Patch 1.5.7 and this being an Alpha and fucking zombie spawns

[Nathanuel (DayZ) 0]

First off i would like to say that this mod is just AMAZING, I think its what everyone who is into zombies has been looking for.

Concerning the zombie numbers i think its just right, it encourages people to group together as they would in real life. Going into a village now for supplies is actually dangerous and a real mission all in its own, whereas before it was far too easy to just stroll around in towns and villages. The spawn rate is too fast but im sure thats an easy fix.

It also makes it harder for the EVIL bandits ;) to stock up with military gear unless they have help.

It seems to me that the zombies are also wandering more , ive seen them alot in places i didnt expect and that to me is really good. They wander around the villages and towns instead of just sitting in a room.

All in all i LOVE the zombie numbers , the only thing that makes it difficult is the lack of ammo :cool:

Please dont be disheartened by people who dont seem to grasp that this is a FREE mod in ALPHA. They are just kids who have seen it online and want a zombie shooter.

The game concept you have is incredible , the survival aspect makes the game so much more intense, please dont be tempted to "dumb" it down for the people who just want a shooter.

Keep up the amazing work and thank you so much for an incredible mod

[d.n.M. 0]

KEEP the Numbers.

If you are careful and stealthy you can stock up on weapons, just not with brute force.

Looking at a city from a hill and instantly seeing 30 Zombies makes you think first. Thats how it's gotta be!

[Leopardi (DayZ) 17]

KEEP the Numbers.

If you are careful and stealthy you can stock up on weapons' date=' just not with brute force.

Looking at a city from a hill and instantly seeing 30 Zombies makes you think first. Thats how it's gotta be!

[/quote']

Then you better up the loot to something much much better, since evading zombies for an hour using up all your ammunition since you had to kill that 1 zombie that attacked you to get an empty soda can and a body bag isnt fun.

[Keurk 4]

What is the spawnrate timer for zombies? Having a huge number of them is good imo, but we need to be able to secure areas for some minutes or maybe an hour before the zombies repop.

[Flipbed 0]

Its cool that there are more zombies but what I dont like is the "infinite spawn" of zombies. Lets say its 50 zombies in a small town with about 10 houses. Me and my friend accidently attracted them and started running for the docs. We then saw that the zombies were stuck at the edge of the harbor docs and couldnt get to us. So we had a great moment to find out how the zombies behave when people are shooting at the outskirts of a village.

What we found out though was a horrifying truth. The zombies are infinitly spawning with very short timers. Since we could stand close without them killing us we killed each and every zombie with one shot. After about 50 zombies dead we didnt have any more ammo but there were even more zombies there than when the first were attracted from the shots.

What im trying to say here is that there should be many zombies. But a respawn timer at about 1 minute is WAAAAY too short. Many zombies but with LONG respawn. If someone just have cleaned a town out then let it be clean for atleast 1h or so. Same with item respawn. This will force players to search other towns or try to find things to scavage that the players before them didnt find.

[hexik 1]

What is the spawnrate timer for zombies? Having a huge number of them is good imo' date=' but we need to be able to secure areas for some minutes or maybe an hour before the zombies repop.

[/quote']

+1

[vibe 26]

Yeah, large amount of zombies is great, uber fast respawn timers = not so great.

[Karl (DayZ) 0]

My two cents -

Zombies like this would be okay if they WALKED. Maybe not like when they get stuck in buildings, but give them a jogging animation or something. Then you can keep the spawns because we might be able to outrun them, and it makes fighting them unless you're trying to get out of the city pointless.

[daedrick 90]

The number of zombies is perfect, no problem about that.

[The Killing Joke 43]

It's tough out there when you spawn at night, and this creates a few issues.

I play after 10:00 p.m. EST, and even when I searched for some West Coast Servers, could only find one or two. If there was a way to implement 'alternate timeline' servers, that would serve people on shift work, or who played the game at night and would like to actually 'see' something, I think that this would be helpful.

I'm not sure if I've just been unlucky enough to spawn where others have gone before me, but the dropped items seemed to be extremely rare for me, even for the simplest of items. For example, on one spawn in, I examined one 'town' close by, found two locations containing pop cans and tin cans, and that was it. This was essentially repeated for the three other times I spawned. I don't have a recommendation on how to remedy this, unless to say 'increase the drops to include multiple items' so that more than one person can nab something. (Actually, that's not overly realistic - does anyone have a recommendation for what one should do in this case? Is it 'toss a bunch of flares and move along?')

