Suggestion:20080128 Choice Skills

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20080128 Choice Skills

Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 22:31, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion type
New Skills

Suggestion scope
Survivors and zombies

Suggestion description
By the time your character reaches level 41, whether they started life as a Fireman, Scout or Doctor, will be exactly the same as all the other level 41s. I suggest we add a bit of diversity to the game by giving you a choice or two along the way to fully leveling your character.

This will involve 4 classes of "Choice Skills", so to speak, which will become available at a certain point in your characters development. (More details below) You do not have to choose then and there which skill you want, you can wait up till level 41 if you so desire and decide then which ones you want to have, or you don't need to choose any of them. Its entirely your choice.

Right, now onto my ideas for skills. There will be two choice skills for each class (except the zombie class as it has 3 choice skills) and you can choose one from each class so there are several combinations of skills for you to choose from in order to shape your character your way. Kind of like Subway, only without the cheese and things.

Here are some possible skills for each class:

Military: These skills will be available for purchase when you've bought all the Military Class Skills.

• Firearms Mastery- This will add an extra 5% Accuracy to all firearm attacks, giving Maximum Accuracies of 70% for Shotguns and Pistols, and 20% for Flare Guns.
• Melee Mastery- This will increase the accuracy of all Melee Weapons by 5%, giving Accuracies of 55% for Knives, 45% for Axes and Pool Cues, 25% for Crowbars and 30% for all others. Please note that this will not carry over to zombie skills if you die.

Scientist: These skills will be available for purchase when you've bought all the Scientist Class Skills.

• Forensic Specialisation- This will allow you to revive a zombie for 8AP rather than 10AP, increasing the number you can do per AP cycle from 5 to 6.
• Clinical Specialisation- This will allow you to see if a survivor (or zombie) is infected (and how strongly, see Potent Venom below).

Civilian: These skills will be available for purchase when you've bought all the Civilian Class Skills.

• Archeology- This will give you a small 3% boost to your chances to find items in a ruined or ransacked building.
• Joinery- This will give you a small 4.5% boost to your chances to barricade successfully at levels above and including Heavily Barricaded.

Zombie: These skills will become available when you have completed the Digestion Tree, the Vigor Mortis Tree and the Memories of Life tree.

• Potent Venom- This will allow you to make a stronger infectious bite which will take off 2HP per action (usual exceptions). This will be communicated to the bitten player, telling them that the bite they received was unusually infectious and they need urgent medical attention.
• Sharpened Claws- This will add an extra 5% bonus to the accuracy of your attacks when you have got hold of your enemy with Tangling Grasp due to a better grip on your target.
• Mind over Matter- This will add an extra 5% bonus to your zombies chances to bring down barricades. This will increase the chance outside to 30% and the chance inside to 35%.

Each of these skills can be purchased for 200XP, regardless of your class, (obviously, to get the zombie choices you must be dead) and after you have selected one from a particular class you cannot change your mind for a different skill from that class. For example, if you buy Firearms Mastery, you cannot change to Melee Mastery.

EDIT: For edit conflicting me, I hearby dub Studoku a moron and SRD. He's not voted spam so he's not a moron anymore. :) I apologise.

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 Keep - Mine. -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 22:33, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

   Keep - I have not read this, or given it any thought, but just because of the pre-emptive spam, I'll vote keep. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 22:34, 28 January 2008 (UTC) Invalid vote struck: no justification (by own admission). --Funt Solo ^QT 12:48, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

2. Keep - I'm sick of the anti-choice skill movement. This could only serve to add more diversity and fun to the game. And fun is sort of the point. --Pdeq^Talk* 22:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

   Keep - I like the idea and it doesn't seem to have any major flaws --/~Rakuen~\^Talk I Still Love Grim 22:56, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

