Suggestion:20090310 Direction With Most Group Groans

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20090310 Direction With Most Group Groans

A Big F'ing Dog 15:19, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Suggestion type
Improvement

Suggestion scope
Feeding Groan

Suggestion description
This suggestion is an improvement to feeding groan to allow hordes of zombies to stick together, and find each other around the city, without metagaming.

Upon logging in, zombies in groups would get a message informing them of the direction of the suburb that in the past few hours had the most feeding groans from members of their group, like this:

You heard the faint sound of many familiar groans far to the northeast. (several suburbs away)

You heard the faint sound of many familiar groans close to the south. (one or two suburbs away)

The sound of many familiar groans echo around you. (your current suburb)

Right now there are three kinds of zombie groups. Traveling metagamers, localized defenders, and ones that adopt a group label without any overall strategy. The first uses forums to jointly attack targets all around the city, the second is a suburb garrison, and the last is for a feral zombie that likes the group's ideology or image. This improvement would allow a fourth group, the wandering horde. A wandering horde doesn't have a precise target like a mall, nor a single suburb to defend, it drifts across the city as individual members move towards light and groans, laying waste to all in its path. It's a collective democracy, whichever way most individual zombies choose to go, that's where the group center moves to.

This isn't to say anything is wrong with metagaming or the other group types, this just expands a zombie's options from three to four.

Time for realism issues! As to how zombies can hear groans beyond the normal range, my reasoning that is if zombies can hear close groans well enough to know precisely where they're from, there should be a greater area where they get a vague direction but nothing precise. I assume Malton has an eerie background sound of thousands of vague distant groans, this ability just acknowledges that zombies can recognize their group in that melange.

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. Keep With this skill a horde of zombies would attack a neighborhood until there were few survivors left. Individual members would wander out in different directions, but eventually the entire group would be drawn to wherever had the most prey. A horde would be kind of like one giant organism in a way. You'd have the giant mass of zombies in the center, and exploring zombies branching out from it like tentacles. The body would be drawn to whichever direction had the most groans. --A Big F'ing Dog 15:20, 10 March 2009 (UTC)
2. Keep An interesting idea, it would certainly allow an active and effective zombie group to exist without taking part in the metagame. Allowing casual zombies to join active groups, and eventually join (or form) a metagame group. --Lord Evans 00:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re' The three group types often overlap in any one group. This could also help existing groups stick together, with a combination of metagaming and distant groans. I could envision a group where the members collectively determined the overall area the group was in, with leaders using forums and wiki pages to recommend targets and coordinate strikes within that area. --A Big F'ing Dog 02:35, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Keep – I like this. Plausible, not overly specific (suburb/direction, not specific buildings), and would make cohesive "cat-herding" more managable using only ingame tools. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾᚨᚾᛏ 12:09, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Keep - in game com ftw.--xoxo 12:27, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Keep - Potentially a very good addition to the game, making intricate metagaming less essential. --Papa Moloch 15:44, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Strong Keep - Could make it a lot more fun to be a zombie as a casual player. --Johnny Bass 15:59, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
7. V.Weak Keep - Handy for people who join large non-mg groups and with small groups it extends their range. --Kamikazie-Bunny 11:57, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Keep - This would be a nice counterpart for radio communication by survivors, which allows survivors to communicate from corner to corner... I don't see why we can't have a means of medium-distance coordination for zombies in-game, as well.--Drugsanimudongs 19:00, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Keep - More ingame comm is always good. Too many people can't metagame for various reasons. -- Grogh 22:14, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Keep/Change - I like the idea overall, but I think Extropymine it right. Instead of having an passive line showing up in the recent activity log it should be an active skill from the scent tree. As a groan how does it know when to trigger the message? A certain amount of groans? If it's an extension of Scent Death it can be another button on the interface. .. Cannon1001 17:00, 12 March 2009 (EST)
    • Re I did think about making this a scent skill. The reason I made it groans is to not show where the most members of your group are, but the show where your group is having the most success finding survivors. Basically, I want to lead zombies to the heart of the fighting their group is involved in. I also like the fact that the group isn't passive in drawing their allies to them. Scent could work as an alternative to this though, it would be better than nothing. --A Big F'ing Dog 02:36, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
11. keep--Sgt Gonnella 00:17, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
12. keep I'm for anything and everything that makes playing a feral less impossible. -- CITIZEN VI 21:37, 19 March 2009 (UTC)

    Keep - Enhancing feral gameplay is good. -- . . <== DDR Approved Editor 05:10, 26 March 2009 (UTC) Late vote struck. --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 11:46, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

