Suggestion talk:20080804 Scent Death and Hordes
from Talk:Suggestions
Scent Death and "Group: none"
| Timestamp: |  Swiers 16:37, 2 August 2008 (BST)
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| Type: | etc. |
| Scope: | Scent Death skill |
| Description: | Currently the scent death skill tells you where the "nearest large group" of zombies from your group is located (or, more often, that no such grup exists in range). While not very useful, its also not fair to zombies who are not a member of any group. I'm thinking zombies who are not members of any group should be considered members of ALL groups when making this determination, and they would be told not only the location of the nearest "horde", but what group that "horde" comes from. This would allow ferals to figure out what (if any) zombie group was active in the area, and join them. |
Discussion (Scent Death and "Group: none")
Not being sure on the actual mechanics involved, I have a hard time making a really detailed description. Does the basic notion make sense? Swiers 16:37, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- So, what message would you receive? Would you need a specific thing in your group name, or must it be entirely blank? Would none/feral/or dual nature qualify? --RosslessnessWant a Location Image? 16:40, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- The message would be the same one members of a group get,only it would say something like "You detect several members of (insert group with most nearby members) (insert location)" instead of "You detect several members of your horde (insert location)." To get this, you'd need to not have anything entered as your group name (group ==""). Putting "Dual nNature" as you group makes you a member of the group "Dual Nature", which is listed on the stat's page. Same would go for "Feral" or "None".
Swiers 19:14, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- The message would be the same one members of a group get,only it would say something like "You detect several members of (insert group with most nearby members) (insert location)" instead of "You detect several members of your horde (insert location)." To get this, you'd need to not have anything entered as your group name (group ==""). Putting "Dual nNature" as you group makes you a member of the group "Dual Nature", which is listed on the stat's page. Same would go for "Feral" or "None".
This may sound silly but... does this seem like a boost to life cultism? A survivor character could make a zombie alt, work up to Scent Death, and place it outside as a sentinel to just scent for large zombie concentrations in the area. --Tansiv 18:39, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- No that's a good point, we don't want an all purpose wide-range-Zombie-dar. Techercizer (Food) (TSoE) 18:41, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- The scent death map itself makes it rather easy to to large zombie concentrations, but I've got hardly any survivor players signing up to use udSIMsniff (its retty much all dedicated zombie players), so fears of "life cultist spys" seem hugely overblown. All this would do is maybe give you an idea of what horde was nearby. Which really, isn't info that any horde I know of makes an effort to hide. Also, from my personal experience, the range on horde detection is VERY short. I'm gonna experiment on that, changing some of my SIM sniffers to have "The Dead" as their group (since its the biggest horde). Swiers 19:14, 2 August 2008 (BST)
The mechanic would be simple. You get a message, if the horde that normally comes up has group members, it adds something like, "There are x members of (e.g.) The Militant Order of Barhah among them". It'd work just like seeing revivifying bodies. The only question is: do you see only the group with the largest #s present?... i mean, if there are members from more than one group... this makes sense, but randomly picking a group might also work... or listing ALL the groups? I prefer the 1st option, but I am offering ideas... Finally, this is a GREAT idea to assist zombie groups' recruiting... And trust me, the larger hordes are okay, but the smaller hordes would really benefit from this. And, becoming part of a group benefits the ferals... Win-win. --WanYao 20:52, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- Either largest, or most recently active %. That's my opinion. Techercizer (Food) (TSoE) 20:54, 2 August 2008 (BST)
Isn't this rather moot if your not part of a group? Lets say there are 50 zombies 5 squares away. The game tells you (via the colors). If you are part of a group and some of your group members are amongst the 50, it tells you. But if your NOT part of a group, the game STILL tells you there are a bunch of zombies 5 squares away. So, in essence, this suggestion is part of the game. If your "unaligned" with a group, you have two reasons for that: 1) you don't want to. 2) your not sure which. Fine. But can't you get the information you need even easier by looking at the wiki or other stats pages? If you know The Dead is in the group 5 squares away, you STILL have to go to the wiki (or wherever) to see if you want to even bother with them, don't you? Basically, if your interested in joining a particular group, you can find them easily enough without wasting time with this.--Pesatyel 21:34, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- Generally people are interested in joining (or at least getting in on action with) groups that are in the same area as them, so they don;t need to walk halfway across the city. It's very easy for survivors to tell what groups are in their area (they just look at profiles, and also have in game communication) but it's actually pretty hard for zombies, although the "rising bodies" thing does help some. Digging on the wiki doesn't help, because only a rather few zombie groups get their locations reported, so you don;t know what groups to look at. Knowing a group has a good number of members in your area at least gives you a wiki page to check out. Swiers 22:57, 2 August 2008 (BST)
