STRIKE

[bullgod]

this morning i logged on and checked the stats page to see more active zombie hunters than active zombies. thats the straw that broke tha camals back.

the persenteges were bad enough as it is (63% human to 37% zombie) but this is to much now.

ive stoped playing the game and i dont intent to start again till somthing changes, ive urged all the members of the Feral Undead to do the same, now i will be going to the other large forums and urging the to join the strike as well.

[TheLEgend123]

I thought at first this was a playful, joke post. But now i see you are serious. Wow. What do you expect to get changed? I guess the point of this game was not to be a kill each other game in your opinion. Are we supposed to join hands and sing carols? WHy not get some head just for the hell of it?(not a game feature suggestion, between zombies an humes anyways ) Its not the games fault zombies arent active, and that hunters are always on the prowl. Its a good skill to have. I love to kill you guys. As soon as i get it you have another thing to complain about. But u should just enjoy playing the game, and be less serious. Ive never heard of players "striking" to get something that seemingly cant be changed. But you have your opinion. This is just mine, and some advice. Stop going @pe$hit over it.

[bullgod]

wow, i need to start checking this board more often.

ok, i see that you were one of those people that was biased from the start thinking we were just whiners, so allow me to clarify the reasons we were so upset, and why we thought the game was unfair.

first off all there is the imbalance of numbers, i don't think its that zombies are not active, its just that very few people that try playing as them for the first time continue to do so for very long. this is due to a number of factors, mainly that playing as a human is ridiculously easier than playing zed. before you freak out about that let me explain my reasoning.

compare two new players, one human, one zombie. lets say both of them are heading the same direction, wanting to travel exactly 50 blocks in just one day regardless of their safety.

the new human logs in for the first time and uses all 50 AP to walk all 50 blocks. he may die at the end of the day since he would have idled out outside, but he can hopefully call on some one to come find him for a revive.

the new zombie wishes to walk the same distance, but as he dosent have lurching gait till he comes up with 100 XP he must use 2 AP for each block can only get half the distance in one day. so if this lone zombie is able to avoid a headshot it will have taken him two days to get the same distance.

but what are the chances of him not getting headshot? well there are more human players with the headshot skill than there are zombis in the entire game(at the time of the strike) so chances are low. if he wakes up on the next day to continue his walk it will be a short one.

if he starts with 50 AP but has to use 2 AP to walk that eventually gives him just half the effective AP, 25. but if he is headshot he will loose another 15 AP (since he does not yet have enough XP to buy ankle grab).

so lets review, 50- 1/2= 25, 25- 15= 10

he can only walk just 10 blocks on his second day in Malton. at that pace it would take him 3 and 1/2 days to march the same distance that the new human player was able to cover in the first day.

to top it off the human player will level quickly by healing others, spray-painting buildings and occasional attacking a sleeping zombie. but the zombie is only able to gain XP by attacking humans, if he can find one. if he's lucky enough to find a human sleeping outside then thats a godsend, but not likely something he will see often. he will have to find a building, break into it (if he can, barricades often take more then one or even two zombies to take down in one day), and hope that he finds a human inside, since some buildings are barricaded but still have no one inside.

for a first time zombie player getting to level five is viewed as the hardest thing that you can do in the game, its even harder to do without a group.

all we wanted to come out of the strike was a little fairness to make things a little more equal in the game.

kevan gave us same new stuff that made it a bit nicer to play, like using Scent Blood, and  Scent Death to find group members, then by giving us XP for taking down cades, generators and ransacking buildings. and the latter addition of giving humans encumbrance helped us view things as a bit more fair.

[Marcus Bell]

There are about a billion different ways to do the math on this game.

I consider myself a relative newbie (I only joined in June '07), but in that limitted time, I've seen the "invulnerable" Caiger Mall fall to zeds at least twice, and been killed at least a dozen times, three of those times I had to spend a couple of days' AP to get to a suburb where I could be revived (thanks, Reganbank and North Blyville!)

Despite my relative newness, I -love- seeing this game develop, and every new skill, tool, or rule, whether for the zeds or the survivors, adds to the excitement for me. As a human player, Urbandead is well-balanced, enough for me to waste 6 months of free time at work (okay, well, only about 5 minutes a day, but still...).

