Was the threat ever zombies?

[dds__@hotmail.com 5]

My last 20 or so deaths have all been to players. Was there a time in the game where zombies were the real threat? Now don't get me wrong... I get many kills on players as well. They often have the best loot and it saves me from going through countless piles of empty cans.

I just think the game could be so much more than a large map deathmatch. I don't know what the solution is. The only threat is other players. Zombies are easily dealt with once you've have a bit of experience in the game. Maybe if zombies were more dangerous it would force teamplay? I don't know.

Random thought at lunch time. Back to work for me.

[Ingway 4]

More powerful zombies would make no sense, they are walking corpses wich somehow are capable of opening a massive wound on you with their BARE HANDS, while you are wearing tick clothing, any stronger we would be facing tanks from Left for dead.

The "deathmatch" problem would stop if everyone tried to at least reason with the person they find, most of the time i try to talk to the person that's near me if he dosn't see me, if he dosn't respond back i shot him down.

[Nekosan 20]

Early on it seemed like the players were more interested in working together to get things done, I'm really not sure if it's the changes to the game or just the influx of players but now it's just about killing people.

Part of it is to do with the fact that there's nothing else to do atm, personally i think there need to be a few more barracks around the place and the zombies need to be spawning away from buildings too, it's too easy to just sit on a hill and snipe at people with zero repercussions.

The lack of difficulty definitely leads to pvp, the fact that even the most basic of weapons is capable of destroying anyone with one shot also means that there isn't really the incentive there to cooperate and farm for many people, the enfield is a better killing tool than pretty much every weapon in the game. I'd like to see weapons spawn with a random quality number/100, the lower the number the more fucked the weapon is, jams, misfeeds etc.

[Ingway 4]

Early on it seemed like the players were more interested in working together to get things done' date=' I'm really not sure if it's the changes to the game or just the influx of players but now it's just about killing people.

Part of it is to do with the fact that there's nothing else to do atm, personally i think there need to be a few more barracks around the place and the zombies need to be spawning away from buildings too, it's too easy to just sit on a hill and snipe at people with zero repercussions.

The lack of difficulty definitely leads to pvp, the fact that even the most basic of weapons is capable of destroying anyone with one shot also means that there isn't really the incentive there to cooperate and farm for many people, the enfield is a better killing tool than pretty much every weapon in the game.

[/quote']

I've read bit about the enflied being good for player killing... is it really that strong? Like 1 shot kills or something?

[ReaperOne1Two2 0]

They need to change it so zombies can hit you if you hold sprint and go backwards for starts instead of missing and standing there then dieing to you shooting them. Then the only other issue is there to easy in buildings.

[Cormac McCarthy 15]

They need to change it so zombies can hit you if you hold sprint and go backwards for starts instead of missing and standing there then dieing to you shooting them. Then the only other issue is there to easy in buildings.

yeaaaaaa, if they could hit you whal running people would go apeshit rofl, id kinda like it though, it would make you have to stand your ground and fight.

[ReaperOne1Two2 0]

They need to change it so zombies can hit you if you hold sprint and go backwards for starts instead of missing and standing there then dieing to you shooting them. Then the only other issue is there to easy in buildings.

yeaaaaaa' date=' if they could hit you whal running people would go apeshit rofl, id kinda like it though, it would make you have to stand your ground and fight.

[/quote']

True, it would make it much more difficult, but no matter what amount of hp you give zombies or damage or run speed they are literally a non threat in there current state because it is the zombie there self that's an issue. It doesn't need to be every zombie is a walking zombie of inescapable death, but even multiple types such as some you can't outrun would be a nice change.

[breakingbad 0]

If you make the zombies to strong, players will just go after other player instead of looting, just just my two pennies' worth.

[Skint (DayZ) 138]

Zeds are just a mild irritant, a moving puzzle that you can solve to get what you need.

Players have always been the main focus of the mod. It's an experiment in human psychology in a virtual world. Wouldn't have taken a genius to figure out what has happened in that scenario to be honest.

Zombies were/are/will be a triviality.

[Zecknaal 2]

I would say that buffing zeds is probably not the best way to increase player cooperation. If anything, I'd see that backfiring, as people are less likely to risk the zombies if players become a more attractive target.

Instead of punishing players, it would be much more interesting to see situations put in the game that incentivized working together. Maybe something like:

-Occasional zombie hoards attacking towns. Kind of like Terraria goblin armies, if you played that. It might force players to work together to stay alive. Obviously, not everybody is going to play nice no matter what situation... but done right it could work.

-Some kind of random "mission" or "event" requiring multiple people to complete. Close X number of valves or the building explodes! Find items A, B, C to save a dying man! It would give you a reason to team up. Alternatively, if people were allowed to join in halfway through, it would give people a reason to hesitate before shooting. Or at least "Hey don't shoot, I'm completing quest. Help and you get rewarded too.....

