new special and evil zombie. he explodes. not quite as powerful as a landmine. they attack in packs. one goes off and another range it goes off. can be a pro and con. can use it to take out a swarm of zombies or basically croak. you can melee them, but have to be quick about it…
it will be the latest mob everyone pisses and moans about if it gets added.
I prefer the version someone suggested, “gasbag zombie” or similar. If they catch on fire they explode in a fireball, if killed by some other means they release a cloud of flammable gas that’s maybe irritating, but not deadly unless exposed to fire. Makes it something the player can better deal with instead of just “if it gets close to you you’re gonna die”.
The only scenario where I’d be in favor of zombies that explode when they get close to you is if someone’s been putting bombs in the zombies… heh, heh, heh
i like that idea. ill add the bomber zombie to a json when that comes out and we have modding support.
its probably better as a mod.
Hmm… disagree.
The ‘smart’ strategy, at the moment, is to kill zombies at range with a bow or something, so exploding zombies which take out other zombies in the process just makes that easier, and makes melee less viable.
Really, what you want is a zombie that’s more annoying to ranged characters. Some suggestions…
1: More fast zombies. Zombie dogs remain threatening for quite some time, despite their general weakness, simply by virtue of being a natural counter to the kiting tactics which work so well against all the other zombies.
2: More zombies with ranged attacks. Shockers and spitters remain threatening long after most zombies stop being relevant, simply because they can hurt you from a nice wide radius.
3: More zombies with protection from ranged attacks. Skeletons are consistently threatening, since they can ignore a lot of ranged attacks, and will force you to melee them down, unless you’re a really awesome shot. Smokers, on the other hand, are more threatening than Hulks, since you can’t kill them at range, and since they’re effectively surrounded by a cloud of poison, they’re dangerous to melee.
From a typical game design point of view, that’s true, but ranged attacks and zombies only have a limited applicability, really the shockers and spitters aren’t even that great a match with being zombies. If zombies were a faction, they’d be like zerg, try and overwhelm you with sheer numbers, the best counter to this IS to keep your distance and not engage, it’s not even a question, that having been said, it’s certainly possible to deal with them as a melee specialist too.
I think balancing melee vs zombies is going to more be a matter of adding capabilities to melee that ranged combat can’t match, like knockdowns, pushing, etc, that let you consistently fight zombies one-on-one, where you generally have a huge edge, especially if you’re capable of kiting them.
I think scaling zombie difficulty makes more sense in the area of increasing zombie numbers rather than making individual zombies more dangerous, although I’m not particularly opposed to increasing zombie variety in general.
Maybe let them have a trait or two, or such is only an introductory level for more complex zombies?
Can their be a big-ass Spitter that explodes instead of jes’ melting down so he’s a great no-no in melee, or is it too op?
[quote=“vultures, post:6, topic:3356”]Maybe let them have a trait or two, or such is only an introductory level for more complex zombies?
Can their be a big-ass Spitter that explodes instead of jes’ melting down so he’s a great no-no in melee, or is it too op?[/quote]
Spitters that explode like Boomers? That sounds reasonable, since you should just be able to run away afterwards.
Can we duct-tape explosives to zombies yet? >.>
@iosyn: we could add pets and then duct tape explosives to fluffy. throw a bone near some zombies and send fluffy off…
It’s been done, though against tanks instead of zombies. Results were poor.