Zombie Speed Suggestion

[johnm81 15]

I would recommend the following changes to zombie speed, but I wouldn't put any of this in the game till vehicles are in the SA alpha. 

 

1. Make Zombie speed 75% of player movement speed.

2. Institute an endurance when players are running.

3. Make Zombies chase and track of over loooong distance. (Already in SA)

4. Make vehicles far more common, but gas rare (Already intended to be in SA)

 

As a player runs endurance decreases. When it reaches zero the player moves at 70% speed.

 

This allows people like me who want the walking dead feel of zombies get what we want and at the same time makes zombies much more of a threat. 

 

 

Thanks.

Edited November 10, 2013 by JohnM81

[Korsbaek 1778]

I would recommend the following changes to zombie speed, but I wouldn't put any of this in the game till vehicles are in the SA alpha. 

 

1. Make Zombie speed 75% of player movement speed.

2. Institute an endurance when players are running.

3. Make Zombies chase and track of over loooong distance. (Already in SA)

4. Make vehicles far more common, but gas rare (Already intended to be in SA)

 

As a player runs endurance decreases. When it reaches zero the player moves at 70% speed.

 

This allows people like me who want the walking dead feel of zombies get what we want and at the same time makes zombies much more of a threat. 

 

 

Thanks.

 

Nah. Zeds will become way to easy.

[enforcer1975 1111]

2. Institute an endurance when players are running.

 

Keep zombie and player speed the same, there is no reason to differ the movement speeds. Zeds should even be a tad faster and endure a sprint a bit longer since they don't get tired the same way a "normal" person would. Players on the other hand should suffer from carrying heavy weights like they do now. Having to decide if you want to bring two rifles for the extra pain or is a days worth of food ( which is a lot lighter and more useful imo ) and water more important should be one of the things a player should ask himself. If a player decides to carry a ton he should collapse if he walks/runs too far and too long.

[johnm81 15]

Nah. Zeds will become way to easy.

Until you are moving slower than the ones chasing you because you ran out of endurance. Then they become way harder.

[johnm81 15]

Keep zombie and player speed the same, there is no reason to differ the movement speeds. Zeds should even be a tad faster and endure a sprint a bit longer since they don't get tired the same way a "normal" person would. Players on the other hand should suffer from carrying heavy weights like they do now. Having to decide if you want to bring two rifles for the extra pain or is a days worth of food ( which is a lot lighter and more useful imo ) and water more important should be one of the things a player should ask himself. If a player decides to carry a ton he should collapse if he walks/runs too far and too long.

Nice idea. 

 

Weight could cause endurance to run out faster. I like the risk vs reward position we would be in.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

The main issue with this is one of travel.

 

No matter how many cars you dot around the map, there are still going to be a lot of players who will spend long periods of time without access to a vehicle, which means that if they want to get anywhere, they're going on foot. Now, I'm a pretty patient player, but DayZ already has plenty of 10-15 minute periods where I'm literally doing nothing but running from one point to the next. That's 10-15 minutes of running. Add endurance into the mix, where I can only run for 1-2 minutes before having to slow down, and that journey gets a lot longer, and I spend even more time moving through large patches of terrain where nothing is happening. That doesn't make for great gameplay.

Edited November 10, 2013 by Target Practice

[johnm81 15]

The main issue with this is one of travel.

 

No matter how many cars you dot around the map, there are still going to be a lot of players who will spend long periods of time without access to a vehicle, which means that if they want to get anywhere, they're going on foot. Now, I'm a pretty patient player, but DayZ already has plenty of 10-15 minute periods where I'm literally doing nothing but running from one point to the next. That's 10-15 minutes of running. Add endurance into the mix, where I can only run for 1-2 minutes before having to slow down, and that journey gets a lot longer, and I spend even more time moving through large patches of terrain where nothing is happening. That doesn't make for great gameplay.

Good point. And to counter it I would suggest yes increasing vehicle access but I would even more so give access to bikes and the like. It is kinda strange you have to admit that everyone who survives the zombie apoc is a super marathon runner...

[Guest]

The main issue with this is one of travel.

 

No matter how many cars you dot around the map, there are still going to be a lot of players who will spend long periods of time without access to a vehicle, which means that if they want to get anywhere, they're going on foot. Now, I'm a pretty patient player, but DayZ already has plenty of 10-15 minute periods where I'm literally doing nothing but running from one point to the next. That's 10-15 minutes of running. Add endurance into the mix, where I can only run for 1-2 minutes before having to slow down, and that journey gets a lot longer, and I spend even more time moving through large patches of terrain where nothing is happening. That doesn't make for great gameplay.

