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Suggestions Discussion

Active Suggestions

These suggestions are currently at vote. Please hold any extended discussion about them here.

Increase Ransack

Are people who say that you need to kill all zombies in a building to remove ransack forgetting that zombies have to kill all humans within to ransack in the first place? Are they forgetting that a building is not safe to move back in until the zombies are dead anyways? Finally, zombies have more to do than stand in a building all day. They can't just spend 50 APs searching. More importantly, being in a building means you don't get feeding groan information, which is important for most zombies to find their next meal. I almost always make sure to log off outside for this reason. --McArrowni 01:15, 4 July 2006 (BST)

I'm with you on this. Ransack doesn't work because zombie's need to move around, not stand in a building all day long. That's probably the one single thing that leads to ransack's downfall. It would help if you could hear feeding groans indoors and could thus stand inside without missing anything, but that idea's been shot down at least once before. --Mookiemookie 14:53, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Remove Barricades/Genny from FAK Menu

In response to John Ember's response about my vote: I stated that "Peer Reviewed" is not his page. Yes, it is to be as useful as possible, and that is why we have the voting rules so that they only get added to once they are voted upon. You can not make up a rule about the Peer Reviewed page that states that only Skill Additions or only Interface Corrections can be added. Rather you can vote on a suggestion and state an arguement; you however have to accept that other users will also craft votes that deny you that arguement.
If you wish me to put this arguement in my vote and take out any reference you, Ember, I am willing to do so; I don't wish to state my opinion incorrectly. --Karlsbad 20:53, 27 June 2006 (BST)

The "IMO" behind every vote should always be assumed. My feeling is that Peer-Reviewed doesn't benefit from lots of niggling suggestions. That's not a rule, that's just my judgment. I don't expect everyone else to agree. Try not to assume I'm such a totalitarian in the future. Thanks. --Ember ^MBR 21:08, 27 June 2006 (BST)

Crushing Grasp

Moved from the suggestions page:

Keep - The maths… (I have used wcil's values here. Note that my maths may still be wrong though.)
MBR - Missing with maxed claws: 0.5 (chance to miss) * 0.2 (chance to miss and retain tangling grasp) * 1 = 0.1 + 1.714286 (claw MBR) = 1.814286; what people previously thought the MBR was.

MBR - Missing with maxed teeth: 0.6 (chance to miss) * 0.3 (chance to miss and retain tangling grasp) * 1 = 0.18 + 1.5625 (bite MBR) = 1.7425; very close to equal damage, but has a higher variance.
This seems like an acceptable boost to me. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 07:35, 25 June 2006 (BST)
- Re - this is not correct (from your misinterpretation of Siddanth. He says "Further claw hits will land at 60% probability, with a 20% chance of missing and losing the grip, and a 20% of missing and retaining the grip." meaning the probabilities are 60% hit, 20% miss-losegrasp, 20% miss-retaingrasp, where the latter is the one affected by this suggestion.). In other words, when you hit a grasped survivor, there is a 0.2 chance that he will "writhe" (miss + retain grasp). You are thus adding slightly less than 0.2 to the claw MBR (slightly less because there will be turns during the combat when you have no chance to lose your grasp, because you haven't got one yet or lost it). Similarly, you are adding slightly less than 0.3 to bite attacks. Even this might be small enough to be balanced, but what people object to is that this increases the consistency of zombie attacks. With this suggestion, if the survivor is tangled there is only a 20% chance with claws and 30% with bite that he will take no damage at all. That's not acceptable. --Rheingold 10:47, 25 June 2006 (BST).
  - Re: Your reasoning is sound, and my maths was wrong. You've convinced me. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 11:02, 25 June 2006 (BST)

Antibiotics

Now, boy, don't be angry that I have an awesome Doctor, I'll give you his number if you want.--Duce Nauks 17:48, 23 June 2006 (BST)
- just don't tell the inebriates that alcohol has medicinal purposes--Gage^RRF 17:56, 23 June 2006 (BST)
  - Yehaw bitches! YOU LIKE DAT! YOU LIKE DAT BOY! Chil', you cruisin' for a brusin'--Duce Nauks 18:03, 23 June 2006 (BST)

Developing Suggestions

This section is for suggestions which have not yet been submitted, and are still being worked on.

Ransack Further and Handy Man

Timestamp:	08:09, 6 July 2006 (BST)
Type:	Game Mechanics
Scope:	Everyone
Description:	This suggestion would propose a balancing between ransacking and barricading buildings by allowing the effect ransack has on buildings to vary by degrees. Barricades may now be constructed with increasing difficulty (less and less probability) as their levels increase. I believe a similar philosophy should be effected towards ransacking. Zombies who have the skill ransack will be able to do more and more damage to a building in something resembling the following levels. The building has been ransacked. 100% chance to accomplish compare to loosely. The building has been smashed and ransacked. 100% chance to accomplish: compare to lightly. The building has been almost thoroughly ransacked. 90% chance to accomplish compare to quite strongly. The building has been thoroughly ransacked. 80% chance to accomplish compare to very strongly. The building has been almost completely ransacked. 60% chance to accomplish compare to heavily. The building has been completely ransacked. 40% chance to accomplish compare to very heavily. The building has been utterly and completely ransacked. 20% chance to accomplish compare to extremely heavily. Survivors, would have about the chance to repair a level of ransacking as zombies currently have of collapsing barricades. There would be no XP rewards for repairs. Base chance to repair would be 15% for unskilled players. The skill Construction increases the chance by 10%. A new skill Handy Man (in a tree below Construction) would increase the chance by 10%. The skill Hand to hand combat would increase the chance by %15. With each skill applied the chance would be 50% to clean up any level of ransacking. Successful repairs You begin to repair the building. You accomplish some repairs but the place is still in pretty bad shape. You accomplish some repairs but the place could still use some work. You accomplish some repairs the place looks much nicer. Failed attempts You try to repair the building but its such a mess you loose focus. You try to repair the building but it seems as ransacked as before. Buildings would have to be completely repaired to be barricaded. The doors may be opened or closed with no regards to the level at which a building has been ransacked. Notes: Percentages given above may or may not reflect the increasing difficulty of barricading. I would hope this system would mirror the one used for barricading now as closely as possible. I'm not all that attached to the adjectives somewhat, thoroughly, or completely. I do like utterly.

Votes
Any feedback or criticism would be appreciated. --Max Grivas ^JG,T,P! 08:09, 6 July 2006 (BST)

For starters, there is really only so much damage ANYONE can do to a location. This would COMPLETELY nerf barricades. Basically, a survivor would have to buildin 34 levels (give or take) of repairing/barricading (and that's assuming each attempt is sucessful). It is also overly complicated.--Pesatyel 19:25, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Re: Thanks for your comments. I may have to do some more math to tune this. I would hope a survivor encountering a building in its worst possible condition would be able to get it barricaded to some level without spending 50AP. I think your right in that might not often occurr in the scenario presented above. I do not want the whole town falling into a totally irreparable state. I'll brush it up if I get plenty of possitive feedback along these lines. --Max Grivas ^JG,T,P! 21:14, 6 July 2006 (BST)

I do like the idea of different degrees of ransack, but I think this suggestion is too strong. Perhaps something more along the lines of two or three levels of ransack, with decreasing chances to accomplish, and higher percentages for the survivors to repair. –Bob Hammero ^T•W!•P! 19:32, 6 July 2006 (BST)

That probably wouldn't be too bad. Maybe a total of 3 levels of Ransack. As McArrowni said above, Ransack needs to be improved a bit. Ironically, Ransack does fit into the zombie ideology (destroying everything) but the conditions do not (having to stay put).--Pesatyel 22:40, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Why are you giving no EXP for repairing? Maybe if you only got EXP for returning the building back to its origional state. Youronlyfriend 04:41, 7 July 2006 (BST)

My thinking was with all the acts of repairing going on it would be somewhat farmish. Also zombies are not rewarded for collapsing barricades and this is meant for the most part to mirrior that system. --Max Grivas ^JG,T,P! 09:16, 7 July 2006 (BST)

Change to NecroTech Employment

Timestamp:	07:22, 6 July 2006 (BST)
Type:	Existing skill modification
Scope:	All players with NecroTech Employment
Description:	Everyone knows that NecroTech Employment (NTE) allows you to recognize NT buildings from the street. You also know that this changes the text on the building to "a NecroTech Building". The inside description reads "You are inside a NecroTech Building. The NecroTech logo is set in the wall behind the front desk...". I believe that the description of the building from the outside should read "the Dury Building (NT)" and the inside description should read "You are inside the Dury Building. The NecroTech logo is set in the wall behind the front desk...". This suggestion will allow users to know the name of a given NecroTech without resorting to the maps or other meta resources. Players on both sides will find it easier to coordinate if building names are visible to all players.

Votes
This is my idea. Tell me if you think the method of display should be changed or if something is unclear.

Darth Sensitive ^{talk • W!} 07:22, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Hmm... this is quite a good idea. It would be very helpful but I'm not sure about your idea on how to indicate it. Maybe it should read like "a NecroTech Building - the Dury Building" just so it's quicker to reconize the building, but that would clutter the screen I reckon. I do however like the change to the internal description, thats very good but I'ld prefer to see a better implementation of the map name though. I just can't quite think of how to go about it though... maybe change the font style or something, it's a tough one. - Jedaz 07:32, 6 July 2006 (BST)

The only other thing I can think of is doing it like the 3rd party map actually does is putting the text on the map in red.--Darth Sensitive ^{talk • W!} 07:54, 6 July 2006 (BST)

What about "NT: the Dury Building"? –Bob Hammero ^T•W!•P! 07:56, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Yeah, I think that would be good. It's nice and simple and you can see if it's an NT building or not quickly. - Jedaz 10:51, 6 July 2006 (BST)

I would Keep this. --Raystanwick 16:18, 6 July 2006 (BST) Great idea. I'll definitely vote keep on this. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 07:25, 6 July 2006 (BST)

I don't see any reason why this shouldn't be implemented --Mookiemookie 14:55, 6 July 2006 (BST)

This should be kept --McArrowni 22:36, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Laptops

Timestamp:	19:43, 5 July 2006 (BST)
Type:	New item.
Scope:	nice choice from the Mobile Phone.
Description:	First off, powered Mobile Phone masts now give WiFi including phone usage. WiFi will enable the use of Laptops, Search rates for Laptops are 6% Mall Tech Stores, 3% Clubs, and 2% Schools. The Laptop is able to send E-mails to people who have a Laptop (similar to Text messages) and is on your contact list, and those who have NecroNet Access would be able to access the NecroNet. Also, for those who have extra AP left can click on the "Play Game" Button, which would give you three messages the first is "You play a First Person Shooter, you reach level 1-20" (Levels chosen randomly.) the second is "You play a Sports game, you get 1-20 goals." and finally, "You play a free massivly multiplayer online-zombie apocalypse game (Urban Dead) Your character reaches level 2-40)." This suggestion, if implemented, could pave the way for Hacker based skills.

Votes

- Author, please leave comments on how to improve this idea. --Canuhearmenow 19:43, 5 July 2006 (BST)

~~Can we play the web game Urban Dead on it?~~ I will only vote keep if I can control probe droids with x-ray vision. --Swmono ^{talk - W! - P! - SGP} 21:26, 5 July 2006 (BST)

Okay, I can understand this is an item to pave the way for future skills/items, but what, really does THIS suggestion/item do? I'll be honest that I haven't actually used NecroNet (too busy doing normal survivor related stuff), but this basically combines the Mobile Phone and Necronet? I won't EVEN comment on the "Play Game" stuff. And these future hacker skills, I'm guessing you have ideas on those (otherwise, why mention them?). There WAS a suggestion along that vein allowing people with the appropriate skill(s) (I think it was just NecroNet access) to use NecroNet from the computers in a school. The suggestion wasn't well accepted (most people thought it unlikely even a NecroTech employee would be able to access NecroNet computers from some other site). But, basically, other than that, there really IS no use for "hacker" skills in UD. And thus, no real use for the Laptop either.--Pesatyel 03:27, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Portable Necronet Access would be pretty cool, and quite useful. Though I think there's too much overlap with mobile phones at the minute, since a laptop could do everything a mobile could do and thus make mobiles redundant. So the suggestion would probably be stronger without the email part. With regards to the difficulty of remote Necronet access, I imagine a Necronet employee with access to both Necronet and the web could put the information online pretty easily, so I don't think there's any flavour problems.--Toejam 14:25, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Not 'put information online', but I'm pretty sure Necronet would have a VPN, so, again, portable Necronet access would make sense. I have no idea what it would do to play balance, however... Jenny D'Arc^T 14:36, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Not a helluva lot IMO. So NecroNet is now portable? So what. There are not enough people tagging zombies for it to be a supremely useful tool. The DEM's DEMON scouting tool does a better job than anything that would ever get implemented in-game anyway, so survivors already have (albeit, limited) omniscience. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 14:45, 6 July 2006 (BST)

This sounds pretty useless as it duplicates what mobile phones and Necronet already does and we know how everyone loves mobile phones and Necronet. If you want to "pave the way for hacker skills" then go ahead and put them into this suggestion. As it stands now, its pretty much one of those "don't come up with new ways to do old things" kinda deals --Mookiemookie 14:58, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Necronet is useful in a lot of small ways (such as checking if there's a lot of zombies near a safehouse or seeing if a revive point has zombies waiting etc) but due to the hassle and AP cost of travelling to an NT building, it's generally not worthwhile to use it. Being able to access Necronet anywhere for (I presume) 1 AP would mean all these different small uses could come into play. --Toejam 18:52, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Blockade

Timestamp:	03:05, 2 July 2006 (BST)
Type:	Skill
Scope:	Zombies
Description:	Intro (skip if in a hurry) Zombies with this skill have learned to each cover different entries to the buildings they are besieging, so as to more easily catch and eat harmans that try to get in or out of the buildings. Whilst survivors quickly learned to find ways to leave the buildings unharmed, it is efficient at preventing them from getting in, unless they come from the rooftops. The real stuff Mechanically, this suggestion would allow a zombie with this skill and at least 14(EDITED changed the numbers) other zombies, 2 of which have the skill, who are standing and on the same square outside of a building, to prevent survivors from entering the builing (or that square of the building, for multi-square buildings) from the street. Survivors could still get inside the building by free-running into it from an adjacent building, but this would require them to find another "entry point". It would still be possible to leave the building, but you could not come back in if the blockading zombie are still there. However, you would be warned of this inside the building: "Zombies are blockading this building. You may leave, but it will not be possible to re-enter from the street" (EDITED I forgot to finish my sentence --McArrowni 16:04, 2 July 2006 (BST)). To prevent zerging issues, the skill would only be available to zombies of level 5 or more, and would have tangling grasp as a prerequisite. Movies sometimes portrait hordes of zombies crawling at the protagonist's building and on the barricades, and it seems to me that entering such buildings should not be possible unless one came from the roof or shot the zombies first. This suggestion would bring this dimension into the game. There is also a bit of nonsense IMO in the current game in how buildings in zombie-infested areas are easier to enter than survivor territory, because nothing is heavily barricaded... Even if there is a horde pressing on the building's doors. EDIT: To prevent armouries becoming undefendable, they can never be blockaded succesfully. Mechanically, this is because there are no buildings next to armouries (so no free-running way in). For flavour, armouries would be assumed to have special entry points more accessible to humans than zombies. --McArrowni 16:04, 2 July 2006 (BST) In conclusion: Non-armoury buildings that have a horde of 5 zombies outside of them, including one zombie with this skill, cannot be entered by survivors. Please comment and suggest changes :)

Votes
Author: --McArrowni 03:04, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I'm not sure about this one. If the concern is that there are not enough players in the game, we don't need more things which make the game unfun for new characters, even if they are survivors and not zombies... Jenny D'Arc^T 04:06, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I'm not too sure about the effect on new players myself. I'm thinking that survivors will make more entry points as a result. Maybe if I made it so the hordes need to be bigger (like, 15 zeds total, 3 of which would have to have the skill, all present and "alive" outside of the building), the zombies would be less able to control multiple areas. Keep in mind though that survivors tend to kill offline zombies, and would probably do so even more with this suggestion, so that the blockading group would eventually shrink. Also, keep in mind that humans who get stuck outside because of this become available food for newbie zombies. In heavily barricaded areas, this include free runners as much as newbies. Ultimately though, I think the skill is interesting enough to warrant the risk to new players. It allows zombie hordes to act with more tactics, and to actually hold ground. This makes zombies more fun to play, IMO. It is also a concern that zombies aren't very interesting to most players--McArrowni 16:04, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Would a survivor be able to leave a blockaded building by going to the street? The suggestion has merit, but I think it might be a little too hard on newer characters. What about having a certain class of building as "unblockadable?" I was thinking the Railway Station, Junkyard, Stadium or School (gives a little more purpose to non-Mall/NT buildings). Or perhaps large buildings (excluding the mall). And, if you want "flavor" as to WHY they can't be blockaded, it is because they are all pretty open with lots of different ways in/out.--Pesatyel 05:44, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Yes, survivors can leave blockaded buildings by the street (I think I said so). It would even be written down in the description inside the building: "Zombies are blockading this building. You may leave, but it will not be possible to re-enter from the street". Right now armouries are unblockadable, but there could be other buildings. However, leaving too many of these buildings would defeat the purpose: veteran survivors would just head towards them, make sure they are never overbarricaded, and freerun from there. Stadium and maybe Mansion is interesting--McArrowni 01:09, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Well, I WAS only thinking of ONE of category of building. Those four just seemed to have the best fit. Perhaps it might be a good idea to see how spread out a particular category of building is across Malton to see which one might be most appropriate?--Pesatyel 05:18, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Oops. My bad. That would be perfect. More importantly though, I came to realize that the current numbers would encourage zerging. Allowing zombies without the skill to contribute is probably not a good idea (zergs, being in high numbers is already an advantage as the unskilled zombies make you less likely to die, etc.). I'm thinking 10 zombies with the skill would do. Hard to pull off (and keep standing), but most real sieges would attain it quickly. --McArrowni 23:55, 4 July 2006 (BST)

