How I Would do Zombies

So, I've been thinking lately (Jeeze, seems like I always start out new threads like that), and I've decided I want to imagine a new zombie game. And hopefully have it made.

You see, the problem with most modern day zombie games is simple: They are entirely too restrictive and unrealistic(assuming zombies themselves are realistic). I would like to remedy these two problems with a new zombie game. I'm going to fully explain all the ideas that I've got, but if anyone else would like to add something in, feel free to speak up and I'll see if it sounds good. Also, any comments, be they good or bad, about my ideas would be welcome.

The World:For starters, my game would be integrated with something like Google Maps, that way the entire world is open to be played in. This would require a very large server to keep alive, but the thing is, we wouldn't need 500 different worlds, because just this one would suffice. Also, this would allow play on familiar terrain, or strange lands. And having different biomes in the world would force people to make different strategies based on their locations. There would be realistic weather, and natural disasters, and everything. For instance: Earthquakes may hit San Francisco in the game, though probably not Indiana, where there's more danger of, say, a tornado. And if an earthquake decides to erupt in Hawaii, then the island will get a little bigger as the lava cools to form new land. The moon would create tides, and overall the world would be a very great mirror of the real world. Seasons would exist, though they would probably be a little more sped up than the real world.

The Zombies: Zombies would come in two varieties: normal and boss. All zombies at the start of the game will be normal, and a "boss" zombie is basically the reanimated corpse of a player. These bosses can be anywhere from level, say, one to five, based on the score of the player killed. Every level that the boss has gives it one additional random "mutation", which would basically be special abilities. The highest level ones would have ALL of these mutations. So examples may include: knowledge of how to do certain things such as work machinery, the ability to tunnel, suicide explosions, hardened craniums so they would be harder to kill, or super strength. As such, these boss zombies would be vastly superior to the normal ones, and far more difficult. Especially max level zombies, which would be dangerous enough to discourage players from attaining extremely high scores(more on scores later in the Player section). Normal zombies, however, would be extremely dull. They would always go for the player, no matter what is around it. They will have no sense of danger, and basically be homing missiles. But, like bosses, they can also come in a few types. There will be some that are fast, some slow, some very weak, some average, whatever can be thought of that would not be considered quite super enough to denote a boss. They will have bone structures that can be broken and destroyed, and muscles that can be cut, or that wear themselves out over time. For instance, a muscle at 100% "durability" would be able to perform very well at things such as destroying barriers or tearing flesh, but at say 10%, the muscle is almost all destroyed and so does not perform such acts as well. Muscle will not repair itself over time unless the zombie obtains a meal of some kind. Bones would never be repaired. However, over a couple seasons, normal zombies would decay and be destroyed. Boss zombies would take considerably longer, such as say two game years instead of two game seasons.

*Big breath* TBC in my next post. This will probably take a while to explain, so give me a few posts to get it all out, and I'm sorry to any computer I harm.

The Player: Players would be human. Any limitation placed upon us in real life, is placed upon the player in the game. We have muscles that need to be built up and kept in shape, food that must be eaten, sleep that must be slept. Over time, the screen will become more and more blurry as the player is on, and so it will become harder to do things. The player will also begin to move more sluggishly. This is an indication of the need for sleep. Logging out would constitute "sleep", a state in which the blur on the screen begins to become clear again, and the character regains lost muscle stamina and personal stamina. The character can be attacked in sleep, though, and so it is a good idea to set up a blockade of some kind around yourself before logging off, or to find friends to guard your back. After 16 straight hours of play, the character will be unable to perform most menial tasks, and after 20 hours, the "sleep" state is forced. If your character passes out, it cannot be played again for at least 5 hours. However, a full 10 hours is needed to be fully rested. To make it simple, half of however long you play is how long you must sleep to become fully rested. Hunger will work in a similar way, meaning when hunger raises high, the character becomes weaker and cannot perform as well as when they have eaten. However, keeping hunger too low can cause your character to become fat, and thus reduce overall speed. After a day of not eating, strength will become affected, and after five days, the character will expire. After expiring, the character cannot respawn for a set period of time, say two days. This prevents characters from not caring about hunger and just saying they'll respawn and continue what they were doing. Food is not meant to be hard to find, it is only mean to be a realistic limiting factor. Stamina exists for both muscles and the person. Muscle stamina is based on the amount of work performed by each individual muscles, and when it becomes low enough will limit that muscle's abilities. Personal stamina can be seen as the average muscle stamina remaining, and when personal stamina drops low, the character become limited severely, such as losing the ability to run or climb certain things. Weight that the character carries also affects stamina, and is something that must be balanced with the kind of things that you want to carry with you.

