Crypto suggestions

I would like to see his drone get a range buff to make his drone travel further. His ultimate cool down could be slightly shorter.

I suggest make drone usefully in battle: when drone active you can shock enemy (like in launch trailer of season 3) to stun (read like paralyze) him.

@SERPENT_DESCEND 

Yep - fair enough, I've now taken out any mention of moving the drone outside of drone view to avoid confusion. It would be pretty ridiculous!

Yeah I could see that EMP range being less than scan range could make it hard to know if you're gonna hit but I think you should have to get in close(ish) to EMP so I think making the EMP range larger could make Crypto become too good. It's a fine balance!

Aha Yeah I do find that the problem with crypto is that unless you time your drone perfectly, by the time that you've got out of drone view and got to the battle then your opponents have plenty of time to recover. Let's shorten that window to make Crypto more effective and more fun!

Yes, your ideas are along the same tracks as mine. Here's my take on Crypto right now:-

Why is Crypto underpowered?

Crypto's entire kit usage relies on him standing still for short-medium amounts of time. In a game where movement is king and many of the top-tier characters have movement abilities, it is clear that the current benefit that the drone provides does not typically outweigh the cost of being stationary and not having access to a movement ability.

What approach should we take to improving Crypto?

I don't believe that Crypto needs any re-design but instead Respawn could bring down the opportunity cost of using the Crypto drone whilst enhancing the payoff and still keeping in theme for the character.

What this means is we want to make Crypto have to be stationary for less time and make the drone abilites more powerful so it is more worthwhile to use them.

Practical & User Experience Considerations

• We also want to consider only ideas that are reasonable to code for Respawn game designers (i.e. no autopilot nonsense).
• We want to only consider ideas that the average player would enjoy using & find easy to play with rather than making any overly complex abilities

DRONE USABILITY BUFFS

• Reduce the time delay between hitting your tactical (Q) and entering drone view.
  • The animation does not add anything to gameplay so I think that this should be almost instantaneous. (Crypto is a cyber enhanced human ffs he has no time for delay!)

• Whilst in drone view, the fire-button (left-click) should cause the drone to advance in a straight line toward the clicked location.
  • The drone will stop when it reaches the target location, is obstructed by object or the drone reaches the separation limit.
  • The drone's movement continues even when Crypto is not in drone view but new commands can only be issued from drone view.

DRONE POWER LEVEL BUFFS

• Increase Drone Scan Range to 50m.
  • EMP Range remains to be 30m
• EMP prevents usage of shield healing items for 20 seconds.
  • Shield Batteries,  Shield cells and Phoenix kits cannot be used.
  • Shield healing items that are mid-use are cancelled.
  • The flavour here is that cells seem to be electro magnetic devices so an EMP would definitely fry them!!
• EMP destroys Gibaltar Shield and Watson Ultimate.
  • It just makes sense thematically and makes Crypto fulfil a bit more of a counter-defense role.

CRYPTO PASSIVE

The detection ability of Neurolink should just be a part of the drone. The passive I'm suggesting instead is called Closed Circuitry.

• Crypto is not slowed by electrical effects.
  • Arc star, Crypto EMP and Watson pylons will not slow Crypto but will still damage him the same
• Crypto cannot be detected.
  • Bloodhound tactical and enemy Crypto drones do not show Crypto.
  • Digital Threat / Digital Scopes do not display Crypto in red highlight.

I believe that overall, these upgrades would make for a more well-rounded Crypto who was less dependent on being stationary and would have a touch more impact on the game without being overpowered.

I figured that since he designed the EMP he would design himself and his technology to have shielded circuitry (Faraday Cage) and so he would incidentally be resistant to electrostatic effects. I think its a very minor passive buff but I think it fits his character and would mean that he has something small to offer even when his drone is down. From a gameplay point of view its basically unacceptable that Crypto is affected by the slow of his ultimate.

The image is built in Krita... https://krita.org/en/

Krita is open source digital painting program that can do almost everything that Photoshop can do. All I did was extract the Icons from an image on google. Design a new one in Krita and put some text. I also took the colour scheme from the Apex character abilities image.

I figured that since he designed the EMP he would design himself and his technology to have shielded circuitry (Faraday Cage) and so he would incidentally be resistant to electrostatic effects. I think its a very minor passive buff but I think it fits his character and would mean that he has something small to offer even when his drone is down. From a gameplay point of view its basically unacceptable that Crypto is affected by the slow of his ultimate.

The image is built in Krita which is free software that you can download from https://krita.org/en/ 

Krita is open source digital painting program that can do almost everything that Photoshop can do. All I did was extract the Icons from an image on google. Design a new one in Krita and put some text. I also took the colour scheme from the Apex character abilities image.