UDWiki:Open Discussion/Borehamwood How Was It For You?

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This is NOT a policy discussion. This is an Open Discussion about the unique Borehamwood situation. Add your thoughts and ideas. Please treat it as such and contribute with that in mind.

A vague Attempt at order.

Ok. For Clarity Can each person please state their opinions under a header featuring their user name. After that, discuss here, or on the talk page.

Rosslessness

Having Played on both sides, I think that Borehamwood was a better thought out city than monroeville. The Rage Ability helped out zombies in the early days to horde more quickly. The lack of Radio Transmitters made broadcasts a more useful tool. Finally The fact that the gaming rules haven't changed is of great benefit. The opening/closing/headshot/not headshot rules of monroeville really sucked the fun out of the place.

Rorybob

In my opinion, there was something, as in Monroeville, that made the maps ever so slightly less enjoyable than Malton. For Monroeville, (As Ross stated) it was the Perma-death, no perma-headshot, no perma-death. In Borehamwood, it was the Big Brother House. It was the main "Objective" of most of the players, so much of the rest of the map was unpopulated. For a competiton, it was great, but for gameplay, it wasn't so good.

DanceDanceRevolution

Once again, I got over the idea of starting afresh and, like in Monroeville, my characters slept in for 4 weeks before being killed. The idea of just being thrust into the city seems fun but without the immediate structure of Malton (barricades, masses of players etc.) it loses its feel. After Iscariot's behaviour on the wiki and Hagnat's subsequent tantrum I made an effort not to bother going to the BB house.

I often think that the area in the new cities is too large for 1000 level 1 players. I love travelling in any game, but in UD it just isn't feasible in a 'one life' scenario with little metagaming scene, unless you are a team player, which I'm not. If there was anything that would have kept me playing, it would have been for Borehamwood to start off at 50% the size, to give players more bonding in 'groups' and 'hordes', as to allow players to level up some. Then give it 3 or 4 weeks and "lift the quarantine" and add the extra 50% onto the map. --ϑϑℜ 12:48, 22 July 2009 (BST)

Thats a sodding amazing idea! Or perhaps a couple of smaller areas, that are then linked up? Or links that only become opened after a certain action (Like wirecutters, but bigger.) Someone must repair, power, and transmit on a certain frequency to get the bridge opened. Or something.--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 13:02, 22 July 2009 (BST)

Honestmistake

DDR has hit the problem with new maps dead on. The race for MoL vs Construction adds a lot to the early days but the maps are just too damn big. For the next one I would actually like to see NPC's in the early game. Just mindless bots scrabbling at doors, chewing on corpses or running around hysterically until killed. Countering this I would remove the xp gains for whack n fak and Zed/Zed combat. Might give the sense of theme more weight.--Honestmistake 14:38, 23 July 2009 (BST)

So how would these NPC's work? Passive alts created by kevan? Maybe a couple of hordes at various points? A church or railway station being used as an evacuation point, full of level one consumers. Newspapers or graffiti could contain the information on where they are? --Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 16:27, 23 July 2009 (BST)

Pretty much any or all of those things... I know people would shout "NPC's are against the spirit of UD!!!" but lets face it, the abandoned accounts already provided this so why not make it a bit more flavourful by making it deliberate and coding in a few generic responses? --Honestmistake 12:26, 24 July 2009 (BST)

I like the "TK" nerf there. Though it would put people in danger, isn't that what a zombie apocalypse is all about? :) --Rahrah^{Come join the #party!}16:47, 23 July 2009 (BST)

Necrofeelinya

Borehamwood was great at the start, but participation was low in part because of the very brief window for new character creation. Rage sped up the game, but I think the organization of the BPC was the dominant factor in how quickly the city was crushed. It seems to me that speeding up the game at the start was kind of pointless if it was just going to lag at the end, and zombies seemed to anticipate this... after ruining the city, the BPC disbanded and most of the zombies dropped out of the game despite significant numbers of survivors remaining. Like Monroeville, there's been no end game in Borehamwood. The game seems capable of dragging on for years, just as long as a few players keep holding out on either side. That doesn't seem to me like it should be the nature of a "hardcore" city. I somewhat agree with DDR's idea. There needs to be concentration of area, dependent upon the number of participants. Either that, or the participants need to somehow forage for survival. But I'd say not just at the start, I mean all through it. That is to say, as participation shrinks, so does the area, just as it grows as participation grows.

