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In this point in the development of Urban Dead, to be a newbie zombie (being it being killed as a survivor or starting at corpse class, because theres not much difference at all) is painful. Unless you're lucky and can keep up the tracks of some big horde like the RRF or The Shining Ones resorting to metagaming (something that most newbie players dont know of), or the even less frequent event of a survivor standing in the open, you're reduced to some kind of cannibal being, feeding on your kind. The only way to gain experience as a zombie is combat, and every survivor is unreachable for the common of the newbie zeds, being them behind buildings barricaded to the level of at least very strong+2. This cannibal status, punished in game with half experience and out of game with the obviously twisted morality of the act, plunge most zombie players in a state of depression, uneasiness of mind (talking seriously), explaining why most of them just give up or resort to the nearest revive point to play the fun side of the game: survivors. Heck, survivors only are PKers if they choose so, not like newbie zeds!!
Let me emphasize what a barricade means to a new born zombie: the absolute impediment to reach your objective, to do what you're supposed to do: eat brains. You have to cultivate at least 3 skills until you can really bash trough them: Memories of Life, Vigour Mortis and Death Grip; and in any survivor-ruled suburb, zombies get no experience at all, standing up after a headshot only to walk amongst deserted, or best said corpse filled, streets until they get headshot again. Correct me if im wrong, but even the most crazy of the trenchcoater, level 1 firefighter, can make a trip to Ridleybank, bash Petrosjko (no offense) head a couple of times and die honorably with 30 "hard earned" experience points in a day of "hard work". If you try to bash trough barricades without those 3 skill, you will run out of AP half way and log on next time with full barricades built again, and what have you won? Nothing.
After this short monologue, that i hope enlightens even the most hardened sights of survivor-only players, i have this suggestion, or rather 2 merged suggestions that if submited separated get spamminated, but together... you will choose with your vote.
I propose that every succesfull hit that a zombie lands on a barricade ("You smash at the barricade. Part of it collapses.") grants the zombie 2 points of experience. That will be an average of 25 points of experience every 50 AP with maxed skills, 17,5 to beginner corpses (or just anyone with Vigour Mortis and not Death Grip) and 12,5 for a slayed survivor (no zombie skills). Enough (i think) to grant newbie ferals a more etic, helpful way to gain experience than cannibalism, that grants maxed zombies an average of 30 experience per 50 AP (Tangling Grasp could improve this rate a bit but it seems to be ineffective against fellow zombies). Take on account that a healer gets around 62 experience every 50 AP granted for them that they search for FAKs on a powered hospital (and im saying a powered hospital, not requiring any skill, not even shopping or bargain hunting that can easily boost that quantity on a powered Mall), and that bashing barricades is as critical and vital for a zombie than healing for survivors.
Now, if i were just rooting mindlessly for zombies, i wuold let this suggestion just as it is. But imagine... this gets implemented ( =D ). Now, what would us have? 31% (i made the calc) of the zombies are either level 1, 2 or 3. Lets assume than 1/3 of them are searching for revives, and the other 2/3 are training (most of them, sincerely, practicing cannibalism). Imagine that only half of them, not them all just half, starts bashing barricades for XP. It will be zmobaggedon! 1500+ zombies starting to bash trough chairs, planks of wood, tables, refrigerators and finally a friendly veteran open the door. If siege tactics like Guides:The_Mall_Defence_Manifesto count with zombies getting bored of getting no experience bashing barricades and then leaving, it wuoldnt work anymore. To tell the truth it is fair, now both sides dont get bored (not that much) anymore. But surviving will be harsh. So, i propose that every Large Building that have the main disvantage of when a zombie enters it can move freely to any of its squares, to have extra levels of barricades to counterbalance that disvantage, and for these leves to be implemented as follows:
It has been reported than barricades can be built up to the level of Extremely Heavy+4 (And if anyone doubts that a barricade can be built beyond Extremely Heavy+0, today i smashed a barricade from Extremely Heavy+2 to Quite Strongly, and i know it was EH+2 because i succesfully smashed it two times and it was still Extremely Heavy in the building description). Anyways, to barricade up to that level is next to impossible even with your two best friends zerg_1 and zerg_2 (joke), so i propose that the max level to be cut to EH+2 (hard but possible to do even for 1 person alone) and to create a new skill: Fortify (player is able to fortify large buildings) to be placed under Construction at the normal value (100XP). This skill will make you able to barricade up to 8 new levels. The first 4 will add to the building description the legend to "The building has been Extremely Fortified", and further fortifying will change the description to "The building has been Imposingly Fortified". Their mechanics will be the same as barricades, and as said before they will only apply to Large buildings. The difficult rate at fortify is to set up by Kevan, as well as if any modification is needed to the normal rates of barricading, because he's the only one that knows the success rate of normal barricading. To start fortifying, you have to be on a large building and the building have to be EH+2; when it is, or if you bring it up to EH+2, the "Barricade the building" button will change to "Fortify the building", and you can start to fortify it. Every time you fortify succesfuly, it can say something like "You find some ropes and secure the barricades with it" or if you fail it can says something like "you fail to find something to strenghten the existing barricades", to represent that there's no more place to put things on the barricade, and the only thing you can do is secure it trough ropes, cables or maybe nails (i'm not creative enough to give you 5 sentences for fail and 5 for success, so dont ask).
So, thats it. The first part alone (bashing barricades giving XP) i saw something when i was new to the wiki that i think that wuold be a dupe or almost a dupe, but this one is carefully (and painfully) calculated . The second one (the "Fortify" skill), i didnt find anything like that anywhere, let me know if i didnt search enough. Both of the merged suggestions are there to the only purpose of making a newbie zombie playable (as i consider it is not in the present day). If you consider one of this suggestions is good and the other one is not, let me know so i submit it alone. This suggestion wont be as popular as my "Frightening Touch" suggestion, it is quite controversial, but if something here seems workable, that can be saved, and i have all the time of the world to further think how to fix whatever you find flawed. Thanks if you readed all the suggestion, and if not, dont vote =) .
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