Zombie Population and Types, Player Progress.

[YassirX 54]

I'm basically just throwing in my thoughts when it comes to Zeds and Player Progression.

 

There have to be different types of zombies, some examples:

Walkers [fast running speed, small damage, low health, attacks in groups]

Infected manifestation = several zombies clustered into one body [very big, high health, walking speed, high melee reach, deadly, poisons items, other zombies and players with infection in a 5 meter radius])  
Soldier-Zombie [running speed, medium damage, bullet-proof vest which heavily reduces the received damage of pistols and other small caliber weapons]

Standard-Zombie [walking speed, low health, has no cheek (hits cause infection)] - Should be 100% of the Zombie Type population in small towns.

 

Zeds should mainly react to noise which makes them very dangerous at night. Everything aside from Walking creates noise, the amount of noise should depend on the speed of movement and the surface.

Shooting with a weapon creates noise too and depending on the type and caliber of the weapon this can attract very many zombies, especially when the player shoots a shotgun inside of a city-center.

Some Zombies (depending on the type) should still have good vision. Soldier Zombies should be able to track movement at ~200 meters while Infected Manifestations and StandardZeds can only see in a radius of about 50 meters. I'm pretty sure that those values would need some testing and maybe should be lower... 

 

There should be a very high amount of zombies all over the map.

Like 50 zombies at a military base, 100+ at the NWAF and Cherno should be a zombie fest with like 500++ zombies walking/lurking around...

Minimum amount of zombies in the major cities should be 300... Zombies-Idle state should makes rather loud croaking noises which sound different depending on the zombie type.

I mean... in the major cities there should be so many zombies that you cannot even go into a building without clearing those zeds in front and of course... inside... of it.

Zombies have to be deadly and devastating, forcing most players to work together to be able to survive.

 

Zeds should be scary and they should be a real challenge. There should be no way a fresh spawn can go straight to one of the major cities.

In fact the major cities should be endgame locations where only well equipped players which operate in groups and/or are very careful can survive a loot run.

 

All Fresh-Spawns should spawn in Kamenka, Kamyshovo or Niznohye. Small towns like those should have ~20 zombies max.

That way players can slowly gear up and move towards the inland... places like balota, cherno, elektro or berezino would mean a fast death for a bambi.

 

Player-Progress (due to area/zombie difficulty) should be like this:

"LvL" 1. Small Towns, Cars/Vehicles, Train-Stations, Castles // Main Opponent: Standard Zeds

"LvL" 2. Medium Sized Towns, Industrial Areas/Factories, Shipwreck, Crash-Sites (Civil Heli/Plane,) // Main Opponent: Standard Zeds. Walkers

"LvL" 3. (endgame) Cities, Military Areas, Airstrips, Abandoned Military Convoys // Main Opponent: Extremely high amount of Standard Zeds + Walkers, Infected Manifestations, Soldier Zeds.

Edited January 27, 2014 by YassirX

[commanderbash 102]

there's one thing you have right, there's currently nothing limiting our progress to different areas, like infestation for example, you wouldn't run to an end game loot area without packing some serious kit. but thus far you're pretty much good to face the world as soon as you find a hatchet and a couple bandages. I don't know what they could do to limit this without having some seriously more deadly enemies like the tank off left 4 dead. and i'm not saying that comically, its to my understanding that they've stripped the AI to the point that it might not even support human NPCs that can shoot back. and I doubt the server could really handle 100-200 zombies per town. so that really crimps their ability to layer progression through the map. I don't think it can be done.

[RedPhantomX4 26]

I really just agree with adding ALOT more zombies, and adding millitary zombies.

[Syphax4Ever 15]

I agree with the fact that its way too easy for a bambi to run into elektro and get stuff. Big cities with high population densities should be certain death for them, by either making zombies harder to kill or having more of them. I'd think somewhere in between best; more zombies, all of them slightly more difficult to kill.

[YassirX 54]

I doubt the server could really handle 100-200 zombies per town. so that really crimps their ability to layer progression through the map. I don't think it can be done.

 

Well, the main problem is that currently zombies and items share the same server-load.

Dean said that the team is working on a different method to manage zombie spawning which will be independent on server restarts. 

They even mentioned that the amount of zombies will be a lot higher in the future... I just hope that they will use those resources at the right places (cities, military bases and such).