Talk:Suggestions/23rd-Jan-2007

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Some Ideas for Zombies

Timestamp: Cutlet 13:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
Type: Balance Changes.
Scope: The health and welfare of all Zombiekind.
Description: You may denounce me as a prophet of doom, but I swear to you... the time of the Second Malton-Wide strike is nigh!

There has been some discussion lately about the prospect of many zombies going On Strike. They believe that Malton, as it is, is frighteningly unbalanced, and recent changes most probably will not solve the problem. So I bring unto this wiki community suggestions numbering three, all of which have been brought in a thread about striking in the RRF forums. Some of you may see them as biased, or perhaps even unbalanced, but desperate times call for desperate measures. I do not suspect these suggestion to last longer than six hours (I predict much Spiced Ham in their future) but I'd like to bring it up anyway, perhaps to get the ball rolling on some pro-zombie discussion. Or, if it doesn't, at least I will have got my views across.

Disclaimer: I do not claim to be a spokeszombie for Zombies in general, or even the RRF. I am merely one of the disgruntled undead.

Suggestions:

#1 Due to the... well... destroyed nature of most of the barricade material (I mean, you can't just keep using the same chair over and over; that doesn't make any sense!) survivors have begun to look for barricading material in the street.

If this suggestion were to come into effect, barricading would only be possible form the street. This means that survivors would have to be a lot more tactical about there placements of entry points, and the level to which a barricade should be built. I suspect this would mean that entry points would have to be closer together, so that survivors who care about survival of harmankind would not get left out in the street because of barricading. Either that, or most buildings would have to remain at VS, with a few spread-out buildings at EHB. There is chance that barricading would remain exactly the same, except for the odd chance of a survivor being caught barricading by a zombie.

Now, this suggestion may not work in the way I think. The way others could react to this is beyond my knowledge, and it could end up either as a minor change, or a massive nerf to barricades. Still, I think it's an interesting idea, and as far as my not-very-far reaching memory can tell, a suggestion of this sort has not been suggested before. So please, give me your thoughts.

#2 As barricading material is used and destroyed on a regular basis, I suspect that after two years of quarantine status, Malton's level of on-hand barricading material would be getting dangerously low. So I suggest that instead of simply finding a piece of barricade-making piece of random furniture every time he or she wants to barricade, a survivor will actively have to search for material to use. I propose that survivors with constructions will get a new button on their interface that says something on the lines of "Look for Stuff With Which One Can Barricade a Building" (The name is negotiable). It would cost one AP to press the button, at which point the character searches for barricade stuff, just like they would for regular stuff. The percentage to find something would be fairly high, probably over 50%. All buildings would have barricading stuff in it, but the find percentages would be higher in some buildings (I'm thinking Warehouses, Auto Repairs, Junkyards... and Mansions, but only because I think they're cool.)

When a survivor finds this "barricading stuff" it becomes an item in their inventory called... well... "barricading stuff." Barricading stuff would be able to go in stacks of three, meaning each stack would take up 2 inventory space, and it would be possible to find barricading stuff already in stacks. All extra barricading stuff you find would fill up your stacks as you found it.

Now comes the next bit, not the hard or easy bit because it's just as hard/easy. Survivors would then click the Build Barricade button as usual and spend one AP and one "Barricading Stuff" in order to increase the level of the barricade by one (i.e VS+1 -> VS+2). This action would always work.

You may be thinking: But why? You're just increasing the AP cost of barricading! You're a n00b! And I would think back That is precisely what I'm doing. It's far too easy to barricade and far to hard to knock barricades down. But then again, I would not be making barricading that much harder, simply because of the tried and true method of AP investment. Survivors in a safe building/suburb could go out and search for barricading stuff, just in case they need to barricade in the future. This is just like a survivor going out and searching for guns and ammunition, just in case they need to blow a zombies brains out in the future.

#3 And now, I shall be brief in the hope that I won't get too many TLDRs. The third and final skill has nothing to do with barricades, and everything to do with sieges. In UD sieges, the besieged are free to run out of the building any time they like to search for ammunition, needles, or simply to escape. I suspect if people could have done that in the sieges of ages past, history might have turned out very differently. So I propose that if a human runs into a square with 25+ zombies in it, they will be encountered (gruesomely) with a message saying You run into the midst of the Zombie horde, but, looking around, you see no way to escape. You will have to fight your way out. At which point, the survivor will have to kill a single zombie before they can escape. The main benefit of this is that sieges will have to be more tactical, and survivors won't be able to leave the building, resupply, and then come back all in one day. Somebody who stands up as a human in the middle of a horde will also have to fight their way out. Yes, even in revive lines. I mean, if you were a survivor recently returned from Undeath, you'd be pretty freaked out by zombies, even docile Mrh? cows. If I were you and you were the survivor, I'd have a pretty strong tendency to kill me some zombies.

