Crazyfist

Yeah, today again I got shot by teleporting speedy zombies.

1. Zombies need to be tougher, less laggy and more interesting (see my zombie - fixing them thread) 2. the ability for a player(s) to establish a little base of operations, restrict zombie spawnage, hide/protect from other players, benefit from it (perhaps some kind of water/food extraction so that you won't need to go loot towns AS OFTEN. 3. The sickness system needs to work better. I havent seen a single sick player. It would be great if your untreated sickness would eventually lead to dying and becoming a zombie. 4. more benefits of living longer. i'm sure people have great ideas.

Since this is a Zombie mod, I'd like to share my thoughts about how to make the zombies a bit more interesting, and less of an unstable game element. Now, the zombies have a few problems at the moment. Let's ignore bugs like eating you through walls, I'm sure those are already underway to being fixed. The biggest one in my opinion, is that when they spot you, they aren't predictable in a realistic way when they get to you. They'll run at you with ungodly speed, you'll try to back up and shoot them when they slow down to attack you, but just as youre about to shoot they veer off and run past you, when you turn, they teleported to some side of yours and starts eating off. This is a huge problem, since it makes you waste too much ammo. The walking/running zombies shouldn't have a greater running speed than our sprinting speed. Zombies should have their running speed slightly nerfed, but have them keep their unlimited stamina. The players need to be able to sprint fast a bit longer, but should have a balanced curve of slowing down eventually to the point of having to walk rapidly. Zombies should always first try to approach you in a straight line, if there aren't any obstacles. Essentially how it should be, is zombies start running after you, you sprint off making them lose some ground, but after a minute or two your running speed becomes less than theirs, so it'll force you to think about where you start running. Also, when you run slower than they do, they need to be able to harm you. As it is now, they'll stop to attack you, but miss cause you kept running. This would force you to conserve your stamina in zombie encounters, make you waste less ammo because of laggy zombie movements, and IT WOULD MAKE ZOMBIES MORE DANGEROUS AND SOMETHING TO AVOID, since you can't just aggro them and sprint until you find a long barn. And in buildings, their slow walking speed should be increased by like 10% not to make it so ridiculously easy. Making a last stand in a building isn't supposed to every time turn out: "oh, well that was easy after all, moving that slow 1 bullet per head fixed that." Anything else to add? Hordes. A great gameplay element would be hordes of zombies that roam the map in packs of 5-40. Some following a road, but most just moving in lines across the entire map. This would make moving through the wilderness a LOT more interesting. Keep you on your toes, make the forests and fields less boring. However, if this is implemented, you also need to be able to hide yourself so that a horde can pass right over you and the zombies not noticing you, if you hid in time. Otherwise hordes could be very unfair. WHAT NOT TO DO The moment I see special zombies, like mutants or superfast or durable zombies, I'll quit. Left 4 Dead is a fun game, but it's a fast paced shooter. Leave the boss/special zombies out of a realistic zombie survival game. If zombies become a bit more interesting and a bigger problem, then it will slightly lessen the ease, and the urge to just run around killing newbies in the shoreline.

What's important is to keep the playing field level. Adjusting gamma in some control panel is clearly not fair since most people wont be doing it. Now is it too dark? No. Unrealistically dark? Definitely not. This is set in Russia, which is pretty much the same (environmentally speaking) as Finland, where I come from. It also looks like its very late summer, or early fall. During this time, at night you wont be able to see anything but the very lightest things, like the painting on roads, some buildings, etc. And in the forest? Completely black. I know this from annoying experiences from my army-time. Walking around, navigating at night using no-light discipline is extremely frustrating, because a lot of the time, it's literally PITCH BLACK. But is this amount of realism good in this game? Hard to say. I'd say make the usual nights SLIGHTLY less dark, but have the occasional cloudy night that's as dark as the nights are now. Sure, it's dark, but if you have any kind of adaptability in you you'll survive. Sticking to sides of roads at night works even better than in daytime. Just don't lose sight of the few landmarks you have. You can use flares/chemlights to illuminate the insides of buildings if you're unsure if there's loot there. Rocket - the beauty of this game is the harsh reality of it. Natural selection, those who adapt, survive. Keep it that way. Don't turn it into a "everyone can get by even without trying" game.

It's a pleasant thought, Shaggy, but I disagree. The whole point is that trusting is always risky, if you keep getting second chances, the game isn't worth playing. Now, there are some interesting points in this topic. The "zombies should be the problem" point: Honestly, they are the problem. Mainly because they are way too buggy to predict. They should run slower and always straight at you (instad of running past you and teleporting back), but they should also be more dangerous once they get to you. Players should stick together point: No. People in a desperate environment need to use desperate methods sometimes, and that shouldn't be hindered. The whole risk business with trusting people is exactly what makes this mod so interesting.