Suggestions/RejectedNovember2006

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This page is for the storage of Suggestions that have failed Peer Review and have been considered Poor and Unworthy Suggestions. This is not the place to put new Suggestions. The Suggestions Page is the queue for new Suggestions to be voted on and suggested. Any Suggestions that have not been voted on will be removed from this page.

Peer Rejected Suggestions

1st November 2006

Dogs

Timestamp: Jack Grudge 12:03, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Class
Scope: New Players
Description: From alsations chained up in junkyards, to the Malton Police Department's canine squad, and of course, the pet cemetary, the dogs of Malton are making their howls heard. Dog would be a new class, with its own skill tree (Dead dogs would have access to part of the zombie skill tree, and would probably also benefit from some of the dog skills learned in life). Obviously dogs would not be able to pick up or use objects (although FAKs/syringes could be used on them). The dog skill tree could include such skills as Guard (bonus to attack when in a building), Man's Best Friend (Bonus to attack when humans are present, but penalty when they are not), Scent Decay (Determine health of zombies), Lick Wounds (Heal Self: Regain 1 Health), Keen Nose (See zombies and survivors through fog), Clever (Open and Close Doors), Howl (Much like the zombie's groan) and equivalents of some human skills such as Body Building and Free Running. Dogs might also get some of the zombie skills (such as digestion) in life.

Some potential problems follow. Maybe people who like the idea in general can suggest solutions: Dogs would probably not have as many skill options as other survivors, and would max out more quickly. Live dogs would probably max out more quickly than zombie dogs (zombie skills are already based on the lack of item use). Yes, zombie dogs would raise questions of why the city isn't overrun with zombie squirrels and pigeons. Then again, cats don't get bird flu.

Left Queue: 18:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Limit MultiClass

Timestamp: SporeSore 17:41, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: balance change
Scope: All players
Description: There should be multiclass limits to encourage each character to play as either a zombie or a human, but not both. This is a war between zeds and harmanz not zedmanz. This could be implemented in one of two ways:
  • Players can only purchase either human or zombie skills above second(or some other defined) level.
  • The purchase of a skill above a certain level removes one skill of equal level from the opposite class, if it exists.


This change should be implemented retroactively, based on each character's original class.

Left Queue: 18:49, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

Horde Leader

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 08:01, 1 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Zombies
Description: This is a skill for high level zombies to help newbies and would require a level of 10 or higher to take. From now on new corpse class characters would always start in a location with a Horde Leader (as soon as the skill is implemented and people take it). The more zombies with the skill there are in a location the more likely it is for new characters to spawn there, but the increase in odds would cap at 10 people with the skill to prevent every new zombie from joining supergroups of hundreds of players. Every bunch of players with this skill numbering 10 people or higher would share an equal chance of a new player appearing there.

This would provide two advantages:

1) New zombies would be likely to spawn in a decent sized group of mid to high level players. This would increase their chances of participating in safehouse breaches and getting some xp.

2) The group of mid to high level players would benefit by having more allies there to soak up damage.

It mainly helps the newbs out though. There wouldn't be a way to tell when it causes a new player to spawn near you but it's something for any player who thinks "Around me would be a good place for someone starting off to be".

Left Queue: 08:26, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

2nd November 2006

Renewed Ankle Grab

Timestamp: Mattimer 03:22, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Balance change
Scope: Zombies.
Description: Ankle grab, as it stands now (or crawls), drops the AP needed to "stand up" from 10 AP to 1 AP. To me this seems like too much of a drastic change for just one skill. It's hard enough to kill a zombie without having to worry about it getting back up a half an hour later to attack you again. Recovering from death should take more AP than it does to move one city block. It takes more than 10 AP to kill a zombie and it could cost quite a bit of ammo and that should be reflected by how long it takes for a zombie to get back up. Yeah, getting Ankle Grab is an accomplishment that should be rewarded, but 10 to 1 is just too much. I propose that we raise the AP it takes to stand up with ankle grab from 1 AP to 5 AP. That would be 2 and a half hours to earn the AP to play again, which is still much less than the time it takes to find enough ammo to kill a zombie in the first place. This would help newer players withstand zombie assaults or just random zombie encounters. Nobody wants to spend all that effort and AP earlier on in the game and spend it searching for ammunition and killing a zombie only to have it stand up in as much AP as it takes to reload your last pistol clip.
Left Queue: 12:50, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Chain Link Fences

Timestamp: Leeksoup 04:10, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Defence
Scope: Survivors
Description: I was reading the GK/RK prevention idea above. I like it, but it seems to be getting shot down, so I thought up this idea.

Chain Link Segments can be found in Junkyards (5%), Factories (2%) and Streets (outside, 2%). They take up 5 inventory spaces, due to their mass. While you have one in your inventory, and you step into (not outside of, into) a Junkyard, you can Assemble the fence for 15 AP. You can only Assemble fences if you own the Construction skill. This, effectively, repairs the hole in the Junkyard's fence, but this fence can be re-cut with wirecutters.

But wait! There's more! If you're in a building with a generator connected, you can Assemble the fence around it for 15 AP. This makes it impossible to attack, unless you cut the fence with wirecutters. There's a downside, though- it can't be refueled with the fence up. Generators inside Malls cannot be fenced, either- Malls are too big and open for a fence segment to have much effect. I know the main concern with GK'ing is inside Malls. I just think it's unfair to have the waiting horde to bust through the mall barricades and be unable to kill the generator, since they're such resource points. There cannot be more than one fence at a location. Fences cannot be put up around Transmitters, since you need to be next to them to operate them. You cannot repair the padlocks on factories with fences.

This will hopefully create a more reliable power supply, since casual passers-by won't take an axe to your generator. In order to kill one, you'll need to carry wirecutters, and really, who carries those?

Left Queue: 12:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Hunger (Edit)

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 21:07, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Zombie Skill
Scope: You ache to feed, and cannot control yourself if you see.. so much.. FOOD!!!
Description: Hunger:
  • Zombie skill, appears as a sub-skill of Digestion. Adds no benefits to your human character.

Your zombie has +5% to hit with bite attacks versus survivors. If you kill a survivor with a bite attack it is possible to earn some bonus XP.

  • As an additional bonus (for the risks involved with fighting a lot of survivors, often by yourself): Whenever you kill a survivor with a bite attack.. you gain +1 XP per 10 (rounding down) survivors present at the time of that kill. To a maximum of +5 XP! (This bonus is to reward kamikazee zombie attacks in safehouses where usually at least 1 survivor may be active and often they may kill you before you make your kill.)

Why?:

It's a bite bonus vs survivors only. Basically allows your zombie to go "Berzerk with the bites" if you're low on AP, or likely to be gunned down by survivors shortly after entering. The main reason behind this is it buffs digestion and possibly infectious bite slightly, because you stand a better chance of getting more bites in sooner. Especially if you are going to be on the receiving end of some serious gunfire shortly, that digestion is needed...

The XP bonus, is another small benefit for this skill's usefulness, and zombies doing what they do. Consider it a Fear/Horror bonus +1 XP per 10 survivors you just made see you do a kill on one of their own!

The max, +5 XP on a survivor kill (if done with a bite attack), is not only quite hard to do.. but with at least 50 survivors present.. how fast can you make that kill before getting headshot with those shotguns? (It's also nice that it adds to the list of things bite can do, without taking away from the reliability of the claw attack.)

It's an entirely reasonable skill, and a reasonable XP grant, if you can earn it every now and again. It makes those lengthy seiges all the more satisfying to the zombie player when they break in every now and again...

Left Queue: 12:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Sentry

Timestamp: Heretic144 23:44, 2 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Survivor Skill
Scope: Survivors who travel in packs
Description: General military skill. Allows you to stand sentry in a building for a variable (you specify) number of hours. Each hour standing sentry costs 1AP and AP aren't regenerated while standing sentry. If a zombie enters the building while a survivor is standing sentry, there is a 50% chance the survivor automatically fires at them and ceases to be standing sentry.

This might appear to be a huge advantage at first, but if you think about it, it really isn't. A survivor might stand inside for a good ten hours (and 10AP!) before firing a shot at an entering zed. Sure, this is helpful, but consider the same survivor instead stepping outside and unleashing a good six or seven shots with the same 10AP. (a couple AP taken for movement) It offers an alternative to the current slugfest and encourages both suvivors and zombies to work together.

Left Queue: 12:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

3rd November 2006

Suppression Fire

Timestamp: 2031 EST 01:38, 3 November 2006 (correcting timestamp, not the author --Funt Solo 08:25, 3 November 2006 (UTC))
Type: New Survivor Skill
Scope: All Survivors
Description: Suppression Fire is a skill used by the pistol and shotgun, basically it will fire off every round remaining in the clip with one action. It takes two AP to use, maybe more, and attacks several zombies chosen at random. You take a 20% to 25% accuracy penalty because of the speed at which you fire your weapon, so it is only useful at the higher levels. The skill is supposed to be used in situations where a larger group of zombies breaches a building with fewer survivors in it since now survivors must dump bodies one at a time.
Left Queue: 09:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Driving Hunger

Timestamp: RSquared 13:34, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Movement tree, Prereq: Lurching Gait
Description: Zombies who purchase it may move into a square containing at least survivor for 0 AP. In order to prevent zerging (especially pack zerging, which would be scary), I suggest a counter to hold 5 Stamina Points, which are reduced by one each time this skill is (automatically) used - when SP are zero, the skill does not activate. SP are not visible to the player, and regenerate one point each time an AP is gained. The messages could look like this when the ability activates:
  1. "Your hunger for flesh incites you to greater speed."
  2. "Despite your hunger, you are unable to force your dead muscles too quickly."

Gameplay notes: this essentially provides a zed with a single free attack on a surivor (by saving it the AP required to move into the square) and a powerful way to follow a fleeing survivor in active combat (as the survivor must use AP to move, but the zed may be able to follow for free if he is fast enough on the draw). The 5 SP limit avoids the possibility that a huge pack could follow a spy to cross the entirety of Malton, and allows for the survivor to still flee in the above situation if he has an AP advantage. It is highly unlikely that a zed would kill more than one survivor during his turn, and most of the time would only receive a single AP bonus.

(optional interaction notes) This skill would complement "Sprint" (above) in that one would be a bonus to survivors and the other a bonus to zeds. Also, this is subtly different to Adrenaline Rush (which I object to as a zed skill, though not as a survivor skill), suggested here: Suggestions/2nd-Nov-2006 It could be implemented as an 'alternative effect' for a zed with Sprint or Adrenaline Rush.

Left Queue: 09:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

access problems

Timestamp: Death7 21:31, 3 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: improvement
Scope: anyone who wants to use the game but it is blocked by a web filter
Description: to access the game past the web filter i can use https:// (the

sites ip address)i can log in but if i do anything other than move it says "invalid

referrer" i don't know if you can fix this but if you could that would help those who want to play from school, work etc.

Left Queue: 09:24, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

4th November 2006

Broken Glasses

Timestamp: Crazylilvietguy 00:13, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Small Search Tweak
Scope: New Survivors
Description: For those of you who play Shartak, you know of the "broken knife" thing. For those of you that don't, you will "find a broken knife, which you discard" if there is nothing to be found in that square. Now, many people new to UD will search random areas, wasting too much ap. So, I suggest that we have a similar feature, but you rather find "a pair of broken glasses."
Left Queue: 09:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

NecroTranq Syringe v3

Timestamp: 12:12, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New Weapon / New Skill.
Scope: Scientists / Survivors.
Description: In attempting to capture and study zombie specimens, NecroTech scientists have had some limited success in developing a zombie tranquiliser.


  • New Scientist Skill: Undead Anatomy
  • Prerequisites: Lab Experience
  • Effect: Increases accuracy of an attempted NecroTranq syringe attack by 15%, but only against a zombie.


  • New Item: NecroTranq Syringe
  • Base accuracy: 15% (maximum accuracy vs. humans)
  • Maximum accuracy: 30% (with Undead Anatomy vs. a zombie)
  • Capacity: 1-use weapon (an attack attempt damages the fragile syringe beyond use, whether or not it was successful)
  • Inventory: 1 space
  • Locations: NecroTech Building: 6% (1% taken from DNA Extractor, 2% taken from GPS Unit).
  • Effect vs. Human: successful attack does 1HP damage to the target and provides 1XP to the attacker.
  • Effect vs. Zombie: successful attack does 1HP damage to the target and provides 5XP to the attacker. Additionally, the zombie is tranquilised (see below).


  • Tranquilised:
    • Movement between squares now costs 2AP (this essentially switches off Lurching Gait, and has no effect on a zombie without Lurching Gait).
    • Cure #1: A zombie that carries out a successful Infectious Bite is cured.
    • Cure #2: A zombie that dies (<1HP) is cured.
    • Cure #3: Once the zombie has spent 10AP, doing anything, the tranquiliser wears off.
Left Queue: 09:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Ruins Of The Damned

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 19:41, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Zombie Skill
Scope: A very, very slow rate of regeneration (healing) when at a graveyard, wasteland square OR inside of a ransacked building
Description: Ruins Of The Damned:
  • Zombie skill, appears as a sub-skill of Ransack. Adds no benefits to your human character.

Your zombie has a limited form of regeneration (healing). You heal 1 Life every 12 hours. This rate of healing is 1 Life every 6 hours at a graveyard, wasteland or ransacked location.

  • Your zombie only gets this healing if they are still standing at that location when the healing timer goes off. To simplify this timer is set for regular intervals during the day throughout Malton (just like when you recover AP.) So 2 times a day at regular locations: zombies gain 1 life, and 4 times a day at graveyards, wastelands and ransacked buildings, zombies present gain 1 Life. (Max. 2 Life a day at any other location, and max 4 life a day at the better ones.)
  • This healing is weak in the extreme (it doesn't cost you any AP or inventory items, that's why)! But it has to be, survivors have to be able to kill zombies to get XP.. but if survivors don't keep the pressure on zombies.. they'll keep getting up.. and for those who haven't even been gunned down.. heal up all battle damage, eventually.
  • This skill allows for a new zombie tactic of being able to hold locations, especially ransacked buildings. But your zombie has to remain standing to do so, so this skill is offset by survivors who get out there and drop the Z's! So zombies with this skill can just stand there and you can focus on your other chacters for a couples days, checking in on this zombie periodically to see if they got taken down... Zombies are patient, dead things, this is something they can do, forever if they have to.
  • This skill is a reflection of "Time being on their side" survivors who don't make efforts to control the standing zombie population, and take back ransacked buildings will find that now even the zombies can be hard to cleanse from a suburb once they've gotten a foothold! Even survivors turned zombie may desire this skill, so when they're stuck at a revive point hopefully they won't get headshot every single day they check in on them.. so they will get that damn revive, eventually.

Why?: Survivors have so many options available to them when it comes to tactics: barricades, free running, searching, generators.. grouping up, etc. Zombies don't really have much in the way of taking and holding territory except ransack (which is effective, until cleaned up) this skill is meant to work in tandem with that (subskill of ransack, so it takes a while to earn it!) Zombies just standing there, holding a building, forces survivors to have to put a little more effort into removing those zombies, so they can dump the body and clean up their suburb.

It allows the zombies greater latitude to "punish" survivors for failing to keep a suburb, or work together. Zombies don't need/give a crap about their Life totals, but survivors will! As a survivor you will not like to almost kill a zombie one day, free run back to your safehouse, go back the next day and find out that same zombie has healed back a bit of Life.. you'll like it even less if several zombies are also healing. But miltiply it by a thousand or a million.. those zombies are only healing 2 or 4 Life per day (each, if they have this skill).. hence the very very low healing rate to prevent that being a problem.

It means you're going to have to use up a bit more ammunition the more time you waste not dealing with zombie hordes in your area. Headshots are still good, shotguns are still good.. hiding from zombies forever hoping they just go away, not good.

Left Queue: 09:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Custom attacks

Timestamp: Wheresthefun 21:41, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: gamemechanic(ish)
Scope: Everyone
Description: For roleplaying purposes you may change what the message whoever you attacked recieved, for instance you could replace "soandso punches you for 1 damage" with "so and so backhands you for 1 damage shouting, 'TAKE THAT'." This would mostly just be to make things more interesting, and would not be required. It would show up when you chose to edit your profile.
Left Queue: 09:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Sewers (essentially, a hiding place for zombies)

Timestamp: Schizmo 23:55, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Balance Change?
Scope: New Zombies
Description: This applies mainly to new zombies, but can be taken advantage of by older zombies as well.

This suggestion was previously modified, and in accordence with the rules, has been re-submitted with the changes.

The idea is that, much like Malls and Power Stations, the Zombies need a place to hide out away from the human assaults, the same way the humans hide from zombies. Everyone knows that the main goal of the humans is to hide out in barricaded buildings and avoid the zombie hoards that lurk on the city streets. But when one of those humans happens to get themselves killed because they're new to the game, or even if they become PK'd by another human, it's tough to adjust to the life of being a zombie.

I propose that the empty, and otherwise useless blocks of land (streets and alleys) become spotted with entrances to Sewers that zombies can use to hide out away from humans.