The more time passes, the more I feel this isn't as good an idea as I thought. It would basically become either too easy to zerg up your numbers or so hard to attain that you really have to be part of a big siege anyways. In which case it would work automatically, nearly for free. The result is more a game alteration with xp cost than a real skill. I probably won't submit it, myself. I don't mind if someone else tries, however, but keep in mind what I just said. --McArrowni 00:00, 5 July 2006 (BST)

Coffee

Timestamp:	Jenny D'Arc 23:03, 29 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Item
Scope:	MOVED TO HUMOROUS SUGGESTION PAGE Jenny D'Arc^T 13:42, 5 July 2006 (BST)
Description:	{{{suggest_description}}}

Votes
{{{suggest_votes}}}

Necrotic Symbiotes (Revised)

Timestamp:	Rheingold 05:57, 29 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	New Zombie Skill
Scope:	Survivors & Zombies
Description:	NECROTIC SYMBIOTES (Revised) Introduction: Malton is far from being a Zombie Apocalypse at the moment. We won’t get more zombies by changing the balance and forcing more survivors to spend time undead, but by adding features that 1) generate interest among veteran zombies and 2) make the game easier for younger zombies. Hence this suggestion... A New Skill For Veteran Zombies: Brain-Rotted Zombies above Level 10 can acquire Necrotic Symbiotes. These are symbiotic bacteria which have evolved in a brand-new environment - persistently undead corpses. The bacteria don't harm their zombie hosts but they can infect nearby survivors and cause Necrotic Fever. Infecting Survivors: The zombie can launch a Necrotic Contagion attack at 30% to hit, 40% max with Tangle. If it hits the attack does no damage, but it gives the survivor Necrotic Fever. This disease is not fatal but it drastically weakens its victims and it's contagious. Effects Of The Fever: Every time a survivor with Necrotic Fever spends 1 AP on a Strenuous action (moving, barricading, or attacking) he takes 3 damage. All other actions, such as searching and speaking, are non-Strenuous. Necrotic Fever does no damage to a survivor at or below 12 HP. A survivor with both Necrotic Fever and Infection loses 3 HP for Strenuous Actions, and 1 HP for non-Strenuous Actions. Catching The Fever: The disease is extremely contagious. Non-Feverish survivors have a 0.1% chance per patient of catching the disease every time they spend an AP in the same Location as one or more Fever patients (i.e. three patients in the area = 0.3% chance every time you do an action there). This may seem small, but consider the example of a survivor who spends 50 action points (i.e., one "day") in a mall with 100 other survivors, 5 of whom have Necrotic Fever. His base chance is only 0.5%, but by the end of the day his chance of remaining healthy is (99.5%^50) or only 78%. There is a 22% chance that he has caught the fever. By the end of the day, the epidemic will have spread from 5 to 26 people. Within three days (assuming no efforts to contain the epidemic) the entire mall will have the disease. The main danger of the fever is its contagiousness. Effects Upon Death: Necrotic Fever disappears when the survivor dies, unlike an Infection. Curing The Fever: Unlike an Infection, advanced medical training is necessary to properly treat and cure Necrotic Fever. Only survivors with the Surgery skill can cure the disease, by applying a First Aid Kit. If a survivor has both Necrotic Fever and an Infection, a FAK will always cure the Infection (as normal), but only cure the Fever if applied by a Surgeon. Further Medical Training: This suggestion would work well with the peer reviewed suggestion Prognosis, which would allow medically trained survivors to spot Fever cases.

Votes

- I worked on this for a while and I'll probably submit it soon. Please let me know what you think and, if you vote Kill, what I can change to make it a Keep. Thanks in advance --Rheingold 05:58, 29 June 2006 (BST).

Few things. First, if the disease evolved in dead bodies, why on Earth would dying kill it? This simply makes no sense flavor-wise. It would also create some bizarre situations in revive-happy areas such as Caiger, as it may actually be easier for a survivor to kill himself than to hunt down somebody with Surgery for a cure.

Second, why does the disease stop doing damage at 12 HP? I'm not a doctor, but it's my understanding that dying people are not typically more resistant to disease.

Third, it is unclear as to whether the cure would have to be applied in a powered hospital, as is the case with normal applications of Surgery. You need to clarify this, and for my money you should definitely require the powered hospital. Otherwise, requiring the Surgery skill really means very little at all.

These concerns aside, I really like this suggestion. It's got great flavor behind it, and I think it would alter the game dynamic for the better. --Jimbo Bob ^ASS•U! 08:28, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Question by question -

First, the disease goes away w/ death for gameplay reasons. If it persisted until cured, pretty soon everyone in the game would have it, as it's very contagious. I suppose to justify this you could make a (hairsplitting) distinction between dead/undead bodies. Regarding the second point (easier to kill the diseased than cure them) that adds the AP cost of a syringe (20 AP) to the survivor budget. And where this suggestion really shines is not on an individual level but in a big siege. Imagine, every time the zombies break in they don't attack, they just infect everyone they can. In effect they're opening a second front on the mall, a disease front. If the survivors don't spend AP away from the cades curing disease, soon it will literally cripple the defense of the mall.

Second, the fever is only a "wasting" disease. It weakens the survivors without killing them. Hence (flavorwise) the symbiosis, the zombies provide the bacteria with a host and the bacteria infect and weaken potential munching targets for the zombie, and that's the way it works in the game as well. The disease isn't fatal, it's designed to make people targets for Feeding Drag so those newbie zombies can get lots of kill XP by tagging after vet-filled hordes. In that respect it's very different from Infection which is mainly used by zombies as a "Ha I lowered you to 1 HP and infected you lawlz" taunt. This actually helps the zombie cause significantly.

Third, I like the idea of powered hospitals but that wasn't what I originally intended - just a survivor with Surgery applying a FAK anywhere. It really depends how many survivors with Surgery there are. Right now it's definitely a vanity "I bought all the others, what's left to spend XP on" skill, but if this suggestion passes it will become VERY in-demand in sieges, etc. and people in the Science classes will fit it into their levelling.

I'm glad you like the ideas in this suggestion and I'll think about the additions you suggested. Thanks... --Rheingold 10:52, 29 June 2006 (BST).

First, thanks for taking the time to write out such a well thought-out reply. I appreciate it. I still have some concerns, though, which follow.

I understand the need for balance - this suggestion'll have a hard enough time already, as many people are reflexively resistant to anything that would significantly change the playstyle of the game. However, I disagree that this is actually needed for balance. As you've noted, this is highly contagious, which is the real threat. If you keep the disease as easy to cure as it is now, though, any outbreak should be easily contained (especially if the disease is detectable with Diagnosis or another skill), or at the worst kept contained within the low-level population. It'd be a hassle for the high-level population in a siege, but nothing really disturbing. With regards to the second point, I wasn't arguing that having infected persons commit suicide would be better for the survivor population as a whole - the 30 AP cost to revive someone clearly indicates it wouldn't. My point was that for individual players it might be easier.

Just flavor-wise, wasting disease do kill people - see tuberculosis. With regards to gameplay, using the disease to "prep" survivors for Feeding Drag sounds interesting, but I've got my doubts as to whether it would actually work out that way. In the kind of hyperactive healing environment Malls (which would be where this skill would be primarily useful) represent, players would be kept above 12 HP even if by some weird twist of fate they were not cured outright.

Lastly, I really think requiring powered hospitals or some other kind of buff to this skill is needed. If you allow survivors with Surgery to cure the disease anywhere with nothing more than a FAK, it seems like it would be all but impossible for the disease to really spread. Keep in mind that A), the survivor population has a lot of high-level players, and B), a single Surgery-wielding player with the mall rat skills could cure literally dozens of people in a single day. --Jimbo Bob ^ASS•U! 18:09, 29 June 2006 (BST)

If the infected survivor needs to go to a hospital to get healed, the idea might run into 'multiply it by a billion' trouble, because the more people there are in a block, the more people a sick person will infect. Normally this is countered by the fact that more people in a block mean more people to heal the sick, but unfortunately that wouldn't be this case if the only person who can stop the infection is the sick person, by leaving to go a hospital. --Toejam 23:59, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Both of you bring up good points. Clearly I need to think about this a bit more before submitting. I'm leaning towards the following changes -

First, the disease is changed so that it will lower a player to 1 HP and no further. This isn't as neat or suggestive as the 12 HP limit but it will mean that more players actually can be dragged even in a healrich environment. I remain pretty firm about the idea of letting the disease merely weaken survivors so zombies get kill XP with dragging.

Second, I am leaning towards increasing the difficulty of curing the disease by some means. Ideas I've thrown around for this include -

1) a new skill (which would be under Diagnosis),

2) a percent chance of curing when applying a FAK (with either the new skill or surgery) of about 40-50%,

3) powered hospitals,

4) no cure, but scientists can manufacture Vaccination Syringes which when injected, protect a survivor from the contagious transmission of the disease until his next death (via a state tag).

Third, I might possibly make the disease persist from life to unlife (like Infection) with the caveat that the disease is Dormant (does no damage) during unlife. This would remove one "sink" for the disease tags (i.e. death is an "autocure") which could mean that I could keep the human-humna curing efforts easy to compensate.

--Rheingold 01:43, 30 June 2006 (BST).

I whole heartedly support this suggestion as is, where anyone with surgery can heal it anywhere. I think having to be in a powered hospital to cure it makes it incredibly powerful, but I would support that if the disease were a temporary thing in the game, for a month or so, and then went away. Plague month would be awesome.--Burgan 04:40, 30 June 2006 (BST)

It needs some work but I really like it. I don't think that the infection should die when you die. Also, maybe this infection should replace the existing 'infectious bite'. The Necrotic Contagion attack wouldn't really be very useful, so maybe this should be an upgrade to the infectious bite. I still think it's good to have it as a subskill of Brain Rot though - it makes it only for hardened zombies. --Otware 20:03, 30 June 2006 (BST)

...Too powerful really. A Plague Month would most likely kill off the entire survivor population if it was only curable in a powered hospital. If it was curable anywhere, We'd deffinatly make it though. Seriously though, It's still way too over-powered. If it just happened to *Poof!* dis apear after like 40 AP, that would be great. The contagousness is largly what makes it over powered.--Labine50 ^MHG|^MalTel 10:06, 1 July 2006 (BST)

It is very powerful, I personally don't like the idea that a handful of brain rot zombies could clear a mall in days just by infecting people. Could drive away new players, all they're doing is is searching a mall, suddenly they've got a nasty infection that they can't cure themselves and hurts them rather badly. If there's a mall full of people and an infection gets in, people will either flee or start to PK to clear it out. Getting eaten after sleeping outside or eing killed in a break-in is fair enough, its part of the game, but being PK'ed because you caught something you couldn't avoid and could do nothing to prevent is the sort of thing tat really annoys people. Also surgery may be too high up the skills tree to cure it, after all surgery is not needed to cure fevers. (Yes, this is a rubbish excuse, feel free to ignore it) Diagnosis might be better. --Preasure 09:35, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Barricade Variance

Timestamp:	∞
Type:	Fundamental barricade change
Scope:	More variance among buildings, gives a nice change to building types, and could help zombies
Description:	I was just thinking about how I always end up barricaded inside a low-key building and how a school is just as defensible as a fort. What I think could fix this, as well as provide some distinction and add more value to certain buildings, is if barricades were limited by the building type. Most barricade suggestions seem to get shot down fairly quick, so I'm bringing this to the talk page hoping you'll hear me out. For the sake of discussion, I propose a mid level of max barricades to be VSB, and this will be the frame of reference. I'm not sure exactly how much above and below that would be good, so I'll just shoot out what I'm thinking around. EHB should be reserved for forts, to make them more interesting to hold. The 'heavily barricaded' could be used in PDs, NecroTechs (creepy corporation designed defensible locations), Banks, Mansions (the rich have fences and sturdy walls?). Things to have lower maximum would mostly be things designed to let lots of people in and out, such as stadiums, hotels, libraries, cinemas, railway stations, schools, churches. The main reasoning behind my suggestion here is to make different buildings worth more/less, to spice up the game, and to slightly knock down barricades, since after a few months of play, I'm finding them too powerful. My survivor runs guerilla strikes and already has more zombie skills than the zombie that I started at the same time; something's not right here. --Burgan 05:19, 28 June 2006 (BST)

Votes
Don't vote. Just comment.

I think you might need to be a bit more specific.

(EH) Armory, Bank

(VH) Mansion, Museum, NecroTech Building, Police Department, Zoo

(H) Arms, Factory, Fire Station, Mall, Power Station, Warehouse

(VS) Auto Repair Shop, Building, Hospital, Hotel, Junkyard, Library, School, Tower

(QS) Cathedral, Church, Cinema, Club, Railway Station, Stadium

I'm not sure if that is what you had in mind, but it is a start.--Pesatyel 07:12, 28 June 2006 (BST)

Thanks, I was just trying to get a feel for what people thought would be appropriate levels. I'll submit this in a few days if no else adds any concerns. --Burgan 04:52, 29 June 2006 (BST)

I don't want to be mean, but a suggestion like this wuold get spamminated to hell. Anyways, if you submit only what Pesatyel suggested, your suggestion basically cuts off a lot of barricade levels to hundreds of buildings, with no countermeasures. Either you add more levels to barricades, so the strongest buildings gets to "Extremely uber barricaded" and maybe the lesser level a building can be barricaded could be a lil higher than suggested, or something else that actually balances the suggestion. Maybe your could focus your suggestion on making it harder to reach the higher barricade levels on the low-key buildings instead of nerfing the barricades that much, but always include some countermeasure or the current barricade balance will be changed and blood will mix with spam... --Matthew Fahrenheit 05:07, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Adding more barricade levels will just get this spam-killed as well. Making it harder to reach the higher levels is something I'd consider resubmitting this with if it gets killed the first time around. As far as I'm concerned, however, the barricade balance does need a slight shift, and I think this is slight enough. --Burgan 20:30, 30 June 2006 (BST)

I agree this would likely get spaminated, but I like it anyway. So far as I'm concerned, barricades could use a nerf, and this one makes sense both in terms of flavor and of gameplay. This would actually add a little more strategy and a little more fear to where survivors choose to spend the night. Fun in a game like this one is all about choices, and right now the only real choice for many survivors is which absurdly overbarricaded suburb they'll be invulnerable in tonight. --Jimbo Bob ^ASS•U! 08:35, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Well, the levels I proposed were just examples (and if you notice, I put MALLS at H). I think this combined with the idea of search diversity would make for a good combination. I've mentioned it at other places the game needs to get away from the mall/NT-centric game play. Combine the QS level buildings with better search odds/items relative to the high end stuff would help to balance things. Sure, someone would hole up in a bank or the armory then go to the other locations to search, but THAT is the basic idea. Right now, a person can spend LESS THAN A DAY in a powered mall and outfit themselves as they see fit, especially if the mall has an NT building close by. Of course, on a side note, I think adding junk items to mall searches (yes, WITH the mall skills) would be a definite improvement.--Pesatyel 20:15, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Pesatyel's pretty much summed up what I was thinking about the levels in a nice little list. Thanks! I'll credit you when I post the suggestion (unless you don't want your name associated with a possible spam suggestion). Right now I'm just trying to word the suggestion so as to make it clear that the motivation behind this is not to nerf the 'cades, but to add some more variance to the buildings. I'm afraid this community is a little too spam-happy. --Burgan 20:30, 30 June 2006 (BST)

I like it, but I don't like it. On one side, we have newbies which are easily killed if they can't find shelter. on the other ~~crucifix~~ hand, it would be harder to keep pobile phone masts safe.--Labine50 ^MHG|^MalTel 10:10, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Thanks for the newbie comment, I'll have to include that when I submit. I like the idea of the game being more newbie friendly.

As for the phone masts, I've still never used a cell phone in game. Would you feel that would make it kill-worthy for you (or anyone else, for that matter)? --Burgan 02:45, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I really like this suggestion. Barricades need to be changed up a little, and with a bit more work, this could be it. I don't really see how Labine50 could argue about newbies getting killed, since the only buildings they could enter anyways (For the most part) are going to be VSB Resource Buildings that are targets for Zombie Attacks. If anything, this allows for newbie survivors to find more places to hide and helps nerf Barricade Strafing by keeping certain buildings under EHB. Just come up with an 'official' list of what buildings barricade levels are, and you've got a Keep from me. -- Tirion529 03:14, 3 July 2006 (BST)

I'm not sure what Labine was thinking either. But what did you think of the example list above? QS might be too low, so how about this?

(EH) Armory, Bank, Police Department, Mansion

(VH) Museum, NecroTech Building, Power Station, Zoo

(H) Arms, Building, Factory, Fire Station, Mall, Hospital, Tower, Warehouse

(VS) Auto Repair Shop, Cathedral, Church, Cinema, Club, Hotel, Junkyard, Library, Railway Station, School, Stadium--Pesatyel 05:51, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Labine said he liked and disliked, for newbs and for phones, which I took to mean that he likes that this makes it easier for newbs to find an entry point, and harder for everyone to defend phone masts.

