Suggestion:20070601 Stench of Death

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20070601 Stench of Death

Grim Rictus 07:12, 1 June 2007 (BST)

Suggestion type
Skill

Suggestion scope
Zombies

Suggestion description
"Stench of Death" is a zombie skill. It would cost 100XP but would require the purchase of "Brain Rot" first.

"As the flesh and organs of the undead continue to rot, an unbearable stench surrounds these revolting creatures. Overwhelmed by the noxious fumes, survivors find it difficult to concentrate on tasks as they struggle to hold down their rations."

IN SHORT: If a zombie with this skill is present, survivors suffer a penalty to success rates in that location. Multiple zombies with this skill result in higher penalties.

Forgive me, but I'm not an expert in the game mechanics, and I can't be sure if the figures I use are reasonable to survivors. I figure that if this skill were added, someone with a much better sense of balance (Kevan) would know better than I.

BASICALLY: What I propose is a skill to encourage team play, provide an additional benefit to Brain Rot, and add some much-loved flavor to the game. To put it simply, zombies with this skill cause a detriment to the odds of a survivor in that location successfully performing an action, which stacks when more zombies possessing this skill are present. The skill could also be effective while the zombie is a dead body. Since survivors immediately dump bodies outside, it only serves to make the area outside a sieged building more dangerous (as it should be). The skill might also work after the zombie has been revivified and is human (although rare in the case of Brain Rot), which would mostly be to humorous effect ("Who stinks?"), but could also signal the presence of a zombie spy in possession of the skill.

To prevent abuse or overpowered-ness, I propose that the penalty be very low, so we'll say 1%. Furthermore, the penalty must be capped at a reasonable limit possibly by limiting the maximum penalty applied to survivors (say, 30%), and by guaranteeing that a survivor's success rate not fall below a certain point (10%, perhaps). Additionally, the penalty could affect some actions at different rates (e.g. double penalty for melee attacks, because who would want to get that close?). The requirement of Brain Rot adds incentive for full-zombie players and limits the number of zombies who will purchase this skill (though non-Rotters benefit from the effect as well), plus it makes logical sense from an in-game perspective (a Brain Rotted zombie of course _is_ rotting!)

FLAVOR: This is what I think makes the skill so much fun. It's rarely a huge plot point in films, but it should be obvious that a dead body reeks real bad! And so a horde of dead bodies must be overwhelmingly awful. A player will realize that there is a concentration of stinky zombies based on a tag added to the location description. Some proposals:

1 SoD Zombie: "An unpleasant odor is detectable."

3 SoD Zombies: "A foul smell hangs in the air."

7 SoD Zombies: "A putrid stench clings to this place."

10 SoD Zombies: "A gut-churning fetor permeates the atmosphere."

As you can see, there are many colorful ways of describing varying degrees of stench, all of which add to the apocalyptic environment. These would also provide a rough indicator of how many Stenching zombies are present at a revive point, making it a little easier to sort through the Rotters who have the skill.

Lastly, the skill could also interact with the Scent Death skill, allowing zombies to locate nearby groups of especially rancid bodies.

ADDENDUM: I _may_ have made the limits too high, and yeah, screwing too much with melee is probably not a good idea since it will mostly affect desperate survivors and those brave firemen. But the only area where I see this skill causing major strategy changes is that it will be harder for survivors to clear out recently sieged buildings that still have hordes. But zombies usually leave pretty quickly once the survivors pull out to go hunt them down. And lastly (again), let's not forget that for a zombie skill, this is actually pretty damn useful to survivors. It will give survivors an indicator that a probable high-level zombie is present. And thanks for fixing my bad formatting.