Also, to make this suggestion perhaps a little more appealing (like adding chocolate sauce to a piece of glass), a survivor would be able to run back in the direction they entered the square from, just so newbies don't accidentally run into squares full of zombies all the time and die.

Discussion

Well... whaddya think? *Prepares to be nuked form orbit. Twice.* -Cutlet 13:19, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

*Prepares the Spam Nuke* I do not want useless barricading junk in my inventory! --Slice 'N' Dicin' Axe Hack 14:28, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't really agree with the first two suggestions, but the third one is somewhat appealing. Maybe if a survivor is revived in a large horde of zombies they will need to spend extra AP to get out of the mob. I'm thinking of something like, "You have been revived in the middle of a large zombie horde. This will take X extra AP to navigate through the crowd." Maybe it should take an extra 3 AP? --ZombieSlay3rSig.png 16:41, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I already started a suggestion(Hindered Passage on this same damn page ffs) similar to your #3. As for 1 and 2, prepare to get spammed. Any suggestion ever made about either making barricades harder to build or easier to tear down has been spammed by the constant whining pro-survivor voters who never bother to comment on your idea until the vote... Consensus seems to be that zombies need to be more fun to play. In general that to me suggests that zeds need more ways of interacting ingame without having to metagame. On the other hand some idiot(even myself once) always pops his head up and says "Zombies are a mindless disorganised horde." This contradiction must somehow be resolved. Mah zambah nah nahg magagamang. Magagamang mah brahn-bam azzgrabbaz. Funt Solo's excellent but extremely ambitious Underworld suggestion is a good example of what is needed to make being a zombie more fun.--SporeSore 17:57, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll comment on your ideas separately:

  • Barricade from the outside. It shouldn't be impossible to barricade from the inside. If barricading from outside is added, then make it easier to do outside (boarding up windows) than from inside (what's left that's not broken?).
  • Barricade stuff in inventory. After carrying around 5 generators, 6 shotguns, and 4 radios... I just don't think I will be able to cart around that vending machine. The current inventory system is ridiculous, but this would be the corrigated iron that broke the camel's back.
  • Fight your way out. Way too powerful. Not everyone has maxed out skills and fully loaded shotguns, especially when they are about to retreat. Aside from that, I like the premise (if it doesn't affect free running). How about they can either (1) kill a zombie, or (2) every time they "try" to move away, there's a chance that the move fails and burns an AP?

All in all, I think these are too powerful, especially all at the same time. For what it's worth, I agree with you that there needs to be a balance change, and as long as your final suggestion is balanced I'll be sure to keep an open mind. --Uncle Bill 21:33, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, the barricading suggestions are the ones that I most expected to be spammed into oblivion, so I'm not surprised at many of your comments. On the suggestions page I'd probably get a lot of "ZOMG! Don't nerf barricades!" and "BBQ! Make it more fun not less fun!" I think that #1 and #3 of these suggestions would make the game more fun. They would make unlife as a zombie less difficult, which would ease the frustration many of us feel, and they would make life as a survivor more diffult, which would ease the apathy many of them feel (I know the apathy, my zombie character was a survivor once). There's nothing quite as enjoyable as using your wits to worm your way out of a challenge. There are two things that make life difficult for Zombies: Barricades and Freerunning. Sadly both of these have rules associated with them, along the lines of "Don't change barricades/freerunning!" I think change is a good thing. It keeps the game fresh. That's why I think barricades need to be changed.

@Sporesore: Yes, suggestion #3 is pretty similar to your Hindered Passage, but they have quite different intended effects, methinks. Your suggestion would use up a lot of a survivors AP if they were to, say, try to run through Ridleybank. They pretty much would have to use double AP to get through it. Whereas suggestion #3 is more of a "waste most of your AP in one fell swoop" kind of deal, which would be a lot more effective when buildings are sieged in relatively zombie-free suburbs.