    Semi-Weak Keep\Change - Would make zombie game play easier. Though making it as a skill would make it more balacnced. --Mail2345 20:16, 27 March 2009 (UTC) Late vote struck. --Midianian^{¦T¦DS¦SP¦} 11:46, 28 March 2009 (UTC)

Kill Votes

1. Kill You only had this on Developing Suggestions for 2 days. That's hardly enough time to really get into why this won't work. But briefly, if you can't hear FG while inside it hardly makes sense that you could hear it a suburb away. I can't even get into the flaws with "branching out and drawing the rest of the horde" --– Nubis ^NWO 15:35, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

   Re My counterargument to that is that messages in this game aren't about what your character can actually hear or see logically, but about what is useful to you as a player. Is it logical that a moan audible six blocks away can't be heard inside a building right across the street? Of course not. It's just that you lose that precise sense of direction, so it is no longer useful to the player and the game doesn't inform you about it. And likewise, if a zombie can pinpoint the exact origin of a sound six blocks away, does that mean they magically hear NOTHING when its seven blocks away? Perhaps this should have a range limitation, which could be a few suburbs so a zombie can't hear a sound literally from the other side of the city. But since we've established zombies have keener senses than humans, in this fantasy there's no limit to what a zombie's actual abilities could be. Since humans can hear feeding groans six blocks away, if a zombie's abilities were merely as good as a dog's (who can hear 4x farther than humans) that should mean they could hear something from as far as 24 blocks. Perhaps their senses are better. And, IMO two days is a fairly long time, long enough to post a one sentence comment I'm sure. --A Big F'ing Dog 15:46, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

2. Kill/Change - The basic idea is good, but making it for groups only seems odd. Like you said, Malton has an eerie background of thousands of vague distant groans, and while recognising a direction isn't too big of a stretch, recognising specific moans from such a distance is. --LaosOman 20:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re Zombies can already recognize groans from group members as "familiar groans". This just applies that same ability to more distant sounds. --A Big F'ing Dog 21:18, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
     • Re: Hearing familiar groans over the distance of several suburbs is where the problem is. Recognising familiar groans, sure. Hearing groans from a long distance, fair enough. It's the combination I dislike. --LaosOman 18:52, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
3. Kill - as LaosOman and its rushed--Athur birling 22:03, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
4. Kill - More than one suburb is unnecessary. By the time you've traveled to 'several suburb away' zombie group, and regenerated AP, they would have most likely moved on.D^ANCED^ANCER^EVOLUTION (TALK | CONTRIBS) 23:49, 11 March 2009 (UTC)
   • Re But remember, the zombie group (unless supplemented by metagaming) doesn't have a specific destination. So it won't move quickly and purposefully, but creep in whichever direction has more targets, only moving on when the current territory is ruined. A full day's AP is 50 spaces, enough to cross five suburbs! You'd easily be able to catch up. Also, if the range was just twenty spaces or so, how would you ever find your group again if you went on vacation? Or went exploring in the direction the group ultimately decided against? --A Big F'ing Dog 13:53, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
5. Kill - More than 2 or 3 suburbs away seems a bit too much. --ZsL 15:42, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
6. Weak Kill/Change - I just can't get behind zombie super-hearing. If this were a "scent" skill ("the familiar smell of death is strongest to the South" or something) I'd be more likely to buy into it. But hearing a groan 5 suburbs away, no. ~ extropymine ^{Talk | NW | 4Corners} 17:39, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
7. Kill - I don't like the idea of giving zombies super senses. --Turtleboy412 ^{Talk! In game} 21:19, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
8. Change - reduce the area down to a 9 suburb block (3x3) and i would love this. Make it so it only triggers if there have been at least 10 groans too and i think it would be even better!--Honestmistake 10:01, 13 March 2009 (UTC)
9. Kill - As the others. -- T^HEL^ORDG^UNS^LINGER 01:59, 14 March 2009 (UTC)
10. Kill - As Turtleboy. --Private Mark 04:22, 15 March 2009 (UTC)
11. Kill - This would NOT create a fourth type of zombie group. It would only draw the ferals to follow type 1 (traveling metagamers). Metagaming zombie hordes don't seem to have any real problem eating things so why the need for a boost? --Giles Sednik ^CAPDSWA 20:39, 16 March 2009 (UTC)
12. Kill - As the above have already stated. --Lois ^{talk 10MFH} 18:09, 23 March 2009 (UTC)

Spam/Dupe Votes