WHAT IT DOES:

  • Gives new zombies a place to build up in numbers and hide out from humans.
  • Sewers can be entered by humans, however the amount of waste and corpses would automatically infect the human (infectious bite, except, no bite). In addition, the cost of movement to humans in a sewer would be 2 AP per block. This is a way to deter, but not prevent, human access to sewers, as a way to protect new zombies from being killed and constantly having to spend 10 AP to stand.
  • Should the Ruins of the Damned suggestion be considered and/or implimented, the Sewers could also be a place for the added regeneration.

WHAT IT DOESN'T DO:

  • Zombies would NOT be able to drag humans into the sewers, but should a human be IN a sewer, zombies would be allowed to drag the humans out onto the streets, with the Feeding Drag skill.

Open to any and all suggestions for improvement.

Left Queue: 09:41, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

5th November 2006

Detect Ransack

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 01:24, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement
Scope: All
Description: Lit buildings are detectable from adjacent squares, I suggest doing the same with ransacked buildings. You'd be able to see the broken windows, doors, and clouds of dust from a little bit away. This would prove useful to survivors when deciding whether to risk going to a building or not, and would nicely balance out zombies being able to tell what buildings are lit around them. While a lit building is highlighted yellow perhaps ransacked buildings could be highlighted dark gray instead.
Left Queue: 10:19, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

6th November 2006

Lower Revive Costs If You're Not Killed By A Zombie

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 06:31, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: balance change
Scope: Revivification
Description: For a while revives were pretty cheap compared to the high cost zombies had of breaking through barricades and killing and Kevan rightfully made revives cost 10AP to perform. Here's the news brief:

"Memo to NecroTech staff: The subjects are developing a resistance to our current antigens - syringe barrels must now be fully emptied to guarantee successful revivification, even if this takes longer and puts support staff at risk."

Today I saw a PKer waste five survivors in one day then leave on the line, which I'll paraphrase "that's five of you f**got asses, or was it six? see you all again soon!" It occured to me that since PKing has a pretty low AP cost compared to the high cost of a zombie killing someone that death by PK might not deserve the same 10AP revive cost.

Here's what I suggest. Reviving someone who was killed by a survivor would now only cost 1AP, as previously. There'd be no way to check in advance which zombies were killed which way, just after pressing the revive button you'd get a message:

"On close inspection you noticed the subject was killed by a human and was not infected with the newest most resistant strain of the virus. The procedure was easier than expected."

All other revives would stay 10AP. This is balanced. Cheaper kill cost results in a cheaper revive cost. It falls in line with the current UD policy of allowing PKing but making it less effective (half xp for attacks). Dying would still be bad, you'd stil become a zombie and need to wait for someone to spend a syringe. But it'd remove the penalty intended to make things fair for people playing zombies.

Left Queue: 10:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

NecroTranq Syringe v4

Timestamp: 13:41, 6 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New Weapon / New Skill.
Scope: Scientists / Survivors.
Description: In attempting to capture and study zombie specimens, NecroTech scientists have had some limited success in developing a zombie tranquiliser.


  • New Scientist Skill: Undead Anatomy
  • Prerequisites: Lab Experience
  • Effect: Increases accuracy of an attempted NecroTranq syringe attack by 15%.


  • New Item: NecroTranq Syringe
  • Base accuracy: 15%
  • Maximum accuracy: 30% (with Undead Anatomy vs. a zombie)
  • Capacity: 1-use weapon (an attack attempt damages the fragile syringe beyond use, whether or not it was successful)
  • Inventory: 1 space
  • Locations: NecroTech Building: 6% (1% taken from DNA Extractor, 2% taken from GPS Unit).
  • Effect vs. Human: none. You waste 1AP but the syringe is left intact. A message tells you that "the syringe has no effect against humans".
  • Effect vs. Zombie: successful attack does 0HP damage to the target and provides 4XP to the attacker. Additionally, the zombie is tranquilised (see below).


  • Tranquilised:
    • Whilst tranquilised, the zombie is at -5% on all attacks.
    • Cure #1: A zombie that carries out a successful Digestive Bite is cured.
    • Cure #2: A zombie that dies (<1HP) is cured.
    • Cure #3: Once the zombie has spent 10AP, doing anything, the tranquiliser wears off.


  • Note: - The negative effects of being tranquilised don't stack. A DNA scan could show that the zombie is tranqed - otherwise, sticking a tranqed zombie just wastes a syringe.
Left Queue: 10:22, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

7th November 2006

Guard

Timestamp: Tirno 06:15, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: action
Scope: Survivors
Description: Overview: This action permits survivors within barricaded buildings to stand guard over their barricade for an amount of time. The intention of this action is to deter or counter a coordinated zombie attack in a siege situation.

User interface description: [GUARD] barricade for [TIME] hours with [ATTACK]

  • [Guard] is the action button
  • [TIME] is a drop down selector with values of 1 hour to 4 hours, in .5 hour increments. Default value is 1 hour. Selection depends upon available AP.
  • [ATTACK] is an attack drop down selector, using the normal attack convention.

Prerequisite conditions: The following conditions must be met in order to guard the barricade:

  • The player must be in a building
  • The building must be barricaded to at least Very Strongly
  • The player must have at least 2 AP
  • The player must not be infected (infected survivors cannot concentrate on guarding)

Game Mechanics: When the player clicks the [GUARD] button, he expends 1AP per half-hour that he will guard the barricade of his building, with a minimum of 2AP spent to guard for 1 hour. A value will be stored indicating the end time of guard duty, i.e. GUARD_TIME = CURRENT_TIME + GUARD_HOURS, at which time the survivor will return to resting. A value will be stored indicating the selected attack mode. Guards with zero remaining AP and guard time remaining see "You settle in to guard the barricades" rather than "Exhausted, you can go no further."

  • If a zombie enters the building from outside (not from inside other parts of a large building, not if it stands up inside the building), the guarding survivors will attempt their selected attacks (as normal) in order of least guard time remaining, i.e. sorted from lowest to highest by the value GUARD_TIME - CURRENT_TIME. If the zombie dies as a result of the attacks, its body drops inside the building.
  • The survivors that attempted attacks drop out of guard mode. Thus, each guarding survivor gets one attack per guard duty, whether it is successful or not. The AP cost of that attack is included in the AP cost of the guard mode. The attack will appear in the player's "Since your last turn" list.
  • While guarding, the survivor has a bold warning that indicates, "You are guarding the barricades." Any AP spent on any action, aside from talking, cancels guard mode.
  • Guarding survivors also appear in a different list of names to other survivors. "Names are guarding the barricades." or "Number survivors are guarding the barricades. [List names]". "Barricades" is replaced with "doors" if the barricades have been torn down below "Lightly barricaded".
  • Zombies can't tell the difference between resting harmans and guarding harmans. They do see the list of attacks made against them.
  • Guard mode cannot be used to attack other survivors.

Expected gameplay effects:

  • Survivors that congregate in strongholds will spend their last few AP of each day to guard barricades.
  • Survivors not in large groups will not guard barricades, as one attack per survivor is not much good against even one zombie. Groups would need at about 14 guards with loaded shotguns and Advanced Shotgun Training to be reasonably assured of stopping one invading unarmored 50-HP zombie, or 42 guards with axes and Axe proficiency.
  • Survivors expecting attack will use the 1 hour guard period to cover the expected assault. This gives them one attack of opportunity at the cost of 2 AP. Headshotters will particularly like this option.
  • Very coordinated survivor groups may establish guard duty guidelines (i.e. Graffiti "If you intend to sleep here, put in two hours guard duty."), perhaps even guard duty rotations.
  • Survivors with remaining guard duty time will not use AP on other tasks, thus cancelling guard mode, unless they are vital, i.e. attacking zombies coming from other parts of large buildings.
  • Zombies will be somewhat deterred from making an assault on heavily populated strongholds since the first, perhaps second through the door will certainly get iced, perhaps by a head-shotter.
  • Very large coordinated zombie attacks will absorb the losses and press on if they can get many zombies through the door. They may elect to send in cannon fodder zombies first to absorb the guards' attacks.
  • Server load will be reduced because the mass of survivor players monitoring a siege will refresh less often, trusting to their guard mode to get at least one shot off on attacking zombies.
  • This action will encourage group activity among both survivors and zombies.
Left Queue: 08:26, 7 November 2006 (UTC)

8th November 2006

Communication

Timestamp: Reaper with no name 16:44, 8 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Anyone level 20 or above
Description: Let's face it: Most players don't talk much unless they have to. Why? Because it uses up AP that could be better spent in other ways. At the same time, many players have accumulated hundreds or even thousands of XP that is of no use to them. Well, this suggestion seeks to solve both of those problems in one swift stroke.

This skill can be purchased by anyone (survivor or zombie) that is level 20 or above at 100 XP. What this does is put an option on the player's profile page called "XP speech". When not selected, this option does nothing. But when it is selected, talking no longer costs any AP. Instead, the player will spend 10 XP each time they talk. If the player doesn't have enough XP to talk, the ability automatically turns off and must be turned on again after the player has accumulated enough XP.

This will encourage communication between players by removing the problem of taking away from the amount of actions a person can make that day. At the same time, it minimizes spam talking by putting a fairly high cost on said speaking (talk 10 times and you've just wasted 100 XP). And since this ability can be turned on and off at will, players who don't want to use it can just leave it off or not get the skill.

Left Queue: 11:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

New Skills – Stench of Decay, Festering Boils, Open Sores

Timestamp: Phrenis 18:54, 8 November 2006 (GMT)
Type: Zombie Skills
Scope: Zombies, varying from low to high levels dependent on the particular skill.
Description: Stench Of Decay

Decreases the chance to be hit when attacked up to 5% (from 3% in the Festering Boils skill) because of the distracting presence of the smell, and causes the Scent Death skill to pick you up from 3 blocks away as opposed to the normal 2. Festering Boils is a prerequisite skill for Stench of Decay, and does not work when you are a survivor.

Festering Boils

Decreases the chance to be hit by 3% as survivors are distracted by the smell and appearance. Festering Boils has no prerequisites, and does not work when you are a survivor.

Open Sores

Decreases the chance to be hit by 3% as survivors are distracted by the smell and appearance. Festering Boils is a prerequisite skill for Open Sores, as well as the skill being unavailable until the zombie reaches level 10 (like Headshot in Zombie Hunter). Open Sores does not work when you are a survivor.

(Rewritten to fulfil the one-suggestion-a-day rule, and to tie the category of skills together)

Note: I think people are misunderstanding the stats. The first skill gives a 3% reduction. The second one doesn't reach 8%; it only increases the 3% to 5% (+2%).

Left Queue: 11:57, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

9th November 2006

Necrotech Tracking Chip

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 04:19, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Item
Scope: Survivors
Description: As faith in their own revival formulas grew and the odds of escape shrunk many Necrotech personnel began making plans for after death. A tracking chip was developed to draw attention of field units and facilitate their own revival. Found in necrotech buildings (3%, half taken from GPS) then injected under the skin these chips would send off a faint tracking signal and transmit a pre-entered message.

Explanation of buttons and AP Cost and stuff:

In powered NT buildings people with the item would have a button "Program Chip". Clicking on it would bring up a text field a lot like the one for cell phones. You could save a brief message. Then you'd press a button marked "Inject" and it'd be saved under your skin. The total AP cost would be 2. It'd have no effect while alive but once killed the chip would activate.

This would allow anyone with Necronet Access inside powered NT buildings to find you after pressing another button "Track Personnel" (1AP). Everyone chipped within a 4 square radius would show up on the scan. It'd be a list of names arranged from earliest killed to latest with a profile link, their current location, time of death, and the message. It'd look like this:

Darkman: Deceased 3 days 2 hours 45 minutes (3 west 1 north)
Please help! I'm an active medic and need to get back into action
Redplex: Deceased 2 days 14 hours 37 minutes (1 east 1 north)
Damn it! They got me! Check up on St. Pious, they must have broken in!
HeadmasterQ: Deceased 2 days 10 hours 3 minutes (right outside)
I have brain rot. I'll be waiting outside the Necrotech for a chance to slip in and get brought back
etc...

The process of being revived would damage the chip and require you to find a new one for the next time you die. And when a zombie if you change your mind about being tracked there'd be a new option to attack: "Tracking Chip". This would have a 100% chance of tearing the chip out of your body.

This doesn't buff humans since it doesn't decrease the cost of reviving someone, but it does let you see who's been waiting longest. Better someone who's been waiting a few days get a revive than someone who just died. This doesn't hurt zombies since it doesn't increase the overall amount of revives, just averages out the amount of time any individual person has to wait.

  • Clarification: You'd have to be standing to show up on the scan.
Left Queue: 12:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

"Epic" characters

Timestamp: Leeksoup 23:11, 9 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: new mechanic
Scope: everyone
Description: Everyone's seen the big bad boss-type characters in everything made about zombies. Why don't we have them in Malton?

The gist of it is this, and I'll get to mechanics later: Zombies would have a single player declared "Horde Leader" and survivors would have a single person declared "Malton Commander".

First, the mechanics of picking. Every two(?) days, the server would check if there is a Malton Commander and a Horde Leader/Malton Commander. If there is NOT, it would pick one currently standing Zombie/Survivor with all the zombie/survivor skills (including Brain Rot for zombies. Note, you only need zombie skills for Leader and you only need survivor skills for Commander, not both) and send them a prompt, to be seen upon login: "Do you want to be Horde Leader/Malton Commander?" To prevent abuse, you would be unable to do anything until you pick either Yes or No. If Yes, you become Leader/Commander, with all its benefits and disadvantages. If No, the server picks another random zombie/survivor that meets the requirements. You lose this special status upon being killed.

Now, the mechanics of Horde Leader. If you picked Yes, you would become Horde Leader. This would change your title on the map from "You see X zombies here" to "You see X zombies here, including the massive Horde Leader!" Additionally, your position would be marked with a bright red asterisk. In return, you would get 200 HP max (and given upon becoming Leader, so you have full health), and an attack and barricade buff. Claw attacks would have 5 damage and 75% accuracy (better than a pistol!) and bites would have 7 damage 55% accuracy. Because of the high damage, they would be affected by flak jackets, but it's still 4 damage and 6 damage! NOTE: There is only one Horde Leader. This would not be a universal buff. There is only one, and the survivors get something too. In addition, you would get a survivor damage negation that stacks with a flak jacket, of a 20% decrease in damage over 5. It's like having another flak on, on top of your current one (if you have one).

Now for Malton Commander. After clicking Yes on the prompt, your inventory is emptied and stored in the server. (So you don't actually lose anything, it's just stored.) You are then given:

  • An M1A1 Assault Rifle with 6 damage per shot, 75% accuracy and 14 bullets in a clip (unbuffed by skills).
  • 3 extra clips
  • SWAT-grade ceramic body armor with 40% damage negation to attacks above 5 (just like the Horde Leader, if he had a flak)
  • A special radio that allows you to broadcast from anywhere, if it's powered or not, or even outside.
  • A specially designed combat helmet that prevents you from being killed by pk'ers. You can be really, really hurt, but if you go below 0 you can stand back up as a survivor AND as Malton Commander. Sorry, PK'ers, no farming the Commander in hopes of becoming it.
  • Emergency Medical Supplies, 6 count, that heal 15 HP anywhere (unbuffed by skills).
  • A DNA extractor
  • A GPS
  • Two MK4 NT syringes, designed to only take 5 AP

You still only have 60 HP (you need all the survivor skills), but you are a survivor and survivors naturally last longer per life. You can search for more materials in a Fort. No one but the Commander can get these supplies there. He has a 100% chance of finding *something*, but it may be something he didn't need (like a GPS.) He can find all other things (pistols, shotguns, FAKs etc) in their normal places at normal rates.

Remember, there are only ONE OF EACH out at a time. If they die, a new one is picked in TWO DAYS. They still have the normal AP cap of 50, and the same AP generation rate. It would just add that 'epic' feel if there were some truly great threats out there, for both sides.

Left Queue: 12:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

10th November 2006

Grasping Hands

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 03:33, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New zombie skill
Scope: A whole lot of zombie limbs sticking through the windows..
Description: Appears on zombie skills tree as a sub-skill of Tangling Grasp, adds no benefits to your human character.

Your zombie is one of many who can't keep their hands out of the windows, constantly trying to grab at survivors within. Every now and again you get to take a swing at a survivor entering this building using free running.

Whoa, WTF?!?! Okay, the game mechanics are actually pretty simple.. stick with me on this.

  • Each time a survivor moves from one building to another using free running at there is at least 1 zombie outside that building with this skill:, the computer will select at random, only 1 zombie with this skill outside that building to see if they get to make an attack. (Multiply times a thousand or a million, is not a problem, only 1 zombie at that location ever gets to take that swipe at your survivor.. but the more you move each square has it's risks.)
  • The base chance is 1% that this chosen zombie may get to take a swing at the survivor (it's pretty rare.)
  • This chance goes up by +1% per 100 zombies (rounding down) in total at this location.. to a maximum of +4%, for a maximum total of a 5% chance to make an attack! (That's for 400 or more zombies outside of this location.. just to get the max chance to attack.)
  • So your zombie finally gets to take a swipe! Well it isn't a free action... whether you're online or not it will cost 1 AP to make this 1, single claw attack on this survivor (normal chances, normal damage), if you hit you hit, you miss, you miss. You can still gain XP, and kill a survivor as per any "normal" combat situation. Your zombie doesn't have a choice, if you buy this skill, you will use 1 AP every now and again taking a swing at the occasional survivor trying to enter this building.
  • If your survivor is killed, they still die on the square they just entered (movement was not prevented.. just proved fatal!)

