Zombies? What zombies? This is pure PvP.

[Max Planck 7174]

Totalyl agree with initial post. It's just a PvP game with no help or team play. Zombies are useless here. Remove them and rename the mod.

If you don't think the zeds make a difference, why remove them?

[t1337dude 101]

If you don't think the zeds make a difference, why remove them?

Because they're scary! :(

[sixbarns 217]

But their speed is retarded at the moment. It's gamebreaking since they run in zigzags too and clip through you and walls. Right now you can't fight zombies outside buildings or you make the zeds run in circles after you while your friends kill them.

It's just much more efficient to lose them. Not only there is no reason to kill zombies but also fighting them in broken to hell.

Yeah, it's lame but the zig zagging makes them harder to hit. They're easy now so imagine what they would be like if they just ran right at you. They wouldn't be very hard to to kill would they?

Yeah, they clip through walls. The game is not finished.

You can fight zombies outside buildings. I do it occasionally when I'm bored. I turn around, run backwards, wait for them to swing and miss, and then I shoot them. Or, I crouch and aim at them as they run. Their zig zag pattern isn't too hard to hit. It just takes some practice.

[sixbarns 217]

Yeah zombies are doing something to people that have no clue what they're doing and they are going to die several times before they learn. And then you have falling down from 3 steps and dying. Stepping on a rock and dying. Dying for no reason at all. Walls and doors killing you. Dieing on another server after getting shot and relogging. Maybe that's where the majority of PvE deaths come from? Because I can't understand how can someone die over and over again to zeds which I can easily ignore most of the time to the point that 84% of deaths would be to zeds.

Players being the main threat doesn't justify zombies being just indicators that there are people in town.

New players. I don't know how long you've been playing or when you started but when I was new I was killed again and again by zombies. I've seen new players crawling around in starter towns so I know they're still learning the zombie mechanics. Even the controls take a while to get used to so a lot of the thousands of new players are getting owned left and right by zombies. Once they master the zombies it's a different story.

[Candiru 1]

Totally agree on this. Might be a little fun gearing up but then it gets downright boring. Hunting for players or running for 1 hour to get where you want to go. There's no "survival" feeling to the game it's just shoot and kill on sight. Zombies are not a threat and it's as the creator of this thread says = The game is exactly the same, just PvP large scale. Zombies aren't even accounted for.

I always quit after being killed. What's the point in doing it all over again? Gearing up, surviving, getting killed.

Edited July 22, 2012 by Candiru

[Lookdavook 18]

In those areas, there are five times more zombies and they can all take three times the punishment of other zombies because of their mutation. And they see you from miles away. If you aren't heavily armed and able to get in there then you're going to turn zombie yourself.

Alright, I see u are very well experienced in the field of balancing. Now go home, kid.

[AzinGaming 60]

OP is a huge idiot and nobody should take his post seriously. Anyone who has played this game for longer than 5 minutes know that zombies have a huge effect on the gameplay. The OP is likely crying after being sniped and lost all of his gear.

PvP is the fun, dingus.

The original post even states that PvP is important and shouldn't change. You are such a massive idiot, you can't even understand the words used in the original post. The whole post is about making the zombies more challenging and says nothing at all to do with removing any of the PvP elements. What I've suggested is that the game be made harder.

I'm guessing that you've just got your first ever sniper rifle, managed to camp a seaside spawn location until an unarmed player appeared, killed him after missing seven or eight shots and are now fapping like a mad dingo and slapping yourself on the back because it has taken away some of the pain of the 20 or so times you just got owned by me and my friends. You are now a true PvPer, kid.

[JustThatEpic 72]

Dear fellow survivors,

First of all this mod is in Alpha, so it's going to change, probably fairly dramatically, before there's a final product, so if you're just coming here to post 'I love it as it is now, shut up,' then you've already assigned yourself to the losing camp. Even if you do love the current game state, it won't (and can't) persist in a way that a sellable game requires.

