Jump to content

Negative Perks


Dimpy

Recommended Posts

Joel said on one of the perk videos or something that when you lose attributes from status effects, you lose the corresponding perks if the perks requirements exceed your modified attribute rating. The interesting things is that with the right(or rather, wrong) buffs, it should be possible to have negative attributes, so I'm wondering, should the rate of one perk level lost per two attributes points of the associated group lost continue on even as the attributes become negative? In other words, should debuffs potentially cause the player to receive negative perk levels? If so, what should they look like?

 

I think that it would actually kind of work if the negative levels of the perks had effects that were just inverted versions of the positive one. For example,

if four levels in the machine gun perk gives a damage bonus with automatic weapons and a stamina boost for every successful hit, negative four levels gives a damage penatly and a stamina drain for every hit.

If the positive "force of personality" perk give your teammates a passive attribute bonus with your amazing charisma, negative values will turn you into a stat-reducing downer.

Getting a low medical perk value would reduce healing effectiveness, which is ironic because when you're in the most need of medical attention, you are the least equipped to give it to yourself. Instead, you would be encouraged to get help from someone who is in a better state.

A negative "flurry of blows" would mean that every 2-4 successive hits would get greatly reduced damage.

Some of the battle perks that have special crit chances or power attack bonuses associated with them would instead have some potential for "critical failures".

Some of the level 4 fortitute perks have the ability of "shrug off" things like attacks, diseases, and injuries, and I'm not sure how well that would work. However, it might be fair if going the other way on the fortitude scale made you so weak and sickly that you had a chance to randomly catch diseases, and injure yourself, which is kind of like the inversion of "shrug off".

I don't have a good list of the items to be canceled, but the negative perk levels of the crafting perks like "hammer and forge" and "master chef" would restrict the player's crafting recipes even further, eventually taking away essential things like aloe bandages, the stone axe, and even simple boiled eggs.

Roland said that he wanted nerd-poling to be a level 5 parkour perk, but maybe TFP could start it off as a level zero perk, meaning it would be restricted if you got level -1 or less in parkour. I think this was already a thing in a way; I remember not being able to nerd-pole when I got a broken leg because of jump height restrictions.

 

 

Okay, that was a lot of examples. Sorry about the text wall. Are there any perks that wouldn't work well with this philosophy? Does anyone care to add more examples?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Joel said on one of the perk videos or something that when you lose attributes from status effects, you lose the corresponding perks if the perks requirements exceed your modified attribute rating. The interesting things is that with the right(or rather, wrong) buffs, it should be possible to have negative attributes, so I'm wondering, should the rate of one perk level lost per two attributes points of the associated group lost continue on even as the attributes become negative? In other words, should debuffs potentially cause the player to receive negative perk levels? If so, what should they look like?

 

I think that it would actually kind of work if the negative levels of the perks had effects that were just inverted versions of the positive one. For example,

if four levels in the machine gun perk gives a damage bonus with automatic weapons and a stamina boost for every successful hit, negative four levels gives a damage penatly and a stamina drain for every hit.

If the positive "force of personality" perk give your teammates a passive attribute bonus with your amazing charisma, negative values will turn you into a stat-reducing downer.

Getting a low medical perk value would reduce healing effectiveness, which is ironic because when you're in the most need of medical attention, you are the least equipped to give it to yourself. Instead, you would be encouraged to get help from someone who is in a better state.

A negative "flurry of blows" would mean that every 2-4 successive hits would get greatly reduced damage.

Some of the battle perks that have special crit chances or power attack bonuses associated with them would instead have some potential for "critical failures".

Some of the level 4 fortitute perks have the ability of "shrug off" things like attacks, diseases, and injuries, and I'm not sure how well that would work. However, it might be fair if going the other way on the fortitude scale made you so weak and sickly that you had a chance to randomly catch diseases, and injure yourself, which is kind of like the inversion of "shrug off".

I don't have a good list of the items to be canceled, but the negative perk levels of the crafting perks like "hammer and forge" and "master chef" would restrict the player's crafting recipes even further, eventually taking away essential things like aloe bandages, the stone axe, and even simple boiled eggs.

