1.7.2 Opinion thread. All your opinions, good and bad, go here.

[pkolbo 16]

I am tired of commenters who think people are saying the zombies got too hard. Listen up. That is NOT the issue. The zombies are not FUN. That is the issue (in our humble opinion). I have no problem dealing with them, they are not hard.

It is the risk/reward of sneaking vs. wind sprinting through towns that is the difference. Getting and losing aggro easily has lost a sense of danger and respect for zombies that was in the last patch. I found that old gameplay to be unique to this mod and well balanced in 1.7.1.5.

Now, I simply don't care about the Z's. In fact, they are much more a frustration than they are part of the fun. Add to that the unrealistic spawning (which is most likely causing people to believe in the "random" aggro events) and there is no sense of strategy or danger. I can't count on my intelligence helping me because if I get through or clear an area, Z's will refill it immediately if I activate the area with my presence again. But I have this strange feeling that keeping the Z's respawning so close to players is what is attributing to the large performance gain some people are seeing in this last patch.

I cannot fathom how I happen to approach every town just as the local zombie toolshed-raves have ended. I constantly see piles of zombies exiting doors at the same time. Sorry, that breaks immersion for me. It was different last patch.

Lastly, since aggro has become more common-place, people are now having to deal with all the strange, inconsistent mechanics that come along with zombies being aggroed. Last patch, I could forgive a zombie breaking my bones or acting erratic or inconsistent or teleporting. It was my damn fault he got aggroed. Inconsistency while aggroed added a sense of danger. I was damn sure to keep my head on a swivel as I snuck through towns, noting directions and adjusting my strategy on the fly. Man that was fun.

Now that we are supposed to be dealing with this aggro on the regular, it only increases the player's recognition of the inconsistencies in Z behavior. If Rocket wants the game to go that way (more like L4D i guess?), the inconsistent Z behavior on aggro is not forgivable and detracts from the game's fun. In my opinion, the setup in 1.7.1.5 was just right. It tuned the zombies in such a way that took advantage of the shortcomings in the game, not exposing how poorly implemented the Z's are. I am unsure if Rocket can hope to tune the zombies well enough and/or fix the problems to such a state that people will be satisfied with their interactions with the Z's. That is why I think Z's should be navigable yet unforgiving after aggro. If you want zombie deathmatch, go play L4D. Leave me with at least one 1.7.1.5 server, please.

[LockeDown 144]

I honestly have yet to experience difficulty/problems with zed recognition. My usual playstyle is up to par with 1.7.2. apparently; that or I have excelcior luck compared to everyone else.

[BoomBoom (DayZ) 4]

There are two types of Zeds now:

Zeds that have sniper vision and will aggro from a long distance and Zeds that don't even move. I found 6 of them in one spot in the road. They would just growl and stand in place even when I was like one foot away standing.

Players die standing up now. (got me a death)

Gear is half the time unlootable from people. (got me a death)

Dying and passing out for no reason.

Get rid of this stupid patch.

Edited July 13, 2012 by SirAdmiral

[uberwolfe 25]

Has anyone else noticed that shotgun shells, both pellet and slug, are unable to be picked up now?

[freakinpao 2]

I'm sticking with 1.7.1.5 servers for now until the zombie behaviour is fixed...

[bofadeez 2]

I started playing in 1.7.1.5, so this is the first patch for me. At first I didn't like it. I had become pretty used to the zombie mechanics of 1.7.1.5 and at first I really didn't like the new extreme sight range. But after a long session yesterday which involved much daylight looting, I really like the changes. I'm not sure exactly what was changed, but now there is a point to killing zombies. Before it was just foolishness to shoot a zombie inside a town... if I agroed one I couldn't shake, I would run out of town and shoot the zombie out of earshot. Now, if I agro in town, I kill the one I agroed, maybe one or two more, and that's it. I don't know if they took out the gunshots-spawn-zombies mechanic but it seems like it. Yesterday I spawned near Balota, found a Kobra in the tower and then headed for the deer stands. Took out every zombie at the deer stands in an organized fashion. Before the patch, firing my weapon at that location was basically a death sentence as zombies from hundreds of meters away would hear and swarm me. I then proceeded to a nice hour long run through Cherno, got hurt pretty badly but managed to find all the survival tools, got out, found a cow, and got healthy.

