Change Axe to Secondary + Slower Zombies

[TGH 160]

Then explain to me how by being stealthy, a zombie can see me like 200m away? i follow the proper way to be stealthy but the system being jittery, have the axe as a secondary would help

Yup, happens to me all the time. Proning through a place avoiding zombies at all cost. (AK as main weapon, hatchet in my toolbelt) a random zombie somehow runs from 18 lightyears away to come and get me, I have to drop my AK on the floor because I dont want to alert every zombie in the area, then i have to put my hatchet as my primary again and then reload it and then kill the zombie (already taken over 1000 damage by this time) Just seems logical to switch to the axe easy or atleast a secondary knife slashy weapon lol.

[repstar 0]

I agree with making the hatchet a secondary weapon or adding a less powerful one as a secondary, no matter how stealthy you're being zombies always seem to magnetize towards you (for me at least) which makes avoiding them even harder, then having to mess about dropping weapons to get the hatchet out to kill them without shooting and drawing even more attention to yourself is just really irritating. The speed of the zombies and how long it takes to lose them is silly too, they walk around like they're on the verge of collapsing, or crawl in some cases, then suddenly they can move at the speed of light when they have somehow seen you with their rotten eyes from 700 miles away, I wouldn't want them so slow that you can escape after running 50 yards, but with their current speed they could easily win a gold medal in the 100m sprint.

[TGH 160]

I agree with making the hatchet a secondary weapon or adding a less powerful one as a secondary, no matter how stealthy you're being zombies always seem to magnetize towards you (for me at least) which makes avoiding them even harder, then having to mess about dropping weapons to get the hatchet out to kill them without shooting and drawing even more attention to yourself is just really irritating. The speed of the zombies and how long it takes to lose them is silly too, they walk around like they're on the verge of collapsing, or crawl in some cases, then suddenly they can move at the speed of light when they have somehow seen you with their rotten eyes from 700 miles away, I wouldn't want them so slow that you can escape after running 50 yards, but with their current speed they could easily win a gold medal in the 100m sprint.

They would get atleast a 7.8s in the 100m sprint.

Edited July 30, 2012 by aYdee

[Morotstomten 34]

id settle for zombies running equally fast as players, in the beginning as soon as i get an axe my tactic is simple, run like a fat boy chasing the ice cream truck aggroing as many zombies as possible and run into a building and pick them off one by one, and during the course of aggroing zombies once in a while one aggros and sprints like crazy.. away from you, around twice as fast as you can run yourself, its quite obvious they run faster than you, more than once have i aggroed a zombie from far away and running away from it only to have it breathing down my neck seconds later.

and as people have said countless times modern zombies arent dead corpses revived by voodoo magic that limps forward with arms stretched out, hands hanging down moaning "braaaaaaaaaainsss!", though some of them would be rotting by now from lack of food and/or the unattended injuries they sustained if their zombiness was caused by lovebite(s) from another zombie, limiting their physical capabilities(maybe the crawling zombies are supposed to take that role? or are they crawling for fun?)

i do agree that meele weapons should go into secondary, id take an axe over pistol, ideally id like to see a melee weapon slot but thats probably a bitch to make in arma2

[longjohns (DayZ) 0]

Definitely agree, you should be able to use both but I think they should change the damage of the axe, maybe it's a 2 shot instead of 1 or something.

[Chris! 5]

If you have the axe equipped and your pistol is out the axe is sheathed on your belt, why can't we have the axe on your belt, primary in hands, and pistol in your holster? If you want to take out the axe you can use the binocular animation where the rifle/shotgun is rested against your chest with your hands free for say..... an axe?

[TGH 160]

Hope they change the axe expecially lol.

[bloodriot 13]

I've been thinking a bit about the melee weapons and I've thought of some ways it could be made more accessible. While some may seem to ease the experience too far, some of it is to benefit other needlessly complicated mechanics or bugs effects.

If some of these ideas are impractical or downright impossible due to engine limitation, then never mind, just food for thought.

First off. a captain obvious moment but please get rid of the reloading of the hatchet requirement on equip.

