Poll: Who's interested in a PR Zombie minimod?

[Onil]

This poll is for us to have a general idea of how many players in the community might be interested in the minimod we are developing.


Render by Lordas / Poster by Romancer / Composition by Onil
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It's been a year since I started to develop the Survival Games Event minimod, based on the concept from the Hunger Games movie as well as how that concept was used in some DayZ events. My main interest was the survivability aspect of it while connected to some type of scavenger hunt for gear and weapons. The zombie part was not very important but I did consider it as a possible extra.

I searched the PR forums for threads related to "zombies" and found quite a few suggestion threads going as far as 2006, including some created by Devs. But I decided not to ask the community about it until I was certain that we would further develop the SGE into a zombie minimod.

After 2 successful Survival Games Events we decided to add zombies to the 3rd event as an extra opposition but we wanted them to be a real challenge and I suppose we might have made them slightly too powerful. We have since then been trying to tweak them and improve them as to provide a good influence in the game-play.

We are now developing PR:Z minimod which is meant to be played in a pass-worded server without previous signups (unlike the SGE's). For more information about the Survival Games Event and the PR:Z minimod, you should read this thread:

[Project: Survival Games / PR:Z]

Specially this post that explains the distinction between the two parts of this project and the current concept for PR:Z. This is a CO-OP minimod, it is not a SinglePlayer minimod as it is simply not as fun.

You can post your feedback either here or in our main thread.

Cheers,

Onil

[Eddie Baker]

You're beating a long (un)dead horse.

[Onil]

You're beating a long (un)dead horse.

If by that you mean that there are already plenty of games and mods (even bf2 ones) that focus on zombies, I would concur. However almost all the games and mods are about mindless zombie killing where the solo purpose is to kill as much as possible in a somewhat scary environment. The only mod that brought a totally different concept to the zombie related gaming was Day-Z but unfortunately it has turned too much into a PVP, quickly loosing some of the game-play aspects that were initially intended by the developers.

As I said, zombies where never my objective but quite a few players suggested that it would be a nice addition to the over-all survival mechanics and that is the solo reason for their implementation. Following the concept of the Hunger Games, besides the competition and some cooperation between the participants, there were other obstacles put in place by the organization, just to spice things up. DayZ already had such obstacles (the zombies) and it worked out well in the successful Survival GameZ "tournaments".

However, the zombies barely influence the game-play besides being a big giveaway to the approximate location of the players. To be honest, they could be removed from the mod, having it focus only on the scavenger and survival aspect but without an extra opposition it would be even more of a PVP than it already is. If you have any idea for a possible replacement to the zombie opponent, then please do suggest it as long as it is not Aliens, Vampires, Werewolfs and the like. I think they are as much of a cliche as the zombies.


Let me quote Fuzzhead on a post/thread he made years ago:

I always thought PR could do with a zombie game mode as a little easter egg or fun thing.

He then provided a concept very similar to DayZ (before it even existed) and similar to the one I'm using.

So the main reason for bringing a zombie minimod to PR is to provide a fun "break" from the main mod's game-play while maintaining the main characteristics of PR (Teamwork Oriented) and hopefully successfully achieving some of the balance that DayZ intended to have. That is achievable by adding the following characteristics:

- Implementing a system that follows ROE between survivors and forces teamwork to balance the PVP aspect of the game.
- Making the zombies a proper challenge that the player needs to be aware of and that forces him to choose his battles carefully.
- Providing a proper spawn and relocation system for the zombies as to increase their presence surrounding the survivors without being a big give-away to their positions.

And that is pretty much what we're trying to add to the minimod.

Let me know if I misunderstood your comment.

[tankninja1]

Could be a fun mini-mod for co-op.

[waldov]

Id be more then willing to play this, my only recommendation would be having a small version and a larger version depending on the number of players so the server works with a handful of players just aswell as dozens of players.

[WhiteRhino]

It should be better to have a weekend test, before asking how people want to play it, no? To let them have an idea of how the mechanics works and how they feels while playing.

[Heskey]

WhiteRhino is right - release a small tester first and gauge public opinion. The idea is nice, but it depends how well it can be executed, and how it's presented and plays.

Test it before diving into a full minimod.

[Onil]

I understand your point of view but it would be impossible for everyone in the community to test it before participating in this Poll and we did have plenty of tests already. We have been testing PR:Z features while playing Survival Games Events and those were successful. They were however limited to around 30 participants as PR:Z would be limited to about 36.

I asked for testers in the main thread quite often and I didn't get that many either. You can watch plenty of videos from the SGE's (search the main thread) and can watch some occasional streams of the current build: 0nil - Twitch

Even if you would test the current build of the minimod, it would not offer the gameplay that we intend for it, yet. So you will just have to use your imagination for now. Every mod starts with a concept and it is common to try and get a perspective on how many players might be interested in it before its completion. I just think that most people won't bother to read the concept and watch a few videos on the main thread before voting or replying here.

[SANGUE-RUIM]

Could be a fun mini-mod for co-op.

yes, please?

[ComradeHX]

All human players spawn as civi with no weapon(except rock and fist, of course).

[Tarranauha200]

Time used on this could be used on much more important things.

No.

[Onil]

Time used on this could be used on much more important things.

No.

Like what exactly? and are you contributing anything to those "much more important things"?

People work on what they would like to have in game and to get some modding experience. For example, one of our developers is now R-CON on the PR Dev Team which happened mostly based on him working on this minimod to show his abilities and prove that he was capable of helping out on the main mod.

