ZOMBIE FEEDBACK

[misto]

they dont have to be fast fast. even just very slightly slower speed as humans until the damage starts racking up would be good. as ive already said, you can experiment with giving them lessened health to compensate for the speed boost. xenos have a lot more other features than just speed and melee attacks that set them apart from zombies.

theres a reason that, in most zombie type games, the player zombies are "special infected" in l4d tradition or fast zombies in counterstrike infection/deathrun mode tradition, being one of slow shambling horde is not a recipe for lasting fun times. once the newness shine wears off this game mode, im sure youll start hearing this from a lot more people

did you ever play, say, zombie panic source mod for half life? some of its maps had some things in common with what you seem to be aiming for here, and it may be educational to consider it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VhXces3d7nU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9boRE4VDSdI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoVgKpbfvpQ

its been years since i last played it, but i think it has some similarities and principles that make it relevant to what youre trying to do here. notice

-a period of supply gathering and fortification building, much like you see in colonial marines. now, in zps the fortifications were accomplished by nudging physics objects and placing weak wooden boards, so youre already way ahead of the game here

-unlike left 4 dead, human players can be infected and turned in zps, just as in col mar

-the zombies are all player controlled here, just as they are in colonial marines

-the zombies are basic melee types, so theres no need for fancy special infected mutations (unless you want to do that, which would be good and add variety)

-the zombies move at about the same speed as the humans, perhaps slightly slower, but because of the damage and knockback applied by the ranged human firearms, and the non-excessive amounts of health the zombies have, the humans stand a chance so long as they work together

-the videos people upload of this game are often of them winning as survivor, do not take this to mean that it is easy to do so, they are trying to show off how good they are at it.

-the zombies respawn apart from where they died in zps, but i respect your choice to have them bodily revive where their corpse is in colonial marines. despite this difference i feel there is much more similarity

and this was a fairly respected and popular mod, for a time, until newer and shinier things emerged

[shyshadow]

One complaint, all the fucking marines just start chugging suspicious vials, like, all the time. It feels much less real and atmospheric.

Also, very little effort goes into creating a proper "containment".

Very difficult when literally MTs have barely any actual building supplies and admins don't want to send any to make the round more enjoyable.

[apophis775]

Last round, there was a LOT of effort into containment, they just let some people sneak out.

[Nick123q23]

Zombies could use some variety, yeah.

If we're using the ZPS example from above, that game had a special zombie called a 'carrier' who was exactly like a normal zombie except slightly stronger and with the ability to instantly infect people.

Maybe the less, or more damage a zombie receives over time, the faster they get black goo mutations like those scythe hands I've heard people describing the zombies like. Eventually it'd be cool if they also got the acid blood aswell.

[Feweh]

We arent getting into crazy variations of zombies people, re fucking lax

[TheMaskedMan2]

After gathering information from people who've been able to play in the tests, I think zombies need, as Swagile said, mutations. Maybe randomised, rather than chosen, so you'll need to adapt to a new, randomized and twisted body each time you become a zombie. These mutations could develop over time with the zombie's general power as they slowly become stronger from infecting and harming the living.

^ This.

We were talking the other day about potential zombie ideas, though they could conflict with whatever plans the devs have in place. Though generally from the first Zombie round where I was the CO, I had no idea what to expect, or what the zombies were capable of, marines had given reports that they glow, that there was a creature, etc, and since I was simply listening to radio comms, my imagination filled in the blanks, and I assumed that as they died the infection continued to progress until they glowed, turned into unrecognizable monsters, etc. That turned out to not be the case, but it's interesting nontheless.

There were some ideas about a way to kill zombies being "Gibbing" them, which spawns some sort of concentrated black goo stuff they have to kill, and other mysterious abilities, or hidden features like that.

I think of the zombies as similiar to Abominations, they are almost a "hidden" mechanic, that people vaguely know about, but don't know the specifics. I feel as if zombies could benefit from having things like this. Hidden features not specifically told to anyone, but exist nontheless. I enjoy the mystery behind it, the transmission vector. Just hidden scenarios that the zombies bodies may change to "adapt". Hidden variables that must be filled, with a bit of RNG. I've no idea if this makes sense, or how it could evolve or actually work, but these are some of my ridicolous random ideas, something to make them more than "Just" zombies.

Mutation examples? Spooky goo tentacle. Maybe black goo barf. Glowing and slightly faster, explodes goo on death? Etc, nothing game changingly OP, but something to add unpredictability and unexpected changes to the zombies. Perhaps everytime they regrow from the dead they can come back stronger! Not as in simple stats, but in weirdnesss. To help speed up the escalation of the round. As it goes on.

Once again, not asking for insane variations, i'm just rambling, just little tiny things that may make it a bit more interesting. "This one barfs goo." etc. Anyways, in the end, I wish the devs the best of luck on this, and to not y'know, freak out. I'm sure they have most of their ideas planned out already anyways, and we hardly understand the goal they have in mind for this gamemode. These aren't supposed to be super zombies, but a strange resilient virus.

[misto]

a LOT of effort put into containment? people were dragging corpses into lz1

[Tidomann]

a LOT of effort put into containment? people were dragging corpses into lz1

Containment PlanetSide was a disaster. Containment on the ship was much more organized in a quarentine. It was nice being shuffled into a confined space with infected marines.

