I'm making an infection series titles "Incision", and I've hit a snag in the journey gametype. Both humans and infected take multiple hits to kill, except when a human picks up a sword. zombies die instantly. Everything else is balanced nicely, so I can't make zombies take more damage or have humans dish out less. I've cleared up about $300 for a solution but have yet to find one. Any ideas?
You could make it so that Humans cannot pick up weapons, under general settings. Simply set Weapon Pickup to Off.
I've thought of that, and I only plan on resorting to something as drastic as that if no other possibilities come up. A large portion of what drives the humans through the map is weapon pickup, since ammo is low at the start and there are more powerful weapons as they advance.
I doubt that would work for a journey gametype. If you give the other gametype settings I should be able to help. Edit: Why you ninja me
You could make a spawn area for infected where they grab swords that are set to "fixed". fixed weapons cannot be picked up when dropped. I do not have first hand experience just saying something I read on these boards..
That would require that they have a different weapon on spawn which would have to have range and thus be better than the sword, and the other weapon would drop when they die, giving the humans more ammo which is usually the primary drive for movement in a journey gametype.
Have you thought about using the safe havens game type? Disable weapon pickup, unless they're in the safe havens. Dunno if that's an option in the game type... just a thought.
Hmmm... you're in a bit of a snag. I would suggest changing the gametype settings up A LOT. For example, if humans do 110% damage, and zombies have 75% damage resistance, try making it so humans do 300% damage and zombies have 200% damage resistance. Keep screwing around in there, and hopefully you'll find a solution that either fixes the problem or at least makes it better. I've had to do this several times, and it usually works for the best.
does th sword count as a melee for damage modifiers? if so you can just set human melee modifier to 0%
He could give them, say, Plasma Pistols and set the zombies damage low but their melee damage high. That, or he could have them be forced to pick it up in order to progress, E.G. drop ship style.
I guess you didn't get the memo. Plasma pistols kill now. Actually beats the ar. If you give the zombies the active camoarmor ability it will screw with the humans radar such that they have little chance at a close quarters. Then lower the shield recharge of humans significantly so theytake multiple hits to kill but those can be over a pong period of time. No melee damage might be good but then humans still couldn't melds with normal weapons. In any case, requiring multiple hits to kill humans is bad so you might want to change the settings entirely. Of course it would help if we knew the settings
Solution: Set weapon pickup to disabled initially, then place custom powerups near new weapons that respawn quickly and remove this trait temporarily. Depends on how many custom powerups you have, though...
Melee modifier doesn't affect swords so you can forget that route for starters (annoying I know, and yes that includes when you actually hit the melee button). The melee modifier only affects non-melee class weapons. Safe heavens or custom powerups (or both) are a good option if you can make it work. In fact, what you could try is a safe heaven at every weapon pickup spot and have each one only last for like 1 second. You can only have one safe heaven active at a time but it wouldn't take long for the safe heaven at your weapon pickup to activate. I imagine that as long as you were holding RB in preparation then you wouldn't miss your 1 second window. Worth a shot.
Building on buddhacranes idea, you might be able to put all weapons in small low spots and make a safe haven that's just high enough to include those spots. That would only work if your map is flat though.
What gametype settings would you need to know? Custom power-ups could work but then the zombies can pick them up and interfere. I suppose they could be instant respawn, but that wouldn't stop the problem completely, though it sure would dilute it quite a bit. Safe havens could work, but since you can't have more than one active at a time, that would be a problem. I'm rebuilding my Halo 3 map "The Generators" which starts humans at a neutral point from which they need to head down three separate paths to activate generators to open a door. At the end of each path is the only headshot capable weapon(s) in the map, a magnum. However, the way I designed the map, if I place a safe haven on any of the generators, it does not look like the corresponding path leads to it. So unless I can have 3 safe havens up at once, I don't see that solution leading to anything but further confusion in an already complicated map. In testing it myself I picked up a sword when I got severely low on ammo. Maybe placeing more ammo throughout the map could help? That solution helped in the last infection map I made, but it was more open, so projectile weapons were more efficient. However this is an extremely close quarters map, so the sword is the optimal choice, meaning this solution wouldn't be nearly as effective. Edit: An alternative problem with using a CPU is that it's already used to make a 'tank' infected.
From past experience, giving the zombies increased speed and sprint(makes it harder to kill zombies as humans) but also give them the element of surprise (take of radar for humans, give plenty of places to jump out from for zombies) will counter that quite nicely as long as humans aren't one hit kill. This gives your game a more team oriented experience where players are actually force to stick together and communicate to succeed for both the humans and zombies. You want to make it so that the number of zombies goes up progressively up to the point the sword becomes basically obsolete. Also, are humans OHK? The other settings would be helpful too.
Nope, humans take 4 hits to kill. Pretty much for the same reason that you mentioned, enforcing teamwork. As I mentioned, it's very close quarters. Each path has three different zombie attack points, which promotes the instantaneous attacks. Due to the objectives of the gametype, humans work much better when they stick together. However, the infection curve isn't as, what I believe to be, the ideal model: an exponential curve over time. As soon as a zombie is killed, which usually occurs before a human is killed, a sword is picked up, which only further delays human deaths.
With only 3 safe heavens I don't see a problem in having it rotate between them like every 1 second. You'd be waiting a maximum of 2 seconds to be able to pick up the weapon you want; hardly much of an inconvenience. The only thing to test is whether holding down RB before the safe heaven spawns will still allow you to pickup the weapon once it does spawn. If it doesn't let you pickup the weapon unless you're specifically hold RB while inside the safe heaven then, yeah, it might be a bit too much of a hassle. But yeah, if you used a CPU then you'd have to make sure only the humans can get to it. Like raise the CPU above the ground and give humans increased jump height or zombies no jump height. *shrugs*