@Uncle Bill: I understand that many survivors are not super-buff Rambo-esque killing machines. Which is why there was the little addition at the end of suggestion #3 saying that a survivor, if caught in the middle of a horde, would be able to run back the way they came. I think this would add a good level of panic in a mall siege. For example, a survivor might try to run out of the mall, but when they did they would be encountered by 25 or more zombies. Since they were running low on ammo, and were more revivers than fighters, they would run back the way they came. So, next, they would try another exit. Once again, they would be encountered by another 25+ zombies. Oh no! They would be thinking I have to get out and revive Survivor Bill, but I can't because of these zombies! Maybe another survivor will revive him. I hope that the zombies haven't taken down the NT... Oh the terror! This suggestion would make access to the world outside a siege far more difficult. Hey, it could even make radios useful. I think that survivors, especially ones without metagaming, would begin to anticipate sieges with dread. -Cutlet 00:58, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The game is unbalanced in favor of survivors now? When did that happen? Last time I checked, any zed horde with decent metagame coordination can waltz into a suburb and trash it. If you want to solve the survivor/zombie ratio, make playing zombies more fun. Don't make playing survivors less fun.--J Muller 03:35, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Have you checked them game stats? Of COURSE the game is biased (unbalanced? Perhaps, but not so badly) towards survivors! Zombies SHOULD be made more fun...if people would stop spamming those ideas as "survivor nerfs" or "zombies are too powerful" and similar.--Pesatyel 03:44, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Currently the game is most definitely not balanced. The ratio of survivors to zombies is 2:1. Go ahead and tell me that's balanced. And I ask you, J Muller, how many zed hordes do you think there are with "decent metagame coordination"? The answer is: not many. Finally, I think that perhaps suggestion #1, and more likely #3 would make this game more fun for both sides of the conflict. Zombies would be able to do something, and harmans wouldn't be able to do everything with ease. -Cutlet 04:19, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not saying it's balanced. If you read what I said correctly, I'm saying it's unbalanced in favor of zombies. I'm saying that the ratio problems are because playing survivors is more fun. Find a way to make playing zombies more fun, and I'll vote keep. But as long as you're doing it by making playing survivors less fun, it's not exactly the best solution. Think about it. Making survivors less powerful isn't going to solve imbalance problems. Zeds are more powerful anyway as it is.--J Muller 04:56, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Harharhar, you should put that into humourous. Zombies are more powerful? How is this true? You've got barricades, headshot, freerunning, and guns on your side. That pretty much means that you can defend yourself easily, get anywhere on the map quickly and safely, can negate one of the only really powerful things zombies have on their side: ankle grab, and, thanks to the wonders of AP investment, you have weapons with a ridiculously high damage/AP. And you say that Zombies are more powerful? All we've got on our sides is ankle grab. And that doesn't really help, because by the time we've got enough AP to stand up, we would already have been chucked out of the building and the 'cades would be back up at EHB. The power of Zombies is meant to be that they do not die. And yet, with the ease of revifying, survivors don't die either! Is that balance? Is that unbalance in the favour of Zombies? Nooo. You, sir, are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. Or at least making some kind of sick joke. It seems, Mr. J Muller, that you think making life a teensy bit more difficult for survivors equates with "less fun". You seem to believe that easy = fun. Well I've got news for you: easy =/= fun all of the time. I, for one, like a challenge. I quit being a survivor because it was too easy. It was boring. I went and threw myself out a window. When I got revived, I found some zombies and asked them to please eat my juicy brains. Playing as a zombie is fun, most of the time. But it's terribly frustrating to break through a barricade and end up without enough AP even to get a survivor down to wounded, and the next time you log in you're taking a dirt nap outside the building, and the barricades are back up to full. I don't ask for unlife as a zombie to become easy; I just don't want it to remain So. Freakin'. Impossible. -Cutlet 05:17, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm... Let's see.
Life as a survivor: Freerun around. Spend a lot of time searching for ammo for your weapons. Find a heavily populated building. Get Pk'd a lot. Then some horde of zombies comes along and kills you and everyone else in the building.
Life as a zombie: Shamble around. Find a building with survivors in it and a bunch of fellow zombies outside. Tear down the barricades, get in, start doing damage. Get headshot (6AP, big whoop.) and dumped, stand up, repeat until all survivors die.
Yeah, I'd say zombies have it easy compared to survivors. But survivors are more fun to play.--J Muller 05:32, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
How often do you get PK'ed? How often does a horde come around and wipe everyone out? When I was a survivor I was never PK'ed, and I probably died only once and that was because I didn't manage my AP and got stuck outside. And anyway, dying as a survivor is no big deal, all you need to do is shamble over to a revive point, Mrh? a lot, and wait a day, at most, to be revived. Big whoop. Then, the next day, you've got all of your AP back and you can get back to being a survivor: healing, barricading, searching, and shooting, which you can keep on doing for days or weeks before you're likely to get killed again. And in the worst case scenario you get revived with an infection, in which case if you're stupid enough not to have an FAK in your inventory, then it takes maybe another day (at max) to find yourself an FAK and heal yourself, or wait to have someone else heal you. You'll probably still get at least one kill a day.
As a zombie, even one with maxed out combat skills, it still takes most of your AP to get a building open, and then you won't have enough left to damage the enemy down to 12 HP and drag them, let alone kill a harman yourself. And, as I've said before, the next time you log on you'll be dead, the barricades will be back up, and if anyone was killed they will have been revived, and if anyone was injured then they'd be back up to full health. Zombies will rarely get one kill a week. And even if killing isn't your thing, there's still plenty more to do as a human in order to be a functioning part of society. You can revive your friends, heal people, barricade to keep others safe, hold interesting conversations, explore Malton safely, and co-ordinate your forces over the radio. The most a zombie can do for his/her fellows is to groan and hope that someone nearby logs in soon (much less likely with the diminishing numbers of zombies), or to drag survivors out into the street, which will only really happen if there's a survivor wounded enough to be dragged in the building already. Life as a zombie is sooooo easy. -Cutlet 06:03, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
My zombie gets several kills a week, in an area where there are not many other zombies around.--J Muller 06:29, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

