable of going another Generation further, he'd agree that the most eloquent way of describing the situation he put himself in would be: "LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAG!"

arrow Mixed
Any of the above effects come randomly from the Generation A, in a away that each Gen B is different from the other

As seen above, in the type C Gilroy, there's a suggestion that revolves around Hive Bugs, which will be contained in eggs that can randomly hold a number of each strain. This is the effective description of that idea.



Not necessarily from eggs, adding several types of spawns to a list Gen B adds a slight factor of randomness to the fight. Some strains could even be common, while others rare. This isn't necessarily a mechanic from Gilroys you'd avoid killing, the eventual spawn can also come from monsters that are meant to be killed in a wave.

The objective would be having the players adapt to situations mid-fight. As seen in Hive, some players avoid Deathroachs in the beginning of waves. They don't know which waves they are guaranteed to come, but they knew that when they do, they come at a particular moment. This would remove the second factor, thus rewarding the ability to overcome unexpected events or knowing what to prioritize ahead of time.

arrow Fleeing
When defeated, the Gen A Gilroy will release its Gen B driver(s), commander(s), rider(s), which will proceed to flee from you, powerless on its own.

Suggested due to a behavior seen in other game. Theres a large mechanical monster, that, upon defeat, lets the cowardly driver out, exposed to the players. They can choose to shoot him, but often, it proves to be tricky.

This adds absolutely no battle altering potential - to the current battle.
It does however, bring the chance to do a few other changes.

1) Even in that other game it serves merely as a bonus. Defeating the fleeing driver will give yo extra gold pieces, and it has one uncommon drop that the mechanical beast itself does not. In zOMG!, this could be a recipe, which would be rendered rarer than most, as not just you'd have to beat the Gen A creature, but also the fleeing Gen B. If it runs far enough, the fleeing Gen B will simply disappear without dying or rewarding anyone.

I wanted to add some actual danger to this cowardly foe, so:

2) The fleeing Gen B can warn other monsters as it flees, making it so killing it is prioritized so you can have a moment of rest. The monsters don't even need to be placed on the map, it can spawn new ones if allowed to reach a certain point in the map.

3) The fleeing Gen B can find a unoccupied Gen A Gilroy of its type and start driving it, thus making it so for as long as you don't defeat the driver, you'll be constantly fighting this type of monster. Again, like above, the vehicle does not need to be on-screen, and can be spawned only if the driver reaches a certain spot of the map. In effect, this last idea is a Reverse-Gilroy mechanic, where a smaller monster joins another one to render it capable of fighting.

Huh, Sunday lag?

Air? Fluffs and Bootsnakes have a similar behavior, tho less pronounced due to their speed and grounded status.

Add me to the list of those who support the general idea behind this.
Anticipating a bit, you'll cover Mush Can'-styled static enemies, right?
They're essentially hazards and could be used to explore the aspects of mouvement.
Nasty got-too-close surprise.

Anyone familiar with Yoshi's Island? Specifically, the stage 4-4 boss, Marching Milde? S/he's basically a giant version of an enemy you've faced repeatedly in previous stages. For the small fry, any attack can dispatch them. The boss is only vulnerable to a ground-pound, at which point it divides into two smaller Mildes. Continued stomping further divides those, until you're eventually left with a horde of the basic enemies.

I can kinda see this idea, or the "Salvo the Slime" type as Red described for his nightmare, for a magma-based enemy. You either divide it into smaller bits, or shave off minions as the main construct wears down.

At the risk of going off topic, some responses:

Mushroom Mortars, perhaps? Stationary targets, but shoot AoE shells, and are tougher to bring down than standard cannons. Say... 60+ HP or so? More if they're in the Gnome Man's Land (hopeful) expansion.

Mentioning multi-part monsters, I can't help but think of monsters like DQVIII's Mumboh Jumboe, which are several individuals stuck together into a more-powerful being. Either that or Voltron-style mechas.

Indeed, why don't the wolves howl for reinforcements? That's what wolves do!

Navel Piranha, IMO, has the best intro music out of all of them. The level designers for Yoshi's Island DS are evil geniuses.