There is still a very strong incentive to not be seen, of course, and this is still doable, it just requires crawling where you used to crouch. I think, perhaps, zombie sight is a little much, but I prefer it be too much than too little. What I realized in my first serious 1.7.2 session yesterday was that I feared zombies more than other players again, and the presence of seriously dangerous zombies makes PvP a little less reckless. All in all, the combination of improved zombie sight and gunshots not spawning zombies makes zombies just plain scarier and more fun for me, instead of the slightly inconvenient obstacles they used to be.

[Valerio (DayZ) 0]

The Zombies seeing me from 100+ meters and silently coming up out of nowhere like olympic running ninjas, is not exactly fun. Lets not mention that when i reload they can see me from almost twice the range, am i that loud and visible when I'm putting in a fresh mag? I was completely unaware that people clank their mags against their guns, yell, and jump when reloading.

1.7.2 is TERRIBLE.

[crisbunker 2]

1.7.2 broke Dayz last 1.7.1.5 best patch everything now bad zombies , item bug , total mess

[Bishdark 4]

Ok so here is my opinion. I want to say, overall I love this game, it has a great concept and with some polish will be outstanding.

Now let me get into my issues, and let me stress that these are my opinion.

Firstly lets hit the hot topic of zeds. They are too hard, simple as that for me. They are hard in the sense that the game lacks freedom due to them. They aggro far too easily, are a nightmare to lose unless you count glitching them in a building, considering you start with no weapons, the initial immersion is lost in running for 15 minutes to shake them. The player should start with a weapon, again that is simple for me. When/if there are more added, it could be random generated, rare could be a decent pistol, common a crowbar or bat or something. Then the player can really start to play the game from spawn. And not get jumped by another player with a hatchet immediately.

At the moment the player has to cast off as little as 5 minutes to as high as you like of gaming time after death due to finding a weapon. To me personally, this is not an enjoyable part of the game. Once I have a weapon, and I can actually defend myself if randomly spotted and looking for food/better equipment etc, then the game is great fun.

When the zed catches up to you, and with its mystical in built turbo warp system which means it can catch you in a matter of seconds from half a km away. they do seem to be more annoying that hard. Broken bones is something that needs reworking, really isnt worth doing much but suicide if friends arent online and you break your bone with no morphine, suicide and start again no matter what you are carrying. Bleeding I think is excessive, food shouldnt plain replace blood, but instead add a blood regen buff that takes in to consideration what you are doing. If you rest in prone or crouch a while, you regen fast, if running you regen slow. Also having to bandage from blunt force zed trauma is just silly. Blood from blunt force should be very slow in loss and would clot within minutes, bullet wounds of course high in loss.

So let me add some personal suggestion hopefully for consideration.

- Zeds getting a constant speed, same speed as player, but easier to shake after 'x' time or 'x' distance they quit. So when the barn glitch is fixed, the game isnt some homage to Harry Hill. And please fix the warping. Also a stumble or trip effect would be nice, or maybe them bumping in to things.

-Broken limbs only for fall damage. It would take a rather strong human to break a leg, or a decent grapple hold, rotting corpses would unlikely do this.

-Zed damage not causing current bleeding, but instead the player having a pain level where they can pass out after too much pain, making painkillers more valuable. Bullet wounds still cause same bleeding. When passed out, the zombie can feed on the player causing massive bleeding. This would mean dealing with zeds becomes a little less risky, unless you get more than a few, then you are going down no questions, but tactical picking them off is rewarded.

-Add a map wide kind of trucker channel, where players can warn about bandits, the current map marking is underused or doesnt update.

-Make Bandits obvious once again. Bit tired of seeing another player and never thinking of grouping up as everyone just kills everyone.

-Zeds hearing needs a tweak. Some healthy humans have problems with directionality, yet rotting meatsacks can pin point a gunshot and run at it in mere seconds with no second guesses. My hope would be, if you shoot, and a zed is curious it will walk in that direction, unless you are in line of sight. But you get a chance to escape or take cover in a building and brace for an attack.

-Spread loot out, make rare items appear randomly in small towns, as currently there isnt much reward for investigating small areas. On top of that, on a reasonably full server, going to the airfield is suicide by camping sniper. Not that I disagree with it, this games about freedom and if someone wants to play that way, then fair enough, but we should be able to recieve or give warnings to other friendly players.

-Add an experience map, the player maps as they investigate areas, or even an assassin creed style vantage point mapping system. This could mark markets, bars, hospitals, anything of importance. Then of course if the player finds a map it opens up, but keeps areas of importance.