Exceptions:

  • Moving around inside of a large building is not free running, therefore zombies with this skill do not get to attack you with it (unless you just entered that building using free running.)
  • Moving from outside of a building into a building or vice versa, is not free running so there is no grasping hands involved.

This attack is a reflection of a survivor getting caught by suprise at a vulnerable moment in transit from building A to building B. Maybe you got your back slashed open as you climbed into the window.. maybe you jumped onto the other building, but the horde of zombies reaching up from below caused you to screw up and twist your ankle as you landed (or one grabbed your leg while you went down the fire escape to the window).. either way this skill means your zombie is very hands on and distracting, and tends to get their "cheap hits" in on survivors every once in a blue moon even while offline.

This skill does require Tangling Grasp as a pre-requisite, so you will have to be a fairly experienced zombie just to purchase it, as well as having maxed out claw skills would help.

Nerfs Free running? No it doesn't, it makes free running involve risk. You move from one building to another and it only costs you 1 AP.. pretty sweet. But, now you will be aware there is a chance however small you may get the occasional claw swipe taken out of you, so going long distances using free running will be risky. Usually not fatal, but you may have to use an FAK here and there just to keep from dying. Your movement is not prevented, nor does it cost more AP, etc. or any of that hassle.. it just involves risk. Especially entering buildings using free running if there are a LOT of zombies outside. Then again, 1 out of every 20 survivors entering that building getting attacked.. not bad odds.

Left Queue: 11:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Save The Newbs!

Timestamp: Canuhearmenow Hunt! 15:34, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Class Alteration.
Scope: Those weak little Corpses.
Description: Most Newbs start as the Corpse thinking it will be fun, well, that "Fun" goes away after being headshotted by a lvl.38 Fireman with bad spelling. What I propose is to give 80XP to all people starting out as Corpses, which means they can get to Lurching Gait or a claw attack upgrade faster.
Left Queue: 11:43, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

11th November 2006

Attacking Scream

Timestamp: Preasure 11:51, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New zombie skill
Scope: Feeding Groan
Description: As the older zombies grow more vicious, they begin to roar and scream as they attack their prey

As a subskill of Feeding Groan, Attacking Scream would allow zombies to let off a Feeding Groan as they fight a survivor. Whenever a zombie with this skill gets three successive attack hits (claw, bite or blunt weapon) on a survivor, they groan on the third hit at no extra AP cost, allowing them to save groaning AP on fighting. For a fully maxed zombie using claws, this is one hit at 50% (and grabbing hold with Tangling Grasp), and another two at 60%, overall a chance of 18% to get the three attacks and use the skill. If an attack misses, the counter starts over again. Given that attacks can miss without loosing grip, this gives the maximum chance for a maxed zombie to groan as 21%.

Left Queue: 23:06, 11 November 2006 (UTC)

Sanctuary

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 00:22, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement
Scope: Churches and Newbies
Description: Churches have no doors. Why? Perhaps these large and obvious obstacles where smashed down in the early days of the plague leaving yawning openings.

The classic church doorframe is generally quite high, sometimes even more than one story tall. It's hard to imagine the furniture pushed against the door actually stacking high enough to block the entire thing without collapsing. This could leave a small gap at the top of these barricades that a survivor could climb through. Zombies aren't quite as agile or intelligent and instead just try to bash their way in.

I suggest making it so churches and cathedrals can be entered no matter what their barricade level is. This would make them a natural haven for newbies in neighborhoods that might otherwise be blocked off to them. It also balances out the fact they have no doors. This way newbie zombies without Memories of Life and newbie survivors without Free Running would both benefit from the peculiarities of church entrances.

Left Queue: 11:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Memories of Life - Revival

Timestamp: Garrett Fisher 00:18, 11 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New zombie skill/ability
Scope: Players that have maxed out Necrotech skills as a survivor and have at least the "Memories of Life" skill as a zombie.
Description: Succintly, this skill would be added under Memories of Life on the zombie skill tree, on the principle that such an activity would be a commonplace task to a player with maxed-out NecroTech skills. As such, it would only be available to those players who have already completed the NecroTech skill tree. The chance of successful self-revive would not be guaranteed, as it would horrendously unbalance the game and be completely contrary to the lack of finesse that a zombie would have.
  • The skill would allow a zombie to ATTEMPT to revive themselves, provided that they had one or more syringes in their inventory at the time of death.
  • I propose that the cost of this skill would be 20AP, double the current AP cost for a survivor attempting a revive. This is in fitting with basic cost of movement for a zombie prior to buying lurching gait.
  • A success rate of 33% (I'm open to suggestions on that) would provide a worthwhile chance of success, without making it too easy for players to self-revive.
  • An unsuccessful attempt would still cost 20AP and remove the syringe from the inventory.


I can see two major complaints against my idea, and I will address both:

1) Game Balance. I've considered this, hence why the proposed skill doesn't have guaranteed success, in the same way that an attack is not guaranteed, or reading a book isn't certain to give you experience. In terms of being unfair to the zombie population in UD, think about who this skill would actually be used by. It has no effect on those who wish to play as zombies, and it would reduce the number of zombies congregating at revive points or just being Mrh? cows. These people do not otherwise contribute to the game whilst undead.

2) Syringe hoarding. Yes, some players would inevitably do this, but if that's how they want to spend their time as survivors, then let them waste huge amounts of AP searching for or manufacturing syringes. The huge expense of attempting a self-revive would also prevent repeated attempts in any given day. Also, having many syringes hoarded would not guarantee a self revive if luck happened to be against you...

Thanks for your patience in reading :)

Left Queue: 11:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

12th November 2006

Recovery

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 05:30, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Survivors
Description: The undead are immortal, injury and execution just stun them. Not so with the living. To make up for this frailty the human body naturally regenerates, cells dividing and mending any damage at a slow but steady pace.

Recovery would be a subskill of Bodybuilding that causes the living to naturally heal...to a point. Obviously any serious wound like a bite or gunshot is going to need stitches from a first-aid kit but even serious wounds can get a little better on their own. A bite or claw mark can scab over even if it isn't cleaned out and dressed. A bullet wound can close even if the bullet isn't removed. Recovery can't heal you fully, just up to 1/2 of your maximum health (which would be 30hp).

Recovering is a slow but steady process, causing you to regain 1hp per half hour. Certain locations are more conducive to resting, containing many chairs, beds, or benches. In non-ransacked Hospitals, Churches, Cathedrals, Stadiums, Arms, and Bars (to the Winchester!) you'd regain an additional 1 health on the hour (meaning you'd recover 3hp an hour instead of two).

Infection would greatly impair your body's healing process and cause you to only regain an hp on the half hour in non-restful building, but nothing on the hour (meaning you'd recover 1hp an hour). In the above mentioned restful buildings you'd get the 1 extra point on the hour (meaning you'd get 2hp again). Depending on your location and whether you are infected or not Recovery can give you either 1, 2, or 3hp per hour. Note that Recovery DOES NOT cure infection.

Ordinary LocationRestful Location
Not Infected2hp per hour3hp per hour
Infected1hp per hour2hp per hour

It isn't overpowerful, healing at most one claw attack's worth per hour up to 30hp. But it can add up. And even a tiny handful of health can mean the difference between life or death.

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Good Gracious Me!

Timestamp: Lord of the Pies 21:25, 12 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: The Thoughts of a Gentleman upon the most Challenging Problem of finding a Suitable and Dignified use for these New-fangled Electricity Generator Houses! [Power Station Changes]
Scope: Who or what it applies to.
Description: Now, my good man, whenever one hears a proposal to grant electricity generator houses a distinct and worthy purpose one automatically assumes that such a proposal will fail or will not have taken into account the reality of the situation! [Now, I know what yer thinking...] However! Rest assured that the intentions of this motion have not been led astray by one's desires to have powered neighbourhoods (such wondrous inventions as electricity and the light emitting bulb are only to be used by morally upstanding examples of society! Ahawhawhawhaw!)! [Malton's powe stations aren't going to produce electricity any time soon; we all know this. They don't have any fuel, and you certainly can't power huge generators using the amount of fuel in just one fuel can or even a hundred, at least for any reasonable length of time. This suggestion is not about making giving Survivors a ridiculously huge advantage (not only in that all buildings affected by Power Stations would have better search rates and buildings that need power for special functions would have it without needing a generator but also in that it would be nigh-on impossible for zeds to tell whether a building really was inhabited)] In fact, by proposing such modifications one only intends to place such constructions on a higher level in the grand scale of importance (of course, one's humble abode and those of the other fine gentlemen of Malton remain at the peak of such a scale, ahawhawhawhaw!)! [That's pretty much it]

1) I say, one finds it almost impossible to procure liquid fuel when exploring the insides of an electricity generator house! One finds it highly improbable that when deliberately scouring the halls for the very lifeblood of such complex and powerful machinery one should be dumbfounded like so! [The search rate for finding Fuel Cans in Power Stations should be increased to approximately 4-5% (consider all of forklifts, cranes, trains and other vehicles there are at power stations); the search rate for finding Fuel Cans in Factories and Warehouses should be increased to 3.5-4%]

2) This new age of incredibly modern technology is truly amazing, one believes! Hooks suspended above the ground to aerially relocate objects; lifting vehicles utilising fork-like contraptions; one understands fully the benefits reaped by transportation (indeed, one finds it very agreeable that the lower class labourers be transported to one's mills as fast as possible! Ahawhawhawhaw!)! Yet, and one stresses that such a situation is absolutely out of the ordinary, such devices cannot be found when searching inside our water-mills! My esteemed companions, this is shocking! [Forklifts should be able to be used in Power Stations, Factories and Warehouses; Forklifts require both a powered Generator and a Fuel Can themselves (Fuel Cans would have drop-down menus for Generators and Forklifts) to be Operated successfully; Survivors attempting to Operate a Forklift must have the Engineering skill; Fuel Cans in Forklifts last for approximately 1 week; 3AP would be required to Operate a Forklift (with the option 'Operate Forklift (3AP)'; when Operating a Forklift, a Survivor can Barricade more efficiently and so when Operating a Forklift there is no chance of failure to Barricade in the higher levels (from 8 up to 22, after which point the building cannot be Barricaded); a Survivor stops Operating a Forklift if they perform any action other than Barricading; multiple players can Operate Forklifts at the same time; Forklifts can never be destroyed, but can be attacked in the same manner as Generators and Radio Transmitters with similar hit percentages; when 'destroyed' a Forklift instead loses its Fuel Can; Forklifts cannot be used if there is a zombie present in that block of a Power Station or in the Factory or Warehouse]

3) One is thrilled by the prospects new technology brings, although one is often shocked by the limited extent to which one can observe the effects of new technology at a considerably distance! One believes that this situation could be remedied by allowing the overseers of these mills and electricity generator houses to use such new-fangled technology to obsrve whether or not the other buildings in the area have been blessed by electricity (these blessed buildings strictly being the humble abodes of oneself and one's companions, of course! Ahawhawhawhaw!)! [Monitering Substations should be able to be used in Power Stations; Monitering Substations would require a powered Generator; Survivors attemtping to use a Monitering Substation must have the Engineering Skill; 1AP would be required to use a Monitering Substation (with the option 'Use Monitering Substation'; when a Monitering Substation is used, a small map, similar to a NecroNet map, appears; all buildings within 10 blocks of the block of the Power Station the Survivor is in will show up as either yellow or grey squares; yellow squares represent powered buildings; grey squares represent non-powered buildings; empty blocks would be represented by black squares]

[Engineering - a subskill of Construction that allows the use of Forklifts in Power Stations, Factories and Warehouses and Monitering Stations in Power Stations]

Pip pip, cheerio! One must see to the fine quality product one's workers are creating - one must always be aware that one is not paying them too much for inferior work, ahawhawhawhaw! [Okay, I think this suggestion tops the Stadiums one by quite a bit in terms of daring...]

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13th November 2006

Forklift

Timestamp: Lord of the Pies 08:09, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement to Power Stations, Factories and Warehouses
Scope: Survivors
Description: Now there's already a Forklift suggestion in Peer Reviewed, but this one is different.

Forklifts should be able to be found in Power Stations, Factories and Warehouses; they would be used to help survivors barricade more efficiently. Therefore, Forklifts remove the chance of failure to barricade (after a barricade being Quite Strongly Barricaded) because it's much easier for someone using one to find a good place to add another crate/box/whatever to the barricade. Players would see Forklifts as 'you can see the shape of a forklift in the shadows (if building is unpowered, regardless of whether the forklift is powered or not), 'you can see an industrial forklift in the loading bay' (if building is powered), 'you can see a powered forklift in the loading bay' (if both the forklift and Generator are powered).

However, Forklifts require three things to become operational; a powered Generator (you can hardly drive one around in pitch blackness safely), a Fuel Can for itself and the Engineering skill (so 'Forklift Training' is much more accurate, but it sounds wrong for the game) because really, some random guy you pull off the street isn't going to use a forklift properly.

Assuming that Malton is a modern city, it probably has electrically powered forklifts using lead-acid batteries; in this case, 'Fuel Can' becomes a catch-all term for any kind of fuel intended for vehicles or heavy equipment. Fuel Cans, when in Power Stations, Factories or Warehouses, would have drop-down menus for 'Generator' and 'Forklift' options. They would last about half a week, approximately half the time that a Fuel Can supposedly lasts in a Generator.

To operate a Forklift (assuming the player already has the Engineering skill) a player must click a button marked 'Operate Forklift (2AP)'; once they are using the Forklift they may barricade as normal. When barricading while using a Forklift, there is no chance that the attempt to barricade the building will fail; as a result, it would take 22APs (assuming no other actions in between) to barricade a building from nothing to EHB+3. This is approximately 10-20APs fewer than normal. The 2AP cost only happens once while using the Forklift; however, if the player gets out of the Forklift or stops using it (i.e. performs any other action other than barricading) then the cost comes into play again as they must click the 'Operate Forklift (2AP)' button again. In effect, every time they start barricading they have to spend 2AP before they start. Therefore it's in the Survivor's interests to focus on barricading. When successfully getting into an operational Forklift players would receive message such as 'you climb into the Forklift, putting your hands on the controls'. When using Forklifts players would receive messages such as 'you use the forklift to place a stack of wooden pallets/a crate/a large section of pipe/an abandoned car on the barricade' (when using the Forklift successfully) and 'you try to lift the object onto the barricade but there's no room left' (when the barricade has reached its limit).

Additionally, Forklifts can't be used while a zombie is inside the Power Station (only that block) the factory or the Warehouse. Forklifts also cannot be used if the Generator is destroyed or if the building is Ransacked; if either occurs while the Forklift is being used then the player is forcefully ejected from it. Players attempting to use a Forklift without a powered Generator, without a Fuel Can itself or in a Ransacked or zombie-inhabited building would receive messages such as 'you try to get into the forklift, but it's too dark to drive it' (if the Generator is unpowered), 'you try to get into the forklift, but you notice that the battery has run down' (if the Generator is powered bu the Forklift isn't), 'you cannot use the forklift because there is a zombie inside the building' (if there's a zombie inside the building, obviously) and 'you cannot use the forklift because the building is damaged and cluttered' (if the building is Ransacked).

Forklifts can be attacked and damaged at the same rate as Generators; damaged Forklifts are not destroyed, they simply lose their Fuel Can. There would also be indications as to the level of energy left in the forklift with identical messages as those of a Generator.

The Engineering skill is a sub-skill of Construction and is necessary to operate a forklift. Without it, the option to use a forklift doesn't appear.

Left Queue: 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Nursing

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 10:05, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Survivors
Description: During the plague there were the doctors, the medical experts that sewed flesh and treated the virus. Then there were the nurses. These were often just ordinary people that stayed behind to treat the sick, unwilling to abandon anyone and risking their lives in a room of patients that might die and reanimate at any moment.

People with the skill Nursing can tell the freshly revived apart from the truly dead and can drag them indoors for 1AP. The detection aspect would work like Scent Death does but instead of describing their scent it'd just say "There are X bodies here. X are alive." Nurses would be able to drag these bodies one at a time into the building it's laying in front if it's barricaded at Very Strong or less. This would bring the Nurse and the body into the building together and give the nurse 2xp.

Bodies dragged into a building are now visible as "unconcious" and living, even to those without Nursing. They can no longer be dumped outside. If a reviving body was already in a building a nurse could attend to it. This would have the same effect as dragging one in but without moving it.

If the building is conducive to treating unconcious patients, possessing many chairs, beds, or benches the patient would start to recover from bed rest. Bodies dragged into non-ransacked churches, cathedrals, arms, hotels, and motels would start recovering hp at a rate of 1hp per hour. This health is added to their base revived health upon standing up, potentially bring them up to maximum if they've been lying in bed for over a day. It does not cure infection. Standing up ends the healing process.