The Virus: Imagine the virus like that of George A Romero's Diary of the Dead, meaning every single person is infected with the virus, and will become a zombie upon death unless caused severe trauma to the head. However, the virus is dormant unless it is either present in the body of a dead human with the brain intact, or stimulated by a non-dormant virus from another body. Thus, a bite, a scratch, a single drip of blood from a zombie will begin to trigger the virus, and cause death within two hours. The victim will rise as a zombie, and the process begins again. Due to laboratory experimentation, the virus has become invulnerable to the immune system, and so the survival rate after activation of the virus is 0%. It is not airborn, though, and only waterborn when drinking infected water. The virus will die within a day of being transferred to water, and can only survive in blood or saliva outside of the body for up to a week. It will live in the body of a zombie indefinitely, whether the zombie is dead or alive. Burning of the corpses is pretty much a requirement to prevent infection.

The Wanderer: There are many ways a player can choose to play the game. The first is to be a wanderer. You travel from place to place, killing zombies as you go, and prefer to be alone. You have picked your trustiest weapons, and your trustiest transportation; probably a bicycle. There are many perks to playing like this, such as the ease of finding food on the road, and being able to avoid attracting zombies to your location as easily as a stronghold would. However, there are also downsides, such as a lack of supplies, a necessity of having a physically strong character, and not having a safe area to sleep. Points are earned based on how far you travel, and how easily you avoid contact with the infected.

The Stronghold Defender: This type of character is one who finds a place, and makes it their hideout. They play best in groups, with all members helping each other. There are two main types of strongholds players will want to make: The temporary bunker, and the permanent fortress. A bunker refers to any area that is taken to be used for a short amount of time, by using only the supplies in it, and nothing else unless willing to send people out to gain more. Usually, bunkers are areas such as a house, a warehouse, or a school. Bunkers are most often occupied by smaller groups than fortresses. These places can have enough supplies to last the team for a little while, but not forever. However, this style of stronghold is attractive because not much time needs to be invested in it, and when need comes, can be abandoned without much regret. Also, if choosing to play in a housing edition, bunkers can be taken straight down a line, allowing the players to sustain against assaults for years. Drawbacks of this style is the need to find new bunkers, and the movement required. When playing in a group, it would be better to all be on at the same time to move, so that they can protect each others' backs while on the run, and to minimalize extra supply and person loss. The fortress player, however, seeks out an area to become a permanent home. They may create an area with stone walls, with gardens to sustain all those inside, and all the necessities of life inside of one little area. The benefits of this are that the player will not need to move, and can be very effective at surviving in large groups. However, major drawbacks include the loss of so much work if the fortress is breached, and the fact that most supplies are limited, and so when something breaks, unless a skilled person is there to repair it, it's done for. The Stronghold Defender earns points in the same way, whether a bunker or fortress player. An area is set in which the player calls home, and as long as home has no zombies in it, points are generated. The larger home is, the faster points are generated. However, the smaller home is, the harder it is to be invaded.

The Hunter: A character who plays as a Hunter is out to kill zombies. That is their main objective, and nothing else really matters. They can be partners to a wanderer, or they can be adopted into a stronghold of some kind, or maybe be out of their own as well. It doesn't matter how a Hunter decides to live, but the Hunter only gains points from killing zombies. Boss zombies give more points to the Hunter than normal zombies, but are also much more dangerous. The Hunter is the only class that can gain points from killing zombies.

The Raider: A Raider is a character that is out to terrorize others. Whether it be sniping wanderers or hunters, or placing explosives on the walls of a stronghold to allow zombies in, or the theft of items from areas, the Raider is supposed to do things that are bad. Players cannot be a Raider class, but the playstyle can be adopted, so others would need to watch for them. Likely they would choose to be either Hunters or Wanderers to keep the gain of points up, so any Stronghold Defenders looking to take on one of those two should be wary of them. While not something I would particularly approve of, it can happen in real life, and so it can happen in the game.

The Points: By now, I'm sure you're wondering what points do. The plan is that points will count as credits for your account. A freshly bought account will have a certain balance, and over time it will go lower and lower. However, by fulfilling your class goals, points can be earned back. Also, if you run out of points, your account becomes inactive, disallowing you from logging in. Payment can be made to restore points, but instead of paying a bunch of real money wouldn't it be better to just rack up points in the game? Also, after a certain amount of total points accumulated per life, your character's Z level will rise. A Z level is the level of the boss zombie created by your character upon death. So, keeping a character alive for very long periods of time is not advised, because if a character with a maxed out Z level dies, it could create a large problem for anyone around. For Stronghold Defenders in large groups that manage to survive long enough to gain very high Z levels, when the stronghold is finally breached the likelihood of multiple high level bosses spawning is very great, effectively causing the stronghold where they were to become an area to be avoided at all costs. Other than these two factors, points have no effect on the game whatsoever.

