[Feedback] Zombies are too easy to fight. The game should incentivize using guns more against zombies.

[desert_cat 3]

dayz_game_feedback_4_2020

The game for me is separated into three zones.

 

• players spawning in an busy trying to acquire basic stuff like food and melee weapons
• player is two kilometers inland and stabilized his supplies, he has perhaps a shotgun with some ammo looted from a police station and 5-6 steaks from a dead animal.
• player has all the stuff he wants except for rare special items and he is walking around with a backpack full of ammo, desperate for a situation to use the ammo in.

There are some problems with this setup. The first is the backpack full of ammo.

Armed and Dangerous and nothing to do

This happens when a player has reached zone3 (does not have to be a geographic zone, think of it as a level of supplies). This player has a powerful weapons and 50+ rounds for it. This could be an SKS or a shotgun or even an assault rifle. When it comes to physical combat, the game is so easy that the only dangerous and unpredictable things are wolves, bears and players. Because zombies are no threat whatsoever. Imagine this situation, you are at the edge of let's say Zelenogorsk, overlooking the town from a safe distance from a forest. Do you worry about zombies? If you played the game for more than a week, then I would say you are not worried at all. Because all it takes is a knife or even your fists, to move through entire town, and survive it with perhaps a damaged jacket and some bandaged scratches.

 

And before someone claims that zombies are hard, here is a video of me chopping through 7 military zombies with a knife. A careful player can clean out an entire city on his own like this. And I was not wearing a jacket. And melee combat unfortunately is not as much fun as shooting guns.

Video:
https://imgur.com/a/92Sxpap

 

Never is there the incentive for a player to keep the zombies at a safe distance or use their guns before going in melee.

„Yes but zombie lore says guns are too noisy!“

That is only partially correct. In a zombie movie, the characters fear one thing the most, which is getting bit and turning into a zombie. So their rules of engagement are:

• Avoid zombies and loot without being seen.
• If that fails and a lone zombie is alerted, take it out in melee combat, if you can avoid a bite
• If that fails and you get cornered by more, shoot your way out. Also if you can't defend from a bite with melee, shoot.

That's the key part missing. Players are not pressured into using their guns. Because a zombie bite or scratch is harmless. Now I don't expect the game to feature turning into a zombie. But it should still offer danger that approximates it. So that a player tries his hardest to avoid a melee hit.

That means, a player, or a group of players sneaking into a town, should try to sneak up on zombies with melee weapons and take them out before they can bite. However the moment this fails, a player should be motivated into firing his gun to prevent a bite at any cost. Even if that means 5 more zombies will come running. Then players can still run away.

If that level of danger is introduced, then every single encounter with a zombie would be exciting. Because the game currently builds all of its fun on looting. However it can not be the only system to generate fun. Because once a player starts topping out on gear, he will notice that fighting zombies in a town is just a tedious chore. Whip out knife, click through them.

So here is what I would like to suggest:

Increase the risk when fighting zombies so that if a brawl with more than one zombie ensues, shooting your way out with a subsequent chase becomes a better bet at surviving than just risking more melee hits.

Here is how it could be:

• Higher chance of some type of infection that would require medicine. It would not be a „turn zombie“ virus. More like a disease that drains the character's resources or weakens his combat capabilities like running for a long time.
• Higher zombie health against MELEE weapons. This is a big one. Currently a player can kill a zombie with 3-4 hits to its head with fists. At the same time, any zombie will walk away from a center of mass hit from a 7.62x39 SKS round. That makes no sense whatsoever. Also regular melee weapons should take 2x as long to kill a zombie. However this nerf should not apply to guns, they should remain powerful, to incentivize their use.

The idea is to incentivize players to keep themselves from getting bit or scratched, by putting their ammo and guns between them and the zombie if the situation requires it. The current, „I'll take some scratches and save 5 buckshot rounds to clean that village“ should not be.

 

 

Project Zomboid fell into the same trap, where it had an obsession with punishing players for using guns. To the point where it becomes a self-reinforcing idea that when a player shoots a gun, he gets swarmed with so many zombies that he will never ever use a gun again in that game. Let's not have DAYZ get stuck with that same idea. However in Project Zomboid, players can lose their character from one bite so there the fear of close contact remains. However in Dayz there is no fear of close contact, and at the same time melee combat is too easy against them.

 

Edited April 20, 2020 by desert_cat

[green_mtn_grandbob 594]

 

don't you know that dayz standalone isn't even half way done, from what they said what it would be when it was finished. well that depends if they do plan on doing what they said they would do.

