Suggestion: gang-up bonus for monsters

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

New characters have to fight monsters one or two at a time anyway, or they will get ripped to bits. Experienced characters are too powerful and can streak into town naked and bludgeon a hundred zombies (hulks included) with a piece of bubblewrap.

Could monsters be equipped with a stacking aura* that buffs other monsters (within, say, two squares) and gives them higher to-hit, higher damage, greater knockdown chance, damage resistance, etc? Could this be made apparent in an unobtrusive but clear way through the UI? For instance, by showing up in the eXamine [“This monster is in a group of nearby monsters, making him tougher and more dangerous.”] and in the event texts [“The Grabber Zombie lunges forward attempting to bite you! The attack is more dangerous because of the other nearby monsters!”]

I think this would be a reasonable and realistic way of keeping stock monsters dangerous for experienced characters, without making life much harder for new characters. If you meet one zombie on the street and you’re a master of machetejutsu you can just machete him in the face and get back to dropping acid and hoarding romance novels, but if there are thirty of them pressing in on you and you don’t have room to swing or dodge, they’ll still be snacking on your brains.

*For instance, if the bonus is +1 attack, +3 damage, +1% knockdown, +3 damage resistance, and there are 10 monsters within two squares of monster X, monster X gets +10 attack, +30 damage, +10% knockdown chance, and +30 damage resistance. If you think linear scaling is too much, maybe use a square-root or otherwise diminishing returns model.

2

I have to agree here, lots of zeds in one area are difficult to fight to begin with, but that doesn’t even factor in panic.

3

I don’t like the idea of just a general ‘near by’ boost, as I think it’d be difficult to show easily and for the player to work out (is three a crowd? four?). However, a ‘Panic’ or reworked Morale stat would work well here (I think it’s planned), as the number of zombies/whatever could directly cause debilitating affects, which would be easy to see.

As a side note, I think it’d need a lot of work, as having a ‘1 normal Zed = -1 morale’ would be very annoying for late game

4

The idea is good but the way of triggering it is shit. It makes zero sense why zombies suddenly get more powerful around others. The only ones I would say should do this normally are Zombie Masters and Zombie wizards or what ever they are called now. Other then that maybe a panic debuff that if your character sees bad odds he has a stat drop but even that is pushing it.

5

Well presumably a “Panic” mode would work something to the effect of this (In my head):

There are 30 assorted zeds in your reality bubble, out of those 30, let’s say you can see 20, and 8 are aware of your presence and are moving in to attack, leaving 2 unaccounted for.

While preparing to attack the 8 moving in on you, you fail to reach your window/doorway/etc and are now surrounded. This gives the zeds their first boost in that they have you surrounded, for simplicity we’ll just call it “Surrounded”

Your Dodge Skill is reduced by 8 in that you have /no/ room to move around, presumably you’d still be able to somewhat block but it’d be exceptionally difficult. But since these are regular zombies you’re in danger but not massive danger. Morale doesn’t really affect combat skills (yet?) so I won’t bother mentioning it. Your melee skill is reduced by 5 to account for the lack of space and firearms is reduced by 2. (Melee reduction is larger to account for needing to build up force rather than just point and pull a trigger. Some weapons would need a flag to account for CQC compatible, pistols, small SMGs, knives)

While combating these zeds, you made enough noise that the 12 zeds you’d already seen were drawn to you. You’ve dispatched four of the eight, but now those 12 have surrounded you and you also have a few that are a tile away jockeying for position. Which will trigger a second level, Panicked

When “Panicked” Perception, Intelligence, and Dexterity are reduced by 2. Strength is increased by 2 (Mayhaps the adrenaline buff instead?) At the same time, Firearms is reduced by 6, and Melee by 3. (You’re too scared to aim the weapon accurately, your mind is trying to focus but it’s too busy worrying) Morale will go without mention here because again, all morale seems to affect is how well you learn.

somehow you manage to take care of those last twelve, but in doing so the remaining two have shown themselves. A hulk and a standard zombie, and that hulk is ready to run over and rip your nipples off. Despite no longer being surrounded, a fucking huge monster is coming to KILL YOU thus giving the “Panicked” debuff/buff.

On a side note, when NPCs start working properly a “Strength in Numbers” buff might want to be looked into, reducing the ability to be panicked when surrounded by friendlies.

Obviously needs a bit of work as far as balance goes but… that’s my idea. On a related note… Morale:
Personally, I feel morale should have more of an effect than “Well now I don’t want to read or make macaroni art :(” So perhaps a small buff for high morale and a small debuff for low morale, and a larger one for extremely high and low.

