User:Katthew/Zombie Improvements

This is not a suggestions page. This is a list of things that should be implemented into the game to improve the zombie experience and address issues of balance. If you disagree, you're not just wrong, you're super-wrong and you will be mocked.

This page maintained by Katthew and the Hitler Family for those frequent occasions when Katthew has been banned for no good reason.

Now you can show off your approval of these awesome improvements in the true wiki manner, by sticking {{ZombiePlus}} on your userpage and getting this sweet business on it:

	Improve Urban Dead
	Katthew's Zombie Improvements should be incorporated into Urban Dead.

Support for these improvements is support for zombies and support for the game, don't be a loser.

Super Update: In light of the single game change that has happened since I first posted these improvements, I have changed the page to work around said changes. Plus I included some more cool crap that needs to be in the game.

Main Issues

• Survivors have more ways to have fun. Survivors can communicate with each other through speech, radio and phone. Zombies have a gimped method of speech that, in order to make any kind of conversation, requires its own damn dictionary. The closest thing they have to phones or radios is feeding groans, which don't say much except "food here". Zombies entirely revolve around finding things to hit and then hitting them, making them vastly more boring than survivors with their ability to graffiti messages on buildings and suchlike.

• Zombies have it tough. At low level, a zombie can spend hours tearing apart barricades - smashing away heavy furniture and appliance - and end up baffled by a flimsy locked door. At top level, a zombie's maximum damage is approximately one third of the maximum damage a survivor can inflict - and its best attack rate does approximately one third of the damage a survivor's best attack rate. At any level, zombies have very few ways to get XP besides hitting something, while a survivor can get XP by reading a book.

New Skills

Having Fun as a Zombie

• Blood Smear - Zombies can smear blood onto walls and other spraypaintable areas with their hands. Rather than saying "Somebody has spraypainted [message] onto a wall", the location will read "Somebody has smeared [image] onto a wall." Suggested images would be things like "an X in blood", "bloody handprints" or just "blood", selected from a drop-down list. After all, zombies are not all that literate or artistically skilled. Smearing blood would erase any spraypainted message, and equally so spraypainting over a blood smear would erase the smear. Like with the Tagging skill for survivors, smearing certain buildings - such as hospitals, police departments and NecroTech facilities - would give a small experience boost.

This skill serves no purpose other than to give zombies an equivalent to the survivor ability to spraypaint messages. Though they would be more limited in what they could do, they would also not require a spraycan (with its limitations) to do so. Zombie groups would not have to use survivors with which to spray messages, or at least not so many, and instead mark their territory by use of blood smears.

Another way to handle the smears would be to have it done like graffiti, with a text box, but run the text through the zombie-speech translator. Perhaps zombies without Death Rattle would have the drop-down box and zombies with Death Rattle would be able to smear more complicated messages.

UPDATE: The scenes of battles and murders are looking a lot bloodier than they used to. PARTIALLY VINDICATED BUT NOT NEARLY ENOUGH.

• Static Hiss - A sub-skill under Death Rattle that allows zombies to talk over powered radio transmitters. The messages would be prone to static and not always get through. Each successful use would damage the radio transmitter. This would only give a handful of uses before the transmitter broke entirely, if it or the generator don't get destroyed by other zombies first. This skill does not allow a zombie to change the frequency of the transmitter, just to Death Rattle into it a few times.

Giving zombies more opportunities to mess around and generally have fun with their attacks is a good idea - it makes their unlives more than just wandering around, ruining buildings and killing survivors. Along with Blood Smear, this skill serves no real purpose and could be considered a waste of AP - but a fun waste of AP. Zombies could also hold brief but meaningful conversations with any listening survivors, perhaps to exchange threats of who'll end up killing who. A grand time would be had by all.

UPDATE: With survivors on edge for the slightest sound or disturbance, the crash of a transmitter being destroyed can now be picked out on a radio channel, and a building restoring or losing power will be noticed from adjacent blocks. PARTIALLY VINDICATED.

Evening the Odds

• Scent Life - Remember in that zombie movie where it was so dark that the zombies couldn't find their way around to sneak up on people and kill them? Yeah me neither. To stop this stupid bullshit happening in game, there's this skill. Scent Life removes darkness penalties from a zombie's attacks - so in darkened buildings, they'll have the advantage over survivors.

