Zombie Hordes

[Bigglenator 2]

This thread is a general suggestion on how zombies should work, with a few off topic ideas added in:

1. Zombie Speed and Strength

In my opinion Zombies should be very weak on their own but have strength in numbers. Fuck special zombies, no spitters, no bloodsuckers. At the most there should be the VERY occasional encounter of something very special, very strong, and hard to kill in the wilderness. This also means there should be very many zombies around the map, not so much in the wilderness though. 

 

-Zombies should move at a brisk walking pace, fast enough for players to easily get away, but a real danger if you get surrounded.

note: I am now aware that the developer has already rejected slow zombies, but I am sure that most servers will change this when Dayz becomes open to plugins. I am worried that it will be overdone by modders. Look at the Arma 2 slow zombies plugin, it makes zombies nothing more than a bog down on the server.  

 

-Body shots should knock down zombies or slow them down temporarily depending on the caliber of the gun and the type of zombie.

 

-Only the largest rifles should be able to kill a zombie with a body shot.

 

-Soldier zombies should be more resistant to body shot damage because of their ballistic vest. 

 

-Leg shots should slow down zombies considerably or knock off legs at larger calibers causing them to be immobilized.

 

-Headshots should be an instant kill regardless of the gun, if you make a headshot you deserve a reward.

 

2. Zombie Senses

Going off of the World War Z idea that the zombie virus seeks a healthy host depending on if you are sick or low on blood you should be gradually harder and harder to be detected by zombies. This will add a level of forgiveness to game-play so at a certain point you do not have to worry so much about zombies and can focus on regaining blood. At the lowest levels of blood you should be able to roam among zombie hordes, but if you fire a gun or attack a zombie you will immediately will be detected as normal. 

 

-At night zombies gain better hearing and vision, they are also more aggressive. 

 

-Certain clothing should make it harder for zombies to detect you, such as extremely worn clothing or camouflage.

 

-Zombie hordes should roam in the direction with the most sound.

 

3. Zombie Horde System

Zombies should generally form groups with a few strays. They travel around in the direction of sound and lights. Zombie hordes should deter lingering in large caliber firefights and instill a sense of anxiousness and fear after firing a gun. Also this will make silencers and small guns much more valuable. Every gun should have advantages and disadvantages. (I am aware hordes have been confirmed)

 

-The largest zombie hordes leave a trail of death, dust, and trampled grass behind them. 

 

-Hordes should be easy to track and predict with things such as tracking bolts and the idea stated above. 

 

-Players should be able to scavenge for dead survivors behind the trail of death. 

 

-The temporary blight that hordes leave on the land should be risky to get near, or down wind from as players can contract diseases. 

 

-Zombie hordes should be VERY loud, and a looming danger at all times.

 

-Hordes should be persistent even if a player in not loading the area. 

 

-Most of the time hordes should be a small distance away (2 miles or so) and more of a danger if you linger in an area after making noise. Zombie hordes should be a slow danger unlike the current state where a small group of zombies around the corner hears you and bites your balls off immediately.

From here down is off topic suggestions. 

 

-Improve the blood texture, it has looked like red stars flying out of my asshole since Arma 2. 

-Bleeding players and game should leave a trail of blood behind them making them easy to track. 

-Please make it harder to cheat with Gamma, and make playing at night time fun. 

-Upon a player combat logging all players that have shot near them in the past 10 minutes or so should see a large flag above the players logout position through any walls and brush with a chest of all of their things. This will make it unnecessary to learn player names and wait for the combat log message to pop up.

-Base raiding should be very difficult and loud attracting zombie hordes. 

-Nights should be 30 minutes and days 50, this ensures that in one session you are bound to have some day and some night.

-Please only have private hives, i don't wanted to be tempted to switch servers when it becomes night. 

-Larger guns should temporarily disable your hearing depending on the caliber and the kind of headgear you have on. This increases the value of silencers and smaller firearms.

-You should be able to decapitate dead players and put their heads on a spike outside of your base, they should gradually rot and turn into skulls over the course of an ingame month. This serves the purpose of scaring away people from raiding your base. No one wants to raid a base with 20 skulls at the gate. 

