Talk:Suggestions/15th-Nov-2006

Double-Edged Skills

Timestamp:	Reaper with no name TJ! 15:36, 15 November 2006 (UTC)
Type:	Skills
Scope:	Maxed out players
Description:	This is a suggestion for a new set of "skills" that will work a bit differently than the current ones. For one thing, they will only be available to those who have completed their side's skill tree. Survivors must have all the survivor skills and zombies must have all the zombie skills (brain rot is exempted from this). These skills will only cost 50 XP, but will also cost 10 AP (I'll explain why in a bit). A player can only have ONE of these skills at any one time. However, they can unbuy them at any time for no cost. The reason that it will cost 10 AP to purchase one is to discourage players who have excessively high amounts of XP from abusing the benefits of one of these and then switching to another one when it is more useful. They can still do this, of course, but the huge AP costs for constantly switching skills will nerf the benefits. The biggest difference by far, however, is that these skills are double-edged. They have both positive and negative effects on your character. The point of them is not to actually make your character more powerful, but to make them more specialized. No longer will every maxed out character be exactly the same. Different players will be slightly better or slightly worse in certain attributes. Now that the preliminary stuff is out of the way, let's get to the skills themselves. For Survivors: Combat Veteran Countless battles have given you nerves of steel and combat proficiency to match (+5% to all firearms attacks, but it costs 2 extra AP to revive someone) Weapon Master Be the weapon knife, axe, or nothing at all, you have become a master in the art of close-quarters combat (+5% to all melee weapon attacks, but search rates for all items are decreased by 10% of what they would normally be) Revive Specialist Your vast experience in performing injections on zombies allows you to administer revivification syringes quickly but with the same precision (reviving someone costs 2 less AP, but Max HP is decreased by 5) Head Surgeon Your medical skills and knowledge are unsurpassed (Can heal 3 more HP with a FAK, but firearm accuracy decreases by 5%) Heavy Lifter Your musculature has reached a point where dead bodies have become comparable to rag dolls (can dump 2 bodies at once, but heals 3 less HP with FAKs) Looter Like a master criminal, you know what you want, where to find it, and how to get it (search rates are increased by 10% of what they usually are, but accuracy with melee weapons decreases by 5%) For Zombies: Killing Machine Your body is a weapon, and you use it well (Accuracy for all non-weapon attacks increases by 5%, but Max HP is decreased by 5) Predator A chain is only as strong as it's weakest link, and you excell at severing that link (feeding drag can now drag survivors with 15 HP or less outside even if there are barricades in the way, but the accuracy of all non-weapon attacks is decreased by 5%claw attacks have 5% less chance of taking down barricades) Mutation Your body has transcended the bounds of human frailty (Max HP is increased by 5, but recieves 1 less HP from digestionthe accuracy of all non-weapon attacks is decreased by 5% ) Unrelenting Attacker Your hunger for flesh is so strong that it empowers you to claw your way past obstacles (can enter loosely barricaded buildings, but standing up after death costs 3 more AP) A small note: Whenever a new skill is implemented into a character's skill tree and that character has a double-edged skill, that skill becomes dormant (but not lost) until the character purchases the new skill, at which point the double-edged skill automatically starts working again. This is because the double-edged skills are only supposed to be able to work for people who have all the skills in their side's tree, which means that when new skills are implemented, they won't have all of them any more. An example: Say Player A has "Combat Veteran". Then let's say Kevan implements a new survivor skill called "Skill A". "Combat Veteran" would stop working. Then Player A buys Skill A. At that point "Combat Veteran" starts working again, because they now have all the survivor skills again. Also, none of these are cross-class skills. They become dormant when a character is killed/revived. They can still be un-bought/bought, though. All right, I think that's about it. Feedback or ideas would be nice. The numbers in particular are open to change.

Discussion

Your suggestion was hard to read, so I put some bullets in. I'll let you know what I think when I reread it, but one thing popped up right away...how does the 10 AP work? Does that mean a player is limited to 40 AP per day max while they have/use these skills?--Pesatyel 05:15, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

I think he means that when you buy one of these skills you use up 10 AP. Seems like a good idea, but the Weapon Master seems underpowered. +5% to melee weapons still leaves them pretty weak. Also, I don't like the Digestion nerf for Mutation - could you change the penalty?. I still think that Bite isn't often used as it is, and this would make it worse. -- Ashnazg 0643, 16 November 2006 (GMT)

Ashnag is right. Buying one of these skills uses up 10 AP, but that's only at the moment you buy it. The reason I have that is because I wanted these skills to be separate (can't have more than one at a time) but not necessarily permanent (since they are double-edged swords, and you don't want to limit the way people can play), yet at the same time prevent people from abusing the privileges of one, then switching to another when the need arose. The main reason I gave the Mutation skill that particular drawback was because I couldn't think of anything better (more health, but less regenerative ability). But I've changed it around a bit now, and I think the drawback makes a bit more sense for the Mutation and Predator skills (Predator skill clearly implies that the zombie has some intelligence/agility if it can drag survivors through/around barricades, yet due to this nature would be less likely to be able to tear down obstructions. At the same time, it makes sense that a zombie which has mutated would have superior stamina but less dexterity). So, hopefully this is better. --Reaper with no name ^TJ! 21:14, 16 November 2006 (UTC)

You'd be best deleting some of the Surivior skills, so that there is an equal amount of Surivior and Zombie double-edged swords. You know, so that it looks fair. I dislike the Heavy Lifter and the Looter skills. The Heavy Lifter nerfs a recent gameplay change (1 Body/AP), so it would be better to get rid of it. And anything, anything, that can change search odds is hated upon...Oh, and, I think it would be better to keep it at 100XP per skill. Just to make sure people don't change all the time.--ShadowScope 01:10, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Hmm...you may very well be right about the search thing (to be honest, when I said that the numbers were very open to change, I had the search percentages in mind). But I don't think heavy lifter nerfs the new change; just weakens it slightly (there's a big difference between two bodies and a limitless number of bodies). Frankly, there's less skills for the zombies because they don't have as much variety in terms of gameplay, which limits what I can do with them. But since you can only have one of these at a time and (I'm assuming) they're all balanced, then it shouldn't matter how many each side gets. And I guess I could push the skill costs up to 100, but I'm worried that people might not like such a high cost for skills that they might decide to get rid of later, despite the thousands of XP so many players have in reserve. But I'll consider it, especially if a lot of people think it's a good idea. --Reaper with no name ^TJ! 03:08, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

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