DayZ: an exercise in gaming nature (warning, wall of text incoming)

[Cach 0]

This forum has such a bad problem... I have never seen such rampant swearing, trolling, an inability to discuss ideas coherently, people dismissing opinions with a "**** off if you don't like it" and the sarcastic (elitist) circlejerking that occurs whenever someone tries to discuss a legitimate issue with the mod.

This seems to happen particularly around issues regarding pvp/banditry and stems from people on either sides of the fence. Since neither side is right I'm going to stand on top of the bloody fence and hopefully generate a sensible discussion here.

Alright so this game (I know its a mod, I know it's an alpha version and yes, I know what alpha version is) has seen a significant increase in banditry as of late. I've also seen a fair amount of people sobbing on the forums asking the devs to punnish the bandits. These threads also attracted a fair amount of people who seems to take pleasure in words such as 'faggot' and 'fuck' and 'noob' (this is the internet and we are all tough guys here, amirite?) The purpose of this thread is not to discuss these people but I bring them up now so that the sensible forum goer would be able to recognize these antics and ignore them. It does give us a valid starting point for this discussion however, as it is these people hurling abuse left and right, that take an elitist viewpoint on issues such as pvp and realism,

and pvp and realism is what this thread is all about.

Let me start by saying that a game which has a character spawning at the edge of the map followed by running into the nearest town killing somebody, getting killed in turn then spawning back at the edge of the map to run back in and repeat, breaks down any semblence of reality. This type of gameplay is called death match NOT survival, and please don't say it's brutal survival. You are clearly controlling a character whose sole purpose is to run around shooting people and get shot in return, all to respawn and repeat. This happens around the coast and especially the big cities but the sole fact that this type of gameplay exists anywhere on the map detracts from any semblence of a realistic and brutal survival simulator.

And we all know how it happened, and what would happen because of it. We may tell ourselves otherwise, we may point fingers at different people and accuse them of crimes proven or unproven. But the reality is everybody contributed to it knowingly or unknowingly.

For sake of thread clarity I will briefly outline the process:

While pvp was a key feature in the game from the start people were just as likely to come together to group up and and tackle situations together as they were to kill each other. Player killing stemmed from more extreme reasons than just 'for the lulz' or 'I was bored'. It carried with it the stigma of being labeled a bandit and beeing shot on sight, increasing the difficulty experienced compared to a normal survivor.

Once the bandit skin got removed those people who preferred a bandit playstyle did no longer have to worry about increased difficulty. Life continued as normal for a little while longer in DayZ, but slowly more and more people started dying at the hands of bandits. This then created the shoot on sight mentality which was initially driven by paranoia. Later this paranoia got replaced with loathing as people who normally go out of their way to help others ended up getting their hands bitten more and more often. These good Samaritans stopped caring after a while (not all of them) and joined the shoot on sight mentality.

You can see that the game mechanics at this stage does not support coorparate play (I understand you can coorporate with people who you personally know over steam or teamspeak/vent but the level of Cooperation you saw earlier where two complete strangers can meet up, loot a town, heal and help each other out of tight situations, has dwindled significantly and you would be lying to yourself if you deny that this is the case).

Does this mean that the people who are calling for no pvp/pve only servers and punishment systems are justified? NO definitely not. DayZ is harsh as is life and people have to learn to adapt. But what of the people engaging in coastal death match? I can think of no realistic justification for this type of gameplay. So how can we reduce their occurence? (I dont want to get rid of all out firefights but make them rare occurrences with a suitable risk/reward system for engaging in them).

DayZ is supposed to be brutal right? How about ramping up the difficulty a couple more notches. Instead of spawning people with a weapon and ammo on hand, spawn people with nothing but a couple of band aids, a water bottle and maybe a flash light (you can get rid of the flash light if you want). No longer would people be able to spawn and run to the nearest death match town to raise their stats. People would be forced to slow down and search. With no weapon on them they would be forced to take things cautiously till they have armed up, lest they run into someone carrying a gun. Zeds will become an even greater threat than they currently are, all without increasing their numbers or programming new ai for them.

The purpose here is not to make the game impossible but extremely brutal and all the more rewarding when you run into weapon and ammo stashes.

