Buff the enraged infected if they die too much

So I make this topic in response to increasing amount of players getting better at the game and thus doing the same thing: Huddling together and teaming up against enraged infected

Now, this isn’t a bad thing by itself, however i’ve noticed 8 times out of 10 that the infected, even in an enraged state, can not simply infect anyone because they’re being buried upon bullets and TNT.

So, with this in mind, I want to propose that the enrage buff should get buffed more, but with a catch, which I think should be the following:

Just in case you don’t know: When an infected dies twice without infecting anyone, they get enraged, but this alone isn’t enough, so I propose that for every 2+ deaths added without infecting anyone, the buff should get increased, not a lot, but just enough to help the infected get an extra hand with surviving until someone is infected

Though, I admit, this might not be enough, lets say you have 12 players, 2 infected vs. 10 survivors, that isn’t gonna be easy, especially in the 90 second length time that the rounds are, and how long it probably takes to infect someone.

So to get around this, depending on the amount of players, the game should allow for two enraged infected, now, I know what i’m saying sounds and is basically insane and I wouldn’t be shocked if the devs looked at this, laughed, and said no straight away because of balancing reasons.

However, I want to double down on this because I think to understand how bad it can be, you have to experience it, which means you have to get 12 people (yourself included) in a game and try to infect anyone when there’s 2 infected and 10 survivors, It’s not easy, and it’s usually by blind luck or someone being stupid to leave the ‘nest’ of players in order to infect anyone, especially if you’re up against competent players, new players are easy pickings, but you pick on a terminator rank team and you’re gonna find it hard. It would probably be a fine line between balance and skill.

I want to stress though that I believe this system of having two enraged infected should only be active after a certain number of players are playing, heck i’d say if you have a full 12 player game then maybe then it should be active, but drops down back down to buffing the solo infected.

I’m open to feedback on this.

I do agree that it can be frustrating (Especially if someone new to the game joins while you’re first infected, making you lose your enraged perk) when there is 10 survivors vs 2 infected. It can seem like survivors can just easily pick off infected by sticking close to each other and shooting at the same infected that gets anywhere near them.

So I do agree that there should be some sort of change to help make it more fair for the infected when there is more then 8 survivors vs 2 infected. The only way I’ve been able to work out a kill is if my spawn is lucky enough to be right in the middle of the group and they don’t notice fast enough for me to infect at least one of them.

I’m not sure if we need to buff enraged, since you can easily get at least one person in the group with enraged. (Especially with a cheeky spawn, after getting rid of most of their tnt quickly) This would also punish the competent survivors that know how to combat an enraged zombie, by making it even harder to kill it. I feel it kinda implies that someone has to get infected just to get the enraged perk to not be a problem.

But the 2 enraged infected might sound like a good idea if the game is full. Maybe it would need a bit of tweaking tho, to prevent a quick round from two competent enraged infected being able to get the whole group possibly. But again only if the game is full or close to full.

i guess it is.
for example, movement speed increase.
the more you die out of kills, the higher your advantage as an infected.

A rework of zombie strength = zombie : player would fix more problems including this from the ground up.

I’ve started playing Virus a lot more recently, and noticed this is still an issue occurring on most maps (the exception being Solar, thanks to the small map size).

Desolation and Subway seem to have the highest leave the game / AFK rates. As the infected, it’s practically impossible to infect a group of players camping (even with enrage). Tommy Guns and TNT in the same round, and your slim chances are gone. (Edit: The next idea is only relevant with the current balancing of high damage weapons for the Survivors).

I think the primary issue is infecting one player in Virus is not worth it. You lose your enrage to gain one player, but you both die in seconds anyway. I think to better balance the gamemode, we need to double up the enrage. Make it so two players can be enraged, and stop giving enrage once three or more players become infected.

HoneyBadger is correct - players are getting better at the game, and thus it’s getting harder for the infected to win. This is even more true now, a year and a half later.

A small note to add unrelated to the enrage issue - Subway and Desolation’s camping spots are too good. If you’ve played on these maps, you know what I mean. Subway has too many narrow hallways lined with TNT, and Desolation’s hill is only breached when someone makes a mistake by over-extending.

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