If the building is ransacked any recovering bodies would stop regaining health. If it is repaired they would start healing again.

This provides a use for several currently useless buildings and also presents a risk/reward tradeoff. These buildings can aid in recouperating the revived, and bring them safetly indoors in case every building is overbarricaded later when they stand up. However it'd mean leaving the building with more vulnerable barricades. And to get the full benefit a survivor would have to wait over a day before standing, which might waste more AP than its worth in many cases.

Left Queue: 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Reduce Stand-Up Cost

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 17:23, 13 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: improvement
Scope: Standing up
Description: One of the most frustrating things about being a newbie zombie (or even a newbie survivor) is the stand up costs: "10?! That's a fifth of my AP!". It's even worse if you're a zombie who's been headshot: "15?! What the &$%@?!". What I suggest is that the default stand up cost be reduced to 5 AP. This will make the game a little more fun for newbies and reduce the odds that they will quit the game out of frustration. However, at the same time, this doesn't nerf ankle grab or headshot, because headshot will still make harder for zeds to get back up, and ankle grab will still greatly reduce the amount of AP required to stand up.

Let's run the numbers, shall we?

Currently:
No ankle grab or headshot=10 AP
Headshot but no ankle grab=15 AP
Ankle grab but no headshot=1 AP
Ankle grab and headshot=6 AP

Under this suggestion:
No ankle grab or headshot=5 AP
Headshot but no ankle grab=10 AP
Ankle grab but no headshot=1 AP
Ankle grab and headshot=6 AP

As you can see, this suggestion has no real effect on higher-level players. Survivors will still want to get headshot so they can slow down zeds, and zeds are still going to want ankle grab because it significantly reduces the amount of AP they have to waste standing up. All it does is help newbies, be they survivor or zombie.

Left Queue: 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Zombie Regeneration

Timestamp: Bryan Davies 18:07, 13 November 2006 (UTC)--
Type: balance change
Scope: zombies.
Description: Killing hits survivors far harder than zombies. Death turns survivors into zombies, and undermines their efforts. Because zombies can just stand up again at the cost of just a few action points, killing barely undermines them at all. There is a clear imbalance here, giving zombies an unfair advantage. This balance would be redressed by zombies coming back to life with a handicap. When they first stand up after being killed by a headshot, a zombie should only have a limited number of hit points, e.g. 10. They would regenerate hit points spontaneously at a slow rate, e.g. 1 per hour. This would make a recently killed and resurrected zombie more vulnerable to attack, instead of being more resilient than before they were killed!
Left Queue: 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Wounded Effectiveness

Timestamp: Murray Jay Suskind 8:41 pm GMT 13 November 2006
Type: Improvement
Scope: Survivors and Zombies
Description: Essentially, I think it's unrealistic that wounded characters are able to inflict maximum damage or inflict damage at the maximum hit rate. Someone who is on the verge of death wouldn't be able to operate a shotgun effectively and a zombie who's had its arm blown off wouldn't be able to hit as effictively. My suggestion is to make the hit percentages go down in proportion to how much health a player has. For instance, a player with maximum hp of 50 would have a 4/5 of normal hit ratio between 37-49 health, 3/5 of normal hit ratio between 24-36 health, 2/5 of normal hit ratio between 11-23 health and 1/5 of normal hit ratio between 1-10 health. In practice this would impact zombies more than survivors as survivors have easier access to FAKs, so this would have to be balanced by something that would help the zombies out (look below).

- Edit - The more I think about this, the above proposal if applied equally would be really tilted for harmanz, so in the interests of maintaining better game balance (and the fact that damage doesn't mean as much to someone who is undead) zombies would impacted less. For instance a zed with a max of 50 hp would be impacted to 4/5 effectiveness between 21-40 hp and 2/5 between 1-20

Left Queue: 14:37, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

14th November 2006

First, Cause a Distraction

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 00:32, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Balance change
Scope: Survivors
Description: The problem with PKing isn't that it exists but that it has a reduced AP cost compared to a zombie attacking someone. There are no barricades in the way.

We know from one of Kevan's updates "As looter raids and sabotage attacks continue, the city's survivors are beginning to camp out in the larger, shared rooms of their safehouses." As survivors grow more suspicious and wary of quislings they've begun keeping a closer eye on each other, making an attack from within impossible unless the defenders are distracted by some external threat or calamity.

Survivor on survivor attacks and sabotage would no longer be possible inside buildings unless the barricades are down, a zombie is present, and/or if a dead body is on the ground. All three of these situations would naturally cause panic and give a raider the opportunity they need to cause destruction and escape in the confusion.

This just gets a PKer's AP cost in line with a zombies. If a zombie wants to attack a survivor they need to either break down barricades, find someone outside, or find a building another zombie broke into. This would just make PKers do the same. Heck, it'd still be a little cheaper for the PKer since they could use crowbars to their advantage when reducing barricades.

This would not affect attacks made by zombies at all. From a gameplay perspective this just provides equilibrium in the AP cost spent by survivors and zombies in killing the living.

Genre Considerations (*with spoilers!*)

Note that in most zombie movies rival gangs of humans must break down their rival's barricades before they can attack. Take the original Romero classic Dawn of the Dead which has an assault by motorcycle riding gang of raiders on the protagonist's mall towards the end. First they demolish the barricades the heroes set up earlier in the film and stroll through the opening. As they exchange gunfire with one of the main characters hundreds of zombies begin to stream in behind them, attacking everybody.
The movie Day of the Dead also ends with a human character turning against his companions, but this time motivated by insanity instead of looting. In this instance he also turns against his companions by opening the entrance to fort they've taken shelter in.
In the newer zombie movie 28 Days Later at one point the hero must infiltrate a mansion occupied by corrupt human soldiers. Before attacking he releases a zombie into their safehouse. As it runs around infecting and sowing chaos he stealthily runs through, killing his distracted human enemies right and left.

Bounty Hunting

This would stop bounty hunters as well. However bounty hunting would no longer be necessary. Killing a PKer would have no tactical advantage since they'd be equally dangerous living or dead. And there'd still be negative consequences for angering fellow survivors...they could avoid healing or reviving you.

Personal Biases Of Author

I play two characters. One of them is Jon Pyre, a member of Channel 4 News, defender of humanity and the fourth estate. The other is a ravenous ghoul, who'll retain his zombie anonymity for now. Let's just say those folks in Buckley Mall are delicious. From both sides of the necrotic divide I have a problem with the current incarnation of PKing. As a survivor I dislike seeing myself, or possibly five or more comrades riddled with holes while we are logged out, all without a zombie brushing the cades and providing a chance to spend AP mounting defense. As a zombie I dislike seeing my own abilities and the tactics of my entire race completely outclassed. I play as a zombie to kill survivors by the billions and enjoy seeing a mighty horde come at my call. I like to imagine the surprise any remaining survivors have after a break-in, seeing all the names of their companions dragged out into the street. And I don't like knowing that I and my hordemates are being outdone by some guy who ran in, cried out "lol, got ya", and escaped with a higher bodycount than all of us zed did combined. It's not that we don't appreciate the help. As I said I don't have a problem with PKing, just that it's currently more of a easy to pull off practical joke than a bloody victory hard fought for.

So that's where I'm coming from.

Overall

This doesn't stop PKing. But it makes the choice between being a PKer or a zombie one of roleplaying, not Out Of Character "how many people can I kill" analysis. The person who views themself as a mindless ghoul, or an evil horde leader, or a messiah of the dead, would have their playing style equally effective against survivors as the the homicidal killer, the evil scientist, the ruthless survivalist, the cruel army captain, or even the pricipled fighter striking corrupt fellow survivors.

Left Queue: 14:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Revivification Mechanics Improvement

Timestamp: Wfjeff 05:14, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Game Mechanics Improvement
Scope: Revivification
Description: The structure of the revivification system right now has two major flaws.

Problem One: Revivification Experience

Which is harder, shooting a zombie from a distance just to have it stand up again later, or bringing an undead creature back to life by stabbing it in the back of the neck with a syringe before it kills you? Obviously, revivification is harder. Why, then, does it produce extremely minimal XP given the amount of AP spent doing it?

Under current game rules, reviving zombies is a time consuming and unrewarding endeavor. It takes 12 AP to find a syringe (or 20 if you make one), and 10 more to use it. Plus you have to track down a zombie to use it on, which entails a fair amount of risk. It also requires a 200 XP investment just to get the skills necessary to perform this action. Worse, it can only be performed once on any given zombie. Under the best of circumstances this comes to a very low XP return on AP spent.

10 XP gained / (12 AP to search + 10 AP to use + 3 AP to find zed) = .4 XP/AP

By contrast, using a pistol with the same 200 XP skill investment yields quite different numbers. If finding a pistol clip in a police station requires an average of 15 searches and you get 6 bullets per clip, that’s only 2.5 AP used searching per bullet. If you figure with 200 XP invested in Basic Firearms Training and Pistol Training instead of NecroTech Employment and Lab Experience, that’s a 55% chance to hit. Plus, you can keep hitting that zombie until it dies, and you get an extra 10 XP for killing it. Even if the zed is at only 25 health and is wearing a flak jacket, the XP per AP spent is still double what it is for revivification. This is just plain illogical given how much easier it is to pick off a seriously injured zombie with a pistol compared to revivification.

(26 XP for damage + 10 XP for kill) / (30 AP to find 12 bullets + 12 AP to fire them + 3 AP to find zed) = .8 XP/AP

What’s more, with skills like Advanced Pistol Training, opportunities to find ammo even more efficiently with Shopping and Bargain Hunting, up to 14 extra XP for overkill, and the possibility of finding 60 HP zeds, the XP return on AP for hunting is dramatically higher than for reviving.

Problem Two: Revivification Realism and Potential Griefing

On October 18, Reaper with no name made a suggestion based on a very valid point:

Supposedly, revivification works by the character jamming a syringe into the back of a zombie's neck. Sure, it costs 10 AP, but it never fails. Do they really expect us to believe that it would be that simple? Chances are that you tried to stab someone in the back of the neck with a needle, you're not going to be very accurate, even if you try it multiple times. More importantly, it is the only item one can use on another player that never fails and can potentially grief them (if you're a newbie zombie who doesn't have brain rot and doesn't want to be revived, you'll find yourself having to waste a lot of time and AP finding a building you can get into, jumping out of said building, and getting up again). And it just makes so much more sense that should be able to miss when trying to revive someone with a syringe, since you are performing an action that isn't much different from punching or stabbing with a knife (both of which can miss).

His proposal, in a nutshell, was to introduce a 50% failure rate and compensate with a reduction from 10 AP to 5 AP per use. This didn’t pass because of the large AP penalties for failure. Revivification already requires lots of AP and does not pay off well with XP. However, the point he makes holds true regardless.

Solution:

Revivification Syringes should be classified as a weapon type. Different versions like the Mark 1.0 (now out of circulation), the Mark 2.0, and potentially a Mark 3.0 or higher would fall into this category. It would have an extremely low base accuracy and would require 20 AP to use, making it practically useless to the unskilled user. The NecroTech Employment skill would give a 25% increase in chance to hit and lower required the AP to 15, the Lab Experience Skill would provide a 15% increase and lower the required AP to 10, and a new skill, Field Experience, would be added to the scientific skills tree on the same level as NecroNet Access and give an additional 10% and lower the required AP to 5.

Revivification Syringe
Damage: revivification
Base Accuracy: 5%, 20 AP
NecroTech Employment: 30%, 15 AP
Lab Experience: 55%, 10 AP
Field Experience: 65%, 5 AP

In addition, syringes would be refillable instead of single-use. Bottles of revivification serum would be found in NecroTech buildings just like syringes and could be manufactured with the NecroNet Access skill for 10 AP the same way new syringes can be manufactured for 20 AP.

Furthermore, the XP payoff for revivification should be increased from 10 XP to 20 XP. This would make revivification equivalent to the example of killing a weakened zombie which is, if anything, underpowered. This is a reasonable, balanced improvement.

Let’s do the numbers:

Skill Level Chance to Hit AP Cost Per Use AP Cost to Find 1 Dose Average AP to Find Zed Total AP Total XP XP Per AP Spent
Base .05 20 10 3 413 20 0.04842615
Employee .3 15 10 3 32 20 0.317460317
Lab .55 10 10 3 32 20 .625
Field 0.65 5 10 3 21 20 0.952380952
Current 1 10 12 3 25 10 0.4

Compare these to the Pistol with all skills:

Zed Health Damage Chance to Hit AP Used to Fire AP Cost to Find 1 Bullet Average AP to Find Zed Total AP Total XP XP Per AP Spent
60 5 .65 19 2.5 3 70 71 1.014286

It may seem like a rather drastic change at first but once the numbers have been calculated it is all very reasonable and balanced. Moreover, it gives scientists a chance to level almost as quickly as military personnel while adding realism to the game.

Left Queue: 14:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Gang Warfare v2

Timestamp: Funt Solo 12:36, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Game Mechanic
Scope: Groups
Description: Survivor groups band together for protection, not just from the undead, but from serial killers, rival groups, death cultists and psychopaths. Your buddies watch your back, or patrol the doors in your section of the safehouse, trying to keep you safe whilst you sleep.

Zombies have a pack mentality - banding together into hordes and identifying members of their own pack. When hostilities break out between different groups, zombies from the same pack move to intercept the attacker, blocking and subduing them in order to protect their own.


  • Concept: Survivor vs. survivor or zombie vs. zombie attacks are less effective if the victim has friends in the area that outnumber the attackers. Survivor vs. zombie attacks are not effected.


  • Rules:
    • If the victim of an attack, plus all other characters in the same location with the same group as the victim, outnumber the attacker, plus all other characters in the same location with the same group as the attacker, then the attack % is multiplied by attacker group # over victim group #. That's [Attack %] = [Attack %] * ([attacker group #] / [victim group #]). (Outnumbering your enemy confers no additional bonus - in other words, you can't hit at a better % than normal.)
    • Example #1: Bilbo Shaggins is a member of Lord of the Things, and is staying in a safe house with two comrades. Murderous Bastich is a member of Harlots of Death, and Free Runs in and attacks Bilbo. The ratio is 1:3, or 0.33. Murderous Bastich would normally have 65% to hit with his guns, but in this case he's 22% to hit (65 * 0.33 = 22, fact fans). If he brought Leet Killer (another member of Harlots of Death) with him, the ratio would be 2:3, or 0.67. Both attackers would be at 44% to hit instead of 65% (against any member of Lord of the Things).
    • Example #2: The Jolly Funsters are 23 zombies in a ransacked stadium, quietly playing football with the decapitated heads of the recently deceased. They're attacked by the All-Seeing Eye, a group of 17 zombies who want to claim the Stadium and become the dominant local horde. A 50% attack chance would become 50*(17/23), which is 37%.
    • This only operates if there are only zombies or only survivors in a particular location. (Inside a building counts as a separate location to outside a building.) In other words, if zombies are in your safe house, all bets are off - and a sly murder is easier to enact. So to with zombies - if there are survivors present, the idea of pack loyalty is pretty much thrown out of the window (perhaps literally).
    • In order to stop someone freely switching to the group they're attacking (thus circumventing the rule), changing groups will now have a cost of 10AP. (You can roleplay that any way you like - the time/effort it takes to go through a group's Induction Ceremony, or to adopt their style of dress, or to disguise yourself as one of them, or for a horde to get used to your scent.) So, someone could use that tactic, but it's costly. As for someone innocently changing groups - use the roleplay explanations above as to why switching loyalty costs AP. (Someone could, if they continually target the same group - just spend the 10AP once and then never change their group back. Oh well. Call that a thorn in your side. Your ultimate enemy. A PKer would probably only do that versus a sizable group with multiple targets - in which case roleplay says they're easier to infiltrate.)


  • Justification:
    • PKing or ZKing your enemy is too easy. That needs to be addressed. This suggestion attempts to level out the playing field, and also to introduce a game mechanic for group membership beyond mere flavour.
    • Nerfs PKing/ZKing? - no, it doesn't nerf it, but, yes, it does effect it. You can still attack a victim who isn't with their comrades (or doesn't have any) at your full attack %. Plus, if you're part of a PKing group, you just need to team up and plan a raid, in order to be able to attack at your full %. This makes PKing or ZKing challenging, as it should be. It also makes defending against a PK/ZK a challenge.
Left Queue: 14:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Get out, all of you!

Timestamp: Canuhearmenow Hunt! 22:01, 14 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New Skill.
Scope: adds a awesome skill for survivors.
Description: I'll say it blandly; Feeding Drag only for survivors. Now for the meat of the suggestion, to keep zombie users to yell "SPAM!" I added some detriments. First off, this is a 100XP Zombie hunter skill called "Throw" that you must be at level 15+ to get this. This skill uses 2 AP and can only be used on dying zombies (12 HP or less) which you must first attack to get rid of the zombie anonymity potential, for example it would be "You hit zombie for 3 damage, taking to 11, would you like to throw out?" Then you either keep attacking or click yes. Also, barricades affect this skill, failing the skill costs 1 AP, for example:

Doors open: 100% Success chance

Doors Secured: 80% Success chance

Loose barricade: 70% Success chance

Light barricade: 60% Success chance

all the VS barricades: 20% Success Chance

All Heavy barricades: 0% Success chance

so, how do you like this? In light of the fall of Caiger and dump body change people need ways to get rid of zombies numbering in the teens inside a building without spending tons of AP.