Lastly, some perks.
"Nerves of Steel"
Cannot be Panicked unless there are at least 16 monsters surrounding you. Hulks, etc don’t scare you.

"Berserker"
When surrounded your Melee and Firearms skills don’t drop, but your intelligence loss is doubled, and it takes longer to wear off than would a regular “Surrounded” and or “Panicked” state.

6

Technically, there already is a bonus for multiple monsters; you can only dodge/block so many times in a given turn, and every attack after that is a free hit.

7

I don’t want to go into a panic and arbitrarily have to drop some weight to avoid weight-induced pain. Other then that I like this!

8

In theory when one panics the fight or flight response is triggered, so adrenaline would be appropriate, you’d gain strength not lose it.

9

I think a ‘panic’ mode (or whatever) would be great, but I think your proposal is way too complex - having to explain to the player that they’ve temp. lost skills/lots of different stats, and what constitutes different states would become difficult.
I think having each monster in view adding a certain number of ‘tension points’, and if it got over a threshold there was a straight cut to perception and dexterity (or something simple) that’d be easier. This could scale with player battle experience (somehow).

One thing that often comes up with these ‘mental effects’ is that a lot of players see it as annoying when their character panics, as they say (with huge bravado) I WOULDN’T HAVE PANICKED THEN SO WHY ARE THEY. I do get their point though, panic effects tend to be an annoyance, but a simple one for ‘overwhelming odds’ would be good.

10

Also we have to keep in mind that after so many events the character would naturally become unafraid of the things around them.

11

MKay, this as it stands wouldn’t do anything for late game/ experienced characters.

The buff to monsters would have to be enormous- anything less would be a non-issue for experienced characters, and would only help Zeds stomp noobs. Even then, a buff that would effect vets would doubly stomp noobs.
Plus it’s pretty game-y.

The debuff is a much better approach, but again it wouldn’t effect vets- they’ve seen this shit already, they’ve dealt with it a hundred times, don’t tell me they still panic when they see thirty Zs.
Surrounded is a different matter, and in all I like Ekarus’ suggestion.

12

Game design wise, I’m not sure the “you’re surrounded” thing helps, because as GrizzlyAdams points out, it isn’t going to bother experienced players, because they simply won’t get surrounded.

The panic thing… yea… I’ve had plans for this for months now, but no time to add it.
I was thinking panic would be something like the sum of “monster fear” - “distance to monster” across all visible monsters, maybe with a little boost for scary noises.

Each monster would have a starting fear score. Taking damage from a type of monster would increase fear of it, and killing monsters of a given type would decrease fear. Possibly some other interactions. High fear would trigger various conditions that may be either good or bad.

RE: pileups, something I thought of a while back was if you’re holding off a bunch of zombies in a window, the ones behind might occasionally push the zombie in the window into the room with you.

13

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:12, topic:3929”]Each monster would have a starting fear score. Taking damage from a type of monster would increase fear of it, and killing monsters of a given type would decrease fear. Possibly some other interactions. High fear would trigger various conditions that may be either good or bad.

RE: pileups, something I thought of a while back was if you’re holding off a bunch of zombies in a window, the ones behind might occasionally push the zombie in the window into the room with you.[/quote]

Both fantastic ideas, I really like the idea of monsters having a base score and killing them decreasing the fear of them. Possibly books/items could help decrease that fear, like a journal telling of someone killing a whatever and that helping reduce your fear a bit.

As far as pileups go, destructible walls is one way around it, but might be a bit of a big coding task, whereas the pushing through is a great quick(ish) fix, especially if that had a knockback bonus in somewhere?

14

[quote=“Binky, post:13, topic:3929”]Both fantastic ideas, I really like the idea of monsters having a base score and killing them decreasing the fear of them. Possibly books/items could help decrease that fear, like a journal telling of someone killing a whatever and that helping reduce your fear a bit.

As far as pileups go, destructible walls is one way around it, but might be a bit of a big coding task, whereas the pushing through is a great quick(ish) fix, especially if that had a knockback bonus in somewhere?[/quote]

Pushing through would be easy to implement. Destructible walls doesn’t make sense. Just because there are a few Zed behind the window and wall, doesn’t mean they can suddenly destroy it. That breaks the illusion of realism.

That “base score” is going to be implemented at some point as a way of tracking our experience of a certain monster, which will influence a number of other planned things.

15

“The zombie behind the zombie pushes him”
“The zombie falls on you!”

16

Good point, I was thinking perhaps other monsters might have that ability, or if there was a prominence of weaker walls (like scrap metal ones suggested)/decayed/crumbling walls then they might get destroyed.