Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Citizen K...er... Screwed.

 So I've been continuing trying to play "Die 2 Nite", which is an sort of fascinating observation of forty people failing to communicate in a spectacular fashion.

 It isn't a bad game, a little slow on the pick up, and only about as actually rp involved as you let it be. (IE: not really at all)

 The premise is simple, your character is a survivor in a zombie wasteland, and you need to survive as long as possible. This is tricky with increasing waves of zombies attacking your town, and the need for food, and water, so you have to decide what to build and when to build it. This seems all fine and good, especially if you have some older players in town who've played before and know some of the most efficient timelines in which to produce things to maximise survival.

 Except that so far... that doesn't happen.

 There are forums for people to communicate and decide on things, and let people know what's going on, but in the first town I was in, it turned into a fiasco, with one player deciding he was going to refuse to contribute anything to the town, and exploit anything and everything he found on his personal living space ((which produses much less safety at all than using the same resources to, say, enforce the town wall, or build a work shop to reduse the cost of building the town wall and other upgrades.))
 Other players decided to follow suite, and it ended up with everyone building things to cross puroposes, and we got devoured in short order.

The second run through: I lasted a day. I attempt to go out scavenging, then tried to help rescue someone. My character ended up stranded in a zone, I couldn't leave without being killed or injured by the zombies, and although another player could have showed up and helped walk me out by outnumbering the zombies, no one would come when I asked. Or when anyone else asked.  ((That's one way of reducing the number of mouths to feed, and of discouraging people from trying to bring back resources.))

 This time through: We've already banished one player who started at day one taking every resource he could find and using for himself, and he turned around and started causing problems for everyone else. One player was poisoned, and we suspect him, or possibly another player with unknown reasons, and we now have a THIRD person doing the same thing as person one. Plus out of the formerly forty odd people in the town, only 6 or 7 are actually using the forums at all, and the rest are doing... well... whatever they want. Thus we wasted time to get the workshop done before the hoardes got big with them building a big wall before we needed it, and now they're STEALING the resources that could save the town, so that they can do...

 ... Well we're not actually sure what they're doing. They're not upgrading their own housing with it. They just seem to be squirreling it away somewhere. It's totally baffling, and kind of frustrating. It seems likely that the only way to actually survive this game is to get a ruling majority ((around eight players who can agree to shut someone out of using town resources. Eight being the minimum number to 'shun' someone to this end)) and have them all in the same town.

 The stupid part is that this shouldn't be necessary. It should be at least on some level gut level obvious that earning two points of defense making a prettier house is way less than earning THIRTY points on a wall. And equally obvious that if you can only eat one food ration a day, than it might be good to let the other people in town use the available ones while they try and find more so that things like emergency supplies can be built, thus ensuring longer survival and more points per round.

 It's nice to know that if there's actually a zombie appocalypse we are all completely screwed.

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