I think QS is a good max level for some buildings, but keeping the lowest tier at VS does make it less radical and less likely to die. --Burgan 06:15, 3 July 2006 (BST)

A slightly different way to do the same thing as this suggestion could be to make the odds of successfully damaging a barricade different for different types of buildings. It might make the actual experience of hitting barricades more varied between buildings. ("Wow! Smashing this cinema I got 5 barricade collapses in 10 AP!" sort of thing.) Though on the other hand, the reduced maximum way is simpler and clearer. --Toejam 20:52, 5 July 2006 (BST)

I like this idea. I agree with adding this: "Making it harder to reach the higher levels..."

Toejam has a great point above about having it function as more fun for zombies, too... of course more breaches would probably up the fun for all.
Pesatyel's lists are very good, but actually choosing which type goes where would depend on how many of each type there is, and how spread out they are... the maximum cade level of each building type is very debatable. Also, Pes has a good point about the mall/NT Survivorlands. New search rates could be added with this.
some criticism: You're forcing mallrats to move to a different type of building. Everyone will try to rest in the strongest buildings and neglect the weak ones.
zombies(and PKers) will have a new standard for prioritizing targets, and any "max cade list" will condemn the 'best' buildings.(they may make interesting battle grounds; but the malls do that now... kinda.)
This may already be in the game! check thisfor why.
One other thing to consider: if some building types may not go above VSB it creates certain, 100%reliable entryways/newbsafehouses.(which might not be bad... I would like this a lot if it were the right mix of building types.) --Raystanwick 16:07, 6 July 2006 (BST)

I kinda like Toejam's idea too. As the game currently stands, there are only TWO important buildings in the game, malls and NT. PDs, Firestations, Auto Repair and Hospitals are secondary, even if the character in question doesn't have the mall skills. The two things I considered when I made my list was that and the "openness" of buildings, relative too each other (as best I could, of course). And having some buildings not go over VSB was kinda the point (allowing noobs inside). Of course, something like this would best be used in conjunction with other things that "spread the wealth" and make other buildings more attractive.--Pesatyel 22:50, 6 July 2006 (BST)

I agree. Barricades and Search rates are the whole game.(and attacks, too...) IMO, the only meaningful buildings are Malls, NTs, Factories, and Auto Repairs. PDs and Hospitals are useful for newbies without running and the shopping skills; they should be at least as good as the malls for searching.

This would be my 'list' of max cades:

(EH) Armory, Bank, Mansion, Police Department, Power Station
(VH) Cathedral, Museum, NecroTech Building, Tower, Zoo
(H) Arms, Church, Factory, Fire Station, Library, Mall, Hospital, School
(VS) Auto, Building, Cinema, Club, Hotel, Junkyard, Railway Station, Stadium, Warehouse

This has not been addressed yet... Are the barricade construction rates for some buildings different? Is this already in the game?--Raystanwick 07:39, 7 July 2006 (BST)

Prisons

Timestamp:	16:12, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	New building.
Scope:	More realism, new buildings.
Description:	While playing Urban Dead I noticed something. There are no prisons in Malton, there are plenty of police departments though. I propose adding two prisons to the game, one in the north half of the city, and one in the south half. Like most prisons these would be replace border squares (or not, depending on what Kevan makes it if he implements it), because in real life a Prison is kept as far from the city as psooible. The Prison would be a 2X2 building, and upon looting it it would have everything a police station would have including First Aid Kits and the occasional knife. Now i'm just proposing that maybe a unique thing for the Prison is that they start out at Very Strongly barricade level, they are prisons after all. Please contact me if you have any ideas to improve this if it doesn't make it. (note: sorry for posting so many suggestions, I just have a lot of ideas.) (Edited content bolded. --A Bothan Spy ^{Mod WTF U!})

Votes

Keep - Author vote. --Canuhearmenow 16:12, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Kill - I've always wondered about this, by where the hell would it go? On top of an older building? What happens to the people inside? Etc. –Xoid 16:17, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Keep -It would be fun to have a greater diversaty of buildings. Continuaty can take a small step back in favor of improved flavor. And I reason that all barricades levels and people inside the old buildings whould simply stay within their buildings who now simply have a different name and search rate. It would be a less severe update then the big building code, and that happend without any problems.--Vista 16:22, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Kill - I'm certain this is a Dupe. Until a link can be dug up, though... --A Bothan Spy ^{Mod WTF U!} 16:23, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Keep - Only because I've written lexicons about it. Make them in Shackleville and I'm cool with it. Sonny Corleone ^WTF 16:28, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Comment -I'd have to think including something new like this would necessitate having something unique about it. Currently, the game is WAAAAAAAAY to centered around malls (whether or not THOSE are "impenetrable fortresses" is not important) and NT buildings. Once a survivor acquires the mall skills, there isn't even a point to GO to the other resource buildings (PD, hospital (even for surgery) and fire stations). I think we should concentrate on making the CURRENT non-mall buildings more useful instead of trying to add new useless buildings (there was a suggestion for making a Town Hall or Mayors Office in Ridleybank like this one). But, of course, as I said, if this/these new buildings had something...different (and I don't consider a starting barricade level "different"), I can see adding them. And to Xoid, a simple matter would be to put the building over either a useless building or in a wasteland/street space.--Pesatyel 22:55, 26 June 2006 (BST)
Comment/would be a Keep - Personally, I'd like to see some of the peer reviewed fort modification suggestions be implimented first - I think that would be one of the greatest current building changes to help shift some focus off malls, as Pesatyel mentions. That said, however, a prison or two would be a fun addition as well. I'm down for some jail house rock... --Blahblahblah 00:11, 27 June 2006 (BST)
Comment/Keep -Finally, the MPD has a sentence for murderers other than capital punishment. Two choices, get your head blasted out with 5-6 shotguns at the same time, or go to prison.--Labine50 ^MHG|^MalTel 10:13, 1 July 2006 (BST)
Comment - It'd definantly be interesting to introduce some new building types into Urban Dead. And Xoid, I'm sure that the humans who were in the block would just be inside of the new Prison, and the zombies in the square would stay outside... Or something to that effect. -- Tirion529 03:17, 3 July 2006 (BST)
Comment - I'm a little confused by they start out Very Strongly. Could they fall below that? I would not want a building that could not be broken into. Other than that I think they flavor would be great. the scale to 2x2 makes it fit nicely between mall and fort. The chance to find an FAK would need to be tuned fairly well so that it did not make forts completely obsolete. Perhaps somekind of wacky debris newspapers, crucifixes or poetry books. --Max Grivas ^JG,T,P! 10:23, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Rot rework

Timestamp:	00:00, 25 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Skill with game change.
Scope:	Brain rotted zombies.
Description:	I am suggesting that there be created a skill named full brainrot, has no advantages over the other apart from that when revive syringes are used in Necro tech buildings they dont work. I also am suggesting that the old brainrot skill be changed to weak brainrot and when syringes are used within necro buildings it actualy cures the rot removing it totaly. Now what this changes is that once you take the final step there is no and I mean no way back, while if you only have weak rot and find its not for you, well then you can be cured. It basicly gives you a chance to find out if Brainrot is what you want and gives the chance to go back if it is not, without having to find a powered necro tech building each time you die.

Votes
I am not sure about this one, I have thought it over for sometime, so I decided to put it here, anyone care to give me some feedback, please . Whitehouse 00:00, 25 June 2006 (BST)

What's the point, really? Even with Brain Rot it is VERY hard, usually, to get a revive. Most players with Brain Rot don't really get revived too often anyway (though I COULD be mistaken).--Pesatyel 06:08, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Thats the point, this is just in case you find that it was a mistake taking brainrot then you only need to get that hard revive once and next time you are killed you dont have to go for ages before getting revived again- Whitehouse 21:49, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Say what? Oh, I see, basically, the idea is to "test drive" Brain Rot. If you like it, buy it? Originally, Brain Rot was for "dedicated" zombie players. Once you took it, there was no going back. But for whatever reason, Brain Rot was altered to make reviving possible, albeit under difficult circumstances. And, now YOU are suggesting that a zombie waste 100 XP on a skill they might not want? I've seen much better suggestions dealing with Brain Rot as simple as putting up a message like "Are you SURE you want to take Brain Rot?" I think this idea just complicates things too much. I think the majority of players are satisfied with the skill as it stands.--Pesatyel 23:04, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Point taken, I am going to have to find a better way *sigh* - Whitehouse 01:17, 29 June 2006 (BST)

Additional Penalties for Zerging

Timestamp:	19:28, 21 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Improvement
Scope:	Zerging characters
Description:	Zerging characters can be detrimental to the game, because they create an unfair advantage for one player or group of players. While the game has some built-in penalties for zerging already, I propose that three more should be added to more actively discourage zerging, and make zerging a less effective tactic. All actions cost double Moving, attacking, healing, etc. all require twice as many AP as normal to complete. Skills can not be bought While characters are still marked as "zerging," no skills can be purchased, regardless of how many XP the characters have. Notify other players Characters who are zerging would be marked on the map with a "(Z!)" after their name. The "Z" would be linked to the nearest alternate character of the zerging character. Marking which characters have been caught zerging would create social pressures not to zerg, remove any anonymity or uncertainty about who is zerging, and allow players to deal out their own penalties, if they wish.

Votes

Let me know what you think of this suggestion, please. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 19:28, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Not too bad. Personally, I think if you are caught zerging, you shouldn't be able to do ANYTHING, except move (and, maybe, talk). 0% to search, barricade, combat, etc. I think that would eliminate the ability to buy skills. But I like the "Z" idea.--Pesatyel 22:17, 21 June 2006 (BST)

I'm pretty sure I read that the search and combat percentages go to 0% already, and there was a recent suggestion to set the barricade to 0% as well, but I agree with you. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 22:55, 21 June 2006 (BST)

I was planning on making a suggestion that made it so that if a person was zerging, and someone attacked them that wasnt zerging, the single shot would autohit and instakill, and read in the killed messages as: "Person X killed Person Y, Remember kids, Multi abuse doesnt pay". --Grim s-^{Mod U!} 02:51, 22 June 2006 (BST)

Nice! I like that. Really, who's going to vote against an anti-zerging suggestion? –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 02:54, 22 June 2006 (BST)

False Positives? Thats the only problem with any anti-zerging suggestions. - Jedaz 09:24, 22 June 2006 (BST)

Honestly, its such a huge problem right now that if there are false positives, fuck them. There 9,999 other blocks in the game for them to be in. They can go be there. --Grim s-^{Mod U!} 09:56, 22 June 2006 (BST)

Well, the reasoning I used in my vote on it is that, if a zerger can do nothing in a square but move, it would be LESS fun then the instakill way.--Pesatyel 18:50, 22 June 2006 (BST)

Nice to see that my simple zerging suggestion a few days back have spawned so many more.... I'd cry if I still had tear-ducts. -- Tirion529 02:22, 25 June 2006 (BST)

Great idea!!! ~~Crucifixes~~ Zergers will be a thing of the past!--Labine50 ^MHG|^MalTel 10:17, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Well, the current problem that I've been seeing is that people are using Zergs to help barricade buildings. Zerging needs to be punished and punished harshly. -- Tirion529 03:19, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Defense

Timestamp:	6:27 pm 15 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Game Mechanic
Scope:	Resting Characters
Description:	Characters can defend themselves while players are offline. Before logging off, a player may check a box, "Defend until next action." If the character is attacked, it counterattacks once each time it is attacked. Counterattacking uses 1 AP, the same as if the character were attacking normally. If the character runs out of AP, it can't counterattack. Counterattacking does not award XP to the defender.

Votes

I posted this on the 'suggestions' page, and it was spaminated within several hours. Xoid said the general feeling was that it was "utterly absurd," with no further comment. That's interesting, because when I started playing the game, what struck me as "utterly absurd" was a character getting attacked 20 times in a row and not noticing it. Perhaps he's engrossed in a book? As a new player, I can tell you that this is a major obstacle to new players getting involved in the game. The idea that your character will just stand there like a vegetable while a zombie eats him is extremely baffling. Auto-defending would seem like such a basic idea, I'm unclear on why it hasn't been implemented before now. --Gathercole

First of all, imagine playing, then logging on the next day to find you have no AP because it was all spent on auto-defense. Secondly your suggestions was terribly incomplete. "Defend until next action" would mean defending ONCE (the next action being the "defense" action). What form would the counterattack take? Logging on to find out you used all your ammo would suck even worse than not having AP. The main problem is in the "free action" idea of it. Yes, you use AP, but the basic idea is that with each AP one spends, they choose how to use that AP. If you wish to spend the 20 AP to manufacture a syringe, that is YOUR choice. THIS suggestion takes away that choice. In addition, the game does not differentiate between "online" and "offline." Also, that is part of the point of the game. You have a limited amount of time to do things AND still find a safeplace to hide.--Pesatyel 21:46, 15 June 2006 (BST)

I made no further comment because of the fact that, if you read the suggestions page's rules, you aren't supposed to. Apart from everything that Pesatyel said think of it this way, you're sleeping, a zombie grabs a hold of you and keeps ripping into you. Alternatively, zombies aren't exactly bright, even those with Memories of Life. (Hey if they were smart, they wouldn't have a fixation on grandmothers or gangbanging bananas.) There you go, RPing problem solved. Good day. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 03:51, 16 June 2006 (BST)

Thank you for your comments, I'll try to address them. Re:running out of AP/ammo: As I said above, the player checks a box if he wants to defend. He doesn't have to check it. Re:online/offline: I agree the game should not distinguish between online and offline. That's why having characters that are in a catatonic state of helplessness 23.5/24 hours does not make sense. Currently, the difference between online and offline is literally the difference between life and death. Re:sleeping explanation: Again, humans are not awake for 20 minutes and then asleep for 23 hours. Also, a character who has 40 AP is not asleep... unless his player is offline? I think this is an artificial distinction that doesn't need to be made. Re:balance/hiding: Auto-defense would not make hiding unnecessary. Far from it; When the defending character runs out of AP, he's fair game for anyone. It would still be much, much better to find a place to hide. The only difference would be that a 35th level character wouldn't stare into space while he's killed by 4 different 1st level zombies over the course of 10 hours. Thanks again for your comments, I hope to continue working on this idea. --Gathercole

Wouldn't you want to have a good long sleep after running through half the neighborhood to unload a shotgun at some ravenous zombie, only to run back? Or after spending serious amounts of time laboriously digging through rubble, looking for a few shells? Moving rubble and running through many a city block is bound to tire someone out. Especially anyone who is carrying a bunch of shotguns and a box of shells. Or an axe. Or two garbage bags full of FAKs. It's not unreasonable or illogical when you think about it. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 05:02, 16 June 2006 (BST)

Way to obfuscate the discussion.

Re:running out of AP/ammo: As I said above, the player checks a box if he wants to defend. He doesn't have to check it.

Ignored what I said. Checking the box has NOTHING to do with it. What if I DO check it? WHAT weapon is used in the counterattack? It would really piss people off to CHECK the defend box and be out of ammo when they log back on.

Re:online/offline: I agree the game should not distinguish between online and offline. That's why having characters that are in a catatonic state of helplessness 23.5/24 hours does not make sense. Currently, the difference between online and offline is literally the difference between life and death.

Well, a distinction WOULD help your suggestion.

Re:sleeping explanation: Again, humans are not awake for 20 minutes and then asleep for 23 hours. Also, a character who has 40 AP is not asleep... unless his player is offline? I think this is an artificial distinction that doesn't need to be made.

It is a balancing issue. And why are you arguing semantics?

Re:balance/hiding: Auto-defense would not make hiding unnecessary. Far from it; When the defending character runs out of AP, he's fair game for anyone. It would still be much, much better to find a place to hide. The only difference would be that a 35th level character wouldn't stare into space while he's killed by 4 different 1st level zombies over the course of 10 hours.

What ARE you talking about here?

Thanks again for your comments, I hope to continue working on this idea. --Gathercole

What would work better, perhaps, would be if the person had to ALLOCATE x amount of AP to "defense." Say a person with 40 AP allocates 10 to "defense," which only activates AFTER the person has 0 AP left. The 10 AP is considered spent. After reaching 0 AP, the next 10 attacks against the person are counterattacked (using a random MELEE weapon or punch if no melee weapon). An 11th attack would NOT trigger a counter since the "defender" only allocated 10 AP to it.--Pesatyel 21:04, 16 June 2006 (BST)

My comments below... it's a pretty big read... sorry 'bout that --McArrowni 02:30, 17 June 2006 (BST)

The thing that needs to be known about auto-defense skills is that they have been suggested since the beginning of the suggestion system. Whilst this doesn't justify the statu-quo (which is basically auto-defense = auto-kill or auto-spam) on it's own, it means that there is a big amount of discussion which was made on it before.

