Suggestion:20080826 Dead Reckoning

20080826 Dead Reckoning

 Swiers 08:03, 26 August 2008 (BST)

Suggestion type
Skill

Suggestion scope
Zombies

Suggestion description

mechanics

Child Skill of Scent Death, costs 100 experience points

Zombies with this skill would get a new action button, called "Dead Reckoning" (or perhaps something less puntastic). Clicking this button would call up a list of contacts, costing 0 AP and 1 IP hit. This in itself does nothing, but they could then select one contact and spend 1 AP to attempt to "sniff out" that contact's location using scent death. The attempt would succeed only under the following conditions:

1. The contact is a "mutual contact" and so the user is familiar with their scent
2. The contact does not have the user set to "ignore" (this is to prevent people from using this ability on "mutual contacts" who only list them so they can ignore them)
3. The contact is a zombie or a corpse (including reviving bodies- they are corpses) and thus can be detected with Scent Death.
4. The contact is within 5 blocks (the range of Scent Death)

If these 4 conditions are met, the user is told the contact's relative location and physical condition, as in You detect the decomposing odor of Contact Name`s (corpse|zombie carcass) 4 blocks East and 3 Blocks North. If the conditions are not met, you simply get a message saying there was no such odor.

intent

To make it easier for zombies to locate contacts (especially a horde leader) and hence their horde, without as much metagaming.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, justified, signed, and timestamped. # justification ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above may be struck by any user.

The only valid votes are Keep, Kill, Spam or Dupe. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

Keep Votes

1. Author's vote  Swiers 09:44, 26 August 2008 (BST)
2. It's neither unreasonable, spamtastic, game-breaking, retarded, badly flavoured, nor does it contain centaurs, so I say keep. --Anotherpongo 11:01, 26 August 2008 (BST)
3. Keep No nukes for zombies! That's why it earns my stamp of approval. --• LtZurSee slapped your nose with a newspaper for a heal from CORAM (0 seconds ago) 12:12, 26 August 2008 (BST)
4. Keep Nice suggestion, not spamtastic, or a nuke for zombies. Linkthewindow 12:46, 26 August 2008 (BST)
5. Keep, helps hordes. - User:Whitehouse 12:47, 26 August 2008 (BST)
6. It might prove useful for PKers out for revenge. They get bounty-killed and want revenge. So they just sniff 'em out, get a revive, and scout the area within 50 blocks of that location to find the bounty hunter. Of course, the chances of finding the bounty hunter is very slim if they moved... --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 14:10, 26 August 2008 (BST)

   Bounty hunters rarely contact list their targets, and even so, it would only work if the bounty hunter was already dead. Not much revenge you can exact on a zombie as a zombie, or as a survivor for that matter.  Swiers 19:43, 26 August 2008 (BST)

7. Keep Even though it contains no centaurs.--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 14:49, 26 August 2008 (BST)
8. Keep - Good stuff. --Papa Moloch 15:49, 26 August 2008 (BST)
9. Keep - Looks good, if minor. ~Ariedartin • Talk • A KS J abt all 16:49, 26 August 2008 (BST)
10. Keep - As Anotherpongo. --Kaisuke 17:39, 26 August 2008 (BST)
11. Keep - if zombies want to sniff butts, fine by me!--Squid Boy 19:44, 26 August 2008 (BST)
12. Keep - As Anotherpongo. --Igpeno 19:49, 26 August 2008 (BST)
13. Keep - Useful, yet not game breaking. --ZiP^MH+LUE 22:54, 26 August 2008 (BST)
14. Keep - As above. --Bob Fortune ^RR 23:57, 26 August 2008 (BST)
15. Keep - Helps zombies co-ordinate, useful, non-grief worthy, and generally minor. --Janine 01:46, 27 August 2008 (BST)
16. Keep - Can't hurt.--Truezombieboy 03:36, 27 August 2008 (BST)
17. Keep - Because this isn't all that different from what Scent Death does, the 5 block limit doesn't even make it a useful griefing tool -- Necrodeus ^{T M!} 21:14, 27 August 2008 (BST)
18. keep I agree. seems nice if you have a friend who's new to the zombie life, and you wish to enlighten him to the Way Of BARHAH! or just have him follow you around and eat survivors after you find him. Padfu-Zomfu 12:19, 28 August 2008 (BST)
19. Keep - As Anotherpongo. Simply, it would be nice. --BoboTalkClown 02:37, 30 August 2008 (BST)
20. Keep - As below. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 19:13, 30 August 2008 (BST)
21. Keep - Keep the name, too. --Uncle Bill 04:25, 31 August 2008 (BST)
22. Keep - This is a great idea. It is annoying to have to jump through the hoops of metagaming. -- User:Tereseth 3:20, 1 September 2008 (MT)