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 -- Wow. i really,really like this idea, it's new and would improve gameplay. great job! --'BP^Tmz 11:10, 1 June 2007 (BST)
2. Keep Yup.--Seventythree 11:49, 1 June 2007 (BST)
3. Keep - Makes sense to me. I figure the normal death and rebirth process takes care of the stench for most people, but the rotters spend most of their time with pieces falling off of them. That's probably a smell I would notice. --Uncle Bill 11:56, 1 June 2007 (BST)
4. This scores a keep from me. --•▬ ▬••▬ • •••• •▬ ▬•▬• ▬•▬ ^{#nerftemplatedsigs} 12:22, 1 June 2007 (BST)
5. Keep - I'm not entirely certain about the proposed numbers, but you haven't set them in stone and I'm sure that Kevan would get them right. The idea's core though is absolutely sound and one of the best ideas I've seen proposed.--The Hierophant 14:51, 1 June 2007 (BST)
6. Keep - The game is already one sided in favor of survivors. I think this would be a really big plus. I think few zeds are taking up the option of the brain rot skill, because there's no real advatage to it. This improvement would allow the number of zeds to have a minimum, and help slow the decreasing zed numbers, and give zeds a little something more. --Poodle of doom 18:59, 1 June 2007 (BST)
7. Keep Cap it at 10%. As of now the Scent Death button is the "Waste 1 AP Button" (Quoting a senior RRF member). --Secruss 20:08, 1 June 2007 (BST)
8. Keep I am the author, so I may as well make a vote.... I think I'll pick.... KEEP.Grim Rictus 04:21, 2 June 2007 (BST)
9. Keep a 5-10% cap is a good idea, but the idea of high-level zombie cooperation is quite worthy. come on wiki peoples, make sure this at least idea goes to undecided! --Kaminobob 06:22, 2 June 2007 (BST)
10. Keep - I like the idea a lot. I always wondered why people in movies weren't trippin' acid when the horde came by, due to the stench that would most certainly follow. Matthew does make a good point, the game is geared towards guns n' stuff as it is. By the way Kevan, I still haven't seen updates to the new melee weapons, or a single pink hoodie in the clothes section :). A dǝǝɥs oʇ ɯɐds: sʎɐʍ1ɐ! 17:30, 2 June 2007 (BST).
11. Keep - Tasty... or rather untasty... flavour. It adds "realism" and doesn't hugely unbalance the game. --Anotherpongo 17:49, 15 June 2007 (BST)

Kill Votes

1. Kill - Don't mess with search chances. --Saluton 15:00, 1 June 2007 (BST)

   RE: It is certainly possible to limit this skill to not touch search results. I do know that it's already a pain in the ass to find certain items as it is. However, if it _did_ influence search odds it would be keeping with the in-game theme. The idea is to make zombie hordes an actual menace just from their presence, and I think one would have a hard time searching for something in the midst of a stinky zombie horde. Think of it as a power-outage penalty just for having a lot of zombies in one location, and then, only zombies with this skill.Grim Rictus 19:18, 1 June 2007 (BST)

2. Kill - Very onesided. Plus, it doesn't even give the zeds anything, it merely takes away from survivors. Isn't more, not less fun mentioned somewhere in the suggestions guidelines? - BzAli 17:42, 1 June 2007 (BST)
3. BzAli, neither does Headshots, all they do is take away Zombies' AP. And people have fun greifing. The reason I am voting kill is because you fail to realize "Multiply by a million". Lots of zombies got Brain Rot. Because of this, the more Brain Rotting zombies in an area, the more the search odds decrease, making it pretty unbalancing, unless there is a cap. Oh, and even if there is a cap, I'll still vote Kill, because it encourages people to zerg with Brain Rot alts (you know that if zergers have all the time in the world, they most likely will). Still...the idea's core principles does sound...interesting to say the least. Could be one of Kevan's Peer-Rejected suggestions that get implemented.--ShadowScope 18:14, 1 June 2007 (BST)

   RE:I do see the possibilities for zerging, but frankly all you need to do to clear up a building is to kill the zombies, which is what survivors do all day to de-ransack and barricade anyway. One could argue against the ransack skill with this same rationale. By the way, Kill voters, if you think my numbers are faulty PLEASE make suggestions to change them. If it gets killed because my figures are unbalanced I'd love to be able to revise this later on.Grim Rictus 19:18, 1 June 2007 (BST)