But let's not stop here, in the game as it is currently, it is really easy to come across stashes. Weapons and ammo are quite common, why not decrease the amount of spawns for weapons and ammo? while we are at it the devs should decrease the spawns of food too (give an incentive to hunt). Medical supplies seem to be just right and seem relatively difficult to come by (as it should be). so they don't need much tampering with. This spawn decrease would make survival significantly harder.

No longer would there be servers full of bored people shooting each other for fun, we would have servers full of people scrambling for resources and shooting each other for the rounds they carry in their pockets.

Sure there's always going to be some people who just don't care and would still shoot for no specific reason whatsoever, and thats fine because there are people like that in real life. But out of place deathmatches would no longer be a problem in game. (I'll say again, this does not mean that these kind of all out fire fights are impossible as that would be a shame, but they would be rarer and more intense when they do occur as you stand to lose everything and gain everything from them).

We would probably see an increase in highway robbers, people who would rob you at gunpoint because they don't want to waste the few remaining rounds they have.

Higher tier weapon spawns should be made extremely rare and made to spawn only in the middle of the map and as far away from each other as possible (maybe even have a cap on how many different higher tier weapons that can spawn on the server? Eg. Only two sniper rifles allowed per server) Whatever method is chosen these weapons should be made extremely rare and their ammo even rarer.

You guys were claiming DayZ was supposed to be harsh right? there you have it.

As for people engaging in server hopping, why not have a system in place where every account has a limited number of turns that they can server hop for before getting locked into the current server? Say 25 tries per account. While it wouldn't eliminate server hopping it would (like everything else in DayZ) carry consequences for those looking to abuse game mechanics. Server hopping will require thought and would not be something that would be carried out often. People who want to play with their friends would have to decide on a server beforehand.

This carries the added problem of a group of 50 idiots clogging up a server and locking it off, which means there has to be some way of cleaning a server. What I would suggest is giving the admins the power to kick anybody out of their server that has already used up his/her 25 tries. This would give the kicked player 1 more try so they can rejoin another server (just not the one they were kicked from). Not perfect, but it is the best I can come up with. Maybe you guys can think up of a better solution.

I have been lurking these forums for a while and while there are several threads all discussing this, none of them managed to do so coherently, and almost all went along the line of "punish bandits" and "GTFO if you don't like it". I hope this thread won't turn into one of these and people would be able to engage in a healthy discussion.

[CrossShade 4]

The thing you guys don't understand is you keep on stating time and time again that it isn't balanced, fair etc.

Rocket said that it isn't, he also said that he wants it that way.

Keep saying that it isn't a good thing to do, you wont change his mind, you can keep throwing senseless posts and discussing flaming trolling etc.

The result is the same, he said he would rather the game die out than make it easier or less pvp oriented.

Basically, just spam these topics/posts off all day, regardless of how mad you get, what threats you give, or how sensible/irrational you are, the result will be the same.

Anyone with any intelligence would realise this and just give up trying.

[Cach 0]

The thing you guys don't understand is you keep on stating time and time again that it isn't balanced' date=' fair etc.

Rocket said that it isn't, he also said that he wants it that way.

Keep saying that it isn't a good thing to do, you wont change his mind, you can keep throwing senseless posts and discussing flaming trolling etc.

The result is the same, he said he would rather the game die out than make it easier or less pvp oriented.

Basically, just spam these topics/posts off all day, regardless of how mad you get, what threats you give, or how sensible/irrational you are, the result will be the same.

Anyone with any intelligence would realise this and just give up trying.

[/quote']

See I was not trying to make the game less pvp oriented. I was trying to give a semblance of reason to the pvp. Rather than have a deathmatch every so often because you can just respawn with a weapon whenever you die, make the killing all about lack of resources. Pvp is still there and people have Even More Incentive to kill others but it is not merely out of a sense of boredom. I hope you understood this part of my post.

[CrossShade 4]

The thing you guys don't understand is you keep on stating time and time again that it isn't balanced' date=' fair etc.

Rocket said that it isn't, he also said that he wants it that way.

Keep saying that it isn't a good thing to do, you wont change his mind, you can keep throwing senseless posts and discussing flaming trolling etc.

The result is the same, he said he would rather the game die out than make it easier or less pvp oriented.

Basically, just spam these topics/posts off all day, regardless of how mad you get, what threats you give, or how sensible/irrational you are, the result will be the same.

