Suggestion talk:20090310 Direction With Most Group Groans

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From Developing Suggestions

Direction With Most Group Groans

Timestamp: A Big F'ing Dog 19:55, 8 March 2009 (UTC)
Type: Skill
Scope: Feeding Groan, Groups
Description: This suggestion is for a new feeding groan subskill to allow hordes of zombies to stick together, and find each other around the city, without metagaming.

Upon logging zombies with the skill 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 skill 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 skill would let zombies recognize their group in that melange.

Discussion (Detect Area With Most Group Groans)

You hear a familiar flare...., could zombies tell? I can understand your suggestion but, is it needed? Most likely if you hear feeding groans it's the horde your with anyway. --Athur birling 20:18, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

Well, zombies already can detect which groans come from their group and which don't. This just lets them sense which way most of their group is, picked out among the background noise of the city.
And yes, if you're with your group you'll hear a lot of groans from them. But what happens after they clean out the area? Individual members wander in different directions and crack open new buildings. Some group members may follow the familiar groans, but this divides the group. Instead of one giant horde you have little groups of zombies spreading thinner and thinner. Which is fine, but for a zombie relying on feeding groans, it has no real practical value between being in a group or not.
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 20:39, 8 March 2009 (UTC)

I like a lot. It's annoying when you're in a horde and cbf metagaming. You end up getting left behind. This is the type of zombie group i'd like to join :) --xoxo 01:21, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Any more comments before I put it up for voting? --A Big F'ing Dog 03:53, 10 March 2009 (UTC)

Should be automatic, IMO, not a separate skill. ᚱᛁᚹᛖᚾ 13:40, 10 March 2009 (UTC)


Voting Discussion