Suggestion talk:20070930 Defenestration- Feeding Drag vs. barricades & tall buildings

Feeding Drag and Tall Buildings, aka Defenestration

Timestamp:	Swiers 03:03, 29 September 2007 (BST)
Type:	Skill
Scope:	Zombies
Description:	"Defenestration" would be a zombie sub-skill of feeding drag. Defenestration attacks could only be made inside tall buildings (or at least, serve no purpose elsewhere) and (like feeding drag) only on survivors who have fewer than 12 HP's. Unlike normal feeding drags, there is only a 40% chance to hit (50% with tangling grasp bonus) when using a defenestration attack- failures simply miss, with both the target and zombie remaining inside. A successful hit with a Defenestration attack would result in both the target and the zombie moving out doors, as with feeding drag. However, the pair exits the building via a high window; as with jumping, this causes the death of the survivor, and has zero effect (other than producing suitable flavor text) on the zombie.

Discussion (Feeding Drag and Tall Buildings, aka Defenestration)

In short, this is a feeding drag that costs (on average) 2 AP, but auto kills the victim. It can only be used in tall buildings, which means it can be used in all NT buildings, but not in ANY malls.  Swiers 03:03, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Interesting. Definitely not a dupe. It'd be better if the zombie splattered on the ground too, its only 1AP.--  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 03:07, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Ok....so the zombie lands on the survivor. doc crook 03:18, 29 September 2007 (BST)

you say no effect on the zombie. does this mean he doesnt have to spend AP to stand back up?--'BP^Tmz 03:08, 29 September 2007 (BST)

The zombie has to take at least a bit of a hit... preferably death as well... with the chance of landing on it's head (headshot), otherwise this is just a mega-boost where none is needed -- boxy • talk • 04:01 29 September 2007 (BST)

This is a 50% chance to hit, for 12HP damage, giving 12XP + 10XP kill bonus... 50% chance of 22XP... and is it affected by the barricade status, as feeding drag is? -- boxy • talk • 04:29 29 September 2007 (BST)

Kill, maim frag DEFENESTRATE!!!! we need this now and screw wether it is balanced or not! I wanna chuck people out of windows!--Honestmistake 04:09, 29 September 2007 (BST)

oh i agree. this would be kick-ass, but it would make sense that the zombie "dies" and has to get back up.--'BP^Tmz 04:23, 29 September 2007 (BST)

To all the comments saying the zombie should die / need to stand up: take your zombie into tall building and jump out a window. Notice what happens? Nothing, that's what; you land outside the building, alive, standing, with no HP loss. Jumping is just another "exit building" button for a zombie. The game intentionally does this because otherwise jumping would allow zombies to hide as corpses, avoid headshots, and "regenerate" to full HPs for a cost of 2 APs, and its to avoid this that the above suggestion says "nothing happens to the zombie".  Swiers 05:02, 29 September 2007 (BST)

This is a beautiful concept, but feels really unbalanced. Let me do the maths: a potential 12 damage at 40% to hit is an average 4.8 damage/AP. That's incredibly high. For comparison, the combination of maxed firearms & mallrat skills has a combined average damage/AP of 1.707. (And maxed claws are 1.714, including Tangling Grasp.) So far, the balancing factors are that the zombie ends up outside, exactly as per a jump (and thus is potentially barricaded out), and the body is automatically dumped, correct? I would consider this implementation broken, not even considering how XP gain would work.

Just throwing out ideas here:

• Maybe if it required an unbroken grasp, and the accuracy was limited to 40% (the same as a grasp+bite)? Stealing from the handy calculated table, that would give an average chance of 25% for pulling off the defenestrate (as losing grasp would require another claw hit), and lower the direct damage/AP to (hopefully) a more reasonable level. (Excluding the claw, I think roughly ~3 dmg/AP? I'm out of practice on probability.) This would be a high-variance attack, something zombies are sorely lacking in. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 11:25, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Yeah, I'm with Revenant on this one. I would be willing to raise it to 45% accuracy, maybe %50, if on a miss, survivors have a, oh maybe, 15% chance of breaking free & shoving the zombie out instead. In such a case, the zombie would be "downed", since that would be kinda unexpected, and so have to spend ap standing up & going back inside. "No free lunches", "no risk no reward" and all that. --Slightly Lions 12:02, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Now that's an interesting idea – just have a miss carry the zombie outside without the survivor! That might be an even simpler (and better) balancing factor, no? ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 12:58, 29 September 2007 (BST)

I'd considered something like that (maybe the zombie goes out the window hit or miss), but also think the above math overstates the case. The only situation where it is that good is if a) the survivor is at exactly 12 AP (survivors often get dragged with a bit or much less) and b) the zombie doesn't want to re-enter the building. In most cases, there is an extra AP spent to re-enter the building (if they can) and the survivor looses maybe 10 HP average. Still quite good, but the limited circumstances make up for it; its not a general purpose attack, so comparing it to claws is off base. Still, if getting dumped on a miss seems worakable- it basically makes it a 2 AP attack.

Another question- should this be usable when the barricades are up? It makes sense it could be, and that would give it a purpose in non-tall buildings. The survivor would not die in that case, but it would still be a very useful new skill for zombies.  Swiers 19:24, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Absolutely it should work through barricades - provided that the zombie falls out the window on an unsuccessful attempt. --Uncle Bill 19:34, 29 September 2007 (BST)

I like it! Its a "normal" claw attack following a tangle and if it misses the survivor wriggles free and shoves you out the window! Hell i would even go for awarding the survivor some token XP (1 or 2) as he has now learned not to stand near the windows :) --Honestmistake 17:26, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Oh my God! I love this idea. Very nice. --Uncle Bill 19:17, 29 September 2007 (BST)

This is totally wicked! Where do I vote? -- John Rubin^{T! ZG} 21:28, 29 September 2007 (BST)

Not overpowered, zombies can only use it on low-HP survivors, but it would be so cool if there was a 50% chance of zombies body-slamming a survior out the window, killing the survior, and causing 5 HP damage to itself, and a 50% cahnce of the survivor sidestepping, and the unfortunate zombie tumbling out the window with no HP loss. Not really game-mech realistic, but sooooo cool. BoboTalkClown 00:14, 30 September 2007 (BST)

i guess it would be ok to allow it with barricades up. because then the zombie would have to tear them down to get back inside.--'BP^Tmz 06:08, 30 September 2007 (BST)

Man. People voting kill on this for the reason its an instant kill are fucking retarded. Its a 12 hp attack. Its just like a flare on a 12 hp person wearing a flak jacket, only a little more accurate. To call this an instant kill is to call any finishing attack an instant kill. Its just fucking stupid. --The Grimch ^{U! E!} 14:31, 1 October 2007 (BST)

Here's my idea for a change/revision: Leave everything the same, except the XP. When you succesfully defenestrate someone, you get ONLY the 10 XP kill bonus, you DO NOT get any XP for whatever HP the target has left. --Steakfish 02:31, 9 October 2007 (BST)

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