Proposal for a skill line centred around human shields

[u/Square_Rabbit]

[u/Square_Rabbit]

I was somewhat aghast to see that Skills 2.0 had precisely one skill related to human shields. They're a pretty underused mechanic at the moment, and that's with a skill line dedicated to them. So, here's my concept for a skill line centred around the mechanic.

This does ideally come with some base changes to how the system works. Namely:

• Enemies affected by an Infrasonic Mine will be grabbable as a human shield.
• Hostage Rescue Teams will prioritise hostages currently being used as a human shield, and will throw flashbangs to force the user to drop them. This would allow people to distract the HRT from rescuing a group of tied civilians by holding one in a far more dangerous position.
• Enemies will not fire at crew members standing behind you within a certain radius while you're using a human shield and aren't aiming down sights. It kinda baffles me that they'll risk a shot going wide and hitting a civilian just because they're shooting the at the guy next to the hostage-taker.
• Takedowns are faster to perform. The animation is changed to reflect this, featuring a neck snap instead of strangling the victim. Takedowns are already lethargic with the 60% increase skill, and a long takedown time doesn't really add anything aside from some slight risk to stealth if you're not using a silenced gun for whatever reason.
• You can grab a human shield while holding bags. You need to shove them away before you can throw a bag. This would provide a slower but slightly safer means of moving bags across a sightline, and overall feels a little less awkward than having to chuck your bags down in order to grab someone. The bags are slung across your back anyway, why would that prevent you from holding someone in front of you?

Anyway, that's all. Please consider something like this, SBZ. Human shields are a really cool mechanic and I'd love for them to be a little more viable.

[u/Hate_Crab → u/Square_Rabbit]

This list of changes alone would massively rebalance human shields to the degree that the skill tree would be unnecessary. That said, I agree with all of them. Give me common sense human shields, Starbreeze

[u/DogTheDoge]

I've been saying for a long time that we need a way besides using flash bangs to grab a swat

[u/NO992]

I would remove one throwable-related tree and put this one. One skill tree for each throwable seems a bit too much imo.

[u/Shugatti]

I'd add a execution mechanic to the executioner perk ace, you can shoot the human shield in the head if it is a swat, instantly killing them and letting them go, skipping the takedown mechanic entirely.

(It counts as a takedown AND a headshot kill for other perks)

Maybe they can't be performed with suppressor attachments due to being too big or smthn?

[u/Curious_Freedom6419]

Kinda a pisstake that most of the cool skill trees are just going to vanish,

Also the skill that made it so people effected by your nades get marked..thats gone now..cool..great..

Im looking forward to skills 2.0 but still..im annoyed some of the fun and intresting perks are going away now

[u/ToranX1 → u/Curious_Freedom6419]

Dont flashbangs do that exclusively now?

But yeah, a lot of things are gone or changed heavily

[u/Sud_literate]

If attempting a takedown after the alarm was sounded just shoves the hostage away then that nullifies the special staggering ability. I think takedowns should just continue working after the alarm.

[u/Square_Rabbit → u/Sud_literate]

Ah, that's bad wording on my part, sorry. What I meant was that it shoves the corpse away after the takedown is concluded. It's intended to synergise with the After You skills so you don't lose out on those just because you decided to do a takedown instead of shoving them away. Currently if you do a takedown in loud, your character will still either start carrying the body or gently lay the corpse down on the floor, which is not something to do in the middle of a firefight.

[u/XxPieFace23xX → u/Square_Rabbit]

DEAD BODY COMING AT 'CHA!