Developing Suggestions

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Developing Suggestions

This section is for general discussion of suggestions for the game Urban Dead.

It also includes the capacity to pitch suggestions for conversation and feedback.

Further Discussion

• Discussion concerning this page takes place here.
• Discussion concerning the suggestions system in general, including policies about it, takes place here.

Resources

• The Frequently Suggested List
• Suggestions Dos and Do Nots

How To Make a Discussion

Adding a New Discussion

To add a general discussion topic, please add a Tier 3 Header (===Example===) below, with your idea or proposal.

Adding a New Suggestion

• To add a new suggestion proposal, copy the code in the box below.
• Click here to begin editing. This is the same as clicking the [edit] link to the right of the Suggestions header.

• Paste the copied text above the other suggestions, right under the heading.
• Substitute the text in RED CAPITALS with the details of your suggestion.
• The process is illustrated in this image.

{{subst:DevelopingSuggestion
|time=~~~~
|name=SUGGESTION NAME
|type=TYPE HERE
|scope=SCOPE HERE
|description=DESCRIPTION HERE
}}

• Name - Give the suggestion a short but descriptive name.
• Type is the nature of the suggestion, such as a new class, skill change, balance change.
• Scope is who or what the suggestion affects. Typically survivors or zombies (or both), but occasionally Malton, the game interface or something else.
• Description should be a full explanation of your suggestion. Include information like flavor text, search odds, hit percentages, etc, as appropriate. Unless you are as yet unsure of the exact details behind the suggestion, try not to leave out anything important. Check your spelling and grammar.

Cycling Suggestions

• Suggestions with no new discussion in the past month may be cycled without notice.

Please add new discussions and suggestions to the top of the list

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Suggestions

Barricable Streets

Timestamp: Minothor 19:33, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Type: Barricade Change

Scope: Survivors

Description: The ability to barricade the sides of a block (North, East, West, South) to create walled off sections of the city would allow for survivor colonies, unrestricted by free running. (For Kevan and coders) One way I can imagine this being possible would be an array of 4 tiny-ints [N,E,W,S] in the database entries, corresponding to existing barricade levels. So for example [0,0,0,9] would result in "The streets to the South have been very strongly barricaded" This is merely a suggestion and there's probably a more efficient way of implementing it. Advantages: The ability to effectively wall off multiple blocks to create a barricaded region as opposed to a single building. Baricades could also be used to help control zombie movements. Balancing: Barricaded regions would have the same risks as barricades on malls, forts, manors etc. Any breach in the walls would allow zombies to spill into the area and overrun the inside. Especially since each side would be treated as an individual barricade, blocks on the corner of a region would have two faces that require rebuilding. In addition to this, larger regions would have a larger perimeter that needed patrolling and maintenance making defense more difficult.

Discussion (Barricable Streets)

Against. Because we can all agree that zombies need an even harder life and trenchies need more things to fuck up. --RadicalWhig 20:19, 11 February 2013 (UTC)
Against. AP is maxed out at 50. Even with all possible skills excluding brain rot, I typically blow through about 75% just repairing and barricading a building to EHB. Besides, It's been about seven years since the quarantine. Any "survivor colonies" have already been long-since established. -- TheBardofOld 20:20, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: In Response to both discussion points, the main aim of this would be to provide dynamic hot zones.
Zombies would be attracted to barricaded regions with the promise of tasty collections of living inside and survivors would be attracted by the promise of safety in numbers and space to move freely. Also, agreed, as an individual player, building/destroying barricades is a hassle but as numbers grew, maintainance would be easier and the promise of safety/food (as applicable) would be more tantalising.
The Mall Tours show what can be achieved by zombies in significant numbers.
This would allow the security of regions to become a balancing act of Human and Zombie numbers. It encourages the populations to clump together and work collectively.
It's not an impossible stretch of the imagination to picture various human groups alone forming proxy police and criminal elements within these regions. Urban Dead is effectively a hotbed of emergent gameplay after all.
What this suggestion would do is effectively add another tool for players to work together and against each other. --Minothor 21:11, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You're thinking too small. This wouldn't be used to create protected zones. This would be used (whether intentionally or not) to create roadblocks that would either have to be navigated around or broken through at the cost of dozens of AP. As a result, most zombies will simply walk around them while they are able to, but eventually the walls would just appear all over the place and start connecting together (after all, it costs far less AP to build them than to take them down), making it miserable for anyone to walk around outside, be they newbie survivor, career zombie, or just a survivor trying to reach an RP. Meanwhile, veteran survivors could easily free run over the barricades, allowing them to travel extremely rapidly in comparison to the hordes. The concept is an interesting one, but I don't see any way it could feasibly be made to work in the game. —Aichon— 21:31, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Re:You have a good point, they would effectively be a zoning tool but their strength would still lie in creating a protective region. One which as you say, would either have to be built up over time, possibly trapping some zombies within their walls, changing little, or, built in incremental rings out from buildings.
On the revive points though, They'd presumably be set up on the outskirts of these regions, crewed by more experienced players free-running over the barricades. I've also realised an error in my working out, a TinyINT value in a database is 0 to 9, single digits only, this would limit barricades to VS+1 --Minothor 21:46, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