Left Queue: 14:51, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

15th November 2006

Let the booze run freely

Timestamp: Certified=InsaneQuébécois 16:17, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Major improvement ;)
Scope: Survivors
Description: This was somewhat inspired by my suggestion in discussion, which I know would never passed so I didn't bother trying. I want factories to start producing booze (again)!

Proposed change: Facotires can now have their production lines restored. Anyone with the construction skill can, for 20 AP, "Restore the production line" of factories that aren't ransacked. If it is done, eveyone who is inside while it is powered can "Produce a bottle of beer" for 2 APs. Hardly overpowered ;). If you want any actual game mechanics about that, 3 APs to heal 1 HP won't bring you far, but that ain't the point. This is just a suggestion to add flavour to factories. Factories who are powered and have the production restored have "You can hear machines inside" added to the exterior description.

Ya can't refuse the booze! Might not serve much right now, but who knows, later, if some limited form of trading is allowed, we could deal in booze!

Left Queue: 14:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

16th November 2006

Bottles of Alcohol

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 14:46, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: improvement
Scope: Beer and wine bottles
Description: The bottles of beer and wine that you can find lying around seem pretty pointless, don't they? I mean, 1 HP for 1 inventory slot, and no curing infection? Well, at least they have some flavor value. But in that case, why is it necessary for both of them to exist? They're essentially copies of each other with the names changed. Why not just make them one item? I think we should remove the "Bottles of Wine" and "Bottles of Beer" items and replace them with a single "Bottle of Alcohol" item. This makes no difference in terms of flavor, and reduces stress on the server by reducing the number of items by one.

Minor Technical Details: Search rates don't change. Places where both wine and beer can currently be found will have the odds for the two items added together. See examples below:

Current: Building A has a search rate of 5% for Bottles of Beer.
Under this suggestion: Building A has a 5% search rate for Bottles of Alcohol.


Current: Building B has a search rate of 3% for Bottles of Beer and 2% for Bottles of Wine.
Under this suggestion: Building B has a search rate of 5% for Bottles of Alcohol.

Left Queue: 04:04, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Yet Another Crazy Headshot Skill

Timestamp: Mark 17:52, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill.
Scope: Zombie hunters, zombies on the receiving side.
Description: This skill would be fairly simple.

Skill name: Advanced Headshot. Prerequisites: Headshot, at least level 15.

With this skill, when you land the killing blow on a zombie, you pay an extra AP for that attack, and if using a firearm, fire a second shot. This is done because you fire an extra round/take another hack into the zombie's head as you kill them. This tacks an additional 5 AP onto the stand up cost. With Ankle Grab: 11 AP. Without: 20.

The reason I did this is because of Ankle Grab. If a zombie with Ankle Grab gets headshot, 6 AP isn't that much penalty. This is designed to slow down zombies in the way headshot should work. Note: This is essentially a preliminary round, as I know it will be shot down.

Left Queue: 22:29, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

Embrace

Timestamp: ThreeSided 23:05, 16 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Zombie Skill
Scope: Zombies
Description: This is a new zombie skill, that like all the others, cost 100XP to buy. It is a sub-skill of tangling grasp. Once it is bought, a new attack is shown on the attack drop down list called "Embrace". This attack has a 80% chance to hit, and does 1 damage. When it hits, the text read, "You wrap your arms around (insert survivors name here) and squeeze as tight as you can. You do one damage. They are now caught in your Embrace." Once that survivor logs back in, they see "A zombie wrapped its arms around you!" While in the embrace, the survivor (or zombie if you want to be annoying, which doesn't give much XP anyway) cannot do any action except pay 1AP to "Struggle" With the percentage of escape possibility. If the survivor is a higher level than the zombie, they have a 50% chance of escaping per a struggle. If they are lower, they have a 15% chance. If they are the same, it is 30%. This would be good for zombies who just barely make it into a safe house after taking down the barricades, and don't have enough AP to do that much damage, or if they leave a survivor with a significant amount of health left. After successfully embracing a survivor, the zombie cannot do any actions unless they spend another 1AP to "remove from survivor" which, of course, gets rid of the embrace effect. Both the embracer and the embracee can be attacked by both zombie and survivor, and if either are killed, the embrace is removed. More than one zombie CAN embrace the same person, forcing the survivor to have to escape twice, but that would probably be uncommon...
Left Queue: 14:33, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

17th November 2006

Law Enforcement

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 00:47, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill, balance change, improvement, etc.
Scope: Who or what it applies to.
Description: You've been trained as a policeman, to notice crimes and attempt to prevent the escape of suspects. This can be a risky profession but even in the zompaclypse you stick to your duty.

When a survivor kills another survivor inside a building with anyone with the Law Enforcement skill there is a 50% chance one of the policemen will block their escape. The killer would get a message like "ZeroMan moves to block your escape!" The killer can't leave that square until the policeman is killed, until the policemen lets them escape by performing any action other than attacking them, until they find an alternate escape route (in half an hour of real world time), or until escaping the building is made vastly easier by the barricades being completely destroyed. At no point does the policeman automatically attack or do any damage of any kind, they just prevent the PKer from leaving.

To clear things up this doesn't mean that every policeman there has a 50% chance of catching you. Only one person could be in your way at any given point. The odds of getting caught do not increase the more policemen are present. Unless it's a really small crowd of two or three people where a PKer could theretically kill all of them having more policemen just helps the policemen out by making it less likely that they individually would become a target.

WHAT THIS WOULD MEAN

PKing would become riskier in a logical way. Just as if you entered any normal public building today and killed someone there's a chance you might get caught. Any PKer could get around this pretty easily, just come with enough firepower to escape. Pick your target but make sure to pack enough shotgun shells to kill the one or two policemen that might end up impeding you. However this would make giant murder sprees where one Pker kills five people more difficult. You have a better chance to escape running in, shooting your main target, killing those blocking your escape, than you would staying put, shooting until your ammo runs out and you reach the brink of exhaustion.

IS THIS AN AUTO-DEFENSE? I DON'T LIKE AUTO-DEFENSE

Yes and no. While the act of blocking someone's escape is automatic this doesn't actually cause your character to do anything. You don't attack, you don't gain a defensive bonus, or prevent the PKer from attacking anyone they choose. In terms of automatic action action this is more like the way zombies in Ransack buildings automatically get in your way and prevent you from rebuilding, or the way a survivor can automatically escape from a tangling grasp. We know that characters are doing things and taking actions when you aren't there. The no auto-defense rule really means that you shouldn't be able to automate your character, making them spend AP or perform actions that would otherwise require AP.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS OF GETTING CAUGHT? HOW MANY PEOPLE WOULD YOU HAVE TO KILL?

There's an new 50% of getting caught after each kill. After killing the initial victim you have a 50% chance of having to kill 1 policeman, a 25% chance of having to kill two people, a 12.5% chance you'd have to kill three people, a 6.25% chance you'd need to kill four, etc. It's very unlikely you'd have to kill more than two policeman, and a player armed with sufficient shotgun ammunition can easily kill three people and make a getaway. Shotguns can kill a 50hp person with 8AP. Killing three people (initial victim plus two cops) then would cost 24AP, leaving more than enough AP to move in and then make your escape to two suburbs away. This doesn't make make PKing impossible or even difficult. Just approach your task with the right tools. Most PKers use shotguns and kill at least three people at a time anyway.

DOES THIS HURT BOUNTY HUNTERS?

It affects them yes. It doesn't really hurt them. A Bounty Hunter moves in a building, kills someone and has a 50% chance of getting caught. Standard Bounty Hunter practice is to accuse their target and present evidence. Either the Bounty Hunter slips away in half an hour, or the policemen says "Ah, thanks for clearing that up! I see this guy has a pretty long record" and the bounty hunter is free to go. A vigilante might want to plan to sleep in the building they perform the kill in but if they really are a honorable bounty hunter, with evidence, they should have no fear of explaining themselves.

IN CONCLUSION

This is a ballsy skill. You're putting yourself in harm's way, telling a PKer "shoot me to escape". You're willing to risk your life when you're defenseless if it has a chance of capturing a killer. It doesn't really nerf PKing. Just go in able to kill more than one person and leave when you get your chance. You should have no trouble killing and hightailing. What this will make harder is two things: killing as many people as possible and escaping and killing more than one pre-determined target. It might be harder to kill all three leaders of a group and escape because after the first one a policeman might get in your way. You'd have to choose between continuing your assault against the leaders or blasting the cop. And sure you could stick around and empty all your guns, but then you'd risk having a cop on your ass and being shit out of luck. Assassinate who you want, kill who you need to escape, and get out with surgicial precision and you'll be fine. Or go out in a blaze of glory surrounded by the bodies of your enemies.

Left Queue: 08:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Teeny Tiny Itty Bitty Flavor Change, Re: meatbag

Timestamp: Kaminobob 09:24, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Flavor
Scope: Zombies
Description: Just a tiny little simple thing, inspired by the necrothruiblarmiaontaaarg suggestion in undecided. when a zombie looks a a group of humans, they are going to maybe think "yum, humans.", but more likely it would be more like "yum, meat". In that vein, i propose that, while you are a zombie, the section of the overview that currently reads "there are 15 zombies and 4 humans here" be changed to: "there are 15 zombies and 4 Meatbags here". THIS IS NOT HUMAN ANONYMITY. names would still appear in drop-down menus and on the map. (this is not intended purely to be humorous, but flavour-y. please don't spam me on the fact that it happens to be funny as well.)
Left Queue: 08:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Preserved Zombie

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 19:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New zombie class
Scope: New players
Description: this is supposed to be the opposite of my "NT Test Subject" suggestion, though it can also stand on it's own.

Not all zombies were born of humans killed during or after the outbreak. Some have begun emerging from the coffins of those who had died long ago...

These zombies aren't freshly dead survivors or survivors who died in the initial outbreaks (corpse class). These are people who died before that and were either in a morgue or a grave until the zombie plague finally penetrated their resting places. Because these people died normally and were given funerals (or were about to), they have been pumped full of formaldehyde and other chemicals to preserve their bodies. As a result of this their body parts and dexteriy are much more intact than that zombies who are fresh (or started as a corpse). Because of this they only have to pay 75 XP for skills from the Digestion and Lurching Gait trees. Unfortunately, the presence of the preserving chemicals hinder some parts of their mental functioning, forcing them to have to pay 150 XP for skills from the Scent Fear and Memories of Life trees. All other skills cost the usual 100 XP. Their starting skill is Death Grip due to the relatively high level of dexterity they possess compared to fresh zombies.

All right, now for the numbers:

Starting Corpse Player: Starting Skill: Vigour Mortis Claw attack: 35% and 2 damage (0.7 dmg/AP) Bite attack: 20% and 4 damage (0.8 dmg/AP) Chances of taking down a barricade: 17.5% XP needed to purchase all skills: 1900

Starting Preserved Zombie Player: Starting Skill: Death Grip Claw attack: 40% and 2 damage (0.8 dmg/AP) Bite attack: 10% and 4 damage (0.4 dmg/AP) Chances of taking down a barricade: 20% XP needed to purchase all skills: 2250

As you can see, this class is equal to the corpse class in terms of combat ability. But because it's skill is death grip instead of vigour mortis, it is 14.28% more effective against barricades. However, Death Grip doesn't offer as much immediate variety in skill selection as Vigour Mortis (which immediately opens up 5 different skills for purchase, whereas starting with Death Grip would require one to purchase Vigour Mortis if they wanted to access the rest of the tree). Also, this class needs a lot more XP (a whopping 18.42% more!)to max out. By comparison, it's only 75 less than what scientists need, and survivors have 1 more skill than zombies do! These two things make up for the preserved zombie's superior barricade smashing early on (there won't be any difference once the Corpse purchases Death Grip and the Preserved Zombie gets vigour mortis), as well as their relatively easy access to Ankle Grab.

Left Queue: 08:30, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

18th November 2006

Shambling Necrogenisis

Timestamp: Conndrakamod TDHPD CFT 19:52, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Zombie Players
Description: Prerequisites Memory of Life, and Brain rot. This skill applies only in situations where there are corpses present with standing Zombies. A Zombie with this skill would be able to pull another Zombie up off the ground into a standing position for the cost of 6 ap (whether the Zombie on the ground has been headshot or ankle grab.) It would be listed under the Memory of life tree but subject to the Brain rot. Explanation: A Zombie with this skill has the vague memories of a societal nature and craves the group dynamic but being Brain rot doesn’t quite understand how that’s supposed to work exactly. The Zombie grabs onto a nearby corpse and by <insert some form of flavor text explaining necro-genesis et al> effectively reanimates the zombie, but only to such a limited degree that the "raised zombie" can only stand there. Because of some trait in the Necrotek revivication serum, however, it neutralizes the necro-genesis effect; meaning that reviving corpses could not be "raised" in this fashion.
Left Queue: 03:42, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

19th November 2006

A Simple Idea For Forts

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 10:49, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement
Scope: Malton's two forts
Description: There have been numerous suggestions to improve forts by adding additional resources to the armory or putting new resource buildings in the surrounding empty squares, so this may seem familiar. It's building on these past concepts so I hope you won't consider it a dupe but an improvement of an old idea.

I suggest making the eight squares that surround the armory a large building. Instead of being a block like a mall, this large building would be a ring, with the armory acting as a seperate building in its center. While this is mostly outdoor space so are junkyards and they are also considered buildings, with an interior. Most of the building would be simple training and storage areas searchable for flak jackets (1%), binoculars (1%), pistols(2%), pistol clips(5%), shotguns (1%), shotgun shells(4%), flare guns (2%), radios (2%), radio transmitters (5%), generators (2%), fuel (3%), and knives (5%). Two squares would be different. One would be an infirmiry and turn up FAKS at the same rate as a hospital (but no other items) and allow for surgery when powered. The other would be a barracks, searchable for books and alcohol (but no other items) at a high rate. And of course Kevan can tweak these numbers if they turn out to be too high or too low.

This change would make forts a very unique and interesting stronghold/target. It has lower search odds for most individual items than a mall, armory, or PD but has that balanced by possibly turning up a wider variety of items with each search. It is also much more difficult to hold than a mall, with eight squares to guard and protect from ransack instead of four, but unlike a mall has a seperate resource building to fall back to in its center.

You could imagine how most sieges would go. Survivors would hold the outer fort as long as possible to enjoy the wide variety of items available. Soon though any powerful assault would overrun one of the eight squares and cause everyone to retreat into the armory, nothing left to find but guns for the last desperate stand of the army. It should make for some interesting battles. Best of all this should be easy to implement since everything this change requires is already programmed.

Left Queue: 18:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Scan Failure Change

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 21:25, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: improvement
Scope: DNA extractors, zombies without brain rot
Description: Currently, if a DNA scan fails, it's an unmistakeable sign that the zombie has brain rot, because they never fail on non-rotters. Therefore, I propse that there be a small (10%) chance that DNA scans will not work on normal (non-rotted) zombies. This way, unsuccessful scans will no longer be the last word on whether or not a zombie has brain rot.

Roleplay-wise, this can be explained in the same way that the brain rot skill itself does: the abnormal DNA of the undead can confuse the DNA extractor.

Left Queue: 18:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Ankle Bite (another version)

Timestamp: Pesatyel 22:23, 19 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Zombie
Description: Requires Ankle Grab. Costs 3 AP. Bonus +10% (for surprise) to hit. Thus a maxed out zombie would have 40% (Tangling Grasp does not apply).

A zombie is killed. Next to the [Stand Up] button is a new button [Attack]. Pressing the button the zombie to grab and bite the person who just killed him. A successful hit will do normal bite damage and infect (if the zombie has the skill) but will NOT allow Digestion (if the zombie has the skill).

The target will see "The zombie you thought you just killed grabs at you and bites your leg for 4 damage. You shake it off and stomp on it's head."

Restrictions: The attack can ONLY be used against the person who killed the zombie and ONLY so long as that person remains in the square with the zombie after the kill. If the person leaves then returns before the zombie can attack, the [Attack] button disappears. This attack can only be used once before the zombie has to stand up again. If the zombie does not have the AP to use the skill, the AP cost is added to the stand up cost when they (eventually) stand up.

This is similar to Ankle Bite in Peer Review, but I believe it is different enough to not be a dupe.

Left Queue: 18:53, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

21st November 2006

New survivor item / skill and zombie skill

Timestamp: 01:30
Type: New Skills.
Scope: Both Survivors and Zombies.
Description: These new skills would add 1 or two new skills to both survivors and zombies, the survivors would recieve a new item.

Human ideas

Malton is a huge city, it has police and military, but why are there only pistols and shotguns?

The new item for the survivors would be a sniper rifle. BEFORE you gun this down, i have tried to make this as different to the usual "insta kill, zombie tracking" style suggestions before. Taking up two item slots and only to be found in gunstores and the armourys, the chances of finding them i'll leave open to debate. The idea for them is, that along with the binoculars already implemented into the game survivors could spot zombies surrounding the building they're in, so the spot to the North, NE, NW, W, E, SW, and SW then if they had a sniper rifle they would then have the option to take a shot.