The Mechanics: Starting a character and respawning will present the player with a character class selection screen and the world map. It will be divided into 10,000 squares(100x100), and upon choosing a square it will zoom in, and that square will have 100 more in it, and choosing one of them will spawn the player in a random location within the square. However, "infected" squares will exist, which are considered areas where the concentration of zombies is so high that players cannot spawn in it. Water squares will spawn the player either on an island if one exists, on an oil rig or other such artificial island if one exists, or if neither exist, on a boat that has very limited gas, and disappears within a few days. Time would advance throughout the day like it normally does in the real world, meaning when it's 5 am in Japan real world, it's 5 am in Japan in the game. At the same time, in the game it is 4 pm on the US's east coast. Seasons, however, would work differently. One season would be something like 14 days long or so, so as not to overwhelm the player with a full year cycle. Northern hemisphere and southern hemisphere would be inverted from each other, and areas that are tropical would have their rain-dry-rain-dry season instead of Winter-Spring-Summer-Fall, and whatever else seasons naturally occur around the world. Crops would be planted in the late winter/early spring just like real life, and be ready to harvest during late summer/throughout fall based on what is being grown. There would still be the 3 full moons per season rule as in real life, with a 4th full moon in a season being a blue moon. Basically, every day would see the moon gain a full quarter so it would be on schedule or something like that.

The NPCs: Many NPCs will exist in the game. There will be regular people, who try to survive however possible, and are vulnerable to zombies and players and everything around them just like real players are. Then, there will also be unique NPCs. These NPCs will roam the world, killing any zombies they come across. They will be fully invincible, to zombies, players, and natural disasters. They will also all be different from one another, such as having a samurai, a monk, a sniper, and a houndmaster, so they can be told apart, and maybe finding one and interacting with it will grant bonus points. However, they will be extremely rare to find, and after a few minutes or hours or whatever in the same area, they will teleport to another random place on the map. After a player attains bonus points from one, it will also teleport away. This will make it so they can't be just farmed for points, and neither could they be followed endlessly to have a permanent "bodyguard". There will also be animal NPCs, but probably not many, only like cows and pigs and stuff like that that can be used for supplies and food. All regular NPCs and animals can spawn randomly in non infected squares of map, including inside of a stronghold, so that the zombies can constantly be refreshed and animals constantly available. However, zombies will not randomly spawn anywhere unless their numbers fall below a certain "floor" value, such as one million around the world. When zombies do spawn, they will be normal ones, and appear in infected squares, but not in an area that has been claimed by any Stronghold Defenders. However, if a Stronghold Defender has claimed an area inside of their stronghold but not all the way up to their walls, they may spawn inside of or on top of the walls, so beware when trying to claim less than all of your base in order to allow some point controlling. In addition, some invincible NPCs will control a few things in the world, such as intercontinental ferries, zombie research labs, and safe zones.

The Safe Zone: A safe zone is an area that is untouched by the infection. It is also untouched by fatigue, sleepiness, hunger, and anything else that the player needs to worry about. Basically, in a safe zone, the player is fully invincible. However, this does not mean that the player should spend too long there. While in the safe zone, points not only cannot be earned in any way(even if a special NPC is found in one), but are in fact deducted from the account at 10 times the normal rate! This means that safe zones should only really be used as areas to meet back up with your group if you are separated, or as a place to regather your bearings quickly. Extended safe zone visits(including being logged out) will put a severe dent in your character's point checkbook.

The Currency: There will be no set currency in the world. I mean, what can paper money be worth if there is no trade actually going on in the world? Instead, all items will have their own set values, and in order to trade for things, the total values of both sides must come withing a certain percentage margin, such as say 5%. This goes for buying passage across oceans to other continents, for trading with other players, and for hiring NPC bodyguards. Items like food, weapons, wooden boards, and building stone would have high values, while things such as wool or silk for clothes, or bedding materials would have much less value. However, they would be dynamic values, too, so that trading food to someone who has a working fortress and a large abundance would not net much value, but trading it to a wanderer or a bunker member who has considerably less food would raise its value. This would allow some characters to be effective traders and messengers between characters.

The Limits: Basically, I'm thinking that there will be almost no limits. If you can do it in real life, I want to be able to do it in the game. If you want to be a mechanic in the game, you should be able to. Want to dig a hole in a hill? Go right ahead! What's that? You want to recreate the Great Wall of China in the middle of Canada? I don't know why the hell you would want to... But great! Do it! Really, though, I want the limits to be nearly nonexistent. However, a few of them that I can think of would be a limited amount of gas in the game, so that eventually boats and cars would be worthless, making bicycles the most reliable thing for transportation short of having a solar powered car, and then having the amount of bullets in the world be limited unless players learn to make their own. This would make it so that while the game continues to go on, the world really does start falling into more and more disarray, eventually forcing us back into the middle ages and such if we can't make our own power and such. It would create discrepancies in civilizations, based on how they chose to create their strongholds. Say a society in China makes a large field of wind generators. Well, they can have power to do things like we do in life now. Now, say an American society forgot about making some sort of power source. When the gas and coal run out, or the power station shuts down, they are forced back to the middle ages basically, and they must figure out how to survive without power. I'm also thinking no internet in the game, because I want all of the societies to seem separate and isolated, to better stress just how alone they all are in this world. I would also like to limit the number of people allowed in one stronghold, so that everyone playing in the world doesn't just make one big stronghold and stake it out forever. Say, like, 100 players max in a single fortress, and like 15 for a bunker. Then say that fortresses need at least 50 miles between them. That would effectively separate people enough to create a semblance of danger, instead of everyone banding together to stay alive.

