Here's a switch: let's talk about stuff that should be REMOVED

Game Talk The Drawing Board
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Sometimes ideas sound great on paper, but when actually put into practice turn out to be less than stellar. Maybe it’s an issue of them being superceded by later additions, maybe it’s a matter of them simply not meshing well with other things, but as time goes on certain things wear out their welcome and it becomes necessary/desired to cull them. Cataclysm’s no different, and over the many updates we’ve seen things come along that prove to be quite problematic in one way or another. So let’s talk about those problematic things.

And for the love of fucking god, PLEASE don’t turn this into a classic zombie vs. mutated zombie or modern vs. sci-fi shitfest, this thread’s 'bout shit that doesn’t work well/at all or is conspicuous as fuck.

Skeletons: I know that undeath includes varying degrees of rot and decay and all, but while we can suspend our disbelief quite a bit for the origin of the outbreak and everything, these dudes are just a little too ridiculous - the goo just does resurrection and mutation, not bloody magic. Besides which, we’ve already got a fast enemy that does much of the same thing the skeleton does, and the skeleton’s only other schtick is his bulletproof-ness (which shouldn’t actually matter since, given there’s nothing holding him together, a bullet impact would just knock the bone out of place anyway). Fast zombies work, fleshless skeletons running around with nothing to enable motion don’t. Besides, while zombies are universally acceptable, skeletons just seem like too much of a fantasy thing for a sci-fi apocalypse game.

Science Lab 9-Box Rooms: You know those sections of lab that basically look like this?

XXXXXXX XOXOXOX XXXXXXX XOXOXOX XXXXXXX XOXOXOX XXXXXXX
Where it’s the 9 shitty little rooms clustered in one map tile? Those rooms suck from a design standpoint. Most of the other sections are rather rational in their design, either being the giant rooms (understandable, since some experiments might require tons of space) or have varying numbers of designated rooms connected to hallways. Those little 9-box sections, though, they just seem illogical, requiring anyone passing through that sector to have to navigate through experiment chambers. No designer in their right mind would use that sort of setup, and from a gaming standpoint those shitty little rooms’re a pain in the ass to navigate, especially given the mis-alignment of some of the goods throughout there. Let’s ditch them.

Human Corpses: The infection is everywhere. EVERYWHERE. Every single person on the planet at this point is pretty much doomed to become one of the undead after they kick the bucket. So why are there human corpses lying around at the various special sites (drug dealers, army/science corpses, etc)? They should be up and at 'em, not lying around for the player to butcher for whatever strange reason. It’s a petty little oversight to be sure, but still worth amending.

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Dead before the infection happened. So they can resurect because the body has begun to rot, it’s not a fresh kill.

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Despite being generally hated, I was opposed to this for mechanical reasons, the same reason they were ever introduced. Since I’ve now added smokers, who are far more effective than skeletons, their removal is planned.

gtaguy has it right - you had to have been infected BEFORE death, and for at least enough time for the slime to settle itself, or you actually become a corpse. Since the slime spread through the water supply, those who lived off the grid or on the fringe had a decent chance of surviving the initial outbreak and then getting ganked later.

No real comment about lab rooms, don’t care if they are removed, don’t remember ever seeing 'em myself.

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I don’t like skeletons either. They make not a lick of sense to me. It just doesn’t work that way. Also bones shouldn’t protect you from cutting weapons, that’s a stupid trope from fantasy RPGs. If a broadsword hits the skull, collarbone or sternum, the bone is going to shatter, not get scratched. And moving with just sinews and a few decayed muscles also makes no sense, what’s keeping it moving with no internal organs and only a few remnants of tissue?

Slight rant there, but they really don’t belong in a game with science fiction origins for the walking dead.

And those weird rooms in science labs that seem to be covered in items also are a little out of place. Often the dressers are downright blocking the doors.

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The goo that’s enveloping its skeleton is making it move.

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I agree that skeletons are a bit odd. But Darkling might have it. If they stay in it might be better to indicate that it is obviously covered in the goo and is being manipulated by it.