This will turn darkened buildings into dangerous places, rather than survivor havens (since with their abysmal hit rate, zombies might as well use harsh language). It also gives zombies a reason to destroy generators beyond dicking over the survivors.

• Headcrush - For zombies of level 15 and over. When the zombie with this skill delivers a killing blow to a human, the head is crushed and damaged. The zombie now has a temporary form of Brain Rot - one that can be cured by a survivor healing them with a first aid kit, or by biting someone if they have the Digestion skill. Only once this crushed head affliction is cured can they be revived out in the street - if they enter a powered NT building then, like zombies with Brain Rot, they can be revived regardless. DNA scanners will work properly and provide a reading, but detect and display evidence of this "minor trauma" and suggest action (ie, healing) should be taken before attempting a revive, thus prompting the appropriate action from survivors.

Much in the same way that Headshots stop zombies from getting back up and into the fight quickly, Headcrush will stop survivors from being revived quickly after getting killed. One of the main reasons that most sieges last so long is the killed survivors can be easily revived. The slight enforcement of playing as a zombie may also persuade an otherwise dyed-in-the-wool "survivor player" to try their hand at actually playing the other side, rather than shuffling off to stand at a revive point.

One of the major failings many "zombie headshot" skill suggestions have is that they think they should either mess with the survivor's XP or AP. This is stupid. If you take away a survivor's XP, they're either super-maxed out and therefore lose nothing of consequence, or they stand up as a low-level zombie with no skills and no means to buy skills. If you take away their AP, then although you ensure they stay down, that's not what you should want. Survivors want to ensure zombies to stay down, or at least be deterred by so much AP loss they give up. Zombies should want to ensure survivors stay dead, and thus on their side... in theory.

Hopefully if all these (utterly brilliant and perfect) improvements are incorporated into Urban Dead, being a zombie will be enough fun that survivors will slap their heads and go "God's balls! This is actually quite fun!"

• Deathly Torpor - For 2AP the zombie can slow itself down and collapse into a heap, resembling - for all intents and purposes - a dead body. This faux dead body can be removed from buildings just like any other dead body. It takes the zombie the normal amount of AP to stand up, but since this skill would probably be located beneath Ankle Grab, that would be 1. By hiding in this way, lone zombies can hide out in survivor-dominated suburbs without risking a Headshot.

In many zombie movies there is the common "make you jump" moment when a seemingly lifeless corpse rises up to take a bite out of an unsuspecting survivor. This skill emulates that, in part, but doesn't do anything ridiculous like make the zombie disappear or be unmovable. However, the ability to hide in this manner would be an effective skill for feral zombies not wanting to get headshot ten thousand times as they struggle to find refuge, or for groups wishing to trick survivors under siege into believing that the threat has passed. (The latter would still have to contend with the presence of the survivors and the barricades, of course.)

Removing Skills

Inherent Digestion

Digestion, as a skill, is pretty worthless and only useful as a stepping stone to Infectious Bite. This basically means it's 200XP to get to one of the more useful skills in the zombie arsenal (one that's somewhat neutered by the fact that if it was any easier to find FAKs, you'd be able to find two with 1 AP). In any case, infections can stop survivors from killing you (as quickly) or rebarricading (as quickly), so it's a nice skill to have.

Once, of course, you've also got Neck Lurch so it's not an absolute waste of time trying to hit. And probably Tangling Grasp, too. You can miss up to 20 times in a row even with 30% to hit (which isn't "bad luck", it's "shitty coding") which means that having to spend 400XP on a skill that might work occasionally is utter bullshit.

Solution: scrap Digestion. Make its effects inherent to the zombie - all bites, from the start, give back health. Move Infectious Bite down to where Digestion was, and now you only have to spend 300XP to be able to infect people. Or perhaps only 200XP, if the RNG ever starts generating random numbers for real.

