Yeah, I agree. We thought that this was a change better for most users, so we went ahead with it. People who cured continue to not have the skins they didn't have yesterday, but now they feel like they're missing out on something.

The zapper skins will continue to go out the same way (morostide zapper v2) and we don't have any immediate plans to bring back the zombie skins. Tons of plans for bringing out new skins, though! :)

That's really unlikely to happen. Every layer we add, adds additional complexity and filesize and processing power. Separating this into the base layer was hard enough, splitting things up (and what about when you want to layer x4 of them at the same time?) probably isn't going to happen anytime soon.

We looked at our old choices and decided that this was a better choice for the majority of the userbase and made for a more fun and exciting feature.

We are going to continue doing that.

I disagree withs some of these points. Why is the zombie den only open to zombies? It's located in Shadowglen, outside of the underground. Skitters is the NPC who is most for Human and Zombie relations, so why does he only let zombies shop there? I think that opening the den could very easily be explained away by lore and actually makes way more sense than it is now :P

I think that, at least in my mind, the two points you made are reversed. The people pleaser would have continued added zombie skins every survival (except the years when we don't have it) so that people feel "included" and can have exclusive skins that other users can't have. You've seen it in this thread, people who've chosen to stay zombies feel entitled that they have earned what they get (and I don't blame them) and continuing to add zombie strains is a very popular and frequently request feature.

Instead, we turned "zombie strains" and "zapper skins" into a system so that users can save and collect those skins forward, and we can turn it into a reward mechanism for participating in events. Participate in survival and finish it completely? You deserve a skin that provides rewards for you going forward, not just until you cure it. I believe we (you included) had this problem when we finished up the Islander & Pirate event by actually punishing people who chose to toss the flower into the water going forward, because they erased their team and couldn't access either shop after the event. Instead now, they'd get some sort of base for their team at the end and that would be "proof" enough that they participated.

I think that just makes for a boring game. We decide on the lore here, and if we decide that you can just transform into a zombie, suddenly you can! Blizzard recently moved a lot of their items into the toy box, where you can turn into a gnome, turn into a druid of the fire, etc. These are items that completely change your appearance, have no basis in lore, and are perfectly acceptable because they are fun which I think is the point of these skins :) During survival skins will still progress like normal, and at the end you'll be rewarded with an unlocked skin in your wardrobe to use whenever you want. I think that's pretty rad.

On another note, I really appreciate this perspective. We did a sort of look back after the end of the morostide event, and I agree with you. There are some things that we could have put more game mechanics into. We're working on some puzzle systems that we can incorporate easily into events that should make it more challenging for the users who want a challenge!

I think that's a fair point, but we aren't exactly handing them out like candy. The only newly released skin so far has very low chances, and if we played by the regular (not including the first year) survival rules, you'd only be able to get one of the zombie skins every year.

Not to take the WoW example too far, but there are a lot of cosmetic items that change you into the opposing faction, without any repercussions when you go into cities.

And, like I said. I think that right now the reasoning for the zombie den only taking zombies is off, and something that is already kind of addressed. If we changed it today, I think it'd fit more in line with the story of the underground, anyway.

Regardless, we don't have plans to address any of the zombie skins until survival, if at all.

Absolutely, I just don't think that "choosing" zombie really came with any actual perks besides having a cool HA to show off. The temporary infections from last year let people access all of the zombie features for a limited amount of time, removing that as a perk - even though it wasn't even that great of a perk to begin with.

I actually think we're on the same page here, haha.