Anyone with any intelligence would realise this and just give up trying.

[/quote']

See I was not trying to make the game less pvp oriented. I was trying to give a semblance of reason to the pvp. Rather than have a deathmatch every so often because you can just respawn with a weapon whenever you die, make the killing all about lack of resources. Pvp is still there and people have Even More Incentive to kill others but it is not merely out of a sense of boredom. I hope you understood this part of my post.

To be honest, I read the first lines of your post, not gonna read the entire thing when it could have easily been shortened.

Also, people have been given advice and methods of not being killed at the coast which in turn would stop the deathmatch oriented style play.

People refuse to listen, die, complain, then go back to step 1. It's a vicious cycle of self inflicted anger that will never end.

Address people in a different way, tell them how to stop it themselves, not by what other people should do to stop the idiot's being killed.

[Van Heighten 3]

To be honest' date=' I read the first lines of your post, not gonna read the entire thing when it could have easily been shortened.

[/quote']

If you dont want to read the thread and listen to everything he has to say, why are you even here? just close the thread.

You're stupidity drove me from lurking to actually making an account, just so I can write this. congrats.

Also, back on topic. I more or less agree with you on most points Cach. There needs to be some incentive to actually survive.

or more so, there needs to be an actual penalty for death (I mean, besides losing whatever equipments you've gathered)

[Cach 0]

@ CrossShade

I see your point, however it could just as easily be said that the vicious cycle is generated by people having too much power at hand with too little reward/risk at the beginning. They do what most anybody would do when given a gun in a game. Run to the nearest town and shoot anything that moves. There is no problem with dying you will just respawn with another gun and more ammo, honestly this isn't all that dissimilar with other fps games out there.

We CAN get people to travel more inland but there would always be those that enjoy fire fighting in towns, just because you can always respawn with a weapon and ammo in the event of death. What I'm suggesting is not to force anybody to a certain play style, as those who enjoy killing other people can still do so. But a change in the collective mentality that is more geared towards survival. Rather than safety in the knowledge of being able to respawn with everything you already need.

@Vans Heighten

Yup an incentive to survive, or an actual reason to kill each other and engage in pvp

[CrossShade 4]

To be honest' date=' I read the first lines of your post, not gonna read the entire thing when it could have easily been shortened.

[/quote']

If you dont want to read the thread and listen to everything he has to say, why are you even here? just close the thread.

You're stupidity drove me from lurking to actually making an account, just so I can write this. congrats.

Also, back on topic. I more or less agree with you on most points Cach. There needs to be some incentive to actually survive.

or more so, there needs to be an actual penalty for death (I mean, besides losing whatever equipments you've gathered)

You're stupidity?

You go on to prove his point, instead of having a civilised discussion you just insult.

He addressed this in his OP by the way, the one you told me to read.

[lunakhod 8]

Sorry, but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[Cach 0]

Sorry' date=' but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[/quote']

Actually I was trying to get across as much info as possible, so people wouldn't have to make assumptions as to what I'm trying to say. and end up with the thread going off at a tangent from a misunderstanding.

[CrossShade 4]

Sorry' date=' but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[/quote']

Actually I was trying to get across as much info as possible, so people wouldn't have to make assumptions as to what I'm trying to say. and end up with the thread going off at a tangent from a misunderstanding.

I hope you will address that people on either side shouldn't jump to trolling/insulting etc, we already had someone who agreed with you do just that.

When either side shows it's main supporters are just angry immature people who can't talk in a civil manner, it doesn't look good for your point of view. Although it's biased, it's true.

[mattiaspetersen@yahoo.dk 1]

The thing you guys don't understand is you keep on stating time and time again that it isn't balanced' date=' fair etc.

Rocket said that it isn't, he also said that he wants it that way.

Keep saying that it isn't a good thing to do, you wont change his mind, you can keep throwing senseless posts and discussing flaming trolling etc.

The result is the same, he said he would rather the game die out than make it easier or less pvp oriented.

Basically, just spam these topics/posts off all day, regardless of how mad you get, what threats you give, or how sensible/irrational you are, the result will be the same.

Anyone with any intelligence would realise this and just give up trying.