Why am I writing this post? Because my first 12 hours of gameplay on Day Z were amazing; a truly exciting and frightening experience. But after 12 hours, when I'd done the airfield, learned some things about zombie mechanics and could fully rearm in 30 minutes after a respawn, the game has lost all its pazazz for me.

Here is the problem with Day Z right now:

Zombies have no purpose in the game at present, and could be removed with little change to gameplay

Evidence to prove the point:

1. As long as you hold down W you cannot die to zombies.

If you have played the game for more than 12 hours, you should have worked this out by now. When you respawn, you just run around Chernogorsk or Elektra, pick up 5 zombies, then head into a building and lose them all. This is much better than sneaking; it makes you harder to shoot, and you are immune to zombie attack whilst running. Once you go through the building and ditch them, you can loot up and get a handgun.

2. Once you are armed, you are not only immune, but can remove them all from an area without any penalty.

Ok so making sound brings zombies, but what do you care? Just shoot the ones that turn up. But frankly, let's just move on to point 3:

3. Zombies are just irrelevant

There is not a single area worth going to that has any zombies in it that you actually NEED to kill

Stary Sobor, the NW Airfield, all the major towns - there is not one zombie in any of them that requires killing. It's totally fine to run around these places unarmed because the zombies, provided that you crouch run, will never see you.

4. Crouch Run makes you invisible

You can get absurdly close to zombies with this and they'll never spot you. If they do, then of course you just stand up and run away until you get to a building.

5. "Survival?" Then what next?

You all know what I mean. Got a water bottle, a knife, a hatchet and some matches? Go and live in the woods. Forever. Hunting pigs and eating pork every day. Hell, not much variety there, but at least you run zero risk of ever encountering a zombie or a human again.

At the point that you acquire a water bottle, a knife, a hatchet and some matches you have completed the game; there is nothing left to do. However wait... I've got an idea lads... let's...

6. Grief other players! There is nothing else to do late game.

So you've got your MA401, FAL or whatever your preferred Stary/Crash site weapon might be. You've got an Alice Pack with all the survival gear. You only have 2 choices. Sit in the woods, pondering why you've bothered to log in, or go to town and murder every Lee Enfield packing noob who pokes his head towards the power station/appartments/hospital/medical tents.

And why the hell not?

Killing other players turns a single bullet into a massive loot spawn. It's easy to do, gives some exciting gun battles at times when you come up against someone with the right mindset and is fun.

And yet, despite it being fun, I can't help but feel that something is missing from my current gameplay.

7. If you don't shoot every survivor you see on sight, you are doing it wrong.

I would much prefer that there was some kind of choice to this, or that I was wrong in mystatement, but ultimately if you don't kill on sight, you are a fool and you will be killed by some twitchy guy with a Lee Enfield. Sorry, but that's a fact. If the game does not punish banditry, then just as if stealing was not punished IRL, then it's going to be the normal action for the majority. The term "Punish" can be used loosely; there needs to be a big incentive for players to work together, to trade items, and to have something to do other than kill each others.

Whether or not you should kill players is not even a debate; I don't need their help to do anything. I do want their stuff. I suffer no penalty for murdering them. I don't care about the other gamer. And I expect them to do the same to me.

Take all the zombies out of Day Z and for anyone who has played more than 12 hours, the game is exactly the same; players are the only threat to you at any time.

Potential solutions:

1) There needs to be something to do. Something to give you an incentive to enter more and more dangerous areas. I love the idea of creating your own stories, but there simply isn't enough scope to do so unless it involves killing other players. Once you find your first machine gun, the zombies have no relevance to you any more. So...

2) YOU HAVE THE VIRUS.

Every player starts infected and requires increasing doses of antidote; antidote is only found in extremely dangerous areas. In those areas, there are five times more zombies and they can all take three times the punishment of other zombies because of their mutation. And they see you from miles away. If you aren't heavily armed and able to get in there then you're going to turn zombie yourself. And you know what? Going alone just is not an option because of the zombie numbers. You need four or five guys.