yea, so I'll assume you gathered the above suggestions partly from my idea of barricade materials being gathered from outside "on the street" and constructed inside with a practical addition of material shortage in overbarricaded areas due to barricade foraging(like a watering hole too many animals dry the hole) force people to move from safe areas and for a short time onto the streets to scavenge protection--Zbmainiac 04:30, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I pretty much did. I read it in the forum, liked the idea, and posted it here. But I kinda tweaked it so that there would either be barricade ammo or barricading from the outside. -Cutlet 05:20, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

The first one doesn't sound too bad, but the second is too powerful (and I am one of those who believes that zombies are hopelessly underpowered). I don't know about the third one. But personally, I think that the only thing that needs to be done is that barricade strength should be reduced by 1/2. If you think about it, that would make barricade maintenance cost as much AP wise as it is to destroy them (the odds of success 'cading decrease with each level currently there). Survivors would still have the edge defensively, since the odds of successful barricading are at nearly 100% when there aren't any, allowing a survivor to nullify the efforts of two zombies in a heated siege. However, this would nicely balance out the advantages zombies have with regard to Dmg/AP (doesn't mean much because all firearms do is store away excess AP so you can use it later, while zombies can only use the AP they have at that moment) and no need for revives(doesn't mean THAT much since revives are so ridiculously cheap compared to the time and AP costs required to kill a survivor in the first place). But I've never suggested this weakening of barricades because I know it would be spaminated in the blink of an eye. But the sad fact is that unless barricades are weakened somehow, zombies will always be underpowered. Even if we make zombie claws do 100 dmg and have 100% accuracy against survivors, it would still take 69 AP for a zombie to kill a single survivor. That's more than an entire day's worth, meaning that unless a zombie gets really lucky or the zombies all attack at once when the survivors aren't on (which is metagaming, and by definition independent of zombies' actual strength), they will be incapable of doing anything since the barricades will have been rebuilt by the next day. And even if they do get lucky and destroy the cades, IF they manage to kill a survivor in the few AP they have left (very unlikely, as it takes an average of 35 AP for a zombie to kill a survivor when barricades are discounted) the survivor can be revived at an average cost of only 19 AP (8 to find a syringe, 1 to scan, and 10 to inject). Even in the super-lucky-ultimate-best-case-scenario it is impossible for a zombie to break into an EHB building and kill one survivor in less than 32 AP (assuming every single attack is successful, 17 AP spent destroying cades + 15 AP spent biting), which is still more than the average cost to revive a survivor. But only a small minority of the wiki community cares. The others look at the success of zombies within the game and claim it to be proof of the contrary, when it is clearly the result of superior metagaming. Basically, what I'm getting at is that this imbalance will never be fixed as a result of this wiki. If it is ever fixed, it will be due to an action at the top (ie: Kevan). The question is, what will it take to get him to do it, if he will at all? --Reaper with no name TJ! 21:48, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

You know, I think idea 1 might actually make the problem worse! My survivor character would actually be quite pleased if that was introduced. Most green areas are over barricaded, leaving people stranded outside a lot of the time. I've got a zombie character who pretty much relies on that for his meals. Extra entry points would be a massive boon for survivors, in my opinion. The ability to step outside more frequently and see where the zombies are acculmulating in the streets is useful. The best way to survive a zombie siege is to be in a different building! The other two ideas I don't like, I'm afraid. It's been said before, and its true, what what zombies really need is more suggestiones to make playing them fun. They are quite powerful enough as it is. The Mad Axeman 11:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

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