Talk:Suggestions/25th-Jan-2007

From The Urban Dead Wiki
< Talk:Suggestions
Revision as of 13:41, 1 February 2007 by SporeSore (talk | contribs) (→‎Modify Brain Rot)
(diff) ← Older revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
Jump to navigationJump to search

Double-Edged Skills v2

Timestamp: Reaper with no name TJ! 19:59, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Type: Skills
Scope: Maxed-Out Players
Description: Hey, remember this suggestion? Well, I finally decided to get off my ass and put it back up for discussion like the voters wanted. Hopefully this time people will actually notice it and help make it passable. Anyway, some stuff has been crossed out and some stuff (in italics) has been added. Any ideas/comments would be appreciated.

This is a suggestion for a new set of "skills" that will work a bit differently than the current ones. For one thing, they will only be available to those who have completed their side's skill tree. Survivors must have all the survivor skills and zombies must have all the zombie skills (brain rot is exempted from this). These skills will cost 100 XP and 10 AP (I'll explain why in a bit).

A player can only have ONE of these skills at any one time. However, they can unbuy them at any time for no cost. The reason that it will cost 10 AP to purchase one is to discourage players who have excessively high amounts of XP from abusing the benefits of one of these and then switching to another one when it is more useful. They can still do this, of course, but the huge AP costs for constantly switching skills will nerf the benefits.

The biggest difference by far, however, is that these skills are double-edged. They have both positive and negative effects on your character. The point of them is not to actually make your character more powerful, but to make them more specialized. No longer will every maxed out character be exactly the same. Different players will be slightly better or slightly worse in certain attributes. Now that the preliminary stuff is out of the way, let's get to the skills themselves.

For Survivors:

Combat Veteran - Countless battles have given you nerves of steel and combat proficiency to match (+5% accuracy to all firearms attacks, but it costs 2 more AP to revive someone).

Weapon Master - Be the weapon knife, axe, or nothing at all, you have become a master in the art of close-quarters combat (+5% accuracy to all melee weapons, but firearms accuracy is decreased by 5%).

Revive Specialist - Your vast experience in performing injections on zombies allows you to administer revivification syringes quickly but with the same precision (it costs 2 less AP to revive someone, but Max HP is decreased by 5).

Head Surgeon - Your medical skills and knowledge are unsurpassed (Can heal 3 more HP with a FAK, but accuracy with melee weapons decreases by 5%).

Heavy Lifter - Your musculature has progressed to the point where you can carry much more than the average person (Has 5 more inventory slots, but heals 3 less HP with FAKs but has a 2% chance of committing suicide when attempting to free-run due to the extra weight but attack accuracy is reduced by 2% due to the extra weight).

For Zombies:

Killing Machine - Your body is a weapon, and you use it well (Accuracy for all non-weapon attacks increases by 5%, but Max HP is decreased by 5).

Predator - A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and you excel at severing that link (feeding drag can now drag survivors with 15 HP or less outside even if there are barricades in the way, but the accuracy of all non-weapon attacks are decreased by 5%).

Mutation - Your body has transcended the bounds of human frailty (Max HP is increased by 5, but feeding drag now only works on survivors whose HP is at 7 or less).

Unrelenting Attacker - Your hatred of the living is so strong that it empowers you to claw your way past obstacles (can enter loosely barricaded buildings, but standing up after death costs 3 more AP)

Ravenous Hunger - Every fiber of your being yearns for the taste of living flesh (Digestion recovers 4 more HP, but bites now only infect target 50% of the time).

Plague Carrier - Your digestive system has rotted nicely and become a haven for many nasty pathogens just waiting for a new host (survivors bitten by this zombie are "badly infected" and take 2 dmg/turn instead of 1, but zombie only gets 2 HP from digestion).

A small note: Whenever a new skill is implemented into a character's skill tree and that character has a double-edged skill, that skill becomes dormant (but not lost) until the character purchases the new skill, at which point the double-edged skill automatically starts working again. This is because the double-edged skills are only supposed to be able to work for people who have all the skills in their side's tree, which means that when new skills are implemented, they won't have all of them any more.

An example: Say Player A has "Combat Veteran". Then let's say Kevan implements a new survivor skill called "Skill A". "Combat Veteran" would stop working. Then Player A buys Skill A. At that point "Combat Veteran" starts working again, because they now have all the survivor skills again.

Another small note: If someone attempts to unbuy Heavy Lifter and they have more than 51 inventory slots’ worth of items, a message will appear warning them that the excess items will automatically be dropped. If they still choose to unbuy the skill, then any items after the 51st slot will be dropped as per the warning.

Also, none of these are cross-class skills. They become dormant when a character is killed/revived. They can still be un-bought/bought, though.