The conclusions seemed to indicate that people found all mechanics brought forth so far to be inelegant (too many loose ends), and that they prefered the current playstyle. The problem with auto-defense is it rather complex to do without leaving loose ends and would change the entire game. For survivors with combat skills, especially those with headshot, not using it would be like playing handicaped, because the AP lost will frankly probably be less than the AP to get to a revive point, for someone to make a needle, find them and inject it (or at least I hope this takes a good chunk of AP, otherwise it's no wonder survivors outnumber zombies). People prefer to take the whole situation with a philosophy of KISS (keep it simple stupid)

Problems I see with auto-defense, beyond the fact that people don't like how it would change the game:

The game needs to know which attack to use. A suggestion would need to give an answer for it.
- This includes many variables, such as ammo for survivors, best average damage available, etc.
- It also includes variables of: use bite for special abilities or claws for more damage. The game needs to judge which is more advantageous of a zombie to use...
- Lemme guess. Offline fight orders? simple right? Well, aside from the fact that the only RPG game I've seen using it had it buggy as hell, and the fact that it would need to be able to adapt to multiple situations (see point #2), and probably be a nightmare to code, for a Kevan who states most of his upcoming features are not coded yet because of lack of time to implement them...
Zombie bites you, you are now infected. Each time your offline defense skill makes you attack, you lose 1 hp... Then the zombie attacks with claws, increasing his damage by 1 per attack, possibly wether it hits or not, because you kill yourself with infection. Or will infection disable your fight-back capabilities. Or make you immune to infection? Thus nerfing the zombie's special attack? Too much or too little, seems hard to balance
Frankly, logging on with your newbie zombie, whilst losing 15AP to stand up after that headshot, and getting headshot AGAIN by a guy who's offline in the streets, ya know, your only chance to get a victim, because he's lvl 30 and you're not, just sounds plain frustrating... And if offline combat can't headshot, ankle-grabbing zombies will just thank you for the full heal... Too much or too little, seems hard to balance.
Scientists will want the love too. Are we gonna accept offline FAK useage contingencies, as well as self-defense combat revives, or are survivors going to be more of a pain to play than their military brethen. By which I mean, even more than they already are?
If I have a slow connection, does that mean I'm better off logging off in a fight?
Honestly, survivors already have an offline defense skill. It's called construction, and it drains 4 or 5 AP off some zombie you haven't even met each time you use it. I think that's pretty good already

Thus, I call my best offline defense suggestion ever, the "Keep the pace slow" voting/suggesting guideline. It just consists into not letting combat accelerate to the point where seeing some guy when you are online instantly fries him into dust (or insta-revives on sight, like it nearly was in the old days) (disclaimer, this statement may or may not be exagerated). (which, unfortunately, isn't that popular of a philosophy yet, and Kevan doesn't seem to have noticed my wittle crusade yet)

Of course, if you think you can find an elegant, preferably simple, solution to all the problems stated above, you are welcome to suggest it. --McArrowni 02:26, 17 June 2006 (BST)

McArrowni, thanks for your comments. It makes sense that auto-defense has been discussed before, based on the reaction I received. Still, I think there might be more discussion to be had about the details. One thing I would like to suggest is the auto-defending NOT AWARD XP. This would remove a powerful incentive to do it all the time, and make the decision of whether or not to do it an economical one, based on the AP cost of dying.

For now I'll present my findings on survivor weapon selection and ammo usage. I agree that weapon usage algorithms would be too complicated. The player should probably just choose which firearms he wants to defend with. If no firearms are selected, or if a firearm runs out of ammo while the character is auto-defending, the character would switch to the highest average damage melee weapon.
How much ammo should a survivor be willing to spend on auto-defense? Since finding ammo takes AP, the answer depends on the assumed AP cost of dying. For calculating the optimum amount of ammo spent on avoiding death, let's assume death costs the defending survivor an average of 70 AP (10 to stand up as a z, ~50 to find a revive point, 10 to stand up as a survivor). Let's also assume that an attacker begins the attack with 50 HP and will attack the offline survivor until either the attacking zombie or the defending survivor are killed. Since death costs 70 AP, a survivor is willing to spend up to 70 AP avoiding it.
With the pistol: One pistol attack has an AP cost of 3.2 AP (factoring in searching for ammo, loading, and firing). For the amount of AP that would be lost by dying, a survivor should be willing to expend a maximum of 70/3.2= 21.8 attacks to avoid death. Is that enough to kill an attacking zombie? At 30% accuracy, 21.8 attacks does an average of 32.7 damage, which will not kill the attacker. At 55%, the average is 60 damage, and at 65%, 70.85 damage. Therefore, a survivor with Basic Firearms (accuracy 30%) should NOT auto-defend with the pistol, as the AP cost of fighting off the attacker exceeds the cost of dying (assuming dying costs 70 AP). A survivor with PT or APT, however, should auto-defend.
With the shotgun: One shotgun attack has an AP cost of 16 AP. That means a survivor should be willing to expend up to 70/16= 4.38 attacks avoiding death. At 30% accuracy, 4.38 attacks do an average of 13.14 damage. At 55%, 24 damage, and at 65%, 28.47 damage. None of these are able to kill an attacker. Therefore, no matter what skills a survivor has, it is never economical for him to auto-defend with the shotgun (once again, assuming death costs 70 AP).
With melee weapons: Assuming death costs 70 AP, it is economical to defend with the Knife (only with Knife Fighting) and the Fire Axe (With Hand to Hand Combat or Axe Proficiency). If death is assumed to cost 100 or more AP, then defending with the Knife (with Hand to Hand Combat) or Length of Pipe (with Hand to Hand Combat) becomes economical. Only if the cost of death is assumed to exceed 125 AP does defending with the crowbar (with Hand to Hand Combat) become economical.

I hope this analysis has cleared up some questions about the effect of auto-defense on the game. As you can see, it is a fairly modest one, but I think it the benefit of making the game more fair, more logical, and removing the "kill on sight" nature of combat that McArrowni mentioned. --Gathercole 20:18, 17 June 2006 (BST)

No, it hasn't cleared ANYTHING up. And I'm glad you ignored everything *I* said. And what is this "willng to spend" stuff? According to your suggestion, which I see NO change here, the "defender" doesn't get to choose how much AP they spend "defending." If I log off after spending my last AP, then 12 hours later I get attacked 25 times in a row (and don't die), not only have I lost all the AP I had accumlated over the last 12 hours I've also counterattacked 25 times without my control. Why do you keep ignoring those factors? Here's an idea, how about we throw in an "auto stand up" (maybe any auto-Mrh?) when dead and eliminate the need to ACTUALLY play the character at all?--Pesatyel 22:01, 17 June 2006 (BST)

Pesatyel, I'm taking one thing at a time. My last post showed when it would be economical to use auto-defense, with which weapons and which skills. The analysis is based on comparing the AP cost of successfully defending (with a certain weapon or skillset) to the AP cost of getting killed. For example, attacking with the shotgun is so expensive in terms of AP that it's more economical to let yourself die than to enable auto-defense with the shotgun (assuming it costs about 70 AP to get revived). From your comment, it seems like you don't understand the analysis. Do you understand what it means to say that a shotgun attack costs 16 AP? Also, why are you so rude? I'm sorry about not getting to your comments, but I will eventually. --Gathercole 23:03, 17 June 2006 (BST)

This only scratches the surface, I'm afraid. I'm also unsure about the math (If shooting the pistol is worth it, why isn't the shotgun worth it, since finding shells is a by-product of searching for pistol clips, or vice-versa. If you search for one, you'll get the other one "for free" and all AP used to search for one is automatically used to search for the other.

But that's beside the point. This discussion has made me realize the following

Newbies would be majorly hurt by such a change. Newbie zombies would constantly die even when online (in addition to their offline deaths) until they take the digestion skill. Well... unless they kill those who can't attack back... Meaning the human newbies
Scientists would be majorly hurt by such a change. Scientists run when their safehouse is breached. Auto-attack doesn't give them anything until they are close to maxed out and have started to take combat skills. This means that zombies will see a scientist and think "food" whilst another survivor would be spared.
You realize that a high-level dead zombie stands back up and keeps killing you, don't you?
Are you suggesting only giving humans the ability to counterattack when offline?

The fact is, having no offline defense is a staple of online games, because it's convenient for game design. It's very hard to implement otherwise. I think you already know that, but I'll remind you that there is still most of my previous message that you didn't even begin to answer to. This will be a lengthy discussion if you choose to go through with this (and I have no doubt that we would find that an Urban dead with auto-defense would be either a totaly different game, or totaly broken)--McArrowni 01:51, 18 June 2006 (BST)

McArrowni, this discussion has also made me realize the same things that you mentioned. Auto-defense would have many effects, but the most significant effect would be increasing the gap between high and low-level characters. Right now, attacking high and low-level characters is exactly the same difficulty; auto-defense would change that. I was thinking too much of the marginal benefits to low-level characters without thinking of the much greater benefits to high-level characters. Right now, what we should focus on is making the game less frustrating (not necessarily easier) for low-level characters so we can retain more players. I do have to defend my math, though :) Although you search for clips and shells the same way, when you find a clip you're finding a lot more damage than when you find a shell. This, combined with the greater amount of AP spent loading the shotgun, results in a large difference in economy. So now that I've come around... should we leave this discussion up, or delete it? --Gathercole 6:44, 18 June 2006 (BST)

Leave it, at least as long as the page doesn't get too big too be viewed. It will be archived eventually. And eventually other people will make the same suggestion and we might have forgotten what we discussed here if we delete it --McArrowni 16:20, 18 June 2006 (BST)

My bad, guess I was a tad testy that night. I think there is SOME potential (if it can be figured out). But if you want to continue with the idea, try doing it on your user page (in fact, I might).--Pesatyel 04:52, 19 June 2006 (BST)

Objective Race

Timestamp:	16:32, 19 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Balance change, improvement
Scope:	Urban Dead, the dying game
Description:	I never come up wth nothing good, and most of my ideas look like MrAushvitz crapped them out, so they usually don't turn up here, rather they end with me, but this thing is so good I had to say it. So the suggestion. Remember in the days of yore, when the game was just starting? There was a contest about spraypainting. No, I a not suggesting we bring it back, it would cause too much Street is Watching spam. But organizing events ingame would help to revive Urban Dead, pardon the pun. So what is this about? Incentive. Nothing has happened since Mall Tour '06 failed to kill Caiger. Some malls were attacked, but certin groups stopped the fun for the zombies, and the zombies were not as "Classy" as them as they said. We can't just give out zombie caterpults, so what do we do? We make events by having them, organized by the game, for the game. We have an objective, such as control of an area, or place, and give ~~rocket launchers~~ XP to the winners. Odd occurances will happen in these areas, such as odd success rates, and messed up search rates. And news will be posted about it, on the wiki. Yes, Kevan will have to work, but the creator sometimes needs to tend to his creation closely. Here are some example events: Take back Riddlybank - Battle for control of the doomed suburb. Win Condition, In two weeks, if 2/3 or more are human, they win, if 2/3 or more are zombies they win. XP awarded to winning side - 15 XP each Bonus - There are no standing combatants of the other side. 20 XP Take Ackland Mall - Battle for control of the Mall. Win Condition, In two weeks, if no zombies are in the mall and humans outnumber zombies outside, they win, if zombies are inside, they win, if no humans are inside, double bonus, if zombies outside outnumber survivors, no win. XP awarded to winning side - 15 XP each UD celebration - on the fifth of July, the human who fires the most flares, seen by the most people, gets 75 XP. The zombie who says the most Death Rattle to the most people gets 75 XP. These are only example events, but the main point is events.

Votes
A co-ordinated NT tour could wreak havoc on Riddlybank in a few hours, and a few zombie spies with crowbars would take down a mall in time for the rollover. If such things were to be implemented, I would suggest they need points on a king of the hill time based system; e.g. every hour on the hour the sides are examined and points awarded. --Burgan 16:42, 19 June 2006 (BST)

I like the idea of time-limited quests, but I'd rather see some sort of badge system than simple XP awards. I.e., if you are one of the humans inside Ackland Mall when the 2 weeks are up, you get the "Food Court" badge. This would show up on your profile page only. That kind of system would add a lot of replay value to UD, but would definitely require ongoing oversight from Kevan. (And Jon, the objectives could all be survival-oriented, just tied to particular times and places.) --Ember ^MBR 16:47, 19 June 2006 (BST)

I've been thinking of something like this, it shouldn't be hard to automate a good range of randomly-generated missions from a stock set of components. Unspecified durations ("be on the dominant side in the Norgan Building when the supply helicopters arrive some time on Thursday") could be an alternative to king-of-the-hill conditions, and would stop people from pouring in during the last few minutes. There's a slight theme problem with how players would find out that these things were happening, though - there could be an otherwise-blocked military/NT radio frequency that announces events, but that's a bit harsh on zombies. Would be good to see some more thoughts on this. --Kevan 03:18, 20 June 2006 (BST)

I'd vote Spam since this promotes griefing of areas. It should be 2/3 harman in a zombie controlled area. There are a lot of suburbs with more zombies than harman. New Arkham for instance. Also, making it more fun for harmanz isn't the point. It's supposed to be for zombies since they're outnumbered. Sonny Corleone ^WTF 03:22, 20 June 2006 (BST)

Since Kevan's requested more thoughts, here they are, in no particular ordering: I like the idea of special events/quests. A lot. As for communicating new missions to players, I'd like to see it done the same way as game updates, to ensure that nobody would be left out. I like the badge system suggested by Ember as an addition/alternative to XP awards, too. Intra-race contests (who can use feeding drag the most times, for example) should definitely be a component, as well. Something you'd need to look out for there, though, would be groups getting together to game the system. For instance, with the example I provided, a human group (or a bunch of revived zombies) could get together in an open building and attack one another until they're all below 13 HP, enabling a designated player who's been charging AP outside to simply step inside and drag them out one after another. Unspecified durations would be superior both to set times (Hail Mary last-minute attacks) and king-of-the-hill systems (in sieges, in particular, zombies spend the vast majority of their time locked outside, even when they're eventually victorious - most successful sieges I've participated in as a zombie I never spent the night indoors).

Anyway, just my semi-coherent two cents on the issue. I'd reorganize this to read better, but I'm actually in the process of packing to leave town, which I really ought to get back to. --Jimbo Bob ^ASS•U! 07:04, 20 June 2006 (BST)

If I may add a suggestion of an event:

Overdose of Trouble:

- Flavour: NecroTech is getting serious now. It's had all its employees in the field take some newly developed serum in hopes of roadtesting a cure for the virus and getting this little matter settled. Helicopters have also used an airborne version of another potenial cure on the zombies while flying over Malton. Two problems: the serum administered to the humans has disasterous effects. And the zombies aren't cured by any means, merely disorientated and PO'd to the n'th degree.

-Gameplay: All players with NT Employment have their hit rates reduced to 5% for firearms and 10% for all other weapons. They heal 2 less HP when using a FAK on both themselves and other players. They can not be infected by bites and lose 2 HP for every action other than speaking. Zombies have all hit rates reduced by 10% and are immune to revive syringes, though if stuck with one without having Brain Rot they go down and it costs them an extra 5 AP to stand up as zombies. Diagnosis skill revels the number of "overdosed" humans and zombies present in the room description for all players, i.e. "There are X overdosing humans and X overdosing zombies here."

-Rewards: "Overdosed" Humans recieve 20 EXP for using a revive syringe on a zombie, 10 EXP for healing others with a FAK and recieve 1 EXP for every 1 AP used (NOT SPEAKING) while their HP is below 20 during the event. Using a FAK on an "Overdosing" human gives you 10 EXP no matter how much HP you heal. "Overdosed" zeds recieve double "damage dealt" EXP on humans and triple the "kill" EXP for every killed "Overdosed" human. --November7 11:51, 20 June 2006 (BST)

Its nice to see Kevan comment every one and a while. Anyways, We have three types of events; skill useage, king of the hill and dominants. We also have three awards, XP, items (zombies would have troubles useing this), and badges or some sort of trophy that you could "use" by clicking, and it would show itself of to some people nearby. As for events, I'm sure the hardest part is annoncement, and I think they should all be announceded a week before they happen in game news. What do you guys think? -- 343 ^U! 15:41, 20 June 2006 (BST)

New ideas. Remember the Malton Iditarod? Lets have anotherone organized in game. All who wish to participate put Malton Iditarod in the group line in their profiles. The first three will get trophies for winning, and anyone, perhaps even zombies could join. I also propose, that the top three of last years Iditarod get medals as well, saying something along the lines of Malton Iditarod '05.

And a new zombie event, Brainstock '06 could be implemented as well. We could have a huge horde go around and hit suburbs, and eat brains. Or perhaps even a Mall Tour '07? Any zombie horde event would require that the zombies attack a survivor or baracade in an area to be counted, and the zombies would have to be in the horde for at least 75% or the time or something. Anyone want to expand on this or comment? -- 343 ^U! 01:54, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Somethings Sonny said about griefing areas, what about multiple and concurrent events? For example, if the "event" is to be at a certain location in Gulsonside at a certain time (to meet a helicopter drop or something), instead there would be 4-6 locations around the city (in different suburbs, of course) where the exact same event is happening. I think the city is large enough to pull off something like that. In addition the problem is that SURVIVORS are easier to event for. If people think zombies need events too...promote some ideas. As for rewards, what about special (but limited) attacks (especially for zombies)? I was thinking some special attack, for the winner(s), that could be used up to, say, 4 times. Maybe not 100% to hit, but instead a temporary boost to hit or damage or the ability for a zombie to use a shotgun (or FAK). Something like that.