Not only that but maybe at any one time there are four potential locations for the one dose of antidote; you won't know which until you've shot your way in.

But the antidote only staves things off so long and a few days later you better get back there.

Oh yeah, I've heard of a game that's player vs. player, with absolute no zombies in it...

It's called the regular Arma II servers, play it, take a break for DayZ, feel better.

[AzinGaming 60]

Alright, I see u are very well experienced in the field of balancing. Now go home, kid.

I doubt that what I've suggested would even prove that challenging. Since the current zombies present zero challenge, multiplying them by five might even make me stop smoking whilst I was playing for a short amount of time.

Don't assume that everyone is as bad as you.

[Virfortis 111]

I say Rocket needs to have 2 weeks of mass "I told you so" experimenting.

First week: Remove the zombies, see what changes.

Second week: Remove PvP, see what changes.

Then restore everything, let the players decide. I'm sure most people will realize that DayZ wouldn't be DayZ without griefing, or random zombie encounters.

It would totally be L4D right? Like...seriously...just LOOK AT IT! No shooting people OMG L4D L4D!

Seriously guys, this all stems from unrealistic PvP, that's about it.

[Smissen 0]

I agree with you AzinGaming. I don't have Dayz yet,but from all the ingame footage I have seen yet,the most were PvP encounters. I don't

say that they should remove all PvP entirely but that they should make the zombies harder to kill,ammo and weaponry become more scarce or

challenges that make the player more busy or make PvP less attractive.

[rybo 171]

Player vs player IS the excitement of DayZ. Zombies ARE THE CATALYST.

Understand this. PLEASE.

What Zombies???

[patrik_poulsen@hotmail.com 9]

You think to much

[calabam 55]

Dunno only been playing this over a week but me and 2-3 friends are killin sum zombies and hunting other players for me its great fun , also the zombies are a way of spotting other players etc etc and any idiots we have seen running though town we have happily blown there heads off , folk are saying this is only and alpha and it will change more and more well i have played loads of mods over the years and usually they tend to be best at the start and end up getting worse not better . The difference here is this mod is very popular so fingers crossed for me if you want more zombie killing its gona take tonnes of work to get them to behave differently , instead of the stupid zombies who run like a train and u cant barely hit unless your inside a building or the fact the climb 50 ft ladders after you or when you tryin to shoot them keep appearing reappearing , If you want more grouping up and non pvp the game would need to go more mmo'ish and mabay have mobs /npc's that required more players to kill etc . At the moment theres zero point in roaming around just killing zombies and just stayin alive on a online server this could be done offline in a single player game ... they fact is its a freked up would in dayz so get used to it and kill everything you see !

Edited July 24, 2012 by calabam

[Kalle^ 11]

I know, I have only seen 1 guy who has talked! And that was guy who I accidentaly speaked Finnish on Swedish server. He turned out to be Finnish and I and my bud with my M16 and his Lee let this guy with Hatchet get away! I feel really good, normally I always have to kill people because they start shooting us!

[haviv[3rdid] 57]

pvp was supposed to be one piece of a larger pie. People who learned the system got bored surviving and made it the main staple because other pieces are missing.

Understand THIS, please.

This is DayZ. This is YOUR story. Understand this, please.

[The Batman 75]

I'm guessing that you've just got your first ever sniper rifle, managed to camp a seaside spawn location until an unarmed player appeared, killed him after missing seven or eight shots and are now fapping like a mad dingo and slapping yourself on the back because it has taken away some of the pain of the 20 or so times you just got owned by me and my friends. You are now a true PvPer, kid.

While I don't agree with what you're saying this did make me laugh so thankyou.