-Last but not least, a player-driven economy of sorts would do wonders for promoting peaceful interactions. Some kind of player-driven post-apoc barter market. I'm not sure how you force players to come up with an economy though.

Just my two cents.

[Double_Back 36]

The zombies are a bit more 'active' now, but not too bad. What I have noticed is that the 'new' zombies in the latest patches require more attention. That means I'm spending more time watching the zombies now and less time watching out for other players in town.

I've definitely noticed I'm letting my 'anti-human' guard down a bit more now. While I used to spend 5% of my time occasionally glancing at the zeds while looting and 95% time looking out for players, it's a bit less lopsided now; which is going to increase my chances of getting shot in the head.

On the other hand, more players are aggroing zeds which is a nice, organic alarm system for those sneaking properly.

[SilverWeed 0]

Infected were a threat a few weeks ago when there was 2x-3x the population even in the smallest towns, they would respawn instantly after death, and had wall hacks for any human who thought they were safe in a building. Oh and they would almost never give up chasing you. Firing at another player in a town had much more serious ramifications since looting the corpse of who you shot was about as likely as you dying to the infected you would aggro.

Now you just run past the infected with your focus dedicated solely to finding/avoiding other players.

[Scorp (DayZ) 0]

I think the same way, like OP and most of the posters here:

Zombies are not real threat.

Of course, you can die from Zombie Attacks, but here is my typical "day" in dayz:

I spawn, RUN in a city like Elektro or Cherno. I run because proning/crouching isn't rewarded in any way.

You need a vast amount of time, just to control a little party of the town and check for loot.

Zombies won't detect you most time, thats right. But its happens quite a lot of times, that somehow a zombie detects me crouching.

But to come back to topic: Zombies are no threat anymore. You just need to outrun them in a city by climbing a ladder or just using any accessible building. You won't get in trouble, as long as you don't stop to move.

If you find loot you need, just make sure to lose your followers or at least to get enough distance to get the loot.

The real threat are other players - bandits - shooting you. The game does not reward crouching - a bandit camping will be happy if you crouch. He may need a little more time to detect you, but then you are sentenced to death. If you run, you at least have a chance of getting missed by the first shot/shots, so you can search for cover.

On the other hand, shooting is not punished enough. First there is too much ammunition.

Secondly the game needs to punish you really, really - and i mean really - hard for shooting by the central gameplay element: the zombies.

I don't have a real solution, but fact is: If the zombies would be a great threat, so you a forced to be sneaky AND to have good ideas in case you got detected, and additional players would need to think not only twice, but three or four times before shooting, the game would get way more about the zombie-apocalypse survival and not about death match with some zombies.

[Zecknaal 2]

To be fair, the zombies are going to be severely un-nerfed when the doorway bug eventually gets fixed. Running through towns won't be a tenable solution after that. Sadly, we can't rely on that bug forever.... *mists up*

[SilverWeed 0]

@Scorp Agreed. The efforts to make the game more challenging by removing spawn items combined with incomplete AI of the infected have turned all attention to PvP. Being shot and killed by another player because I made a mistake is fine, but rewarding careless players mowing through cities with AK's seems to work against the idea of hardcore survival. The current state of the mod reminds me of a very popular shooter I used to play...

Here's to more quick iteration by team Rocket!

[Swag (DayZ) 0]

Well what i think is that

players dont have an actual goal apart from surviving the game needs to be more rpg like

[Mjolnir (DayZ) 1]

I have never been killed by zombies. Of my few deaths that I have had in Day Z so far in months of playing every single one of them has been from a bandit.

[arkental 5]

I can agree with what Scorp wrote. Right now you can generally shoot a player, and still have enough rounds in your mag to shoot any infected who got alerted. It would be interesting to see more infected around, and perhaps instead of only having those within x meters of the fired gun react, have any within their range again will follow them. Causing a poorly planned shootout to end with whoever survives it not being a survivor for much longer.

As far as running around with a trail of infected I have to admit I'd like to see something that puts a stop to that, albeit I will admit I can't think of a solid way to solve it. The easiest solution would be to have infected run faster than players, but that would also unleash a waterfall of tears rivaling the niagaras. And likely cause plenty of frustrating and unintended consequences for players who don't do the Z-train.

I saw someone once suggest infected animals. Perhaps infected dogs that move faster than the player, but are less common than human infected could be a potential approach. Rare enough that you don't constantly run into them, but enough of them that rushing through a village at full speed you're likely to pick one up. Moves faster than the player and if they catch up then, well.. you're in trouble. Also perhaps more common in areas like military camps (under the explanation that the garrison would likely have dogs on duty), making it a nasty experience for a lone shooter to raid these locations and forcing survivors to team up if they want to get hold of the best weapons/gear.