Again, the accuracy is open to debate, but as they are sniper rifles i should imagine a high accuracy rate would be best. The rifle would only hold one round, with the rounds again being found in the same place as the rifle itself. The rifle could inflict between 10-15 damage.

In order to use the rifle, survivors would need "Basic rifle operation" skill, and "advanced rifle training" skill to improve the accuracy. The rifle could be deemed unusable until the survivor has the required skill because of their complexity.

This item would enable trapped survivors to have a fighting chance if they become surrounded.

Well established survivor zones could pick off zombies that dare enter.

Survivors attempting to reclaim an area or building could set up snipers around the perimiter And so on, it's up to your imagination but i do believe this would be a worthwhile contribution to the game. Yes it is a powerful weapon, but as it's use is so restricted to certain conditions. ( skills, tall building, binoculars, Costly in AP) it does not give a huge advantage to survivors, but more imagination.

Zombie idea

Skill, Rotting flesh

After ransacking a building with this skill zombies would be able to perform another action, spreading there infectious flesh about the place. Before the ransacking could be fixed, survivors would first need to clean the area. However, any survivor who attempts to repair the building first would immediately become infected in the same way as a zombie bite.

The message seen by survivors could be as follows "You are standing inside (building name)the building has been ransacked and there is a rotting smell about the place" this would notify survivors but catch out any not careful enough to "examine there surroundings"

A sub tree skill from this could grant zombies the ability to spread there infectious selves about the place without ransacking, this could be called Contageous Flesh any survivors who attempted to find items would become infected again, in the same way as a bite.

This would be especially useful in a siege, defense, attack or any imaginative situation

I've tried to make my ideas as balanced and sensible as possible, constructive criticism and ideas welcomed.

This would add some more balance back into the game.

Left Queue: 07:33, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Bodies out of Forts

Timestamp: Dickholeguy 13:55, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Survivor Improvement
Scope: Fortress Defenders
Description: With the new forts being implemented, the dead bodies that are killed inside the fort cannot be dumped outside of the fort. My suggestion is that survivors be able to clear bodies out of the fortress. Obviously in real life, it would take more effort to dump a body over the walls, so I suggest it takes 2ap per dump.
Left Queue: 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Record Last Action 2, The Barricades. A Novel

Timestamp: Gene Splicer 15:53, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill/Attack
Scope: Zombies
Description: I understand this is a little long, so just skip to the bulletpoints at the bottom if you want.

This is one of the promised Other Uses for the Record Last Action mechanic. Mechanic included to prevent this being a linked suggestion, once again you are voting on the mechanic and the suggestion as a bundle.

Proposal:

That the system take note of the last action a Player performed as a hidden variable, thereby making it available to the system for Flavoursome, Technical and Gameplayerish reasons.

Implementation:

This would be kept track of in the same way as current HP/AP/XP, but storing the php reference for the action instead of a number (see your address bar after you perform an action to see what I mean). Every AP regen this would be wiped, as it can be assumed that the character has wandered off to do something else, such as go to the bathroom or sleep.

A Practical Application 2:

This is a resubmission of the peer undecided idea "The dead got no mercy, no mercy!" put forward by Ron Burgundy, using this mechanic to iron out some of the kill-creating implementation details. I cannot seem to track it down but it was only narrowly defeated (21/33 if I recall) with most of the kill votes being of the "incomplete" variety.Found [it]

The aforementioned suggestion was one that has occurred to us all at one point or another: Zombies grabbing people and pulling them through the barricades to their doom. Ron Burgandy put forward the intriguing addition that only people actively interacting with the barricades could be dragged out. This made thematic sense in that only those hanging around the barricades would be in grabbing distance, while everyone else would be staying as far away from the doors as possible. It also made balancing sense in that it prevents the situation of an entire safehouse waking up outside in the cold without the barricades being touched. The only people vulnerable would be people currently in the process of barricading (and therefore awake enough to jump back inside, unless they had just spent their last AP barricading) or people both foolish and at the same time unlucky (see below).

These bits are important

This ability would require new Zombie skill under Tangling Grasp entitled "Snatching Hands" (or something. Everyone knows I can't think of names at this stage). When standing outside a building with VS+2 or lower barricades, a zombie with this skill would given "gaps in the barricades" as an available target. With HB or higher there are no gaps for survivors to either run into or be pulled out of.

These attacks are made at half accuracy (as per attacking a barricade). A failed attempt would produce suitable flavour messages "You swipe at the gaps.", "You swipe at the gaps. Your hands claw through empty air".

The accuracy is further reduced by 5% per barricade level (-20% for VS, -15% for QS, -10% for VS and -5% for loosely). If you fail due to the barricade level penalty, you cause a barricade collapse. ("You swipe at the gaps. You knock away part of the barricade, widening the hole"). In other words, this skill allows you to "replace" part of your chance to pull down the barricade with a chance to instead pull out a barricader.

If you succeed, but there are no viable targets inside, you get one of the previous failure messages "You swipe at the gaps. Your hands claw through empty air." There is no way to tell if you are failing through lack of targets, or just bad luck.

If you succeed and there are viable targets in the building, the target highest in the stack (the least active one) gets pulled through the barricade into the street. People inside get the message "Hands burst through the barricades and pull (X) kicking and screaming outside". This does no actual damage to the barricade.

So, what is a viable target?

A viable target is someone who could be considered to be "actively" barricading, using the Record Last Action mechanic. For comedy purposes, people attacking the barricades are also viable targets. These groups can be targetted because their activites put them right beside the weakest parts of the barricades, whereas everyone else would be staying as far the hell away from them as possible. Anyone who spent their last AP on barricading before logging off is assumed to be lounging against the barricade, admiring his handywork.

Therefore, all any concientious barricader(or barricade smasher) who does not want to be pulled screaming into the street only needs to make sure to save at least 1ap from barricading to run back inside (if still barricading) or spend at least 1 ap doing anything other than barricading before logging off(such as saying "Need more barricades!").

Bullet Points

  • Ron Burgundy thought most of this up. It nearly got into Peer Reviewed, most kills were due to problems with the specifics (or lack of). Edit: Found [it]
  • Anyone who's most recently used AP was spent on barricading (or barricade smashing) and has not regenerated an AP since then is considered to be within arm's reach of the barricades.
  • A Zombie with this skill can, when attacking VS++ or lower barricades, choose to sacrifice barricade smashing accuracy for a chance to pull out someone who satisfies the above requirements.
  • The Snatch/Smash numbers are: VS - 5%/20% : QS - 10%/15% : Lightly - 15%/10% : Loosely - 20%/5% : None - 25%/0%
  • This is not a siege killer. Every person snatched outside is one less barricade brought down, which is 1ap saved, which can be used to run back inside the (nearly garaunteed) less than Heavily Barricaded barricades. If that person is suddenly jumped on by the snatching zombies, that's several attacks not being spent on barricades. Bad luck for the barricader, good luck for the people inside.
  • This is not x-ray vision. There is no way for a zombie to tell if they are missing due to bad luck or because no-one is there. "Fishing" for barricaders would also not be very economical, as your time would be better spent smashing the barricades as quickly as possible than waving your arms frantically through the holes in the wall.
  • This is not zerg heaven. Standard zerging penalties would apply, and any zerg grabbers would be more economically used just smashing away as standard.
  • The primary use of this is for when you are 100% certain someone is in there barricading, usually because you are attacking a building and start seeing the barricades start to go up again. If you switch to clawing at the gaps, you will either smash the barricades (no loss to you), grab the barricader (possibly scaring him into running away) or miss entirely(which you would have done anyway).
  • When there are Zombies using this skill outside a building (determined in the same way that it is determined whether someone is barricading) the line "You see a few/some/many/lots of rotted arms flailing through the barricades." is added to the internal room description.
  • Barricade Bots would require minor reprogramming.
  • Zombie Spiez!!! would occasionally get eaten in a hilarious manner.

Note: Ninja typo edits were made and a bullet point I had forgotten to type was added, no-one had voted yet. Also found the Burgandy suggestion --Gene Splicer 16:09, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Left Queue: 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Limited Free-Run and Door Opening without skills

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 18:58, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: game mechanic
Scope: Anyone without Free Running and/or Memories of Life
Description: For each side, there is an essential skill without which they can never expect to do very much good. For survivors, that skill is free running. For zombies, that skill is memories of life. Survivors without free running are effectively prohibited from most survivor-held buildings. Zombies without memories of life cannot enter most survivor-held buildings on their own; they must rely on others to open the door for them and hope they can get inside before the door is closed by survivors. For these skills, there are no options. One must have them if they expect to be able to do much. But why should these two skills be so key to the game when most other skills in the game aren't even half as important? The answer is that they shouldn't be. Newbie survivors should be able to get around without free-running, and newbie zombies should be able to enter buildings without memories of life at least some of the time.

This suggestion will serve to make free running and memories of life just a little less vital to players (though still just as effective) by allowing newbie players to have a limited ability to perform them without the skill.

For surviors who don't have free-running, there will be a new button and drop down on their screen. The button will read "Jump" and the options will be "North", "South", "East", and "West". When the button is pushed, a warning will come up informing them that they might fall due to their lack of skill. If they hit "yes", then they will attempt to free-run in that direction (they can't go diagonally). If they succeed, then all is well. But if they fail, then they will recieve this text: "You try to jump to the next building but fall short. Instinctively rolling as you hit the ground, you manage to avoid the brunt of the fall and take 10 damage". At this point they will have taken 10 damage (of course) and will be outside the building that they tried to free-run into. The odds of this "pre-free run" failing will be 15% (about 1/7).

As for the zombies, those who don't have memories of life and try to open doors will have a 20% chance of successfully fumbling them open.

In this way, free running and memories of life will no longer be as critical to everyone's repertoire of skills, yet at the same time will be very desireable because they are either much more effective (fumbling open the doors) or as risky (jumping to another building).

Left Queue: 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Mindful Gesture

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 23:30, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New zombie skill
Scope: Experienced zombies can help "mindless" zombies remember how to open doors!
Description: Problem: brand new zombies have problems entering survivor held buildings without memories of life... Solution: Experienced zombies can perform a leadership role "reminding" mindless zombies what a door is, briefly.

Mindful Gesture

Appears on zombie skills tree as a sub-skill of flailing gesture, adds no benefits to your human character.

Your zombie occasionally notices other "mindless" zombies that don't remember how to open a door, or what a door is. Your zombie points at the door, and the other zombie has a "moment of clarity" where they remember how to use it again.

How it works:

  • It ain't cheap! Your zombie has to be standing at the same location (indoor or outdoor) as any number of zombies that do not possess the memories of life skill. Those zombies that lack the skill will see an Open Door 4 AP button available (in green) whenever it is possible for them to open a door (barricades gone) but they don't yet have memories of life.
  • It costs the zombie without MOL 4 AP to open the door but it also costs the zombie who helped them do it 2 AP. However you gain 1 XP for assisting your mentally challenged comrades.
  • This is not voluntary If you buy this skill, your zombie will use 2 AP every now and again to help a "newbie" zombie remember what a door is (or was.) So in buying this skill you may lose some AP here and there while online, or offline (you get a message each time you helped a zombie with your gesture.) That is why you gain 1 XP each time you do so, so you are rewarded for your assistance.
  • In the event of several zombies with this skill at the same location, only 1 zombie is chosen to do the "pointing" helping out the newer zombies. This zombie is always chosen as the 1 zombie at this location, with this skill, who has the least total number of zombie skills. If that zombie is down to 10 or less AP, the next highest up zombie on the list is chosen if possible, then the next, then the next. So that the zombie who needs the XP the most gets used for this skill 1st. (If you are the only zombie at this location with this skill, even if you have 10 or less AP, it still works normally.)

Zombie "Doorman", OMFG.. Aieee, Run For The Hills!!!

  • The basis for this is simple, to encourage new zombie players to stay in the game, and be able to enter a building, if in a mob. Your zombie with this skill may choose to end their session just outside of a building swarming in a lot of zombies, hoping to get some XP here and there.
  • Is it a huge benefit? Umm, it's costing 6 AP in total (between 2 zombies)just to open a damn door, that costs 1 AP to open if you have the MOL skill. This skill, if anything encourages low level zombies to buy MOL when they can just to save those AP! (Having to rely on zombie mobs just to get in will get tiresome, and your zombie will buy MOL... and someday, this skill too!)
  • This helps low level zombies get the ocassional claw swipe or bite on a survivor sooner, getting more XP when they can. It also encourages low level zombies to mob up when they can (zombies doing what they do.) So it is definately in genre for the game.
Left Queue: 19:00, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

22nd November 2006

Power Stations V8.5

Timestamp: Labine50 MH|ME|P 01:18, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Building Change
Scope: Power Stations?
Description: Power stations in the city now work only through a tonne and a half of work from survivors, however due to downed power lines, transformer damage and the occasional zombie chewing through a power cord, blackouts are to be expected, meaning that only one suburb will ever be powered at a time. Every other day at the server reset, one suburb is picked at random and (almost) the suburb will remain powered for two days. There are 6 power station squares in Malton, for each one of them that is powered by a generator, one sixth of the suburb chosen will be powered, rounding up if necessary. No, 6 tiny little generators are NOT powering 10 buildings at a time, They’re turning on the lights so survivors can see what they’re doing and operate the controls. Due to zombies chewing through power cords and messing around with breakers and fuses, ransacked buildings will not be powered. Also, existing generators stop using fuel when powered by a power station, and naturally, the stats page would show which suburb got the power for those two days. Since it affects about 60 buildings a day, I don't think this is over-powered, (There's a pun there, I know it...) and I’d also like to take a second to thank everyone who has helped make this into a decent suggestion.
Left Queue: 22:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Limited Free Run and Door Opening without Skills v2

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 15:39, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: game mechanic
Scope: Survivors without Free Running and Zombies without Memories of Life
Description: For each side, there is an essential skill without which they can never expect to do very much good. For survivors, that skill is free running. For zombies, that skill is memories of life. Survivors without free running are effectively prohibited from most survivor-held buildings. Zombies without memories of life cannot enter most survivor-held buildings on their own; they must rely on others to open the door for them and hope they can get inside before the door is closed by survivors. For these skills, there are no options. One must have them if they expect to be able to do much. But why should these two skills be so key to the game when most other skills in the game aren't even half as important? The answer is that they shouldn't be. Newbie survivors should be able to get around without free-running, and newbie zombies should be able to enter buildings without memories of life at least some of the time.

This suggestion will serve to make free running and memories of life just a little less vital to players (though still just as effective) by allowing newbie players to have a limited ability to perform them without the skill.

For surviors who don't have free-running, there will be a new button and drop down on their screen. The button will read "Jump" and the options will be "North", "South", "East", and "West". When the button is pushed, a warning will come up informing them that they might fall due to their lack of skill. If they hit "yes", then they will attempt to free-run in that direction (they can't go diagonally). If they succeed, then all is well. But if they fail, then they will recieve this text: "You try to jump to the next building but fall short. Instinctively rolling as you hit the ground, you manage to avoid the brunt of the fall and take 15 damage". At this point they will have taken 15 damage (of course) and will be outside the building that they tried to free-run into. The odds of this "pre-free run" failing will be 50%.

As for the zombies, those who don't have memories of life and try to open doors will have a 10% chance of successfully fumbling them open.

Now, for some concerns about the "Pre-Free Running" that must be addressed (the same arguments can be applied to fumbling doors open, though):

"This Nerfs Free Running!"

Does it make Free Running pointless (or even anything approaching it)? No. Therefore, it does not nerf Free Running. Unless you want to be falling out of buildings right and left, then you're still gonna want Free Running. Making a skill a little less vital does not make it less effective or powerful. As long as Free Running is more powerful than this, then there is no "nerfing" going on. If we started to define "nerfing" as simply the act of making something in the game less vital (no matter what the degree), then pistols would nerf shotguns and shotguns would nerf pistols, because the existence of each makes the other less vital to the game. In fact, the same can be said of any two items in the game of a similar type: Axes and knives nerf each other, bats and lengths of pipe nerf each other, etc. This "pre-free run" in just that; a free run to use before you get the official, better free run.

"Yeah, well what's the difference then, if they're just gonna get Free Running right away anyway?"

The difference is that now you have a choice. If you want, you can hold off on the Free Running for a little while and buy Diagnosis instead. And besides, you wouldn't be able to do this "pre-free run" between buildings more than 2 times on average without falling. This would still leave some buildings that you wouldn't be able to get into without Free Running.

"Well, now Free Running isn't an absolutely essential skill!"

First of all, how is that bad? This game is supposed to be about choice, especially when it comes to how you build your character. A beginning scientist or doctor is practically helpless until they get their first 150 XP and purchase Free Running (assuming, of course, that they don't spend it on a cheaper skill).

"Hey, if I could survive as a low level, then so can the newbs!"

First of all, that's not necessarily true. The game is different now than it was when each of us were leveling up. A different set of circumstances, areas (which can have a HUGE effect on someone's survivability/leveling), and players are before today's newbs than there was yesterday. It is entirely possible that there are some people out there who legitimately can't seem to survive more than a day without being killed. Most of those people will likely leave the game.

