Balance: Sound and Zombie Spawns Quantity

[Miloch]

Personally I find a the game a bit easy in the early stages. I’m not really a fan of what I heard mentioned about making it so you are much more vulnerable when trying to use a window or some such to control the hoard. I think rewarding the player for strategic thinking is a must. But I think right now the penalties for making loud sounds aren’t very high. I think increasing the distance that sound travels should be a must. Maybe even doubling it with modifiers for terrain, aka map tiles.
The second part I think that would make a big difference is the number of zombies that there are in town. I certainly feel that if the zombies were a bit thicker, mainly the regular zombies, you’d have to be more cautious when trying to clear a town. Right now you can clear a town by moving single tile window to single tile window, without much though. And for the most part I feel that is because the number of zombies is pretty limited. If you say… doubled the current number of standard zombies, it’d feel more like a horde moving at you.

[AerialK7]

[quote=“Miloch, post:1, topic:1092”]Personally I find a the game a bit easy in the early stages. I’m not really a fan of what I heard mentioned about making it so you are much more vulnerable when trying to use a window or some such to control the hoard. I think rewarding the player for strategic thinking is a must. But I think right now the penalties for making loud sounds aren’t very high. I think increasing the distance that sound travels should be a must. Maybe even doubling it with modifiers for terrain, aka map tiles.
The second part I think that would make a big difference is the number of zombies that there are in town. I certainly feel that if the zombies were a bit thicker, mainly the regular zombies, you’d have to be more cautious when trying to clear a town. Right now you can clear a town by moving single tile window to single tile window, without much though. And for the most part I feel that is because the number of zombies is pretty limited. If you say… doubled the current number of standard zombies, it’d feel more like a horde moving at you.[/quote]

Dont run through the window, its not that hard

[Nopkar]

Honestly, from a strictly tactical standpoint, fighting a zombie horde in a window is the only viable option we have.

I personally use girders, fences, bushes, counters and anything else I can find, not just window’s. hell, i’ve fought off zombies from a kitchen table!

the fact is: Zed’s are slow and stupid but are strong and are in numbers. The window is not an exploit but a strategical location that allows us to level the playing field.

That being said, maybe not ‘quite’ so high of a penalty when moving through it?

[AerialK7]

Yeah, being in a window with a crowbar makes you near untouchable, due to the fact it takes them 3 turns to hit you and they are usually dead by that point, maybe make it two turns or something so they can move through a window.

[Nopkar]

also, answering the other questions in your ‘holywalloftext’:

if you play static spawn, yes, it’s easy to clear a town. Dynamic spawn uses sound to generate an impossibly huge amount of zombies over time as you continue to make noise. This ‘may’ be more of what you’re after.

dynamic spawn CAN be depleted, but again, this is a MUCH larger amount of zeds to deal with so there’s that…

In dynamic spawn a gunshot could very well get you killed…they come from EVERYWHERE.

and shotguns are even worse, generating what seems 20-30 zeds every time you shoot. so yeah

[Miloch]

I’ve played Dynamic spawn. My point is to make static spawn a bit more difficult and clearing towns not easy as heck.

[Nopkar]

I’ve played Dynamic spawn. My point is to make static spawn a bit more difficult and clearing towns not easy as heck.

WIP, this isn’t the final version

and honestly, static is even EASIER with a car…so it’s definitely in line to be balanced.

patience

[Madrien]

I think, this problem could be solved by adding some sort of fatigue to the game.
Standing at a window and bashing Z’s skulls for half an hour is a bit unrealistic.

[deadmerits]

Nicely said Madrien (much better then my first post) but I’ve always said* “The brain is the most protected part of the body.” It takes alot to destroy it and even in good shape its just tiring to destroy brains.

*In real life. The quoted sentence was actually said mere hours ago.

[The_Darkling_Wolf]

[quote=“Madrien, post:8, topic:1092”]I think, this problem could be solved by adding some sort of fatigue to the game.
Standing at a window and bashing Z’s skulls for half an hour is a bit unrealistic.[/quote]
This is our main idea for reducing effectiveness of windows.

There’s a difference between ‘strategically using terrain’ and ‘standing at a window killing everything ever because they don’t get enough moves to do anything before dying’, chilling out behind a window fighting off zombies is great, but it should be something you use to take out a few stragglers or hold a position while an NPC gets help, not kill an entire town’s population of zombies.

[kevin.granade]

Also keep in mind, proposed changes to make fighting at windows less good don’t completely nerf them, they’d still be the best places to fight zombies from, just not a pancea for all your zombie-killing woes.

There are several things interacting to make windows OP compared to how they would be in reality.

1. Tile-wide walls mean that only one zombie can even attempt to get at you at once, in reality if you’re defending a window, you’d have to deal with 3 or more of them cramming through at once.
2. The speed penalty from climbing into a window is (deservedly) extreme, it’s a pretty awkward position to be in, but due to the all-or-nothing state of the move system, monsters have to wait in the pack around the window until the one in the window drops, then when they move in they get a several-turn move penalty dropped on them, during which time the player gets several free hits in. There should be some kind of penalty for sure, but the zombies pushing and shoving in the background should be providing some kind of benefit, whether it be shoving the one in the front through the window, tearing at the wall around the window, or just getting a little move boost when they do get a chance to take action.
3. Also zombies are even beyond completely mindless horde status with how dumb they are, they don’t spread out at all, even when they can move diagonally closer to their target, if there’s another monster in the way they just stand there and wait until the path is free.

[Iosyn]

Good old hulks. Negating windows since the dawn of time.

[Disarcade]

An (o)pen window only costs 200 to move through, while an empty window frame costs 400. Maybe that should be equated?

Then, to even the odds, maybe you could use the construction window to barricade the window, producing a 400-cost window that gets used up as zombies step on it.