Some Ideas for Vents in Virus

Suggestions Virus Suggestions
1

Mac showed a list of things that could be added to Virus a couple weeks back, and one of them was vents that Infected could use to travel around the map faster. I think this is a really cool idea, so I wanted to share some ideas I had for the feature.

  1. Make vents usable by both survivors and infected

Something I don’t really like about being a survivor is that it’s kinda hard to go to another part of the map by yourself without being slapped by some guy on the way there. I think being able to use vents would be a nice way to safely get to other areas with less risk of being infected. I think infected might become a bit too overpowered as well if they’re the only ones who can use vents.

  1. Peeking through vents

It would be nice if there was a short period (maybe ~5 seconds) where you can peek through the other side of the vents and see if there’s anything dangerous on the other side. You can cancel out of venting if you don’t want to go through, and if you don’t choose to vent or cancel, it automatically cancels so you can’t stay in the vent forever.

  1. Short delay for other players after venting

After someone vents, there should be a short period (maybe 5 or so seconds) where no-one else can enter either side of it, so for example Infected can’t just immediately enter a vent and infect a survivor who just vented.

  1. Venting shouldn’t be instant

When you vent, I don’t think you should be able to go through instantly. I think it would probably be better/add a bit of strategy if it took a bit to exit the vent (pretty short, like 1 to 3 seconds). That way, you can’t essentially just instantly teleport to another part of the map, and it’s not entirely guaranteed that something/someone dangerous wouldn’t be on the other side, even if you didn’t see anything while peeking.

  1. Warning for when someone is in a vent

While someone is in/going through a vent, there should be a sound cue so that other players know they’re there. For survivors, you can hear them moving around in the vent (there’s already a fitting sound for this in the game, which you can hear when going through the vent in Suite). For infected, you hear the same sound but faster and with muffled groaning.

This is all just stuff that I think would be interesting, and I’m sure people will probably disagree with at least one or 2 of these suggestions, and vents might not even be added at all, but I think vents are a really interesting idea and I hope at least one of these ideas are considered.

Here’s the list of ideas I mentioned at the start of the thread, btw:

2

I think the vent idea could either work well, or be tricky to get it right. You bring up a lot of good points and things to consider when working in the idea.

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3

I think the best way to handle vents is to have them slowly become blocked off or otherwise unusable as the infected population grows. The main issue that Virus has is lopsided teams- when there are too many survivors bunched up together, or too many infected hanging up on a survivor. If the vents closed as more people got infected it could ease the transition a little more while still letting the infection get past patient zero.

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4

I think having the survivors just tap E to weld or board up the vents as they run around could be cool way to block them up similar to EvKem’s suggestion. This could be a short animation (3-5 seconds) but give enough time for the survivor to get infected by a zombie. Maybe make the weld only hold for 30 seconds or something. Or just put some vents out of reach like on the ceiling where survivors can’t seal them up.

I feel as though they need to add a reason for people to move around. As it stands right now its super easy for people to group up in a corner and kill all the infected. (I’ve only played this mini-game for an hour or so). If there was some reason to keep them constantly moving or give them tasks like “defend these 3 points” once all 3 points are destroyed everyone gets the virus or the zombies get a speed boost or something. IDK I don’t know if that would ruin the feel of the game there just needs to be a reason for survivors to move imo.

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