Before someone says "Not more zombies!" or "Keep zombies out of Starbound!", hear me out on this. Drops/Loot: The zombies will drop an assortment of gear, pixels, and items. Quantity and quality will be determined by how hard the zombie is to defeat. Environments/Habitat: They'll live exclusively on a zombie infested planet, and spawn more frequently at night or when another zombie is taking damage possibly resulting in groups of a hundred or so zombies converging on one point. Movement: Zombies will shuffle along slowly. Attacks/Damage: This is where it gets interesting. Zombies will be generated with an inventory, EDIT: A very limited/small inventory. Maybe a sword, maybe a gun, possibly a helmet at around your tier (plus or minus one tier, so a planet with a threat level of 5 could have Owl, Toucan, or Macaw armor drop) and a couple hundred pixels. All of these items will drop when they die, and the armor worn will determine health/armor. EDIT: The items being one/two weapons, one/two pieces of armor, and a couple hundred pixels. Attacks have a half of a second cooldown and instantly kill. They are weak to flamethrowers, and have 2x defense as would a player with the armor the zombies have on. Pictures;Visuals: The idea behind this is that other players have been turned into zombies, and can be killed and there gear taken. Planets with zombies on them are rare, but offer high rewards with a high risk/ difficulty level. EDIT: Sorry for the initial confusion, I didn't mean an inventory comparable to what a player would have on them, but a few weapons and armor pieces.
If this would even be considered to be added, something will have to change. You would need to Nerf Everything or Have it only in Sector X. Also, dropping all inventory wouldn't really make much sense since you would then get a bunch of dirt (since they are reanimated players) and armor that takes much more time to craft. A lot of lazy players would exploit that in an instant. But to balance the challenge with the reward like this is ridiculous. I shall give you a situation: A mid-level player arrives on a planet with a Legendary Sword. He sees strange creatures. He attacks them, thinking his sword will kill them instantly. It doesn't. Guy dies. Guy rages, especially if he is on Hardcore. With another character, he goes back to that planet. Blocks the Zombie in with dirt. Spends 3 minutes smacking him with a sword. Finally kills it. Gets full Mid-Level armor. Gets a Legendary Sword. Gets a bunch of dirt Proceeds to go and kill others (since it is a horde.). Gets off of planet with 4 full armor sets, 2 legendary weapons, 4,000 tiles of dirt. He thinks that he just cheated the system. He brags, others know, others go, others cheat the system. I don't think that is good at all And that is where I stop. EDIT: Took it out of the spoiler.
One problem with this point (well, one MAIN problem): the incredible lack of balance. Instant kill? How do you fight something that instantly kills? Especially if knockback is removed from Starbound. Half a second cooldown? Wow, this is just getting worse...how does one avoid a zombie born from a RANGED player, then!? Instant kill, half second cooldown, long range. Nuff' said there. And then there's the whole HORDE thing. As if 1 isn't enough to destroy the best of players with the best of armour...2? 5? 23? Sorry, I just don't like this idea at all. With changes I guess it would be an addition (albeit useless in MY PERSONAL OPINION), but as it is now, it's over-powered 20,000 times, and as Dargona said, allows for players to cheat the system.
I didn't really think that zombies would be using weapons, since I've never seen them do that in any fictional show/book/game I've played. The reason they'd be so incredibly powerful is to balance the rewards you'd get from them. Maybe not the full inventory of a player, but something around your tier of armor/weapons or just below. They'd have a lot of health, and almost no possible chance of you staying alive for long while fighting them (since they'd tend to group up and instant-kill). The instant-kill mechanic is also to provide authenticity to the idea of you getting infected, I just thought players would really want to wait around for an hour and then die. The half-second cooldown is because in many/most iterations of zombies is because how long does it really take you to open/close your mouth? Ranged players would definitely have an advantage fighting zombies, but I wanted it to feel more like actual zombies than the ones you see in Minecraft/Terraria. The whole inventory is probably excessive, but some decent rewards should be added considering zombies are supposed to be able to wipe out mankind.
But this isn't balance! Making the enemy impossible to kill just because it may have a legendary weapon?? You can just loot some chests if you want that!! No reason to waste that much time and effort trying to beat the sh*t out of an enemy for 4 minutes. As I said in my other post, it won't be hard to kill them AT ALL. You just need to block them in with dirt and shoot them/stab them repeatedly. There is ALWAYS a way around an enemy with huge health, which means that a balance of MORE POWER = BETTER DROP doesn't make sense in any way! Just Nerf the health and the power, add regular drops, and this will work. Otherwise, this idea will fall on it's face and die, and unlike the idea itself, won't come back to life to eat the living.
Except then you have very boring zombies, that are pretty much just normal enemies on steroids. The fun of zombies, at least in movies, is that a single bite and you're a goner. They don't need legendary weapons, just something that makes it worth risking life and limb against an enemy powerful enough to wipe out humanity. IMO the zombies in Terraria and Minecraft were boring, and didn't really seem anything like zombies. If they're not really going to be zombies, then they should just do an enemy that's not a zombie that just gives good drops. I'm not suggesting legendary weapons, just a variety of drops, like bandages, food, a (normal) weapon or two, etc. One hit kills could be turned down since players would be wearing are armor.
You should never include an enemy that makes gameplay dull. Even if the zombies in other games are boring thematically, they're not boring gameplay wise, which your suggestion would be. Besides not every zombie has to be extra powerful, in fact in most media I see zombies come in hoards because when the characters have the right equipment one zombie isn't much of a threat.
I fail to understand this point. Minecraft, they come in hordes. Like zombies. Terraria, they are slow and hit-on-collision (like bites), and in both, they are WEAK! Why is this "weak" point so important? They are zombies. Humans that have been infected. HUMANS being the key word there. Humans are weak, zombies are weak. Simple, logical, and self-explanatory, to me at least. If the player is weak and gets infected, why does the zombie suddenly become the equivalent of 20 Hulks? The Incredible Hulk, that is. It seems logical to me that a zombie should be weak given the thing it infected was. And that's why I don't like your "insta-kill and infinite HP" thing (infinite being the exaggeration, before someone takes me literally).
hey, this game it for kids to, i mean like 4 and 5 yrs old. will starbound want no more 4 and 5 yrs old kids get bad Dreams at night? P.S: minecraft zombies are not Creepy, but yours is for 4 yrs old, or if they do not like that buct blood.... Great idas
