Ok, as I said in my earlier message, I missed a point. That was
verbal chat. I could see that as an extra toggle, but bare in
mind that many people don't have access to a mic (I didn't until
I got a laptop with an internal one) so you could be severely
inconveniencing everybody without a microphone.
----- Original Message -----
From: Jeremy Kaldobsky <jer...@kaldobsky.com
To: Gamers Discussion list <gamers@audyssey.org
Date sent: Tue, 8 Nov 2011 01:41:00 -0800 (PST)
Subject: Re: [Audyssey] Swamp reflections.
The balance issues of multiplayer are only temporary. I've been
adding in weapons but really haven't done any work making those
weapons balanced. These are all things I am in the process of
working on.
I've already decided that zombies will never wield weapons,
especially not guns. I've never seen any interpretations of
zombies where they could use weapons, so I have no desire to take
that approach either. I do plan to make things more difficult
though, I just haven't gotten to it yet.
Deleting progress.ini will not reset your character. That
information is stored on the server itself. There is not
currently a way to start over unless you create a new name.
Direct verbal chat is something I've looked in to at length. It
is actually very complicated to implement so I don't see it
happening. If it was something relatively easy to do, it would
have been my first choice, trust me lol.
Ok, don't shoot me or hack my head
off, but I think that the multiplayer
game balance is too easy. I mean, it's possible to
get killed (just did,
seem to have been at a zombie spawn point and multiple
bandits appeared on
top of me with no warning, but in general, it seems very
possible to stay
alive without having to make lots of snap decisions, once
you know where you
are and have any one of the top three weapons.
Things that would make the game harder: make the
zombies react to shots
from a longer distance. I've had several instances
where I fired and missed
at a target, only to have it continue its slow patrol
walk. I think that
any target that is missed narrowly should immediately turn
and search for
the shooter.
More zombies please. The single player game is too
much, too many zombies
in too little space, but the multi-player often feels
empty. Perhaps tweak
spawning a bit so there are more zombies at a time in the
larger map size.
Zombies should be able to acquire fire arms as well.
perhaps they aren't
excellent shots, but the concept of a zombie firing at you
from a distance
would be very frightening and would encourage the use of
cover and sniping
tactics.
More zombie packs. It's easy to pick them off one at a
time, but the fun
comes when there's a pack of five or six. Maybe tweak
the AI so that
zombies that are near one another tend to agglomerate into
packs.
I think one has to erase progress.ini to go back to the
beginning state of
the game after once having saved. Future updates
should automagically erase
this file for a death situation, though not a crash.
Zombies flooding the safe zone: Thematically, the safe zone
is a known
location where tasty human brains collect. As such,
it should be under
constant siege, thus making it more difficult for players
to reach it
without a concerted team effort to clear the area. I
actually hung out
southwest of the zone for a while and kept it clean, just
on a whim,
role-playing you understand, but if there's always a lot of
zombies nearby,
it becomes necessary to do this as the zone takes on more
functions.
You've already heard my thoughts on weapon drops and
usage.
And yes, this makes it harder to learn from the
beginning. Perhaps allow
for a beginner mode in multiplayer where the character is
by default more
stealthy, thus drawing less unexpected attention.
perhaps this mode exists
until the player has reached a certain number of kills,
then it is
permanently removed.
Re: chat, I'm sorry, I just don't use this feature in its
current
incarnation. It's a great idea, but the limitations
are such that I don't
find myself with a need.
Would it be feasible to simply implement direct verbal chat
for those of us
with headset mikes? You'd hold down a transmit key
and simply talk and it
would be broadcast over the server with the same sound
localization. This
would replace the slash key, and would remove universal
chat, but would make
actual character cooperation much more intuitive. I
don't know if this
would be technically difficult, my understanding of
networking protocols is
limited.
Looking forward to the next incarnation.
Chris Bartlett
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