3. Keep Exactly what we need! Great Suggestion...although I didn't like how the civilian skill to find more things was called archealogy. Other than that, this suggestion is awesome!--MikhailA 23:30, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
4. Keep with a catch!! - I love this suggestion!!! Except for Mind over Matter, I have no love for that.--GunFox13 23:37, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
   • Re - Is that the actual skill or the name? :P -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 23:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
     • Re - I have no love for the skill and the name--GunFox13 23:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
       • Re - Fair enough. I have to admit, the name wasn't one of the best I've come up with in my history of Suggestions. -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 23:53, 28 January 2008 (UTC)One RE per vote. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 13:59, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
5. Keep -Voting keep on this for the principle of choice skills. The specific skills and numbers may need work but I'd leave that up to Kevan to work out. I just hope he does something to make the classes a little different at lvl-41(42)--DI Sweeny 23:44, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
6. Keep Im voting keep, but I would like to see some refining and more XP for the extra skills. Good work. BenderWaW 23:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
7. Keep/Question - Forgive me if I missed this, but can a player buy a choice skill for each class? Or are they forced to choose between the two for their own class? --Hhal 00:25, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
8. Keep Archaelogy is very much like my skill offering Scrounger which was Spaminated by the same people who vote spam on every suggestion without bothering to read it. I think Scrounger was a better name personally. --Cpt Masterson 00:33, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
9. Keep - GOOD.IDEA -Downinflames 00:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
10. Keep In order to keep this game from losing people it really needs something like this so that all the survivors/zombies are not the same.--ȠәȻᴙʘɱΔȵƆεʁ 01:14, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
11. Keep - to spite every choice skill hater on the wiki, and because these are especially good--Corndoghero^T-S-Z 01:45, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
12. Anti-Spam - Because we could use a little more variety around here. And hey, nerfing everything is sort of like nerfing nothing, right? --Uncle Bill 03:01, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
13. 8 ap revives? - Yes. doc crook 03:29, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
14. Keep - It may be because I'm biased after being "?rise"'d by a zombie, but what the hell. Yes for everything above, especially the ability to have 8 AP revives. --Private Mark 04:08, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
15. Keep - Just what we need. -Inky 04:49, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
16. Keep - I'd vote keep for pretty much any even, well thought out skills choice sugg.--Jed 06:19, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
17. Keep - Yay new skills. --Heretic144 23:10, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
18. Keep More skills = YAY!!! I already know which of those I'd be getting, too... Good job, man. Increasing the distance between total newbs and vets is a good thing- someone who'd much more experienced SHOULD be a lot more powerful. I cite every other browser game ever invented as an example. Oh, and more diversity is kinda good... ~A`Blue`Jelly^TME*V*I*L*_? 23:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
19. Keep - I love it. --The Gecko PKer 02:32, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
20. Keep/change - I like the idea of choice skills, but not so much the ones outlined here. User:VI/signature 15:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)
21. Keep - we need more skills to help keeping the game interesting after 41st level.Recently reached it and lost some sort of motivation to play.--James beckerson 13:54, 5 February 2008 (UTC)
22. Keep - I would like to see some choice skills and character specialization, whether these specific ones, or some others. --Sterling Bershadsky 19:24, 6 February 2008 (UTC)
23. Keep/Change Good idea, but I think you should just make it so that a survivor character can choose any 3, and a zombie a choice of 3 skills (or maybe just 2 each). Other than that, I like the idea. And take out the cade buff, it isn't needed. Cades are good enough. --Toastrlord^{T TSA} 17:53, 10 February 2008 (UTC)
24. Keep - YES, more skills is always a good idea.--Jamie Cantwell3 07:18, 11 February 2008 (UTC)
25. Keep / Clarify - You do mean that a single survivor may only take one of these special skills, period, right? No survivors with three specialist skills? As for the kill and spam voters whining that it empowers barricades... really, what on earth are you thinking? Survivors just got their kneecaps busted with the latest barricade nerf. I say it's about time they got an upgrade. You try holding a safehouse in contested territory sometime. Adept Omega 16:35, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Kill Votes

1. Kill - I'm not a fan of choice skills, particularly ones that force a player to make a permanent decision. There are also potential balance issues here- I'd reccomend taking this to discussion. However, I'll let the moron comment slide and not vote spam because you have thought it through. Some of the skills in this might even work as separate suggestions.Studoku 22:49, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

   Re - Lol. Cheers. I understand that choice skills are a bit of a touchy issue for some. On that note I hereby Copyright every skill mentioned above just in case anyone gets any ideas of pinching them. :D -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 22:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