Revised Skill Tree

• Scent Fear

• Scent Blood

• Scent Life

• Scent Trail
• Scent Death

• Infectious Bite
• Vigour Mortis

• Neck Lurch
• Death Grip
• Rend Flesh
• Tangling Grasp
• Feeding Drag

• Memories of Life

• Death Rattle

• Static Hiss

• Feeding Groan
• Ransack
• Flailing Gesture

• Blood Smear

• Lurching Gait

• Ankle Grab

• Deathly Torpor

• Brain Rot

• Flesh Rot

• Headcrush

This would make the new maximum zombie level (with Brain Rot, without any survivor skills) 25, as compared to 21 beforehand. This is a little larger than the survivor's current 22, but in all likelihood new survivor skills are right around the corner. Not to mention that the disparity just means that survivors need to spend less time gathering XP to be the best. (The joke is that this is already the case.)

Making Things Easier

RNG

Maybe there should be an actual RNG that generates random numbers, instead of a game of "time your clicks right to hit every time". Just a thought, you know?

Doors

Without the Memories of Life skill, a level one zombie can tear apart heavy duty barricades but be foiled by a single, flimsy door. Shut doors are one of the more common frustrations for low-level zombies, especially since the Memories of Life skill isn't as important as skills like Death Grip and Lurching Gait when it comes to making the most of one's AP. Letting out a Feeding Groan is not an option, since there are no humans around, so the poor zombie has to sit back and wait for either another zombie to stumble across this unbarricaded building, or for the survivors inside to rebarricade the place back up to EHB because oh my God you guys there's a zombie outside.

There is a solution to the problem that is not simply eliminating doors (which would cause survivor outcry): introducing the ability to attack the door.

Attacking the door would have a low success rate, perhaps 20-30%, and therefore cost more AP than just entering the building. Doors would only be able to be attacked once the building's barricades are down. However, for low-level zombies without Memories of Life, it would be a useful thing to have. Once a door has been smashed open, survivors can still close it as if it had been opened normally by a zombie with Memories of Life, but since it can just be smashed open again they may want to, I dunno, run instead.

Additionally, somehow zombies find it impossible to enter a building unless they can open the door, but have no trouble leaving without opening the door. Either zombies with Memories of Life need to automatically open doors when leaving a building as well as entering, or some kind of "Open Door" button should be visible when inside a building with a closed door much like there is a "Close Door" button when they are open. Hell, or have both. In fact, definitely make it both. Before survivor start wetting their pants, remember that barricades are the important defence against zombies, not doors. If you are seriously going to rely on doors to keep you safe then you're a colossal idiot who doesn't deserve to be playing the game. C'mon, they're doors. They don't hold back any monsters except if they're barricaded.

Lastly, the doors to ruined buildings should not be able to be closed. Attempting to close the doors should cost 1AP and give the message "The door swings uselessly back and forth on its hinges." or similar. This will, if nothing else, stop zombies from wasting AP checking ruined buildings with closed doors - and stop survivors from hiding out in them, because seriously.

Barricades

Zombies can only groan when survivors are present, so it's not really possible to attract other zombies to a building you're trying to open until you actually get in there and groan at the survivors inside. Who, of course, will inevitably be barricading as fast as possible. Sisyphean, right? There is a solution.

Upon bringing the barricades down a visible level (from extremely heavily to very heavily, for example) there would be a noise. You have, after all, just pulled apart a pile of junk and made it fall to the ground. So everyone in that block, and in the surrounding eight blocks, would hear "A crash coming from 1 block east" (for example).

Anyone (both survivor and zombie) inside a building in one of those eight blocks will hear nothing. The survivors inside will hear "A loud crash coming from outside" and thus be alerted to the zombie demolition crew working on their defences. Whether they want to keep barricading or run is up to them.

Hit Rates

The starting zombie hit rates are atrocious, and are the main reason why many new zombies quit the game. In principle, in an MMO the higher level you are the more difficult things are supposed to get, to increase the challenge as you become more powerful. In Urban Dead, everything gets easier.

Increasing the starting hit rates by 10% would see starting zombies have a 45% chance to hit with their hand attacks, a better rate even with the unpredictable RNG. Finding survivors and bringing down barricades is already a massive waste of AP, with low-level zombies sometimes spending days trying to find a target, often starting their day spending a whole 10AP to stand up. Giving them a better chance at dealing damage would give a quicker return of XP per AP spent, and maybe stop them from considering the game to be massively slanted against them (which, to be fair, it is) and quitting.