The crowbar feels a bit useless unless you didn't find a hatchet... and as it stands now, i've seen about 10 hatchets to each crowbar. Should be removed or given a purpose(example: make loot crates or locked footlockers that needs to be pried open).

As for the primary weapon to melee weapon switch... here goes:

I think the hatchet, as a toolbelt item should not need to be equiped in the primary or secondary slot. Just make it available to wield via the mouse wheel without needing to move things to and from your primary slot.

My biggest issue with having to switch primary to hatchet (or secondary for that matter) is that you need, not only to have 10 slots in your backpack for the gun, but also an additional number of slots equal to the number of magazines in both the backpack and main inventory or risk loosing items. Dropping the gun also drops magazines automatically and i'm always very weary of dropping items on the floor in fear i lose them to a bug.

Not only is this clunky as hell in good arma fashion (except in arma you don't need to be constantly moving items around the inventory), but you are also loosing inventory eficiency as you must keep reserved slots just for this reason, and the more magazines, the worse it gets.

I'd even go as far as being whilling to have reduced backpack slots to offset this, but at least every slto you have could be used and the interface would be so much easier.

[NightRipper 284]

I'm pretty sure in the in-game item description for the hatchet it says that the hatchet is one-handed, so making it a secondary would make sense.

[Greenshift 3]

Me and my friends were playing last night we geared up with some pretty nice guns and we were pretty happy because it was the first time we actually got such great weapons and we were geared up pretty nicely, so we headed to the airfield. We proned pretty much everywhere just to be safe and somehow a Zombie seen us and came charging towards us, We had to go into a hanger and take the zombie out. Then about 3 hundred million trillion zombies came pouring in so we had to waste a ton of ammo and make a HUGE ammount of noise so the entire universe could hear our gun shots. I really think the Axe should be a secondary weapon, because they you could easily swap from your main AK74 or Sniper straight to the axe and take out the zombies without making any noise at all. I think it also makes sense that you could put an axe on your back whilst holding your gun or vice versa. Personally I'd much prefer a secondary as an axe instead of a pistol as you make no noise at all.

I also think Zombies should be slower, they seem to limp around like their lower body is completley drained and a dying corpse, but as soon as you aggro them or they see you, boom they come running like Usain Bolt at 9000MPH, also sometimes when you try to lose them by running through trees (if there is no buildings around) they dont seem to get stuck and they keep following you, I just think it would be nice if they made them slower, not SUPER slow but just a bit slower than humans so you could outrun them for a while and then they would get lost behind eventually and lose you.

Tell me what you guys think about this! ;)

I agree, I ran into a town that had next to NO ground cover, even prone zombies will see you from a bit of a distance away, without grass around they will lock on you quick. I ran into a house that had no back door and a friend had one rather loud gun and I had an AK Kobra and OMG did the zombies keep coming, I ran out of ammo as the last one came through the door, my friend logged out so that pretty much saved us.

Is it just me or does gun fire actually spawn zombies not just attract them? If so STOP IT!!! I think you should be able to run into a town wipe out all zombies and have at least 3 minutes or even 2 minutes before zombies begin spawning.

My group saw me raid a deer stand where one zombie had gotten stuck under the deer stand, I shot him in the head and 6 zombies exploded out of him, it was crazy. Get a handle on the spawn rates I know this is a hard game of survival but either make that hatchet a side arm weapon or CHILL with the crazy zombie spawn.

[TGH 160]

I agree with all responses above me and under my last post lol, hope they do implement this change.

[BalborValis 4]

Why not just allow hatchets to be used as a weapon direct from the tool belt, if you can sling the primary weapon over your shoulder or holster a pistol when not using it then this is not unrealistic. And it would not make killing zombies with the hatchet any easier than someone only armed with a hatchet. Currently for fighting zombies, a hatchet and a pistol if a far more effective set up than someone with a pistol and assault rifle, mainly because the assault rifle (or shot gun) would make too much noise. In a survivor group, having 1-2 dedicated Hatchet armed members would be very effective for taking out large groups of aggroed zombies once you get inside without attracting more zombies and workout waisting lots of ammo.