- Furthermore, this is NOT moot. Far from it. A feral will want to know where the organised groups are -- as oppossed to clusters of unorganised ferals -- so he can vulture. So there's a glob of 20 ferals fumbling at the barricades over there and never getting inside. Or, there's a mob of 6 zombies whom you KNOW metagame, over here... and you know they'll be freeing up some food ... You follow the latter. So, no, this actually helps ferals, and is kind of useless, in fact, for organised hordes -- because they usually know where their zethren are already. --WanYao 01:20, 3 August 2008 (BST)
- Thanks for the clarifications. I didn't get that from the suggestion itself. So, basically, what though? This would announce ALL the groups in the square? I'd imagine there should be a minimum number of members or something at least.--Pesatyel 07:51, 3 August 2008 (BST)
- It would basically act as if you had joined the group that has the most zombies at one single location within range. Assuming that range is 5 blocks (same as the scent map) it would mean you would be told where the largest concentration of that horde's members is, and what horde that is. Hard to describe in English, pretty easy in code. There's be no minimum, but "ties" would be resolved by picking the nearest group first, and then at random from among equally near groups. Swiers 08:03, 3 August 2008 (BST)
- It would basically act as if you had joined the group that has the most zombies at one single location within range. Assuming that range is 5 blocks (same as the scent map) it would mean you would be told where the largest concentration of that horde's members is, and what horde that is. Hard to describe in English, pretty easy in code. There's be no minimum, but "ties" would be resolved by picking the nearest group first, and then at random from among equally near groups.
- Thanks for the clarifications. I didn't get that from the suggestion itself. So, basically, what though? This would announce ALL the groups in the square? I'd imagine there should be a minimum number of members or something at least.--Pesatyel 07:51, 3 August 2008 (BST)
- Furthermore, this is NOT moot. Far from it. A feral will want to know where the organised groups are -- as oppossed to clusters of unorganised ferals -- so he can vulture. So there's a glob of 20 ferals fumbling at the barricades over there and never getting inside. Or, there's a mob of 6 zombies whom you KNOW metagame, over here... and you know they'll be freeing up some food ... You follow the latter. So, no, this actually helps ferals, and is kind of useless, in fact, for organised hordes -- because they usually know where their zethren are already. --WanYao 01:20, 3 August 2008 (BST)
Hmmm. I think this is pretty low on the realism stakes but is a definitely plus for the game experience of feral zombies and will mean hordes become bigger and bigger as they suck in the ferals around them. Also, Swier's UDsniff application ftw.--xoxo 03:38, 3 August 2008 (BST)
So, lets say there are 3 zombie groups within 5 squares of you. 1 group has 6 members in range, the other 2 have 5 members in range. This would give you the group name of those 6 members. If one of them leaves, the 3 groups would have 5 members each (in range) and this suggestion would pick one at random to give you the group name.--Pesatyel 04:33, 4 August 2008 (BST)
- Not quite. The report would go on a block by block basis first fro blocks in range, then break ties based on a total group numbers in range. If group Azzgrab had 5 zombies all in one block within range, and group Barhah had 10 total zombies in range, but they were spread out 1-4 to a block, you get told about the 5 zombies from group Azzgrab. Swiers 05:09, 4 August 2008 (BST)
current suggestion / voting discussion
server usage discussion
I know just barely enough about databases to maybe mae a big mistake here, but my feeling is that this would add only a fairly small amount of work to each call for Scent Death. Currently SD already has to figure out how many zombies are in each block in range. Thats a DB querry something along the lines of "GET zombies BY location". With this suggestion, you just change that to "GET zombies BY location AND group". Which means instead of 1 entry per location, you get as many entires as there are groups in that location. Then you'd just sort at all the entries (order by zombies) and look at the top of the list to see which have the most zombies, and sort out any ties. Given that it seems most of the work is handled by a few DB querries, and only tie breaking needs to be handled in normal code, it seems likely to be rather fast.
Then again, I could be WAY wrong... Swiers 05:13, 5 August 2008 (BST)
