Zombie Mode Balancing

[Samlen]

So, plenty has been talked and complained about with some of the balancing in AoD... sometimes from unbalanced kits/loot in chests, sometimes because hunters can't kill even one survivor when there is a group of ten versus one. So, in the spirit of balance, I that adding a new 'balancing' option similar to what I'm about to explain would be beneficial. By taking a ratio of how many hunters:survivors there are, buff the hunter's team by a degree proportional to the current ratio.

e.g. 10 survivors, 1 dark hunter. At a 0.1:1 (1:10) ratio, the hunters team could get a buff of say, strength I, Regen I, Resistance II and speed I. The hunter manages to kill a survivor before dieing, bring the ratio to 2:9 (2/9:1). With the hunter:survivor ratio having moved above a certain barrier, the buffs for the hunter team drops, possibly reducing/removing the resistance buff. This continues on until eventually the hunters have no more buffs remaining (Most likely before hunters equal/outnumber the survivors, as they have the respawning advantage). Ideally, the buffs/ratios would be configurable for each of the differing maps, with it being an option the map maker would include as part of their map (or added in later if needed).

Thoughts? Did I ramble too much and make no sense?

 

[froyd]

I agree that hunters need to be balanced somehow, but I think that this is not the best way to do it. It seems like this buff is intended primarily to prevent the first one or two hunters of a round from being 10 v. 1-ed, but the problem is that, even if there are a ton of players online, not all of the players will be attacking the hunter at once. In your example, where the hunter is buffed with Strength, Regen, Resistence and Speed, the Dark Hunter is quite likely to come across a lone survivor and in their buffed state would almost certainly kill them. While this would lower the buffs slightly it means that hunters would be more likely to kill the first survivors they meet, and discourages solo players and 1 v. 1 fights.

I think it would make more sense to either just improve hunter kits (i.e. hunters spawn with armor about equal to the best armor available in the map's chests,) or to somehow only apply the buff when a hunter is fighting more than one person. For example, +5% attack damage (or something like that) for every player that hits the hunter in a short period of time, say 10 seconds. That way in a 1 v. 1 fight the hunter would have only a slight buff, while in a 10 v. 1 fight they would have a buff equivalent to strength I.

 

[Samlen]

It's definitely the kit balancing that needs to be fixed most of all, but in cases like group mobbing, maybe have the buff be dependent on how many survivors/other hunters are nearby instead of based off of number of hits within 10 seconds. As a hunter, you might have to loose half of your health before a buff per hit like that could do a noticeable difference (and a buff based off of being hit like that makes 1v1 fighting strictly unfair). It might make more sense to have the server calculate how many hunters/survivors are within a small area and buff the hunters based off of that ratio.
- e.g. 2 hunters vs. 5 survivors within a 20 block radius, so the hunters get a regen buff (or more or less depending on testing the balancing).
My only (current) worry about this is how much potential lag this could generate, depending on how simple/complicated it could be to code this.

 

[Comp]

Thanks for the suggestions, we definitely need to make sure everything is balanced, and 1 hunter vs 10 survivors is not fun. However, instead of giving buffs based on the number of players in the vicinity, we instead are going to choose one hunter for every 5 survivors. E.g 1 hunter for 2 survivors, and 2 hunters for 6 survivors, and 3 for 14. This should help keep things a lot more balanced.