There's the other thing. I had one group of flares, and they were pretty much gone within a 30 minute span, and in one town. In the nighttime, it looks to me that we need to 'hole up' in a certain town, as travel is mostly impossible. If the moon was out all the time, that might help, but it would seem that the weather in my area was against me. We had lots of clouds, and when it wasn't cloudy (did I mention pitch black?) it was RAINING. Yeah, thanks a lot.

Overall, LOVED IT. There was one moment when I was running, looking to the sky for guidance, and stopped. I figured, "oh ok, it's a fence" so I did my 'hop over the fence move. Nada. I wondered what I was stuck on, so I popped up a flare. It bounced behind me, and I was looking into the eyes of another survivor! Cool. Scared the crap out of me, but cool nonetheless. (No, I didn't shoot him.)

Fun times, everybody. Fun times.

TKJ

[semlerpdx 0]

Too many complaints about "patches" when the heart of the complaint is based out of lousy gameplay skills. Like someone said' date=' this isn't Left4Dead. I quite possibly have the lowest Zombie Kill Count for any survivor who's still alive longer than 23 hours, and I've been playing since the beginning. Each of the encouters I've had were tense as hell, much like Resident Evil games, I don't spend my rounds unless I absolutely have to.

If you run around this game, a survival game, full of expectations that you're gonna become some badass Zombie killer, you're not surviving - you are "playing". If you are not afraid to die, than you are missing the whole point of this game. Players will die because of impatience, rash action, and poor choices. Survivors will survive because they plan, they have patience, and they value their "life".

[/quote']

You are forgetting the fact that this IS A GAME. This is not real life.

If the purpose of the game is to never fire a single shot and always run away, which it is rapidly becoming, then about 3/4 of the playerbase enjoying this mod /is/ going to quit.

The game should be balanced. If there are going to be this many zombies, perhaps some should not be able to run. More should hop, some should crawl by default, some should only walk but take more then 3-4 shots to kill. There are many ways to balance the game out, but just adding tenfold the amount of zombies that existed before not only breaks the game, it is taking the fun out of "playing" it. You aren't even "playing" anymore. Anyone who says "well it's a survival based game, if you want to shoot everything that moves go play call of duty" with all due respect go take a flying leap off a fucking cliff.

I am not against the idea of hordes upon hordes of zombies roaming about (as it is now), but it needs to be balanced. The gameplay right now is not fulfilling. It is cruel and boring, which is not how a fucking video game is played. If you want to go sneak around and never attack anything, go play Amnesia. I play DayZ so I can meet up with my friends, loot M16's and shoot zombies, not try to meet up with my friends, die 20 feet after spawning, find two Makarov clips, meet 1 zombie, sneak past, 16 more start chasing me, die, rinse, repeat.

end quote

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You are a weak player and are missing the point of the game and this thread. Read the first post. Zombie numbers increase is accidental bi-product of most recent patch.

"just adding tenfold the amount of zombies that existed before....breaks the game" READ THE FIRST POST!

All you new players want to do is complain about the number of Zombies in relation to the number that was present pre-patch. FYI, pre-pre-pre-patch, these numbers were rather standard; but dry your eyes, princess - it will most likely be fixed in the next patch to be the way he designed it.

And watch your mouth, son! No one wants to read your rage post about how you have no patience and think you need to be able to kill a town full of Zombies by yourself with limited ammo in a survival game. If this is too cruel and boring for you, then don't play it. None of us want to listen to your non-productive slamming and bitching of this free mod (still in ALPHA stage) just because you want it to be a First Person Shooter.

Not a single thing to add except crying about the Zombie numbers? Do us all a favor, and don't post up here. This is our forum for discussing the patch and its MANY changes, and how THEY affect the game - not for rage-quitters to post up their venom about how much they hate the ONE unintentional change arising from this recent patch.

