I'm going to throw out something crazy, give me feedback

[Techercizer 82]

I'd like to throw up an idea for you guys, not because I think this is the best suggestion ever or even that it should be implemented in the game, but because I'd like to see how it affects you and what improvements or derivations you can come up with. Tell me it sucks, by all means, but tell me specific reasons WHY it sucks.

Idea:

-Insane hard-to-hit zombie speed is reduced significantly. Zombies now move slower but spawn in larger numbers.

- Additionally, any hit from a zombie has a percentage chance to infect the target with the zombie virus, as in the old zombie movies.

- Once a survivor is infected, he has a limited amount of real-world time before he keels over and transforms into a zombie NPC. The zombie NPC must be killed to access its gear, but its pack may be stealth looted as a player's can. The zombie behaves like a normal zombie for all intents and purposes except for the loot it holds.

- A survivor will know he's been infected (bitten, if you will) via a HUD icon.

Obviously, I know that this idea doesn't quite jive with the current direction rocket is headed in, and obviously I can see some balance issues with trying to figure out all these chances and stats, but I want to hear what you think about this anyway.

I'm hoping a change like this would make zombies less about twitch-blasting and more about bullet saving, with an emphasis placed on not getting boxed in by the horde, instead of running up staircases and killing an entire city's zombies in a mag.

[ShadowGhost (DayZ) 0]

I like your way only the virus i'm not sure about!! but sounds awesome!

[robosheriff 13]

Dis I Like.

altho i think you shouldn't be able to know when you are infected until you are about to turn into a zombie so everyone who gets hit by a zombie is considered a potential danger to the group.

[Techercizer 82]

Dis I Like.

altho i think you shouldn't be able to know when you are infected until you are about to turn into a zombie so everyone who gets hit by a zombie is considered a potential danger to the group.

That's an interesting possibility.

I was hoping to give people who had been bitten a chance to play their character as much as possible before they turned; live life to the fullest, fire a full mag into the air, take on Cherno alone and go out with a bang, that sort of thing. I was also looking into creating group dynamics where people would hide or lie about their infection so as not to trouble their groupmates or to live longer.

Not knowing you're infected also offers interesting possibilities. People can still lie about zombie hits, with the added paranoia that they themselves don't know if that bite will be fatal. It does lose the opportunity to go out with a bang though.

I wonder, if the symptoms of the infection mimicked that of the already present common cold, if that could create an interesting middle ground... It'd be fun to see someone drive a truck off a cliff because they had the sniffles and thought they were infected.

[Landen 2]

this is a good idea, if they spawned 100 zeds in cherno, electro, solichny etc, those big places, and the airfield, and maybe 30 in the smaller places like kamyshovo or balota.

they all move slow, and they have better senses, so they may aggro on you, but you could potentially loot a building before they get toyou

[kothen 0]

Would they also only die from headshots?

[prometheus111 1]

Ehhh... I like the infection idea...not so much the slow zombies... This seems like it would just turn into "run to each lootable building as fast as possible and then outrun the slow zombies to the next city" rinse and repeat. Right now it actually matters if zombies aggro because it forces you to run or shoot and further expose yourself to other zombies...thus eventually having a whole horde of racing zombies on you if you don't dispose of them properly. Making zombies slow would remove (at least in my opinion) the terror that DayZ zombies have about them.

I like the idea of infection, but please...antibiotics have got to be less rare. lol

[n4ndoz 20]

Nice idea. I should add:

Instead of slowing all the zombies...

Zombies would be devided in some kind of "aging" "sub-types" like:

Recently infected: they are faster, but their senses are still like human's.

Mid-time infected: slower than the recent ones, but have increased senses performance.

"Old-zombies": the slowest but their senses are way better than human's and they could moan or something to "advise" the others around him that he found someone.

("they are not intelligent, they just feel themselves threatened, and scream, the other zombies "know" that sound and run for it")

I think that there's not much problem to implement such feature, since zombies on the game are already implemented in sub-types. =)

Some animals have this behavior, and we are talking about zombies, mindless undeads that live by their instincts. =)

About the Infection it would be related to your blood.

The less blood you have the more chances to be infected you have. In real life, the lack of blood makes your immune system to fail sometimes. And, if eventually you get some more blood from transfusion, the chance is still there, increasing each time you've got blood loss.

This way, players wont rush at zeds and regen themselves for ever. The more you get hit by them the more chance to be one of them you've got. Also, this way, no matter if you've got some zed bites, if you regen and get a shot there will still be a chance to be infected.

This surely will make the game A LOT more funny and realistic!! =)

[Bashfluff 0]

I love this idea. Slow zombies and infection are two staples of the zombie genre, and it would be remiss for them to be omitted in this mod. I'm not sure about the poster above me's idea about fast zombies, but I think the rest is brilliant.