It’s less animate skeleton and more a blob that acidically ate away some poor sap/zombie’s flesh and decided to use the bones to give itself some structure to move around easier. Those blobs are supposed to be at least semi-intelligent right?

In that case they may need a little bit of a rework anyway. Spawn a small ooze on death or something and change the skeleton’s description to match.

EDIT: As for my own thing I would like seeing infinite water from toilets removed. Or at least make there be water that is so bad it either simply can’t be purified through normal means, or needs to be run through a purifier multiple times. Perhaps we could get a new larger, heavier water purifier that purifies through evaporation. Perhaps even make it a static map object found in sewage treatment plants.

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Necromancers. I would like to see them edited. Maybe give off ooze that goes for corpses and makes them live again?

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Corpses:

Military and Scientist corpses are perfectly rational, as they’d be the first to be given a dose of the limited supplies of the cure.

Skeletons:
They go hand in hand with the Necromancers. Personally, I think neither make much sense in the setting.

Rooms: Never ran into them.

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On the skeleton issue: Bullets can shatter bones very very easily.
Especially if they’re not slowed down by such petty things like organs and flesh.

However I’d say attacking a skeleton with something like a knife would be stupid, you just wouldn’t be able to cut bone well unless you had a shit-ton of force or momentum, aka it’s practically a bash anyway. So it’s more an issue of bullets being cutting damage I think. Then again Skeletons are ridiculous, we already have fast zombies they do well enough. Can’t wait to see the smokers, because god knows grabbers are useless unless they get close.

Please don’t make smoker ability a fast use lol…

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[quote=“Greiger, post:6, topic:411”]I agree that skeletons are a bit odd. But Darkling might have it. If they stay in it might be better to indicate that it is obviously covered in the goo and is being manipulated by it.

It’s less animate skeleton and more a blob that acidically ate away some poor sap/zombie’s flesh and decided to use the bones to give itself some structure to move around easier. Those blobs are supposed to be at least semi-intelligent right?

In that case they may need a little bit of a rework anyway. Spawn a small ooze on death or something and change the skeleton’s description to match.

EDIT: As for my own thing I would like seeing infinite water from toilets removed. Or at least make there be water that is so bad it either simply can’t be purified through normal means, or needs to be run through a purifier multiple times. Perhaps we could get a new larger, heavier water purifier that purifies through evaporation. Perhaps even make it a static map object found in sewage treatment plants.[/quote]

Just Rename it “Gooey skeleton,” or “Structured goo,” or even “Skeletal goo.” Just some Ideas

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Triffids and Fungaloids.

Unless something is added to make them worthwhile, all they currently do is make an area of the map not worth going into.

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Trifflids are a valuable food source, last I checked plant matter takes 3 times as long to rot as meat does. With some cooking timing you can make the stuff last 6 days without it rotting. While meat will last 2 at best. You don’t want to live too close to them, but having some within reasonable travel distance is an asset.

Fungaloids are far less useful, but it’s an entertaining change of pace to attack the spire.

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[quote=“Greiger, post:12, topic:411”]Trifflids are a valuable food source, last I checked plant matter takes 3 times as long to rot as meat does. With some cooking timing you can make the stuff last 6 days without it rotting. While meat will last 2 at best. You don’t want to live too close to them, but having some within reasonable travel distance is an asset.

Fungaloids are far less useful, but it’s an entertaining change of pace to attack the spire.[/quote]

Until meat rotting becomes an issue, or it is harder to hunt meat, it’s not really worth it unless you’re vegetarian.

As for fungaloids, while it can be entertaining, it’d be nice to see some point to it. Either the ability to completely wipe them out being easier, or something to gain - perhaps some kinda mushroom based potion/drug?

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I’m fine with them just being an awesome threat that players learn to simple avoid.

The process of discovery is important, I think, and I’d love to make that discovery easier, but I fully support having some discoveries end up as “stay the fuck away unless I’m looking for a challenge.”

Also, you DO get a mushroom based drug, a super amazingly awesome one, in fungaloid territory, so…

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The only thing I don’t like about skeletons is their immunity to bullets. I don’t consider them out of place, but they do overlap with fresh zombies so… axing them is ok with me.