[/quote']

exactly my words! give this man a throne ;)

[lunakhod 8]

Sorry' date=' but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[/quote']

Actually I was trying to get across as much info as possible, so people wouldn't have to make assumptions as to what I'm trying to say. and end up with the thread going off at a tangent from a misunderstanding.

Lots of information is good, but this isn't. People want to read something information dense. The less words you have to use to get your point across, the better.

[ssential 0]

Good post, thanks OP.

In my opinion, what dayZ currently lacks, is some kind of "global quest". A quest where everybody can lend a helping hand, and a quest, that if completed, helps everyone survive longer.

Currently you can repair helicopters, cars, boats etc. But for what reason? You're making a huge bandit magnet out of yourself and everyone you meet will shoot you, and you better shoot everyone you meet as well. The main problem with vehicles is that they are only for "egoistic" purposes (sure in the end everything is egoistic, but you know what I mean). There's no way you can help the people with vehicles. Once you got good enough weapons and vehicles, the game degenerates itself to: Shoot everybody on sight.

I had an idea for a global quest that goes as follows:

The power plant at elektro has severely been damaged due to no maintenance and bandits raiding the place, leaving all chernarus in the dark. It however can be repaired again. The items you need to repair it are scattered all across chernarus. Once half repaired, it will power the street lights of elektro, more advanced repairs will power cherno, then the surrounding villages until every village has electricity again. Electricity will drive zombies away from the city into the woods, making villages to safezones where people can meet and trade.

Vehicles as helicopters would come in very handy as you could make stashes filled with repair and maintenance items throughout the land where the vehicles could pick them up and transport them to elektro.

Bandits that live from the darkness, will try to prevent the whole process. They become organised bandits. The random shoot a guy on sight or steal that vehicle will occure less likely, as the guy in the vehicle might work for the greater good and in the end might help you. Why should you kill a guy that has a whole lof of repair items on him, they serve no purpose to you.

[Cach 0]

@CrossShade Yea it was unwarranted name calling on Van's part but honestly I'm not exactly sure what I'm supposed to do about it, we need moderators in these forums. To be honest I was slightly miffed that you didn't read the OP but fairs fair he was wrong and its up to you to ignore him and stick to the discussion (see how easily this thing got sidetracked).

Rocket is the dev I'm assuming and it's his vision that this mod is as brutal as possible right? So wouldn't what I suggest make everything brutal for everybody?

---

Sorry' date=' but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[/quote']

Actually I was trying to get across as much info as possible, so people wouldn't have to make assumptions as to what I'm trying to say. and end up with the thread going off at a tangent from a misunderstanding.

Lots of information is good, but this isn't. People want to read something information dense. The less words you have to use to get your point across, the better.

I'm sorry but english isn't my first language. It's not even my second and I do tend to ramble a lot. I will try and keep the word count down in the future

[septuscap 42]

Let me start by saying that a game which has a character spawning at the edge of the map followed by running into the nearest town killing somebody' date=' getting killed in turn then spawning back at the edge of the map to run back in and repeat, breaks down any semblence of reality. [/quote']

I agree spawn rushing is stupid -- but I've also never died to it. I don't see how fully equipped players are dying to new spawns with makarovs. Are they sneaking up on you and one-shotting you in the head? I don't want to blame the victim, but it is a sort of made up problem. That is, it wouldn't even be a problem if you wouldn't die embarrassingly in a makarov vs. winchester/m16/whatever fight.

Or maybe I'm misreading the problem. Are you saying the issue isn't people abusing spawn rushing to get revenge on the guy who just killed them, but rather more suicidal behavior on the coast due to close respawn distance? (ie. run through the field and try and shoot you b/c screw it I'll just respawn 1 minute away anyway with gear)

Once the bandit skin got removed those people who preferred a bandit playstyle did no longer have to worry about increased difficulty. Life continued as normal for a little while longer in DayZ' date=' but slowly more and more people started dying at the hands of bandits. This then created the shoot on sight mentality which was initially driven by paranoia. Later this paranoia got replaced with loathing as people who normally go out of their way to help others ended up getting their hands bitten more and more often. These good Samaritans stopped caring after a while (not all of them) and joined the shoot on sight mentality. [/quote']

Some one posted a good idea where if you kill a player, your clothes are bloodied. You can visit any pond to wash off the blood (with a cumulative wash time of X minutes per kill). A good samaritan who is forced to take a life only occasionally can easily keep himself washed of blood. Some one who is camping cherno will easily rake up hours of washing if he wants to blend in with survivors; most wouldn't even waste the time looking for a pond to clean up, or sit there swimming to wash the blood clean.