[bad_mojo (DayZ) 1204]

I like the infection idea, but I'd rather see the player "pass out" after they get infected and wake up as a zombie, dropping your current item & backpack. Maybe even make it so if you don't feed on a player you stave to death. And you could always hit respawn if you turned somewhere isolated.

Zombie survival!

[Techercizer 82]

I don't want to get into anything complicated like forcing players to play as a zombie at the moment. This idea is really more about changing the way people react to them in general.

As for the *run into every lootable building, run out before zombies get there* approach, I think it's implied that with this change, there would be zombies around all the lootable buildings, and probably inside too. Running blindly into a building through the crowd would probably just get you trapped in the building with 70 zombies pouring in through the doorways. If it isn't implied, well I've said it now.

[KingDavid73 0]

I like the infection idea and the slow zombies... but maybe as just another zombie type. Keep the current types and add in the slow ones.

[Techercizer 82]

I like the infection idea and the slow zombies... but maybe as just another zombie type. Keep the current types and add in the slow ones.

That's not really what I'm suggesting. Could you perhaps offer some development on that concept, like why you think it would be an improvement and what ways you think it would influence the game?

[Whole Wheat Bread 0]

This is a similar thing I posted in a slightly-unrelated thread but it fits to what you are saying to a point.

I have to agree with you about the danger level of zombies; it simply isn't enough right now. The danger that does come from them is from their jerky and poorly-done animations, not from the fact that they are undead killing machines that only crave human flesh. I like the fact that a well-placed headshot kills, but outside of exploiting the fact that zombies have to walk inside, aligning a headshot when a zombie is running at you while looping through broken animations is far too challenging and is not realistic in the least. I have quite a radical solution for the animation issue as well as the low-danger level of zombies.

I think zombies should have a chance to infect.

I believe that rocket should implement an infection system. While I am not going to type out all my ideas for this system due to it being late, I think having a system such as this in place would solve the two issues I outlined above.

1. Having an infection system would allow for the very buggy running and attacking animations to be eliminated. Give the zombies, at the most, a quick lunge attack for 10-20 feet (these are rotting corpses after all, not Olympic marathon runners from Kenya.) While they would no longer be able to chase you down, their danger would be greatly increased by the fact that each hit by them would mean a high percentage to infect (75%+.) Coupled with a slight increase in the amount that spawn in larger areas which would have higher populations in real life (cities, military bases, etc.) This solution would both increase the difficulty and danger of zombies as well as fix animation issues.

2. Make headshots the only viable way to kill a zombie. This is self-explanatory and with the fix I mentioned above for the animation issues, I think it would be fair but still require a steady aim. While headshots should be the only way to kill a zombie, I believe that enough (more than current) damage to the torso/legs should cause a zombie to drop into prone position. This would give the player the ability to down zombies in a panic but would not eliminate them, and would also cause the player to burn a lot of ammo.

With these things implemented I think Day Z would be greatly improved and they would address many of the issues that players are having while still keeping the game fair and fun.

[Stilgar 7]

The aging subtype seems a little hard to implicate. I'd say just slow them down a little bit; enough where you can outrun them a bit and shoot accurately without getting hit and, if you're quick, maybe do some looting. Fast enough, though, where you'd be under a lot of pressure and wouldn't have that much time. It would give some reprieve, but not enough where people would just never have to deal with zombies.

[LackofCertainty 2]

This is a similar thing I posted in a slightly-unrelated thread but it fits to what you are saying to a point.

I have to agree with you about the danger level of zombies; it simply isn't enough right now. The danger that does come from them is from their jerky and poorly-done animations' date=' not from the fact that they are undead killing machines that only crave human flesh. I like the fact that a well-placed headshot kills, but outside of exploiting the fact that zombies have to walk inside, aligning a headshot when a zombie is running at you while looping through broken animations is far too challenging and is not realistic in the least. I have quite a radical solution for the animation issue as well as the low-danger level of zombies.

snip

[/quote']

I think the premise you have about the zombies is wrong. Rocket didn't intentionally give them jerky animations. The way zombie pathing works in game is that whenever a zombie is agroed, the client of the person who agroed them uploads pathing to the main server. The reason why, is that if the server had to handle pathing for hundreds and hundreds of zombies simultaneously, the load would be too much to run it on anything short of a very very beefy computer.

The reason why they're jerky, in other words, is because there is a lag time between your computer determining their route for them, you transmitting that data to the server, and then the server returning that info back to you.

Now, since we know that, I think this plays into why rocket went with fewer, speedy zombies instead of lots and lots of slow zombies. If there were tons and tons of zombies, then our computers would have to process and upload pathing data for that many more zombies all the time. This would put a bigger strain on servers again, which would kinda ruin the whole point of client side pathing over server side pathing.

TL;DR

Quantity of zombies is tied to performance issues. It's not as simple as "Put in moar zombies!!1!" :P