Suggestion talk:20080507 DNA Extractor Simplification; remove drop list

Revification of Contacts

I'm confused: what about reviving people who use the DEM tool or something similar to request revives? I've played only a little bit with the reviving part of the game but from what I understand you only get the "revive" button after you extracted a DNA sample from a zombie? If not, how do you revive a specific zombie who's been added to your contact list? To reiterate, I'm under the impression that scanning a contact was the only was for you to revive them. If not then yes, while I doubt this change would save much bandwidth it will cut down on wasted AP due to scanning ineligible targets.--  ^Z_Z 19:46, 8 May 2008 (BST)

No, you can select a revive target from the drop down menu next to your revivification syringe. A DNA extractor is not required to perform a revive, and especially has no use if the person you're trying to revive is a contact. --Pdeq^Talk* 19:49, 8 May 2008 (BST)

The change I'm proposing would ONLY affect scanning, and has no impact on revification. You do NOT have to scan contacts to revive them. In fact, that is the main point of DEM's revive request tool; it saves revivers AP because they don't have to scan, and it also avoids problems with rotters "jamming the scan stack".
As Pdeg said, this would have zero impact on revivification of contacts (or otherwise). A syringe can be used on any contact the same way a FAK or attack can. In fact, the drop menu for syringes lets you target anybody present (by name or as a zombie), just like a FAK or attack. That includes survivors and contacts who are corpses, but it rarely causes problems for those other items, but with scanners its a pretty common mistake because after you revive somebody they become the selected target for scanning, and you have to unselect them.
Its similar to the problem you run into after loading a gun; you need to re-select the target and the weapon you were using to keep attacking, and its not uncommon to end up punching somebody after re-loading.  Swiers 20:43, 8 May 2008 (BST)

Cool, thanks for the explanation. I guess it would be a dupe but if someone can put a suggestion about stopping accidental punch attempts after reloading that would be neat too.--  ^Z_Z 20:58, 9 May 2008 (BST)

clarifying my point

there are two types of situations that come to mind where a person would scan a contact prior to reviving, despite knowing that they don't need to.

1. for the XP. a very obvious example would be someone who's 4 XP away from getting the lab experience skill, and wants to revive a friend, but there are other situations where this can and HAS happened. I've seen newbies do this, for the XP. They're not zerging, they're not scanning their alts, they're just grabbing that extra 4 XP before reviving someone they would have revived anyway. I don't see how this is any different than other methods of XP farming (like killing zombies outside). I don't do this stuff myself, but I don't particularly mind that others do.

2. so that the person you want to revive doesn't find out you've contact listed them. Maybe you have a crush on them, so you contact listed them, but you don't want them to know this? or maybe you think they won't know who you are, and that they'll assume that you're reviving without knowing who you're poking the needle into, which is a bad practice and could earn you disrespect if people suspect it. Someone might scan a contact just so that nobody thinks they'd revive without scanning, without needing an explanation every time they revive off the contacts list. --Jasonjason 01:33, 9 May 2008 (BST)

1)That's not the best way to get XP with a scanner. You don't know how recently the contact has been scanned (unless you have very close communication, or are zerging) so you don't know if scanning them will net you any XP. On the other hand, scanning "a zombie" will ALWAYS earn you XP, if there are any unscanned zombies in that location. I;d say its an unlikely stretch at best
2)That's also quite a stretch. Firstly, nobody cares if you contact list them; I contact list people at random all the time. Secondly, nobody except the person you revived will know if you scanned before reviving, and they likely will know (or not care) why you revived them.
In short, I'm confident enough in this idea that I've written a GM script that essentially does the same thing for my own character's, and its done nothing but help me. However, the GM script doesn't reduce server load; the server still send the full target list, I just never see it, and always get "the zombie(s)" as my selected target instead. --  Swiers 01:44, 9 May 2008 (BST)

1. is something I've seen in practice, with people who work closely and use IRC. --Jasonjason 19:01, 9 May 2008 (BST)