The Social System: Talking to people will work like it does in most MMOs. When you're close to each other, you can talk normally and they can hear you. When they're a little further, you have to yell. Talking would attract nearby zombies, though, and yelling zombies from a little further away. However, whispering is not realistic, and so would not be in the game. As well, no group chat if you decide to form a band of people. Writing messages and letters will be possible, though, and having people deliver them, too. It will be made so that messages cannot be opened by anyone except for whoever sent it, and whoever is supposed to receive it, but anyone can handle the letters. Telephones, cell phones, Morse Code receivers, and any other long distance communication tools will not work, and so letters and talking will be very important. Of course, if you really needed to, I'm sure players would just pull up vent and talk like that, but it won't be in the game.

The Band: There would be a grouping system, called banding. A band would be any group of 2-100(or whatever the fortress max would be) people, who stay together. If it is a group of Wanderers, they would have to stay within close proximity of each other to remain banded. A group of Hunters, however, can be a bit more distanced because their profession calls for it. Stronghold Defenders may only be banded while in the same claimed stronghold. Of course, if some defenders wanted a scout, that means that they would need to take on a Hunter and send him out. The advantages to banding would include: disabling of friendly fire to banded members, Stronghold Defenders all gaining points for the claimed area, Hunters gaining points for allied kills(including the kills of non-Hunters), Wanderers gaining points slightly faster from avoiding zombies(because two people attract more zombies than one), and it also allows players to share items without having to trade for equal value, see each others' positions on the map, and lets them see each others' sleep and hunger stats. A player would only be able to be in one band at a time.

Basically, that's it. I might think of more, and if I do I'll post where I made changes or added something, but so far I think I've got the gist of it. Now, I know a game like this really couldn't exist with today's technology, but what do you all think? Would you play it? Does it at least sound good? What would you change/add? How would you go about playing it? Anything you want to say.

I think that I, personally, would start playing with a group of friends from real life, and form a band. We would have like three to five Hunters and eight to twelve Stronghold Defenders, and we'd make a fortress ASAP. We'd probably d it near a highly populated area, so that we could get a lot of zombie kills and rack up the points as high as possible. Then after we had a nice system going, we'd send some raiding parties into the city and stuff, and keep killing zombies. Maybe eventually we'd find a few more players that wanted to join us and we'd expand our stronghold, but our goal would probably be to hold out as long as possible. Of course, being near a city it would be more likely to attract raiders, but I still think we'd work out well. Probably eventually lose, though, becoming high level zombie bosses and never being able to return to that area again, but oh well. I think it would be fun for quite a while.

I'd play it, but I would really only choose major cities, because even if we had the technology today, it'd take forever to make and a great deal more money than most developers are able to put into something like that.

A 1:1 scale world is unrealistic. A better idea would be to have a couple of different places that are large areas, but self contained. You could have New York, for example, and not just the city; you can do a bit of countryside as well to create the varied environments.

I like the interaction between players. They're forced to work together.

There are some things I don't like though. Logging out, really, shouldn't leave you in danger. Imagine having something come up in your life only to find you've been killed and have to start over. What a pain!

Along with that, the fact that players become boss zombies upon death. If you play for ages and then quit, your character will just be an epic pain to new players. Imagine if a wave of people just quit playing; any newbies would find themselves screwed. Of course in your psycho huge world that would be easily avoidable.

Oh, and I don't pass out after 20 hours awake. I understand that it would be unreasonable for anyone to play that long but still, don't be too restrictive :p

Your concept is fantastic. The only way I could improve it is to make it one of those virtual reality gizmoes. Because who wouldn't love to experience a zombie apocalypse and be able to go "oh it's okay my friends and family aren't dead" after it!

I also applaud the sheer effort you went to. I mean jesus h christ that's a lot of text.

You know, I actually talked with a friend of mine a few times over the last few years about making a survival focused zombie MMO. We even had some of the same ideas (including, strangely enough, somehow integrating with google maps to attempt to more easily recreate real world locations).

