I’m gonna post this even though im not sure what the reaction would be.
I have been playing virus for a while now and have noticed that it is often really easy to survive, since many rounds get stuck on 2 or 3 infected.
Below are some scenarios of common occurrences in virus:
Player A is patient zero. Player A infects Player B. Player B then quits, leaving Player A to get whomped for the remainder of the round. (Patient zero does not become enraged after they infect someone, even if they quit)
Player A is patient zero. Player A then gets completely destroyed by the rest of the lobby spamming their tommy guns. (This one happens more often on Hospital, since there are long hallways which provide good camping spots)
There is also an issue where survivors can win if patient zero never dies. Survivors could just run away from the them for the entire round and win easily. (Although this never happens cos someone will always shoot them)
I dont think the issue is with the weapons, as they are mostly balanced and are especially helpful for when there are more infected than survivors. I think the issue is with the lack of buffs for the infected. For example, after patient zero infects someone else, all they can do is throw themselves at the survivors and then respawn until they happen to spawn next to someone. This isnt too much of a problem for casual players as it is easier to catch them off guard, but when you are comfortable with the map and know all the spots where infected can spawn, it becomes really easy to survive.
One thing you could do to help balance the game is provide further buffs for when less than half the lobby are infected. For example:
You could give infected more health or speed the more they die, or the longer they are alive. You could also allow infected to regenerate health so that they arent just running around on no health. (Not sure how assist kills would work in this scenario)
You could include a chance for anyone to become enraged, which decreases as more people get infected (I personally would like to see this, as it would make the game more chaotic)
You could prevent survivors from using certain weapons until they get a certain amount of kills or until a certain percentage of the lobby is infected.
Add Mutators (Please)
Anyway, those are my ideas. I think it would help balance the game as it allows for a little more strategy for infected.
I really like the regen idea, so many times I’ve ran away from a survivor group with a sliver of hp left, making pretty much any action I take next guaranteed to fail. Would be super helpful to hide and regen rather than having to willingly sacrifice myself for more hp
from what i’ve observed playing virus there are a lot of people who play it that aren’t fps players at all, so for them it isn’t easy, but everyone in the virus ‘community’ generally agrees with the fact that rounds are usually limited to fighting 1-3 people and it feels very slow
the biggest problems that contribute to virus being too easy(in my opinion):
people will hide behind a door for 30sec trying to get one guy when there’s only 2 other infected leading to slow gameplay
there will be a line of tnt that takes 50 seconds to break through and by the time patient zero gets one person, the round is almost over
subway is an extremely slow map because it’s way too big and i think it needs to be reworked, maybe by removing spawns that aren’t towards the middle of the map
possible solutions:
add more troll spawns, the one at the top of hospital was good and i think it needs to be re-added
an option to start with more than one infected at the game select screen, maybe up to 3 or 4
no double barrel and tommy gun in the same loadout
more achievements, and maybe a really difficult one like other gamemodes/plaza activities have so it gives people a reason to grind
i personally think the game feels balanced when there’s an active number of infected, so i wouldn’t change zombie hp or weapon dps, the problem lies in actually getting the round going. the recent change making it so you only need to kill patient zero once to activate enraged i think is unanimously loved in the community
I’d say the game is already rather difficult for inexperienced players because they struggle a lot to figure out what they need to do. And considering lobbies are mostly formed by first-timers or casual players at best, and extremely skilled players are just a part of that, the best idea is keeps the game at this status and adds an option that can make a round start with more than 3 infected as haruna suggested.
I also understand that infected have to be faster than survivors, but only slightly in my opinion. Too faster will make the game extreme which is either being stuck at 2 infected or everybody dies within half of the round. There was a period where infected can clearly run faster than survivors and it was ruining the experience on my view
This definitely boils down to a level design issue at its core, but a major gripe I have is that the first couple of infected have to spend most of their time just walking across the map to get to the survivors, rather than actually trying to infect the survivors, especially since the survivors tend to just group up in one area. Being able to select a specific spawn point might be a bit too abusable, but having spawn points grouped into clusters and being able to select a rough location to spawn in might work?
I like the idea of regenerating health for Infected, as long as it takes a bit to kick in after you’ve taken damage.
In terms of level design issues, one idea I like was having vents that infected could use in Subway.
The new maps coming out address a lot of the issues that the old levels could improve a bit upon. We have lots of ways for infected to avoid getting hallway’d.
In terms of difficulty, I personally find it pretty balanced right now, but I would like to explore adding the setting for 2 infected on start (as a mutator), and making it so the Tommy Gun and Double Barrel aren’t in the same load out.
I’ll most likely address these points when we release Corrosion soon after Casino Phase 2.
I don’t want to make any major promises but certain types of mutators are easier to make than others and perhaps we could explore our previous plans with mutators and get the systems out sooner than later.
If Patient Zero happens to be an AFK player, people just have to wait the 90 seconds for the round to be over, or someone agrees to infect themselves which: A) it’s hard because people tend to rush and kill the AFK player constantly while you try to go to them, then if you succeed: B) you don’t get to play the game because you can’t get enraged and it’s very hard to get to someone without any buffs.
If Patient Zero first infects an AFK player, the same happens but in reverse, most people don’t notice in the moment, and they become frustrated after the fact they wasted their enrage on an AFK player.
Possible solutions:
AFK players should not become Patient Zero.
Make AFK players not count towards Patient Zero’s first infection.
Maybe auto-kick non-host AFK players after 3 rounds so it doesn’t happen constantly? (It’s about 5 mins, so it isn’t unfair if you happen to need to do something else for a bit.)
+1 to the regen after a bit, at least would help to give you a second chance, my only concern would be people hiding behind a wall being more common because of this though, it just depends how fast you regen.
I blame the tommy gun being OP in sheer quantity of ammo and damage more personally. I kind of agree, but then loadouts would be much less varied with the weapons we have now, they’d need to add another semiauto weapon and/or shotgun to compensate, in which I’m not so sure they will do.
This. Subway is in dire need of a rework, map’s too big and open. Personally, besides a map size cut, I’d actually like the addition of an abandoned subway train.
Also, with the lighting change, seeing which ticket gates are closed is very tough (for me at least), maybe make it a bit more obvious, for example make the display of the thing have a bright red X or a bright green circle/arrow to indicate, or just flat lights?
i’ve been playing a bit more virus lately and one thing has been sticking out to me quite a lot: tnt is too unbalanced, someone with great movement and capabilities as an infected still can’t do anything when people just camp in between a line of tnt
my suggestion would be that if tnt is out for a certain amount of time, it can fizzle out or explode on its own maybe with aoe damage. most of the time tnt paired with tommy gun means a round will never get started and i think for very very new players this might be fine, but for the vast majority of lobbies it’s gg as soon as it starts