 

 

Well said, pretty much summarizes "walking simulator 3000 "

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

Good point. And to counter it I would suggest yes increasing vehicle access but I would even more so give access to bikes and the like. It is kinda strange you have to admit that everyone who survives the zombie apoc is a super marathon runner...

 

Yeah, I see what you're saying, but it's one of those things where you have to be willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of gameplay - sure, it's pretty unlikely any of us would be wanting to run 10km over uneven terrain on a diet of nothing but baked beans and mountain dew, but when the 'realistic' alternative would leave players potentially having up to 30 minutes of doing nothing but holding the 'W' key, you have to decide whether that's going to be the sort of thing people are going to want to spend their free time doing on a regular basis.

 

As for cars/bikes, Chernarus doesn't strike me as the kind of place where cars are everywhere. For me, finding and repairing a car should be a mid to end game kind of thing - if I can find a car within ten minutes of spawning, where's the challenge and the enjoyment of spending all that time scavenging for parts, finding the car in the first place, and then trying to find a place to hide it? There's already a pretty major issue with players not really having enough to do in DayZ after a certain point, and I can only think that making vehicles almost immediately accessible would exacerbate the issue.

It's the same with bikes, if not worse - a bike can achieve a good 30-40 km/h on most terrains, which is better than a good proportion of vehicles. It's silent, and it's damn hard to find if it's hidden well. Once players become too mobile, they'll gear up even quicker than they do already and once again run out of things to do.

 

It's a very tricky balance to get right, which is why I feel that the status quo of mild disbelief is a better option than the potentially game-breaking changes suggested. I'm not deliberately trying to be an ass, and I can see that your suggestion's been given a bit more thought than some of the dross this particular section gets posted, but I do enjoy playing devil's advocate and I can definitely see some potential side effects from the changes.

[johnm81 15]

Yeah, I see what you're saying, but it's one of those things where you have to be willing to suspend disbelief for the sake of gameplay - sure, it's pretty unlikely any of us would be wanting to run 10km over uneven terrain on a diet of nothing but baked beans and mountain dew, but when the 'realistic' alternative would leave players potentially having up to 30 minutes of doing nothing but holding the 'W' key, you have to decide whether that's going to be the sort of thing people are going to want to spend their free time doing on a regular basis.

 

As for cars/bikes, Chernarus doesn't strike me as the kind of place where cars are everywhere. For me, finding and repairing a car should be a mid to end game kind of thing - if I can find a car within ten minutes of spawning, where's the challenge and the enjoyment of spending all that time scavenging for parts, finding the car in the first place, and then trying to find a place to hide it? There's already a pretty major issue with players not really having enough to do in DayZ after a certain point, and I can only think that making vehicles almost immediately accessible would exacerbate the issue.

It's the same with bikes, if not worse - a bike can achieve a good 30-40 km/h on most terrains, which is better than a good proportion of vehicles. It's silent, and it's damn hard to find if it's hidden well. Once players become too mobile, they'll gear up even quicker than they do already and once again run out of things to do.

 

It's a very tricky balance to get right, which is why I feel that the status quo of mild disbelief is a better option than the potentially game-breaking changes suggested. I'm not deliberately trying to be an ass, and I can see that your suggestion's been given a bit more thought than some of the dross this particular section gets posted, but I do enjoy playing devil's advocate and I can definitely see some potential side effects from the changes.

 

Lets run with that course of logic. Lets say everyone can with 5 minutes of searching some town find can find a car. And thus can gear up faster. Why is that a bad thing? You made the point that they will run out of things to do as gearing up and getting a car is the end game. But if we have learned anything from DayZ Epoch is that when players can build their own base, that is the end game and cars/gear is just on the path to get that. And as Rocket stated player made raid-able bases is a feature that he wants in the release version.

 

Believe me, I wouldn't have made the suggestion of making cars easy to get along with zombie movement reduction if I still believed that cars are the end game. That goal post has been moved and it will be base building when DayZ SA goes gold if what Rocket says comes to pass.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

See, that doesn't help the issue of players reaching endgame too fast though. All you've done is just cut out the first (and arguably most important and enjoyable) stage of the game - surviving. Those first few hours where you're scrambling from house to house frantically trying to find a tin of beans because you're starving, where your only option when spotted is to turn and run because you don't even have anything to use as a weapon, and where the running from town to town is worth the wait because you know that whatever you find will be useful.

If I can find a car inside an hour, none of that really matters. I've not got to worry too much about finding food, because I'll be able to travel from town to town in a minute or so - my hunger will have barely dropped, and I'll be able to loot three to five times as many locations as I would on foot, because I can get between distant points so much quicker. Zombies won't be too much of a problem as I can just hop in my vehicle and run them down/drive off.

