Patch 1.5.7 and this being an Alpha and fucking zombie spawns

[rocket 16567]

I've calmed down now. I really should be banned from the forums for 6 hours after each update. Especially if I have not slept.

[Lobotomy Lobster 0]

I like the new zombie numbers but its showing how doddery the zombie AI is. Make them less perceptive, stop them running through walls and make it easier to distract them and I think this number will work well.

PS: I know what you think about zombie speed Rocket but it would be really good if they stopped sprinting and zig zagging at the same damn time

[Skalli 2]

Hell.. I like it. I shot one Zombie with Sniper and didn't realise the Zombie count. After two kills 10 Zombies came to me..

[griffinz 2816]

I've calmed down now. I really should be banned from the forums for 6 hours after each update. Especially if I have not slept.

I thought about it when I was dying from the door glitch...but I survived, and I, too, have calmed down.

You were the one who wanted high emotions from this mod :P

[kaibz 8]

Rocket, i had no idea some people would actually send you abusive mails just for this, it doesn't even make sense for me.

This mod is greatest gaming experience i have ever had and i mean it, even i you get abusive mail in the future, just remember there are people who will always be gratefull for what you 've done and who will appreciate the time and work you put into this mod.

[Bandit (DayZ) 3]

Id love to read some of these abusive emails.

[CraveMode (DayZ) 2]

It was getting pretty easy, I was used to taking on towns myself and lost the drive to survive and just wiped out the zombies without a problem.. Now it is exciting, fun, and scary (not to mention, have died a few times now.) So, for the experienced players, its more of a challenge.. and the new players, will learn how to avoid and get around zombies as the only way to survive.

Maybe some people will stop trying to kill each other so much and try to work together. (hah!)

[applenator@gmx.net 0]

I did not read through all the comments, but please Remove the Panicking sound.

For me it actually works completely against the tension of the game. Instead of getting scared i get annoyed by my character being "retarded" :D (He actually could go with the zombie crowd with the noise he is making) ;)

[Goldenkrow 0]

I hope the numbers of zombies stay O.o It's just the respawn rate im concerned about. Honestly please dont listen to the sissies :P Unless you, personally, think it is an issue

[Katana67 2907]

I also feel people don't know how to give constructive feedback without sounding like a spoiled brat. Which might be part of the problem.

However, I absolutely love the more zombies. It makes them an equal threat to PKers, instead of PKers being the primary threat.

Sure, there might be a bit too many... but I don't know. In future updates, I think this bug should be learned from and maybe the zombie spawns should simply be slowed. The total number of zombies is right on, but the spawns are a bit much.

Was so freaky last night actually finding roaming zombies somewhat away from the towns. Love it.

[Guest]

I fucking love the zombie count. Im actually using the smoke grenades and empty bottles...and may even consider playing cooperatively next time im on the coast (just to survive the towns)

Funny thing this, been playing for 1½ week now, mostly as a loner and only just now (yesterday to be precise) gave a go for the tin cans and whiskey bottles. So good to to have the ability to lure them zombies out of a barn with a whiskey bottle.

But now with 1.5.7 it's a rush to play! My thoughts that the increased zombie count gives groups a lot more bang for the buck, since usually they're not moving about silently so they get to have some good hunting raiding a town clearing out zombies and taking the loot.

And gives loners some tense situations navigating through a town, taking the loot they can get their hands on and moving on.

Some say that the zombie count is just too much for a loner right now, but hey, being a loner ain't everyone's hobby.

But man that suits me!

btw: HBd rocket

[Goldenkrow 0]

See Rocket? Alot of people love the zombie count! ^^ Please dont do anything drastic. People actually have to think smart and not blindly killing people all the time now, since you might need them to survive, or might lure a bunch of zombies to you

[sata3d 3]

i dont have any problem to survive whit the new patch 1.5.7 ( only bandits kill me )

i play zday from the his first alpha

some people dont like the new zombies volume

maybe they dont know to much the arma 2 engine ( i play Cold War Crisis from 2001 ) and they are new to the mod

i think the mod can have training servers and normal servers

normal server:

crooshair off,

3rd person camera off,

full volume zombies

training server:

crooshair on,

3rd person camera on,

low volume zombies

[nexerius 0]

Great work.

I guess its the new players complaining... Bloody new players...

[jonesyx@gmail.com 19]

The new zombie numbers are probably what was needed (the old ones were far too low) but there's several issues at play here.

1) Timers- Loot timers and zombie spawn timers should not be going hand in hand. If you clear a town you shouldn't have zombies spawning directly in front of you as you're exiting.

2) Weapons- The Enfield, much maligned as a terrible shitheap of a weapon, is now King. You fire a single shot, and every zombie comes careening towards you, making town clearing take far less time than otherwise. It's now about gathering all the zombies towards you to mow down when you are prepared rather than just running away and picking them off as they chase you.