And one last thing, what about NPCs? I know people have said "no NPCs" in the past, but I think it might depend on the situation. For example, one event could be to escort an NPC child (or maybe a group of people) to a specific location (NecroTech building or outside the city by going to a map edge location). The NPC would be unable to attack (it is a child) or use items and would be linked to a particular player (moves when they move) unless the player specifically hands off the NPC to another player or dies. If a zombie kills the NPC, they win. If the player successfully escorts the NPC to the location, THEY win.--Pesatyel 04:55, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Guns are usually a zombie no-no, but I think that in certin cases, say an event, we could have them use one at a low chance to hit, and the reciever of the attack would see: A zombie fumbles with a metal object and you hear a gunshot! A zombie has attacked you with a (pistol or shotgun) for (5 or 10) damage! The event? Necrotech helicopters have been seen in the area recently spraying something. The military has stopped them, but it seems to have a temporary effect on the zombies that makes them smarter! Any shots a zombie fires would be in a certin timespan, and only a certin amount of times, at a negitave of their original hit rate (how about -50%), and to prevent greifing, they would not be able to fire at other zombies.

Also, [Ben] (remember the tagger mission? Also, does he even play anymore?) and any other past event winners (Iditarod?) should get medals or something added to their profiles. -- 343 ^U! 20:21, 21 June 2006 (BST)

But see, that's what I mean. Make the rewards something BIG. Ben got like 200 XP for his reward (and based on the profile link you provided, I don't think he plays THAT character anymore). But, it appears, only 3 people actually participated in that event. I don't think just giving XP is the way to go, but allowing the character to do double damage up to 4 times or 90% chance to hit on 4 attacks or zombies being able to use a shotgun twice or a pistol 4 times would make things interesting. It isn't like the whole "event" idea is going to be all the time. X event happens and the top 3 players involved (depends on the event, I'd think) get one of the rewards I mentioned (or something else). Then, maybe a month later, ANOTHER event happens.--Pesatyel 22:25, 21 June 2006 (BST)

I like that concept, but also like giving out medals. How about both? One to brag on, and one to reward your hard earn work? Like, a Iditarod runner would be able to walk for free for three days? Who thinks we cold give out rewards taht aren't overpowering? 343 ^U! 19:22, 23 June 2006 (BST)

I think both would work. The reward would only last for 4 uses while the medal or badge would be permanent.--Pesatyel 02:37, 24 June 2006 (BST)

A possible reward could be a bunch of free AP for talking(i.e. bragging), or some kind of prestige item. Maybe a use for all those overpowered weapon suggestions?. What (survivor) wouldn't participate in a contest if the rewards were a 15 damage shotgun, or five one-use molotov cocktails? Of course, we could go the whole way and give a victorious zombie a one-shot rocket launcher :D Basically, anything that fails the multiply by a million check becomes a valid use when its availability is directly controlled by Kevan himself. Finally: Maybe Kevan could, every so often, choose a "trusted member of the community" to be a ZM for a day, and run a special event? I don;t think we'd be short of volunteers. --Gene Splicer 22:44, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Another anti-zerging measure

Timestamp:	14:33, 22 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Game Mechanic
Scope:	Zerging
Description:	This is another anti-zerging measure. Basically, if a player is flagged as zerging, they get a 'strike' against their name; and they are notified (it could be through email, when they next log-in, in the building description so they don't miss it, it could come up in red, I don't know!) After another week, if they are still doing it, they get another, and so on. When a player has 3 strikes, their character is deleted. This stops zergers, as they are just deleted; and also reduces false positives as a player has to be flagged three times for their character to go.

Votes

I just thought of this now, and I posted it on here because firstly, I didn't know if it was a dupe; and, secondly, I want to know how people will take this. Do you think the number of strikes should be higher or lower? Should the time between checks be shorter? Is this a good idea? Does it already happen in-game?

The notification is so that if players who run more than one character accidently bump into each other, they have a chance of getting away before they are deleted.

I would vote against this, just on the principle that a suggestion should never delete characters. Make it harder for zergers to play, yes, but don't remove them from the game entirely. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 18:32, 22 June 2006 (BST)

Same, I would actually spam this. Someone could get really unlucky and have 3 false positives and then poof. They are gone. It's not a very nice way of going about it all. - Jedaz 03:02, 23 June 2006 (BST)

Agreed, due to shear dumb luck my characters my characters run into each other but they never interact, in fact whilst I would normally heal/revive or in other manner help other characters I instead turn tail and run from my own, AP allowing. But despite this I currently have two characters holed up in different parts of Hildebrand Mall one recently revived and relocating from the hell hole he was in the other just wandering as many directionless high levellers do. Would these both be deleted by tomorrow under your new regime? Zerging is annoying and shouldn't be tollerated but this is an overly simplistic solution to a complicated problem. -- FallenAngel 13:24, 23 June 2006 (BST)

No! Points should at least go away slowly just in case someone was not zerging. 343 ^U! 19:24, 23 June 2006 (BST)

OK, fair enough!

Myself and my girlfriend play from home and sometimes from university. I'm always running into people using the same uni proxy as me, and we're always switching between who logs in from home. We can handle it when we occasionally screw up and end up wasting a day of ap, but being deleted? :( --Gene Splicer 13:21, 30 June 2006 (BST)

N. FUCKING O. NO. This suggestion goes beyond harsh. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 13:37, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Overlord - Can 'Rally Scourge'

Withdrawn. - Author, --W3c 20:53, 23 June 2006 (BST)

Yet another sniper rifle suggestion

Timestamp:	{{{suggest_time}}}
Type:	New weapon/game mechanic
Scope:	Cross-block attacking
Description:	New item: Sniper rifle, holds one round, 1AP to fire, 2AP to reload. Chance to hit 0.5% (increased with skills) Found in police stations or armories (more likely in armories). Also has special use, detailed later. New item: Sniper round, single round, ammo for Sniper rifle. Found in police stations or armories (more likely in armories) New skill (military): basic sniping. Increases chance of hitting with Sniper Rifle to 5%. New skill (military): intermediate sniping. Prerequisite: basic sniping. Increases chance of hitting with Sniper Rifle to 15%. New skill (military): Advanced sniping. Prerequisite: intermediate sniping. Increases chance of hitting with Sniper Rifle to 25%. When inside a building and you have a sniper rifle AND the "Basic sniping" skill, you get a special "snipe" action in which you climb to the roof of the building and prep your rifle. If someone is already sniping on this building, you cannot join them. While sniping, you will be able to see players on one adjacent square. To view a different square, you must spend 1AP to move your rifle. Note that you cannot fire on people in the same square as you. While in the sniping state, you are totally unaware of what's going on inside the building (meaning, if a PKer or zombie is sneaking up behind you, you won't know it until they actually hit you). While people on the street and adjacent blocks cannot attack you, anyone inside CAN attack you, with a BONUS to hit because you don't see them. Furthermore, a sniper on an adjacent roof can fire at you, again with a slight bonus to hit due to reduced range. (You can't fire at anyone else inside a building, however.) You can fire at people in the square you are aiming at, with the hit percentage as specified above. When a sniper rifle is fired in this way, everyone in that block and the surrounding blocks can hear it. They will see "You hear a gunshot from the roof." (inside), "You hear a gunshot from the roof of the building in front of you." (outside), "You hear a gunshot from the roof of a building to the north" (south of the building). Furthermore, if you missed the person you shot at, they will see "A sniper's bullet lands near your foot!". If it hits, they will get "A sniper hits you for X damage" (obscuring the name). This means that not only will you know where a sniper is, but you'll know if he's targeting you even if he hasn't landed a hit. Since you know the sniper's location and whether he's targeting you, you can easily move out of range assuming you have no further business on the square you're on and have 1AP to spare. The current problem I see is that it gives survivors an unfair advantage vs. zombies. And I think that needs to be ironed out somehow, perhaps allow zombies as well as survivors to use sniper rifles and to snipe? I'm looking for suggestions here.

Votes
In the suggestion page this would not survive long. It's complicated, a multi-step action suggestion that lets you fire in adjacent blocks. Also, people hate the idea of zombies with guns, especially sniper rifles, unless they are rocket launchers :P </inside joke>. It's also good practice to provide with final % to hit (with all skills) and damage for the weapon. --McArrowni 21:44, 25 June 2006 (BST)

Unfair advantage to survivors is an understatement. With this, even with only a 25% chance to hit, the fact survivors don't have to leave the barricade to attack makes this a spammable suggestion. People like to comment about how simplistic UD is and, in this instance, THAT is true. The nature of combat in UD is that the player attacks a target and they target MAY fight back (or run), if they are able. That is one of the risks of the game. Since everyone would be using this weapon, the ambient spam would be pretty plentyful and PKers would LOVE it. THIS version of Urban Dead would not support such a weapon, although I think a "hardcore" version would.--Pesatyel 06:17, 26 June 2006 (BST)

I, for one, would spam the living shit out of this. One of the basic fundamental premises of the game is that you need to put yourself in danger in order to attack. --Mookiemookie 19:29, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Argh! I wanted SUGGESTIONS as to HOW to fix the unfair advantage to survivors! That's why it's here instead of on the main page. Anyway, I just had an idea. Zombies could have a "wall scaling" ability that would allow them to attack an active sniper on the same block as them as if they were inside the building, INCLUDING the bonus to hit. (Non-snipers inside the building can't be attacked as normal) As a result, sniping on a zombie has a big risk associated with it -- you're hoping that they a) don't have the wall climbing ability and b) don't use it. With that change, I think it could make higher-level battles more interesting due to the extra element allowing players to attack across city blocks, but at greater risk. survivor-vs-survivor battles would be spiced up quite a bit if both sides had snipers, as well. Roothorick 20:59, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Dude, we CAN'T give you ideas on how to fix something that CAN'T BE FIXED. I think Mookie and I summed it up pretty well how this is unsalvagable. NOW you want ninja zombies? Double spam there. Why wouldn't the zombies use the "wall scaling" ability to just get inside the building? Based on the current parameters of the game, there is NO way to make this balanced.--Pesatyel 23:10, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Just because something sounds "cool" does not mean that it can be balanced out to fit into the genre and mechanics of the game. Forget the snipers and wall climbing ninja zombies. --Mookiemookie 18:12, 28 June 2006 (BST)

I don't think this is too powerful. You're not normally in much danger when you're outside and online, so this suggestion doesn't make you all that much safer.--Toejam 22:29, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Did you read our comments? Pick the right building (ie. MALL) and sit on the roof taking shots at other characters in, essentially INFINATE safety, only having to stop long enough to go down and search for ammo. And, I just realized something. The OP never listed how much damage the weapons does!--Pesatyel 10:32, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Maybe I should have said that I don't think that the core concept of this is overpowered. Most of the risk to a survivor in the game comes not from when he is outside shooting zombies, but from when he's tucked up sleeping in his safehouse. Even in a mall he is not totally safe. While a sniper would not be in danger of being attacked outside, he still risks being attacked inside, especially with the bonus to hit him. That's why I don't think this would over-protect survivors. --Toejam 15:16, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Say what? PKing is worse than having zombies (or what else am I to infer by your "most of the risk to survivors comes when they are sleeping in the safehouse")? In addition, according to the suggestion, only one person can be on the roof at a time. So it isn't like I can be up on the roof sniping and you can come up and PK me. So you must have meant sniper-on-sniper. Thus it needs being said that PKing does not need legitimization. The focus of the game is survivors fighting zombies and zombies fighting survivors. This skill does not do that and it can't.--Pesatyel

Anyone inside the building can attack the sniper, with a bonus percent to hit them. To clarify what I meant about being killed inside, from my experience, most of the times a survivor gets killed, it's because zombies broke into the survivor's safehouse while he was offline, rather than zombies attacking him in the short time he was outside. --Toejam

I don't like it. It requires a third tier to be added to each block (outside/inside/ontop), which (at this point) has no other use than for snipers to shoot from. There is no current counter (ninja zombies nonwithstanding). It changes the flavor of combat. Too big a change cost for what is, in essence, a neat image. Good idea, but wrong game for it. Jenny D'Arc^T 15:35, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Universal Skill Set

Timestamp:	06:17, 30 June 2006 (BST)
Type:	Skill fiddling
Scope:	Everyone
Description:	Currently, there exists one skill useful to both zombies and survivors (Bodybuilding) ~~along with a number of peer reviewed suggestions~~(actually, I am not sure if this is true). I propose that, along with the civilian, scientist, military and zombie skill sets, there be a new skill set called "Universal"(open to suggestions for a different name) where these would be placed. Universal skills would cost 100exp for everyone and would be available to purchase whether you are a zombie or a survivor. Along with making crossover skills considerably more available to brain rotted and career zombies, this would also make it easier for the peer reviewed "Separate Zombie/Survivor Levels" suggestion to take such skills into account. I am aware that Diagnosis also crosses over to zombies, but I always viewed this more as a bug than a feature, and it would remain a scientist skill. It was suggested I move this to here and ask for people to pull up example suggestions that would fit this skill set. Obviously Body Building would apply, but does anyone have any peer reviewed suggestions that may apply, or any favourite undecided/rejected ideas that did badly because it would be too hard for brain rotted zombies to aquire them? Edit: The purpose of placing this here is to garner examples, not for voting yet. But constructive criticism always welcome. Further edit: Broke the wiki. IMPORTANT EDIT: Ok, there appears to be some confusion as to what exactly I am talking about. As you know, when a survivor, your purchase screen looks like this Military skills Scientist skills Civilian skills Zombie Hunter skills and as a zombie, like this Zombie Skills I propose changing them to look like this Military skills Scientist skills Civilian skills Zombie Hunter skills Universal skills and Zombie skills Universal Skills The universal skill set would contain skills that have identical effects whether you are alive or dead, and being unable to aquire them would put you at a distinct disadvantage. Whether you are alive or dead, it would contain the same skill list. Skills such as Bodybuilding, AP affecting skills if they ever appear, muscle based damage increasers, and so forth. The point of this suggestion is NOT to propose such skills, merely make it possible to implement them neatly. The only skill that currently exists that would be viable for this skill set is Bodybuilding. I am looking for peer reviewed (but unimplemented) suggestions, or undecided/rejected ideas that failed because of the crossover difficulty. I would then use these as examples of the kind of skill that would go in here. Building an entire skill tree that would fit in here would be beyond the scope of this suggestion, and would result on people voting on the skills rather than the concept.--Gene Splicer 20:28, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Votes
I like the idea. I think this would also tie-in nicely with suggestions for specialisations at high levels. --Otware 19:57, 30 June 2006 (BST)

OK - what kind of skills, logically would help both a human and a zombie? We have Bodybuilding and Diagnosis... If we were to extrapolate... perhaps some sort of engineering which improves both the building and destruction of barricades? Jenny D'Arc^T 21:08, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Right off of the top of my head: Anything that affects AP directly. It's obvious that if a skill would be made for survivors to gain more AP or be able to store more (at a cost, of course), it would pretty much have to either have a zombie equivalent or be universal, and vice-versa. Sometimes, an equivalent on the other side doesn't make as much sense as letting the skill be useable by the other side, and making them just crossover skills makes it unfair for brain-rotters. --McArrowni 21:56, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Bodybulding is the kind I am thinking of, as well as a suggestion of mine currently being reviewed. Skills that do exactly the same thing for survivors as zombies. Can anyone remember any suggestions that got shot down because it was unfair to give them to one side and not the other? Especially from the days of no-revive brain rot --Gene Splicer 00:06, 1 July 2006 (BST) (I'm the suggester btw) --Gene Splicer 00:10, 1 July 2006 (BST)

~~Uh, doesn't the game already HAVE a "universal" skill category (of which Body Building is part)?~~ I don't really think the game NEEDS any additonal 'cross-over' skills. But if you insist (new skills don't hurt), as McArrowni said, AP effecting skills (though they ALWAYS get shot down) would be a start. Or physical skills. I think the main reason that suggestions get shot down "because it was unfair to give them [the suggestion] to one side and not the other" is because, again, as McArrowni said sometimes it doesn't make sense to have a skill usable by both sides. And I might add that some skills just would NOT work as cross-over based on the game play mechanics inherent in zombies and survivors (Free Running is a perfect example, though I KNOW it isn't a skill you meant).--Pesatyel 10:44, 1 July 2006 (BST)

CNR time! I was not referring to the Civilian catagory. I was referring to a catagory that would appear in your purchase screen whether you were a survivor or a zombie. Also, that is the exact opposite of what McArrowni said. He was saying that having a universal skill set makes MORE sense than implementing identical skills for both sides simultaniously, and is MORE fair than simply allowing a crossover skill. The only existing skill that would be transferred to this catagory would be Bodybuilding, so I am asking if anyone can recall any good suggestions (or suggestions they thought were good) for crossover skills that were shot down due to it being difficult for zombies to aquire them. I can then include them in my full suggestion to let people get a better idea of what I am talking about. --Gene Splicer 12:07, 1 July 2006 (BST)

I think you'd really have to put the whole tree in the suggestion, because, as I understand it, approved suggestions are passed along to Kevan who has asked for them to be ready to implement by the time he sees them. In the interest of full disclosure, I personally would probably vote against the USS, for flavor reasons, but it's an interesting idea and it deserves to be judged on it's own merits, not shot down for being too vague (which is why I'm trying to give you suggestions in the first place). Jenny D'Arc^T 14:28, 1 July 2006 (BST)

I don't think you quite understand what I am talking about. I have included some more gibberish in the main suggestion. (pauses for reading) So there's no point in me making a full skill tree but I'd definetely like to have at least... hmmm... three skills to list to show why this would be useful. Body building is one, so I am looking for at least two more. I also do not think that suggestions are passed on to Kevan, I think he just scans this section of the wiki every now and again and sees if anything catches his eye. But anyway, I am still hoping someone will go "I remember this cool idea I saw, it was called (whatever). This would fit perfectly here." --Gene Splicer 20:28, 1 July 2006 (BST)