DayZ is supposed to be brutal right? How about ramping up the difficulty a couple more notches. Instead of spawning people with a weapon and ammo on hand' date=' spawn people with nothing but a couple of band aids, a water bottle and maybe a flash light (you can get rid of the flash light if you want).

But let's not stop here, in the game as it is currently, it is really easy to come across stashes. Weapons and ammo are quite common, why not decrease the amount of spawns for weapons and ammo? while we are at it the devs should decrease the spawns of food too (give an incentive to hunt).

No longer would there be servers full of bored people shooting each other for fun, we would have servers full of people scrambling for resources and shooting each other for the rounds they carry in their pockets.

We would probably see an increase in highway robbers, people who would rob you at gunpoint because they don't want to waste the few remaining rounds they have. [/quote']

I think this would just give an insane advantage to people who have time to farm for 8 hours a day. M107 ammo is already pretty rare, but I still hear it being used on new spawns in cherno/elektro. People don't camp new spawns for loot, they do it to practice sniping (hitting moving targets, getting inside the mark's head and figuring out where he's headed, positioning for the shot where you think he'll be, etc, all with almost no recourse since they'll probably have nothing but a makarov).

Spawning a player with no weapon may or may not be a good idea. I don't know that it would change the dynamic any -- run to my tent and re-arm? Scavenge a primary from the nearest village? I haven't seen this wave of makarov kamikazes that requires this addition.

Maybe killing the ammo/weapon spawns at Cherno/Elektro/Balota specifically would help though.

I mean I like the story you painted about bandits holding people up at gun point rather than wasting the ammo, but I just don't see that being practical. It'd mean we'd have to get ridiculously close to the mark, we'd lose the element of surprise, he'd probably just start zig zagging and make us use more ammo to take him down (rather than landing a good shot on an unsuspecting victim), etc.

I don't know how you'd reliably lessen everyone's ammo to the degree required to force that kind of play. More likely people would just farm the best area possible and use ammo only to kill anyone that came by (which is the same thing people do already). So people that have enough time to farm would have the ammo to kill, and those that don't would just be shit out of luck.

[Deuzerre 64]

I agree on most of the points, and it's nice tat they are explained thoroughly. DOn't listen to the guys that say that it's too long, therefore they are right.

Changing the weapon and ammo spawns could be a solution. less easy to find military grade ammunition would be a good thing too. Less lethal weapons could also be a solution (.22).

I especially like the start "naked" philosophy. It would be worth a try, but I'm not certain it would have the intended result. At least, people would have to go in towns to get a gun first, increasing the "zombie" aspect of the alpha.

Not too found of the anti-server hopping solution. There are many legit reasons for people to "hop", like finding it laggy and such.

Less about the suggestions: Yes, more interactions, more "highway bandits", a varied experience in short. That would be the first step against boredom.

[Cach 0]

@Ssential

While that is a good idea for a mission based system, there's still the problem with death being too safe. This method won't stop the people who find safety in the knowledge that dying would give them more ammo and a weapon. Ultimately what is needed is for the game to focus on more brutal survival, heightened risk/reward and a shift from the current safety in death. If this is not brutal enough have the respawn entirely devoid of items.

TL,DR: Make people fear death and shoot out of paranoia instead of boredom

@SeptusCap

Yes I was talking about suicidal behaviour on respawning. And as for finding weapons I was thinking of cutting down weapon respawning by 50% at least (with higher tier weapons only spawning once, which means you will have to kill the person carrying it to acquire it). Also a system where you would be unable to judge where the best spawns are could be implemented to prevent spawn camping. Instead of having a guranteed spawn every 30 mins (I think) have the spawns randomise themselves. If you pick up winchester ammo from cherno. The server will spawn winchester ammo in a randomised location other than cherno. The server keeps track of spawning to prevent crowding of a particular spot with resources and instead spawns the new resources in the spot that has gone the longest without anything spawning. With people picking stuff up everywhere the spawn system would become too complicated for anyone to predict hopefully bringing down spawn camping.