Kill Votes

1. Kill - it's the wrong flavour for me, because why is a zombie sniffing out their best buddy? Also, this could be used (in a complicated fashion) to track a victim, even after death - and that's not really fair. --Funt Solo ^QT 16:03, 26 August 2008 (BST)

   Why sniff out your best buddy? Because he's the one who nows where food is! It can't be used to sniff out anybody who s not a mutual contact, and who has not "ignored" you, so unwanted tracking is very unlikely and entirely preventable.  Swiers 19:40, 26 August 2008 (BST)

   Mutual contacts are not by definition friendly, or if unfriendly, ignored. In fact, it makes sense to both list your worst enemy and also not ignore them. You have a point about the pack instinct, though. I think this should be weakened somewhat, so that dead body detection is not possible. Your inactive best buddy wouldn't be any use to you! Also, this is overpowered because it tells you an exact location, which is a bit magical. How about the general direction? That would still be fairly powerful, but you wouldn't be able to pinpoint a potential PK target and then meta-game to your buddies where he is. --Funt Solo ^QT 19:47, 26 August 2008 (BST)

2. Kill - Zombies are not bloodhounds. Noses decay just like all flesh - if the living human body can't be used to sniff out friends, one where most things are in a state of decay definitely should not. --Pgunn 16:22, 26 August 2008 (BST)

   Zombies clearly already have much better olfactory capacity in game than survivors do, especially as regards corpses and other zombies. In fact, this ability already quite nearly exists; if you and the "target" are the only members of a group in the area, you would get directions to their location, as part of the "nearest horde members" info. So really, this ability is not much of a stretch from current zombie sensory skills; its just a new application of existing abilities.  Swiers 19:40, 26 August 2008 (BST)

3. Kill As Pgunn--Airborne88^T|Z.Quiz|PSS 16:23, 26 August 2008 (BST)
4. Kill - Not a bad suggestion, but as Pgunn.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  01:18, 27 August 2008 (BST)
5. Kill - As above --Diablor 21:10, 27 August 2008 (BST)
6. Kill - So we take the worst parts of Scent Death shee, and we remove all the good parts shee, and we make it so tharsh a way to block it but that kills what poshible good could come of it shee. I don't like this idea, I don't like being able to let people freely track me, I don't like being forced to fill my contact list up with people who don't want to pay attention because I am where they should be, I don't like the fact that this is a tracking tool, I don't even like the current Scent Death and this would be a less newbie friendly version of that already unfriendly skill which was added for newbies/ferals.--Karek^maps?! 02:12, 28 August 2008 (BST)
7. Kill - Once again not an idea i'm entirely opposed to but as Funt, your assumption that because someone's in my contacts and not set to ignore means i want them being able to locate me any time of the day, is downright wrong.--xoxo 12:25, 29 August 2008 (BST)

   Yes, it would be ideal if there were a checkbox (initially unchecked for all current and new contacts) next to each contact for "friendly", where only friendly contacts get this benefit. That would also be nice for Suggestion:20080827 Cellphone Auto-Response & GPS Bluetooth. I left that out due to complexity. I suppose a (new) color could be assigned to that purpose, but that would go against the "colors have no pre-set meaning" system that has been in place so long. An alternate (but very clumsy, and not 100% effective) solution would be to save a MassContacts list of your enemies, and add / remove them all as needed.  Swiers 20:24, 29 August 2008 (BST)

8. Kill - As J3D. --Midianian^{|T|T:S|C:RCS|} 12:31, 29 August 2008 (BST)
9. Kill - As Funt Solo. I have enemies on my contact list that I wouldn't ignore, and they probably have me on theirs. Wouldn't want them tracking me! LemonHead7t7 *̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡|͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|]]| ̡̡̡ ̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡*̡͌l̡* ^{Talk/PDA/Red Rum/MOB} 22:11, 1 September 2008 (BST)
10. Kill - One of the survivors few strengths is communication and this suggestion would strip that even more from them.

Spam/Dupe Votes

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