Suggestion talk:20070629 Necrotic Bite

Kill - First, you've done a great job on this suggestion, and I commend you for it. However, I still don't like it. I feel it may end up being to harsh on newbie survivors - arranging heals or revives, etc.. As well, making it so it has to be cured by another survivor seems a little rough too. If all you needed was the surgery skill, well that might be fine... but I see what you are trying to accomplish, and allowing 'self-heals' is what this suggestion is seemingly trying to avoid. However, I still feel I must dissent. --Ryiis 09:18, 30 June 2007 (BST)

First of all, thank you for your well written and respectful comment. I agree that this will make infections more harsh on newbies - they will find that they have to keep using FAKs to keep their HP. But then, many things in the game affect newbies in a more powerful way, by virtue of the fact that they are newbies! I'd imagine that they will keep searching in hospitals for FAKs and exclaim "Why can't I heal my infection?!". At that point, I'd expect a fellow survivor with the Surgery skill to heal them.
Perhaps I should have tried to come up with a few things to assist survivors?
One could be a brief explanation of what the Necrotic Infection is, and appears the first time a player gets the infection: "You have been given a Necrotic Infection! Each action now costs you 1 HP (except talking). You can use a FAKs to give yourself HP, however you will need to find a fellow survivor who has the Surgery Skill to heal you before you can get rid of your infection. Try a local hospital."
The other could be that players that have the Surgery Skill can identify other players who have a Necrotic Infection - giving them a chance to heal the infection, without the player having to request it. armareum 12:27, 30 June 2007 (BST)

I think you are on to something. Having text that allows the players to a) know what has happened, b) where to seek help, and c) that this thing will kill them if not promptly attended to would help newbies a great deal. As well, I really like your last part - that players who have the Surgery skill would be able to detect the infection. I assume though, that some of the more zealous of the editors/players on this wiki might require the Diagnosis skill instead - which would makes sense, though much harder to attain (300 XP worth of abilities). I am seriously considering changing my vote if changes, such as the ones your were proposing, were to take place. Zombies need some loving too! --Ryiis 17:52, 30 June 2007 (BST)

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SPAM -THIS SUGGESTION WOULD MAKE AN SUCCESSFUL INFECTION AN AUTOMATIC KILL IN UNDERPOPULATED SUBURBS This a extremely bad suggestion and I'm bemused why people don't seem to pick up on this. This terribly broken suggestion transforms what is meant as a simple flavor addition to bite into a unstoppable attack. A successful bite attack would cause unparalleled damage to the survivor without any comparable investment by the zombie.

1. An infection is not an attack in itself, it is a side-effect of the bite attack, which is already quite potent. It features a 1.2HP/AP damage similar to an axe attack plus it has an infection and healing side-effect, making it a far superior secondary attack compared to the survivors axe.
2. The limited damage current infection does is offset by the non-existant AP cost to the zombie. People are forced to take damage or spend AP's healing themselves without any further action of the zombie. Increasing the damage and AP's infection would be similar to simply lowering the maximum AP and HP of survivors in balance terms as there is no balancing cost on the other side.
3. All other cooperation mechanics in game reward, the most you can do with this mechanic is postpone punishment. Groan and drag increased the positive rewards on one side for playing a certain way, this would force people to play a certain way simply to stay on the same level. It carries a negative incentive. negative incentives reduce the fun in gaming. See the headshot mechanic for comparison.
4. the information needed for the cooperation is withheld There is no way to see who has the infection and who doesn't. It's very strange to make "teamwork" the solution without giving any way for people to know who is actually in need. The only way for people to cure this is starting to heal random people and hoping that they have the bad version. There would be no tactical possibilities and the teamwork would depend on uncoordinated random actions.
5. this would be an automatic kill or a day wasted in lowly populated suburbs As this is depended on other people healing you any suburb that doesn't feature a lot of random healers would become instant death traps. You'd need to spend a lot of AP & HP finding an healer who would be off-line. all further action would be impossible without killing yourself. You'd be unable to contribute anything to your own and others safety. You'd need to log-off and wait until you are healed. For a lot of people the next possible opportunity to resume playing would be a day later.
6. This would encourage survivors to flock together in malls. The only real defence against this lays in numbers. The game would degenerate into an even more mall centric mode. Small safehouse and lowly populated suburbs would become less economic as they would have little defence against this. Big groups would be favoured over small groups and

All in all horrible unbalanced.-- Vista  +1  21:38, 30 June 2007 (BST)

RE:You make an excellent critique of my suggestion, and I'm glad you did. You're right, it's overpowered and will make the game less fun in this form. I think you're right about an infection being purely flavour, but I don't agree that it necessarily should be. But I'll respond to you point by point.