Discussion I like killing machine, make it reduce your hp by 10 though, not 5. The penalties with two-edged skills should ALWAYS outweigh the benefits, because the benefits to an individual playstyle are always more than they look on paper --Gene Splicer 09:03, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll be honest with you. these sorts of suggestions get shot down pretty quickly once submitted. I personally like them, however they are just not kindly accepted as it is. (edit: Oops, I thought I signed my reply. Whoopsies!) --Ducis DuxSlothTalk 22:09, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Personally, I prefer the idea of class differentiation. Why whine about how tough NTs have it when you could start as a cop and get the NT skills faster? I also think the penalties should be just a little harsher than the bonuses.--Pesatyel 23:41, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Really great. But I think Heavy Lifter should be reverted. That means that if someone with Heavy Lifter spent all 50 AP free-running, he's guaranteed to die. -Mark 20:09, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

If the penalties outweigh the bonuses there would be no point, because no one would get them. I mean, would you buy a skill that makes you weaker overall? The point is specialization. Remember, a player is supposed to be just as strong with any one of these as they would without them. The entire point of them is to help benefit people with specialized playing styles. But I'll change Heavy Lifter. Problem is, I want there to be an equal number of survivor and zombie skills (otherwise the zombies will get more out of the deal), and I want to make sure that a person with any of these skills is no stronger or weaker than a person without them. --Reaper with no name TJ! 20:48, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I think you are trying to be too ambitious here. You are trying to get 11 skills passed at once. You might have more luck if you split this up into several different suggestions. If you put them all into just the one you will get lots of kill votes from people who dislike only one of your skills. The Mad Axeman 14:04, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Same as Mad Axeman above. I also think that the positive/negative effects between opposite skills should be the same. For example: Combat Veteran gets +5% to hit but +2AP to revivify - Revive Specialist get -2AP to revivify but -5% to hit.--SporeSore 14:24, 31 January 2007 (UTC)


Modify Brain Rot

Timestamp: --Swiers X:00 16:34, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Type: Skill tweak
Scope: Zombies
Description: The game has changed a lot since the inception of the "brain rot" skill. Its once obvious benefit (no combat revives) is now pretty dubious (combat revives are hardly an effective attack if they cost 10 AP). So a lot of zeds are stuck with what is (at best) a near useless skill, and at worst a major hinderance to character advancement. I'd like to develop some ideas for improving Brain Rot, aside from making it a direct combat buff.

One notion would be to make it a "social" skill. Zombies with brain rot would recognize other zombies, just as if they were in the same group. This would mean they could see zombie profiles and recognize which zombie was where, doing what, and could so co-operate more easily without extensive metagaming. If a zombie with brain rot ran into a large crowd of zeds, they could check the profiles to try and tell whether they were mrh cows, or a real horde. You could even check the profiles to figure out WHAT horde it was. This would perhaps open the door to survivors using brain-rotted zombies as spies to idnetify rotters (and then clear them out of revive ques or just plain greif them) but I think the benefit is worth it. As it is, survivors can potentially already "infiltrate" zombie groups as zombies, making it harder for zombies tho hold ransacked buildings by ZKing from within the "horde"- this would help prevent such devious tactics.

Another notion would be to allow zombies to buy survivor skills without being revived. This is mostly a "feal good" measure- people might be more encouraged to play dedicated zombies if it didn't hold them back from "leveling up". It would make BR zombies a bit less discouraging, and let them have "level parity" with all the high level survivors and non-brain rot zombies out there. It also does away with the nonsense of zombies getting revived just to learn a couple survivor skills that "cross over".

Comments?

Discussion

This is a really good idea. Since players with brain rot are almost exclusively dedicated zombie players, the griefing factor (if any) is offset by the difficulty to revive a rotter, if one is an human spy. Excellent idea. -Mark 17:15, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

Eh, not a bad idea, but personally I would rather just have brain rot be a skill that one could turn on and off (maybe some option they could select in their profile). That would eliminate the problem of zombies being forced to stay as zombies as well as keep combat revives nerfed. Probably already been suggested, though... --Reaper with no name TJ! 19:06, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I like it. How about zombies is a clickable link (much like the "show all survivors" button, which then shows the names of all zombies in that tile?--Grigori 23:02, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The "show all survivors button" only shows up when there is more than 50 survivors. So yeah, if there were more than 50 zombies present, it should be appropriate to have such an effect, and might be the best way to reduce server load. The basic idea is just that long term zombies (the ones with brain rot) should recognize other zombies as easily as survivors recognize other survivors. --Swiers X:00 20:16, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It's a bit illogical that severe brain damage would improve a zombie's mental faculties. --Cman yall 01:17, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Its also illogical that a rotting the brain would interfere with a DNA scan that doesn't (we'd expect) involve taking smaples of brain tissue. I'll try to come up with some flavor justification; I don't think its a stretch to say the healthy survivor's brain (which can't recognize most zombies) works differently from one with brain rot. Don't think of it as the brain ROTTING, think of it as being open to and having receptors for airborne viral vectors, viral vectors that all zombies give off (this is what DNA scanners actually scan) and which the "rotted" mind understands the meaning of. --Swiers X:00 03:38, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

A few good ideas, however brain rot is hardly useless. If a lazy survivor tries to revive you, they just wasted 11ap and a decent syringe. However, I do like the idea of buying survivor skills while undead. I think it is certainly needed. Also, how about having other brain-rotted zombies show up as bold, or as a different grouping altogether on screen? --Ducis DuxSlothTalk 11:32, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

That takes a VERY lazy survivor these days, as spending 1AP on a DNA scan will prevent it. It happens, but the point stands- Brain Rot has much less effect (both as a defense and for revive clogging) than when introduced, due to changes made in how OTHER skills / items work. I considered that zombies with Brain Rot should show up differently, but you can just check their profiles if you must know. A lot of dedicated zombie players do NOT have brain rot, so I certainly wouldn't want to segregate the two groups. I figure if somebody really cares, they can use thier conatact list settings (or UD tool) to highlight the guys with BR. Also, BR zombies may not want to stick out- I see no need to make it that much easier for survivors to use "spy's" to figure out who might clog up the revive points. --Swiers X:00 16:58, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Both of the above ideas have now been submitted as (separate) suggestions for voting. --Swiers X:00 17:17, 28 January 2007 (UTC)