You're still thinking in terms of zones, patrols, stationary survivors, and people behaving rationally, rather than as a mob. I'm suggesting that a survivor doesn't need to do that at all, nor do they behave that way. If I spend 5AP building a wall, I can put up 7-8 every day that will each cost around 20AP to tear down for zombies. As such, almost all of the zombies will choose to go around the walls, meaning that I'm free to keep putting them up and connecting them together. As a result, it's inevitable that the entire city will be covered in walls in no time at all as a result of trenchcoaters, making it impossible to navigate the city. Zombies will have to spend two day's worth of AP just to break through a wall so that they can move a single block, while survivors will be able to repair that wall with less than a day's AP. Besides that, sieges will never happen since zombies won't have any mobility at all. —Aichon— 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

I don't see how that makes the game more fun. Mostly, it will just make moving about more frustrating for everyone, as even survivors need to get outside occassionally (revival, island buildings, travelling). Those roadblocks are also most likely to spring up in green zones where survivors know nothing better to do with their excess AP, making them even more frustrating areas as they already are.
Furthermore, I could see them getting abused as griefing tools, as someone gets PKed, and the griefer sets up roadblocks on the outside squares between the dumped body and the nearest RP. -- Spiderzed█ 21:51, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

+1. Clear description, what is wrong with this suggestion: can easly turn into griefing tool. Other than that I think UD needs less barricading, not more. Low level survivors and zombies have hard time enough as it is. --Labla 22:21, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Super For Barricade strafing for all. I hate only being able to tear down cades on empty buildings, I wanna do it in the street, too. --_K 23:14, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Just so you know, it's extremely difficult to get support for any proposal that either 1) increases the amount of barricading in the game; 2) decreases mobility; or 3) helps the survivor cause. Yours does all three. Bob Moncrief ^EBD•W! 01:17, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'd like to reiterate that this sounds like a major pain in the ass for everyone who is not a trenchie. 1) If you have ever, ever played as a zombie, you know damn well how hard barricades are to take down as it is, just for the *possibility* of killing survivors and ruining a building. Now imagine you have to take them down every fucking day just to walk somewhere. HEEEEELL no! No one is going to fucking bother with fighting over these barricades and going all "hot zone" and shit, because I absolutely guarantee you it won't be worth it to have to bother with the arduous task of bringing down two, three, or four times more barricades merely to get to your target just because some survivor had nothing good to do. I would rather quit the game than have to deal with these as a zombie.
2) In addition, your "balancing" is not only illogical, it's also completely, I might even say perfectly, ass-backwards.

"Barricaded regions would have the same risks as barricades on malls, forts, manors etc."- No it doesn't. Streets don't need to be held for survivor resources or shelter. Zombies are the ones who need empty streets, to walk through. Survivors can just free run over these, so survivors aren't being restricted at all. Survivors don't fucking sleep in the streets, they don't have resources in the streets, and FR means they aren't restricted. They basically get an extra fucking line of defense.

"Any breach in the walls would allow zombies to spill into the area and overrun the inside." Okay, so the horde overruns the inside of a STREET. Big fucking deal. They just moved A SINGLE STEP at the cost of a lot of AP. WOW WHAT A HUGE GAIN FOR ZOMBIEDOM. Again, nothing of fucking value gained for the zombie, while the survivors sit back in their TRPs.

"Especially since each side would be treated as an individual barricade, blocks on the corner of a region would have two faces that require rebuilding. In addition to this, larger regions would have a larger perimeter that needed patrolling and maintenance making defense more difficult." So? Again, there is nothing to be gained for the zombies. A line of barricades in just one direction will still keep out zombies perfectly well, and it doesn't take much AP to get cades up to VSB. And in green burbs, you can bet your ass all four directions are going to be caded up to max 24/7. What kind of logic is this? Seriously.

