georgedorn

I have no problem with the Z aggro range, the Z attack range, the increased Z damage or spawning with no weapons. I have one problem with 1.7.1, and that's the Z spawn rate. Let me explain. I started a new character and immediately went into the woods in order to find a barn further away from towns. The first barn I came across, there were a couple Zs out back, and a monkey hanging around just inside the barn, not going anywhere. I waiting a while to see if he'd start moving, but nope. So a crawled up closer, stood up to get his attention, and then ran into the woods where I lost him in seconds. Got back to the barn without a problem, and it was now unoccupied and easy to get into. Not much of use in there except a giant pile of tin cans, so I took them. I even used one to get back out of the barn without aggroing any new Zs. This felt _awesome_, realistic and deep. It had verisimilitude. Fast forward to looting attempt number two, a shed by the road further up in the hills. This one had some Zs in the hill overlooking the shed, and while I was throwing a can to try to draw a Z out of the shed, I aggrod all of them. It took a lot longer to lose them this time, and I took some hits, but finally they were lost in the woods, wandering. I went back to the shed to claim my hard-won reward and... The hill was crawling with new Zs and the shed had a new occupant. I repeated this process three more times, until the forests were crawling with confused Zs and I finally had taken too much damage and run out of bandages. THIS is the problem. Buildings are now Z generators that kick out new Zs every time you move more than 30m away and come back. This destroys any remaining shred of disbelief I had. There are basically two viable strategies for deal with Zs now, both stupid. One is to aggro every Z everywhere, run into buildings with multiple doors, grab loot and run out the other one, losing most Zs in the process. The other is to scout a building and if you don't like the Z layout, reset it by aggroing them and losing them in woods; when you come back to the building the Z layout will have reset.

Bugs: 1. Zombie pathing 2. DC abuse 3. Falling damage is stupidly high. Features: 1. Multiple zombie alert states. Zombies shouldn't aggro the sound of a tin can or gunfire from a source they can't see, but they should go into investigation mode, which increases their sight/hearing range and make them wander in the general direction of the sound. Increase the investigation-trigger range greatly - extensive gunfire should draw curious Zs from hundreds or thousands of meters in all directions. 2. Remove most global chat/notifications. This includes global player death messages. 3. Make it easier to visually identify players you've designated as friendly.