User talk:Phil Nekro

Welcome

Hey Phil! Sorry you lost your password, but welcome back to UDWiki! If there's anything I can help with just let me know at my talk page. Cheers! Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 23:54, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Archive of your suggestion below

Rubble

Timestamp: Phil Nekro (talk) 23:00, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Type: Adjustment

Scope: Ruined Buildings

Description: This change is partially predicated on the idea that Urban Dead's best days are behind it and that Kevan is not going to release an Android or iOS app in the future to bring in a new wave of users. I've been playing the game off and on since 2005, and the apocalypse vibe is truly setting in. There are about as many people [actively playing now http://www.urbandead.com/stats.html] all over the city as there were at the First Siege of Caiger Mall alone. That's not necessarily a problem, but one of the effects of the suburbs being mostly empty is that the barricade system especially survivors when the population is low-density. As a solo survivor it's much easier to barricade a few buildings and free run from one to the next than it is as a solo zombie to break down even a Very Strongly Barricaded building and get inside with enough AP to accomplish anything. If you're not part of a coordinated group, I don't see how it's fun at all to be a zombie right now, much less a brand new zombie with low attack accuracy and no lurching gait, and I think that's reflected in the stats. Therefore I think it would be helpful to have a deeper stage of Ruin that is more like Rubble: the roof has completely caved in, the interior stairwell is inaccessible, there are huge holes in the walls, etc. Essentially, take the descriptions from the Decay feature but make it something that can be done intentionally and with the added effect that the building becomes like a street square until it gets repaired, meaning it can't be used for free-running out of either. Now, on the mechanics, I think a few considerations still need to be worked out because scale is important. If zombies could spend 10 AP doing this, it would definitely make mall sieges more like actual sieges because you could deny adjacent entryways to heavily barricaded areas just by ruining them. For any organized group, it seems like this would be incredibly overpowered. Instead, the best balance I can think of is that after some number of days of being ruined (three sounds good to me), 10 AP can be used to reduce a building to 'Rubble' where it functions as a street square until repaired. I also think this could be explained easily in-game as an effect of the continued decay of buildings in the city, so they're now weak enough that zombies can partially collapse them, and would be a replacement to the current Decay effect which takes more AP to repair the longer it's been in that state. The positive effect is that zombies would be able to mark off territory more effectively and limit where survivors could easily hide. Places like Ridleybank would be immediately obvious as inhospitable except from a concerted effort by survivors to go in together, but it would help out zombies in safer neighborhoods too because it would throw a wrench into a lot of barricade plans. For balance on the other side, I have two issues I haven't worked out because I play survivor more rarely. The first is how much AP it should take to repair this, because I don't really know what would be a fair number to both sides and in most situations of varying population density. The second is whether it would make sense for survivors still to be able to hide themselves in the rubble so that they can't be seen unless someone is in the same square as them. If it was completely like a street, I think that would be going too far. But the second biggest AP help to zombies would be being able to stand 'in' a Rubble building and still see the outside of the surrounding blocks without having to spend an AP going in and out. As a coding issue, I have no idea how difficult it would be, but if the ability to 'hide' from people not in the same square as you were not included, it seems like all it would take is re-purposing some of the flavor text and temporarily changing a building into a street. Summary: New zombie skill called 'Rubble'; replaces Ruin decay with a AP-costing action; Rubble buildings function like streets until repaired.

Discussion (Rubble)

The main difficulty I think is that a number of people use Big Game Ruin Hunting as their main play mechanic/motivation; removing/significantly altering the one-a-day ruin cost would really mess those people up. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 23:53, 27 September 2016 (UTC)

Yeah, but by 'a number' you're essentially saying maybe 20-30, if that, right? If there other bad effects I haven't considered, that's an issue but I don't think a couple dozen long time users are enough to veto something that would positively effect hundreds. Survivors lose permanent free-running entrance portals and zombies get a way to better invest AP, so as balance, there's a cap to how much AP that costs to undo. As a zombie, I'd have absolutely no problem with leaving it so Big Game Ruin Hunting could still work, but I imagine that would be considered unfair even though there are more zombie hunters than zombie hunters right now.--Phil Nekro (talk) 00:23, 28 September 2016 (UTC)

linking for selfishness A ZOMBIE ANT 00:45, 30 September 2016 (UTC)

	WARNING
	This suggestion has no active discussion. It will be removed on: 5/28/2018

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