1. Yes, it's superior to the to fireaxe, but that's a rather disingenuous comparison. The fireaxe is a survivor weapon that has advances over guns or shotguns in that ammo does not need to be found (useful when too far away from the appropriate TRP, when PDs or Mall is smashed, and allows a survivors to carry loads of syringes and still pose a hostile threat to zombies). The Bite should only be compared to the Claw, as it's one of two choices for a zombie. Survivors and Zombies are fighting each other, not a common enemy, which is why its an appropriate comparison to make.
2. Yep, no balancing done (in this version). This definitely increases the power of the Bite. An infection can be healed with 100% success rate with 1 FAK, and so the survivor strategy of holding one FAK, at all times, nerfs any effect an infection might have. If that can continue, then any increase in power is at mute point. However, you have a point that infection has a cost to the survivors AP without a very high AP investment by the zombie. So I propose a change in infection mechanism. The zombie no longer has to grasp the survivor first (requiring 2 skills from different trees) *any* bite can give the (more powerful) Necrotic Infection, though not at 100% success rate. Initial figure: 10%. The zombie now has to put in an AP investment into delivering the Necrotic Bite.
3. Can't argue you with you there, and I agree that positive incentives are the way to increase fun. I obviously didn't consider all aspects of the suggestion, and I now appreciate how hard it can be to do so!
4. Yeah, that's another perfect point. I say give give survivors a message on the effects of a Necrotic Infection the first time they get one. And possibly even a permanent link to it's effects the words "Necrotic Infection" that would be near their HP. Diagnosis should be required in order to detect a Necrotic Infection.
5. Again, you are right. No player should be completely dependant on another who might be offline - they might as well be a zombie (except they can't even do *anything*, due to HP loss). I propose a change to make it possible to heal yourself. HP will always be added, however healing the infection is not always guaranteed. Initial figures - Healing yourself: No skills 20%, First Aid 40%, Surgery 50%. Healing by another player: No skills: 20%, First Aid 50%, Surgery 80%, Surgery in powered hospital 100%.
6. Nothing to reply.

To summarise changes:

• Infection mechanism changed: No longer need to grasp survivor then bite, any bite can deliver the (more powerful) Necrotic Infection. However this does not happen *every* time there is a successful bite. This means the zombie has to put in a high AP investment to deliver the Necrotic Infection. All other bites deliver the Normal Infection (dependant on skills bought, of course!)
• Survivors get warning/info screen/message: First time Necrotic infection shows survivors how the Necrotic Infection works
• Information needed for cooperation no longer withheld - available to survivors who have Diagnosis
• Self heals possibly: but not guaranteed. Initial figures suggested in #5 above. 'arm. 04:26, 4 July 2007 (BST)

RE:I'd make it a bit more newbie friendly and tweak the healing yourself percentages and healing by other percentages. There is too little incentive for cooperation if the percentages of either group healing it are too close together . In the current numbers maxed out characters don't really need help from others in any situation but only need to carry 2 faks instead of one.

I'd say healing yourself at No skills 25%, First Aid 30%, Surgery 35%. on average 4 to 3 FAKs versus 1 now. requiring more work but still reasonable.

Healing by other No skills: 50%, First Aid 75%, Surgery 90%, Surgery in powered hospital 100%. on average 2 to 1 FAKs versus 1 now. (or even always successful regardless of skills if you really want to emphasise the cooperation angle.) This way healing by other is always far more preferable then healing by self even if it's between a newbie and a fully levelled healer.

Quick summery of the main effects.

• The percentages are so that healing yourself after a revive probably would get rid of the infection regardless of level. (This is O.k. because survivors are most vulnerable right after standing up when revived, and it's hard to devise a mechanic that would differentiates between revives in highly populated areas and wastelands)
• When infected in a wasteland the effects would be serious but not insurmountable. Zombie held suburbs would become (even) more dangerous and require more planning from survivors to have successful trip there.
• In highly populated suburbs and large sieges healing others would become the most effective tactic by far. The stronger infection would still have a larger cost to fix overall, most noticeable the stronger form of infection would make rebarricading while active zombies are around even more costly/dangerous.

I think it's very likely that the percentage of infection with the stronger virus might could best be upped, but as I have little to go on as what the effects of each percentage would be it's something that can only be known trough trail and error. As far as I can see only Kevan would be able to find out through gradual increases what a good balanced percentage is.-- Vista  +1  10:29, 4 July 2007 (BST)

RE:I like your numbers. Though I'll take this to the Talk:Suggestions page for people to debate it out - so many considerations to take into account!
One thing I need to correct, you said "The percentages are so that healing yourself after a revive probably would get rid of the infection regardless of level" - once they are die and become a zombie they no longer have the Necrotic Infect, they just have a Normal Infection. Hence when they are revived, only one FAK to be heal the Normal Infection. And presumably holding FAKs will become more common?
Yes, the more Necrotic Infection needs to happen often enough to have a measurable effect on the survivors. Too low, and the lower HP damage done to survivors by not using the more powerful Claw attack (and in spite of possible HP regen by the zombies) would mean that the Necrotic Infection would be an ineffective way for a zombie horde to attack - essentially nerfing itself. It'd just turn into a griefing effort by a minority. Of course, get the balance right, and it might mean that zombie suburbs are easier to hold, but it has no positive effect on taking a survivor suburb (probably something to do with zimbie/survivor ratios). 'arm. 04:58, 6 July 2007 (BST)