As for the highway robbery that's up to the players to decide whether it would be worthwhile to save your ammo on the off chance the other guy complies or shoot him with the knowledge that he may not have the ammo you need and you just wasted yet more ammo. It's just one scenario which might crop up on occasion.

[rickenbacker 190]

For the TL:DR kneejerk artists: The OP is saying that if resources were more scarce, maybe even with a limit per server on certain weapons, there would be some POINT to the free-for-all deathmatch servers we have now. Which I agree with.

[kilmannan 1]

There also needs to be more spawn points around the map and away from coastal areas.

Why are we all spawning on the beaches? What's the story behind it? What's the point behind it?

Why aren't we starting in a house, our house, with nothing but what we have in our house, setting off to find out what the hell is going on?

Yes, it is an Alpha, but at the same time, there are some basic things which could have been implemented better to reduce a lot of problems and hopefully will be as development goes on.

The first thing they need to do in my opinion is get a grip of this website and forum. That's something that can easily be fixed.

[Cach 0]

This is an alpha version which means the dev is free to try out various ideas before going beta. My suggestion might very well break more things than it fix and the reverse could just as well be true. But we would never know, and conjecture on what would happen would only go so far.

[Cyberman128 0]

Very interesting ideas here that I'd love to see tested.

Although I do also think the number of zeds need to be increased and that they should be spread out a bit more, in the wilderness etc.

Also OP don't listen to those who claim it's too long. It's nice to go in detail and give some context, and if people don't have the attention span to read a slightly longer post then it's their loss.

[CrossShade 4]

Very interesting ideas here that I'd love to see tested.

Although I do also think the number of zeds need to be increased and that they should be spread out a bit more' date=' in the wilderness etc.

Also OP don't listen to those who claim it's too long. It's nice to go in detail and give some context, and if people don't have the attention span to read a slightly longer post then it's their loss.

[/quote']

You know, he already stated he was against people insulting in his OP, telling people you READ it all, enjoyed the detail then not actually taking any of it in?

You have a nice day Sir.

[Cach 0]

@CrossShade

Please stop trying to derail this thread, I see no insults in Cyberman128's post. And my OP asked people to ignore insults and not fall for them. Trying to minimise name calling which would irritate people and end up derailing threads.

@Cyberman128

The problem I see with increasing zed count is that there would be more stress on the server. I don't really know how it all works but I've seen it been mentioned multiple times so the dev might be considering it.

[Virfortis 111]

Sorry' date=' but if you can't get your point across in a few concise sentences, the point isn't worth making.

[/quote']

In other words, you expect him to use memes and trolling? That's the only way to make a thought as complex as meaningful gameplay boil down into a couple sentences. If the internet, subsequently you, would not straw man him at every corner for being concise, he wouldn't have to be so drawn out. He has to flood his argument with disclaimers and further arguments JUST to keep his point on track. A thought does not have just a thesis, it also requires reasoning.

He doesn't need to be more concise, the internet needs to be more respectful.

[Cyberman128 0]

Very interesting ideas here that I'd love to see tested.

Although I do also think the number of zeds need to be increased and that they should be spread out a bit more' date=' in the wilderness etc.

Also OP don't listen to those who claim it's too long. It's nice to go in detail and give some context, and if people don't have the attention span to read a slightly longer post then it's their loss.

[/quote']

You know, he already stated he was against people insulting in his OP, telling people you READ it all, enjoyed the detail then not actually taking any of it in?

You have a nice day Sir.

Maybe I was a bit harsh there, but I just really dislike it when a post that honestly has very little wrong with it (I could understand if, say, he didn't use paragraphs and we were met with a literal wall of text) is met with the equivalent of "didn't read, lol".

I'm sorry, anyway.

I'll try to be less hypocritical in the future.

@Cyberman128

The problem I see with increasing zed count is that there would be more stress on the server. I don't really know how it all works but I've seen it been mentioned multiple times so the dev might be considering it.

Well, rocket has increased the numbers before, and that did make it much more challenging.

Anyway a lot of people on the forums didn't like it, and so the numbers were reduced again in the patch before the bandit removing one.

Pretty sure the increased zombies didn't cause much more stress. Can't be certain though.