Second of all, just because you survived through something doesn't mean others should have to have it just as hard. Let's go back to a time when zombies were little more than a joke. More specifically, the time of the old headshot. Now, let's say you are a zombie who managed to level up despite that. Would you think that all new ombie players should have to deal with losing all their XP every time they are headshot? I doubt it. Here we have the same thing. Just because a suggestion will give newbies an edge that newbies of yesterday didn't have doesn't mean that today's newbies shouldn't have that ability. Otherwise there would be few or no peer reviewed suggestions, because everyone would be against suggestions that added anything that wasn't around when they were leveling up.

"OMG ZERGERS!!!!1one!"

All right, let me tell you something right off the bat: any suggestion that can benefit a player but doesn't directly punish zerging can be abused by zergers. Consider a recently peer reviewed suggestion about adding radios to a firefighter's starting equipment. A zerger could create tons of firefighters and use them for the purpose of spying on dozens of different radio broadcasts at once. And what about the (also recently peer reviewed) suggestion to change around the starting items in order to balance the classes? If I recall correctly, part of that involved giving medics a knife. Now, medics and doctors are already ideal for zerging (their starting skill hampers their own XP gain, but helps out other players; perfect for zergers), so this could give them a big edge. Now, a zerger may not have to go to the trouble of creating a small army of firefighters for combat; they can use the army of medics that they normally use for healing. Sure, they won't be as effective, but that's easily fixed by sending more medics than they would have sent firefighters. Do you see where I'm going with this? Almost anything in the game can be abused by zergers. And even if something like this didn't exist, a zerger's army of firefighters/medics/whatever is bound to get enough XP sooner or later to buy Free Running on their own. And while we're at it, let's point out that it be just as effective (if not more effective) to just have their zerg characters tear down the barricades of the building, rather than having them all do an action that only has a 50% success rate and does 15 damage upon failure.

So, in conclusion: Under this suggestion, free running and memories of life will no longer be as critical to everyone's repertoire of skills, yet at the same time will still be very desireable because they are either much more effective (fumbling open the doors) and/or less risky (jumping to another building).

Left Queue: 22:23, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

24th November 2006

Necrotech Research Facility (revision of Necrotech HQ)

Timestamp: J Muller 06:09, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Location Change
Scope: Kersley Mansion
Description: Bold Text is Changed from Original. I've tried to take into account all the problems people had with the first version.
  • Kersley Mansion will be the subject of major change.
  • A line will be added to the building description in the lower left corner, only for zombies or survivors with Necronet Access reading "A hidden door in the basement leads down a dark ladder" when unpowered and "A hidden door in the basement leads down a brightly lit ladder" when powered.
  • A button will be added, again only for zombies or those with Necronet Access, to go down the ladder.
  • Upon going down the ladder, the player will be in "HQ office", part of an underground 3X3 area. HQ office is, like non-Necrotech office buildings, mostly useless. It can be barricaded as normal.
  • To the north, there is "Residence block", searchable for newspapers at the same rate as Hospitals, but does not contain FAKs.
  • To the northwest, there is "Residence block", same as above.
  • To the west, there is "Security office", searchable for pistols, pistol clips, shotguns, and shotgun shells at the same rate as armories. Also, when the office is powered, a survivor and zed counts for all the other underground rooms will be visible to anyone in the room. Flavor when powered: "Security monitors are lit up with images of the other rooms in the complex"
  • To the southwest, there is "Necrotech Laboratory", essentially exactly the same as an NT building.
  • To the south, there is "Specimen Room", as useless as an empty block. The description reads "The room is barren, with a solid iron door and concrete surfaces."
  • To the southeast, there is "Infirmary", searchable for FAKs at the same rate as a Mall Drugstore, and "Large Scalpels" at 3%. Players with Surgery heal 15HP when this room is powered.
  • To the east, there is "Utility Storeroom", searchable for Radios at 5%, Radio Transmitters at 2%, generators at 3%, GPS units at 15%, Mobile Phones at 10%.
  • To the northeast, there is "General Store", searchable for Books, Poetry Books, Beer, and Wine at the same rates for each as in the Mall Book Stores and Liquor Stores.
  • The power structure has been shut down, so each room has to be powered like a separate building.
  • Freerunning between rooms is possible through crawling through large ventilation ducts.
  • If a room is ransacked, the zombies have blocked the ducts and freerunning into or out of the room is impossible.
  • If you don't have Freerunning and move to another room, or you have left the room, you will be "standing in a hallway outside X."
  • Rooms can be barricaded as normal and have doors.
  • Because of the construction of the complex, only a transmitter in the Office can broadcast to the outside. Transmitters in other rooms are only heard by those in the complex. Security Office transmitters can be heard by all, inside or out.
  • When dumping a body, there are two options. The normal option is the same a dumping the body outside a building and deposits the body in the hallway outside the room, still in the underground complex. The second option, costing 5 AP, is to "dump body into disposal chute". Any body dumped into a disposal chute is treated as having been headshot, even if it was not, and incurs the +5AP penalty (does not stack with Headshot!) to stand up. The body is spit up outside the lower left corner of the mansion above.
  • If the center HQ office is ransacked, the ladder is broken and it is impossible to leave. Any survivors in the complex when the center is ransacked are unable to leave until the center office is cleared and fixed. Zombies cannot leave either. Survivors and zombies can still enter the complex by dropping down, but cannot leave afterwards.

Obviously, holding this complex is a risky proposition for survivors. You have everything you need right there, but if the zombies get in and ransack the center room, you're getting out through them or the disposal chute. Also, its location (Stanbury Village) puts it close to places of heavy zombie concentrations. I don't think I've forgotten anything, but if I have feel free to post it. This'll probably go though several drafts, so please pick it apart mercilessly on this second run. NOTE: See discussion page

Left Queue: 20:05, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Chatting

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 03:06, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Survivors/Zombies
Description: Sometimes you want to talk not to deliver a message or ask for aid but just for fun, or if you notice someone is online. For instance during a large battle with several active players it can be fun to trash-talk, shout words of encouragement, or scream "Grab harman manbagz!" Fewer players do than are inclined because most people are unwilling to sacrifice their AP, and possibly lose the battle, for the sake of roleplay.

I suggest a new type of talking for humans and zombies made available by concurrent human and zombie skills that'd put a new text box on your screen. It works the same as talking with just two major differences.

  • 1) It does not consume AP to use (still uses IP hits).
  • 2) Only people "close by" can hear it, meaning only people who refresh the screen within the next minute.

So you'd still want to use an AP to announce to a room of people "Survivors in need at X" so 50 people will get your message. But if you and and an ally were clearing a zombie out of your safehouse together you could shout out "This one's for Odin!" so your battle buddy or enemy get the message without you stupidly throwing away points you need to attack. This could also allow for brief back and forth conversations, but only between whatever humans/zombies are active right at that moment.

This should lead to a lot more "gangbang harmans!" and "chaaaarge!" than we have now. And it wouldn't cause spam because the message would only be seen by people who refresh the screen within the next 60 seconds.

Left Queue: 22:13, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Colo(u)r Familiar Feeding Groans

Timestamp: Rheingold 22:30, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Interface Update
Scope: Zombies, Ron Burgundy
Description: When a zombie on your contact list gives a Feeding Groan, that groan sounds "familiar" to you. From now on, if that zombie is assigned a color on your contact list, the world "familiar" will be bolded and in the same color. Repeated groans ("...and again. And again.") will not be colored so this should be a very minor strain on the server.
Left Queue: 14:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Dah? (Door?)

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 23:44, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Memories Of Life Modification
Scope: Zombies can no longer close doors
Description: Memories Of Life Modification

Memories Of Life should read: Your zombie automatically opens doors when they enter or exit a building.

Seems simple enough, what's different however is 2 things:

  • #1: Zombies automatically open a door (for free) when they enter or exit a building. (Barricades and movements costs enough AP, as-is.)
  • #2: Zombies cannot choose to open, or close doors. (if you get in, and there's survivors in front of you.. you can't go and play with the doors!)

I feel this is nessesary because the opening and closing of doors is a preventative tactic that involves.. well... thought along the lines other than just the "here and now". I prefer to think zombies are semi-immortal but very reactive and instinctual, and don't do things based on forethought (like closing a door behind them, gathering equipment, etc.)

This also prevents recently zombified humans from getting up, and shutting a door, helping the survivors. That is a bit out of genre, don't you think?

It also seems a bit off for a zombie without MOL to be able to close a door, or (if that's not the case, I could be wrong...) for a zombie to have any reason to close a door.

This just makes zombies more like that, smashing barricades, eating people, ransacking buildings.. no closing doors.. so it doesn't "screw" newbie zombies. Or allow zombified humans a way to "screw" zombies before they get revived.

This seems fair, because now human survivors have to pay 1 AP per body to chuck them out of a building, so this will help "newbie" zombies in many respects.. but major zombie seiges will need several zombies with MOL, or with AP to spare, at times.

Note: If you're alive, you are free to open & close each and every door you wish, if you like.. I'm just saying not while a zombie. It just isn't behaviourally logical.

Left Queue: 14:57, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

25th November 2006

Tracker/GPS change

Timestamp: ThreeSided 02:06, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New item/item change
Scope: zombies, survivors... everyone who comes in contact with one.
Description: NOTE: please do me a favor and read through the whole thing before voting, because I guarantee you it will sound pointless unless you get my whole point from this

First off, I will start with the change idea I have for the GPS. My idea for it is that you can see the map of malton on it. however, every square on the map will only show a coordinate, and will be blank. it is a seemingly useless change, but makes sense with the next part of the idea.

This part is an item that would be able to be found in Tech parts of the mall, and in NT buildings. I'll let you discuss the percentages. In order to use a tracker, you must have a GPS. After you kill something, you have the choice to place a tracker on the body (only if you have a tracker and a GPS). Once you place the tracker on the body, you will get the message: "You clip the tracker into the flesh of the skin", and you can give the tracker a name (maybe the persons name). From that point on, the GPS map of the person who placed the tracker will have a small red dot on whatever suburb the tracker is in, along with the name of the tracker next to it. If the zombie is ever revived, the red dot turns green. You can zoom in a on a suburb, and see what exact square they are on.

When a tracker is placed on you, you cannot tell it is on you until you are a survivor again, after which you can remove it for 1AP and 1HP(its attached to your skin so... yeah... ouch...). Once you remove a tracker, it deactivates/turns off. The green dot on the GPS map of the person who placed it on you would become black and stop moving with you, and next time they log on they will get the message: "Tracker (insert tracker name here) has been deactivated.". The GPS would then have a black dot where the tracker was when it was removed/deactivated. A tracker can be deactivated by the placer at any time, and black dots can be removed as well. You can have a maximum of 30 trackers active at one time on your map. any others you have placed on someone will appear once one of the trackers is deleted.

Now to where this would come in handy... this would be good for bounty hunters, who after killing a PKer, could place a tracker on them. The bounty hunter would be able to keep track of them as zombies. Once the PKer is revived, he/she could be tracked. Even if the PKer removes the tracker, (most likely, I mean... who would be stupid enough to leave it on?) you still know that the PKer had been revived, and where they were before they removed it.

But this wouldn't completely get rid of PKing... bounty hunter hunters could use this in the same way, and general PKers could use this to keep track of bounty hunters they want to avoid.

This would give a whole new dimension to the game, and would make it much more fun, in my opinion...

EDIT: oh, and I forgot to mention. If you drop your GPS, you of course cant use it, but if you find a new one then you still have all of your little tracker dots. You cannot be alerted of deactivation if you do not have your GPS.

Left Queue: 09:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Hiding

Timestamp: Darkvengance 17:54, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Humans, or Zombies
Description: I believe you should add a skill that would allow a player to hide. I have read the Fequently suggested page but I think that when a player hides there should be a chance that a human (or zombie) walking by will see them. make it about a 50-50 or 40-60 chance of finding the hiding players.To keep players from constantly hiding it could have a high AP cost, say about 10 AP. Also it would be good if this was a skill that the player would have to buy before being able to run around hiding. The check will be rolled once for every AP spent in the square and only 1 check will determine if the hiding player(s) in the square are visible or not. Zombies would not be able to hide, come on when was the last movie you saw that zombies could actually hide from people and ambush them? Remember zombies have minimal intelligance
Left Queue: 19:25, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

How Colored Contacts Could Help The GPS Unit

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 04:49, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement
Scope: The Humble GPS Unit
Description: The contact list just got a wonderful improvement that lets you color code your contacts. Kevan has talked about tying in the contact list with the GPS unit in the past to let you find your friends and allies easily. Here's one way of doing it.

At the bottom of the contact list below the names but above the "Make Changes" button have a line that says "Send GPS Coordinates To:" followed by a seperate checkbox for each color you can tint contacts. There'd be a new column in the contact list titled "Coordinates". If your mutual contact has a GPS unit, you have a GPS unit, and they've marked you a color that they are sending their position to it'd display their current suburb and their x,y coordinates there on your contact list. Otherwise it'd just be blank.

If you ever decide a contact shouldn't know your position just change their color or uncheck their current color. I don't think this should work for zombies so while someone is dead their GPS unit will be switched off (assume it turned off when they fell down) and they won't be able to see where their contacts are, nor will their position be transmitted. Before you say that's unfair to zombies I have two valid reasons why it should be set up this way:

  • 1) It'd make sieges too easy for zombies. They'd see where their horde leader is and all converge on the same one building. The only zombie weakness is their lack of coordination. It's why they can't talk or use radio. Humans already have the ability to organize groups with radios, this wouldn't overpower them there. It's more for finding friends. While I believe zombies should have a way of finding friends too this isn't it, maybe something with groaning or scent would work better for that. Besides, zombies consulting handheld GPS units is horribly out of genre.
  • 2) It'd make reviving too easy! Your friend is dead? You could see exactly where they are and hop to them needle in hand.

This should make the GPS unit a crucial item and allow allies to meet up even if they aren't logged on a forum together or on good enough terms to actually share AIM names. Mobile phones are a bit impractical for calling all 100+ contacts you have and finding out where they are and radios are anonymous and public. This should be a welcome addition.

  • note: Changed suggestion title because it was too long and screwing with the page.
Left Queue: 15:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Revive Expert

Timestamp: The Mad Axeman 15:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: New skill
Scope: Survivors.
Description: After performing many revives, some people are getting rather good at it. Being brought back from the dead by one of these experts is less traumatic than normal, allowing for a quicker recovery.

Revive Expert is a new skill that requires that the character already have Lab experience. When a zombie is revived by someone who has this skill they stand up with 5 more hp than usual - so 30 (Or 35 for those with bodybuilding). The AP cost to make the revive is unaltered.

Left Queue: 15:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Poisonous Bite

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 19:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Zombies
Description: The zombie anatomy has always been abnormal, so it's not really much of a surprise whem their salivation glands begin mutating further...

This will be a skill under Digestion. When a zombie with this skill bites a survivor, there is a 20% chance that the survivor will become poisoned. Poisoned survivors suffer -10% to all attacks. However, this cannot drop a survivors accuracy below 20%.

Examples: A survivor whose normal accuracy with attack X is 50% would have an accuracy of 40% when poisoned. A survivor whose normal accuracy with attack Y is 25% would have an accuracy of 20% when poisoned (because the poison can't reduce their accuracy below 20%). A survivor whose normal accuracy with attack Z is 10% would still ave an accuracy of 10% when poisoned (again, because the poiso can't reduce their accuracy below 20%).

This poison effect can be done in conjunction with infection, but the poison effect does not stack with itself (so you can't poison someone twice and hacve their accuracy drop by 20%). When the survivor is poisoned, the zombie will be informed just as they are when a survivor becomes infected. Poison can be cured by a FAK, just like an infection. Poison does not affect zombies, and will instead remain dormant until the zombie is revived (just like infection).

What's the point of this? Well, most zombies don't bite very much. In most situations they don't need the HP granted by Digestion (unlss they're in real-time combat, chances are their HP will probably be full) and they only need to bite once for infection. But this only works 1/5 of the time. As a result it will give zombies more reason to use bites multiple times, as it will take an average of 5 bites to poison a survivor. It can be fairly powerful, but it is just as easily cured as infection (actually, one FAK will cure both at the same time). And last but not least, it gives zombies another strategic option they can use against survivors, which is always a good thing.

Left Queue: 15:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

New class skills

Timestamp: Waffles 20:26, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Class skills.
Scope: Everyone.
Description: Firstly I'd like to say that I've never worked with a Wiki page before, and all this HTML is confusing and frightening me. So if I messed up in editing some part of the template(likely) then please bear with me.

I think all character classes need a skill in addition to the skill they already start out with in order to diffrentiate them more. As is now a level 41 military class is indistinguishible from a level 41 scientist.

Consumer skill- Idle Chatter

This skill would allow a civilian class two speeches and two text messages without an AP cost daily.

Police skill- Voice of Authority

Allows a police officer to enter heavily barricaded and below buildings as though they were only very strongly barricaded. The idea behind this is that the police officer commands the people inside to shift aside some materials to allow entrance for him. This has no AP cost and does not damage the barricade.