Edited April 20, 2020 by green_mtn_grandbob

[William Sternritter 449]

19 hours ago, desert_cat said:

That's the key part missing. Players are not pressured into using their guns. Because a zombie bite or scratch is harmless. Now I don't expect the game to feature turning into a zombie. But it should still offer danger that approximates it. So that a player tries his hardest to avoid a melee hit.

That means, a player, or a group of players sneaking into a town, should try to sneak up on zombies with melee weapons and take them out before they can bite. However the moment this fails, a player should be motivated into firing his gun to prevent a bite at any cost. Even if that means 5 more zombies will come running. Then players can still run away

I don't know how you do it, but shooting in dire situations is quite common, also players pick on zombies with guns just for fun or training. Yet, shooting usually presents more problems than it solves.

Obviously, you attract other players, but that is the risk/reward of moving down zombies fairly quickly compared to melee. There is always someone nearby, so it's not negligible by any means. 

More importantly however, the gun game changed significantly, a lot of the ammo is not as effective as it used to be, because the devs are still shuffling numbers around. Now shooting a zombie with 9mm or even .45 is not a sure thing. .22 is pretty much useless. Silencers are screwed as well. 

And finally, shooting creates a bullshit situation when a random bunch of zombies out of nowhere will rush you. Years ago, shooting zombies as you go, especially with silenced guns was a viable option. Now it's pretty much a dare for disaster. If you get into a sticky situation with the last few zombies around you, instead of dispatching them quickly with your gun, you will get more zombies in your face. Doing that in the open is again an invitation for disaster. I have seen it way too many times now, that firing a shot even at a remote settlement leads to a horde of zombies. Instead of dealing with 5 you're dealing with 20. To top it off, zombies respawn way too quickly, so you risk rather wasting your ammo than getting rid of zombies, if you keep shooting throughout in towns and villages. You loose too much time dealing with the horde.

So what you describe is currently impossible because of how the zombies are handled when you fire a gun. You will not have to deal with 5 more zombies, not to mention that once you're in a sticky situation, 5 more zombies still can be the death of you. Therefore yes, normally, I will rather risk being scratched and having my equipment damaged, than use a gun in, even if the odds are seemingly in my favor. Shooting is the last resort and it means more fight, loss of time and very high risk if you have nowhere to barricade yourself. 

All my experience comes from vanilla btw. 

[desert_cat 3]

On 4/21/2020 at 10:09 AM, William Sternritter said:

Silencers are screwed as well. 

I would disagree. They are not useless. Shooting a zombie in a town with a suppressor will still attract zombies in the vicinity (I think5 50-70 meters), but it without a suppressor, usually a radius of 200 meters is attracted. They do work, because suppressors don't make a gun completely silent.

If a player has 20 glock rounds, and he is forced to use it if zombies were more dangerous, then he can still kill 5-10 zombies with that ammo, which is the population of a village.

The game is too easy, and no experienced player will lose to 5 zombies. The video I posted shows how I kill 7 MILITARY zombies with a knife with minor scratches on my character. If melee combat is this easy, shooting guns will remain a fun side thing that no one really does. And then the game rewards the very poorly realized melee combat over the very well realized shooting. That is keeping your best features awayfrom players while forcing them through tedious click melee combat that is boring and is without danger.

[William Sternritter 449]

11 hours ago, desert_cat said:

I would disagree. They are not useless. Shooting a zombie in a town with a suppressor will still attract zombies in the vicinity (I think5 50-70 meters), but it without a suppressor, usually a radius of 200 meters is attracted. They do work, because suppressors don't make a gun completely silent.

If a player has 20 glock rounds, and he is forced to use it if zombies were more dangerous, then he can still kill 5-10 zombies with that ammo, which is the population of a village.

The game is too easy, and no experienced player will lose to 5 zombies. The video I posted shows how I kill 7 MILITARY zombies with a knife with minor scratches on my character. If melee combat is this easy, shooting guns will remain a fun side thing that no one really does. And then the game rewards the very poorly realized melee combat over the very well realized shooting. That is keeping your best features awayfrom players while forcing them through tedious click melee combat that is boring and is without danger.

You're right, silencers don't make a gun absolutely silent, but it should also not attract zombies from 50 meters afar. 
You will easily lose to more zombies if they rush you and corner you, especially when you try to shoot them because you need space for the shooting to happen. Once you're bleeding your health goes rapidly down and you no longer have the luxury to keep swinging or shooting, you must attend to the wounds. 

