Suggestion talk:20080218 Zombies Can No Longer Can Use Guns

Bug Exploit?

For what its worth, I think this "bug exploit" is pretty much intentionally allowed. I deduce that from three things. The first is simply that its been present and openly discussed (both as a bug and as a "hidden feature") for some time. The second is that there now seems to be code in place that causes a zombie to not only NOT benefit from tangling grasp when using guns, but to in fact always miss if they have established a grasp. The third is from watching "Land of the Dead"; in that movie, one of the zombies becomes quite good at using a gun, and teaches other zombies how to do so. I like to think of the (relatively few) people who know how to do this as being the zombies who have been shown how to use guns. Even if / when everybody who checks the wiki knows about it, its still going to be a rather minor game factor, as most zombie players either don't read the wiki, or would rather not spend AP searching for ammo after they get revived (which really is a pain in the ass, truth told).  Swiers 03:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

What about PKers? My death cultist is always loaded with ammo, whether alive or dead. --  AHLGTG THE END IS NIGH! 03:18, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

That would not be the case if you blew of all that ammo while dead- you'd find you do NOT have plenty when dead and also run short when alive, because you'd be shooting more often. Likely you'd get revived and have nothing to shoot, spend a day or two scrounging ammo rather than PKing, and maybe get bountied while doing that. If you carried LOTS of pistols (and almost no shotguns), it might see you through the downtime and back into life, but then, who wants to use only pistols? You'd still spend more of you "live time" restocking than you do now. You wouldn't really do any more shooting (which is limited by your ammo supply) and you'd actually do LESS PKing (in the sense of killing survivors as a survivor). All you'd do is shift some PKs to kills as a zombie.  Swiers 04:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with ya Swiers. Kevan has known for a long time about this, and I doubt he'll remove it. It's probably intentional anyway... --Banana reads Scoundrell for all of Yesterday's News, Today! 03:49, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I think you guys ought to learn a bit more about the difficulties and priorities that come in programming games before you say that this is "intentional".--Jorm 04:04, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree it was likely an accident that made it possible initially. I said it seems intentionally allowed, as in allowed to continue long after it was first raised as an issue. From the (admitedly limited) coding I've done, I doubt it would be that hard to block, especially given that zombies can NOT uses axes or knives with the same method. Well, they can use them in that manner, but they do so (afaik) at the base hit rate for the weapon, without the benefit of any skills. This is a pretty big "bug" not to block, given some of the other fixes that have been made.  Swiers 04:19, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm just saying: You'd be surprised how hard certain "simple" bugs are to fix - or even test. And just because a bug still exists after a period of time doesn't make it "not a bug" - it just means that it is lower priority based on a series of factors, not the least of which include difficulty to fix, widespreadness of incidence, ease of exploitation, degree of impact, etc, etc, etc. So far, I've only ever heard of one person - you - exploiting this issue. One. And that would make it a low, low, low priority.

Further, you - not being the author of the code in question - cannot describe how and why a bug is "allowed" based on your incomplete understanding of other code and behavior. Ten seconds I have spent thinking about this and I've already come up with a reason as to why your analogy fails: neither axes or knives require reloading, while guns do, which means they likely operate under different code parameters. BAM! There goes that theory.

Post a bug report. That's what this is: a bug (either in code or game design, but I'm going to guess in code).--Jorm 04:45, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

There is a bug report to this effect, where you can see discussion as to whether or not it even constitutes a bug. Thus, it makes sense to put it in a suggestion, where people can vote on it. --Pdeq^Talk* 04:59, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

You guys kill me. You don't get a vote as to whether or not a bug gets fixed, man. You just don't. Seriously: learn a bit more about development.--Jorm 05:04, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

The debate is not about whether a bug gets fixed. It's about whether it even constitutes a bug. --Pdeq^Talk* 05:12, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

And again: you don't get to decide that.--Jorm 05:21, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Says who? The suggestion system is a fine way to get the opinions of many people on the wiki community. --Pdeq^Talk* 05:23, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Says the guy who makes that decision on the Bug Reports page. That's Kevan, as only he knows whether it is a bug or not, all you can contribute to the conversation is whether you like it or not, even if only three people in the whole game that I know of have ever even used this on anyone.--Karek^maps?! 05:36, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

It's a feature on at least one firefox extension ("Act on Profile"), so I'm sure it's been tried out by a number of people, although I have never witnessed it. But that is besides the point. I suppose that as long as Kevan is aware of the bug, it does not matter to me how he is made aware. It appears your claim is that he will/has seen it there already, so no point in voting on it. In that case, I will change my vote. --Pdeq^Talk* 05:42, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Please do, the sooner we can get this removed the better, it's exactly the type of thing Spam removal exists for. It's also been reported 3-4 times in Bug Reports--Karek^maps?! 05:44, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Done. Wasn't quite sure on the wiki code for striking, so I used "#:<s>my vote</s>". Hopefully that will suffice. --Pdeq^Talk* 05:51, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

True, if considered a bug by the programmer, it may be unresolved because it has minor consequence compared to the effort required to fix it- even if that effort is minor! The game balance impact would be pretty small even if many people used this; you'd just have PKers (and maybe zombie hunters) who spend a little more time dead, but otherwise do essentially what they do now.  Swiers 06:02, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Bug Report

Why it was still in "bugs reported Once" is beyond me. I'm gonna move it up to "reported more than once", because it plainly has been.  Swiers 06:35, 19 February 2008 (UTC)

Biting

I like to bite my fellow survivors, so I'm changing my vote to a kill (I'm not a filthy PKer, I heal afterwards)--Corndoghero^T-S-Z 16:34, 19 February 2008 (UTC)