-This one is important: Please for the love of satan make it possible to clear an area of zombies, none of that bullshit where they keep spawning in on top of you. 

-Please add in spray paint to edit the map. i am aware it will result in a lot of vulgarities as rocket said, but who cares. Dayz is a wild west and very much unfriendly already. This game isn't meant to be moderated or especially friendly to young players. 

-There should be some sort of trophy system when you kill players that can be carried, such as ears. Note: This should probably be a bandit only feature. 

Edited July 10, 2015 by Bigglenator

[Conrad_The_Comrade 577]

To start, they're not zombies, they're not undead, they're more along the lines of disease ridden people.

Knowing this, you should be able to gather that no, they do not have any special abilities, no they aren't stronger than humans (In the general sense), and no, they aren't necessarily weaker either.

 

The infected are not going to be slow (This has been discussed numerous times, and the running screaming infected we see today are here to stay for the most part), but their are intentions of having more, it's just a matter of performance.

 

Their senses aren't anything special, if you can hear it, so can they. If you can see it, so can they. It's pretty straightforward, they have HUMAN senses, because that's pretty much what they are, just sick.

 

Hordes are planned (I'm fairly certain), so theres where you win, however some of your suggestions I don't see being able to be added, just because of how DayZ is. Plus, finding dead survivors is just a matter of someone dying from them, that's not something the game would be able to generate on it's on.

 

As for the off topic suggestions, well...

-Nothing to say about the blood texture

-Has been suggested, but I personally don't see it getting added

-I THINK they're trying to find a solution

-I, without any doubt in my mind, don't see this being added, because this game just isn't like that. We don't have indicators, we don't have special tech to enable us to see that, and the whole premise of DayZ is to be authentic. If anything, if someone shot off a round, has been attacked, or has had a gunshot go off within x meters away shouldn't be able to log off for a good 5 minutes, in my opinion.

-Bases aren't even in game yet, so I don't see much to discuss about that

-If you play on the servers that have the time sped up, it's already easy to play day and night. Playing on experimental, I've had 3 days and 2 nights in one go, no restarts. Playing on a private hive would be even better since you wouldn't have people switching servers to avoid the dark.

-Private hives, they got ya covered.

-I like that idea, their was actually a topic on that a little bit ago, but yah

-Uhm, alrighty then, you enjoy your heads

-That's planned

-I would agree with that, except I personally would get annoyed seeing penises every time I go into a major city. If people were a little more mature, fine, but sadly most people aren't.

-I like the idea, except a "Bandit only feature" doesn't make sense. The game doesn't have a humanity system as did the mod, and the game isn't going to force you to do something just for a trophy. The only time you're forced into something is when you want to say use a Saline or Blood bag IV, but that makes sense, cause I doubt you can do that on your own in reality. Also, I would love a journal of sorts in the game, that keeps that characters "stats" and such (Drawing tally marks for however many people you killed, having photos of where you've been, maybe even having an IG camera to take them, etc.)

[OnionOfShame 138]

One thing I have to add is that zombies need to know when a sound is just the environment. Otherwise they will all just walk into the ocean when they hear the waves.

[TenseFrost 0]

the zombies now are VERY fast, you cant even lose them behind buildings as they are on your ass.

I just agree on the Zombie Hordes and making the zombies a BIT slower.

[Bigglenator 2]

To start, they're not zombies, they're not undead, they're more along the lines of disease ridden people.

Knowing this, you should be able to gather that no, they do not have any special abilities, no they aren't stronger than humans (In the general sense), and no, they aren't necessarily weaker either.

 

The infected are not going to be slow (This has been discussed numerous times, and the running screaming infected we see today are here to stay for the most part), but their are intentions of having more, it's just a matter of performance.

 

Their senses aren't anything special, if you can hear it, so can they. If you can see it, so can they. It's pretty straightforward, they have HUMAN senses, because that's pretty much what they are, just sick.

