zombie survival time

[xxxtrickyxxx]

hey, not really much of a help question... just looking for some opinions of how long you might want a zombie survival type map to last in terms of time like a half hour, one hour etc or the amount of waves. i have been recently working on a warcraft theme type of survival more focused on what commoners might have had to go through during the plague like zombies, and many undead creatures. it is a completely indoors environment located in a pretty large multilevel tavern/inn where you will be blocking doors, windows, etc and killing waves of undead with a few noticeably different rifles and items along with some customizable ability set ups. right now i have pretty much considered 15 rounds, 5 of them being strictly boss only fights, so it would overall be around 1 hour or a little bit longer.

this doesnt really belong in the development section as im not really going to go any more descriptive, but i am just wondering how long people like survival type maps to last. dont want it to be too long and get boring, or too fast that it has no replay value.

thanks

 

[Asdfblah1]

Maybe an option to choose from short/medium/long?

An hour long sounds just right to me.

your avatar is scarey

 

[Weegee]

+rep for awesome avatar

Hmm ya an option would be sexy. Or maybe a type in your own time option

 

[xxxtrickyxxx]

^_^ cool, +rep from a crappy avatar i made. btw, +rep for giving +rep...

anyway, as asdfblah1 stated, an hour sounds about right but having shorter/longer options as dragonlance stated could also be good to have. except I am not really sure how I would implement it right.

right now I am balancing between having an xx time until dawn and you must survive wave after wave with fixed but random boss intervals, or i could do a strictly survive an unlimited amount of waves with random encounters and try to see how high you can get until you all get overwhelmed and die.

 

[UndeadDragon]

I think that Dragon_Lance has a good idea. Typing in your own time. You could alter wave lengths to match the time that the user has entered. Just stop them from typing something too low (or maybe a really short game could be fun).

 

[Varine]

30 second zombie apocalypse FTW!

 

[xxxtrickyxxx]

lol, hmm, correctly altering the waves according to the time frame may prove a bit challenging but may just work. i basically intend to have maybe 3 or 5 minutes worth of spawning for each wave and 3-5 min boss fights every say 2 waves. or i could be more intuitive with it and have a specified spawn count for each wave and if you happen to be real good and kill fast, then well you will complete that wave faster and have more time to board up walls and barricade i guess. i dont want the waves to be too difficult but the randomized bosses that appear every few waves and the end boss i hope to make them original and interesting enough that it will require some team work and thought process to kill them.

to undeaddragon specifically about typing something too low, i can already see someone typing like 5 minutes in and then completely make the game retarded since there would be no way to fit a wave and end boss fight in that time frame. 0_o

Varine- lolz.

 

[Bloodcount]

UNlimited. Randomized waaves and bosses. Random item drops. See for how long you can survive?

This is the best thing I can think of

 

[Varine]

If it's random it has to be a tiered system based off average experience, otherwise you'll get that one uber boss right from the start that does like seven times more damage than their health.

 

[xxxtrickyxxx]

hm, well unlimited randomized waves and bosses is easier than having a linear oriented story mode kind of thing but yeah the creates in general would get a bit stronger each wave or more populous maybe and the bosses would have to be factored by the average levels of all your team mates to determine the bosses hp. the damage of each boss wouldnt really be a huge deal because you level up but it is focused on increasing your personality traits you pick in the beginning as well as your specialization instead of your health stats but the abilities each boss uses would get harder to make the fights difficult.

i have 4 or 5 boss fights described in text until i get to the point i can implement them, but i could always use any cool and interesting boss ideas or ability ideas. i will probably try getting around 10 different bosses so there can be quite a few randomizations between each boss fight every 2-3 waves so you wont get bored after 15+ rounds.

as a time estimate, think maybe about 3-5 mins per wave depending on your teams speed would be decent? boss fights would probably generally be about 3 minutes, less or longer depending on the team and how far you are. so i am thinking if you wanted to play about an hour assuming you dont die, your team could get through about 10 waves, plus 5 different bosses which is 1 boss after every 2 waves. for those who might go further, they could keep getting more randomized but sometimes new boss fights.

 

[Varine]

Oh shut up... it's coming along just fine. And it's not linear, it's a quasi-dynamic plot system through several transferable linear story arcs.