Simple and Fair Idea to fix annoying and undeserved instant kills in multiplayer.
since the beginning of me3 there has been alot of problems with the ai for certain enemies that allows them to perform instant kills on players at seemingly random intervals even if the player is visually out of range or in the middle of making an attack move. this behavior while making the game more difficult causes significant problems in the higher tier difficulties. i came up with a what i belive to be a simple and fair method of having the game AI determine wether a instant kill is valid or invalid.
the first check would be a shield or barrier check.
if (playershield >0) do not execute instakill
one thing that always annoyed me is the seemingly arbitrary manner in which a enemy can simply and unblockably kill you with full protections. i have even seen a banshee grab a n7 paladin with full shielding directly through a deployed omnishield which is supposed to block attacks. This brings me to the second check the ability check.
the ability check will check to see if a player has used an ability that makes it partially or completely immune to damage.
for example
If player used biotic charge within the last 1-2 seconds consider player invalid instant kill target.
is omnishield deployed between enemy and target instant kill move breaks the shield only and starts a delay timer before the ai is allowed a second attempt preventing the instant break and kill combo.
and lastly i am adding this specifically for the phantom to allow for proper melee engagement. if a player character is equipt with a sword as it's main weapon there should be a unique quick time event to parry the death strike. this would finally give the melee centric n7 classes the ability to perform their intended anti phantom rolls more effectivly. this parry check would also apply to a paladins omnishield.
the third check is what i like to call the lag safeguard.
banshee will initiate instant kill request. banshee will wait for next player location packet before snapping player into the death animation. client positional data always wins if the player has moved away from the banshee a sufficiant distance between the instant kill start and the next datapacket the instant kill will be aborted rather than teleporting the lagging player half way across the map into a death grip.
in all these basic checks make the instant kill a finishing move that can be executed only against a unshielded vulnarable opponant rather than a arbitrary FU as it currently stands.
I think it's best you post this over at the BioWare Social Network in the Gameplay or Multiplayer forum.
But to be honest - with your suggestions, insta-kills would effectively be negated. They are meant to be a punishement for getting too close to the bosses. Since the Banshee magnet hand got mostly fixed I've never been grabbed when I didn't deserve it. As for the vanguard - you should get punished for charging into a Banshee, plain and simple. As for Phantoms - especially on higher difficulties the force of your charge is important, so you'd better spec into the power/force bonus tree of your passive skill-set. This way they can get staggered when you charge them and their insta-kill is disabled for this time.
Especially the quicktime event would make an insta-"kill" an insta-"laugh". When did you last fail the quicktime-event from a Husk-attack? Plus, this would need considerable development effort. With the last DLC coming out tomorrow, I don't think they'll change parts of the game this drastically anymore, you're 1 year too late for that.