 

Personally, I hate the idea of bases, but I accept that it's simply my own preference, and that I'm just going to have to accept them as an inevitability - hopefully they're a long way down the line though. Either way, I wouldn't be using Epoch as a model for the future of DayZ just yet - the only thing it's shown for me is that if you make it too easy for players to gear up quickly (and it's pretty easy to do that in Epoch!), then they'll run out of things to do, and when they run out of things to do they'll either stop playing or start hunting other players to amuse themselves. There's a fairly large KoS problem in DayZ at the moment, and there's a particular school of thought that believe that it's simply because so many players enjoy the game but have done everything there is to do, so they do the only thing that's always going to be changing and fresh - hunting players.

 

I do agree that for most players though, base building is the 'current' endgame, but that doesn't mean that you should therefore shuffle vehicles to early game. Leave vehicles as they are now - rare, hard to find and even harder to keep, because it adds more playtime to the game - more things for players to achieve, and more to keep them occupied.

For me, DayZ should be a kind of pyramid. You start at the bottom with your can of beans and your winchester, and you learn those basic survival skills that you'll use in everything else you'll do in DayZ. That's what you'll spend the most time doing, even in endgame, you'll still have to stay alive. Once you've done that and geared up enough that you can start raiding industrial spawns for vehicle parts, you can move up to the next tier and start hunting for and repairing a vehicle, because even when you're building/built your base, you'll be needing that vehicle to move the heavy parts and get you to and from distant locations to search for stuff. Then, once that's done you can finally move into endgame with the basebuilding and whatnot.

If you take away that first tier, not only do you drastically reduce the amount of time before players reach endgame and run out of things to do, you also rather drastically skew the development of new players. What good is having a car if you don't know how to survive when you have to get out of it?

 

Heh, we've deviated a little bit from the original topic here, but I'm enjoying the discussion. :p

[AP_Norris 1018]

Zombies... Should be fun to fight.

[johnm81 15]

See, that doesn't help the issue of players reaching endgame too fast though. All you've done is just cut out the first (and arguably most important and enjoyable) stage of the game - surviving. Those first few hours where you're scrambling from house to house frantically trying to find a tin of beans because you're starving,.....

 

Heh, we've deviated a little bit from the original topic here, but I'm enjoying the discussion. :P

 

You posted a lot but let me focus on a single concept I think you have that might not be true. And that is the game gets easier with a car. Let me remind you of two very important changes to DayZ SA that differs from the DayZ Mod.

 

1. 150 player cap per server where it was 50 before most of the time.

2. Loot spawns on server up not when you enter a new area.

 

So what if you can travel to that town really fast. You can still have a car and be starving because once the initial loot sweep is done, pickings will be very slim. And you have a lot more hungry mouths to consider. So instead of tedious marathons you have fast paced travel times and then fight for your life in towns with much more bandits all trying to get what you need to. Food AND GAS.

 

And don't forget, with what I am proposing, if you have been running from bandits, you will find that the zombies will be much more dangerous. Fight to the death because fleeing wont work.

[GodOfGrain 191]

Yea, due to gameplay considerations, average running speed should remain more or less the same than currently, to cover large distances in a reasonable time.

 

But it would be a shame not to have item weight as a relevant factor. I'd suggest:

 

• Keep current running speed
• Zombies run a little faster than survivors, so normally they catch up and hit you (+5%)
• You can use "sprint" for a 15% boost,which  allows you to get some distance to them
• Sprinting now depends on stamina
• Stamina is influenced by health & weight carried. A fresh & healthy surivor may outrun a zombie for about 5 minutes, the team's MG gunner who likes to carry 800 rounds for good measure will be out of breath after 30 seconds.
•  
• Speed difference of a sprinting player to a zombie is just enough to get a little bit of distance between you. Outrunning them shouldn't be the go-to action. Zombie should still be like 30 meters behind ya ... and then you get slower...
• After a sprint, you will run slower than before while stamina regains. This is necessary, otherwise people use sprint for travelling. So speed decrease should at least equal speed gain.

Edited November 11, 2013 by GodOfGrain

[harley001 315]

Keep zombie and player speed the same, there is no reason to differ the movement speeds. Zeds should even be a tad faster and endure a sprint a bit longer since they don't get tired the same way a "normal" person would. Players on the other hand should suffer from carrying heavy weights like they do now. Having to decide if you want to bring two rifles for the extra pain or is a days worth of food ( which is a lot lighter and more useful imo ) and water more important should be one of the things a player should ask himself. If a player decides to carry a ton he should collapse if he walks/runs too far and too long.