As you can see, my suggestions make zeds easier, but not too much, mostly when giving chase. But makes it more effective to survive zed attacks, or less frustrating. The pain damage I mention could be high, but I would prefer it to modify depending on amount of zeds hitting at once. Nearly all zombie lore, one isnt a problem, untill its buddies turn up. Currently a single zed can cause you to lose 2000 blood easily, especially when you are in melee, it warps behind you, can break limbs quite often, and you sometimes end up pulling more.

One more thing, maybe in the future of the game. Factions. Friendly and bandits being more defined. With a block on players choosing to be friendly on firing upon other friendly players. Just simple means there is no fuss when you see another player in trouble to whether you help or not. Maybe even a pve server, the gear from which would not cross over in to a pvp server, but it is there to welcome a wider audience. Me personally, I have died from most player encounters, killed a few that shot at me, but I still enjoy the tension a player nearby brings.

Edited July 13, 2012 by Bishdark

[paniohitus 8]

Overall 1.7.2 isn't that bad. Only things what we have:

*Losing of loot. I had my M249 in my backpack. I dropped it, played on a server for 3 hours. Next day logging in on another server, progress was saved, but my M249 was again in my backpack, hehe

*We have ppl that joint DE 65 spawnt with empty gear. (we server swapped to get better ping) They get back to another server and get gear back. But on DE 65 they lost it

*I don't know if the large distance is the problem. The agro-zombies is a little weird. You see 6 zombies in the distance. Some close and further away. We are walking in a field and we agro not the zombies close, but the zombies futher away... They run to us and stop, and are inspecting on a place where we never were....

*Respawn is to fast, we clear buildings, and suddenly all zombies are back and spawned in the middle of us.

[DemonGroover 8836]

Just as I was singing the praises of the new patch I login to find that the last few hours of play have not been saved and I spawned in the same state and position as the beginning of my last session. I'm not playing until that's fixed, that's for damn sure.

Why not wait for a release version of Day Z and wait out the Alpha and Beta stages? If you dont want to help test the mod then dont, it really is that simple.

[Kar98 27]

Loving the mod. I haven't had cravings for games in years this is just so unique and thilling

My only criticisms are getting knocked unconcious below 9000 blood, I feel it would be a bit better at around 6-7000 blood

And perhaps a bit more consistancy in the running of the zombies. Currently I wait for them to approach me, wait for them to stop I take a step back watch them swing then shoot them which feels a bit odd. Perhaps if they ran a bit more consistant but if they reached you they would hit while running giving the player an incentive to shoot them before the zombie reaches them

The no gun I didnt' like at the start but once I understood the zombie mechanics a bit more I think it's good to stick with it

As for the new viewing distance, I'm not too fazed by it, it just means I have to crouch run a bit longer instead of stand up running

[jblackrupert 308]

Played it for several hours tonight.

- Some Zombies have super vision and hearing

- Some zombies are totally deaf and blind and just stand in one spot doing nothing, like they fell asleep standing up. The "sleeping" zombies you can walk right up to and kill with an axe without any real reaction.

- Zombies now spawn all around you within spitting distance. Front, back, side... They even pop on the screen in crushed together groups right before your eyes.

Zombie trains are now made up of zombies spawning with you as you run, not just aggroing the ones around you.

- Walking into or by a building triggers groups of zombies to spawn. I got stuck in the firehouse tower because of a never ending supply of spawning zombies.

- Zombies 50+ metres away on the other side of a building go aggro and search you out even if you are not moving while others within spitting distance walk around ignoring you,

I have no clue how this version got past closed testing. How could you miss zombies popping on screen in front of your face or the ones standing there in a daze?

[Spectorials 7]

I am tired of commenters who think people are saying the zombies got too hard. Listen up. That is NOT the issue. The zombies are not FUN. That is the issue (in our humble opinion). I have no problem dealing with them, they are not hard.

Agree entirely and have a whole post explaining this on a previous page (25 or 26).

Nobody should be able to argue with that, it has nothing to do with being noob or pro or whatever. If it's not fun you are going to put people off...

[MperorM 8]

1.7.2 zombies are like hard anal sex without lube.

[fasthandz 7]

First time playing 1.7.2 because of school work. I am so happy that they fixed zombie aggro. Thank you!!!!!

[twitchn 0]

There needs to be a setting for admins to disable Zombies all togather. This game has way more to offer than zombies.

Once helicopters come back and more vehicles are added it will be a proper sandbox.

[Bemin 3]

There needs to be a setting for admins to disable Zombies all togather. This game has way more to offer than zombies.

Once helicopters come back and more vehicles are added it will be a proper sandbox.

I've saved my first post for this long just to have the satisfacton of telling you how large of an idot you are. Feels good man.

