Slow Zombies

[tatsuri 7]

It's just logical.

On start players begin with painkillers, a flashlight and one single bandage. They go scavenging but it's day time so unless they crawl there's a 75% chance they will be randomly spotted by a zombie anywhere between 10 - 30 ft away and now it's chasing them at full speed.

Choices stand at:

- let him munch on you while you walk around trying to find a house to kite him in

- Leg it to the nearest forest and hope you don't attract the whole town (which is most likely gonna happen)

- crouch sprint for a bush and dive into in the hopes the break of LOS is enough to make him lose aggro (not likely)

- shoot him and attract EVERY zombie and player nearby.

- die.

It's not a very practical platter.

Fast zombies are near impossible to shoot if they're moving, seriously it's stupid with the added graphical glitches. I typical let them hit me so I can get a clean shot (more than once i've been hit by friendly fire on behalf of a teleporting zombie.)

Going inside rarely helps anyways as zombies sometimes retain their speed indoors and then you're screwed.

Being spotted causes an instant fight or flee response rather than allowing planning and analyzing what to do now you've screwed up. This is a survival simulator; the fight or flee response should be left for being trapped or encountering a bandit. A lone Zombie is small fry. A pack of zombies is trouble.

A single hit from a zombie could be the cause of infection or a broken leg. Shouldn't we have at least a little bit of a chance to avoid that hit once we're spotted?

Sprinting away costs you precious hunger and thirst. You're on red thirst and unarmed you attempt a raid on a small town only to be spotted almost instantly. You leg it for a few hundred meters till he loses aggro. Now you're on flashing thirst and red hunger. You're also bleeding.

Although the introduction of slow and shambling zombies may sound like an easymode I do have some tweaks to help the adjustment to retain high difficulty:

-Speed. Yups straight up in the topic title it should be reduced.

Their current neutral speed is great what i suggest is only a slight increase on that speed for a chasing zombie. This makes the treat not of being instantly mauled but being caught if you don't keep moving.

Crawlers could have a max speed of a crawl sprint as they close in for a much more threatening zombie among the slow ones.

- Zombies track by scent, this is obvious and DayZ zombies do so also. I propose ramping this sense way up.

Of course the scent following rule should only apply after a zombie makes visual contact.

Zombies would follow the smell of fresh flesh for kilometers if they sensed no easier source.

Of course this may sound ridiculous in terms of escape but introducing deodorizers or even just bathing or walking in water sources to wash your scent clean would counteract having them follow you forever.

Also there could be a 25-50% chance of light sources or wildlife distracting them from their prey (possibly only temporarily.)

This would make scavenging much more nerve wracking as being spotted without knowing could lead to some tricky situations such as where a single zombie has spotted you and as he follows you his moans attract others and while you're looting a house they are slowly surrounding the house and blocking off your escape.

Spending to much time in a town or city could attract the attention of a horde!

This would help shut down wannabe campers as if they haven't been careful enough they may get swarmed when they least expect it.

Also you would have to be much more careful setting up camp as if you've got a trail then zombies could be swarming all over it when you return.

I feel this would bring a really nerve wracking suspense to raiding towns and would force more planning and emphasis on stealth and strategy to avoid zombies at all costs.

If it were possible to have wind direction affect scent as well it could bring much more depth to raids.

Having a set distance that they will follow could also help force players to explore more of the map as they head inland to avoid a horde if they're cut off from water.

- More zombies.

If it's possible to increase the zombie populous without sacrificing stability then with slow zombies it's a great idea. Pack towns and Fill the cities. With the threat of being swarmed always looming why not make being swarmed unexpectedly a terrifying ordeal.

- Hearing doesn't cause aggro but attracts zombies from further away and a predator would let his buddies know he found dinner.

Even the faintest sound can attract a predator but they wouldn't attack a sound if they don't know what caused it.

This forces players to keep moving during raids and really makes you question whether shooting someone on sight is the best idea.

Also zombies should be able to alert each other of prey. Alerting even one zombie could be a real threat if there's a few around.

Keep the zombie call restricted to the immediate area. Have them call out whenever they directly spot and/or attack you.

With a zombie horde always a looming threat players will have to question every sound they make. "Did i just step on concrete? Oh man i better keep moving."

This would also cause a lot of tension as you have to sum up whether sprinting is really the best choice.

- Sight.

Because the threat really begins once you've been spotted this should be reduced (or rather tweaked) to be only LOS and a really bad range (only a few meters.)

Light at night should attract them from extremely far though. Basically if a light source is in their LOS within 4km they are attracted to it. If you're within sight of a city and you light a fire. It's a deathly mistake.