If players found it too slow at the start of the game, they were in the wrong areas. Anyone near the BB house saw the slaughter about to commence, as I'm sure those in the Northeast did. That's where the waves came from, if you were in Radlett or the Northwest at the start of the game, you'd probably have been bored to tears waiting for the carnage to reach you, and once it did, the devastation was so rapid you didn't have much of a chance. The fun of B-wood early as a survivor was trying to play the front lines, staying close enough to the action to see it happening, but getting away quickly enough to not get caught by it. My first character died quickly due to an early miscalculation near the BB house... my second took much longer, getting chased from 'burb to 'burb and I watched in awe as the destruction proceeded around the city, playing both as a zombie and a survivor, enjoying both sides.

Notable among the problems in B-wood early on was the extensive use of street treats to level zombies. This was just part of the excessive metagaming that's plagued the game throughout in my opinion. It was blatantly obvious around the BB house, where one could go and find rooms full of both survivors and zombies, and it was pretty obvious that few if any of them were seriously contending for the space. They were building a horde and speed leveling it, preparing the organized onslaught that was to come. Survivors responded, albeit belatedly, with a highly organized metagaming effort that they still continue now. And now, in an effort to organize the remaining zombies, I'm experimenting with metagaming options as well. Borehamwood has always kind of given non-metagamers a hard time. If only things could have stayed simple.

I also posted a concept a while back on DevSug that contained a few suggestions for a new hardcore city... it's now on my Wiki User page and I need to work on it more to flesh it out, but there are ideas there I'd really like to see tried out. But I'll stop rambling now, and let someone else use up some page space here.--Necrofeelinya 01:41, 24 July 2009 (BST)

Zarneverfike

I enjoyed Borehamwood at the start, and am still enjoying playing it now. The challenge of surviving as a human against fairly overwhelming odds adds a whole different flavor than Malton has. I agree that Borehamwood was a better planned city than Monroeville. Having just 2 malls and the Big Brother House in theory should have meant longer sieges (as there were fewer choke-points. It didn't work out that way, but it was better having fewer points of survivor concentration. I'm not sure of the numbers, but Borehamwood felt a bit smaller, with so much land in the countryside (much of it blocked by the river.) Rage was a good addition. Also, the TVs and CCTVs were nice flavor.

That said, there were some things I think could have been better. The Big Brother house was too large for survivors to defend. It should have been slightly smaller, or it should have had mechanics similar to a fort (If you remember the show, there were outer gates that kept the zombies out.) I think that would have made the house last a bit longer (which would have been more fun for both sides.)

I like the idea of a smaller city to start with or a segmented city. That would add a very interesting gameplay element to the beginning part of the game. I don't like the idea of the city shrinking with participation. Once the zombie / human ratio becomes very zombie heavy, the only effective way to survive is to evade fights with them (something that would be nearly impossible in a shrinking city.) You would end up with a city that was completely zombie infested after about 2-3 months.

As for survivor meta-game, its never been highly organized, but it exists to keep survivors alive. Meta-game develops on whichever side has a tougher time game-mechanics wise (which is why zombies have a much better meta-game in Malton.) Borehamwood's survivor meta-game works fairly well because its to the point now where its strictly survivors vs. zombies (meaning all PKers and spies have long since been eliminated.)

I think that's all I wanted to add. Oh, yeah... I wanted a boat, damn it. --Zarneverfike 17:50, 24 July 2009 (BST)

"The Big Brother house was too large for survivors to defend. It should have been slightly smaller, or it should have had mechanics similar to a fort (If you remember the show, there were outer gates that kept the zombies out.) I think that would have made the house last a bit longer (which would have been more fun for both sides.)" - You could have retreated to one of the office facilities or nearby warehouses, which were as easy to defend as any building in the city. Isolated, but not multi-room like the BB house itself. I think the BB house made sense not being easily defended, and the nearby offices made sense being more defensible, though I still think they stood no chance with what was going on there. Nothing did with that concentration of interest.--Necrofeelinya 12:09, 2 August 2009 (BST)

Blake Firedancer

I didn't mind Borehamwood that much. To me, it was just another city. I did enjoy the cameras in the PDs though. It's only a pity I got to the Big Brother house after it was ruined, and the promotion had ended.

I think for me it was seeing the new building types that was the most fun. Just a shame they were all ruined before you could say "Harman pudding in a can" --Blake Firedancer ^{T E RNL? P.I.S.I.T.} 11:09, 24 August 2009 (BST)