User:Rosslessness/Safehouse Hatred

This is what's wrong with survivors.

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Note * This is all hugely personal opinions. Share your thoughts on the talk page.

I'm quite annoyed by this update.

* Settling in for the long haul, some survivors have been modifying and memorising their safehouses. Those able to scout a safehouse can spend 30AP to survey the building, giving them approximately 5 extra AP per day within their nominated safehouse, until they die or the safehouse is ruined.

This addition add nothing new to the survivor experience. All it does is reinforce old and completely stupid assumptions about how survivors should behave.

Maths first.

There are at least 4 things wrong with this character spending a week in this building.

In order to benefit from the safehouse option you have to be in your safehouse. When there you have a 10% chance on each AP expended that you will get the action for free. This works out at 5ap in bonus every day. Now factor in the cost. In order to regain your 30ap, you'll need to expend 300ap within the building of your choice.

That's 6 days. Inside the same building. So what kind of building is worth spending that number of AP's inside? A Bank? Probably not. You're probably going to select a TRP.

One Useful Skill Ignored

To add to this, speech doesn't appear to be one of the actions you might save AP on. So not only does this skill make you stay still, it penalises you for trying to organise yourself in game, as if you are talking then it takes longer to regain the invested AP from scouting the building in the first place.

Staying still for almost a week.

So now you're standing inside your safehouse. What are you going to do? Stock up on ammo? Or needles? Anything else?

Oh yeah. Barricade. As long as the zombies are outside, you can't die, and they can't ruin the building. That's brilliant.

Except its not. It's Fiddler's Green Syndrome on a city wide scale. Safehouses full of people protecting their safehouses, raising the cades, ignoring the newbs even more than usual. Who cares whats happening at that other PD? You need to protect your one. Now imagine that scenario, in every Hospital in the city. This only encourages selfishness.

Now in fairness, in some cases it may be an advantage. Gelasius General Hospital (Vinetown) or The Merson Building in Griggs Heights are examples of lone structures that would really benefit from being your safehouse. The areas of the city where there isn't a similar building a few AP away. It might even help in a siege.

Except it won't.

Sieges are still the same

If I'm in a siege, I'll probably die. And then I lose my bonus. And because I want to get right back into the fight, I'm not going to be able to waste 30ap to reaquainte myself with my safehouse. I need those AP's to throw that rotter out and get some damn cades up.

Then we are back to the problem of cade blocking. Because if the zombies break in, it will still be as difficult to barricade. Of course it might take them longer to get in, because you've got a few more AP, but once the zombies are inside, you suffer the same imbalance in cades that always exists. But now what do you do? Do you meatshield to stop the place being ruined, or run to stop yourself dying? Because either way you WILL lose your safehouse bonus. If you are in a situation where it is highly likely you will die, scouting a safehouse is the worst use of your AP.

Of course none of this matters. Because you shouldn't have a home base! Even setting a home base implies that you're working in a defined area. If the Big Bash are in your suburb is it sensible to stand there? Of course not! River Tactics are by far the best strategy. Get repairing in their wake! Don't cry over the ruins of your "special" home.

Dying isn't bad!

Here's another popular misconception, especially among those who have never played as a zombie. Dying isn't that much of a problem. It happens. But by making the safehouse bonus disappear on death, it reinforces the assumption that dying is bad. It really isn't. A dead survivor can scout a ghost town at his leisure, decade entry points far better than if he was alive, and is the only outcome of the truly altruistic suicide repair. Dying is temporary, the biggest problem that survivors have is that they don't like dying. Yes it's hard if you're level 2, but no one with even half a brain would buy this skill before freerunning, or ankle grab. There are lots of brilliant Guides on the wiki. Have a look. How many of them recommend scout safehouse as a skill? How many Groups recommend it?

404: No Benefit Found

Truly mobile groups, out there repairing the 100+ repairs are going to gain nothing at all. If I'm resetting a repair cost, I'll probably die, and any building I'm focussing on will probably be reruined (but with a vastly smaller repair cost) by the time I get up. If anything the job is harder, as safehouses encourage static groups who will want to spend more time nearer their base, as on the surface its more ap efficient to search there than anywhere else. This means they're spend mora AP in one place, and less Ap on buildings even a few blocks away. It makes survivors more static, more defensive.

Maybe I should set this building as my safehouse when I repair it?

The Home Tracker

I'm a newb. I wake up in a PD and make it my home base. From then on every time I move there's going to be a reminder about where I'm from. The implication is that I should stay close, and return to it. It doesn't matter there's 30 zombies next door, that's my home. Have you seen that zombie film where all the survivors stay where they are, and everything works out fine? Its another way to shepherd the survivors together inside "safe" TRP's. Which is stupid as now there's another danger from all standing in the same building.

Now the home tracker isn't a bad update. It helps the non meta navigate, especially to follow Feeding Groans. Its the introduction of safehouses at the same time that's my issue. By combining both into a single update the implication is that you should return to your safehouse and protect it at any cost.

Conclusion

If survivors were supposed to stand still, barricade their safehouse up to EHB and sit there all the time searching and barricading, Build Safehouse would be an amazing benefit.

But survivors excel when they run revive points, repair wherever the need arises and help each other throughout the city.

This is nothing but a huge disadvantage to those of us who aren't idiots.

--Rosslessness^{Want a Location Image?} 14:20, 17 August 2010 (BST)