4. Kill - Can you say...OVERPOWERED? This is crazy! On a completly different subject, I fixed up some of that messy formatting above. --Hhal 19:32, 1 June 2007 (BST)
5. Kill - I see some problems with this suggestion, First, the nerf to survivor accuaracy is huge, potentially making a guy hitting at the pity range of 10%. Then, it nerfs player's attempts to carry on normal survivor characters with all available skills (including Brain Rot). Finally, you propose it to nerf melee attacks even further, polarizing the game towards combat-oriented characters and support oriented one a whole lot (those that spend time searching for guns and ammo and those who don't). That's why I don't like the suggestion. --Matthew Fahrenheit ^YRC☺T☺+1 02:52, 2 June 2007 (BST)
6. Kill Overpowered. Simply overpowered, even if you greatly reduce the penalties. Magentaine 05:01, 2 June 2007 (BST)
7. Kill - Mathew makes some good points. Its not a terrible idea, zombies would smell horrible, but, it does nerf survivors. --Sonofagun18 09:35, 2 June 2007 (BST)
8. Kill - The suggestion makes sense if you're trying to keep it real, but this'd make it incredibly hard for new military to level. We already had enough of a nerf with the encumberance. dudemeister 17:27, 3 June 2007 (BST)
9. Kill - first of all, Knowing that there is a high level zombie nearby is completely useless to a survivor as a 5 level zombie is already efficient enough to be a killing machine to worry survivors. Second an enormous amount of zombies have brainrot. So it wouldn't be rare. You can look at the stats page to see what I mean. With any reasonable incursion the cap would be reached. Third it's fucking over the player that play both sides with one character, like the game is set up to be played. I want to be able to the best possible survivor when alive I want to be able to the best possible zombie when dead. I don't want to be a second class character just because I actually play both sides.-- Vista  +1  20:09, 5 June 2007 (BST)

   RE: Second class? Playing both sides doesn't mean you have to "collect them all." If a skill doesn't help out your style of play, don't friggin' buy it! Brain Rot proves this model, since anyone that wants to play a survivor after buying that has to go through a lot of hassle and then stay alive to avoid repeating it. The game is set up to allow one to play both sides, but not to encourage it. And if you feel like your zombie/survivor character is getting screwed, think of all the career zombies that have nowhere near the variety of skills that survivors do, and they still need to revive and buy the two survivor skills that do them some good before they can be at their zombish best. Survivors are rewarded with a huge list of skills to buy. Zombies get a handful of skills and then nothing but empty XP if they have no interest in being alive. Grim Rictus 13:06, 12 June 2007 (BST)

10. Kill - No merit. There are already incentives for zombies to horde, why do we need more? Especially when you nerf survivors so badly when the zombies are already doing a effective tactic. And have you thought about the necessary reduction in efficacy/increase in AP usage of reviving (since you get as close as you would for a melee attack. Your idea seemed cool to yourself at first, but you didn't think about all the angles. armareum 14:16, 8 June 2007 (BST)

    RE: Actually, I did think about the revives for a bit, but I thought that the moment I put "revive" and "penalty" in the same sentence that I might be overwhelmed by the cry of "NERF!" But if you think that's a good idea... Actually, since the skill only applies to (nearly) unrevivable Rotters, there's absolutely no need to further screw with revives. Grim Rictus 13:06, 12 June 2007 (BST)

Spam/Dupe Votes

1. This really is spam -Well, obviously the zerg thing makes a good point, even if rasack already causes zerg problems. Plus, the zombie horde is already uber-overpowered compared to survivors, and the thing that supposedly keeps "balance" is that zombie groups can't be evenly spread without becomeing less effective. With this, not only would it be easy (as it is now) for zombies mostly hold a suburb, the weapon reduction would make it so they could easily hold buildings. Third, I already hate the fact that zombies can get one level higher than survivors, don't make it worse. Finally, you screamed "never actually played the #&$&# game" when you RE'd vista. SURVIVORS AND ZOMBIES HAVE THE SAME #^$^ NUMBER OF SKILLS EACH! CHECK THE F@$^$^ PAGE! --AlexanderRM 02:29, 13 June 2007 (BST)

   Actually, I screamed "never played survivor", at least not much, which I pretty much admitted to in the suggestion. I'm very sorry that I didn't count them up individually, perhaps it just SEEMS like there are so many more survivor skills because it's broken into more branches. Zombies get six branches, and oh by the way, no items or weapons of any kind. Survivors have, essentially, eleven branches (if I counted right), with sub-branches off of those, plus every kind of gadget to be found in all of Malton. And seriously, levels aren't the same as a high score. I'm sure they make you feel all big and bad, but just realize that once a zombie gets that one extra level, then they're no longer competing with you as a survivor. Now your other complaints are valid (but SPAM?, c'mon), but seriously, zombies are never going to hold entire suburbs, at least not permanently. Zombies get bored camping, there's nothing to do if there's no survivors, so the zombies look for them. Maybe we'd hang out in resource buildings a little longer, but hey, don't you guys have fun clearing us out? Grim Rictus 05:11, 14 June 2007 (BST)