George Bone

Great thread there, i'm glad someone thought it out a bit more. I guess what i thought was that through a random class it would force players to adapt to their charactor and then move on from there and aquire new skills. This would make no new charactor useless. But then i think its a good experience to have a new charactor with that initial panic of having nothing and simply trying to survive against the odds. So as that thread says perhaps its better if everyone started on a blank slate and learned skills through their charactors unique experience of the game. Thereby making them not completely disposable as now.

But to be an effective soldier you'd need a first aid speacialist to bandage you well and heal your wounds. You'd need a mechanic or tinkerer to maintain decent upkeep on your weapon. Your skill as a soldier would only be beneficial to a group as alone you'd not have the resources to be as effective and survive. There should always be a disadvantage to every class to balance out the good. Theres not even a guarantee you'd get a weapon without help if the zombies were tougher around military bases and other densely populated regions. I thought rocket said he wanted the game to be a simulation? Ofcourse people should be able to adapt and learn new skills through repetition and disipline but prior to the apocalypse people would have learned some skills that might be useful to their situation. Having said all that it would have to extremely well thought out and be as balanced as possible to be fair. But it would rewarding because it would force the player into different random roles and not the current wash and repeat of get an m4 then brace for the inevitable fireaxe in your back.

Just an idea i had. When you start a game the game picks out one random class from maybe 3 branches of skills: medical, technical and physical. For example you'd have basic first aid, doctor, surgeon for medical skills. The chance of being basic first aid class would be comparatively high compared to surgeon class which would be rare. For other classes there'd be tinkerer, mechanic, engineer, brawler, melee fighter, rifleman, sniper, small arms ect. This would help stop people killing each other on sight as you'd need other peoples skills in order to survive and you'd never know what skill they had unless you asked. It would make sence too because people would have their own skills learned from their lives prior to the zombie apocalypse. At the moment people kill because everyone is the same which makes life cheap. This game has to emphasize the unique qualitys of every individual charactor to give them any worth and consequently avoid having their heads blown off for waving hello.