Hey Folks,
I just uploaded a new feature where the player who kills the most zombies, and the player who burns the most zombies will be awarded and extra hero coin when the game ends.
An extra reward for getting out there and killing the zombies!
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This somewhat disincentives slower more careful play - zombie slayer very much encourages suicide charges in order to get more kills, soul saviour encourages letting towns fall to the blight in order to burn the bodies. It also doesn’t fit all that well with the theme of truing to maximize total survivors.
I’m unsure what to suggest but i don’t think suicide charges and letting towns fall to the blight in order to gain an advantage was the goal.
Also just to say I liked the totally cooperative nature of the game, I’ve said in multiple games things along the lines of I just want the man to go where it will do the most good, now if I’m plying for my advantage, I probably should hoard it to have a chance for more kills later. Good thing I don’t think I personally will do that, but it will be interesting to see what other players do.
These rewards seem to be implemented for single player as well: is that intentional? It feels a little silly to get bonus coins for these on SP maps, since there’s no competition for them. Not that I mind getting a pile of extra coins, but it feels a little dirty.
Yes sorry. They were not supposed to be implemented in SP. thanks for the heads up.
One of the reasons I wanted to add this was to reward players who were getting out there and doing the hard work of cleaning up the zombies. You still have to actually win the map to get the coins.
If you are being a bad ally and sacrificing the team’s score for your own gain, well you are not doing cooperation very well.
Just like when there is a Jester King and you decide to start playing lots of cards, or all you allies armies are in the swamp and you cast a Marsh Sting.
There are more and more ways in the game that you can be a bad ally, because I think I’d like there to be a bigger difference between a good and a bad player of this game.
(Perhaps you could say that some of the skills you need to play this game are social skills)
Very good answer, just one objection - how many people care about the total score - it may be because I’ve only joined random matches but all of them have focused on a win at any cost (even though a win would be certain anyway and if they played a bit more cautiously they would of got a higher score)
Is it worth giving something for higher scores in order to encourage people in that direction?
It may also be a sign that I need to find a regular group to play with but I have no good idea of how to achieve this (perhaps it fits into your ideas for guilds in the game)
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I know I’m always playing for score, and am usually the player with the highest kill/burn score. I think the best players will find ways to maximize their kills and burns without sacrificing score: so using ranged weapons for kills and taking risks with fast units to achieve pyres across the map. Players who play that way are actually playing for everyone’s benefit. Trying to get the highest score on a multi-player map is a good incentive for me, although it does get frustrating when 2-4 of the players drop out of a six-player map…
I like the new incentive system–it’s not that significant, actually (as far as balance disruption), but it’s still a nice little bump in the right direction.
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Im in a 6-player game right now where Im the last one to not be afk, It’s going on 20 days and I just need to clean up the last zombies. Unfortunately, the Zombie Slayer and Soul Savior medals are going to be awarded to an AFK person who did a lot of work in the early game, and I dont think there are enough zombies to kill or bodies to burn for me to catch up to him, even though Im the last on in the game. It feels like a waste for those extra coins to go to him, and not me
This may just be because I only started playing recently, but I’ve found that I care way more about the Slayer and Saviour bonuses than the actual score. Mostly because the score feels like some semi/arbitrary rating the game hands to you when everything is done but which you can’t really influence much by yourself, while the bonus objectives give you shiny shiny coins that can be used to buy cool stuff for the next games.
Having said that, I don’t really like the feeling i get from the Slayer and Saviour objectives. It feels like my fellow players are also my rivals for the loot, rather than allies to be helped and supported whenever possible. Certainly it is a bad idea to let them die off, but especially in the later stages when everyone has powered up and is coming together for the Great Battle, it can feel a lot like kill-stealing when your allies manage to wipe those hordes/graveyards before you get there in time.
I love the idea of being rewarded for playing well and contributing, but this feels like it goes directly against the co-operational nature of the game.
Then again, i’m not sure what conditions could replace the current ones. Maybe something like who supported their allies the most with resources or in battle? (though i could see that being exploitable too)
Or perhaps a common mission of some kind? Like not losing x% of the starting population, or never losing a purchased town from anyone (or 2-3, and exluding any DC’ed people both at the time and retroactively)?
or perhaps a combo system, like when you stun or damage a horde and someone else kills it, you both get co-op points?
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There seems to be some negativity with this change so I was thinking of something else that could work. Just want to say personally I don’t mind the system. I know people will try to game the system or abuse it, but I will still play the game as I always have and if I end up with a coin that’s a nice bonus.
But what I was thinking is if Blight had a Renown system like in Triton. But to keep things a bit different, say everyone can only spend 1 Renown after each match when they check the end game screen. This would be like a personal MVP award people can give out to who they think deserves it.