No, I understood what you meant. ~~I was pointing out there already WAS such a category, even if zombies have to "go living" to get to it.~~ I don't believe the game needs a category of skills that both sides can purchase. The nature of game play for each side is too different to warrant a bunch of new skills that both sides can use. And the other two skills for which you are looking are Diagnosis and NecroTech Employment (and Ankle Grab if you want a fourth). A skill usable by a zombie might be too powerful in the hands of a survivor (or the reverse, of course). Besides, how come YOU haven't gone through the previous days pages to find the skills you seek?--Pesatyel 01:06, 3 July 2006 (BST)

...So, you are saying that suggesting a catagory of skills that can be purchased while both a survivor and a zombie is silly, because this catagory already exists, you just have to become a survivor to access it. Yes? --Gene Splicer 03:44, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Why do you keep focusing on just PART of what I said? Does the strike out clarify the thought process for you? We don't need to nitpick over an unnecessary point. Now what about the REST of what I said?--Pesatyel 05:59, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Ok, First point: There are a number of things that are treated identically by both sides in this game. The most obvious of these are AP recharge rate and AP maximum level. These were actually the reason I started this suggestion, and since AP was first thing that occured to McArrowni in his comment, I must not be alone. If such a skill was implemented, it would be unfair to make it a civilian skill as brain rotted and "career" zombies would find it very difficult to acquire, and would be at an unfair disadvantage if they could never pick it up without compromising their principles. If it was made a zombie skill, same applies to humans who want to keep their death total to a minimum, or just don't feel like standing in a revive queue for a few days. Implementing it as seperate zombie and human skills that either crossover but do not stack, or act as "dual skills" so that buying one buys the other, looks... messy. I know there have been suggestions put forward like this, because I remember how awkward and forced they looked. So no, there are areas where both sides are identical, an increase to one side without the other would be unfair, and existing methods of introducing it are messy. They may not be many, but they are still the skills this idea is aimed towards. --Gene Splicer 14:21, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Second point: Diagnosis- Diagnosis is a zombie remembering what it was like to be a doctor, I don't think zombies should be able to learn that while dead. Scent Blood already exists, and in a much more thematic way. Necrotech Employment- I had forgotten about this. I find it unlikely that a zombie would gain employment while dead, but might remember where he used to work if he had worked there while alive. Ankle Grab only comes into effect when you die or revived. Making it available to survivors when they can buy it the first time they die, and if they don't die, they don't need it, makes this kind of pointless. This is why I was not going to use these for examples. I'm looking for unimplemented ideas that would be improved by making them available to both sides in the suggested manner --Gene Splicer 14:21, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Third Point: Of course there are skills that would be overpowered for a zombie but not for a survivor, and vice versa. Free running being a perfect example (kudos!). That's why they are not carryover skills, and why they would not go into this skillset. I'm not suggesting that EVERY skill be purchasable and useable by either side, or indeed every carryover skill. Just any that either a survivor or zombie would, thematically, be able to develop on their own, and would be unfair to make more difficult to get for one side than the other. --Gene Splicer 14:21, 3 July 2006 (BST)

And Fourth point: Because while I remember seeing them(see above), I cannot find them, or recall them in enough detail to describe them accurately. Remember, there is a backlog at the moment. So I am hoping that either the people who suggested them or someone who remembers them clearly enough for them to be used as examples will come out of the woodwork. --Gene Splicer 14:21, 3 July 2006 (BST)

You could have fooled me about the backlog. - Jedaz 00:46, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Was a backlog. Dammit, now I have to get off my ass and go looking again --Gene Splicer 02:37, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Power Stations V6.57

Timestamp:	07:50, 1 July 2006 (BST)
Type:	Use for Power Stations
Scope:	Survivors
Description:	Read before you comment! Ok, first of all, scroll down until you see bullets if you just want an summary of the suggestion. This is what may be viewed as a over-powered suggestion. There has probably been a bunch more "Use for power plants" suggestions, But I think this might work without giving survivors a huge edge. (See? No bias there...) The idea and how it works Here’s how it works. You need to buy a skill called "Power Station Operator" which allows you to repair the generators in a power plant. It costs 20AP to do this. The power flows out into the city, where it is converted into power that buildings can use with transformers. There is one transformer in every suburb. They can be destroyed also, and repaired for 5AP. Each power station has a secure land-line which can be used to contact the other station. Both stations need to be functioning for it to work. More specific and easier to understand details are below. Descriptions- Non-functional power station-Same as now. Functional Power Station-...You here a low hum as power flows into the city. Transformer Details: 1 in every suburb Acts like loose barricade (But can only be attacked from inside) Descriptions- No power:…There is a transformer here. It is in-active. Power:…There is a transformer here. It is humming with electricity. Broken:…There is a transformer here. It is badly damaged. Repairing a transformer takes 5AP You also need the skill to repair one. Miscellaneous Details The power Stations have control panels to show what suburbs have power. The power grid shows up on the stats page. There is a secure line in power stations that can be used to contact the other station. (both stations need to be working.) Here is a summary of the main points: You need to buy a skill to repair generators in a power station. Repairing generators costs 20AP A can of fuel will keep it going for 20 minutes. The Generators can not be repaired if building damage or zombies are present. Generators act like a loose barricade, in strength but can only be attacked from inside.

Votes

Hope you like Version 6.57 Niilomaan. (And if this seems unrealistic, go to my user page and look at my "Ultimate Realism Suggestion")--Labine50 ^MHG|^MalTel 23:19, 6 July 2006 (BST)
Kill - What can happen in 20 miniutes. This seems like one guy sarifices half their AP to let their mates get to search between the flickering of the lights. It seems like a very short window to go through all that. It would take a zerg army of fuel guys to maintain it even if it was not under attack. Also the com line seems like an add on. Phones and radios should do instead. Holding both power stations seems like an ineresting goal but the reward here is (I think) too short of a duration. How about no grid on the stats and settle for a percentage like phones. Stop using the term generators at the power station. How about turbins/cosoles/junctions or switches. NecroTech signals, another add on that only serves to complicate. At 20 minutes you have not given zombies time to coordinate an attack. They would just wait for it to expire on its own. Also a seperate skill seems a bit much. Perhaps construction as a requirment for these repairs. --Max Grivas ^JG,T,P! 10:07, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Venomous Sting

Revised and Moved to Suggestions page by Author. Look for 'Maggot Sting' --W3c 06:15, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Further Discussion

This is for any further discussion concerning the suggestions page that doesn't fall into the previous categories.

Not so much a suggestion as a request.

could someone (a mod) issue an official warning to all those making offensive and nonsensical responses today? A degree of insult is often reasonable but quite frankly the abuse being posted today is uncalled for and in most cases pathetic posturing by this pages most annoying users. most of us don't read this page for their stupid humour and frankly they are becoming a burden to the community! Oh and i wonder how long it takes someone to move this to a talk page or just delete it.--Honestmistake 12:01, 26 June 2006 (BST)

You do realise of course that people are sick and tired of the same suggestion being given over, and over, and over, and over again, right? Or for that matter, suggestions that are so stupid that the submittor should be shot. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 12:09, 26 June 2006 (BST)

RE: yes of course i do, but that is not what this is about. there is no excuse to say someone should be "aborted" just because you do not like their suggestion and i am sure i am not the only person who thinks WTFCENTAURS and other responses are well past their sell by date. I can live with the stupid responses to stupid suggestions but some of the abuse posted today has been personal and beyond the pale, much of the rest is just bandwaggoning with no real point or constructiveness.--Honestmistake 12:16, 26 June 2006 (BST)

If people ask for others' opinions, they can't complain about what they get. If you don't want to be flamed, run your idea through this page first. The main reason why we had so many shitty suggestions (and such shitty responses) was because the authors couldn't be bothered to actually check whether people thought they were good ideas. And then there was W3c's "Veteran Revivers" suggestion. He couldn't take the hint that it was Just. Plain. Bad. And you're saying he should be insulted at the result? Abject stupidity doesn't earn you politeness or respect. Cyberbob Talk 12:23, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Even stupid people need respect. People don't come here to be criticised, they come here to try to get their suggestion into the game, and the judging of the idea is just a necessary obstacle to be overcome. As voters, it's our job to initially accept all suggestions, but then weed out the bad ones so that we only present the good to Kevan. We should do this as painlessly as possible for everyone involved, because if this page gets hostile and unwelcoming, we're going to start driving off perfectly good suggesters. And no-one wants that. --Toejam 17:26, 26 June 2006 (BST)

The least people can do is put it through it's paces here first. The LEAST. Commonsense, and reading the suggestions dos and do nots also goes a long way. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 17:28, 26 June 2006 (BST)

No the least they can do is think about what they are suggesting; in return the least they can expect is constructive criticism if the idea has merit and a reasonable level of abuse if it doesn't. It is possible and reasonable to insult someones suggestion with humour, it is not reasonable to make offensive comments just because you are having a bad day, feel like it or are just plain obnoxious. I didn't want to rant about this but the suggestion page is being ruined by people who should know better. Oh and XOID, the suggestion that you flamed so offensively was not really spam it just wasn't very good --Honestmistake 19:15, 26 June 2006 (BST)

No, it was spam. You do not directly negate another skill, not like that. It is in the list of dos and do nots. On top of that the suggestion was utterly irredeemable. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 19:38, 26 June 2006 (BST)

Thank you, Honestmistake, for your comments. I just saw this section, and was surprised to see that there are poeple in this wiki who believe in such things as ethics. --W3c 16:13, 1 July 2006 (BST)

It's nice to know that there are still people who are apologists for imbeciles. If they have enough brainpower to use a computer, play an online game, and navigate their way here, then they bloody well read the fucking rules as well as use what's between their ears. It ain't rocket science, and it's not particularly difficult. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 17:15, 1 July 2006 (BST)

If someone can't be bothered to do their part as a suggestor by reading the do's and do not's and previously submitted suggestions, then I can't be bothered to do my part as a suggestion voter and give them constructive feedback without expressing my sincere wish that grizzly bears rape their family to death. --Mookiemookie 18:08, 28 June 2006 (BST)

Why, Thankyou Mookiemookie, I appreciate the sentiment. But too bad I live on the other side of the Globe, where Grizzly bears aren't even in Zoos.--W3c 16:13, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Don't worry, I'm certain a suitably similiar creature could fill in. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 17:15, 1 July 2006 (BST)

So you're admitting that you don't read the rules of the page and make crappy suggestions because of it? Because I only directed my comment at those people. Well, whatever... --Mookiemookie 20:19, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Mookiemookie, I figured you were referring to me, because Honestmistake started this thread because of Xoid's offencive comment against me. I said what I said, and I haven't said what you claim. Don't put words in my mouth. And Xoid, you maybe the big-daddy-mod around here, but don't think, even for a moment, that I don't know how to shut you up, just because I try to be civil. I don't care about this wiki any more than I do for your Verbal Diarrhea - All I care about is the Game. --W3c 07:40, 2 July 2006 (BST)

And how, exactly, do you plan to shut Xoid up? Are you going to use your SHITTY INDENTATION SKILLS to give him an anuerysm? Cyberbob Talk 07:52, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I skipped Indentation because that would make it easier to notice a post between many comments - looks like it worked, though :) --W3c 16:22, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Sure. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 16:49, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Heh. No. You did say as much, or have you forgotten what you already wrote? MookieMookie specified that those who do not read the rules and their families were whom he wanted to see raped by grizzly bears. By saying that "You appreciate the sentiment", you are inferring that you are one of those people who can't be bothered to do their part as a suggestor. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 09:09, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I refuse to comment - and don't expect me to reply to any more of your flamebaits (yeah, I do remember calling me one!) Lets just get back to the game, shall we? --W3c 16:22, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Oh. So now, when you realise you're losing the argument, is when you suddenly decide to break off. Cyberbob Talk 16:33, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Cyberbob, why is that everyone insists on picking a fight with me? I've got better things to do, like improving my suggestions. Right now, there is one just above this thread - why don't you help me out and stop fighting over nothing?! I was new, I goofed up. I agree. But what good is flaming going to accomplish? Will it improve things around here? The mere idea of project U! pisses me off, even though it is supposed to be a joke.. If improving the game is more important to you than winning a flame war, help me out please. --W3c 17:06, 2 July 2006 (BST)

If flaming drives retards such as yourself away from the wiki, then I would say it accomplishes a lot. Cyberbob Talk 17:17, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Doesn't look that way, does it? I have become immune to flaming! And you know what? I won't reply to 'you-know-who's comments. Furthermore, I'm done with this thread. --W3c 20:46, 2 July 2006 (BST)

What a lovely little attempt at deception, unfortunately for you, I saw through that. Your "refusal to comment" would have actually had some weight had you not, y'know, commented. Anyway, I took offense to your patently false claim that MookieMookie was putting words because MookieMookie was not doing as such. You know it, I know it. Admit it. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 16:49, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Muahahahahaha DANCE MY LITTLE DRAMA-PUPPETS, DANCE! Actually though... get the sand out of your cooter, w3c. I was only poking a bit of fun at you "appreciating" a sentiment that wasn't aimed at you in the first place. --Mookiemookie 17:24, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Come to think of it, I'll add this: No. Stupid people do not need respect, let alone deserve it. They are but a plague, derailing any good endeavour they manage to become embroiled within with their constant inane, ill thought musings. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 17:15, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Hear hear. If you can't be bothered making an effort, no-one should have to put up with you. Cyberbob Talk

My 2 cents here. I am very new to this game, and not particularly wiki-savvy, but I've been a lot of online communities over the years, and have seen far too many die for lack of a simple code of netiquette. I understand it's annoying to deal with noobs over and over again (we used to call it the 'September syndrome'), but that's part of the cost of having new people join any community. A simple spam and ignore should be the correct response to someone who makes the suggestion for the umpteenth time, and leave the pointing to FAQ to someone else who has the patience for it. If you're in that bad a mood, log off for a while and get some excercise, work out the frustration physically, and come back. Jenny D'Arc^T 20:31, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Actualy I'll have to disagree with you Xoid, stupid people do need respect. Lazy people however don't need it. If you are too lazy then you don't deserve it because you haven't put in the effort to try and get it. These are what we call n00bs because they can't be bothered changing and we don't owe them anything. But we should try to help and respect the people who are genuinly trying to become better at something and are willing to listen to what more experienced people have to say. Todays newbie could be tomorrows bureaucrat. - Jedaz 08:49, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Or today's bureaucrat. Cyberbob Talk 08:53, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Thats kinda cryptic of you, care to expand on it? - Jedaz 09:04, 2 July 2006 (BST)

There is a difference between civility and respect Jedaz. No one gets my respect without earning it. People who show they are willing to improve have been spared from my bile. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 09:09, 2 July 2006 (BST)

I guess this is where the various interpertations of the word respect come into play. In my opinion you have to respect someone enough to be civil to them because if you don't respect someone at all how could you even be civil to them? Thats how I view the word and obviously you view it slightly differently. Of course I was talking about how we should respect people enough to be civil with them and at least try and help them if they need it. Of course no one gets a high level of respect from me without earning it either. But I do respect everyones opinions no matter who they are which I guess is a different kind of respect then the kind that you have of a person. Anyway none the less we should at least be civil to (or in my opinion respect) the people who want to learn and grow as people. - Jedaz 09:20, 2 July 2006 (BST)

	grammarlol
	theirs,grammar .mistake'sin,themthar hills this .userhate's grammar,mistakesyes siree;

The beast has arisen! Cyberbob Talk 10:21, 2 July 2006 (BST)

At least your spelling has improved significantly. Now perhaps you can work on your grammar? (I must say I am partly responsible for this. My idea. XD ) –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 10:27, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Well if you can point out where you belive I went wrong then it would help alot. I can't see the error, but grammar errors can be hard to identify at times. - Jedaz 10:37, 2 July 2006 (BST)

"Well if you can" -> "Well… if you can" OR "Well, if you can", ETC. It was primarily the lack of commas which earned you that template. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 10:50, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Ah, fair enough then. Well I'll go and work on it, thanks for pointing it out to me. - Jedaz 10:54, 2 July 2006 (BST)

And don't forget your vote on Weather. "purposed" -> "proposed" and "and this is much better I reckon" -> ", and I reckon this is much better." Cyberbob Talk 10:58, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Ah it doesn't really matter, it gets the same message across. I'll keep an eye out for various mistakes like that in the future, but I feel it's not worth making the effort of changing it now considering that it's just a vote. - Jedaz 11:08, 2 July 2006 (BST)

An excellent rebuttal Jenny, and possibly the only reason I would take into consideration, having already discounted all the others. Good show. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 09:09, 2 July 2006 (BST)

The Urban Dead Wiki: Now With 50% More Rainbows, Ponies and Happy Face Suns! --Mookiemookie 01:46, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Like, WTF? –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 15:13, 3 July 2006 (BST)

I said that because I thought the end result of this discussion was that we were supposed to be nicer and happier from now on? I guess that means I can't call anyone "fuckface" anymore. And that makes me a sad Mookie. :'( --Mookiemookie 03:31, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Backlog Progress

Just keeping a log of which pages I've done up to and by association, those ready to be filed away. It doubles as a measure of my hate for Mr NoName. "Current" Progress: January up to Jan 11th ready for processing. Velkrin 19:56, 21 May 2006 (BST)