I think if the zombies are made harder, you risk alienating new players entirely. As has been stated over and over again in this thread, new players die over and over again to zombies until they can figure them out and how to avoid them. If the zombies were even tougher (i.e more of, being able to run in buildings and easier to aggro) you're going to get new players giving up because they can't physically get away from them and are greeted with many frustrating deaths.

Sure, DayZ is MEANT to be extremely hard - I get that; and I get that experienced players don't have the difficulty that new players have. But there has to be a compromise at some point, else new players can't become experienced players.

[Smissen 0]

But isn't that the same case with mass PvP encounters ? If I was killed over and over again by players,I would also give up.

[shikanosuke 2]

I can think of two changes that are completely doable and each would give zombies some relevance in survival.

The first would be to make being hit by a zombie either guaranteed or 50% chance to give you an infection, which is realistic considering the thing injuring you is made entirely of deseased rotten flesh; this might make it over challenging for newer players but no one who wants a zombie survival game is going to be stopped by that and it might even give people more incentive to team up for survival benefits. Zombies would always demand your attention and the threat of handling them would need to be taken into account forcing you to at least acknowledge that they are there and they arent literally HARMLESS on their own.

Second change would be either a more realistic limited sprint in which there is SOME POINT at which you cant run fast enough to avoid being hit anymore so that you would have incentive to actually sneak around and really have to deal with zombies that get on you, or a better hunger/thirst system that would result in players occasionally finding a time when they actually need more food/water than they have found or could easily find looking nearly anywhere, so keeping up supplies long term becomes concern, not really zombie related but it would help the game out.

I personally think that any zombie survival game really NEEDS to be challenging to survive in singleplayer, and have multiplayer as an addition to the experience and not the only thing that makes it even remotely worth playing.

So anyone who knows how to code want to make a modified version of dayz with features like that? Or is that not an unrealistic hope?

[svisketyggeren 662]

I would hardly say dayz is the same without the zombies...

If u had taken out the zombies I would probaly lose 70% of my playerkills since its the alerted zombie sounds that usually informs me that there is a other player in the vicinity....most players dont bother to sneak around.

From a distance I also know if there players around if the zombies are alerted.

But I have to agree that zombies could have been a bigger challenge...I dont think its good gameplay that u can just run through some trees to lose zombie aggro.

Some areas like the airfields need harder zombies, maybe zombies that run faster than u, zombies that can take a head shot or 3. And more of them.

Adding a stamina system to affect running would also be nice

Edited February 28, 2013 by svisketyggeren

[silky mick 0]

I agree with OP, zombies arent a major threat, they are more annoying than anything else. it seems to me that everyone's objective is to gear up in cherno/electro then head straight to NW airfield to get a sniper then just camp a city picking off all the bambies. Yawn.

whenever im in cherno/electro the zombie count is pathetic. I can fire the lee enfield as much as I want and the Zeds dont get aggro I dont know why unless im literally 5 metres away from them then they get aggro.

every player shoots on sight, I dont trust anyone but if I see them first I dont usually open fire unless they have the bandit skin. I like doing PVP now and again but I think some people need to head over to call of duty or Battlefield 3 because all they do is kill players and show no interest in the zombies.

I like the idea of everyone working together to obtain a mutual gain such as an antidote but like many other posters have said these places would just get camped and it would be even more annoying than usual to play.

for me they should make areas like towns and cities literally over run with zombies and have the odd few in the woods/fields so they are a constant presence within the game.

[svenbreakfast 231]

It's zombies. Zombies are easy to deal with if you're armed and cautious. People in zombie films die because they are stupid, just like in DayZ mod. If you have yet to be in a firefight that was made complicated by zombie presence that just tells me you're green.

[Max Planck 7174]

What is the point of bumping a 7 months old thread?

The discussion here concerns an older version of DayZ, it makes no sense to bring it back up.

The necromancer even went of topic...

[Fraggle (DayZ) 15720]

Max I agree, it's so old that the original point of the topic is lost.

Locked.