[The_Weasel 16]

OK a few hours into the patch now, here are my views:

Zombie aggro is more or less fine, I don't have an issue with it as you can escape them. I find this to be realistic, both in being spotted and escaping. However the random being spotted at 1000+ m while prone, is an "immersion" breaking experience.

The real issue I have is with zombies breaking bones and the respawn rate.

If realism is where we are going, it should be possible to clear out a town and it be empty for a while. The respawn rate and distance is far to high. We were in Starey in the Supermarket to test this, after killing 150 zombies between 3 of us, they kept coming and we ran out of ammo, we had to run to the hills and escape them. If your in town and shoot in a building to defend yourself, it seems you set off a never ending wave of zombies, kill them till you run out of ammo, then kill some more. Yes, we could use quieter weapons, yes we could have used melee weapons, but if realism is what we are going for, there needs to be a cooldown timer on the respawn. IF you fire the lee enfield in town, you should be able to clear the existing zombies and leave the town free to walk about, this is much closer to "realism" as such. I don't mind zombies aggro due to gun shots, that should happen, but the never ending waves make it impossible to use any weapons except SD or melee. This is rather game breaking for me, the only way to survive is to lose them with buildings/line of sight or run to the hills so far away your sure you won't set off others with the gun shots.

TLDR: Zombies should respawn slower, to stop the never ending waves. Once you have killed the EXISTING zombies in town, there should be at least 5 mins till they respawn. They should not respawn in a players line of sight, they should not respawn within 50m of a player. Simply going for realism here. You should be able to "clear" a town and know your safe for a few mins at least.

The second game breaker for me is leg breaking at full health. Both myself and a buddy of mine have got rather frustrated from this. Your full health, get hit once and CRUNCH, broken leg. If your in an unlucky situation, you can be swamped and die in seconds. My mate was dead in 10 seconds as he got swamped. The same happened to me in the barracks. Full health, zombie hits me, bam broken leg. Within a few seconds, you are dead. Not even a chance to react. I would suggest that broken legs should not happen from zombie hits until you reach about 6000 blood or so. As you can be knocked down at less than 10000, that seems a good balance. But getting hit once and dieing immediately, just makes it pot luck. It should be challenging, not instant death.

And before I get flamed, my average survival time is 14 days and 90% of my deaths are from snipers. Its very rare for me to die from zombies and usually have my zed kill count in the hundreds before I do die.

Overall TLDR:

Broken legs at full health is not fair. Infinite waves of zombies is unrealistic, you should be able to clear out areas and know your safe from respawn for a few minutes.

Other problems:

Server lag is nuts, even on low ping severs (16ms) I still still the yellow and red chain often. Response on items can be woeful, clicking 100 times to pick up a mag is frustrating and gets you killed. On one server, lag was so bad (still low ping) that one of our group shot a zed. The zed died. Then 30 secs later his pistol shot hit the ground. We freaked as we thought bad sniper (One shot one kill or your a bad sniper) we realised it was his shot a few seconds later. But 30 secs? WOW.

Make the axe switchable like the pistol/main weapon. I may have missed what to do if you can already do this, so apologies for my ignorance, but it seems you have to put your main weapon in your back pack to switch to your axe. When you use your pistol, your main weapon is slung on your back, so could we have it that you can select your axe with the mousewheel or F key, and it autoslings your main weapon on your back. The axe is on your belt, you sling your gun when in pistol mode (and pistol goes in holster when using main weapon?) so really, you should be able to get your axe out without putting your gun in your pack. This would make survivor players in town much more responsive to PVP and is more realistic.

Stop items from spawning around boxes. The spawn point should be a box OR a pile of stuff. Having to move all the rubbish to open the box is just annoying. Same for backpacks spawned with other loot, they float and you have to remove other loot to get them.

Zombies still hit through walls. Random unexplained hits too. I was in the Mil tents at Berezino and got randomly hit. I moved, no zombies anywhere, not inside nor outside the tent. Weird. Hitting through tents and walls is not realistic.

Half full magazines still bug. SD weapons seem less powerfull. 6 body shots for the M9SD for a zed. Really? Ammo is so rare, makes the gun pointless.

Give new spawned people an axe at least to start with. I'm OK spawning without a weapon, but I have experience. Its a nightmare for new players.

Dissapearing and duping items is annoying. If my packs too small, fine, but don't vanish the gun because I forgot to take 1 item out before putting it in my pack. Not sure if duping still happens, I don't try to exploit that way.

and waaaaa I lost my ghilli suit waaaaa.

