Borrowing a page from our own history, how about a zombie type that doesn’t approach the player to attack unless it sees the player either try to sleep/exhausted, or that they’re critically injured?
Otherwise it’s just there, following a screen or so behind the player. It doesn’t interfere it just follows you. You start to get near it and it backs further away, but it tries to never break line of sight.
Optionally it could also:
be really hard to spot, like a chameleon affect
have to be detected purely through sound
All those questionmarks on the map just got a lot creepier.
What I’d like to see is a liiiiiittle different from your idea but not that much.
I like the idea of a moderately powerful mob that passively confronts the player. You see it and you think “that is going to complicate things” but isn’t an immediate threat. It’s unique in the context of the enemies in the game, which go right for the throat with maybe a little hit-and-run kiting.
Ideally if it hangs around outside immediate archery/thrown weapon range your options for dealing with it in the here and now force the player to decide between making some noise or just playing it cool until the worst possible moment.
A particularly mean thing to do is have an AI set up to maintain distance to the player, just inside the monster’s detection range, so if the player tries to approach they back off. If you’re the same speed you can’t catch them without cornering or otherwise impairing their ability to move, if they’re slower than you it still takes a large amount of effort to catch them.
See the game “Smart Kobolds” for an exquisite implementation of this.
With this setup, something you can do is have them just maintain distance, but keep track of how many allies they can see. If the number of allies goes over a certain threshild, they attack!
This would totally not work for zombies, and I’m not sure it’s a good fit for Cata in general, but it’s a neat idea.
Yeah, it might be a little too “intelligent” for zombies, but maybe as some sort of [REDACTED] type enemy?
Most of the mobs in the game, if they inspire any dread at all, do so because they’re strong or tough or have a weird side effect to fighting them like obscuring your screen or poison etc.
I think it’d break it up a bit to have a mob you dread because of how it passively behaves.
The sleeper zombies you mentioned I think do that as well. Antagonize the player without directly attacking. You dread going into areas with them sprawled everything.
[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:4, topic:3202”]A particularly mean thing to do is have an AI set up to maintain distance to the player, just inside the monster’s detection range, so if the player tries to approach they back off. If you’re the same speed you can’t catch them without cornering or otherwise impairing their ability to move, if they’re slower than you it still takes a large amount of effort to catch them.
See the game “Smart Kobolds” for an exquisite implementation of this.
With this setup, something you can do is have them just maintain distance, but keep track of how many allies they can see. If the number of allies goes over a certain threshild, they attack!
This would totally not work for zombies, and I’m not sure it’s a good fit for Cata in general, but it’s a neat idea.[/quote]
Actually, that AI you describe would be perfect for wolves, coyotes, wild dogs, or any other sort of pack hunters, since that’s how they tend to track and hunt in the real world.
More or less. Shockers are filled with malfunctioning bionics. The ‘lightning’ they shoot at you is supposed to be a side-effect of being undead cyborg mutants.
Initially I thought they were kind of silly - in my experience, shooting lightning at you is something smartypants wizards do, not mindless zombies. But when I read the explanation that it’s a result of broken cybernetics, I decided it was an acceptable enough handwave.
Maybe a regular zombie that, when dealt damage, shreds some meat off to reveal a terminator style endoskeleton underneath?
ILL BE BACK (FROM THE DEAD)
As long as we’re just referencing stuff, can we have a Grey Jumpsuit item with the flavor text “Wearing it makes you want to steal everything around you and start fistfights.”?