Navneeth

I can't think of a particular movie. But The Last of Us on PS3 has a pretty fair (and realistic-ish) mechanic. Zombie bites infect you; not zombie blows or scratches. And in realistic terms, it's hard for a human to simply bite you. Human teeth (and zombie decayed half fallen teeth too) are not meant to be used as primary weapons. If a human/zombie tries to bite you, you simply bash his skull with your real weapon; your fist. So the zombies in that game try to beat you down first before biting. That's essentially how it works in this game too, so i don't get why infection MUST come from every 5 blows. P.S. In most zombie movies, the protagonists aren't immune to the zombie infection as they are in DayZ. In hardly any zombie movies does a couple of zombie punches result in a full-fledged (ordinary) bacterial infection that kills you in little more than an hour.

The Irish potato farmers are viral? I'm not sure how the skin corresponds to the condition... does the infection originate from fecal matter in crops or something? In fact, I've seen this pic before but I kind of brushed it off because I thought, "Well that doesn't seem right. Why would viral zombies look like that?" It would be nice if these could be reskinned/reanimated so that they actually look more diseased than other zombies. Nevertheless, thanks for the clarification. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=McXyq83yR1M The comments summarize the laymen's perspective on the patch.

You could say the same about alert-levels: being able to know how much attention you're gathering using a gauge is unrealistic and makes the game sterile and boring. Let's not forget all health indicators, descriptions of items (why not just learn to recognize them all?), the side chat, and your spawn location being revealed to you. I think that the vast majority of players will agree with making the distinction more obvious. Nothing is stupider than getting infected after your first zombie attack because an indistinguishable viral zed hit you. It just ruins the experience and prompts half of the afflicted (with or without good kits) to commit suicide. When I spawned yesterday, the FIRST TIME a single zed hit me, I got infected. No bleeding, just infection. There was no point continuing the life. Furthermore, if a zed is viral, then there should be some visual association between their sickness and skin and animations. After all, this infection is serious enough to kill a human in little over an hour. For example, viral zeds could: -have blisters, boils, and puffiness -cough, vomit, or spit out blood at times -be covered in vomit, spit, mucus etc. -move a bit slower or intermittently collapse to the ground It's nonsense to have to treat every zombie in the game like it can infect you in one hit. Maybe this would be tolerable if the infection weren't so severe, or if antibiotics were more common. But now the mechanic basically forces people to bypass it by respawning. Any mechanic that is dickhead enough to do this on a large scale pretty much ruins the gaming experience.

I think the biggest question will be... what the hell does a viral zombie look like?

Melee hasn't been nerfed by this though; if anything, it's just been made super OP. Now you're kind of ****ed if you get spotted by zombies in an area with few buildings unless you have a melee weapon. If you have a melee weapon, you have an unlimited source of food and drink from the zombies. OP's aim (nerf infection) is totally reasonable, but his reasoning is illogical. Some of his frustration just stems from the flawed zombie mechanics and the risks associated with every choice. If meleeing had NO repercussions, it would just be OP by definition right? With regard to mechanics, zombies in standalone ought to be: -slower -easier to escape (LoS restrictions) -easier to sneak by (nearly blind and deaf when not aggroed) -able to be killed by strangling/beating them to death (tLoU style) In return, they should be able to run indoors and alert each other of human presence. Seems balanced to me. EDIT: The funniest part to me is that the infection isn't even some uber zed infection: it's just a NORMAL infection! LMAO! Yet it kills in like <4000 seconds (~1 hour) and cannot be cured no matter how much time you've survived it. Forget bed rest, hydration, high-protein diet, and warmth: you either get antibiotics (which are as rare as Mountain Dew) or stash your body in a convenient place and kill yourself.