3) AI- The current AI based on Arma 2 is atrocious. I'm not sure what, if anything, can be done about it though. As it stands you have zombies running full tilt serpentine at you, making mowing them down at anything more than 10 feet an exercise in frustration. Couple that with latency/lag (chances are you're not going to be playing on a server in your own country/continent with the way servers are overloaded) and you're talking about survivors dying solely because the AI decided to zig-zag at the last second.

4) Animations and health-Similarly, if you're increasing the zombie count twofold, threefold or fourfold, you'd need to lower the unconciousness timer. I've been hit at 8600 health only to finally get out of it at 200 health. Survivors can get stuck in the getting out of prone animation and then hit back into unconciousness at an alarming rate. Either the chance to get knocked out is too high or the limitation of when you can get knocked out is not low enough.

5) Zombie Glitches, bugs, and annoyances- We've all seen them. Zombies can't run inside buildings, unless the floor type happens to be grass (happens in barns and houses at times). They clip through walls, windows, and doors at an alarming rate. Want to get on a ladder while a zombie is at the bottom or the top or on it with you? Hope you love being hit. Swimming isn't an option, since zombies can apparently follow you into the ocean (and perform a full Jesus Walks on Water act to attack you).

TL;DR- The zombie AI needs to be worked on (if possible), the areas at which zombies can traverse needs to be turned down (please, can we not have them climbing giant tower ladders to get at us), clipping bugs need to be fixed, and the ratio of running to crawling/monkey zombies needs to be changed. As it stands the current zombie numbers are great in theory, but hampered by a relentless enemy that runs at the same speed you do, sees farther than you through obstacles, and quite often spawns on top of you.

[The Killing Joke 43]

I did not read through all the comments' date=' but please Remove the Panicking sound.

For me it actually works completely against the tension of the game. Instead of getting scared i get annoyed by my character being "retarded" :D (He actually could go with the zombie crowd with the noise he is making) ;)[/quote']

OMG, that's the CHARACTER? I was running around for 10 minutes last night, with no ammo, trying to figure out (in the dark, no less) how to ditch a zombie spawn of about 5 of them. I couldn't figure out where that strange noise was coming from, but now, it makes sense.

I'm with you. I hated that sound too.

TKJ

[Sapper317 1]

I see a disproportionate amount of people posting in the forums that they like the new amount of zombies compared to how many people in servers themselves are at their wits end. Im just pointing out that forum users opinions are not necessarily representative of the player base, so just keep that in mind.

In my opinion, the difficulty level is now far too high and the zombies need to be scaled back to the original numbers with better AI. It is alpha though and the mod is free, so point taken.

[Jargen (DayZ) 0]

I like the new numbers except the zombies are too damn fast, if you could actually outrun them it would make life that bit more easier. Having a slow horde of zombies slowly surround and fill the building your in is much scarier then having 5 suddenly appear in your face.

[SubSeven 4]

I love the new Z' Numbers. You have to actually think now if you fire a shot or not. Also it makes things much harder for Bandits now raping Newbies on the Beach.

By all means rocket leave it this way. People will adapt, they always will.

Also Happy Bday :D

[inacio 4]

I love the idea of having a load of zombies, I just think they should be slightly slower so people with slower connections (like me!) have a chance.

[Marsten 11]

It's my first post here, so hi everyone.

First of all - I'm a new player, and love the mod so far, altough was a little suprised at how few zombies are in this game. Now I know why. :) Anyway I like that their numbers increased, but I have a few suggestions.

I think 800 - 900 zeds is a wee bit too much. It makes it really hard to start the game off. But 400 (the number of z atm I started playing) was to little. I think 600 - 700 would be optimal.

If we decide to stick with the present number, their spawn rate should be lower. That said I like the idea that zombies are more likely to walk around now, so it is easier to just stealth your way through them. It's a lot better than when they were just standing inside the houses. Altough I think there should be more ways of disposing of them quietly. Maybe a silencer (I don't know if there's something like that already) or malee weapons (is it even possible in the ARMA engine? I just bought his game for the mod) so we would give "lone wolves" some better chances.

All in all I love how unforgiving this mod is and can't wait for it to get more polished.

[Reale 5]

you should always be able to get around on your own... one man sneaking into a city is more subtle than a team of people...

me and my friend didnt realise there was an update and the server randomly killed everyone so I am assuming that means it time to update to 1.5.7 lol hope it didnt save that :(

anyway, being on a server with 700+ zed is fine with me... a truck drove by yesterday and alerted 15 zombies to an area, i couldnt believe there was so many but then I counted and thought there could always be more :P

[Zombie Squirrel 5]

3) AI- The current AI based on Arma 2 is atrocious. I'm not sure what' date=' if anything, can be done about it though. As it stands you have zombies running full tilt serpentine at you, making mowing them down at anything more than 10 feet an exercise in frustration. Couple that with latency/lag (chances are you're not going to be playing on a server in your own country/continent with the way servers are overloaded) and you're talking about survivors dying solely because the AI decided to zig-zag at the last second.