Lots of people complained about the other PR minimods for the same reason but most ended up enjoying them when they tried it out. Following your logic, those would have never been developed.

[Eddie Baker]

If by that you mean that there are already plenty of games and mods (even bf2 ones) that focus on zombies, I would concur.

Let me know if I misunderstood your comment.

You only partially understood my comment

There are already plenty of every-fucking-form-of-entertainment-media that focus on zombies. Episodes of fucking police shows are doing zombies. Marvel zombies, DC zombies in the form of the Black Lantern Corps, zombies-in-denial in Dead Space, REC and 28 Days Later. THERE ARE FUCKING STAR WARS ZOMBIES. Double tap this genre between the eyes and burn it on a pile of sparkling vampires.

Lots of people complained about the other PR minimods for the same reason but most ended up enjoying them when they tried it out. Following your logic, those would have never been developed.

Those should not have been developed, either. Existing factions in the core game have so many goddamn placeholders or anachronisms for assets and there are so many bugs in this release that need to be fixed; some of which were working in previous versions. Had those mods not been made, you could have seen 1.0 months or perhaps even a year ago, possibly even with less bugs than there are now.

So, once again, not only "no," but "FUCK, NO!"

[Rhino]

Had those mods not been made, you could have seen 1.0 months or perhaps even a year ago, possibly even with less bugs than there are now.

I'm sorry Eddie but that's just not the case. There is a big difference between new content and new core features. The thing that held up v1.0's release was core features like the launcher, not content and the people working on the new core features where not the same people working on new content which is all the minimods are for the most part. This is also not to mention that most of the minimods are also primarily community driven which means a lot of the work done for them was not by the Dev team even, but by community members who wouldn't have had an opportunity to work on the core factions without taking their own initiative.


As for having a Zombie MM for PR:BF2, as I've said before when you first posted the idea, I see very little point myself. While I have nothing against zombie ganra or games etc, I in fact regularly play L4D etc, the BF2 engine is a really bad engine to have something like this for IMO and even PR's content or gameplay can't really be integrated into it at all well either. While quite a few people have voted for a "24hr zombie server", I would think it to be highly unlikely to have any players in it when competing with normal PR and its servers.

[Mineral]

Tbh I was happy you guys were making a survival gamemode with core PR gameplay features like weapons & vehicle handling and keeping the focus on small teamwork. I found that to be a excellent concept and you guys executed it very well! But yeah, it's hard to make that into a persistent normal public server type gamemode. But maybe somehow it can work.

But I can't see how zombies fit in well into that or a separate gametype. Just can't see it's benefits other then a extra thing to shoot at or run away from. Other engines and games can do zombie type games so much better. I would tbh focus on the survival gametype and try to make that into something that can be played daily.

[Onil]

Tbh I was happy you guys were making a survival gamemode with core PR gameplay features like weapons & vehicle handling and keeping the focus on small teamwork. I found that to be a excellent concept and you guys executed it very well! But yeah, it's hard to make that into a persistent normal public server type gamemode. But maybe somehow it can work.

But I can't see how zombies fit in well into that or a separate gametype. Just can't see it's benefits other then a extra thing to shoot at or run away from. Other engines and games can do zombie type games so much better. I would tbh focus on the survival gametype and try to make that into something that can be played daily.

That is the whole point Mineral... it will always be primary a survival minimod where the zombies are exactly only something extra to shoot at or run away from. They are meant to be an annoyance more than anything and that is why it doesn't matter as much if the BF2 engine is not the best at AI related features. They are not and will never be part of the main concept of the game-play and if you ask me, same thing applies to DayZ in the sense that the zombies didn't make the mod popular, the player interaction and game-play made it what it is.

But the word "zombie" does tend to call more attention than anything else, exactly because it became so popular. I think the votes show how much interest there is in "zombies", if I had asked if the community was interested in a PR Survival minimod, most people wouldn't know what the fuck we're talking about. We could simply call it PR:S as in for Survival which is what it is all about. And I guess we could have one layer with zombies and another where we replace those with AI humans with knifes, screwdrivers and baseball bats (for the ones that dislike the zombie scene). But that changes nothing game-play wise and is just extra work. We can also easily disable the zombies for some of the events.

So in the end, as long as people keep in mind that zombies are far from being our main focus, and that the gameplay is focused on the thrill of surviving while scavenging gear and weapons, then everyone will understand what we're trying to achieve here.

I also don't see a 24h server a realistic thing... if anything we would continue organizing something every two weeks or once a month. And the use of AI allows us to reduce the number of needed players to more than half which allows us to keep organizing the events with a low player base.

[Mineral]

That's not how I see it though. It's a distraction of the main thing, and if you are only doing it to get the players attention, then well... You get a even bigger no from me Either you focus on the zombies, or you don't implement them. That's my opinion at least. Looking at the vote I'm not the majority opinion

[Rhino]

Looking at the vote I'm not the majority opinion

You really can't go fully off a poll however as people vote without fully thinking something though or without much of an idea on what they are voting on. I mean just take a look at the Chopper Wheels Poll, even after a month of releasing it with PR:F and strictly saying only people who have tried it to vote, the initial poll got 72% saying yes, then after a month or so of it being released in v1.0 it only got 51% of the vote:
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f254-v ... s-1-a.html
https://www.realitymod.com/forum/f254-v ... ls-2b.html

[tatne]

Why do people have to force zombie mod to every game?