Thread: An idea regarding the witch...

So, I was thinking earlier - unless you hit some bad luck and come across a Witch in a narrow corridor with tier 1 weapons, she's not really a particularly major threat any more, as there's usually at least one character on each team that is willing to attempt crowning her, albeit with varying degrees of success.

So, why not liven things up - add a bit of unpredictability into the mix. I suggest one of two options:

Option 1:
Triple her health, and have her screams summon a horde as well. That would genuinely make her a threat, as failing to crown/avoid her is almost certainly going to result in someone dying, whilst preventing her simply becoming a faster and harder to hit version of the tank. This massive improvement is tempered by a 40% chance that when disturbed, she will actually run away and hide somewhere else rather than decimating the survivors. This is so that if you DO get a witch in a narrow corridor with T1 weapons, you're not guaranteed to die. Just 60% certain.

Option 2:
When disturbed, there's a 50% chance her screams will alert a tank, which will come charging to her aid, much in the way Big Daddies and Little Sisters worked in Bioshock. Except this time the Little Sister is a psychotic bitch with three feet long fingers who is capable of disembowelling you if you're dumb enough to go near her without an autoshotty.

So, any thoughts/suggestions/ripe fruit you'd like to throw at these ideas?

I actually like these ideas. It'll give a real disadvantage to the Survivors and will truely make the Witch live up to her reputation... well, the reputation when you first hear about her.

I always wondered why the Witch was considered the strongest Infected to only be rivalled by the Tank, when someone can easily one-shot her to the back of the head and poof! That statement disappears.

I can just hear the yelling that will be incured once a stupid teammate in Versus decides to try and cr0wn.

Well that was kind of the idea - make attempting to sneak past her more of an option, as at the moment, there's no real penalty for trying to crown her and failing. Like you said, if you can get the survivors arguing over whether attempting to crown her or sneak past her is a better option, you've already improved on what we have now.

Originally Posted by Flipflop

I always thought she should continue to go after the whole team not just whoever disturbs her. It doesn't make sense that she would just stop. This way there's a risk she could incap more of you, maybe even all.

During playtesting, she actually did attack everyone after being disturbed. But the playtesters complained that it was rather bad and unbalanced that she would do that. So, thanks to the bullshitters, her 'All 4 Dead' technique was removed.

Unbalanced? To have ONE zombie type that differentiates between who disturbed it and who didn't? Weird.

Thanks for telling me that though, I didn't know

I've been saying for the last two months or so that the witch is particularly unbalanced. So I think your ideas are great. In nearly every game I play in anymore, there will always be someone who just runs up and autoshotguns her to death/glitches behind her/crowns her, unless someone is going for Do Not Disturb. She really isnt a threat anymore now that people have learned she is an EASY kill.

Some ideas I have had: maybe she could startle twice as fast or maybe instantly if someone walks directly up to her (as in within 1 ft. of her), maybe double or triple health(as you said), and the idea I really like is that if she is startled, her hit would be instant death, instead of just an incapacitation.

Agree 100% with Target on this one. The witch is not a problem anymore, save maybe on the occasional Expert map. Anything to bring more fear and variety into the game is fine by me, as well as anything to make the Tank and Witch actually worthwhile. Currently, they're both kind of a joke. I can't get teammates to sneak around the witch anymore, they're like "Why... *BANG* ...bother?" and she's done.