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I never understood the concept of skeletons getting bonuses to defense and resistances vs. regular zombies in any fantasy setting.

Isn’t every zombie just a skeleton with more fleshy armor over it?

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Speaking of “Fresh” zombies, I’d like to see them removed. They make no sense, and fill a role already filled by fast zombies without adding anything of value.

Also, don’t make any sense.

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Fresh zombies are fast zombies. They just got renamed in a merge once.

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I agree that necromancers should be removed, or at least changed so that it doesn’t sound like a fantasy RPG. Also, I have incredible trouble with hulk zombies after the first few days. I don’t know exactly should be done, but making runs into a town after the fourth or fifth day is unfeasible with these zombies roaming around, considering they’re always faster and more powerful than the player.

Then again, maybe I just don’t have a good strategy for killing them quickly…

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I think before we start proposing the removal of enemy types, that the consequences of doing so should be carefully weighed.

Right now skeletons appear to serve a purpose. They are an early game enemy which moves relatively fast, and has a particularly high resistance or possible immunity to bullets, but are fairly easy to deal with otherwise. They can cause certain types of characters to need to have a different strategy to deal with them. This type of enemy adds variety and helps to keep gameplay from stagnating by possibly asking a player to change up their preferred combat style once in awhile. I think bullets probably shouldnt bounce off of them and that they should instead miss most of the time, as should small piercing weapons… but thats a minor tweaking issue. I can understand that they dont quite fit with the ‘zombie lore’ and are more typically an ‘undead lore.’ However, removing them on that basis leaves all sorts of other magical, demonic, and scifi enemies in while removing an enemy that poses a specific challenge and requires a changing of strategy in some cases to defeat.

Necromancers pose their own unique style of gameplay threat. By themselves they are not really all that menacing. But in a group and as a support that tends to linger back while the more aggressive enemies attack the player, they cause the player to need to shift their focus from defeating the immediate physical threat to defeating the long term threat, in some cases. They fill a very specific role which as far as i know, no other enemy type does currently. Perhaps they should resurrect a ‘lesser’ version of the enemy in place of a fallen monster, or maybe even some other type all together, but removing these different -types- of threats altogether would allow players to use more single-strategy methods to deal with larger subsets of enemies, and thus would reduce the somewhat dynamic gameplay down into something more grindy and repetitive.

So far, both of these enemy types make sense from a gameplay standpoint. They both behave in a manner in which the player could expect them to, and they both require changing the default combat method to deal with. If we start cutting enemy types like these without analyzing the impact their removal would have on the gameplay as a whole, i think we would be doing the game a huge disservice. Before an enemy is removed its really important to ask things like: What problem will we be fixing with this removal? Will it cause changes to the players behavior at certain stages of the game? What impact will it have on balance for weapons, traits, and even tactics? And most importantly: Does this item/enemy type do anything unique which would leave a void in its absence.

Assume that the default player tactics are to either use melee against enemies, or to use ranged piercing weapons against enemies. Right now, most enemies that im aware of are vulnerable to gunfire + kiting, or melee + slow movement tiles. Skeletons add some balance and force a ranged character to change their strategy, maybe use a non-optimal technique to deal with the enemy. Likewise, a necromancer can cause a melee character to re-prioritize his targets, or to possibly run away if he realizes that all those brutes hes killing in a choke point might just pop right back up again and overwhelm him in the long run. The necromancer as an enemy type asks the melee character to try a ranged tactic, or to leave his safe choke point to take care of a threat which could cause the battle to last longer than he anticipated, or that it might be in his best interest to just run.

One needs to keep in mind the extreme variety in player skill that this community has, id be willing to bet that the majority of players of Cataclysm have never made it to day 7 or experienced any of the late game content. Some know how to (ab)use terrain to slow enemy pursuit, or even to kill many of the early game enemies in melee combat without risking any damage. Some experienced roguelike players would know that you have to run away from some battles, and that there are some battles that you cannot run away from, that you need to put yourself into the best possible position in which to fight them. Considering all of these factors is particularly important before making hasty additions or removals.