More Experience

Zombies have one basic way of gaining experience - hitting stuff. Hitting survivors provides experience. Hitting generators and radio transmitters provides experience. Hitting barricades provides experience. Hitting things to ransack a building provides experience - but just barely.

Giving 1XP per level of ransack, with a 5XP bonus for getting in the ruin, would give zombies a reason to buy Ransack besides messing with survivors. A low-level zombie could buy Ransack to ensure that opening an empty building wouldn't only give a small handful of experience for smashing the barricades, but an extra 10XP on top of that.

Giving a flat 10XP bonus for infecting a survivor (and only survivors, not zombies) instead of the usual 4XP would also give mid-level zombies a way to progress faster. It would be a one-time deal, any further bites would not give the same bonus. It would encourage feral zombies to infect survivors and help them progress faster than they otherwise would.

Less Zombie Antipathy in the Wiki

Clicking on the wiki button introduces you to a main page where some key links are Revive Point, NT Locations & Security and Mall Information Center - not to mention the map of the city. The vast majority of the wiki is slanted against zombie players, with pages and guides dedicated to countering zombie attacks linked prominently. Those few pro-zombie pages tend to be hidden away, often poorly written. For new zombie players, this is an overwhelmingly negative reception.

This is mostly due to the perceived (yet wholly imaginary) "war" between zombies and survivors. Changing this would be easy - establish alternate sections for survivors and for zombies linked from the main page, with additional generic links (such as building types, first day guides and so forth). The zombie pages would have to be cleaned and maintained with the same diligence and obsessive-compulsiveness that the survivor pages see. The survivor side could still have pages like the suburb map, but the zombies could also have a similar page where suburbs are rated by different categories than "zombie presence" - like, for example, amount of powered buildings and so forth.

Fluff

Zombie Clothes

In order to change clothes, a zombie must be revived and go to a store and edit their profile settings there. This does not mesh with the overall message of the earlier sections: zombies should not have to be revived for any purpose. This includes shopping for clothes. Yes, accepted zombie lore shows that zombies are not particularly up to speed with fashion, but your average survivor profile also shows a complete lack of fashion sense. (For the record, I look awesome.) In any case, zombies should not have to get revived just to make some minor changes to their outfit and then throw themselves out of a window. It's a waste of time and AP for the zombie and it's a waste of a syringe for the survivors, who must hoard them like the precious things they are.

As a compromise, zombies should be able to change their outfit inside any ruined building. Rather than choose from the survivor list of immaculate shirts and whatever, they would choose from a "zombie list" of clothes - ragged, torn and bloodstained. A new wide choice of zombie clothes could spark a delightful change in the fashions of Malton and provide stuff for all you useless pubbies to vote about on the Clothes Suggestions page. Different ruined buildings would provide different types of clothes. Repaired buildings would provide nothing, thus giving certain zombies one more reason to ruin it.

Survivor clothes would of course still be present on newly-dead zombies, and those zombies who do get revived would still be wearing their zombie clothes. Dying (or revivifying) does not affect one's clothes beyond perhaps a bit of wear and tear, after all. It's entirely possible that survivors would take to killing anyone found alive and wearing zombie clothes, but it's not like people don't already have more than enough excuses for their rampant paranoia, so whatever.

Building Descriptions

Yes, we get it. We ransack the building. Hooray. Survivors get to play around with tapestries and stuffed alligators all day, zombies should at least have some more... descriptive descriptions of ransacked buildings. A more definite clash between "building is okay" and "building is trashed" would give zombies a better feel of their handiwork, and instantly warn survivors they're entering the lion's den. Probably after falling off it in the first place, knowing you dumbass pubbies.

Another easy addition to placate the ravening hordes of zombies that demand acknowledgment for their hard work would be an implementation of a system similar to the snow effect that was in place during the winter months. Buildings where several kills happened would have a short line saying (for example) "There are patches of dried blood on the floor." More little add-on descriptions of this nature would enhance the atmosphere and provide something better than just "You're in a building and, fuck, I guess it's been a bit messed up or something? Whatever."

UPDATE: The scenes of battles and murders are looking a lot bloodier than they used to. SLIGHTLY VINDICATED BUT NOT ENOUGH.