3) This is going to also screw all hell out of noob survivors and zombies alike, who spend a *lot* of time on the streets. Why not also make them do the hokey pokey for 25 AP every single fucking day? Would have the same effect.
4) Finally, I'd like to point out that this is insanely easy to abuse via zerging, which alone should kill this suggestion stone-dead on the spot. Thank you very much.--RadicalWhig 03:25, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Re:RadicalWhig, while I was happy to respond to your first comment, I have no patience for anyone choosing not to use even a modicum of common decency and politeness in discussion. You have raised some valid concerns but the general tone and attitude of this post is idiotic, purile and frankly doesn't merit being spoken by a five year old acting like a complete cunt, let alone someone older.--Minothor 15:22, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'll take off my troll hat for a minute. Lemme tell you why you are getting the response you did: it is a piss-poor idea. That's not me being an ass, that is simply the truth. I understand where you are coming from, but you are saying: hey I got this great idea, but for it to work everyone needs to only use it the way I say they should. That doesn't happen. Don't have an idea and then throw it out for massacre, have an idea then try to figure how some asshole could use it to ruin someone else's experience. Then when you present it and someone throws up some idea you never thought of you can modify until you get something workable. However, this idea was not put to any type of rigor, you didn't say how could someone break this; you said if everyone would just do it the right way, it would work. Maybe it would, maybe it wouldn't, but you are going to get shit if it appears your idea had little of no forethought to how it could be abused. If you aren't willing to spend the time on your idea, why should anyone else? --_K 01:13, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Alright, I will politely explain this to you, minnie. You talk about barricading in way you like, way you think thing happens. You think all other man do thing this way. Then there is way thing really will happen, which not your way. You still insist thing happen your way, because you look thing like good survivor look at thing. But good survivor not only man in game. There is man called trenchie, man called trenchie will do bad thing with barricading. There is man called griefer, griefer do bad thing with barricading. There is man called zombie, zombie no like extra barricade, make them very mad. There is man called noob, noob no like barricade at all. And there is thing called streets, streets no very important, but you say like is very important. But thing is not like what you say. When you look careful at thing, thing make trouble because not every man do thing exactly like you say. Also because more barricade no big risk to survivor when zombie always have much big trouble with barricade. You get it now? And I sincerely apologize for making you cry to sleep yesterday. --RadicalWhig 03:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

First time commenting on a suggestion, but I simply don't trust survivors to handle even more barricades. It would become either an overly defensive fort that attempts to keep everything (including new survivors) out, or a neglected cheesecloth that lets every feral in. As for balance, this would create a major inertia problem. In strong areas, zombies and survivors who want to meet zombies (a lower level needing to find zombies for xp, or revivers) would have a miserable time. When a horde did break in, it would lead to a mass buffet of survivors who got careless inside the walls. And is there any mechanism to prevent survivors from making a layer of walls that are ridiculously thick? As for creating hot spots, I think this would actually impose isolation, since moving from one colony to another would take an unpredictable amount of AP, and few survivors would venture to take that risk often. --  FOXLION    05:50, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Re: Thank you for your feedback and issues raised. I have to admit, the risk of survivors getting complacent within walls was actually intentional, adding to the risk factor, but the possibility of extra thick walls would indeed be a ball-ache. On the mobility issue, since using tinyInt to store the values would limit the barricades to VS+1, wouldn't that allow the low level survivors to clamber over barricades allowing for normal movement? This admittedly, would make things harder for zombies, and would need to be addressed. I'm open to any suggestion on how to revise my suggestion.--Minothor 15:22, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

You're letting a technical implementation detail get in the way of your thinking. Figure out how you want it to work first, then figure out the implementation, rather than the other way around. Also, a TINYINT is not 0 to 9, as you seem to think. For the database types that implement TINYINT (Oracle and Postgresql don't, while T-SQL and MySQL do), it's an 8-bit integer with a range from -128 to 127 or 0 to 255, depending on if it's signed or not. —Aichon— 16:02, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I have been a zombie before and I got free running not long ago. When I was a noob The one thing I dreaded was the EHB of buildings. No offense man, but this is a horrible idea. There are now drawbacks to survivors this would hurt zombies even more. Zombies are only about 30% of the population. This would make zombie numbers fall to I would say single digit percents, that is if there are any zombies left after this would be put into effects.

TL;DR: nuh-uh. ~ _{05:52, 12 February 2013 (UTC)}

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Suggestions up for voting

The following are suggestions that were developed here but have since gone to voting. The discussions that were taking place here have been moved to the pages linked below.

There are currently no suggestions up for voting.