Progress Update: Up to Jan 15th ready for processing. Velkrin 20:45, 21 May 2006 (BST)

Small Problem - Came across something odd while I was going through the rest of January in order to cross out invalid votes before I tallied. Found some votes which were signed but not dated. Are they still valid votes? Without the timestamp we can't be sure it was cast in time, and since the pages have no history we can't check it there. Should I just strike them? Velkrin 05:56, 22 May 2006 (BST)

Isn't the old page history still there on the pages the votes were moved from? --Dan 19:44, 22 May 2006 (BST)

Every page had had their history archived or deleted or some such so that it begins at March. So there is no history to check from what I can tell. - Velkrin 20:36, 22 May 2006 (BST)

Actualy they are invalid votes because you have to have a time stamp on your vote for it to be valid. - Jedaz 14:25, 23 May 2006 (BST)

Progress Update: January up to Jan 20 ready for processing. Velkrin 17:54, 23 May 2006 (BST)
Keep up the good work Velkrin. Hopefuly when we get through all of the backlog then people will put in the effort to actualy manage this system. But it seems unlikely to me that they will. Oh well one can only dream. - Jedaz 16:31, 24 May 2006 (BST)
Progess Update: The ENTIRE MONTH OF JANUARY, seen here, is ready for processing...mostly. There was a minor problem with this suggestion and votes appearing/disappearing. I pointed it out in my note. - Velkrin 18:48, 24 May 2006 (BST) - Edit: Page in working order again. No idea what was going on there. Velkrin 00:27, 25 May 2006 (BST)
Good job, I'll get onto that whole month now and get the suggestions sorted. - Jedaz 11:14, 25 May 2006 (BST)
Problem #3: Problem trifica is complete. Going through February when I came across this. Vote #14 is signed and timestamped, but there is no name link, which suggests the usual tilde method wasn't used, so we can't be sure it was the same user, or even the correct time. Valid or no? Velkrin 05:08, 26 May 2006 (BST) Edit - I also just noticed his other votes are done properly, but this one looks like it was inputted manually. 05:09, 26 May 2006 (BST)
Well I would say that it's invalid becasuse it's not stamped correctly, so feel free to remove it. - Jedaz 07:03, 26 May 2006 (BST)

I'm going to wait for a mod's opinion on this one. - Velkrin 21:17, 26 May 2006 (BST)

Well I don't see the point disturbing a mod for this. Mainly because even if the votes there or not the suggestion will still just go to peer rejected. - Jedaz 06:13, 27 May 2006 (BST)

Progress Update: The months of February and March are tallied - except for this (locked), and this (see above). - Velkrin 21:17, 26 May 2006 (BST)
Wow, Keep up the good work - Jedaz 06:13, 27 May 2006 (BST)
Tallied. Go nuts. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 13:40, 4 June 2006 (BST)
Yay! Finaly Januray has been done. Well for all of the peer reviewed suggestions. I'll go back over it later and move the other suggestions. But the peer reviewed realy need to be moved first I reckon because the older they get the less relevant they are to the game. - Jedaz 12:23, 29 May 2006 (BST)
Update: Bored of UD. Tired of favoritism towards survivors, lack of action on zerging front, etc, etc, etc. Someone else can take over. - Velkrin 22:16, 2 June 2006 (BST)
YES!, Febuary is all done now. We are getting there. Oh yeah, and cya Velkrin, we'll all miss your valuable contributions (yes I know it's a late reply, but meh). - Jedaz 09:02, 10 June 2006 (BST)
Yay, all the way up to the end of March is done. So I'll just check if the undecided suggestions are moved fully up to the end of March... - Jedaz 09:03, 19 June 2006 (BST)
Update: All, and I mean ALL of the way to the end of March is 100% done. So about 2 more months to process then we're back to where we should have been already. - Jedaz 10:23, 20 June 2006 (BST)
Update: - Yay, all of April is done. I reckon in about 2 weeks time there shouldn't be any back log left which will be good. Well heres hoping. - Jedaz 01:04, 29 June 2006 (BST)
- Another update - Well by the looks of things since I'm up to the 25th of May I should be able to eliminate the whole back log with in a few days. Much sooner then I was expecting obviously. I'll probably go and do some more tonight. I expect that if I get into it I should be able to finnish it off within 24 hours, but I'm not making any promises. - Jedaz 09:30, 29 June 2006 (BST)

THE BACKLOG IS NO MORE!!!

Yes, I have gone and finnished it all, so I'm happy as you may be able to tell. - Jedaz 03:28, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Streamlining old suggestions

In the course of doing research on a suggestion idea I might have (or trying to provide a link for a dupe vote), I normally search through the Previous Days pages and archives. But I usually skip searching through the Undecided page since, it seems to be a redundant page (as is Peer Rejected, for the most part). Undecided says see original votes for feedback while Rejected doesn't even list votes (which I think it should). What I propose is we get rid of Undecided and Peer Rejected. On the Previous Days pages, list the suggestions in full, including votes (most already ARE). Next to the title of each suggestion, we put the following markers. SPAMMED, REVIEWED (as in Peer Reviewed or just Peer Review) and KILLED, as well as the vote numbers.

Example:

Suggestions/3rd-Jun-2006

VOTING ENDED: 17th-Jun-2006

Radios Only Heard Via Receivers REVIEWED, 19/22

Make Broadcasting Require a Skill IMPLEMENTED

Radio Tuning REVIEWED, 11/12

Transmitters and Inventory WITHDRAWN

Executions SPAMMED, 7/8

Sense Infestation SPAMMED, 7/10

Brain Rot death rattle KILLED, 13/14

The markers would be to streamline the process for researcher.--Pesatyel 07:14, 26 June 2006 (BST)

While yes it is a good idea it is just too much work to continously do with the current back log and everything else that is happening with the suggestions system. If you want to know the votes on a suggestion in peer rejected or undecided just have a look at the time stamp on the suggestion and go from there, it's not that hard to do. Anyway I don't think what your purposing would work too well. You need to have a bit more at the end saying "Keep/Total" or whatever it's in. As far as I can tell it changes which kind of vote the first number stands for which is not very intuitive for most users. If you went and attempted one months worth of this you would realize how much effort would need to be put in and most likely you would be one of the few people who would put any in at all. Anyway I don't think it would be wise to remove peer rejected or undecided. Plus anyway there wouldn't be any record of the spaminated suggestions if peer rejected was removed. - Jedaz 09:08, 28 June 2006 (BST)

Well, spamminated suggestions would be left, in tact, on the previous days pages instead of being moved to the Peer Rejected.

Would anyone be upset if I made this a personal project?--Pesatyel 20:22, 29 June 2006 (BST)

I don't think it would be wise to start changing the main suggestions pages without first getting input from the rest of the wiki. However, if you worked on it in your User namespace, on a new sandbox page or something like that, I doubt there would be any problems. That way, people could see what your idea would look like, without you having messed around with the public pages. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 20:33, 29 June 2006 (BST)

As BobHammero said. Plus I'm unsure what you meen by spammminated suggestions would be left. Are you talking about using  to hide the suggestions or to leave them on the page so people could see them easily but just saying that voting is closed? Either way both solutions provide their own little problems.

Maybe a better way to go about this whole thing is to just have a massive listing of suggestions (which link to the suggestions) stating their votes. That way it doesn't clutter up the pervious days suggestions pages. I don't know though, I'm just not that comfortable with changing the current set up... - Jedaz 01:23, 30 June 2006 (BST)

That's basically the idea. As I currently understand it, the current day's suggestion page is moved to the Previous Days pages, minus any suggestions that get spammed which are sent to Peer Rejected. To use my example above, "Executions" and "Sense Infestation" would have been sent to Peer Rejected, while the others would have gone to Previous Days (with a note that "Executions" and Sense Infestation" were spamminated). Once voting ended, "Radios Only Heard Via Receivers," "Make Broadcasting Require a Skill" and "Radio Tuning" would have been moved to Peer Reviewed. "Brain Rot death rattle" would have stayed in Previous Days (or possibly moved to either Undecided or Peer Rejected) and "Transmitters and Inventory" would have just disappeared.

Instead, all 7 suggestions for that day would STAY on the Previous Days page. There, a person could read the whole suggestion, with votes, in its entirety, or just peruse the TITLES to know how the vote went. By leaving the suggestions intact on the Previous Days page, you save time and effort by simpling adding in the markers near the suggestion titles when the voting ends and NOT having to move suggestions anywhere else (it is a pain in the ass not being able to find a suggestion because it got moved somewhere or simply disappeared. "Transmitters and Inventory" would be listed in the contents page, but the suggestion itself would be gone). Well, I'm not sure how well I explained it (its way late...), but I think I'll take Bob's advice and see what I can do with my user page or a sandbox.--Pesatyel 11:04, 1 July 2006 (BST)

Hmm.... I kinda get what you mean I think. I can understand the frustration of not being able to see the suggestion on the page when you are looking, but what this means is that when voting is finaly closed for that day then you'ld have to unhide the suggestion. Although it's an alright idea I'm not that big of a fan of it because it would mean more work with the suggestions system and I don't want to start creating more work at the moment. The main reason is that most likely it won't be done and then you'll get what we had with the backlog of suggestions. (I caught up, yay!!! But no ones congragulated me yet *cries*) - Jedaz 00:40, 2 July 2006 (BST)

First of all, congrats on getting caught up. :p And yeah, I thought about that after I posted that last comment. It doesn't really change my idea a whole lot. Instead, we just have 3 sections. Peer Reviewed, Previous Days and Spamminated. And can you explain to me about "hiding" a suggestion?--Pesatyel 05:35, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Thanks, your the first person to congratulate me. Well if you have a look at the wiki code then you'll get an idea because I've included a "hidden" messages in this.

Basiclay there isn't much to tell about it, you more or less put  at the end of where you want to hide, aka the end of the suggestion. The only reason that I don't really like this is because I reckon it'll become a logistical nightmare due to people not doing the work properly. - Jedaz 09:11, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Humorous Suggestions?

Recently 2 "humorous" suggestions were removed from the main suggestion page and it is noted that placing purposefully humorous suggestions on the main suggestion page is considered vandalism. So, basically speaking, does that mean the UD wiki community does NOT want "humorous" suggestions posted?--Pesatyel 05:11, 5 July 2006 (BST)

Theres a page designed just for "humorous" suggestions where people can place them there. It was decided a while ago that it's considered vandalism if they are posted on the main page as it wastes peoples time having to find the real suggestions from the humorous. - Jedaz 09:13, 5 July 2006 (BST)

Policy Discussion

This area is for formal policy discussion concerning policy votings to be opened on the subject of the suggestion page, as per the rules for changing the rules

Voting Time

I propose a change to the current policy regarding the clearing of the Suggestions page. Currently, because I could not find an exact explanation, the policy seems to be something along the lines of, "Once per day the suggestions page will be cleared. On the day that it is cleared, all suggestions that were posted the previous day will be moved to the Previous Days Suggestions page to make way for new suggestions."

However, there is a problem with this policy. Theoretically, someone could make a horrible suggestion (along with their allowed author keep vote) right before the day changes, and before anyone else has a chance to vote, the suggestion could be moved by a moderator to the Previous Days Suggestions page. Now out of the spotlight, the suggestion could manage to make it two weeks without receiving a single vote beyond the author keep vote, and could end up on Peer Reviewed Suggestions, having received 100% Keep from its one vote.

I propose the following policy change:

To remove old suggestions, the suggestions page will be cleared, a process in which suggestions are moved to a subpage of the Suggestions page, and linked from the Previous Days Suggestions page. Suggestions that are moved must have been on the Suggestions page for at least twenty-four hours, based upon the timestamps on the suggestions and the current server time. If necessary, the Suggestions page may be cleared more than once per day.

–Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 00:21, 22 June 2006 (BST)

I don't know. I don't really see the need for this. Yes a bad suggestion could be moved in theory and pass. But you have to remember the Kevan factor of the whole system. As someone pointed out the other day Kevans implemented some suggestions from Peer Rejected and theres a whole lot of suggestions in Peer Reviewed that haven't made it into the game yet either. It's really all up to Kevans digression as to if he implements it into the game ore not. So I don't really feel that there is a reason to change the current system and this change would make more work and a much more cluttered page I reckon. - Jedaz 09:09, 22 June 2006 (BST)

True, this would require more work -- although I doubt it would require that much more, since it would only involve asking yourself something along the lines of "Hmm, is '09:00, 21 June 2006 (BST)' more than 24 hours past '10:00, 20 June 2006 (BST)'?" And of course Kevan has the final say over the entire game (and the wiki), but we want to reduce the possibilities of what goes onto Peer Reviewed to those things that the community can (by 2/3, at least) agree on as a good idea. Besides, it's not just about bad ideas, it's about potentially good ones as well. To use a suggestion of mine as an example, consider Alphabetized Drop Menu. Since it's been moved, it's only received one vote, which brings it to a total of 7 votes -- hardly representative of the community in its entirety. If every suggestion had 24 hours on the page, every one would get a fair chance at being seen by plenty of voters. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 05:38, 23 June 2006 (BST)

It would require to move every suggestion by itself, instead of en-masse. that would multiply the amount of work by 3 to 15 times. right now the moving is done very faithfully by one person. (thanks! good job) when Squashua stopped doing it we had a fall out that lasted weeks before somebody else took it up again. this would mean we increase the workload from a single action that can be done at the same time every day to something that needs to be done many times a day at irregular intervals. Asking for disorder and drama for something thats never been a problem--Vista 00:29, 25 June 2006 (BST)

Why would it require moving each one individually? Wouldn't it just be a matter of selecting all the suggestions up until the "not yet 24 hours" point, and moving those, just as is done now if there are "two days" of suggestions left on the page? (Yes, this would mean that some suggestions are on the page for more than a day, but it would still mean that nothing could be there for less than a day). –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 19:06, 27 June 2006 (BST)

What Vista means is that once a suggestion has 24 hours done it gets moved. Thats how he understood it and how I understand it. So what that means is that you only can move one suggestion at a time because it's highly unlikely for two suggestions to be submitted only a few minutes apart from eachother. So say if you have a series of suggestions at 03:06, 7:23, 13:58, and 18:42. From what you are purposing is that when 24 hours pass any suggestion is suppose to be moved. So say someone gets there at 4ish, moves the first suggestion. Then no one gets there until say 15ish and move the next suggestions and then eventualy someone goes and moves the last suggestion. So in essence thats 3 times more effort in moving the suggestions. It's not moving all of the suggestions in one lump and hence is why Vista (or so I belive) basicaly said that it would be moving the suggestions individually. If there were actually more people interested in moving the suggestions then I think this system *might* have a posibility of working well in my opinion. - Jedaz 08:46, 28 June 2006 (BST)

While I see the possibilty of something like that happening, I seriously doubt the probability of that ever happening. I, for one ALWAYS check the previous days suggestions just to see if there was something added that got sent there between when I perused the page on day 1 and then on day 2.--Pesatyel 06:49, 26 June 2006 (BST)

The idea is more to give every suggestion equal time on the page than to prevent the contrived scenario I outlined above. But if I don't get any support for this idea soon, I'll just withdraw it. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 19:03, 27 June 2006 (BST)

How about changing it to "...all suggestions that were posted the previous day and are at least 12 hours old...". So when someone logs on and maintains the page, the would leave behind any suggestions that have not been up for at least 12 hours, so all suggestions would spend 12 to 36 hours on the main page. --Gene Splicer 13:48, 30 June 2006 (BST)

Yeah, thats probably better, but I'm still not sure about it all... the main reason is because whos going to move the suggestions the other half day away? Usually I get on at 9 (BST) when I'm not on holidays and can't really get on 12 hours later. Anyway I think the current system works reasonably well as it is and changing it so it's more complex is kinda asking for trouble if you ask me. - Jedaz 00:52, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Do I need to do something official to withdraw this idea, or do I just let it die when the page is archived again? –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 19:19, 2 July 2006 (BST)

If you think it's worthy of putting it to the vote, feel free. The rules are around here somehere… –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 19:25, 2 July 2006 (BST)

If you want to withdraw the idea just wait for the page to be archived again. I'll be archiving in the next few days (unless someone else gets to it) so I'll make sure that this is gone when it does, that is unless you want to put it up to vote of course then I'ld leave it up so people can see the discussion and so on. Well let me know what you want to do so I can archive it accordingly. - Jedaz 12:08, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Might as well just let it die. I think the rules for this page are broken in many different ways, but this one is probably less important than some others I could think of. –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 01:00, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Dupe votes

I think it's ridiculous that people go and dupe an idea which is in peer rejected but say "I like the idea but it's a dupe". It's stupid because people will dupe an idea even though they like it and it'll never get into peer reviewed. I purpose a change in the rules from

 "Dupe, for Suggestions that are exact or very close duplicates of previous suggestions. For a Dupe vote to be valid, a link must be provided to the original suggestion."

to

 "Dupe, for Suggestions that are exact or very close duplicates of peer reviewed suggestions. For a Dupe vote to be valid, a link must be provided to the original suggestion."

