Zombies and Aggro

[Swi1ch 39]

I'll preface this by saying that I am not a programmer and thus I do not know the limitations of the engine, so it could well be that something like the following suggestion is not at all possible.

At the moment, zombies have two states; passive and aggressive. I would like to suggest a third, which would be alert.

Zombies currently hear much better than they see, and thus it is usually sound that triggers their aggression. This appears to be based on a rather basic scale; certain sounds travel further than others, and if the sound reaches the zombie, they react to it. This can be rather strange, as zed can somehow pinpoint your exact location from a good distance away. I would like to see some form of threshold on this trigger, causing the alert state, that would work something like the following;

(Note; all numbers are for ease of concept rather than hard figures and would obviously require significant tweaking. Also, all references are based on zombies, and not distances player characters would hear audio.)

Weapon X has a sound radius of 200m. The first 100m would trigger any zombies within the area to immediately 'look' at the sound source. Any zombies that identify a player would immediately aggro onto them. Zed that were within 100m that can not see the player, would begin to move towards the sound source.

Zombies outside that 100m, but within the 200m range, would trigger an alert state; they continue with whatever they are doing at the current time, but repeated triggering of this alert state from the same location (For this example let's use 25m of the original sound source), within a certain period of time (Let's say one minute) would cause the zombies to go and investigate. This repeated triggering would ideally be somewhat randomised (although more than once or twice to trigger investigation) so that players aren't able to say to themselves "OK, I can fire three rounds before I must move out of the area, where I can fire another three rounds". The randomisation means that the longer the player stays in the same area, the more risky it becomes, and they do not know the exact extent of the risk.

There are many reasons I believe a system similar to this would benefit the game, but I present two;

From the Survivor point of view, it seems that at the moment having an overwatch buddy on a hill with a sniper is entirely useless, as a single shot will trigger the horde onto him. I feel it would be entirely realistic to have a three man team send two people into a town whilst their sniper uses his extended vision advantage to guide them in. He could then provide sniper support on any zombies that are in the path of his friends, but not be able to just clear the entire town. He would have a rough estimation of how many rounds he could fire within a period of time without severely endangering himself. Firing more than that to support his friends would result in him having to relocate and leaving his team without support, so it's a trade off that needs to be considered.

From the Bandit point of view (Ohh, controversial), right now a Survivor (Or another Bandit, for that matter) can be fairly certain of their safety from snipers in many towns (Before you comment, realise I said 'many', not 'all') as a Bandit will likely not fire in order to avoid getting himself overrun by the entire horde. With this system, a Bandit can still fire on Survivors in towns, but must be wary of firing too many times, as even if zed only moves to investigate rather than becoming fully aggro'd, they will head towards him, revealing his general location. If he chooses to fire fewer times, he then needs to relocate, during which time the players in town can get to cover or spot him.

I considered the possibility that this may make the game borderline unfair for solo Survivors, but I believe in this situation, as the benefits of being solo; Less time needed to be spent in hostile areas as less supplies are required, less chance of being spotted by hostile players, less chance of making a mistake and aggro'ing zombies, would weigh nicely against the benefits of being in a group; In this situation, a bandit must fire many more times to down the group of Survivors, which puts him at far more risk of being identified. So a Bandit would be much less likely to trigger zombie investigation firing on a lone player than a group, but is much less likely to spot them in the first place, and if that player attempts to take cover he is much less likely to trigger zombies than a group.

Thoughts on this? If you don't like it, please provide a reason.

Also, inb4 we don't need more snipers. It's part of the game, and balancing it is important.

[mooncabbage 2]

Regardless of snipers, I think an alert state makes sense. Zombies shouldn't know exactly where you are, and even if they do, they should really only know where you LAST were.

I think it's probably a technical problem though. Right now the zombies are animals, they use ambient AI. I don't know anything about arma modding at all, but it's likely that the more stuff you add to the AI, the more stress they'll put on the server and the less you can have.

Zombies do seem a bit too easy to aggro and too hard to lose atm though. The on/off is no fun. I can crawl through a town with total impunity, but if I accidentally stand up and run leaving a doorway, I could aggro every zombie in town on me.

[red62 9]

Also' date=' inb4 we don't need more snipers. It's part of the game, and balancing it is important.

[/quote']

>balancing it is important

>balancing it

>balancing

http://games.on.net/article/15603/I_didnt_want_any_sense_of_balance_at_all._I_wanted_it_to_be_an_anti-game_Dean_Rocket_Hall_on_Day_Z_Part_1

[Swi1ch 39]

Also' date=' inb4 we don't need more snipers. It's part of the game, and balancing it is important.

[/quote']

>balancing it is important

>balancing it

>balancing

http://games.on.net/article/15603/I_didnt_want_any_sense_of_balance_at_all._I_wanted_it_to_be_an_anti-game_Dean_Rocket_Hall_on_Day_Z_Part_1

Well, damn. Scratch that part from the post.

[Land Squid 22]

Something my friends and I noticed regarding the zombie AI...

We were on the roof of a hospital with a horde below us. We tossed down a smoke grenade to mass the zombies in one spot and then were going to toss down a frag to clear them, except the moment the frag hit the ground the zombies all ran away from it. This seems like a bit of an oversight with the zed AI.