World War Z

So, I just got an idea for yet another map. Inspired by the book World War Z, the game Fallout 3 and vaguely by SWAT, DotD, NotD and similar maps (although I hate SWAT).

Basically, it takes place in a ruined city. 9 players control "Survivors" with different careers, as they are just regular people, not trained soldiers with the latest machine guns and rocket launchers. No, you must defend yourselves with handguns, kitchen knives, and baseball bats. You have to go around, find supplies, build barricades, set up traps and survive the zombie onslaught for 30 minutes, when an evacuation helicopter arrives.

The remaining 3 control "Zombie Hubs", structures set in Zombie hot-spots (the Hospital, the Church and the Cemetery) which are invulnerable but can train 8 different types of undead. They gain periodic income as well as bounty for killing civilians and Survivors. Zombies have to find and kill Survivors within 30 minutes or there will be nothing left alive in the city and the infestation will burn itself out in a matter of months.

Planned Features:
-Corrupting medical supplies:
--Zombie units can "corrupt" things like bandages, blood packs, pain killers, and other medical supplies. This infects the item, giving it's icon a slight discoloration but aside from that it will appear normal. When a corrupted item is used, something will happen (I haven't decided yet) from the following list:
---You become infected and will become a zombie when you die, and will take damage over time until you die or are vaccinated.
---You instantly die and become zombified.
---Or the item is just rendered unusable.
--In addition, corrupted items have a reduced effect. If a bandage heals 100 hit points, it may only heal 20 hit points if it's corrupted, for example.
-Status effects:
--Units can either be Burning or Irradiated. Burning or Irradiated Survivors will deal heavy damage over time to themselves and nearby units and can pass it along to nearby Survivors and Zombies. Burning affects Zombies normally, but Zombies are not affected by Radiation. Thus, they can carry the Radiation and spread it but do not suffer ill effects.
-Civilians:
--Civilians, including dogs, will either be hostile, cooperative or fearful of Survivors, but will only be hostile or fearful to Zombies. Civilians can be turned into Zombies if infected. This is the only way Zombies can exceed their food limit. Civilians, with few exceptions, are very weak.
---Hostile: Civilian will attack on sight.
---Cooperative: Civilian can be ordered to follow the Survivor and will attack nearby Zombies.
---Fearful: Civilian will run in the opposite direction.
-Traits:
--You can take a Trait at level 1 and every few levels thereafter. Traits have a positive and negative effect. Example traits:
---Pessimist: You expect the worst. You can detect Corrupted medical supplies with a skill learned when taking the trait but are not affected by the Pastor's* buffs.
---Bookworm: You are knowledgeable but frail. All of your abilities receive bonuses to their effects but you have fewer hit points, deal less damage and move more slowly.
--As you can see, Traits can be very powerful but can have dire consequences. A Pessimist could save lives but have too many and the Pastor* in the group becomes useless, possibly making you lose in the long run.

*The Pastor is a planned career, an AoE-buffer.

This is in the very, very early stages, which is why it's in this forum and barely anything is nailed down. Thoughts, opinions, ideas...?

Sound a bit like Afterlife but with more features and more fun (not having the state of the art weapons and such)
I'm almost sure you have though of this but you could add a Optimist trait (in opposite of the Pessimist) that gains bonus from the pastors buffs but thinks every thing will be easy and will have a hard time detecting corrupted items (if being able to do it at all)

An "Optimist" is a good idea but I'm not sure I want to make him gain extra bonuses from Pastor buffs, as I plan for them to be very substantial (in the realm of +100% damage for X seconds and such). Maybe he bestows very minor auras or gains bonuses based on the number of nearby units... and being totally unable to detect corrupted items sounds evil but fun. I like it.

Thanks for the feedback!

hehe
The Optimist might have longer duration on the pastors buffs? not much longer but for about 5 secs or so (depends how long the duration is normaly) and if the pastor has a Heal over Time type of spell the duration might be shorter but will heal the same amount

Well, that still kinda falls under the same category as augmenting the buffs. But... *shrug*

Could some other people comment and break the tie?

Nice man, sounds awesome! Good idea, and hope you can get it done and good! Good luck!

Sounds fun but what I can say is if this is a defense-heavy map that focuses on finding that best location with the least possible entryways to defend for 30 minutes, then having humans control zombies is not fun for them.

Thanks for the comments!

And yeah, I'm wondering how to make the Zombie side more interesting. I'll likely include upgrade trees but it'll need to be deeper. They WILL have access to at least 1 Boss unit (for now it's 1, but there are 3 extra slots on the Zombie Hub command bar so more is a possibility).

Say, you are aware that there's already a map called World War Z(ombie) right?

Originally Posted by TheDivineBoss

Say, you are aware that there's already a map called World War Z(ombie) right?

...aww, damnit. No, I did not know that. Oh well, I'll rename the map but keep the thread like this for sake of ease.