Reform of the zombie mechanism

[murhis 4]

At first I want to say that I am aware of other threads about ideas of renewing zombies, but I wanted to gather my own thoughts on a new one.

Zombie apocalypse is a great idea in the game, but at the current state they are mostly just annoing feature of the game and the reason is because of the few major drawbacks on the mechanism how zombies are behaving.

First and the biggest drawback is the aggro system. Currently zombies are basically having just 2 mindsets 1) randomly roaming around the place and 2) running to the end of the world till they catch you or die. Aggro system really needs to have some other states than on/off. Especially this is a big problem when the game includes PVP and majority of the weapons(unless you have 9mm or a silenced weapon) are luring every zombie from couple of hundreds meter diameter. This feature basically renders every loud weapon useless if you play this game "by the book" aka. not disconnecting when you have gazillion zombies running after you. Every PVP hot spot areas are close to zombie infested areas.

So what I'm suggesting is instead of zombies having just a on/off aggro they should have multiple different states on their aggro mechanism. I'm gonna give you an example of the aggro states in a numbered list:

1) Random roaming

- Roaming around the place like they are currently doing.

2) Curiosity mode

- Approaching at the normal speed towards the area of sound / movement source.

- Only a slight sound / movement will cause this state.

- After a short time turning back to a random roaming state.

3) Rage mode

- Approaching at the full speed to the area of sound / movement source.

- Loud sound / clearly visible movement will cause this state.

- After some time turning back to a curiosity mode and et cetera.

4) Lock on mode

- Chasing the target(survivor/bandit) with the full speed.

- LoS(Line of sight) to the target at the close range will cause this state.

- Turning back to a rage mode if loosing LoS to the target and et cetera.

These 4 different states would add so much more depth to zombies behavior and they would offer different tactic options to deal with them. Like go into hiding, luring them away from their roaming areas, aggroing them by the purpose, etc. Instead of having just 2 options 1) to shoot till they die(and aggro even more zombies) or 2) sneak past them. Also this would offer nice PVP zombie tactics as well, like luring a zombie horde to other players area. :)

Second problem is their path of movement when they are aggroed. I don't know is it intentional that Zeds are zigzagging when they are running at you, but that just doesn't feel right. I don't know about Zeds intelligence abilities, but I would assume them to act only with their instict. Which is basically chase the human and eat him. So I would guess they would come directly at you without any Matrix bullet dodging moves. Also one relevant point about the running is that zeds really should run faster than you. So you wouldn't be able to run all around the map without zeds catching you.

Last but not the least is the zombies spawning. In my opinion the only real major problem with it is that zombies could spawn literally next to you and that I wish to be a different. Also I dunno how the zombie spawning triggers now, but it feels like when you enter the town they suddenly start spawning in the town. I think it would be better if they would start spawning earlier than you have the visual on / entered the actual town.

My Zed cents.

[Chocolate_Fantasy 1]

Sounds like something for the beta, really, but I'd love to see this in the game.

[Blazinschryvman 0]

Nice Suggestions, I was also considering how awesome it would be to shoot, sprint a good distance away and the zeds would gather at where the shot took place instead of hunting you down.

[Bal Sofs Tihl 7]

I like this idea.

I think the current infected spawning mechanic is probably to simulate fully populated cities. The servers couldn't handle just having that many infected present all at once, so it keeps re-spawning them. This provides the same effect without requiring insane hardware to run it on.

However, having infected pop into existence right in front of you is kind of silly. Having them spawn a small ways off or maybe inside an empty building or maybe even give them an animation so that it looks like they are coming out of the ground...or something, haha. Anything would be better than their current magic act.

Also, combine this with more dangerous infected. I think they are too easy to kill and don't cause enough damage and have too low a chance of causing an infection (infected can do this, right?) Increasing the threat from infected would improve this game significantly.

[DarkMagik 0]

These sounds like good ideas. Me like. I approve!

[zorilya 0]

i'm down with the Zombie behaviour suggestion and i was gonna start a tread about the magic zombies if there wasn't already a comment

[herring (DayZ) 0]

Hire John Carmack to design the zombies.

[Migalouch 0]

I'd dump the curiosity stage because I mean come on when have you ever seen a curious zombie?

[Deuzerre 64]

It's not curious, it's "attracted but not hostile".

Like a dog turning it's head at an unidentified sound.