 

Hordes are planned (I'm fairly certain), so theres where you win, however some of your suggestions I don't see being able to be added, just because of how DayZ is. Plus, finding dead survivors is just a matter of someone dying from them, that's not something the game would be able to generate on it's on.

 

As for the off topic suggestions, well...

-Nothing to say about the blood texture

-Has been suggested, but I personally don't see it getting added

-I THINK they're trying to find a solution

-I, without any doubt in my mind, don't see this being added, because this game just isn't like that. We don't have indicators, we don't have special tech to enable us to see that, and the whole premise of DayZ is to be authentic. If anything, if someone shot off a round, has been attacked, or has had a gunshot go off within x meters away shouldn't be able to log off for a good 5 minutes, in my opinion.

-Bases aren't even in game yet, so I don't see much to discuss about that

-If you play on the servers that have the time sped up, it's already easy to play day and night. Playing on experimental, I've had 3 days and 2 nights in one go, no restarts. Playing on a private hive would be even better since you wouldn't have people switching servers to avoid the dark.

-Private hives, they got ya covered.

-I like that idea, their was actually a topic on that a little bit ago, but yah

-Uhm, alrighty then, you enjoy your heads

-That's planned

-I would agree with that, except I personally would get annoyed seeing penises every time I go into a major city. If people were a little more mature, fine, but sadly most people aren't.

-I like the idea, except a "Bandit only feature" doesn't make sense. The game doesn't have a humanity system as did the mod, and the game isn't going to force you to do something just for a trophy. The only time you're forced into something is when you want to say use a Saline or Blood bag IV, but that makes sense, cause I doubt you can do that on your own in reality. Also, I would love a journal of sorts in the game, that keeps that characters "stats" and such (Drawing tally marks for however many people you killed, having photos of where you've been, maybe even having an IG camera to take them, etc.)

Honestly i havent played Dayz in its current state- its been a while. I abandoned it and decided to wait till it exited beta until i really get into it. that is why some of these are a bit wrong.

[Conrad_The_Comrade 577]

Honestly i havent played Dayz in its current state- its been a while. I abandoned it and decided to wait till it exited beta until i really get into it. that is why some of these are a bit wrong.

It's all good, wasn't trying to criticize or anything, just trying to give any helpful information and opinions c: I would recommend playing the Experimental patch, loads of fun right now. And getting a truck to start is an amazing feeling.

 

Oh, quick question, kinda off topic, can you see the image in my signature?

Edited July 10, 2015 by Stryker7x

[Bigglenator 2]

It's all good, wasn't trying to criticize or anything, just trying to give any helpful information and opinions c: I would recommend playing the Experimental patch, loads of fun right now. And getting a truck to start is an amazing feeling.

 

Oh, quick question, kinda off topic, can you see the image in my signature?

I don't see anything in your signature, and thanks no offense taken.

[Conrad_The_Comrade 577]

I don't see anything in your signature, and thanks no offense taken.

Alright, thanks, looks like it really is broken, gonna fix that. c:

[A.I.C 8]

Would certainly like to see "infected survivors", maybe should be given varying levels of "decay" to their clothes, so some would at first glance look like any other survivor, as recently infected people would of course. 

 

Ones with packs could even have a couple of bits of loot in maybe then too. 

 

Anything "different" though, well, of course we dont want to see any "tanks" or things like that. But, what would the very late stages of this infection be, simple starvation and death?.. 

 

Could be a good angle there to work with for the dev's i think, personally id go for a "night time" infected for this role, a real mess of a look to it, that's slightly faster than a survivor, makes an unholy sound when it sees them and gives chase, and perhaps even a head-shot only/ complete limb destruction to put them down. 

 

Add a little more to that night time would that. 

 

But, not knowing the end game as it is, im going by only what picture i have built in my mind from what ive seen thus far so, maybe it wont need any more "spice" to the night, it was just something i always thought when i first started playing and went through those night times in Dayz. 

 

I miss those times :). I think that those things would be a good (and acceptable) addition to the infected, personally. 

Edited July 10, 2015 by A.I.C