[Druig 7]

I agree, the respawn rate of Zeds is what bothers me the most by far...it really sucks that i cannot clear a small town.

The leg breaking is fine for me since 1.7.2, only happened once and i thought it to be realistic, because 4 Zeds where hitting me and i wasnt on full health.

[The_Weasel 16]

Both myself and a mate got a leg break with one hit at full health, very very frustrating.

I would not mind a doubling or tripling of the numbers of zombies if the infinite spawning was stopped and the leg breaking was under 6000 blood. If anything that would be better than the infinite spawn. The constant waves mean any planning before you enter town is pointless. Especially when they don't appear till you get close. OK I have scoped starey with binoculars from every direction. If I count 30 zeds, I should only have to kill 30 when I alert them. A team should be able to clear a town. This could work well, as it would alert other players that there are people about. Only dead bodies in town? No zeds? You know a player is close or has been there recently. Zombies should be a threat due to numbers rather than htting hard and breaking your leg.

[ultimateburger 0]

Just a couple comments…everything seems pretty good except for zombie aggro and zombie respawn. I don't mind the new aggro distances TOO much, but I think it should be dialled back a little when you're crouch running/walking. Currently it can just take WAY too long to skirt along the edge of a town. Again, it's not really contributing to the fun of the game, just the frustration. I am fine with having to crawl mostly in towns, though.

Also, the zombies seem to respawn a little too quickly.

That is all, great job in general.

[Targeter_NL 39]

The zombie aggro range seems fine to me, but they respawn way too fast. Also, sometimes gameplay is not saved and that's very annoying. :(

[rfxcasey 2]

A little bit of a correction here..

They aren't Rotting Zombies. They're 28-days later rage infected. So, they're still living. But apparently life for the infected is good. Despite their change in dietary requirements they seem to have become super human.

Sorry typing on a smart phone at work 4 am in the morning is not working out that great. I'm home now so as I was saying.

Not zombies in the classical sense then I suppose. But if they are not dead, or at least brain/soul dead then are you suggesting that they can be cured? Regardless, if they are not smart enough to drive cars and hold jobs then they are not going to be smart enough to distinguish you from another zombie at great distances. If anything smell would be the key factor in triggering the uncontrollable desire to eat you. They won't be attacking you with the desire to spread the infection, it will be out of hunger.

Secondly, look at the way the walk and act. Not the sighs of a higher intelligence I think most would agree. I mean some of these zombies are wobbling to and fro pretty much staring at the sky and you expect anyone to believe that they are cunning eagle eye predictors like a falcon or a jaguar that will spot a survivor at crouched in the tall grass at 50m. The zed look and act more like someone who has been smoking weed all weekend long and those folks usually aren't too observant. Look that the way apex predictors act and then look at these zeds. There is no comparison. Besides would an apex predator run around making all the god awful noise the zombies do if they were really trying hard to catch something to eat. They are basically brain dead eating machines that are going to be triggered by pretty much one thing and once again that is smell.

Why are they not just eating one another then? Probably because they smell like shit. A few days in the woods and we'll all smell like shit. Then the zeds will really have a hard time picking out who's dinner and who's not. If you want to talk about realism, the zeds have no compelling reason not to eat one another. Its not like they are going to catch the infection again and you already said that they were not dead so what does that leave us? I mean its not like once we are all dead the zeds are going to start a united nation of zeds all holding hands and singing Kumbaya. If we all smell like shit after a few days, then its going to boil down to pheromones or body heat the ladder being extremely hard to sense if one is not equip to sense in the first place and even snakes can only sense temperature differences from short distances.

We are never going to get 100% accurate realism because lets face it there has never really been a zombie apocalypse. I think the triggering radius need to be toned down a bit. The other main reason is that it puts newly spawned players at a even greater disadvantage to bandits that have all the toys and don't even really need to go into town for anything. A new player used to be able to sneak into a town without a huge learning curve and get what they need to get started if there isn't a bandit sniping everyone in Cherno right after they spawn laughing to themselves hysterically because they are mean sadistic bastards who aren't even after loot just like killing defenseless newcomers . Now it will be even easier for the bandits when they see zombies agro'ing left and right and lightly to unarmed new spawns running like a little school girl screaming in terror at a whole town of zeds chasing them around.

Edited July 13, 2012 by MajorMayhem

[SiSi 6]

Totally agree with

The_Weasel

small edit: if u fix that respawn issue, overpowered infected aggro is ok. otherwise it has to be nurfed half the way back to 1.7.1.5

Edited July 13, 2012 by SiSi