[/quote']

Have you actually played Arma2:OA latest betas without this mod? Doesn't seem so. As it stands, AFAIK the zombies is NOT Arma 2 AI at its full. They are seemingly stripped of the behavioral modules, and mostly based on some Player:GetPos hackery, to make the performance better (Normal battles in Arma 2 have like few hundreds full AI at most). Actually, the AI in Arma 2 can do such things as flanking you, take cover, suppress you a bit (although they could more), etc. Even do high command tactics - especially with some community AI mods (UPSMON,ASR_AI,HetManAIcommander,...). And getting better with every patch.

So please keep in mind the zombie AI is (or at least used to be, dunno what Rocket did with them when he transitioned them to FSM) quite stupid in comparison to normal Arma 2 AI.

[ninami 37]

I HAD to make a forum account because I feel this is just TOO important.

The increase in zombies is important! I mean this IS a survival zombie apocalypse game, which means you need to survive while zombies plague the lands you once lived in. The zombie count before the patch was not good, I mean no zombies in the woods? Only 3-4 zombies comes charging at us when me and 2 friends start shooting like crazy with shotguns and snipers? That's not survival in my opinion.

Sure you need to kill a lot of zombies, but a survival game is all about being cautious and careful, not running into a ghost-town screaming and shooting like a maniac.

So to sum up, I LOVE the increase in zombies because it makes it more like a survival game which it's suppose to be. Keep up the AWESOME job :)

[Ayanamifan 2]

I know you've heard enough about zombie numbers, but I'm tossing my hat in the ring too.

Because, I actually like the new numbers. If the spawn rate could be lowered though, that would make things perfect, imo.

I spent a good 30 minutes or so looking for the dead body of a newly found friend of mine in Krasnostav.

First off, the server crashed a few times and the last time it came back up stable, it was the middle of the night and RAINING. Omg, the rain ... couldn't see ANYTHING.

After wandering the town for 15 minutes and finding the rough area he fell to the zombies, I spent 30 minutes playing a dance of death with zombies ... I was in the very middle of about 10 zombies in a very short distance in a field. It was quiet intense and made the fact I survived without firing a shot or alerting a zombie a really great feeling. Apparently, the server ate my friend in between him dying and me finding the area he died in over the few restarts it had.

Much later, I came across a barn in the middle of no where, with what looked like only 3 zombies around it. Being relatively remote, I decided to shoot at em. Wow. Before this patch, the Winchester didn't seem all that loud - but as soon as I fired that sucker ... 7 zombies come rushing at me - from long ways off ... Was the Winchester nerfed?(fixed?) Not that I'm complaining, it's a freakin shotgun. It just made me reflect on the Krasnostav encounter I had before and was suddenly REALLY happy I did not fire that weapon.

The panic feature seems interesting, but needs to be tweaked slightly, as you've already mentioned. I'm interested to see how temperature will play in to the game. I think it will add an interesting aspect to the game, risking a fire to keep warm or what have you.

One thing that's always been a bit of an issue for me is the speed of these zombies. I'm not sure if it's anything you have control over, but it just seems like they run with what appears to be a speed hack - if it were a player. It seems way too fast to be believable and takes away a bit of immersion for me. I don't know if its something you have control over, but running at -slightly- higher than player speed, so the speed is believable but they can still catch players - but would not seem so ... ridiculous.

As a new player to the game, one of the things I've had issues with is just trying to figure out what to do next. I found a decent weapon - found plenty of ammo, food and water ... but I wasn't sure where to go from there. I've explored all the airports, been nearly through all the major towns and I just can't seem to find anything 'cool'. I came across a toolbox and a shovel ... but I don't know. I did hook up with a pretty cool fellow and have just mostly been following him around and helping out the best I could and that's been enough for me now ... but I don't know what area of the map I should be focusing on, where I should go exploring and what not.

One could argue that's part of the game and I don't necessarily disagree ... I just hope I don't get bored with trying to find some thing cool and shelving the game because it's just the same thing, over and over.

Perhaps these new zombie numbers will give exploring towns a bit more of a challenge and that will be enough, just trying to resupply. Because honestly, before the change ... all I would ever die to is bandits. Zombies were just kind of .. in the way. Now, they're quite the threat and I don't see that as a bad thing.

The next couple of days will be interesting, that's for sure.

As a side note - RE: Zombies in the woods ..

I'm split on this topic, honestly. On one hand it does seem a bit odd to run through forests and not see any ... but I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing. I can take a really long time to meet up with people that happen to be far away. I can just imagine being forced to 'crouch run' through the entire map to get to them .. it would take -hours-. Some could argue that as a benefit ... but I don't know. I don't really want to spend 2 hours TRYING to get to my buds to start playing with them .. :/