Making Co-Op More Cooperative

Risk of Rain's online co-op is a great idea, and has the potential to be a lot of fun. However, as it stands, there's very little that players can do from a strategic point of view to actually help each other. Teamwork seems to consist solely of concentrating fire on tough enemies. With that in mind, I tried brainstorming ways that classes could be tweaked so that they actually have ways to assist each other.

Acrid
Getting him out of the way first, because he's the only class that currently has a strategic co-op ability: his Caustic Sludge speeds up allies.

Commando
Diversion: Going "neener neener neener" at enemies while evading their attacks really gets their dander up. Evasive Rolling across enemies aggroes those enemies. This tweak allows the Commando to come to the aid of an ally being set upon by a mob by using their evasive roll (relatively low risk, since the Commando can't be hit while rolling) to draw away a portion of the mob.

Enforcer
The enforcer's Shield Slam ability could already be useful in this context, because the enforcer could theoretically use it to clear an ally.
Stalwart Shield: You're the final line of defense between your allies and hordes of hungry aliens, and you shall. Not. Yield. While in Shield Mode, if an ally is behind you within a certain distance, then enemies who attempt to pass you from the front are slowed proportional to that ally's health. The less health the ally has, the more slowdown is applied to enemies.

Bandit
Barbeque for Two: Just can't beat that smokey flavor. Using Smoke Bomb in near vicinity to an ally applies the Smoke Bomb effect to the ally, as well. With this tweak, the Bandit could wade into a horde to rescue an ally by applying Smoke Bomb to both of them.

Huntress
???
I have no ideas for the Huntress.

Han-D
???
I have no ideas for Han-D, either. Possibly a way for his drones to heal or buff teammates?

Engineer
Distribution of Labor: The assembly line caught on for a reason. When the Engineer remains in close proximity to allies, his mines and turrets regenerate more quickly. This could encourage the engineer to play a more supportive role, and would make turrets more expendable. Expendable turrets would be dropped more frequently, where they would provide supporting fire and draw aggro off teammates.

Miner
The "Best Teammate in the Universe" Swing: If an ally is in the area of effect of To the Stars, then To the Stars applies knockback, expelling enemies from its area of effect. The Miner could use this ability to clear teammates.

Sniper
Interferometric Spotting: The sensory feed from nearby ally's equipment supplements your own feed and that of your spotter. When an ally is in your line of fire, Steady Aim charges faster. This ability encourages the Sniper to cover teammates. In particular, if an ally is being set upon by a mob, the Sniper can drop into position and quickly discharge a fully-powered shot into the mob, thinning it considerably.

Mercenary
Bodyguard: Watch your teammate's back, and they'll watch yours. When an ally is in near proximity, they become invincible whenever you become invincible. Blinding Assault and Eviscerate can therefore be timed to nullify damage a teammate might have taken from a swing of Providence's sword, or just to provide a teammate with valuable invincibility frames as they beat a retreat.

Thoughts?

 

While some of this would obviously be subject to balance, etc. I think it's a really cool idea and I would really like to see something like this implemented.

As for an ability for the Huntress:
Glaive Accelerator: When a glaive "hits" an ally, it is redirected toward the nearest enemy and its bounces are reset.
Or maybe something related to her move while attacking.

For HAN-D:
Efficient Drones: Nearby allies benefit from the healing effects of HAN-D's drones (maybe at a reduced amount?).

 

Full on support. This would do wonders for helping enforce teamwork although that Merc ability would be really abusive given that to play Merc efficiently, one must abuse all invincibility frames possible. I particularly like Enforcer, Engie and Commando's perks.
A question though: Would multiple classes perks stack with the same class? Such as 2 Mercs or 2 Engies for example.

 

I like this idea for the Huntress. A lot of my own ideas were centered around allowing classes to come to each other's rescue, so with the Huntress, I was caught up on trying to think of some way that Blink could be used to teleport enemies out of danger (maybe by taking them along for the ride if the Huntress blinked across an ally). Really, though, from the perspective of the ally, that would get annoying pretty quickly. The only tweak I might suggest here is maybe, instead of resetting the bounces, hitting an ally straight-up adds one bounce. Because the Huntress is a kiting class, it's not entirely unexpected for her to be in the back lines, constantly firing into the horde while retreating. Allies who aren't as mobile might therefore be in between her and the horde, and so firing the glaive and having it hit two or three allies on its way to the mob would make it progressively more devastating - and also assist the allies in between in their retreat by taking off some of the heat.

I hadn't envisioned the abilities being stackable, at least not linearly. With the Engineer, for example, regen rate is just boosted if there is an ally or allies nearby; the Miner and Sniper perks would activate if one or more allies were in range; the Enforcer perk would proc based only on the health of the most damaged ally present; etc. Multiple allies don't increase the rate further.

Stacking would get trickier with something like the Bandit or Mercenary perk, because if they use their perks with more than one ally around, should it be applied to all allies? Probably not - that would be massively OP. Especially if you stacked a bunch of Mercs together and they successfully staggered their attacks - they would just be straight up invincible, all the time. Then again, if they can get to that level of teamwork, you might be able to argue that they deserve it.

EDIT: Given that the Mercenary is a Mercenary, an interesting perk might be for them to gain a Golden-Gun-like buff based on the amount of the gold possessed by nearby allies.

 

Not class specific, so perhaps this is the wrong place, if so my apologies. Similar to the shrines that take % health there could be a way to bring someone back. Once the dust settles, and you have the HP etc, and its pretty "safe" shouldn't you be able to have teammates rejoin you in battle to finish up the level rather than having them sit there reading a book for 5 minutes+?

I love the here is your one life, don't mess up. concept, but unfortunately often times my friends end up dead and I'm the one finishing the level, listening to them complain about having nothing to do.

 

A-ha, I came up with something for HAN-D.

STACK_OVERFLOW: Killing an enemy while your drone capacity is maxed spawns nano-drones which fly to all teammates and apply small heals. This encourages HAN-D to play conservatively when teammates are relying on him for support, and also gives HAN-D the ability to drop onto a horde that is pursuing an injured teammate and attack with FORCED_REASSEMBLY, which ideally will thin the horde and simultaneously provide many small heals to the injured teammate quickly (since he's nearby and the nano-drones will reach him quickly).

 

I think all of these ideas are really good, although the Mercenary's might be a bit unbalanced. But I think multiplayer perks sound useful, though I haven't gotten to play any multiplayer yet so I don't know.

 

So something like Monster Tooth's effect then? And you say "small amount of health" which comes the obvious question: How much HP? 10? 20? Gotta say, kudos on the name of it though. Fits perfectly.

 

5-10 HP to start, but possibly scaling with HAN-D's level so that it stays relevant as players get larger and larger HP pools.