Medic skill- Field Training

When a medic applies a FAK to someone in a powered building, they gain an extra 3 HP.

Scout skill- Far Sight

Can see who is inside a building simply by standing outside it via command "Look inside". The idea being that a scout's natural agility allows him/her to peek into windows that would be inaccessible to other classes.

NecroTech Lab Assistant skill- Extractor Finesse

Has the ability to use the DNA extractor on three zombies per day without an AP cost.

Doctor- Healing Touch(Pheonix Wright lololol)

Can choose how to distribute the HP they heal. Let's say a doctor can heal 10 HP with a single FAK(First aid skill). The doctor could type in "4" beside the HP counter beside "LeftyHooks" name and that person would recieve 4 HP and the doctor would be able to heal whoever else with the remaining 6 HP in that FAK. The XP healed for each HP healed would not change. I'm assuming that you can gain XP in decimals. .4 XP, etc.

Firefighter- Drag Person

If a human survior is standing outside a building, a firefighter can choose to "drag" them inside at a cost of 1 AP to the firefighter. The rationale being that firefighters drag people OUT of burning buildings, why can't they drag them IN, too?

Corpse- Has Memories of Life until level five.

The thought behind this is that a fresh corpses' brain hasn't degraded much yet, but will eventually. Apparently all zombies are the same anyway, since there aren't different zombie classes. If different zombie classes were introduced I'd love to think of new skills for them, but as is I've never played a zombie before and don't really know what would be beneficial to them without breaking the game.

Okay, I saved the Private class until last, because I have several ideas for them and couldn't decide on one.

Private class skill- Strained March

A private can sacrifice 10 HP twice in order to move two more spaces per day. This is NOT an AP gain, it only allows them to MOVE, not perform any other action.

Private class skill- Fort Clearance

Can enter forts regardless of how heavily barricaded they are.

Private class skill- Flatbed Truck Operation

Would allow privates to move bodies out of forts at a cost of 3 AP.

Keep in mind that I don't want privates to have ALL of these skills, just one of them. I like the latter two because they would make the forts very military-centric, like they should be.

You can't very well expect me to have read EVERY suggestion ever, some of these are bound to be dupes.

Left Queue: 15:02, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

26th November 2006

Criminal Database

Timestamp: Lord of the Pies 08:25, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: PD Improvement
Scope: Survivors, PKers
Description: Contrary to what the title and the 'suggestion scope' might seem to tell you, this wouldn't give a complete list of all PKers in Malton or anything like that. But anyway, let's assume that either a) some random insane person has been regularly updating the database of known criminals in Malton or b) the same thing, but done by the remaining police.

In a powered Police department, you would be able to 'View Criminal Database' for 1AP (using a computer from somewhere inside the Police Department). This would give you the following message:

'You open up the database of criminals and a list of names and faces appears. Moving to the top, you read the highest entry:

[gap 1] - [gap 2] count(s) of murder,

[gap 3] count(s) of [gap 4]

[gap 5] count(s) of [gap 6]

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS'

[gap 1] would be the name of the PKer with the highest number of kills, while human and against humans (since the criminal database was added). [gap 2] would be the number of kills. [gap 4] and [gap 6] would be additional, yet fictionalized, randomly determined crimes use purely for flavour, such as assault, rape, looting etc. (ignore the fact that two of those can be done in the game already) and [gap 3] and [gap 5] would be random figures for those crimes, once again whose purpose would be for the flavour.

This doesn't really damage PKing (and in fact might be seen as some kind of achievement of how fearsome the top PKer is) and really wouldn't have that much of an effect on the top PKer too, unless some kind of complete city-wide manhunt was ordered, in which case they'd have to run like hell (but then again, they'd already be doing that...). If the top PKer is griefed by people who're chasing after them then it's really only a matter of time until another one takes the spotlight or he finally escapes. Besides that, there are a great many regular PKers who wouldn't ever be up there.

Left Queue: --The General T Sys U! P! F! 10:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

GPS pinging and Beckoning Groan

Timestamp: Jon Pyre 06:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement/Skill
Scope: GPS units/Zombies
Description: These are two counterpart suggestions for human and zombie to allow them to find contacts in game without necessarily being in the same forum or sharing AIM addresses. Meta-gaming is fine and dandy but sometimes you just want to work with that guy you met in a safehouses a while back who isn't on your forum or someone you don't necessarily want to share your AIM name with.

GPS Pinging

Here's another idea on how to tie in the new color contact improvement to the GPS unit. Next to the GPS unit have a drop down menu listing all the contact colors (grey, purple, red, etc). Select which color you want and click the GPS unit and all your mutual contacts of the chosen color that have GPS units will receive the following message:

"Your GPS unit beeps and indicates Player Name is at (33, 58) (timestamp)."

There is no potential for griefing since only people in color category you select will receive your location. If someone pings too frequently and generates spam you could prevent yourself from receiving their messages by A) Ignoring them in your contact list, or B) Removing them from your contact list. There could also be an additional option on your contact list to block entire colors from pinging you. That would you could tint your group leaders/allies the permitted color and only receive pings from them, not all the rabble on your contact list.

Beckoning Groan

This zombie skill allows you to call out to your mutual zombie contacts from a distance. It'd be similar to the GPS unit pinging, groaning to mutual contacts of a specific color from across the city (assume zombies can hear some frequencies that carry well humans aren't receptive to) However a precise location would allow hordes to form too easily so your allies would only receive your current suburb. Once in the same suburb they could rely on feeding groans to eventually bring them together. It'd have the same protections against spam and griefing as the GPS method.

Random Bullet Points

  • Technical Feasibility: I don't know how easy this would be to program and run compared to features using similar mechanics like radios, highlighted/ignored contacts, and feeding groans. Maybe it'd be easy, maybe it'd be impossible. Unless you're a programmer and can state with professional accuracy this wouldn't work I implore you not to vote kill/spam for server load reasons.
  • Doesn't allow griefing. You select who gets your location. Nobody does unless you want them to.
  • Doesn't allow spam. You can stop anyone from sending you their location.
  • Helps foster alliances on both sides.
Left Queue: 21:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

27th November 2006

Barricade removal tweak

Timestamp: BBM 16:50, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Game mechanics tweak
Scope: People attacking barricades from inside
Description: When inside a building, I propose that you gain a percentage (possibly 5-10%) boost to accuracy when attacking barricades.

If you think about it, there's the wall of the building, then a large pile of rubble that's being added onto from inside. Therefore, it would be easier to remove that rubble when you're removing it from the inside. Another way of thinking of it is when faced with a stack of biscuits, it's easier to take the top one off than take the bottom one out. I don't really reckon this would cause a problem with PKers and such, as there would still be more efficient ways to disrupt safehouses than dismantling the barricades, but this would give people a useful boost when for example dealing withover-barricaded entry points.

Left Queue: 21:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Change junkyards into zombie jails

Timestamp: Asheets 21:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: improvement
Scope: players in and around junkyards
Description: In my opinion, this is a suggestion for junkyards, wirecutters, and fences that does not create a complete anti-zombie safe haven (the complaint for most suggestions involving junkyards/fences/wirecutters these days). In fact, I think that this might cause some strategies to be re-thought if this suggestion were to be implemented.

My idea is to replace barracades at junkyards with fence repairs accomplished via wirecutters. Barracades would not be allowed to be built in junkyards; instead, the repaired fence would serve as the barricade itself -- with levels of "loosely" to "extremely heavy" retained. Free running would still be allowed at levels from "open fence" to "very strongly fenced". Zombies would have to bash at the fences to tear them down.

The key point to this change, however, would be to make it so that fence repairs could be done from the outside as well as inside with the wirecutters. That way, zombies who conquer and occupy a junkyard could be trapped inside until they could bash their way out.

A side effect would be that humans with free running couldn't leave until they cut/bash the fences back down to "very strongly"; humans without free running would have to bash/cut the fences all the way down to leave.

Of course, the trick is to convince zombies/humans to invade and hold a junkyard. I believe the trick to this would be to make the junkyards better resource points (to motivate humans and zeds to enter and hold these areas) by increasing the search percentages for items.

Left Queue: 21:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

28th November 2006

Detection.

Timestamp: by Lonewolf17a at 2006-11-28 08:14:23 (Put into format by Mark 15:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC))
Type: Skill.
Scope: Survivors.
Description: First off i wanna say i'm new at this posting stuff (NOT A NEWB ON THE GAME!!!) so if there is any critacism it won't be taken in the wrong way....

Okay Sorry for that last bomb on dectection uhh... anyways i hope this about sums it up thought okay let me evaluate...

Dectection-Enables a human to track down a zombie who has recently either tried to kill or talked or gestured at you! I.E. Lets Say a message comes up that say "a zombie has attacked you for 4 dam.""Following the trail of your own blood it looks as though this zombie is at 3blocks north 2 blocks east."This way it would be a little bit easier to dish out revenge anyway I hope that is enough to sum this up and I'll start shuting up on this subject if it's getting annoying. Thanks for taking time to read--Lonewolf17a 15:44, 29 November 2006 (UTC)Lonewolf17a

Left Queue: 10:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Take Cover!

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 19:19, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Game Mechanic
Scope: Survivors
Description: Have you ever slept through a gunfight? No? And you say you've never been in the vicinity of one, either? Well, even if you haven't, let me assure you that guns are LOUD. You can't sleep through them. So, why is it that people can sleep through gunshots in UD?

I propose that anytime someone uses a firearm, all survivors (doesn't affect zombies) in the area/building at the time of the shot gain a 10% evasion chance towards all firearms attacks for the next 10 minutes. This is essentially the same as reducing the accuracy of all firearm attacks against you by 10%. This effect can not bring a person's accuracy below 30% (so those with 30% accuracy or lower are immune to this). Also, the benefits of this do not stack.

As an example of this, let's say that Player A fires a shotgun with an accuracy of 65% at Player B inside a building where Players C and D are also hiding out. If Player A tries to attack Player B again with a firearm within the next 10 minutes, his accuracy will be 55% instead of 65%. If Player A decides to attack Player C or D instead, his accuracy will still only be 55%.

Now, to illustrate the limitations of the effect, if Player C attempts to fire her pistol (accuracy of 5%) at Player D during this time, her accuracy will still only be 5%, because her normal accuracy is below the 30% threshold.

This whole thing is basically supposed to simulate people taking cover while they are under fire. It could perhaps be construed as a form of auto-defense, but the fact that it is an inherent game-mechanic for all survivors (rather than a skill) that doesn't affect the survivor-zombie balance may make up for it. In any case, flak jackets are much more of an auto-defense than this could ever be (reducing damage by 20% means a lot more than reducing accuracy by 10%). One could also argue that this weakens PKing. And while that statement may technically be true, it also weakens bounty hunters just the same, which balances things out.

Left Queue: 10:23, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

29th November 2006

Just Look through the Darn Fences Already!

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 15:17, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: location alteration
Scope: Junkyards
Description: Junkyards. Just what are they? In the context of the game, they're big open areas where junk goes that happens to be surrounded by wire fencing. Now, that's all fine and good, but then why can't you see who's in them? Fences aren't walls; they don't hide anything from your vision. If you're standing in a junkyard, people should be able to see you.

Therefore, I suggest that players standing inside a junkyard should be visible to those outside of it (but still in the same square). They wouldn't show up on the map, but the junkyard description should have a message added to it that looks something like this: "Inside the fencing is <insert survivor names here>, and <insert number here> zombies."

By the same token, players inside the junkyard will be able to see who is outside the fence (but within the same square). The message would work just like the one above, but would replace "Inside" with "Outside".

This is X-ray vision! Yes, it is. For ONE building. A practically useless building that technically isn't even a building but just an open area with a fence around it. And it works both ways.

This nerfs distributed defense! If your distributed defense strategy relies that heavily on junkyards as places for survivors to sleep, then you've got much bigger problems to worry about than this.

Left Queue: 10:25, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

30th November 2006

Body Desecration

Timestamp: Billy McGoggenhammer 23:35, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Zombie skill.
Scope: Survivors who get killed.
Description: For the time being, I feel that the game is very unbalanced in survivors' favor. They can do up to 10 HP damage in one AP and headshoot zombies, to name just two things. What I'm suggesting is a headshot equivalent skill, so when a zombie kills a survivor, he must spend 5 extra AP to become a zombie. If you have Scent Death and can do it to revivified bodies; doing this could get you 1 XP. Other possible names for the skill could be Soul Wound, Blood Drain and Skull Crack.

This could also be the start of a new group of skillsets like Zombie Hunter. Maybe it could be called Pack Leader, Horde General or Alpha Zombie.

Example: A zombie has attacked you for 3 HP.

A zombie grabbed hold of you!

A zombie bites you for 4 HP. You are infected.

A zombie attacked you for 3 HP ...and again ...and again ...and again.

You have been killed by Dick Cheney, the Alpha Zombie! It has desecrated your body and you will need an additional 5 AP to stand up.

Or: You have desecrated a revivifying body.

Left Queue: 03:15, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Movement training

Timestamp: Me1990 22:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Skill for Survivors and benefit for zombies
Scope: zombie hunter skill.
Description: This is a zombie hunter skill that requires a Level 15 character and the skill of free run to have. The skill is called Movement training. The way the skill works for survivors is that you will be able to go to blocks with 1 AP. The way it works for zombies is they can hear you from 5 blocks away in each direction and if a zombie is in that block it can't be used.

Example: your running to get to your HQ 5 blocks away and a zombie hears you coming from 3 blocks away and intercepts. As you get there you see the zombie you click 1 more block and a message will appear saying some thing like a Zombie blocked your path you maneuver around it. Then you would end up 1 block over instead of two.

Left Queue: 03:21, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Unknown broadcast

Timestamp: Shadow213 03:31, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement.
Scope: Both
Description: When a survivor turns into a unused radio station (a station that has not sent out any signals for the last two hours). When you are one block away from a zombie using death rattle, the following description will be announced, "Static is played on your radio". Whenever a zombie or zombies use their death rattle on the same block to you, the description should be submitted, "As the zombie is saying '(insert zombie talk here)'; the radio begins to speak. '(insert text here)'." The difference is that after 11 characters(letters, spaces, punctuation), there is 3 letters replaced by periods (meaning the static). Note before anyone says it that it would not create spam because the radio station must be unused and also; you have to tune it in to the radio to begin with. Also, be aware that the name will still be zombie.
Left Queue: 08:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

NecroTech Net Upgrade

Timestamp: George Remero, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Improvement
Scope: NecroNet and Contacts lists
Description: At the moment access to NecroNet isn't really very useful, especially now you can look out of the window with binoculars. I propose that when a player accesses the NecroNet that their contacts list is updated, with what? With the last know position of everyone on their contact list that NecroNet knows about. i.e. those who have submitted their position to the NecroNet, or non-brainrotters who have been scanned (both being subject to being active in the last seven days). I think that reporting of position when connecting to NecroNet should be optional (for reasons discussed below), probably with an extra AP for 'report in', perhaps with a manually entered field [Clarification - you only get 4 digits like gps co-ordinates, think tuning a radio]- making a GPS or map necessary to know the right position.

This upgrade would require another column on the contacts list with a 'last known position' heading or similar.

This will obviously aid survivor groups in co-ordinating, but they do that in external forums and on irc anyway, I would like to see this kind of communication brought back into the game.

This change could potentially aid griefers who are out to get certain individuals, so I haven't suggested submitting your own position be mandatory, it'll be up to the individual to decide. Also bare in mind NecroNet access isn't a beginners skill, XP is better spent on lots of other things, you don't have to submit your real position if you don't want to, unless you're a Zombie (and if you're in a mob you can't be attacked individually), and if you want to be a Zombie and stay that way you get brain-rot.

Left Queue: 10:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Terrifying Groan (Edit)

Timestamp: MrAushvitz Canadianflag-sm.jpg 13:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Type: Feeding Groan Option
Scope: If you find a lone survivor... your groan range is increased
Description: Appears on zombie skills tree as a sub-skill of Feeding Groan, adds no benefits to your human character.

Your zombie is capable of emitting a very loud, and very terrifying groan whenever it encounters a lone survivor.

  • Whenever your zombie encounters a lone survivor, and you utter a feeding groan: that feeding groan's range is 3 squares (instead of 1.)
  • There is no change in the AP cost of your feeding groans, this skill simply makes a feeding groan against a lone survivor a much more effective "dinner bell".
  • The terrifying groan has a different "sound" than normal feeding groans (so zombies know it's feeding time on a single victim!) This groan will be described as: "You hear a loud, terrifying feeding groan from X,Y" The survivor at this location who hears this groan will read "A zombie just made a very loud feeding groan to call all nearby zombies to come eat YOU!" (adds to the horror, makes the feeding groan more of a "challenge")

What This Is Expected To Achieve: It will probably be most effective for lone survivors outdoors.. so it would be good for calling newbie/nearby zombies. Mainly, it's just to make the 1 survivor groan actually useful for something, if you don't mind the extra 100 XP for this improvement. Survivors that don't stick together should try to be more careful, or help keep one another alive, for good reason. It's a very reasonable, and fair zombie buff that isn't overpowered, just handy!

Left Queue: 10:32, 16 December 2006 (UTC)