I do want to say, though, that because of your posts, bullgod, and those of others, I've decided to play both as a human and as a zed. Starting today, I now have a zombie character who will definitely be active in the fight against those icky humans (in a completely different part of the city, of course). I can't speak for others, but now I know that I'm helping to keep a nice, even 50/50 balance.

But even while Ed the Dead Janitor is busy munching on arms, Marcus Bell still dreams of the day when he can resume his happy (if uneventful) life as a customer service call centre employee in the human world.

[Splitstar]

come on bullgod

A. I have a human and a zombie player, i started both on the same day and i am still a lvl 1. Ok so i fit very nicely with your examples. My human has 40 xp after about 2 days, and my zombie has 42 xp after the same time. If i had not been luckily and killed a zombie with my human i would have had 30. My zombie gained its xp by playing smart. So i looked around where i spawned, chose the nastiest suburb nearby (luckily this very dangerous suburb had a mall) walked about 5 blocks attacking a survivor along the way. Since i can sleep on the street i dont have to waste XP looking for shelter like i did with my survivor. So in my comfortable ghetto i can gain xp by pounding on doors and attacking nearby survivors. Gaining XP allot faster then with a survivor.

B. What are you in a footrace with a human?! if zombies are not as fast as humans don't try to out run them. I know it takes a starting zombie 2 AP to walk a block. So then adjust your playing strategy to account for it. Stick to one bad suburb gaining xp until you have zombie gait.

C. My zombie character doesn't have to waste XP looking for, shelter (big one), bullets, syringes, FAK, fuel tanks and whatever else survivors look for. HUGE advantage for zombies.

D. What did you come to this game for? When i use to play video games i loved a challenge, thats why you play online, to verse other humans, what more cleaver and faster players can you find. Playing a zombie is not overwhelmingly hard, it MAY be a challenge, but that is no reason to pout.

[EDIT] ok now im pissed, i woke up with morning went on my survivor character and began attacking a zombie having 30 AP, i didn't gain a single XP from it. Missed every time.
So in final, stop complaining.

[bullgod]

come on bullgod

A. I have a human and a zombie player, i started both on the same day and i am still a lvl 1. Ok so i fit very nicely with your examples. My human has 40 xp after about 2 days, and my zombie has 42 xp after the same time. If i had not been luckily and killed a zombie with my human i would have had 30. My zombie gained its xp by playing smart. So i looked around where i spawned, chose the nastiest suburb nearby (luckily this very dangerous suburb had a mall) walked about 5 blocks attacking a survivor along the way. Since i can sleep on the street i dont have to waste XP looking for shelter like i did with my survivor. So in my comfortable ghetto i can gain xp by pounding on doors and attacking nearby survivors. Gaining XP allot faster then with a survivor.

B. What are you in a footrace with a human?! if zombies are not as fast as humans don't try to out run them. I know it takes a starting zombie 2 AP to walk a block. So then adjust your playing strategy to account for it. Stick to one bad suburb gaining xp until you have zombie gait.

C. My zombie character doesn't have to waste XP looking for, shelter (big one), bullets, syringes, FAK, fuel tanks and whatever else survivors look for. HUGE advantage for zombies.

D. What did you come to this game for? When i use to play video games i loved a challenge, thats why you play online, to verse other humans, what more cleaver and faster players can you find. Playing a zombie is not overwhelmingly hard, it MAY be a challenge, but that is no reason to pout.

[EDIT] ok now im pissed, i woke up with morning went on my survivor character and began attacking a zombie having 30 AP, i didn't gain a single XP from it. Missed every time.
So in final, stop complaining.

ok, i would like to state that your talking about the game as it is now and not as it was before the strike and the changes that resulted from it.

A. back during the strike you couldn't get XP from attacking barricades or anything but humans, and since there were so many high level players then and so few zombies playing that most buildings were caded low enough for any wandering human to get in, but not low enough for a singe zed to get in on his own, so finding a human sleeping outside was a freaking miracle back then.

B. i wouldn't actually race like that with a human your right, i was just pointing that out to show the numbers. in retrospect i could have said that the human was trying to find a building that wasnt EHB and the zombie was just wandering in circles looking for food. the number of moves they could make would still be the same.

C. no he dosent, but he may be safer if he finds a stack of zombies to sleep in, but chances are if he is in a human rich suburb he will wake up with a headshot so your day starts out with having wasted 15 AP already, since at the time there were more humans with the headshot skill than there were zombies playing. it only becomes an advantage later on after you have ankle grab.

