PvP Designer James "Lucid" Laird has written a lengthly dev blog entry discussing how Cryptic designed the upcoming Zombie Apocalypse map, which will be introduced when the Blood Moon Halloween event launches on Oct. 27. The PvP map is here to stay, so you'll have plenty of time to fight the zombie horde in Champions Online.

The team discussed the map a couple weeks ago in a dev chat, but here's a refresher: one zombified hero fights on the side of the zombie NPCs while the rest of the heroes try to push them back. As heroes die, they'll become zombies and shift the balance between the teams.

So how do you make such a fight both fun and fair? That's what Laird's blog entry is all about. "Over the past month, the map has skewed between far too many zombies (games lasted 30-60 seconds!) to too few (I had to tell one of the playtesters to let the zombies kill him). The initial numbers feel about right now, but the zombie numbers gradually ramp up as the heroes fight; we're still tuning those values," he said. Keep reading after the jump for the full post.

It should come as no surprise that we at Cryptic love zombies--they're menacing, they're expendable, and they're great for solving puzzles in Scribblenauts. As we work on the upcoming Blood Moon event, though, there are enough Halloween-related events going on that when I talk about the Zombie Apocalypse I need to be clear *which* Zombie Apocalypse I'm referring to.

The Hero Games Zombie Apocalypse map is a player-versus-player scenario map. The heroes stand against an unending army of (NPC) zombies and one former hero, a player whose character has been "zombified." This is a purely cosmetic change--zombie heroes keep all of their super-powers. When a hero falls to the zombie hero or the NPC horde, they rise again as one of the undead. When the map begins, the lone zombie player must use hit-and-run tactics, trying to swoop in and defeat a hero who has been wounded by the NPCs; their only real advantage is that death is final for the heroes, but a zombie simply respawns to rejoin the fight. As more heroes become zombies, the balance between the teams shifts until the map reaches a tipping point and the heroes are outnumbered by their fallen comrades. The heroes are forced to break and run, which lets the zombie team hunt them as a group. The end usually comes quickly.

Interesting Trivia: ZombApoc is without a doubt our oldest PvP map. If the fossil record is to be believed, it was originally designed over a year ago (by some other fine person). It's spent the last year slipping on to and off of the list of maps we could cram in for launch. Since beta, players have been asking for more scenario PvP games, so it was a no-brainer to release our zombie scenario map during Blood Moon.

There's a world of difference between having an awesome idea and having a fun PvP map. The good news is that we'd already done some prototyping playtests back in the day; we had proof that the concept was sound. The bad news was that the original design called for the game to be scored purely on survival. Zombies get points for defeating players, but the heroes get points simply for not dying. In practice, this doesn't encourage players to fight at all--better to run away from the zombies, to live longer! The map was fun if you played it "right" by standing and fighting the zombie horde, but the scoring system didn't encourage that style of play.

The quick, heavy-handed fix is to take away the heroes' ability to run. Heroes in Champions can fly, teleport, tunnel, and run faster than any NPC; without these abilities, they'll be unable to run from the zombies. Problem solved. However, movement is a lot of what sets Champions' combat apart from other games, and movement powers are an iconic part of players' character. Taking away travel powers would work, but it would be a shame. "Remove all travel powers" gets filed away as Plan B, and I start looking for a new Plan A.

A solution I liked more was to reward players for zombie kills rather than for time survived. This is an elegant solution: it encourages players to charge into combat and pushes them to fight as many zombies as quickly as they can handle to get more points. However, this is bad news for support characters--healers and tanks will be cursed with permanent low scores. Especially since the map encourages a survival mentality, this would also be a shame. However, I consider this to be not as bad as completely removing travel powers, so this is my new Plan B, while removing travel powers is now Plan C.

Another suggestion was to confine the heroes to a particular area. Give them an object they need to defend, or fill the edges of the map with super-enemies so the players need to stick to the center. This is promising in principle, though I'm worried that players will feel confined. The Champions forums have asked for more open-world maps, and I don't want to give them an open-world map but prevent them from using all of it. Limited Area, Plan B. Reward for Kills, Plan C. Remove Travel Powers, Plan D.

After going back and forth with the powers team, we experiment with a new Plan A. We add critters that attack when the players leave the center of the map (one of the "limited area" variants) and only reward them for time spent in combat, so players who run away get no points. The zombies drop health boosts to encourage even wounded players to fight the undead. We have a couple of playtests.

Survey says: Plan A mostly works, but it doesn't feel quite right. The basic concept is still fun. However, it's still possible to exploit the scoring system. Players still feel like they're running around the map trying to avoid fights, rather than engaging the zombie horde. Players don't understand that flying too high or too far will draw the wrath of the critters around the boundary. So we experiment with Plan B. "Pretend there's an area you have to defend," I say. The players do, and it works.

Plan B it is. At the next playtest, there's a clearly-defined bubble around one of the cabins. The zombies attack it in waves, and the heroes earn points by being close to the cabin. I ask the playtesters if it feels constricting, but they tell me just the opposite: it helps to focus the conflict on the map. Heroes know where to stick together, and zombies know where to attack. It certainly has the right feel, as the players work together to defend their territory and the zombie players lurk around the outside looking for prey.

At the same time, I've been fiddling with the rates at which the NPC zombies attack. Ideally, the heroes should feel threatened by the NPCs, but not overwhelmed when there are both NPCs and player zombies. Over the past month, the map has skewed between far too many zombies (games lasted 30-60 seconds!) to too few (I had to tell one of the playtesters to let the zombies kill him). The initial numbers feel about right now, but the zombie numbers gradually ramp up as the heroes fight; we're still tuning those values.

It's a good feeling to watch ZombApoc (there are some people at Cryptic who would abbreviate it ZomApoc. Those people are wrong.) clawing its way into the light of day at last. One of the pleasures of my job is the cheers of the zombie team as they bring down one of the heroes, knowing that it means one more member of their team and one fewer hero.

If it's not clear by now, I always root for the zombies.