 

I don't like the ideal of making them superhuman.  They are zombies/infected.  There is not one plague out that there that adds benefits.  

 

And plz no "its adrenaline because they are crazed" argument.  Normal people would have adrenaline that would kick in when something is chasing them trying to kick them.  Plus normal humans would be better shape.  Everyone always tells me the zombies are normal people who have been crazed so treat them like it.  

[johnm81 15]

I don't like the ideal of making them superhuman.  They are zombies/infected.  There is not one plague out that there that adds benefits.  

 

And plz no "its adrenaline because they are crazed" argument.  Normal people would have adrenaline that would kick in when something is chasing them trying to kick them.  Plus normal humans would be better shape.  Everyone always tells me the zombies are normal people who have been crazed so treat them like it.  

 

While I do like that GodofGrain is going with factoring weight and health into endurance I tend to agree with you. I would like to see zombies at a lesser state than a healthy, rested human being. And then let the human tire and have his/her speed decay over time. Zombie agro will have a long duration so this would translate into the short term humans faster than zombies but in the long run zombie will catch the human. 

 

This forces us to deal with the zombies, see them as a huge threat, and give us some of the classical zombie that lots of us want.

Edited November 11, 2013 by JohnM81

[King of kong 1117]

F*ck classical zombies, I say. Go play the game that's so bad it had it change its name. Hardcore gamers want fast zombies that are beilevable, not weak little zombies that you can outrun, this isn't the Walking Dead, pansies. DayZ isn't the game for you

[Karmaterror 982]

Yes....slow us down! .....A LOT! I see way too many posts reading like "but it only takes 30 mins to fully gear then all i have to do is KOS". Ok, now imagine that running to NWA is NOT something that can be achieved in a night....even if you run your toon to exhaustion. Now you have a real devision of players as you head north. You are not going to just run into a bambie who put a weight on the key and made it to NWA his first night on the server. 

 

This way a nights play could only consist of looting a city and maybe trying to make it 2 or 3 towns into the map that night. That dosent take anything away from the survival aspect....it in fact intensifies it. Imagine its day 4 and you and you buddy have finaly....fiiiiiinaly arrived at nwa. Imagine that heart racing feeling you get running in now....then multiply it by 10. Because now if you die you wont just run back there in 30mins. Its a proper new life....a proper fresh start. Theres no way your getting back to your body before the restart :P

 

Also would help a lot with people who play like me on a new server.......Usually i get enough food and drink, then head strait for the map border. 1st night search east side, 2nd night north side. every time find a camp somewhere with a nice fixed car and some guns. Now if i had endurance and that would take 4-5 days to do....id think twice about it and would probably stay closer to towns.

 

Also like the idea of them bieng slowwer than you.....untill stamina runs out. This adds a new thing to manage in game, a new tactical decision to make..."can i sprint to that building with my current stamina....or will i slow too soon and get mobbed by my train"

Edited November 11, 2013 by Karmaterror

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

You posted a lot but let me focus on a single concept I think you have that might not be true. And that is the game gets easier with a car. Let me remind you of two very important changes to DayZ SA that differs from the DayZ Mod.

 

1. 150 player cap per server where it was 50 before most of the time.

2. Loot spawns on server up not when you enter a new area.

 

So what if you can travel to that town really fast. You can still have a car and be starving because once the initial loot sweep is done, pickings will be very slim. And you have a lot more hungry mouths to consider. So instead of tedious marathons you have fast paced travel times and then fight for your life in towns with much more bandits all trying to get what you need to. Food AND GAS.

 

And don't forget, with what I am proposing, if you have been running from bandits, you will find that the zombies will be much more dangerous. Fight to the death because fleeing wont work.

 

Interesting point, but it seems you're looking at DayZ from a much more PvP aspect than I am. Whilst I accept that DayZ is a multiplayer game and that if I don't like playing with others I should find a different game, that doesn't mean that I particularly want a large amount of PvP in my game - like most things, a bit of it in moderation keeps things interesting, but this "fast paced travel times and then fight for your life in towns" that you speak of sounds nothing like the DayZ that I fell in love with, nor does it sound like the future of a particularly good survival game. As much as I hate to use the example, DayZ isn't Battlefield. If I want fast-paced action and crazy firefights, I can go play BF4. Hell, that's what it's made for. If I want to battle the constant threat of starvation, dangerous zombies and the risk of potentially hostile players, I'll play DayZ.

A large part of the atmosphere in DayZ is the pacing, and that's why I'd be so reluctant to toy with the movement speeds and/or effective mobility of the player, because you'll throw that pacing off - too fast and players will gear up too quickly and get bored once they run out of things to do. Too slow, and they'll get bored having to spend half an hour just to get between towns.