"then about 3/4 of the playerbase enjoying this mod /is/ going to quit." - 'SneakStrafeShoot'

-- LET THEM QUIT THEN! WE DON'T NEED THEM OR YOU! --SemlerPDX

"Anyone who says "well it's a survival based game, if you want to shoot everything that moves go play call of duty" with all due respect go take a flying leap off a fucking cliff." - 'SneakStrafeShoot'

After you, pal. With all due respect

[sfvkye 3]

Its strange that the mod drawn in so many new people for what it is but some people still complain about it for what it is.

Please Rocket, stick with your vision and carry on regardless. Alot of people might be making stupid arguements but you should never try and cater to us. Take on suggestions and make your mod.

Honsou.

[Samsquanch (DayZ) 8]

The new patch is interesting and fun. Took it upon myself to play last night while D3 was dead in the water.

Problem is too many new people, and young kids looking for free coding with the flavor of their choice. It is to be expected though.

[DeadJohn 1]

I'm a couple of days new, I'm really enjoying what you're up to here, reminds me of STALKER a lot, and thought that was pretty much gone.

The new zombie count seems more or less right to me, just that their hearing radius is a bit too large, you pull the entire town even if you're 2-300 metres from the edge of town and using something like the AKM.

[aphex187 52]

Okay' date=' so still people don't realize this is an [b']Alpha. If you do not know what this means - go look it up on wikipedia RIGHT NOW.

When I fix one bug, many can crop up.

I fixed some zombie spawning bugs, time syncing bugs, and now there are alot of zombies. This became apparent in testing, but rather than delay the patch release by a few days (too many people are helicopter dying) the update was released.

So yes, the zombie numbers weren't my intention - but now that it is here, let us see how they play out. Maybe we might actually learn something from it or maybe everyone just wants to jump to conclusions in the first ten minutes...

At the end of the day people should be bowing to you for even releasing this masterpiece! Bugs or no bugs this is one of the best games i have ever played, and i've been playing games since '79!

[semlerpdx 0]

Please stop comparing this game to a non-existent real world zombie apocalypse scenario.

It is a video game.

It isn't as much the number of zombies that upsets me' date=' its the consequences:

1. They cannot be evaded

2. They will never stop chasing you unless you kill them

3. They run fast and zig zag

4. They respawn before you can clear them all

5. They teleport into buildings

With lower zombie population, the above problems were bearable. Now they are not. Maybe if some or all of those points are fixed, it will make the increase in zombies tolerable.

[/quote']

1. Zombies can be evaded - there are many tactics in the "Surviving DayZ" Guides. One of the key points is to not get any more chasing you while you are attempting to evade. Have your "plan B" already worked out, such as a downhill slope leading out of said area, or what have you. It can't hurt you while you're sprinting away, period.

2. They will stop chasing you if you put a large amount of distance between you and them, along with a large amount of physical objects. (A town, a forest, a large body of water) These things slow them down tremendously, and eventually, they give up. I can't believe there isn't a YouTube vid of this yet.

3. They run fast and zig zag - Yes. They do. It is also their biggest disadvantage. Course correction at full sprint after collision with an object causes a full stop, and turn, before next sprint starts. This slows them down; think running through a forest - they get hung up left and right! Now, think DOWNHILL! The way they zig-zag slows them down as well, and if you are running, you should be zig-zagging also. Each significant course change you make forces them to re-aquire a path to you. Combined with Step 2, you will learn the skills to escape Zombies and save your good ammo for potential Bandits.

Always have an escape strategy beforehand, think Downhill, through forest; and always have your "last stand" point planned out. Wide open field, or backed in a corner, behind a lake, or on a bridge.

4. They respawn before you can clear them all - YES!! FIRST Relevant Patch/Mod suggestion and report! Nuff said - it's a small variable, all mission builders use some form of it and adjust as needed. I'm sure it will be done.

5. They teleport into buildings - Again, same issue as #4 - spawning too fast; unless you are refering to the way Arma bots seemingly "walk through walls".

If that's the case, just know they usually form a path to enter through a door, but freaky things happen in a predictable way that you can work with. Sadly, this cannot be fixed, it's an engine issue (that won't be present in the Real Virtuality 4 game engine). What I do, and it works every time, is to put a meter or two between the wall and myself, keep 360 degree SA (even with a one entry room), and whenever possible, gain elevation. Same as an open field - though, they don't "stream through walls" in hordes, but one can pop through now and again. Know this, and keep your back off the wall and you'll survive.