Distinguishing light from the surroundings would be a lot easier then distinguishing prey at night.

- Slow zombies also allow some great baiting and kiting strats ;D

Edited August 6, 2012 by HansGruber

[ThatGuyCalledReptile 314]

Zeds need to be harder.

They need to be Faster.

They need to be Better.

That way our work will be never over.

[xM4rk 0]

Holy wall. TL:DL?

[BearGravy 53]

Right now the only thing I am scared of are bandits. Zombies need to step it up, not slow it down.

[tatsuri 7]

Meh, everyone has their opinion and this in mine. Fast zombies were always a Hollywood creation to increase the pacing of their stories. But you know, whatever 'simulation' doesn't mean anything hear right.

[ApriL 28]

Slow zombies will mean more zombie to keep it balanced. There's only a certain amount of zombies you can have before shit starts to lag. Players are the problem, not the zombies. Leave the zombies as they are, there needs to be more co-operation between players and we will get in that in the future.

[tatsuri 7]

Really? The zombies are fine?

dude they chase you for no reason I've seen countless situations where players are crawling and zombies gained aggro from ridiculous ranges. If they were slow and there was more it would be far more balanced. Lag issues are being worked on regardless and If you've ever actually played ARMA you'd know there can be a hell of a lot of NPCs on a multiplayer map before is lags.

[Toffe (DayZ) 7]

Like when you're trying to help a friend but they just teleport all over the place, that needs to be fixed asap. I'm okay with them being fast though.

I don't think you should have to "tank" the zombies to actually hit them (to be fair only some situations require this).

And yeah, random unjustified aggro from 100m+ when crawling in MGS style.

[Mos1ey 6301]

I'm getting aggro from 20+ metres even when slow crawling these days, zombies are really buggy right now. :(

I don't think they can increase the numbers but better AI and more health would do it for me. It seems a bit ridiculous that they drop in 1 AK shot to the chest.

[Rick Grimer 29]

I expected the Walking dead. I got Olympics 2012.

[Smiric 11]

I really like the ideas listed here.. If there's a way of drastically increasing the amount of zombies without it lagging then this would be great in my eyes, then again I've never really been a fan of fast zombies anyway.. Much prefer tons of slow ones!

[TehBigRedOne 1]

Its hard as hell when they're attacking you right as you spawn.

- You have nothing to kill it with

-Running into the forest doesn't always work and it can bring you into the middle of nowhere

- First hit 75% of the time makes you bleed so if you're in the middle of a town you are screwed

-Not always buildings to run through

-You are completely vulnerable to player who wants a number next to his murders

-Sometimes by the time you are able to escape while bleeding you are at a point where you can't even see anything anymore

[tatsuri 7]

This is all assumptions but from what I've gathered during my time here and playing DayZ the game is still just a baby and the Lag issues WILL be fixed as really they seem to be mostly bugs from ARMA anyways. Plus this is coding and if i told you about DayZ even just a year ago you'd have thought it were a joke. Games get better every single year so bitching about lag issues in an alpha is like bitching at a retard for drooling.

[necroslord 73]

This is a tough topic. I would really prefer numerous, tough, slow shambling zombies with better tracking that keep a lot of pressure on you while in town buildings. However yes, too many zombies can get troublesome.

So then we have fast zombies that can beat the crap out of you if you are careless / unlucky. The problem is that their behaviour is not consistent. Also they don't need to be uber fast. Left 4 Dead is a good example of this. Those are fast zombies, but not ridiculously fast, and they offer a good gameplay. Zombies here have to be fixed before any balancing can take place.

Hopefully in the standalone version we will have zombies that don't look so ridiculous when they chase you. Because by the way, they aren't scary, nor immersive, just plain annoying.

[tatsuri 7]

Rocket, wherever you are I hope you have time to read this and at least consider my points as even with the current zombie population I believe slow zombies have the potential to greatly increase the fun of DayZ and solve several problems associated with zombie difficulty scaling. I mean the game's supposed to be hard, that's how we want it.

But it needs to be fair.

L4D zombies don't even run this fast... not to mention it's plausible to shoot them while they run whereas in DayZ shooting at a moving zombie will most likely just waste ammo and attract more zombies. They are simply to buggy to shoot at their current run speed.

Also zombies easily outrun players unless they are fully sprinting (2xW) which can make losing them pretty much impossible with the current ai detection.

At the least i beg you to ponder on having the zombies slowly wander towards you till they are within a few feet or until they make physical contact and then once they know you're prey they run at you. Basically giving us a chance to put some distance between the zombie to find a potential hiding spot before you're forced to shoot or run.