2. Kill - So survivors get to choose 3 useful skills, zombies only one? I think not -- boxy ^{talk • i} 01:46 29 January 2008 (BST)
3. A previous discussion I took part in (I like the idea) had a choice for each class. If your character is a fireman, you can get the fireman's skill, for example. This is more "general" than that (even though, in that one, you could pick ANY of the skills, your class just "converted" to that class). But this still needs discussion.--Pesatyel 03:26, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
4. Change - An extremely well thought out suggestion; however, I cannot vote "Keep" in the current format. Please see the discussion page for suggestions for balancing and what-not.  Billy Club Thorton  T!  RR  05:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
5. Kill - It just seems like it'll meatbags (Harmanz) stronger than Zombies. The worst part for me is that there's no across the board boost to hit rate, and it's only on Tangling Grasp. That's only the start of my problems, but I'll spare you a long post, heh. Xyu 10:57, 29 January 2008 (GMT)
6. kill I love choice skills but... the problem here as far as I am concerned is that survivors can choose 1 from each section and that is way too much compared to the zombies single extra skill (skill of doubtfull use at that!) With a little work this could be made great, its just not there yet! --Honestmistake 11:09, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
7. I'd love to see skills that created individuals, but this just nerfs the zombies. - W 12:15, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
8. I agree with Karek down below, but in a less spamful manner. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 14:00, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
9. Kill -- I would actually really like some character specification, but this doesn't seem to be it. --Squid Boy 14:56, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
10. Kill - an okay idea, except that you screwed over the zombies. They either need a set of specialist classes of their own, or six skills that they can choose three from. Then we'll see, although it's worth bearing in mind that 600XP is nothing to most veterans. They'd instantly become uber-players. I'm very wary of this. --Funt Solo ^QT 16:30, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
11. Change - I like where this is going, but it needs to be refined some more.--Zach016 17:36, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
12. Kill Theres nothing wrong with choice skills. But some of these arent a choice. We'd all pick 8ap revives surely?--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 18:23, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
13. Kill as Studoku -- UCFSD 15:39, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
14. Kill - I just don't like the idea of certain skills being permanently cut off from my character. I like being able to fully explore the game's possibilities without having to create multiple characters. --Toejam 06:56, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
15. Kill/Change - I like the idea of choice skills. I just think this is too powerful. With some reworking you could get a keep from me. I would prefer it if the skills were only available to you if you started as the particular class rather than if you just bought all of the class skills. That would make choice of class actually meeaningful. Also, maybe joinery could be revised in light of the latest zombie buff re: cading? - Headshot Hal 20:36, 1 February 2008 (UTC)
16. Kill Unbalanced skill choices AND survivors can have more skill choices than the zmobies? No thanks. Improve the relative balance of the skills by giving zombies something better and giving them a wider choice. And limit the choices to one per character based on class rather than a blanket 3 for survivors and 1 for zombies. I read this suggestion as pro-survivor and anti-zombie. --R33F3RM4N 16:28, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
17. Kill I really hate the idea of choice skills in Urban Dead. This isn't Dungeons and Dragons. --_└^Frozen_┘^┌_Flame^┐ 16:48, 7 February 2008 (UTC)
18. Kill - As many above. This should be taken to discussion. The class balance already sucks, and I hate choice skills. Almost none of my characters ended up being what I started them out to be. --Diano 20:29, 8 February 2008 (UTC)
19. Kill - I like being able to get all the skills in the game. That's what makes UD better than other RPGs. --Ms.Panes 02:03, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Spam/Dupe Votes