A few thoughts that immediately came to mind:

I like the different play stylesa and the idea of being able to hunker down, scavenge and whatever else you can think of, as well as working together. I think all of that could lend it to a very immersive zombie apocalypse survival experience. I'm not sure I'd even bother lumping them into defined classes though. I realize that's somewhat necessary given the points system you thought of, but I'll get to the points system in a bit, and I think having it be as simple as load a character and see what you can do would make for a more interesting explorative process for the player. Instead of laying out the playstyles and making them choose when they load a character, let them explore the possibilities without spelling things out too plainly for them.

As far as the points, my first thought it that using them as sort of a substitute for a monthly fee wouldn't work in a real MMO. The costs of developing and hosting servers for an MMO can run into the hundreds of millions of dollars and without monthly fees they just couldn't exist in their present form with persistent worlds. Maybe someday that will change, but for now, it would be bad business to let the people who spend the most time playing (and therefore who are most likely to pay a monthly fee) to basically build up credit by doing so. Maybe you could get around this with microtransactions, but I dislike the idea of microtransactions in general and it would probably work against a realistic survival feel to be able to pay money for new and better items, weapons or abilities.

Of course if you tke away that aspect then it introduces a problem with the boss zombies. At first I thought it was odd that you would include an incentive to not survive too long in the form of stronger boss zombies when you die since this doesn't leave players much incentive to actually try and survive which seems to be the central theme of the game. This is sort of counteracted if surviving longer gets you more play time (though I'm not sure these competing incentives totally cancel eachother out, and it may lead to some wierd behaviour on the part of players), but if you remove that aspect then the whole thing kind of falls apart. Personally, I think it might be a lot simpler if it was a simple matter of everything giving points and when you die it creates a boss of an equivalent level, but that does create balance issues for new players. But if it's at least possible for low level players to escape from or potentially defeat these bosses individually or in a group then it at least makes it fair and can introduce some truly terrifying moments. Maybe you could even balance it by having characters a certain number of levels below the boss, or with a low amount of playtime retain whatever items and weapons they had once they respawn if they're killed by a boss?

I also agree with getting rid of the potential to die when resting. It's a neat idea and certainly realistic, but I think it would piss people off more than anything. Players tend not to enjoy random elements with such severe consequences, especially when there's not a lot you can do to prevent them. Even if you log off in a secure area, if there's the possibility that you can still be attacked and die then most people will find it less enjoyable.

All in all, a good idea, and very well fleshed out. I've wanted to see a zombie survival MMO of this sort made ever since Resident Evil Outbreak was announced (so about 9-10 years or so?) and would definitely play something like this despite normally not having an interest in MMO's. I'm actually surprised that no one has done this yet frankly.

As for how I would play the game, I may join up with some people online if there was anyone I knew outside of the game playing, but I'd definitely lean towards a combination of fortifying a position and going out to scavenge for supplies whether in a group or on my own.

Yeah, I see what you mean about still being able to die when logged out. Maybe have the option available to players when they make their character. If you do choose the more hardcore style of being able to die when logged off, allow them to receive bonus points or something. But, yeah, I know the fees to keep such a game running would be murder. And I know it would tank very quickly without reliable monthly fees. But I think that having an MMO that was F2P(after buying the actual game, of course) for all content would be awesome, because most MMOs nowadays are P2P for any content at all, and then the others are only F2P for a small amount of the world, or for "normal" game items. Idk, a guy can dream can't he?

The points system and the boss zombie system were meant to balance each other, too. But likely some people would still choose to rack up points really high while in a fortress, instead of dying to reset them in that life. This would create a hot spot basically, and if the zombies ever got into that hot spot and took out all of the characters in the area, it would become very dangerous because of all of the bosses. However, bosses are not meant to be much harder than normal zombies(unless you stumble upon very high level ones) unless in large groups, and so a new character wouldn't have too much problem with it. And even if a new player stumbles upon a very high level one, they can respawn in a different area right when they die. The way I see it, though, is that people with a very high amount of points would probably only die in areas that have high rates of infections, which would be areas that players couldn't spawn in anyways, and so they wouldn't pose as much danger.

For the classes thing, I was thinking that every time a player respawned they could choose to change their class. However, now that I think about it, it would probably be better to link the class system to the band system. When characters are not in a band, then they can gain points from basically anything, but at a slower rate than if they specialized in something. However, when in a band, they pick their role they are supposed to fulfill in the band, thus specializing them. And then maybe have a system where if the player and the band leader agree, then they can switch their class to something else once every couple days or so. This would allow a slightly more dynamic playstyle, but at the same time force players to try to specialize in an area of some kind.

And I know that a 1:1 scale would be far too massive to actually make. But again, a guy can dream. A friend at school had an idea about that, such as having the infection be localized to areas at first, meaning like when the game comes out only, say, Ireland, southern China, Alaska, and the eastern Sahara Desert are infected, and so the only places that can be played in. Over time, we'd have expansions that would infect more of the world as the game became more popular. Or, since you said scale, maybe we could do exactly that. We could take the whole world, and scale it down to, say, 1/16 the size, and have that be the game world. I really don't know because there are just so many possibilities.