If a suggestion is truely bad enough then it will get spamed, however this change protects suggestions that that were good, but were suggested at the wrong time. What do people think? - Jedaz 06:26, 18 June 2006 (BST)

Yes. I've always thought that was silly, but didn't realize people were actually doing it. --Pinpoint 22:53, 19 June 2006 (BST)

Agreed. Suggestions should be able to have a "second chance," so to speak. (Question: if a dupe of a rejected suggestion is later accepted, is the rejected, original suggestion removed, kept, or is a note added that a duped version was accepted?) –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 22:57, 19 June 2006 (BST)

Well I guess it can be noted on the suggestion that it was later accepted, however I don't know if people would pick it up because personaly I wouldn't go and state that a suggestion was taken from peer rejected. But yeah, I think it'ld be best just to note it. Oh yeah and to Pinpoint, there was a suggestion the other day which was duped and it had 3 links, all to peer rejected but people liked the idea this time around. It is silly, but it happens. I'll see if I can find it for you. - Jedaz 06:53, 20 June 2006 (BST) - EDIT - Here you go, XP gain for First Aid. I'm fairly sure it had a few keeps and no kills on it. - Jedaz 06:56, 20 June 2006 (BST)

I would definitely like to see some suggestions looked at again. As the game changes, some suggestions that were bad start to fit the game better. But....

Dupe votes prevent us from discussing the same suggestion, good OR bad, over and over. I think this idea is a step in the right direction, but I think it goes a bit too far. I believe we benefit from being able to remove frequently discussed suggestions quickly, and I wouldn't want to lose that ability.

If there was a middle ground that would let us remove the over-discussed suggestions easily, but still let us occasionally review previous suggestions, it'd be good. --Toejam 16:12, 20 June 2006 (BST)

Hmmm.... yeah I see your point. Well what about this version...

 "Dupe, for Suggestions that are exact or very close duplicates of suggestions that are currently not in peer rejected. For a Dupe vote to be valid, a link must be provided to the original suggestion."

This makes people wait at least 2 weeks so they don't get duped, which is what should happen. Is that better? I think this is probably the best way of getting a ballance without making it overly complicated. - Jedaz 03:33, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Jedaz, this alteration is just as bad as the other, IMO. That version means that once you get a suggestion in peer rejected, by waiting the two weeks, you can then dupe with impunity. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 03:54, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Hmmm.... good point. Well what do you suggest then? - Jedaz 07:55, 21 June 2006 (BST)

If you are hellbent on this… same rules as a SPAM vote; with the added caveat that a dupe vote doesn't count if the suggestion that is duped is 2 months old.

I would strongly prefer 3 months if this was going to pass regardless of my input. Frankly, I don't want the dupe rules to change to give thigns a second chance, I want them to change so moderators can remove dupes that get 3 dupe votes… (like with SPAM votes): too many useless ideas get duped and Kevan looks through both Peer Rejected and Peer Reviewed for ideas anyway. –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 08:05, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Hmm.... fair enough then. Well I see your point. As you said Kevan looks through both Peer Rejected and Peer Reviewed so I guess it wouldn't matter if this gets changed or not. Oh well, I'll still have a think and what not about it all. If you are serious about changing the votes required then start up a discussion and I'll support you. Seven votes are a little too much I reckon (especaily when they end up counting for nothing) - Jedaz 10:34, 21 June 2006 (BST)

How about permitting dupes on suggestions less than three months old if a recent game addition has affected it? E.g. any suggestion that required some kind of radio network. --20:41, 1 July 2006 (BST)

The way *I* have always viewed the Dupe vote is that it can be considered a dupe (WITH a link provided) if the original is in Peer Reviewed OR is still up for vote. I don't considered Peer Rejected a "dupe" vote source because if the idea truly sucks it gets spammed (though it WOULD help if it was more visibly mentioned as such), and there are only TWO places a suggestion goes to now: Peer Reviewed and Peer Rejected (do we even USE "Undecided" anymore?)--Pesatyel 22:34, 21 June 2006 (BST)

Undecided is probably the most neglected part of the system. Don't get me started with how broken our current system is. *sigh* But if you look now there are a few more suggestions in undecided now as we are getting through this massive backlog. We are less than 2 months away from catching back up. Anyway I don't think anyone would dupe from undecided becuase when you make the suggestion you should really say that you got it from undecided and worked on it ect so it is better. Thats what I did with one of the ideas and it passed (just). The reason that there are so few suggestions in undecided is that in most cases people either love the idea or hate it, there is hardly ever a major split between people. Anyway I digress, yeah I'ld have to agree with your analysis of what a dupe vote should be. I would say that we should use the spam vote for re-occurring ideas, but of course that'll get abused even more then it does now. Actualy I think the only way to make the spam vote not be abused as much is to make it so it doens't count as a kill. That way people would think twice before spaming an idea. Either way I think the whole suggestions system is fairly broken, and peer reviewed is too large in my opinion for it to be of any help to Kevan even though he does say that it's alright. But all we are doing here is giving potential ideas to Kevan and how to implement it and then let him know what the players of the game want. Thats all really, nothing much else. - Jedaz 03:09, 22 June 2006 (BST)

I'm not sure we really NEED an "undecided" page. What might be better would be to just have the previous days pages/archies indicate what happened to the suggestion. Put SPAMMED, REVIEWED (as in Peer Review), or KILLED next to the name. Killed would mean the possibility that someone could rework then resubmit the idea. Of course we'd probably need to change the Peer Rejected page to a "spammed" page as well.--Pesatyel 20:30, 24 June 2006 (BST)

Why don't you put up a discussion asking to scrap undecided. ever since december people have asked what the damn use was but nobody cared enough to do anything about it. (probably because the whole undeciced page has been ignored for months) getting rid of it would streamline the process a little bit.--Vista 00:33, 25 June 2006 (BST)

Well, I did just that (above), but it doesn't look like anyone is interested.--Pesatyel 02:44, 27 June 2006 (BST)

I agree with a lot of the above. Kill the undecided page, and restrict valid Dupe votes to peer-reviewed suggestions only. If the suggestion is found in peer-rejected, voters should vote Kill or Spam and also provide a link to the rejected version for the benefit of other voters. A peer-rejected idea that gets dredged up seems to me quite likely to get Spammed if it isn't substantially improved; and there is no substantial difference between a vote getting removed for Duping and one getting removed via Spamination. --Ember ^MBR 19:54, 27 June 2006 (BST)
- Ok, let me explain why we actually have the "undecided" page. It's to make it easier to find suggestions that are close to passing but just need some number crunching or a mechanic that needs changing. Now, the reason that people have found it "useless" is because people haven't actualy done the work with the suggestions system. Also there are much slimer requrements for undecided then there is for peer reviewed and peer rejected and people usualy either hate an idea or absolutly love it. But for suggestions that are close this is their second chance to make it into the game. But yeah, I agree with how Spam and Kill should just be used on the duped suggestions from peer rejected, however of course not to officaly mention it would be better I reckon. - Jedaz 09:25, 28 June 2006 (BST)

How about you can't Dupe something that's only in Undecided and was suggested more than 3 months ago? --Jon Pyre 19:03, 2 July 2006 (BST)
- That doesn't solve the inital problem with people duping from peer rejected though. Oh well, I don't think it occurs frequently enough for it to need to be fixed now I think about it, however it's still silly that it's posiable I reckon. - Jedaz 06:45, 6 July 2006 (BST)

New Vote Type

Currently there exist four valid votes, Kill(A bad idea, or a good idea badly implemented), Keep(A good idea in all or most respects), Dupe(already suggested and agreed upon), and Spam(Get off our wiki). I propose a new vote class, Revise. Revise indicates the concept has good merit, but needs serious revision. This would allow the author of a poorly implemented skill to know that it's not the concept that people dislike, just the specifics. It would also reduce the use of Spam as a "Strong Kill", since Kill would be a pretty strong statement on it's own. The tally method would be changed as follows

EDIT Pesatyel pointed out a humiliating error in my maths. I have revised the modifiers to take this into account, and extend them my sincerest gratitude.

66% or higher keeps: Peer Reviewed
66% or higher kills/spams: Peer Rejected
50% or higher keeps, ~~more revises~~ twice as many revises as kills: Peer Reviewed
50% or higher kills, ~~more revises~~ twice as many revises as keeps: Peer Rejected
All others: Peer Undecided.

An alternative method of looking at this is to tally a Revise as .5 of a kill and .5 of a keep. Or assuming that for every two people who voted Revise, one would have voted Kill and one would have voted Keep. If you check the math, the above fixed quick and easy guidelines result in suggestions going where they would have anyway.

Finally, this may change perceptions of Peer Undecided from a useless waste of wiki space to a stockhouse of imaginative ideas to create "elegant implementations" for. --Gene Splicer 14:55, 2 July 2006 (BST)

So essentially, a revise is equivalent to the current kill (fix your suggestion variety), kill is equal to "this idea just sucks" and spam would be "this idea is beyond sucking, please erase it from existence.", have I got all that about right? –Xoid ^S•T•FU! 15:02, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Exactly --Gene Splicer 16:58, 2 July 2006 (BST)

If Xoid has it correctly, I'd be all for this idea. Cyberbob Talk 15:06, 2 July 2006 (BST)

Would this replace kill? If not, it seems redundant and a bit complicated (Keep, Kill, Revise, Spam, Dupe). I think most people know what they want from the suggestion and vote accordingly. I belive kill has always implied that the suggestion is a revisable one, otherwise they would vote spam (though, as I said, replacing kill with revise would be clearer). And I don't like (no offense) your altered tally systems. Half points just complicate things.

66% or higher keeps: Peer Reviewed
66% or higher kills/spams: Peer Rejected
50% or higher keeps, more revises than kills: Peer Reviewed
50% or higher kills, more revises than keeps: Peer Rejected
All others: Peer Undecided.

If, say 100 people voted on a suggestion and we had 50 keeps and the rest a mix of kills, spams and revises, why should it go to Peer Reviewed if it doesn't even meet the 66% keep votes? Does that mean that "revise" votes have to constitute 32% of the votes since they are half points (basically, 82% of the votes have to be Keep or Revise)? Because you can't have more "revise" votes then "keep/kill" in that instance. It seems to me the most simple way to do it is Keep (like it as is), Revise (the suggestion is okay, but needs work), Spam (the idea will not work no matter what) and Dupe (ONLY of items currently up for vote or in Peer Reviewed).--Pesatyel 05:28, 3 July 2006 (BST)

Yup, my maths were wrong. Please see EDIT above for that part of my response. For the rest: As of now, I see kill used two ways. "Just no" and "I like the concept, but I don't want it being reviewed with these specifics". Keep is also used in two ways, "perfect" and "I don't like the specifics, but I don't want the concept to be rejected ". In theory, this would result in the following

Keep - I like (guy 1)
Kill - I hate (guy 2)
Keep - I like the concept, but you should change some specifics (guy 3)
Kill - I like the concept, but you should change some specifics (guy 4)

So off to peer undecided. But in practice, sometimes guy 3 and guy 4 (or, rather, the groups they represent) both vote keep or both vote kill, so off to rejected/reviewed with you. Revise is mainly designed to prevent this happening, and also to make it easier to pick suggested improvements from straight kills/keeps. The reason for revives counting a spartial votes is because... well, I'll give another example, with more people

Keep - I like! And always will! (guy 1)
Keep - I like! 5% is just perfect. (guy 2)
Kill - A good idea, but make it 4% instead of 5% (guy 3)
Keep - I like, but make it 6% instead of 5% (guy 4)
Keep - I like. 5% is fine. (guy 5)
Kill - This sucks (guy 6)

This skill is pretty well liked, and passes, four out of six! But now revise is an option

Keep - I like! And always will! (guy 1)
Keep - I like! 5% is just perfect. (guy 2)
Revise - A good idea, but make it 4% instead of 5% (guy 3)
Revise - I like, but make it 6% instead of 5% (guy 4)
Keep - I like. 5% is fine (guy 5)
Kill - this sucks (guy 6)

This skill is still well liked, and to the same degree, but since only a max of three people would ever be perfectly happy, there would only ever be a 50% keep vote and it would never leave peer undecided. This is the danger of the revise option, and the altered peer reviewed/rejected requirements are there to reflect this. --Gene Splicer 17:01, 3 July 2006 (BST)

My only problem with this setup is that this would make the people who sort the old suggestions into Peer Reviewed, Rejected, and Undecided do even more work. We're already backed-up as it is. HamsterNinja 00:49, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Are we really that backed up? You could have fooled me. - Jedaz 00:54, 4 July 2006 (BST)

I don't think this is really necessary. Since people have to justify their votes anyway, most people specify what they don't like about a suggestion when they vote on it. "Kill" doesn't really mean revise anyway; it means, "no, I don't like this idea." If someone wants to see it changed, they often say so in their vote. "Spam" means "this idea is irredeemably flawed, and would be a waste of time to continue voting on." –Bob Hammero ^{Mod•B'crat•T•A} 01:03, 4 July 2006 (BST)

That's kind of my point... there's no official "I like the idea, but it needs fiddling" vote. Your only official options right now are "Good", "Bad" and "Really bad". Thus results in people with good ideas/poor implementation being discouraged by all the Kill votes and giving up, and people with bad ideas assuming "kill" means "try again" and resubmitting the same bad idea with tiny variations over and over. --Gene Splicer 02:44, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Hey Jedaz, maybe SOMEONE will notice the backlog is gone! Anyways, what it seems to me you are saying you want is an official clarification of what each vote means. It appears you have an unclear idea on what the kill vote means, which, in truth, I can understand.

Keep means the voter likes the suggestion as is.
Kill means the voter does not like the suggestion in its current form and must supply a way to try and make it acceptable.
Spam means the voter does not believe suggestion cannot be salvaged and must supply a valid reason why.
Dupe means the suggestion is exact or very close to a suggestion in Peer Review or currently open for voting.

I may be mistaken, but I believe that most voters view the votes that way, albeit unofficially. However, it appears in your example above, you replaced Kill' with Revise, as I said. Is that what you intended?--Pesatyel 05:33, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Just found this, and to provide my own experience to the case, i sometimes use kills for "i like it but not like that", and some other times i use keeps with the same purpose. The "revise" vote wuold be a nice addition actually. This kind of discussion wont be better in the Moderation/Policy Discussion page for everyone to vote? this kind of decision has to have the approval of the community, and here it's kinda hidden. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^Talk 05:59, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Good point about the backlog Pesatyel. Anyway Matthew although this kind of thing would get more exposure in policy discussion the suggestions page has an area specificaly set up for this kind of thing. When this goes to vote (if decided that it should) then we can put up a notice to go and make people more aware of it. But putting that all aside, I reckon that having a Revise vote wouldn't be that bad. The only issue that I have with it is that it would create more work just by having to take longer to work things out. - Jedaz 06:27, 4 July 2006 (BST)

Keep, Kill, etc are already officially defined, and they are defined as so:

Keep, for Suggestions that you believe have merit.
Kill, for Suggestions that you believe do not have merit.
Spam, for the most ridiculous suggestions.

These are the exact definitions of these votes as listed on the Suggestions page. Also, from the "Peer Rejected" page

"This page is for the storage of Suggestions that have failed Peer Review and have been considered Poor and Unworthy Suggestions."

This gives a very different definition of Kill from what Pesatyel gave. Keep means "I like". Kill means "I do not like, and want this sent to the darkest hole of the wiki"(Peer Rejected). Spam means "Hole not dark enough. Make new hole". There is no "I kind of like" or "I could like" allowed, even though this is often how I (and other people?) feel about suggestions. An official vote for thi would make it much easier for voters to say what they actually mean, and for suggesters to understand how their suggestions are going down. I understand that this would lead to more work maintaining the pages, which is why I tried to post the simplest guidelines I could think of that worked. However, the only Maintainy person to voice in so far has seemed nominally in favour, whch is encouraging. (I have also changed the example to be a bit clearer, Guy 6 was supposed to be voting "Kill" the whole time. Brain hiccups FTW.) --Gene Splicer 02:38, 5 July 2006 (BST)

Yes, I'm aware they way I interpret the meaning of each vote is different from the "official" interpretation. But I feel the "official" interpretations are a little too vague.--Pesatyel 05:17, 5 July 2006 (BST)

It's not that the official votes are vague, it's just that they really don't cover all existing situations. Because of this, people are forced to add additional meanings to them to allow them to vote how they actually feel. Exactly what a keep or kill vote means then becomes subjective to the person voting, which defeats the entire purpose of a count-based voting process. This suggestion introduces the new vote to reflect the areas which they do not cover, so people do not have to distort the existing votes to fit around what they want to say. --Gene Splicer 14:14, 5 July 2006 (BST)

How about dividing it up so it's like this

66% or more of keeps is peer reviewed
75% or more of reviews and keeps is undecided
50% or more of kills is peer rejected
The rest is undecided

What do people think of that? I reckon it's nice and simple and easy to calculate. I'm a bit tired at the moment so I may not have thought about it properly so I'll have a look at it again tomorrow when I've had some more sleep. - Jedaz 13:37, 6 July 2006 (BST)

Well, it's doesn't say where, for example, a 70% keep and revise mix would go. Is less than 75% keeps and revises, but less than 50% kills too. Reducing the rejected requirement to 50% is a bit harsh. Whatever the end guidelines end up being, I think 66% keeps = reviewed, 66% kills = rejected should remain intact. I'm off to bed (I on GMT) but I will post some alternative guidelines tommorrow. --Gene Splicer 02:27, 7 July 2006 (BST)

What do you mean? It says that the rest of the suggestions that don't fit into any of the categories go to the undecided category. Anyway the reason I chose 50% for peer rejected is because thats what it currently at so I reckon thats fair, we don't want to change the system too much just to add in one type of vote. - Jedaz 09:23, 7 July 2006 (BST)

Policy Votes

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Talk:Suggestions/archive14

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Increase Ransack

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