With regards to your highly popular first line, most agree that this is a video game, the rest are daft - but this is supposed to be a Zombie Apocalypse Survival Game, and with it comes a challanging degree of realism like many, many Arma mods. You will learn tons about video gamey things, but because this is the Real Virtuality Engine, you can learn a bit about basic survival skills to the degree the video game allows, orienteering, basic procurement of needs, a survivalists degree of caution and patience, and DayZ goes one step further with a basic food/water element.

You are in one of the most realistic game worlds ever made, with a fully modeled Lunar Calander, and properly modeled Sky Map linked to that Lunar Calander, dynamic weather, a ballistics model, and fully modeled 200+ square kilometer maps (larger ones through mods).

So much of this comes about as close to a non-existent real world zombie apocalypse scenario than any video game now could hope to match. If not for the constant reminders of Arma 2's lack of CQC quickness compared to, say, Source Engine games, it would create an emmersion level unsurpassed by anything out now.

Remember, Bohemia Interactive also makes Virtual Battle Space, and they sell that simulator to militaries around the world to train real world soldiers. No one can argue that this is about as real as it has gotten thus far.

"It is not so simply just the strongest who survive, but the most adaptive to change"

[theboneranger 1]

I'm enjoying the more zombies. Doesn't seem unreasonably difficult to lose them or kill them if I'm in a building. Sneaking around Cherno and Elektro in the dark is still the best way to get loot and avoid other players. Game is still lots of fun, especially with friends. I will complain about the physics-defying, tron-bike turns the zombies make at full sprint, but I'm sure that's nothing new. Reading this flame war is lots of fun too. I think most people who complain about the gameplay have never played Arma or OFP before.

[Lady Kyrah 1110]

People also need to realise that rocket isn't making this mod to make you or me happy, he most likely has a very clear idea of what he wants to do and unlike big game companies, doesn't really care if his mod doesn't cater to every gamers out there.

[The Killing Joke 43]

People also need to realise that rocket isn't making this mod to make you or me happy' date=' he most likely has a very clear idea of what he wants to do and unlike big game companies, doesn't really care if his mod doesn't cater to every gamers out there.

[/quote']

100% agree. I therefore request more communication from Rocket. Possibly a blog post once a week, to tell us his ideas, and further make people asplode with anger at his proposed changes. It seems to have worked well already.

:)

TKJ

[Sgt.Spam 42]

Eh, the whiners can go jump in a lake.

Keep up the good work!

[demine0 43]

I just started playing this game yesterday, and the fact that I can't go anywhere without being terrfied of zombies, is amazing. I love how I'll go 20 minutes inland, in the middle of the woods, and find a pack of two or three zombies munching on someone they just chased.

[Roddiy 0]

Hey rocket,

Firstly, thank you for all the work you're putting into this, I haven't been this excited about a game since I was a kid!

That being said, there are a couple of Major issues, that I'm wondering what their status are:

Firstly: Zombies spawning near people, This really kills the immersion, is there any plan to make this stop? or is that how the game is supposed to be?

Secondly: Again, about Immersion, The C-motions the zombies make, as well as their super-speed, again, are scary, but not "Realistic" is this considered a bug, and if so, are there plans to fix it?

Thank you so much, I know how hard it is to dev, a game, you're doing an amazing job!

[Poerisija 1]

Zombie numbers are fine, respawn timer isn't fine. You can't clear a barn of 15 zombies before they respawn again.

[Drake Sigar 9]

I really like the novelty of large horde sizes, but I want to make it clear that I don't see this as a viable permanent solution. The organised inland groups are having a great time, while the new blood on the coast are in hell. Perhaps zombie numbers should drastically increase inland as well as the potential loot, while costal towns should mostly go back to the regular size?

These past weeks some players have been very keen to segregate the community into the hardcore elite and casual masses, when the latter wouldn't own the vanilla Arma II game to begin with. And now that the mod has genuine casual interest? Oh boy, prepare for a barrage of elitism and uninspired CoD references the likes of which have never been seen.

[partybooper 2]

Just wondering:

How am I supposed to get some loot from a crashed helicopter? I can get in as a gunner or save it, but that's about it. No "Gear" option whatsoever...

I'm confused.