[enforcer1975 1111]

The main issue with this is one of travel. No matter how many cars you dot around the map, there are still going to be a lot of players who will spend long periods of time without access to a vehicle, which means that if they want to get anywhere, they're going on foot. Now, I'm a pretty patient player, but DayZ already has plenty of 10-15 minute periods where I'm literally doing nothing but running from one point to the next. That's 10-15 minutes of running. Add endurance into the mix, where I can only run for 1-2 minutes before having to slow down, and that journey gets a lot longer, and I spend even more time moving through large patches of terrain where nothing is happening. That doesn't make for great gameplay.

You don't have to sprint all day you know...do you always run flank speed and never take a break when hiking? Probably not..

I'm not asking for a 10h hike from Cherno to Elektro just some drawback for players who think they are a mule.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

You don't have to sprint all day you know...do you always run flank speed and never take a break when hiking? Probably not..

I'm not asking for a 10h hike from Cherno to Elektro just some drawback for players who think they are a mule.

 

As already stated in my posts above, I'm not suggesting it's a realistic thing to be able to do, I'm suggesting that it's an acceptable break from reality because otherwise you run the risk of making the player spend long periods of time doing nothing other than holding W. That ain't fun gameplay.

[enforcer1975 1111]

As already stated in my posts above, I'm not suggesting it's a realistic thing to be able to do, I'm suggesting that it's an acceptable break from reality because otherwise you run the risk of making the player spend long periods of time doing nothing other than holding W. That ain't fun gameplay.

 

Exactly what i said...i don't expect exhausted players lying on each side of the road in between towns but this way distance will mean something ( the area is already very small and the area players normally use is even smaller ) and having the option or should i say hindrance of not beeing able to take everything along the way will make some things more valuable than others like: "Do i really need another tire or do i really need to carry 20 magazines for my rifle or is one sufficient and i'd rather take food and medicine on the way because it's exhausting." Something like that.

Edited November 11, 2013 by Enforcer

[johnm81 15]

F*ck classical zombies, I say. Go play the game that's so bad it had it change its name. Hardcore gamers want fast zombies that are beilevable, not weak little zombies that you can outrun, this isn't the Walking Dead, pansies. DayZ isn't the game for you

Oh look everyone, its 'King of kong' the deluded person who thinks he is the 'voice of the hardcore'. If he even took the time to read the opening post he would know it is actually making the point for zombies we CAN'T outrun. But no, instead of reading he slammed that reply button to leave a incendiary reply mocking someone for doing something obscure. You know, that is leaving a suggestion on the SUGGESTION forum. 

 

mind=blown

[johnm81 15]

As already stated in my posts above, I'm not suggesting it's a realistic thing to be able to do, I'm suggesting that it's an acceptable break from reality because otherwise you run the risk of making the player spend long periods of time doing nothing other than holding W. That ain't fun gameplay.

I guess if I may be so bold to sum up your point, DayZ has a winning formula for you and you don't want to tinker with what isn't broken least risk breaking it.

 

I understand it and a reasonable concern to have. But I would say no great game was made even better by not having a mind set of always seeking ways to improve it.

[Target Practice (DayZ) 1335]

I guess if I may be so bold to sum up your point, DayZ has a winning formula for you and you don't want to tinker with what isn't broken least risk breaking it.

 

I understand it and a reasonable concern to have. But I would say no great game was made even better by not having a mind set of always seeking ways to improve it.

 

Oh, I agree with you to a point (although I would point out that there are many things I'd like to change about DayZ, just not this particular part of it), and of course the natural response would be that obviously DayZ isn't quite there for you right now, and you'd be looking to make those changes in order to make it your own winning formula.

 

As it happens, we've probably stumbled across the biggest issue here - no matter what changes you make to DayZ, you're probably going to end up altering the playstyle of a lot of players, and as a result get an awful lot of Q_Qing from those who don't respond well to change. It's a gamer thing - we (as a culture) don't really like change at the best of times, and when it's a change that forces us to change, we abso-fucking-lutely hate it. :P

I do agree with you when you say that if you're not trying to move forwards then you're moving backwards, and the developers should always be looking for ways to improve the game - I'm just not convinced that the changes suggested here would definitely improve the game for a sufficient number of people to avoid causing a major community backlash.

Let's not forget that this is a community that absolutely lost it's shit because the mod had a few shoutouts to forum moderators/reddit mods in the form of 'branded' food cans. That shit raged on for weeks, and it made not a jot of difference to the way the game's played. The DayZ community is pretty prone to hissy fits.