[apophis775]

Containment on the ship was pretty well done, planetside was a disaster because people were drinking the stuff.

And no mutations.

[Feweh]

Why the fuck did you guys set up a FOB and bring in all the visibly infected people INTO THE CENTER OF THE FOB, BYPASSING ALL YOUR DEFENSES.

Seriously, that planetside FOB ate itself away inside-out.

[Tidomann]

Why the fuck did you guys set up a FOB and bring in all the visibly infected people INTO THE CENTER OF THE FOB, BYPASSING ALL YOUR DEFENSES.

Seriously, that planetside FOB ate itself away inside-out.

For the roleplay

[Swagile]

Yeah, our SL told us not to panic... as he let 3 infected people into our FOB.

I got the fuck outta there the moment I saw that.

But yeah, zombie mode in its current state would be really boring. The zombie tests had a lot of admin intervention, such as ERT's being sent in, and other misc stuff im probably not aware of as I didn't really pay attention due to playing in the game actively. This intervention kept it fresh and interesting to play.

I wish the devs best of luck in making this a fun gamemode without mutations; I am interested to see the work arounds they will put in to make this much more than a shooting gallery that we had in the second zombie test. I personally liked the first zombie test, but that only worked once because no one knew about zombies so the mystery made it great and created a lot of RP; now people subconciously metagame it just like they metagame xenos on planet and prep their game to fight said enemy.

[taketheshot56]

Containment on the ship was a complete shitshow, the engineers need to be more willing to work. We needed stuff made for the containment in the hanger and the MTs and the CE just ran around. Doing nothing...

[Winter]

It's super awkward when marines chug the bioweapon, though.

[misto]

if youre going to be removing walls for them, just give them a way to break walls on their own

[apophis775]

You really shouldn't be able to wall them off the way that it was happening.

[TehSpoderman]

You really shouldn't be able to wall them off the way that it was happening.

i missed the infection event. What happened?

[Winter]

I think this mode doesn't work well on high pop if it needs RP to succeed, as it only takes one shithead to murderize the VIP and ruin the round.

Also having walls in disposal is awkward, I guess.

[Swagile]

Its possible, but the VIP should have had Commandos protecting him instead of PMC's; thats the only way to ensure high pop baldies are scared enough not to provoke the VIP... and if they shoot, they'll get AP battle rifled to death very quickly, so that will scare off the rest.

That or PMC's should have all had battle rifles.

[misto]

making the pmcs a little buffer does sound fair. then when they slaughter the first wave of wild marines there will be a nice buffer of zombies between them and the main marine force

[misto]

attention marines, make sure to roleplay being a shoe collector and taking the boots off of every dead person you can before they turn zombie, and then make sure to accidentally drop lots of glass shards and shrapnel bits in your key chokepoints

this is my roundabout way of saying that zombies having hurty feets is dumb. they get right back up after 1, 2, 3, shotgun blasts but stepping on a heap of glass shards and bullet pieces has their feet shattered and them made immobile with agony?

[Jerkface00]

Night before last we built a containment firing line in the room south of (what is now DS2) and managed to contain about 30+ zombies in it for an hour before someone decided to unbolt and un-weld the other side of it without telling anyone.

It was hecktic, but containment was possible. It probably would have held for another hour if the rear wasn't opened up for the dead to leak out.

I would like to see the group designated to guard the VIP be more geared towards maintaining the VIP's survival instead of provoking the marines who first encounter them/releasing the "plague".

The marines need a way to "win" besides blowing themselves up with the SD. Perhaps give the VIP a suitcase that's handcuffed to himself and code/ID locked that contains a sample of a "cure". Allow the researchers a means to produce said cure via their new pandemic machines. Give the machines a chance per time frame to produce either a cure or something that makes the infection worse. Make it an incentive to keep zoom-bees in containment to be used to test said cures.

[shyshadow]

Night before last we built a containment firing line in the room south of (what is now DS2) and managed to contain about 30+ zombies in it for an hour before someone decided to unbolt and un-weld the other side of it without telling anyone.

It was hecktic, but containment was possible. It probably would have held for another hour if the rear wasn't opened up for the dead to leak out.

I would like to see the group designated to guard the VIP be more geared towards maintaining the VIP's survival instead of provoking the marines who first encounter them/releasing the "plague".

The marines need a way to "win" besides blowing themselves up with the SD. Perhaps give the VIP a suitcase that's handcuffed to himself and code/ID locked that contains a sample of a "cure". Allow the researchers a means to produce said cure via their new pandemic machines. Give the machines a chance per time frame to produce either a cure or something that makes the infection worse. Make it an incentive to keep zoom-bees in containment to be used to test said cures.

This, it's probably the most satiable resolve. Seriously at the moment researchers kinda just fuck around, and they have no actual reason to look for a cure because the person that's suppose to know if there is a cure is off making people into more zombies. *Looks at Professor Kowloski* Yes, you. Give a sample of a cure or give us death.

[Steelpoint]

I fear the moment 'zombies' is uttered everyone will rush for a Shotgun while dropping their M41A.

[taketheshot56]

Everyone should know the only safety lies in Cargonia.