A bit more player feedback for tagging in Virus

[Zapty]

I dunno if I’m the only one, but I find the tagging in Virus to be kind of frustrating sometimes. Whether it be through ping, or hitboxes, or just simply not judging the right place to walk, it seems kind of irritating. I’m not sure what the devs’ plans are regarding Virus or if this is even considered to be an issue, but I have a few suggestions. I’m no expert in game design so feel free to leave me feedback.

1. Have player collision enabled for enemies. I feel like this might be one of the better ways to do it, since it wouldn’t involve drastically changing too many things, but having it actually count as a tag when you “bump” into them. After they transform you’d be able to walk through them as normally.

The problems I could see with this is it could change the balance of the game a little, as getting a crazy multikill where you run through half of the survivors at once would be a bit harder; although I could see cool scenarios where people sacrifice themselves to block the paths of the zombies for a split second to give the others a window to escape.

2. Maybe a “swipe” animation for the zombies.

I know Virus itself is based on an older game, so it might not be ideal to change the “idea” of the game, but even a purely cosmetic attack might feel a bit more satisfying to spam while you try to run into people. Could maybe cause confusion with new players though, so maybe not.

3. Maybe player outlines in zombie mode? Not sure if this would help too much or even at all but I’m just throwing ideas out there. Would obviously not be able to be seen through walls, but could provide a little feedback as to where to aim your green zombie feet.

(And maybe an idea for outlines is enraged mode shows all outlines through walls. Who knows.)

Obviously I’m not the best player in the world but in my opinion it feels less like needing to get good and just a little quality of life change. Thanks!

[Arkive86]

@Zapty

Maybe a “swipe” animation for the zombies.

I remembered this being talked about, but I don’t know if it ever became or currently is planned.

@macdguy

Reliably networking other players colliding with each other isn’t particularly easy to fix, so one major change we’ve talked about is changing the way players infected others. Instead of touching, it would require one slash attack to cause infection. This would solve the networking as the slash is a single event that can be predicted over time, as opposed to what we have now.

[macdguy]

@Arkive86

I remembered this being talked about, but I don’t know if it ever became or currently is planned.

This is still planned to happen.

@Zapty

Maybe player outlines in zombie mode?

This is already a thing in the game. Players are outlined so you can easily find them as an infected.

[Jinko]

I agree i feel like the game is broken because i can never tag people even though the player models colide

[Zapty]

Oh I guess I forgot it was in the game already whoops

Nice to see that it’s planned though; hopefully we see more in the future

[Omega_Haxors]

A minor change that would go a long way in helping the bad netcode without ruining the game itself would be giving some sort of subtle visual notifier to the player how much latency is between you and the enemy. That way, if you see an enemy that is shooting off a lot of ‘lag’ particles you would know to aim ahead of where they appear to be, rather than where they currently are.

[Omega_Haxors]

Somewhat of a nerf to overpowered HOST connection would be good too. Normally it’s not a big issue but when everybody has 100+ ping and the host has perfect connection they have a remarkably unfun advantage which can throw a whole game.