A zombie MMO would not work, in that it would be a victim of its own popularity. The zombie is to be feared, not because zombies are frightening - one zombie is inferior to one human - but because of the sheer weight of numbers. That is where their strength lies. The problem is, if you have lots of human players, all of which capable of taking down hundreds of zombies, the zombies are no longer a threat.

Yes, alright, you can have people playing as zombies - except most people will not want to. It's the ultimate nerd survival fantasy - the lone Tallahassee style badass, cracking one-liners as zombies get chainsawed. Hundreds, thousands of these characters, and what kind of a threat do zombies pose? They don't. In zombie movies, there's always a bunch of unlikable whiny characters who get eaten quickly. If there was a real zombie apocalypse, the vast majority of the people who indulge in the zombie fandom would fall into this category. Probably all of you reading this thread! I don't give a smurf about your special zombie plan, you'd be eaten. I'm a huge fan of the genre and I have no delusions - I'd be zombie chow. And for a real zombie apocalypse, that's what you need - hundreds of chumps being god damn massacred, otherwise it's not an apocalypse. Nobody wants to play as the chump, they want to play as Tallahasee.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There's a browser-based zombie MMO called Urban Dead. (Link) All the zombies and humans are player controlled. Humans go from building to building, scavenging supplies, building barricades and whatnot, and the zombies eat. There's also a mechanic where zombies can be revived into humans using a NecroTech (read: Umbrella) syringe, so death is never permanent. The simple fact is, the overwhelming majority of the player base did not want to play as zombies. This led to pretty much the entire city being a fortress for humans, completely powered and safe. Humans feared other humans more than they did the actual zombies. They sat around in their castles, roleplaying and acting like badasses. This carried on for years - the zombie apocalypse was a zombie mild inconvienience.

Only recently due to a flood of people from the usual sites (Something Awful, Shacknews, LUE etc) playing as zombies led to their nice suburban existence being destroyed. Of course they all got smurfing slaughtered like the chumps (see above!) that they are... and they are not happy. Do they play as zombies? Do they smurf. They sit around doing nothing for weeks waiting for someone to revive them as a human. They whine and complain to the creator of the game that zombies are overpowered (they're not; quite the opposite due to previous complaints!) because they got killed by a zombie in a zombie apocalypse game. And it all goes back to what I said - Nobody wants to play as the chump, they want to play as Tallahasee. And thousands of Tallahasees vs zombies is not an apocalypse, it's not about survival, it's a turkey shoot.

So yeah, zombie MMO? Wouldn't work. Now, a zombie game in a GTA-style free roaming city, with up to 16 players? That would work a whole lot better, imho.

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Originally Posted by Psychotic

A zombie MMO would not work, in that it would be a victim of its own popularity. The zombie is to be feared, not because zombies are frightening - one zombie is inferior to one human - but because of the sheer weight of numbers. That is where their strength lies. The problem is, if you have lots of human players, all of which capable of taking down hundreds of zombies, the zombies are no longer a threat.

Yes, alright, you can have people playing as zombies - except most people will not want to. It's the ultimate nerd survival fantasy - the lone Tallahassee style badass, cracking one-liners as zombies get chainsawed. Hundreds, thousands of these characters, and what kind of a threat do zombies pose? They don't. In zombie movies, there's always a bunch of unlikable whiny characters who get eaten quickly. If there was a real zombie apocalypse, the vast majority of the people who indulge in the zombie fandom would fall into this category. Probably all of you reading this thread! I don't give a smurf about your special zombie plan, you'd be eaten. I'm a huge fan of the genre and I have no delusions - I'd be zombie chow. And for a real zombie apocalypse, that's what you need - hundreds of chumps being god damn massacred, otherwise it's not an apocalypse. Nobody wants to play as the chump, they want to play as Tallahasee.

Let me give you an example of what I mean. There's a browser-based zombie MMO called Urban Dead. (Link) All the zombies and humans are player controlled. Humans go from building to building, scavenging supplies, building barricades and whatnot, and the zombies eat. There's also a mechanic where zombies can be revived into humans using a NecroTech (read: Umbrella) syringe, so death is never permanent. The simple fact is, the overwhelming majority of the player base did not want to play as zombies. This led to pretty much the entire city being a fortress for humans, completely powered and safe. Humans feared other humans more than they did the actual zombies. They sat around in their castles, roleplaying and acting like badasses. This carried on for years - the zombie apocalypse was a zombie mild inconvienience.