Roland said that he wanted nerd-poling to be a level 5 parkour perk, but maybe TFP could start it off as a level zero perk, meaning it would be restricted if you got level -1 or less in parkour. I think this was already a thing in a way; I remember not being able to nerd-pole when I got a broken leg because of jump height restrictions.

 

 

Okay, that was a lot of examples. Sorry about the text wall. Are there any perks that wouldn't work well with this philosophy? Does anyone care to add more examples?

 

 

Interesting....

 

Would we lose the ability to forge [for example] I wonder?

 

Hmm...

 

This is fascinating.

I wonder if a Dev might elaborate on negative side effects.

Would be something for us to discuss.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about option of giving your character negative perks at character build?

 

Surely some could have some kind of negatives and just like IRL a person would compensate the negatives with some positives.

 

The hardest playable negative I can think of would be missing one arm. Call it "The One armed Bandit", No two handed weapons or tools. +30 points!

 

Others:

Poor vison: minus to hit unless wearing glasses. = +2.

Claustrophobia: unable to live underground. = +10.

 

Something to get it started :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about option of giving your character negative perks at character build?

 

Surely some could have some kind of negatives and just like IRL a person would compensate the negatives with some positives.

 

The hardest playable negative I can think of would be missing one arm. Call it "The One armed Bandit", No two handed weapons or tools. +30 points!

 

Others:

Poor vison: minus to hit unless wearing glasses. = +2.

Claustrophobia: unable to live underground. = +10.

 

Something to get it started :)

 

Carful. Fallout wants to have a word with you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about option of giving your character negative perks at character build?

 

Surely some could have some kind of negatives and just like IRL a person would compensate the negatives with some positives.

 

The hardest playable negative I can think of would be missing one arm. Call it "The One armed Bandit", No two handed weapons or tools. +30 points!

 

Others:

Poor vison: minus to hit unless wearing glasses. = +2.

Claustrophobia: unable to live underground. = +10.

 

Something to get it started :)

 

Its called Project Zomboid and its not even remotely fun.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How about option of giving your character negative perks at character build?

 

Surely some could have some kind of negatives and just like IRL a person would compensate the negatives with some positives.

snip

Something to get it started :)

 

Meh. It's a cool idea, but I don't think it really works with this game. There's too fine of a line between negative starter buffs being totally impractical for those who aren't intentionally trying to make the game harder for themselves, and buffs being being ripe for exploitation by min-maxers. How much exactly does losing an eye increase your muscle mass? Since there is no real life analogue to that question, it makes the system inherently more unstable.

 

Instead, I think starting on a harder difficulty make all your buyable perks(BTW nonbuyable perks are called 'buffs')start out -1, and your stats start out -2. I think that's around a 60-level deficit. In return, you start out with the starter quest completed, (because hardcore players have already done that one a lot), and maybe some extra points on top of that too. The hardcore players can specialize and become stronger in a certain area than what lower difficulty players could achieve, but to do that, they have to spend their points a LOT more wisely, and cut corners on abilities that they may have previously taken for granted. Maybe the ability to survive the weather for over a minute is more important than being able to build a stone axe. This kind of thing might be annoying for new players who need a few safegaurds to prevent them from accidentally building an unplayable character, but for veterans I think it would spice up the game style with more possibilities. Certainly better difficulty system than just increasing zombie damage and gamestage progression rates.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Considering A17 tends towards an RPG gameplay with stats that you increase, i suggest the possibility of defining your starter stats:

1. When you change your profile you get a new tab with starter stats, the default being everything on 1 for every present (debatable) and newly made character. You can view the stats while browsing the list.

2. When updating any character (or making a new one) you can distribute the points, giving negatives to some and adding the remaining points to other. This way you may start with super strength, but low intelligence.

3. Need to think about how the negatives (or rather below 1) influence the gameplay.

4. In the course of playing you can add points to your negatives the same way as if it would be a base of 1, getting it back to 1 and over.

5. The change of default distribution would allow players to choose with which stats they want to start and which they want will need to work on later on.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Darnit I paid for that game. [Haven't played it yet.]

 

Glad I got it on sale then. :crushed:

 

You're losing nothing.

Example:

Unless you have a cop background, you can't even shoot firearms straight, but firearms are useless anyway because single shot means you now have 2000 zombies chasing you.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...