[pulse89 0]

I would prefer lots of slow zombies Walking/Dawn of the Dead style but I understand that because of engine limitations this is difficult so for now I'm happy with the 28 Days Later style and can even live with the erratic moving and Olympic sprinter zombies, what really needs to be fixed RIGHT NOW is the spawning,

I hate going into a town with a total of 8 buildings, doing reconnaissance and counting approximately 15 zeds then leaving the town with no ammo, 50 zombie kills under my belt and another 10 zombies on my tail. The no-spawn radius should be increased to around 100-150m and the spawn rate reduced.

[Mos1ey 6301]

You guys know the zombies currently run the same speed as a player and because they have to stop to attack you they're actually slower than you, right? If you keep your eyes and ears open you shouldn't really be getting hit that often, even when shit hits the fan and you end up with 5+ zombies tailing you...

[BalborValis 4]

I'd prefer slightly shower zombies, maybe 80-90% slower than full run speed for normal zombies, but make them headshot kill only. Weapons aren't that easy to come by at the start although you can get by with a hatchet for a while. Also zombies should be totally silent unless they are aggroed

[necroslord 73]

You guys know the zombies currently run the same speed as a player and because they have to stop to attack you they're actually slower than you, right? If you keep your eyes and ears open you shouldn't really be getting hit that often, even when shit hits the fan and you end up with 5+ zombies tailing you...

They don't have the same speed as you. They are way faster than you. When a zombie aggroes from really far away, even if you turn around and run at max speed he wll catch up with you in no time. The only reason they don't beat you to death is that since they have to stop to attack they don't get to land a hit as long as you keep running (unless you lag).

[tatsuri 7]

You guys know the zombies currently run the same speed as a player and because they have to stop to attack you they're actually slower than you, right? If you keep your eyes and ears open you shouldn't really be getting hit that often, even when shit hits the fan and you end up with 5+ zombies tailing you...

So you assume everyone wants to run screaming through the city?

I'm usually crouch walking/sprinting and I rarely stand unless I'm inland or saluting so actually that means me and most of this community i'd wager are slower than a typical zombie in DayZ.

THINK about your argument.

[Carebear Baddie 47]

You didn't add "use my silent axe that will attract no zombies and can even be used to pre-emptively kill a zombie before he even sees me" in your list of stuff you can do. You should try that.

Also, don't crawl so close to the zombies.

[VVired 27]

I don't agree with your reasons, but I do agree with the notion of walking zombies/infected. My reason is simply for the sake of continuity, as in zombies should not switch from running to walking just because they are indoors. My ideal aggroed zombies are those that move at the same pace as non-aggroed zombies, regardless of indoors or outdoors, more plentiful, and require a lot more body shots to kill (but one headshot nonetheless). Also their detect range should be higher just to match the difficulty and to give that "horde" experience of being surrounded by a mass of zombies. If someone is to provide the argument that they are not dead, but infected so they should be able to run, then I believe that is false for a very simple reason. If a virus/infection/parasite/etc does take over the human body yet keeps it alive, it would be reasonable for the loss of a large degree of motor skills, thus minimizing the ability to run, at least with success.

[Carebear Baddie 47]

I don't agree with your reasons, but I do agree with the notion of walking zombies/infected. My reason is simply for the sake of continuity, as in zombies should not switch from running to walking just because they are indoors. My ideal aggroed zombies are those that move at the same pace as non-aggroed zombies, regardless of indoors or outdoors, more plentiful, and require a lot more body shots to kill (but one headshot nonetheless). Also their detect range should be higher just to match the difficulty and to give that "horde" experience of being surrounded by a mass of zombies. If someone is to provide the argument that they are not dead, but infected so they should be able to run, then I believe that is false for a very simple reason. If a virus/infection/parasite/etc does take over the human body yet keeps it alive, it would be reasonable for the loss of a large degree of motor skills, thus minimizing the ability to run, at least with success.

Zombies walking inside is a bug.

Also, they are infected, as the home page says:

A 225 km2 open world post-soviet state and one of the areas hit by a new and presently unknown infection which has wiped out most of the world's population. You are one of the few who have survived and now you must search this new wasteland in order to fight for your life against what is left of the indigenous population, now infected with the disease.

[VVired 27]

I know it is a bug, but so far it remains unfixed. From my understanding, its due to the complex and buggy nature of pathing in the mod, so why not just make aggroed zombies walk? It would fix a lot of the zig-zagging issues and Arma's hit detector on zombies. If you're providing the fact that they're infected to counter my argument, please read the final segment of my former paragraph.

[Bricrue 0]

I'm with you 100% Hans.