D. im very happy with the game, iv said so before. i dont mind a challenge at all, hell i went to two attacks on caiger before they got rid of the bots, we couldn't get more than 6 zeds inside before the cades went back up, and thats 70+ of us working together. that didnt keep me from going back the third time and helping shacknews take it down. my problem and the reason i started the strike was because of the difficulty for new players at the time. back then as a young zombie all you could do was basically walk around and die until you got the help of a group and leveled up a bit. now that you can get XP for taking out cades it gives young zeds another option for XP, and makes attacking cades seem like a better use of your AP than just walking around, which may also reward them with something to eat.

do me a favor and know what your talking about before you tell people to stop complaining again, you weren't there and there for your opinion on it doesn't really matter to any one that was.

and as far as getting XP your best bet for a low lever human is to find some faks and heal people, or even zeds standing outside. early hit% are always crappy.


and yeah Marcus thats usually the way i play the game too, altho since there are still more humans than zed i play 3 zombie alts an one human(he's not a pker i swear! ). if there was a 50% ratio i would likely play two of each.

[WeaselBoy]

Isn't the math a little off?
 
You wrote:
-------
if he starts with 50 AP but has to use 2 AP to walk that eventually gives him just half the effective AP, 25. but if he is headshot he will loose another 15 AP (since he does not yet have enough XP to buy ankle grab).

so lets review, 50- 1/2= 25, 25- 15= 10

he can only walk just 10 blocks on his second day in Malton. at that pace it would take him 3 and 1/2 days to march the same distance that the new human player was able to cover in the first day.

-------
Wouldn't it be :
50Ap -10 to get up -5 due to headshot = 35AP
35AP spent walking would be 17 blocks with 1 AP left to say "GRAAAAH!" at the end.
17 blocks is better than 10 for sure.....

[bullgod]

Isn't the math a little off?
 
You wrote:
-------
if he starts with 50 AP but has to use 2 AP to walk that eventually gives him just half the effective AP, 25. but if he is headshot he will loose another 15 AP (since he does not yet have enough XP to buy ankle grab).

so lets review, 50- 1/2= 25, 25- 15= 10

he can only walk just 10 blocks on his second day in Malton. at that pace it would take him 3 and 1/2 days to march the same distance that the new human player was able to cover in the first day.

-------
Wouldn't it be :
50Ap -10 to get up -5 due to headshot = 35AP
35AP spent walking would be 17 blocks with 1 AP left to say "GRAAAAH!" at the end.
17 blocks is better than 10 for sure.....

i don't know man, i was never good with math, point is it still sucks.

and seriously, the strike happened OVER a year ago now, so maybe we should talk about something new before we fall in to some kind of loop in time.

[karek]

C. My zombie character doesn't have to waste XP looking for, shelter (big one), bullets, syringes, FAK, fuel tanks and whatever else survivors look for. HUGE advantage for zombies.

You claim to be playing smart but how smart can you be playing if you need to spend a lot of AP every day looking for shelter? In the future remember where your shelter for the night is before you go out.

Yes survivors overbarricade a lot now, and that wasn't really an issue back before survivors started thinking that that was playing smart(i.e. look at what they think are good barricade plans)

Shelter is something you need to find maybe once a week at most, and it shouldn't take more than 10-20 AP, that's per week. Finding zombies, easy, or at least it is and was when the numbers were more balanced population wise, at level 1 you can easily gain more than 50 XP a day, I got 80 on my first day with my survivor Police Officer and this was in Santlerville where the only zombies in sight were all at the revive point. I APed out, got killed, slept at the revive point, and was a survivor again in under 5 hours. I do believe that would be more along the lines of playing smart, I didn't even need shelter(that's a recent example).

As for your example with your zombie, you got lucky, that's pretty much how you level up with a zombie unless you follow a zombie group(i.e. Bullgod's very valid point about movement AP), you get lucky. Zombies at level 1 have worse hit rates than many survivors classes at level 1, a survivor scientist at level 1 has a potential XP netting of 230 a day if you "play smart" or get lucky, a zombie at level 1 can, at most, gain 60 experience, most always under that because 60 is assuming perfect accuracy and no movement/rising AP