Suggestion:20120722 Beckon

	Closed
	This suggestion has finished voting and has been moved to Peer Rejected.

20120722 Beckon

A Big F'ing Dog 07:15, 22 July 2012 (BST)

Suggestion type
Skill upgrade

Suggestion scope
Zombies

Suggestion description
This is an idea for a communication ability that would allow zombies to covertly contact allies, and use scent trail to follow friends as well as enemies.

I suggest upgrading Flailing Gesture to also gives zombies a Beckon attack. This attack would cost 1 AP, deal 0 damage, and have an 100% chance of success, acting like the zombie version of a newspaper attack.

It would look like this to the target:

A zombie stared at you.

Survivors and zombies targeted by the Beckon would receive a link to the "attacking" zombie's profile, and recognize them if already in their contacts.

If a targeted zombie has Scent Trail then they would be able to follow the zombie that beckoned at them. This would make Beckon a pretty handy way for allied zombies to stick together without talking to each other. You could beckon at each one of your contacts in a room so they know where to meet you.

Unlike zombie speech, flailing gestures, groans, and bellows it's important to note that Beckon is entirely confidential. Only the person you targeted gets the message. This allows zombies to secretly lead their friends elsewhere, without forcing them to alert other zombies they do not know.

Voting Section

Voting Rules

Votes must be numbered, justified, signed, and timestamped. # justification ~~~~ Votes that do not conform to the above may be struck by any user.

The only valid votes are Keep, Kill, Spam or Dupe. If you wish to abstain from voting, do not vote.

Keep Votes

1. Keep A handy way for small groups of zombies to stick together without metagaming. Perfect for a tiny band of strangers remaining together after their first victory. In discussion a valid point was raised that this doesn't really help with leading large groups because the AP cost would be prohibitive to beckon at all 90 zombies in a horde. It might be worth coming up with another skill suggestion for the purpose of leading large groups. But I think Beckon is fine as a covert messaging system for pairs of zombies and small groups, without also covering that more powerful function as a horde leader ability. --A Big F'ing Dog 07:19, 22 July 2012 (BST)
2. Keep/Change I encounter situations where this would be helpful all the time. Just the other day, after a successful siege on a building in which several ferals helped, my group decided to move half a suburb away to another building. I'd have loved if those ferals could have tagged along. Though those ferals are still in my contacts, I will probably not have a chance to play with them again. I prefered the version of this suggestion in which actual hand gestures were used, so that's the only thing I would change. I don't really like the "stare" flavor of the current suggestion. ~ _{18:10, 22 July 2012 (UTC)}

Kill Votes

1. Kill - My issue wasn't that the AP cost was too high in certain circumstances (it is, but that's a symptom of the bigger issue). My primary gripe is that the current incarnation of this suggestion is clumsy and kludgy in that it dumps a task that should be everyone's job — following the leader — on one person's shoulders, concentrating the work, rather than distributing it (i.e. the AP cost isn't the issue, it's how you distribute the cost that's the issue). The result is that the leader is obligated to burn AP every day on this skill, meaning that they effectively have less AP with which to actually play the game and have fun. That just isn't cool. Even if you only have five people in your group, that's like getting an extra Headshot every single day. Rather than increasing fun, you'd be decreasing it for them.
   
   Also, unlike the other zombie skills, which are potentially useful to any zombie when they find themselves in a certain in-game situation, this particular skill will never be useful to the vast majority of zombies for out-of-game reasons, since the vast majority of zombies will never find themselves in the position of leading a group. I feel that it's bad design to shoehorn in a skill that has no applicability for the vast majority of players.
   
   Besides all of that, there's also the lore issue, which was never resolved. While I'm willing to accept that certain zombies may be leader zombies, what sense does it make to have a "covert messaging system" in a horde of shambling, grunting creatures? Zombies could definitely use something that accomplishes your goals with this suggestion, but this suggestion is not the way to do it. —Aichon— 15:44, 22 July 2012 (BST)

   Reply That's a valid point about the AP cost. But I think communication is part of actually playing the game, and deserves an AP cost that matches its benefit. Speech shouldn't be free. Sure, 5AP to lead five allies might seem like a lot. But think of how much AP you'd save overall by having a focused and concentrated attack, it really comes out to a bargain. Some people disagree with me on this point, which is a fair opinion, but I think that limiting zombie speech is a major balancing factor. The main balance in the game is between survivor communication/mortality vs. zombie fragmentation/immortality. So an AoE coordination ability for zombies is almost as dangerous as an AoE healing ability for survivors. That said, my opinion isn't an absolutist one. Zombies definitely need better coordination skills, just not ones as good as survivor communication skills. But overcoming your side's inherent weaknesses should cost AP. Survivors overcome mortality through syringes. But this bears a high AP cost and requires someone else's help. So that's kind of an example for how zombie communication skills should work. It should cost AP and require skills. And the better the communication, the higher the AP cost should be and the higher tier the skill should be. I also tried to take the zombie lore/flavor you rose into account by changing the flavor text. Originally it was "A zombie slowly gestured for you to follow it" which you pointed out, isn't really keeping with the idea of zombies being mindless attack drones. So I changed it to "A zombie stared at you" which allows the player to draw their own meaning. Is it a meaningful glance asking them to follow? A hostile glare? A mindlessly glazed staring? Ideally the ambiguity lets people interpret it however they prefer. --A Big F'ing Dog 19:04, 22 July 2012 (BST)

   You're arguing cost. I'm not. I'm talking about who pays the cost. Dumping it on one person is a bad mechanic. It just is. I agree that this suggestion adds something good to the game. Where I disagree is that it makes the bad part of the suggestion worthwhile. Balance is different than that. We can add good things to the game and keep them balanced while making the game more fun for everyone. That's what a good suggestion should do. We just need to work at it until we figure it out, and while this suggestion has the nugget of a good idea, it's not there yet. —Aichon— 00:12, 23 July 2012 (BST)

2. Aichon nailed it. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 15:52, 22 July 2012 (BST)
3. I suggested, during this one's conception, a version which simply adds most of this functionality to flailing gesture without creating a new attack; for the sake of both flavour and elegance I'm not keen a version which adds unnecessary steps or options to the process of mass communication. 16:10, 22 July 2012 (BST)
4. Kill - Per Aichon. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 16:50, 22 July 2012 (BST)

Spam/Dupe Votes