by Sorastro
Scorpion0x17 wrote:
from the game designers point of view, if you have two possible rules, one that makes the game neither harder nor easier, and one that makes the game harder, the rule that makes the game harder is the better rule.
So by this logic, a rule such as: "Upon entering a building a player loses a wound on a role of 4-6 due to falling debris" would automatically make the game better because it makes it harder? I don't think so. Surely the designer's job is to make the game as balanced as possible, that is challenging but without capricious and ungrounded spikes in difficulty.
This brings me back to a point I made earlier: I'm not convinced the designers themselves deliberately chose for the splitting of zombies to potentially alter the difficulty of the game so dramatically: I think it's just the unhappy confluence of two rules leading to a potentially illogical and unfairly-punishing outcome. (This incidentally doesn't mean I have a problem with the zombie-reactivation rule, just the splitting rule.)
The designers do a very good job of ratcheting up the difficulty in a logical and elegant way: namely through the XP/danger levels mechanic. I don't think they need to resort to building in random difficulty spikes such as the case is here.
Also imagine this: You're a survivor trying to escape a zombie-infested zone, your fellow survivor stops and says: "Hang on! We'd better not go that way because that will cause an odd number of walkers behind us to split into two groups, thereby causing an inexplicable re-activation of all walkers in the area and we'll die!". It just doesn't make sense, and I think worrying about not splitting up odd-numbered groups of the same zombie type would be the last thing on my mind in that situation.
Ultimately I guess it's not just about whether a specific rule makes a game harder or easier but the most fun for those playing the game. For me and some others the splitting rule as written isn't fun, and randomising the movement of left-over zombies is an easy solution.