And to keep up with the hero coin rewards from this system, maybe every 10 Renown you earn you get a bonus hero coin.
Downsides would be most players might not know about the end game screen, people might just do this to give to friends.
If Blight Renown was invisible to everyone and only shown to the player themselves, it might not encourage trading or giving away to friends as much since it’s not like a badge of honour but a personal tracker of if players appreciate your efforts much.
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I like the renown idea. Not sure if it would function as a replacement, but i think it’s worth looking into on it’s own.
Just want to say personally I don’t mind the system. I know people will
try to game the system or abuse it, but I will still play the game as I
always have and if I end up with a coin that’s a nice bonus.
If only my inner perfectionist was that relaxed. 
Downsides would be most players might not know about the end game screen
Most players who finish a game would know about the end screen right? If only to have a look at the stats when they’re done. If it is obvious enough, would that be a problem?
10 renown might be a bit high though, taking into account that not everyone will vote, that many games have 2 or 4 players, and that some players leave prematurely. It would take several good matches to gain 1 coin, whereas currently one can earn 1-2 coins per match regardless of the number or behaviour of other players.
Some people might not check All Games, especially if they are Free players that don’t join a lot of games where they need to check it. Also since it’s an optional thing, a lot of players might not even bother with it as well.
I have to agree though that 10 seems like a high reward for a coin.
Still, it’s a nice idea. Maybe 2-3 points per coin as a replacement for the Slayer/Saviour, or ~5 if it’s independent?
Keep in mind that if you are killing the zombies and burning the bodies you are doing the right thing for the team. The sooner those graves are cleared, the less zombies you will have to fight.
Also keep in mind that nobody gets any coins if you lose to the zombies.
But you are right, I did add the system to add a little friction, a little more excitement. A little more to work for. A little bit of capitalism in our game of communism.
I decided not to add the renown system from NP, but will be adding a badge system where you can spend hero coins rewarding good allies and friends with special achievements.
This is how I feel about it as well.
I actually do play for score and do feel that I can have a very large impact on that. Saving towns, attacking with range and using costlier, higher-strength-but-fewer-units, uh, units make a large impact on the score. It’s true that I still rely on my teammates a lot to get a High Score, but my impact on that score is rather large. For me, it is my perfectionist nature that makes me always want to do this/go for this as opposed to other things, like get the trophy for killing/burning the most.
In my case you succeeded
Hmm, thats actually a rather interesting system. Let’s see people’s altruism and comradery fight it out with their desire for more cards!
I actually do play for score and do feel that I can have a very large
impact on that (…) For me, it is my
perfectionist nature that makes me always want to do this/go for this as
opposed to other things, like get the trophy for killing/burning the
most.
As a bit of a perfectionist myself, I can certainly see where you are coming from. I personally just never cared about high-scores as much as optimizing my play and getting all the fancy achievements. (I am really looking forward to the oncoming achievements system). Perhaps I will start caring more once I get out of the oooh, shiny! phase and start min-maxing
Until that fateful day, to each their own.
I think this system needs a little updating. I personally don’t think all bodies and all kills should be worth the same. For example, a Zombie Dragon is 1000 STR but only 1 zombie. A person puts as much effort into killing this as others do for killing around 120 unbuffed Goblins.
I think zombies killed should be “Total Strength Killed”, so in the above situation, both players would be very close to each other after combat. I think it should take into account buffs and debuffs when the zombie is killed. So 20 Undead Trolls in Swamps gives more points for this reward than 20 Undead Trolls off swamps.
I think the same thing should be for bodies, but I’m unsure how the bodies should be calculated. Maybe unbuffed stats of the zombie bodies you burnt? So 1 Dragon Corpse burnt would be equal to 1000 points. One Goblin body, no matter where the body is located, will give 8 points.
Downsides to this is that it is confusing. Right now it’s easy to see what it means for Zombie Slayer and Soul Saviour. If these changes come into place, it will mean that a new person would need to read up on game mechanics a bit to fully understand how it works.
I agree 100% with this. Simply basing zombie slayer on actual # of zombies killed rather than their aggregate strength incentives players to target large weak groups rather than say, the blighted hydras.
A reward for teamwork would also be cool, albeit harder to measure. Maybe it would look at how many resources you shared, or maybe like League of Legends you there was a way you could rate a player as helpful immediately following a match
Thanks for the feedback guys. I agree that it will encourage players to chase down the goblins, but think for now I would like to just keep things simple. I dont think it would be huge complication to change it to zombie strength killed, or you could even award it to the player to earned the most valour in the game.
I am planning on an award for being a good team player, but I would like players to give this out to each other in the same way as badges in NP.
To quote Gimli from Lord of the Rings, “That still only counts as one!”
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