Zombie spectator feature

[Private_Joker]

This is a pretty typical feature request for zombie games, but I'm gonna throw it out there.

Purely for relief of spectator boredom, and not for the sake of different gameplay, I suggest a really minimal zombie play feature.

I figure, a one-shot respawn as a clot without extra health, speed, or anything that could really affect the survivor gameplay. Players would die, wait frozen until the next squad that includes a clot spawned, and then they'd pop up across the map with basically only the ability to walk around slowly and do a little bit of attack damage, until inevitably they are spotted and quickly have their heads popped off by a player.

This is only for the sake of something to do while a player waits for the round to end. Maybe even nix the ability to do any damage to guarantee no real effect on the survivors' game, and only allow zombie spectators the ability to walk around until they're killed.

I'm really just throwing this out there cause I personally think it would be alot of fun. Here are the problems I can think of:

1. AFK dead players last alive as zombie specs would halt the game. Solve by forcing death if the number of live zeds is less than 6 or something.
2. I've heard that that kind of thing takes a good bit of coding and work by developers. Solve by promising to take them out for ice cream and lapdances.
3. Needy members of the player community much like myself would inevitably demand and whine that the zombie spectator feature be expanded into a full zombie teamplay mode (a la Half Life Zombie Panic!) . I don't want that. I just think it'd be really nice to be able to walk around and interact with the world after I die (a la spectator mode in the original Quake online deathmatch) instead of just floating around thinking about how dying sucks.

To make it purely a spectator feature would make KF just that much more unique, I think. Of course some might have problems with it, so making it a server-side and/or client side option would probably be prudent.

Cheers,
-Joker

 

[Dr. Pibb]

Yummy, lapdances and icecream. As of of now, you have my support for this idea.. On a serious note though, this really is a good idea which gives the spectators at least something to do.

 

[Private_Joker]

Pre-emptive, a note that I didn't want to make an edit:

It'd have to be a clot. Anything else would be too powerful, or too complicated.

-Joker

 

[HodlPu]

I like it, but I could see people abusing it.

How? By blocking doors for the survivors
Any ideas for that?

 

[Private_Joker]

Again, they'd be clots. They can't block doors cause they have no health, and effortlessly killing them would solve any problem they could cause.

You're right though, generally the biggest concern is abuse. But by restricting zed spectator abilites to that of or less than what the A.I. has, most potential exploits are eliminated anyway.

Movement might be tricky, since it seems like zeds have some special fantastic jumping ability for when they come to obstacles. Of course zed spectators couldn't really be allowed to jump too much cause they could find a way to abuse it for dodging player attacks. That could probably be solved by something like increasing the "step size" for zed specs, or giving them a jumping ability and restricting it to once every three seconds.

-Joker

 

[demontrace]

I like this idea. I don't die that often, but when I do, it is kind of a bummer.

Then again, sometimes I die just so I can get a little break

 

[HodlPu]

What I meant was... A group of friends playing could abuse this. Say a team mate dies, he then blocks a doorway to prevent ZEDS from reaching his friends, ducks so his friends can shoot, thus becoming a perking fest.

 

[thrash242]

Solve by forcing death if the number of live zeds is less than 6 or something.

This is already the case, except I think it's less than 10. Haven't you ever noticed the last one dying when he's nowhere to be seen? They start to slowly lose health when there's only a few left.

 

[Bio666]

This is the worst idea. EVER. If you want to wandering around after you're dead, press the middle mouse button. If you want to follow your team mates to alert them of danger, press the left mouse button. If you want to keep watching youself get rapped, dont press anything. That's pretty much everything anyone demand. Right?
Only sightly plausible scenario of this thing is, change the mode to follow speciman, but no partriarch. Otherwise, make a deathmatch game with human vs specimen, and players can chose side.

 

[Private_Joker]

This is the worst idea. EVER.

Bio, don't ever have children.

HodlPu I understand now, and that's a really good point. The first answer is that zed spec wouldn't have the ability to duck, since the AI don't have that ability. Also, at least the fleshpound wouldn't be stopped, if he was in heat, because of his spectacular zed-liquifying charge.

But even better, I bet the devs could come up with good ways to idiot-proof it still: maybe code zed spec a flag that makes it take 20 damage whenever it touches another zed. Why not? Then, no blocky.

Generally, given the understanding that this feature would be meant only for spectating purposes, the devs would have lots and lots of freedom to counter such abuse, since they really don't have to be fair to spectators. Thus, they can impose whatever "disadvantages" they wanted, with the excuse that spectators shouldn't be affecting gameplay anyway.

And Bio, seriously. I'd tell you to go ask a friend to duct tape your fingers together, but you probably don't have any friends.

Cheers again,
-Joker

 

[Kylegdaddy]

I don't see the appeal in slowly crawling around as a clot with no abilities. Especially when you could be zooming around as a normal spectator and helping your team by calling out the bigger incoming ZEDs. It's like being on a riding lawn mower with the blade disabled when you could be flying around like Superman.

I'm not saying spectator mode is "fun", but I don't see how being a gimped clot would be entertaining either.

 

[Bio666]

Bio, don't ever have children.
...
And Bio, seriously. I'd tell you to go ask a friend to duct tape your fingers together, but you probably don't have any friends.

Cheers again,
-Joker

Great. One million argument of the day. Note to self: Never. Ever. Ague with stupid people. They gonna drag you to their level.

 

[Soanos]

Great. One million argument of the day. Note to self: Never. Ever. Ague with stupid people. They gonna drag you to their level.

...and beat you down with their experience.

 

[Private_Joker]

Even for how much I know we all love swinging our e-peens, please try to focus on the discussion. And be respectful goddammit.

Honestly, the appeal that I see in zombie spectator is being able to tease my friends. I'd hide around corners and pop out behind them just to scare them and maybe get that gratifying scream-yell over voice chat before they blew my head off. Priceless.

Even if all I could do was damage of two healthpoints, the task of sneaking around would be alot more entertaining than flying around ghosting the positions of scrakes and FP to your teammates, which really isn't much help I think.

There's only one word to desribe the feeling sneaking up behind your friend and whacking them on the back of the head to scare them: glee.

-Joker