Trail of Corpses

[terrylava 0]

People complain that after gearing up, there's nothing to do but kill other players. People complain that KoS is ruining their enjoyment of the simulation. People argue that in a real zombie apocalypse, people would probably be killing many more zombies than players. Well, I feel that this mechanic may have a solution to all these problems.

The Trail of Corpses

After killing fresh humans, the infected smell the bodies and follow the trail of corpses to their creators.

After killing 2 players, 1 zombie will spawn every 15 minutes within 400m of the murderer.

After killing 4 players, the 1 zombie spawns within 400m of the murderer, and one spawns at 375m.

After 8, the 3rd zombie spawns at 350m, and so on to 100m.

Of course, these numbers may need to be tweaked for balance.

To remove the effects of the Trail of Corpses, the murderer must kill twice as many (Non trail of corpse?) zombies as players that he killed to cause the effect. The bodies of the infected mask the odor of the Trail of Corpses. This serves a dual purpose. Making a high murder count mean more than just being a dick, and also, you see a herd of infected in the middle of nowhere? Trail of Corpses. Better than a bandit skin.

[wtfosaurus 30]

Something similar to this would be if the corpses of the people you killed became zombies. However, I don't there isn't an authentic explanation for making them spawn into a zombie.

[terrylava 0]

Yeah there isn't a logical realistic explanation for uninfected corpses turning into zombies in the universe of infected human type zombies as opposed to supernatural zombies. The trail of corpses idea sort of has some sense of fitting in the dayZ universe as it adds a level of hard to one of the upper tiers of gameplay. People want more challenge after getting kitted out, this will provide that, as well as take some pressure off of newer/less skilled players while they are learning the mechanics through PVE. If the trail of corpses isn't taken cared of by killing zombies, other players will become more cautious when they see a zombie away from a known spawn point. Sure the zombies probably should spawn near the player corpses, but what fun would that be?

[ryokukitsune 5]

I think this is a good idea but a tad flawed. The idea really only applies to ax raids as those would be the only one with enough splatter to get a decent scent trail off of. If that where also the case then wounded players would need this mechanic as well because just jogging around with a flesh wound would attract the horde and so far the declared fact that “zombies have a heightened... sense of smell...” hasn't come into play. Might be worth Rocket looking into.

For the rest of the discussion as to characters coming back as zombies I like that Idea and its not difficult to imagine the possibility of a full immunity or a partial immunity. Soldier corpses are evidence of this. Some of them are dead dead and some of them are doing the rot walk. The same could apply to characters, say 1:5 chance of a character getting up after death regardless of how they died (lest a 50cal to the head) after about 1-2 minuets they would get back up and start shuffling away. If the bandit was out for their loot then he'd have to make sure the deed was truly done and by the time he got to the corpse it would likely be in range to aggro the horde.

This also opens up the door to the landmine zombie. Zombies that look like their dead but are actually waiting for prey. Dependent on how damaged their body is (fractures or excessive “head trauma”) means they can't be mobile like other zombies so they just wait for prey and latch on to ankles when something gets to close. This type of thing would be a 50:50 chance for character zombies that actually roll a zombie state so that even if they aren't moving when someone goes to loot them there is a pretty big chance that they'll still get up and bite the crap out of you for violating their personal space.

This makes it so that if any player gets close to them they have to take them out before they can loot them. Twitchy fingers would likely report their position to the entire nearby horde unless they had a silenced gun. Since the landmine zombies are opportunistic they also have a very high chance of making a player bleed out so they'd also have to patch themselves up.

Bottom line, think twice about killing someone or at least make sure they're dead before you stick your hand near an undead bear trap.