It's a mix of circumstance and game mechanics. In general yes, the zombies are all too easy and no longer present a significant threat. But with a flip of a switch they can become overwhelming. It is comical at times how you can beat a zombie with can of food or just use your fists because it staggers them all the time, yet on the other hand there is no reason why an axe, sledgehammer or crowbar would not be powerful melee weapons with which you can mow zombies down easily. There should even be swords, to match the theme of castles and armor we can find.

Devs also must stop screwing around with the stats and finally have a vision for the game. For some time after 1.0 axe was useless, now it's a one hit wonder again, as long as you aim for the head. You say that it is tedious and boring, but no it's not. It requires precision, you have to deal with the clunky zombie movement and so on. An argument could easily be made that shooting them with a shotgun in comparison is just laughably easy. But neither is really true, I think. If all goes well both axing them and blasting them is fun, easy and well realized.

Guns are nice, but they give away your location. Your ammo is finite and your guns can jam. For me, there is no reason to shoot when dealing with a small number of zombies, but then again you are not discouraged to do so. If I want to blast away and have fun that way I can. I've done it regularly, but there just is no reason why a gun would be mandatory to deal with zombies. TLDR my argument is, currently, you're not forced either way and it must stay so. 

Also it seems to me like you're not looking at the overall picture. Zombies are easy but there are other players. Servers I play on are rarely at low population these days, definitely not during peak hours. These days it's the other players who present the challenge and danger of this world. Should it be so? Should the zombies be more dangerous and thus force players to cooperate, rather than shoot each other?

Well, that is another debate to be had, but for me the result is, that there still enough danger and shooting in the world. It used to be that gunfire startled me, because there were barely other players. Now I worry if I hear no shots for a longer period of time.

[Parazight 1599]

Should arm infected with shotguns, imo.  Even if they have no aim whatsoever.  They'll attract their friends while other survivors will have to wonder if it is a player or AI.

[rackinglad27 138]

3 hours ago, Parazight said:

Should arm infected with shotguns, imo.  Even if they have no aim whatsoever.  They'll attract their friends while other survivors will have to wonder if it is a player or AI.

noooo just nooo, think about what your saying man.

[William Sternritter 449]

12 hours ago, Parazight said:

Should arm infected with shotguns, imo.  Even if they have no aim whatsoever.  They'll attract their friends while other survivors will have to wonder if it is a player or AI.

You know, now that they have backpacks and such, they often already look like players 🙂 

[Derleth 1357]

1 hour ago, William Sternritter said:

You know, now that they have backpacks and such, they often already look like players 🙂 

Aye, especially on servers where they can have headtorches!

Personally I think infected work pretty well right now, there just needs to be more of them. Dispatching one or two or even three in melee is not difficult, but it shouldn't be. Once you've stirred up more than that things can go downhill quickly if you haven't planned ahead and know where to run. What needs to come back quickly is the risk of wound infection, devs disabled this a while back and haven't come around to putting it back in. Once getting a scratch can get you sick again, dealing with even a few zeds in melee will come with a risk.

I play on a modded server with zombies increased around 5 times and the player cap reduced proportionally - and where zombies can break your arms in melee - and wound infection is in. It is all about PvZ there, looting Chernogorsk as newspawn is extremely dangerous for example, there are zeds everywhere so you really don't want to make too much noise - killing them quickly and silently is critical, and sometimes they're so densely packed it is simply not possible, you need to find another way around. Teaming up with another player to cooperate is much preferable to shooting him..

Just one thing is pretty critical though, infected need to be able to climb on top of cars and break down doors if there's enough of them. It is far too easy to dispatch even a large horde by locking yourself in a house or climbing on top of a car wreck (provided you have enough ammunition).

Edited April 24, 2020 by Derleth

[William Sternritter 449]

5 hours ago, Derleth said:

Just one thing is pretty critical though, infected need to be able to climb on top of cars and break down doors if there's enough of them. It is far too easy to dispatch even a large horde by locking yourself in a house or climbing on top of a car wreck (provided you have enough ammunition).

They did this even in early 0.63+ right trough doors, regularly 😄
Jokes aside though, I'm still waiting for the options to barricade doors and windows, which could play nicely into this. If you want to have a properly defended position you need to barricade yourself. 
 

[rackinglad27 138]

5 hours ago, William Sternritter said:

They did this even in early 0.63+ right trough doors, regularly 😄
Jokes aside though, I'm still waiting for the options to barricade doors and windows, which could play nicely into this. If you want to have a properly defended position you need to barricade yourself. 
 

enjoy waiting then 🤔 you want houses to be able to be barricaded yet the cars arent even fully operational or even the inventory system.