[Wolfskin75 1]

My last 20 or so deaths have all been to players. Was there a time in the game where zombies were the real threat? Now don't get me wrong... I get many kills on players as well. They often have the best loot and it saves me from going through countless piles of empty cans.

I just think the game could be so much more than a large map deathmatch. I don't know what the solution is. The only threat is other players. Zombies are easily dealt with once you've have a bit of experience in the game. Maybe if zombies were more dangerous it would force teamplay? I don't know.

Random thought at lunch time. Back to work for me.

EXcellent POST!!! thanks for this. I love to see people thinking about this.

Thank you for making my day.

[yimmy 0]

dont underestimate the : "Jump throught wall, one hit... ohh my leg is broken" maneuver... ended me a few times -regardless of weaponry

:P

[manowar 19]

Turn your attention to the patch where within 30 seconds of the server coming up there were 2000 zeds on the map and the server crashed slightly after

[Shag 90]

I hope the zeds eventually become more than pointless annoyances.

I'm sure they will, but I have to give my feedback in the alpha. Please buff the game so there is more than just PvP.

[funionz 7]

Early on it seemed like the players were more interested in working together to get things done' date=' I'm really not sure if it's the changes to the game or just the influx of players but now it's just about killing people.

[/quote']

Spot on, points for you. April OG's are the only ones who get it :/

[Beloozero 118]

I blame RoosterTeeth, partially. Their advertisement for DayZ drew in some incredibly aggressive players apparently.

[Bal Sofs Tihl 7]

Some people just want a persistent, free-for-all PvP shooter and that's OK - I'd play that - but that is just not this game. DayZ has the "Z" in it for a reason (though, since they are not really zombies, just infected people, so that reason is a little convoluted, but still). It is supposed to be about survival horror. Part of that is definitely that risk of getting killed by any people you come across and the FFA PvP and permadeath are some of the best parts of this game. However, the other aspects, such as survival and horror, definitely could use a little bit of work.

I have a few ideas for how things could be changed.

The characteristics and mechanics of the infected are getting to a pretty good place, I think. The biggest problems are really just bugs and exploits (infected walking in-doors and player ability to log out and be safe). One exception would be that I don't think enough infected spawn for gunshots. Guns are loud and I think only the Lee Enfield pulls a realistic number of infected. However, this is likely an issue of a much bigger problem: loot spawns.

Right now, too much loot spawns, especially guns and ammo. Survival isn't hard - food and drink are everywhere. You don't spend all your time searching buildings to survive. Enough food spawns that finding it is incidental, an afterthought. What people search for are weapons and ammo. And not just everyday weapons and ammo, because you can find tons of that, too. People are searching for military grade weapons and ammo - automatic assault weapons and sniper rifles. Other gear people actively look for is equally ridiculous, like ghillie suits and night-vision goggles. After my last death, I searched three buildings in Electro and I found an AKM with 60 rounds, a winchester with 30 rounds, a revolver with 30 rounds, and a G17 with 30 rounds. I had also found a couple of Makarovs, two shotguns and a M1911 that I did not even bother picking up and I ended up ditching the Winchester, too, as I knew I could always find another if I needed to. I also had a ghillie suit, but I killed a dude for that; so, maybe it doesn't count.

This creates an environment where no one thinks twice about shooting. Bullets are nearly worthless because everyone has more than they need. If you see a person who does not see you, there is no reason not to shoot him in the back. He dies and then you clean up the 10 or so infected who hear you. When I killed that guy for the ghillie suit, I emptied a whole clip of AK-47 (oh, yeah, I also found an AK-47) into him and still had one mag left for the infected. Bullets are worth nothing in this game and that is silly. The amount of guns and ammunition that spawn should be significantly reduced and the number of melee weapons increased. If you have one gun and 4 rounds, you are going to have to be really sure the person you are shooting at is carrying something good. Especially if every gunshot in Cherno spawns 50 infected.

With this change (and some bug/exploit fixes) sneaking past infected could be far more worthwhile than playing the game like Quake or Left 4 Dead 2 (my favorite FPS and action-horror game). And if shooting a guy will get you killed right away from the infected that spawn or later because you won't have any ammo, you will much more inclined to cooperate or barter with him.

Additionally, these changes would be more realistic. Chernaurus must have been an NRA enclave or something, because with the amount of guns and ammo we find, these citizens make the Midwest USA look like pacifist vegetarians.

Reduce spawns of guns, reduce spawns of ammo, reduce spawns of everything. This will make the game more about survival, more about horror, and more realistic.