1. Spam - Insanely overpowered. Do not make revives cheaper, 'do not make Flare Guns more accurate, do not make it easier to barricade, do not weaken infection, and do not make search rates better.--Karek^maps?! 22:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
   • Re- Fair point, but allow me to point out that I have countered each of those in some way. While it will be cheaper to revive, it will also be cheaper to kill. While for some it would be easier to barricade, for some zombies it will be easier to bring them back down again. Infection is not actually weakened at all, while a survivor with the ability to see infection can identify it, on the other, one of them might not be around and the infected person could stagger around losing 2HP at a time. I have seriously thought about all those points and came up with ways to counter them while I was writing it. Also, can you really see someone carrying around enough Flare Guns to kill someone? -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 22:46, 28 January 2008 (UTC)
     • Re - Cheaper to kill is in no way analogous to cheaper to revive and does not solve the problem. The easier to barricade vs easier to destroy doesn't come even close to balanced out in this suggestion. Infection is very much weakened because you let survivors diagnose it, when they already get FAKs at 60+% to find that's a massive nerf, 2HP infection doesn't balance that out in any way. And Flare Guns, if Flare Guns were at 20% to hit I sure as shit could, that's 1 in 5 hits that deal 15 damage, as in only 4 hits needed on someone with body building.--Karek^maps?! 22:50, 28 January 2008 UTC)
       • re: I say the opposite of Karek because zombies have it so good and survivors have it so hard. So there. --Cpt Masterson 00:38, 29 January 2008 (UTC)Non Author RE. --Karek^maps?! 00:41, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
2. Spam - 1. Overpowered. Giving an equal buff to the other side is not balancing, it just makes everyone overpowered. And you're not actually even giving zombies an equal buff, those are all underpowered when compared to the survivor equivalents, not to mention that survivors get to take three skills, while zombies only get one. 2. Still HATE mutually exclusive skills. Learning to shoot really well doesn't stop you from learning to hit really well. Learning to punch an needle into a zombie doesn't prevent you from learning how to spot an infection. Becoming a better barricader does not in any way hinder your ability of learning to search better. The skills being "choice" skills is entirely arbitrary. --Midianian|T|T:S|C:RCS| 03:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
3. Spam - This suggestion quite amply demonstrates the core failing of the suggestions system, namely, people are too fucking stupid to see how fucking broken suggestions are if written pretty. Lets see. (For the purposes of simplicity, i am going to ignore searching for humans, as well as barricades for zombies, and just use base rates, since both contribute "roughly" the same in horde situations. In feral situations zombies are a lot worse off) 5% on guns increases shotties by an entire 0.5 damage per ap. Thats huge. 5% on pistols tosses em up to 3.5 from 3.25 in unflakked, 2.8 to 2.6 in the case of flakked. Axes get a similiar free buff, though not as large. In case no one has noticed yet, these numbers are broken, and all the others are too. This is an ap based slow play game. There is an upper limit on people a character can reasonably expect to kill as a balance factor, and as an enjoyment protector.
   But, lets not stop there. You are effectively asking that the revive rate for the game be increased by about 25%. At present, you can revive 4 people and live. this takes it to 5. This is not to mention the barricade buff. HB and over is hard to do for a fucking reason. The zombie suggestions there are a fucking joke. Infection is useless not because of low damage, but because everyone has a FAK or two in hand. This changes nothing. 5% buff, but tossing it in tangling grasp is roughly equivelant to just giving them a 3% buff across the board, puny compared to what axes and guns recieved. And wow, 5% extra decading... that will be great when humans are blowing our head off more efficiently and reviving their dead monstrously better than before. Balance, i find you in this suggestion not at all. --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 09:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
   • Re - No offense mate, but you really do live up to your name. :P You are a bit of a Grinch. Rather than voting Spam on every suggestion (which you seem to do), maybe you could offer something constructive for a change rather than a moan about the failings of the suggestion you are voting on. If it upsets you that much, I'll take it down and fix the numbers, Oh Grimchy, Lord of the Suggestions page. -- Cheeseman ^W!RandomTalk 00:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
     • Re - I would, theres just nothing that can be done to save this suggestion. Why waste my time suggesting tiny improvements when the best improvement would be to douse it in petrol and set it on fire for the insurance money? --The Grimch ^{U! E! WAT!} 00:14, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
4. Spam - The problem with the suggestion is that it gives exceptionally useful buffs to Survivors and only moderately useful bonuses to Zombies. So, the shooty survivor who already has the best possible accuracy is now getting a permanent "You now have an even better accuracy" bonus. Whereas the Zombies who have crap accuracy only get their chance to hit bonus added onto Tangling Grasp. When the Scientist is able to revive for 8 AP, the Zombie gets extra damage done with infection - A bonus they never even get to see the effects of. This is not even in the slightest, and very poorly thought out. The bonus for searching a ruined or ransacked building is neigh useless. Honestly, why the hell would you even search a ruined or ransacked building in the first place? What is being done there is offering a second choice that is so utterly useless, that everyone will get the barricade bonus skill. Try and get the skills balanced between the classes, as well with each other. Then maybe you'll have something. But as it stands, its way too un-balanced. --Teksura^Talk 10:27, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

   • Moved my vote from kill to spam. Someone pointed out to me something I missed: This skill is specifically designed to give 3 amazingly useful things to survivors, and only ONE somewhat useful thing to zombies - Survivors get to pick one skill from each, but, the skills are designed to its plainly obvious what everyone will get. This is a plain and simple suggestion to reduce the revive cost on all survivors for no good reason, make barricading easy for no good reason, and giving all survivors a combat buff that is always there for no good reason. The Survivor gets all of that, and, on the other side of the coin, the zombie gets to choose only one of the following: A moderate combat buff that they don't always see, OR an infection bonus they never actually see the effects of OR a small buff to taking down barricades. Note that although the bonus giving to building the barricades is smaller than the bonus to taking them down, the survivor already has a massively higher chance to successfully build the barricades in the first place, compared to the zombies who have 25% to take down the barricades. 30% to take down barricades is still crap. --Teksura^Talk 10:50, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

5. Spam - While all the survivor buffs are over the top, this vote is mainly for the insanely huge barricade buff for civilians. It's thinly veiled, but a 4.5% addition to cade rates means that HB cading is now successful two thirds of the time, and EHB is now 25% from only around 20% before. When the EHB construction rate is as high as the current zombie decading rate, that's just madness. As Teksura said, you have to balance this a lot first. --Aeon17x 11:44, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
6. Spam - As above. --The Hierophant 20:43, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
7. Spam - I changed my vote, grim brings up a great point... --/~Rakuen~\^Talk I Still Love Grim 23:22, 29 January 2008 (UTC)
8. Spam - As all above spam voters. -- John Rubin^{T! ZG} 05:43, 30 January 2008 (UTC)
9. Spam - Ditto.--Kolechovski 23:56, 3 February 2008 (UTC)