How about some rare and interesting weather types? These are meant to be truly rare. As in you MIGHT get one a year in game. More like one every three in game years.
Dimensional Storms:
A freaky storm where odd things happen. Odd colored lightning. Randomly appears nether creatures. Very small chance to create or destroy a portal. Small chance to randomly teleport moving creatures a short distance.
Goo Rain:
It’s raining and the rain contains a higher then normal portion of goo from other dimensions. This rain would heal some creatures and have a random chance of spawning a goo blob.
Spore Rain:
Weather conditions are just right to carry the spores from a Fungaloid tower to the current area. Random spore clouds will spawn (possibly other critters?) but hopefully not enough to cause a foothold situation…
Blood Moon/sun:
The moon/sun is the color of blood. Something in the atmosphere is causing all the zombies to be more excited then normal. Best to lay low.
Anomalous Storm:
The cloud crawl in random directions in fits and starts. Lightnings arcs up and then turns back towards the earth half way. A random anomaly may be born from this.
sounds like FUn™ Add option to turn off via options or blacklist and count me a supporter. No need to stop there either. Think there is still an issue trying to implement “random” event stuff though.
for telling us that there will be a day when we can have that awkward moment:
when zombie horde turns into a fungal horde and fights itself before turning completely fungal and chasing you again with the added threat of little spores everywhere, and wildlife joining the fight against you instead of running, or fighting the horde. And just because you thought getting out might be easy enough, one of them is starting to take root now to become a new tower. How nice ^.^.
I was thinking the same thing, mostly for making future seasons harder. Here’s a post I made a couple weeks back about it.
Mutated packs of zombies might be interesting, similar to champion packs in Diablo. You could even go so far as to give them hard-immunities to certain types of damage, particularly as the game continued.
I was thinking seasonal difficulties might provide a bit of flavor for late-game.
Your first couple of seasons would be normal, but after winter had passed, each season would have a chance of being abnormal (severity depending on how long the player has been alive for).
Some example effects:
Summer:
Random fires occuring during the day.
Volcanic activity / aggressive magma flows.
Meteor strikes replacing lightning storms.
Heat haze, massively reducing weapon ranges.
Energy activity resulting in random zombies being accelerated.
Radiation waves of increasing intensity. The closer you are to the surface / outdoors, the higher the exposure. (forcing the player to survive underground in part)
Scorching UV, damaging the player if he is uncovered or not wearing thick enough protection.
High friction air, where ordinary ballistics become highly ineffective or unpredictable.
Winter:
Nuclear winter, a permanent snowstorm where moving outdoors would be much slower and difficult.
Icicle spores popping up from the ground like splinter mines. Individually not threatening, but walking on them creates sounds that monsters might hear.
Frost, giving guaranteed moments where your vehicle will lose control as well as poor/no plant growth.
Ice mutation, all outdoor zombies inflict a stacking slow when they hit players and vehicles (regardless of armor absorption).
Persistent ice storms where you take minor damage outdoors.
Brittle mutation, all melee damage doubled for both parties outdoors.
Crystal air, altering the effect of energy/sci-fi weapons erratically.
Spring/Autumn (perhaps keep these mild so as to give the player a break between rough seasons):
Acid pools bubble to the surface slowly.
Wildlife boon causing wild life to greatly repopulate (and obviously zombify shortly) as well as forests becoming laden with living plants. (forcing players out of their lovely forest resort)
Acoustic resonance mutation, magnifying sound loudness high enough that sneaking is no longer the primary option.
Zombie mutation (less zombies in general, more packs of identical specials)
Marsh weather, causing all grass tiles to be more difficult to traverse, sometimes acting as small holes.
Bacterial storm, explosively damaging bleeding and cut damaged individuals.
Really just the kind of things to force you out of your comfort zone in late-game. Not all effects would have to be a malus, just something to keep things interesting in late game.
Perhaps there could even be long-term quests to eliminate(or increase) certain weather conditions that players could attempt. For instance your game would be seeded with different malus seasons (you’d experience these consistently after the first winter) and you’d work towards restoring the world back to normal (mostly for your own convenience of course), otherwise the effects may intensify beyond your control.
… What if Difficulty increase/ implementation of rare weathers was implemented by completion of specific quest lines/tasks. Then all the horrible weather stuff could be added, and active, but only become a thing once character had gotten good enough and completed something difficult enough to allow them to continue down the “quest-line of difficulty” O.o I have no idea where that thought came from… but, much yes? It would mean a more manageable way of choosing graduated difficulty increase. Jumps in zombie mutation could also be tied in so that it would be gradual with “little” jumps upon completion of some other quest line.
For what it’s worth several of these suggestions I’d like to eventually get in, but as localized weather formations rather than as widespread ones. You might get fungal rain occurring in very heavily fungalized areas, or acid/ice/radiation/etc. rain occuring near linked portals, for example. That gives you the perfect ability to avoid them if you want, or to delve into them for their benefits/challenge if you would prefer that instead.
Eh… It’d be cool to see it put into the game in anyway. I’m still for it being as a widespread thing instead of just localized. But I could also seeing it get progressively more likely as the years pass, so it’s mainly a late game thing. Year one, doens’t happen at all. Year two, very minor possibilities. Year three, minor. Year four, small. Always a small chance, but progressively getting harder.
yes, but they generate lag and are realy unfriendly for vehicles in motion (spores can wreck your car if you ram them, cata logic…) i was living near fungaloids for long time until i used moltov cocktail against zombie horde, fungal bed quickly catches fire and spread it, i lost my base and decided to end life of this character because it was end anyway
personaly i like ideas for some ambient challenges others than sunny weather and snowstorm/icelab
and spore rain should give only fungal infection if someone is not protected against it and buff already egzisting fungus in area because spawning spores (what turn into fungaloids what spawn even more spores) will cause great preformance drop