Only recently due to a flood of people from the usual sites (Something Awful, Shacknews, LUE etc) playing as zombies led to their nice suburban existence being destroyed. Of course they all got smurfing slaughtered like the chumps (see above!) that they are... and they are not happy. Do they play as zombies? Do they smurf. They sit around doing nothing for weeks waiting for someone to revive them as a human. They whine and complain to the creator of the game that zombies are overpowered (they're not; quite the opposite due to previous complaints!) because they got killed by a zombie in a zombie apocalypse game. And it all goes back to what I said - Nobody wants to play as the chump, they want to play as Tallahasee. And thousands of Tallahasees vs zombies is not an apocalypse, it's not about survival, it's a turkey shoot.

So yeah, zombie MMO? Wouldn't work. Now, a zombie game in a GTA-style free roaming city, with up to 16 players? That would work a whole lot better, imho.

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I'm quoting for the truth here, it's sad but true that an online zombie apocalypse would be a failure. I never played the zombie game in the post by Psy but I can relate. A couple of years ago I played and worked on a game loosely based upon a plethora of sources including LOTR, WoT, Warcraft (this game was around for about 4 years longer than WoW so stfu plz), Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, Dragon Lance (subset of D&D I know but I differentiate same as I do the forgotten realms), Forgotten Realms you get the picture. Well originally it was based heavily on LOTR but with the threat of a lawsuit by the Tolkein Estate and my introduction as the main writing element of the game I managed to bring enough diversity in to the world to keep the players and the various "watchers" happy.

In a LOTR style game, players do not want to be the Goblin or Orc what gets slapped up with Gimli's Axe. They want to play as Aragorn, Elrond, Legolas etc. (Though even from the start there were some D&D references with Dark Elves, Imps, Trolls, Ogres all being playable races) Now originally during the earliest phase of development there was only the "light" or "blessed races" these were: Hobbits (later to become Halflings under threat of a lawsuit), Trolls, Dwarves, Imps, Humans and Elves. as playable characters, after some initial play testing occurred the "dark" or "damned races" were introduced there wasn't balance in terms of numbers which was a mistake imho (Damned races being: Ogres, Orcs, Goblins Darkelves) not to mention Humans and Elves had a major advantage of being able to cast healing spells which broke the balance of the early game. A second major mistake was made by the original head developer in that he didn't say "hey it's only an alpha lets reset the game world entirely and start anew" he instead gave everyone 3 character slots. Some players took the opportunity to play as Damned Races, as this was meant to be for. Though most of them played as Dark Elf because it was perceived early on that Elves and Dark Elves enjoyed an unhealthy bonus in combat and were by far the two strongest races. Other players took the route of creating 3 light characters, all tied in to different groups but groups what traded with each other. It was dodgy by the rule book and yet players got away with it for years. In fact I remember some players getting away with one of their characters dying in a raid only to be avenged 5 minutes later by their multi-character who would via a couple of other characters (possibly from multi-accounts) return the gear to the original character so as to look "legit" when it wasn't. Like I said the original developer made many mistakes. When eventually the number of characters per account was dropped to 2 a good number of "darks" were deleted because they were severely disadvantaged compared to the light characters who were better supplied, more numerous and had better support. (The main supplier of equipment in the Light races side turned out to be the games worst cheater, he got away with it for a long time but was caught by myself and another admin who joined the team at the same time as myself, he was designated as purely focusing on server security and anti-cheat protocols, he was very good at his role) Eventually we ended up switching to 1 character per account, again a lot of darks were deleted and many turned in to NPC masters including my own dark (who yes was a dark elf, not because of their "power" bonus but because I didn't feel capable of role playing a convincing goblin (which in reality due to the way combat powers were worked out was the best combat race of them all, though it had some of the worst movement in the game) I didn't keep her because players accused even writers of cheating if they had a powerful character who actively fought in the war between the two factions. The in-balance brought the game to it's knees, the fact that some of the top dark players became admins (in part to help dissuade dark players that there was an in-balance in the team based on our in game characters, all developers on the final team were found from within the player base) meant even more trouble for the balance because these players would invariably declare themselves neutral and no longer take part in PvP action on allegations of cheating.

However I digress a little here the short of it is that there was a way discovered to balance the sides but it was never implemented on the server due to the "free will of players" and the refusal of the rest of the development team to reset the servers completely even though the game was in Beta phase still. Essentially you would have to set code up to determine the "balance" now in a light versus dark game where races were balanced out (personally I would have added a barbaric human race to the game I worked on for the extra damned race, the direct opposite of the human "blessed" race in the example of the game I worked on) you need to have it really say that if the difference between the two sides was greater than 5% of the total number of characters then character creation on the side which had more characters is disabled until the numbers are back within balance. Now 5% sounds harsh but when you think of thousands of players this could be 500 characters more on one side than the other. Gotta think big and plan small. 5% is generous, I would have had it set at 2% personally. Now in a game where the sides aren't balanced (guns vs melee - survivors vs zombies) you want an overwhelming number of zombies because a fair few of them will die in the attempt to take down players. This means setting the balancement code to something like if number of survivors = >40% of the number of Zombies in the game then survivor creation is disabled until the number of survivors in the game is =<20% of the number of Zombies (this helps create desperation amongst survivors) Brutual numbers on the scale of thousands, this means for every 100 survivors there should be in the scale of 400 - 800 zombie players.

