"Scaling" zombie difficulty based on food availability

[hkurban 31]

Based partially on an idea rocket mentioned in an interview.

As it stands right now, all Zombies move fast (unless they are "hoppers" or "crawlers"). This occurs no matter where you go, all zombies move at the same speed.

My suggestion is, what if this was not the case, and zombie speed scaled based on how malnourished the zombies are. For instance, highly traveled areas with lots of players yields "healthier" zombies that can run full speed. But say you go into a small town up north that has little loot and thus very rarely traveled by players. As a result, the zombies in this area are underfed, and have little energy to chase after you. Zombies in these areas might be reduced to a mere shamble.

These lightly traveled remote areas would, as a result, be a little safer to approach. While the loot might not be as valuable in these small towns, you have a greater chance of making your escape. Unless of course, more players decide to loot the smaller towns. Then more players die there, and the zombies get "healthier" and as a result faster. When the zombies get faster, fewer players will want to "risk it" and some will head for safer looting points, driving the zombie speed back down. It's a vicious cycle.

This might be accused of being an attempt to "nerf" zombies, and in a way, it might, but remember that the areas where players frequent the most such as Cherno or NW Airfield will have zombies just as fast as now, if not faster. This is more of an idea to encourage exploration of the entire map by means of creating a "path of least resistance" to the smaller less dangerous towns.

Now as far as how the mechanics of this could go, I could see this tracked in a couple of ways.

Best case scenario, this could be done on a server-by-server basis, but if pinging the frequency of travel in a certain area puts to much strain on the server, then it could be done globally as sort of a DayZ-wide aggregate.

Zombie health could be determined a number of ways. First, you could have it track the number of deaths in the last X amount of hours X distance from the zombie spawn location. This is probably the most memory intensive version. A second way would be to track how often players pass through a certain area, or how frequently a particular zombie spawn area is triggered. Lastly, the zombie health could just be determined via a player "heat map" of activity that updates every X hours. It's less dynamic, but would as a result require fewer resources on the server's end.

As an afterthought, ambient temperature could affect zombies in a similar way to players. Zombies exposed to a cold environment would be less energetic and not follow the players with the same vigor (this of course being during extreme temperatures that drop the player to around 32 degree temp, not brisk temperature that only brings you down to 40.

Edited July 31, 2012 by HKurban

[Senrain 148]

Wow this is actually a very good suggestion. +1

This would be something I'd like to see.

[Grodenn 53]

I like it! Maybe even adjust the amount of zombies in the area with the same or similar system? (Gief way more zombies than now!).

[liquidcactus 719]

Good thinking there duderino.. ive still got major hang ups on how fast the zombies are in general still ! waaay to fast as it is !... hopefully they slow them down a touch sometime soon but yes like your idea

^___^

[hkurban 31]

Good thinking there duderino.. ive still got major hang ups on how fast the zombies are in general still ! waaay to fast as it is !... hopefully they slow them down a touch sometime soon but yes like your idea

^___^

I prefer "His Dudeliness", you know, if you're not into the whole brevity thing.

[TheStoryteller01 12]

I like the idea a lot as it makes the engine react to measurable player activity without rewarding or punishing player actions.