User:Swiers/Follow Groan

Follow Groan

 Swiers 02:29, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Suggestion type
skill improvement

Suggestion scope
Feeding Groan

Suggestion description

introduction: Feeding Groans inspire urgency in those who hear them, zombie or survivor. As such, this suggestion would simulate zombies blindly and instinctively responding to feeding groans, driven purely by hunger, or survivors rushing to intervene in an ongoing attack they hear in the distance while outside. The aim of this suggestion is to make things a bit easier on new players (who may lack skill at navigating) and low level zombies (who lack Lurching Gait) and to potentially save other players some IP hits and time.

mechanics: Feeding groans normally give the distance(s) and direction(s) from which they originated. Per this suggestion, each feeding groan you hear would also have a button that says "Follow Groan (nAP)". Pressing that button would move your character directly to the "outside" location at the co-ordinates from which the groan originated, with the AP cost (n) being equal to the normal "minimum distance" cost for moving to that block (1 AP per block moved). This is regardless of whether the character is human or zombie, or even a zombie who does not have Lurching Gait.

issues:

• Isn't this a Speed Action or form of teleportation? It could be described as such. But so can Free Running. With free running, you skip the movement step of leaving / entering a building (and its AP cost), and never see the outsides of locations. With Follow Groan, you would skip moving through a few intervening blocks (but not the AP cost) and not see what was in those blocks. Feeding Groans are not predictable, and rarely would this affect "real time" combat, as most times zombies follow groans that are many minutes old.
• Can this take you into negative AP? As with other actions that cost more than 1 AP (including movement for zombies who lack Luching Gait) this could take you into negative AP. You'd likely end up outside a building that is either going to get ruined or re barricaded before you can act, but if you wanted to you could do it. Manufacture of Necrotech Syringes (a Speed Action already allowed by the game) and movment by zombies who lack Lurching Gait can already result in negative AP, so it seems an established game mechanic.
• What is the point / effect of this? The primary effect is to allow low level feral zombies to respond to feeding groans more easily, with fewer AP to move and no chance of getting lost, both of which are good for players who don't meta game. The secondary effect is that experienced players can more easily follow groans- its the same movement cost for them, but eliminates the chance of getting lost, and reduces IP hits they use moving. Tertiary effects might be to reduce server load (fewer IP hits used by both newbies and experienced players = less server load) and also increase the utility of feeding groan slightly.
• What if I'm not standing up? What is the AP cost going to be? You can't move when you are a corpse, and standing up would refresh the screen. Thus, this only works for character's that are standing. To really benefit from this ability, low level zombies would have to make an effort to avoid being killed.
• How far does this let you move? You can only ever hear Feeding Groans from at most six blocks away, so it would let you move up to 6 blocks. Movement from one point to another in Malton can always be accomplished by moving a number of blocks equal to the greater of δ(X co-ordinate values) or δ(Y co-ordinate values), through a combination of diagonal and straight moves. Thus, the Ap cost would vary from 1 to 6 AP as the distance of the groan does.