u/drewey09

TL;DR at the bottom.

The current plague nest gameplay loop is seemingly: Go into a plague nest ——-> kill zombies —-> hit a node ——> zombies spawn to try and stop you —-> hit more nodes ——> more zombies spawn to try and stop you ——> hit the heart ——> more zombies spawn to try and stop you ——> kill the heart ——> more zombies spawn to try and stop you ——> repeat for two other hearts. Nests are seemingly just a bigger SOD2 heart with multiple parts. And while that isn’t necessarily bad, I think it is somewhat shallow.

The world of SOD3 has evolved. The plague is more organized, it’s actively seeking out survivors, and on the whole it’s far more deadly. I believe that gameplay surrounding nests should reflect that nuance/complexity.

I don’t believe plague nests should spawn zombies at ALL when the player attempts to engage them. Instead, I think a nest should CALL in defensive hordes/reinforcements from infestations, other nearby nests, etc.. Essentially it would be the inverse of a base siege.

Picture this: You sneak into a plague nest and quietly take out every zombie in the place. You take out your first node when suddenly the heart lets out an incredibly loud shriek. You have just kicked a bees nest and the real battle has begun. You already scouted the closest infestation, it’s around 1000 meters away. That gives you around a minute before the first set of reinforcements arrive. The traps you set on the road will buy you a bit more time but you’re expecting heavy resistance from this particular nest. You get to work, take out more nodes, and right when start to attack the first heart directly you hear the door bang. The first few zombies have broken through your defenses. You look at your map and you see it, wave after wave of reinforcements are being sent out from every infestation associated with this nest. They are staggered/delayed, and while you can hold them off for a while, it’s only a matter of time before you’re overrun. This is a direct battle between you and the nest.. and you lose. You did your best but need to fall back. Although you lost the battle, this wasn’t for nothing, you dealt a significant blow to the nest. Most of the infestations it had established were totally drained/are now gone. You’ve bought yourself crucial time, time that you can use to prepare for your next attempt.

I really think nests and their impact on the world should be very dynamic. Infestations should serve a larger purpose than just being an inconvenience, blocking base sites/POIs, and being the source of potential attacks on player bases. They should be the source of a plague nest’s overall strength and sites where a nest has sent some of its “resources”.

If a nest has to rely on its infestations/“resources” throughout the world for its defensive strength (in addition to its offensive strength), it would open up a world of different strategies for both the plague and the player.

If you take out infestations? The nest wouldn’t be able to mount as large of a defense and less reinforcements would get sent in (but maybe the nest itself becomes more fortified in response). If you ignore infestations? The nest would have the ability to mount a significant defense (but maybe it’s much weaker because most of its resources were spent on growing infestations). On that same note, nests could dynamically change their strategies depending on how many hearts are left, how the player has interacted with it, etc.. You could partially defeat a nest only to find that it has gone all in on sending out infestations and fortifying itself. Or maybe you heavily damage a nest and it begins launching one desperate final attack on your base using all of the strength it can muster.

There’s a world of possibility but I think all of that possibility would/does feel shallow if zombies can just appear out of thin air around nests. That makes so many different strategies largely pointless. Why kill all of the zombies nearby if more are just going to immediately spawn? Why whittle down the resources a nest has if “game magic” is just going to spawn more zombies in regardless of your time investment? Why lay down traps or do anything of the sort if zombies can just spawn past them?

I think the same applies to screamers or zombie spawning around infestations as well. In the recent alpha gameplay we saw that screamers spawn zombies now. I think that adds to their threat in the moment, but I also think that execution doesn’t quite hit the mark. I mean where are those zombies even coming from? Instead of having zombies appear from thin air, why not have a screamer’s scream also call in defensive hordes from nearby infestations. Those hordes may not get there immediately but those reinforcements would still show up even if the screamer dies immediately. And to compensate for the loss an immediate threat, those reinforcements should linger. Suddenly a completely safe area is swarming with shamblers, runners, and freaks, threats that you now HAVE to deal with. Maybe the nearby nest even decides to set up an infestation right where that screamer “sounded the alarm”, as clearly it is a high value area. As for infestations, they should be able to reinforce each other in moments of duress.

You could also use this sort of “defensive hordes” mechanic to your advantage in so many different ways. Want to weaken an infestation? Lure some of the zombies away with a screamer. Want to loot a high risk area that is heavily infested? Start attacking the nest so it diverts all of its resources towards defense (allowing you to navigate those heavily infested areas relatively safely, maybe even taking out some infestations with little resistance in the process). On the flip side, nests on the whole could be much more strategic as well and everything action would have some form of trade off.

I’m not sure how hard something like the above would be to implement but all of the above is seemingly baked into SOD3 (or will be). It’s basically just the “siege” mechanic slightly repurposed. With that being said, I think on the whole it would make a huge difference gameplay wise and remove a lot of the random “Oh I guess a zombie just spawned next to me” like we saw in SOD2 (which again isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I personally think a more dynamic system would be more enjoyable).

TL;DR instead of the game spawning zombies around plague nests that are being attacked (and infestations/screamers to a lesser extent), the nest should call in “defensive hordes” from nearby infestations (essentially pulling back the resources it’s send out in the world). This would essentially be a “siege” at the nest itself and it would open up a lot of different strategies for taking on nests, a lot of different ways for nests to act/react, and it would make SOD3 way more dynamic on the whole. Plague nests would be a living threat, and just like how the player’s choices matter, so would the nest’s.

P.S. I wanted to briefly use the bottom of this post to say THANK YOU to the whole team working on SOD3. The game, even in the early alpha stages, looks amazing and I am super excited to be able to play it next year. You can definitely tell that a lot of love has already gone into this game and I am incredibly grateful to everyone at Undead Labs for giving us such an amazing franchise!!!