And there you hit the problem Psy eloquently points out, nobody wants to play as the bad guy, they want to be the badass good guy. They want to be the Tallahassee type character or the Legolas and Aragorn.

On a side note, Psy I think what you're referring to is a cross between Left 4 Dead and the Dead Rising games, personally Dead Rising with 16 players could be too many, maybe 8 players with objectives which require the survivors to break off in to smaller groups to achieve for example "party A must get to the power room here and restore the power so that Party B can open the gate from the control room for Party C to access the objective area" This leaves players determining their strengths and weaknesses and the number of people required to do a job. Considering that the Zombies will be attacking all the parties as they attempt to achieve their goals, be it hold out in the control room, fight your way to the power room or make your way to the objective and secure it so that the players from party A and B can reach it too. Or is it possible for party A to go for the power room and objective and party B to hold out? Will their ammo last? Do they have the appropriate tools for the job?

Edit: The whole players being vulnerable offline can work, but it needs a lot of thought and balancement. The game I worked on did have this feature, if you want more details on it, send me a mognet or something :)

I think it'd be cool if the safe zones weren't always safe. Like they could be raided because that would be realistic. Humans gathering in one spot? That's a perfect enticing buffet for zombies. Maybe put the raids on a timer and the quicker you do something the more you get rewards for it. Like say if you keep them way in less than 5 mins you an now trade for some super awesome gun you can't get it if you don't have something to trade but you COULD if you did. That'd be neat I think. That way zombies could take over more of the map for the whole apocalypse feel,

The thing about that Freya, is that it would create more guns in the game. I want the supply of guns, bullets, and weapons and the like to be limited based on how many the game starts with, and how many players are able to actually create for each other. If I held special events like that, especially with rewards in the way of superguns, it would throw off that balance I want of how well people can manage their supplies. The Safe Zones, though, are meant to be a place to have a reprieve, but at a significant cost, which would be why it would consume points faster to be in them. I think it's a fair tradeoff, too. And anyways, imagine being in a "Safe Zone" and it suddenly is being swarmed by enemies. Likely, it'd get on your nerves, especially if you died, or if you're a new player that truely believe Safe Zones to be... well, safe.

Oh, and the "I wanna play the good guy, not the zombie." thing wouldn't have any effect in this game. The idea is that you can only play as a survivor, but if you die, then an NPC boss zombie spawns from your corpse. It would be more realistic to always have an AI control zombies, anyways, because according to the vast majority of zombie movies, novels, etc, zombies work like machines. They have a set goal in mind, and pursue that goal, and only that. If you were able to play as a zombie, then you could screw with that philosophy, causing the entire system to be thrown off. That's also the reason I wanted to put a floor on the number of zombies in the world, though I think instead of one million it should be closer to fifty or one hundred million. That way, they always outnumber survivors, and so players always need to be on their toes in case a random mob comes their way. And being realistic, guns may misfire, jam, need re-bored, overheat, whatever, and melee weapons will break, and everything. These random events, and limits, and some other things will help prevent the Tallahassee style character. Another thing to prevent that, is that all characters are vulnerable to the virus, and so one single bite will still kill.

And Reno, I think you're right that there needs to be a way to specialize characters with skills and the like as well, but I'm thinking that they would be hard to gain, and all lost upon death, just like everything else in the game. Skills wouldn't be supernatural like things, though, but rather things like better aim through long use of a certain gun, or quicker reflexes, or a green thumb. Taming dogs and the like would be useful as well, but I don't think it would constitute a new class entirely, because it could easily be either a baseline skill, or a Hunter specific skill. The dogs could start out young, like a puppy, and would grow to full size in like 1/2 a game year. If you teach it well during that time, it will be a good hunting partner, but if not then it will be far less useful. Things like that.

I was just using gun as an example... it could be anything. I think the safe zone getting swarmed would be dynamic! Hell that :bou::bou::bou::bou: works for like Rift. Their entire zones get swarmed with enemies, quest hubs and all!

I wonder how we could get a physical fitness system to work for players... Maybe like give each muscle set a level and experience, right beside their fatigue, and for more fatigue they use, they get more exp? And then that exp lowers as well over time, simulating how you lose muscle when you don't use it very much? It would be so easy if we could just make a program that perfectly replicated nature, and then just add zombies and a few other things in, made it a virtual reality game, and said, "Go."