Give me your cheese reduction plan...

[ZedClampet]

For Zombieville USA 3D (see description of cheese below). I'm going to make a list of the best ones and pass them on to the developer.

Only the basics set up: This is a twin-stick shooter. When you do a run, you spawn into a randomly generated world and zombies start spawning. After a certain length of time, the difficulty level increases. This keeps happening until eventually you die and that ends the run.

The cheese: There is a vampire perk which heals you a small amount when you kill something with your melee weapon. Players have discovered that you can last longer in the game if you just max the best melee weapon and the vampire perk and stand in a corner left clicking.

Conditions for the solution: For people not cheesing (like me) the melee vampire perk really helps the game. I can take more chances and try to gain my health back (re: chances, there are a lot of pick-ups and chests in the game). So try to create a cheese solution that doesn't involve nerfing the vampire perk. My suggestion is an example of this.

My suggestion: Create a super zombie that can't be killed and have him spawn right on top of anyone standing in a corner and have the super zombie hound the player for the rest of the run. You should be able to stay away from him, but you shouldn't be able to stand in one spot for very long before he catches you and does massive damage..

 

[March's Ghost]

My suggestion: Create a super zombie that can't be killed and have him spawn right on top of anyone standing in a corner and have the super zombie hound the player for the rest of the run. You should be able to stay away from him, but you shouldn't be able to stand in one spot for very long before he catches you and does massive damage..

Or have a bit tougher ones that are immune to the effect. They can be killed and are challenging, but don't heal you when they die. Thus you can control the rate the immune creatures are spawned to balance the usefulness of the effect. Maybe spawn the immune zombies at a steady rate. The player can ignore them to find zombies that will heal them, but at the risk of having more of the immune spawn while they heal themselves.

 

[ZedClampet]

Or have a bit tougher ones that are immune to the effect. They can be killed and are challenging, but don't heal you when they die. Thus you can control the rate the immune creatures are spawned to balance the usefulness of the effect. Maybe spawn the immune zombies at a steady rate. The player can ignore them to find zombies that will heal them, but at the risk of having more of the immune spawn while they heal themselves.

Currently how the cheese comes to an end is that the exploding zombies can no longer be killed before they explode, and there are quite a few of them at that point. If you want to survive you have to scramble and stay just out of detonation range while hitting them with your weapon while also watching for zombies coming from all other directions. Of course, you can also switch to a gun, but you'll either be quickly overwhelmed or run out of ammo because they are so hard to kill at that point. Any way you choose to play it, you won't last very long at this stage.

In some ways the exploding zombies kind of accomplish what you are suggesting. The problem with them is that by the time they get this strong, you are already one foot in the grave anyway. Maybe if the exploding zombies exploded more quickly, it could cause people to have to start moving much earlier.

 

[Zloth]

My suggestion: Create a super zombie that can't be killed and have him spawn right on top of anyone standing in a corner and have the super zombie hound the player for the rest of the run. You should be able to stay away from him, but you shouldn't be able to stand in one spot for very long before he catches you and does massive damage..

Have the walls attack. I've only seen it done once before, and it's been a long time. Maybe a single wall isn't very effective but, if you've got two walls in a corner, they can team up on you and do Bad Things.

 

[ZedClampet]

I got thoroughly slammed on the Steam forums for suggesting that being able to do nothing but stand in a corner and spam the left click button was bad for the game.

 

[Pifanjr]

What about getting rid of the walls altogether? Vampire Survivors has a couple of maps like that.

Alternatively, make standing still worse than moving. There are multiple ways to do this, but one basic way is to add enemies with a ranged attack.

I got thoroughly slammed on the Steam forums for suggesting that being able to do nothing but stand in a corner and spam the left click button was bad for the game.

What I would consider to be basic reading comprehension seems to be a rare skill online.

 

[ZedClampet]

What about getting rid of the walls altogether? Vampire Survivors has a couple of maps like that.

That might work, but he might not like the aesthetic change. I've never actually used this cheese, but since the whole game takes place outside, I assume people are using fences, like the fence around the graveyard or the privacy fences some houses have.

Alternatively, make standing still worse than moving. There are multiple ways to do this, but one basic way is to add enemies with a ranged attack.

That might work. Would you, as a player, consider it a problem if the zombies could shoot you without a line-of-sight, and you couldn't reciprocate? Because most of the time there are going to be zombies filling all the space between you and the ranged unit, so if the ranged unit is going to shoot you, then the best solution, I think, would be for him to lob something like a grenade over the other zombies. But you, the player, would have to maneuver in such a way that you would have an open shot (unlikely to happen due to the number of zombies), or fight your way to him. ACTUALLY, that sounds really fun. You could make sure he doesn't throw the grenades in rapid succession and give them a little delay before they explode and a small area of effect so that you have a fighting chance to get away without taking damage, AND you could try to lure tougher zombies into taking damage from the grenades! All the while you are trying to maneuver your way to this guy before a second one shows up.

I love this idea! It would add a lot to the game even for those of us who aren't cheesing. I'll tell him he needs to hire you. I'll tell him you are elite on a worldwide level and currently making $200/hour but you might take the job for less due to it being a QoL improvement. That should get his best offer. Now if you were currently my employee and he asked about you, I'd say, "He shows up to work most of the time. You just have to get used to the fact that his sweat smells like alcohol."