Zombie spawning and other general Zed concerns

[priestizzle 1]

It is all too frustrating to coordinate with a few friends to wipe out a small area in a town of 25+ zombies, begin to loot, only to have more zombies spawn nearby quite quickly. Most of the time this leads to multiple deaths, low blood counts, and other bad things. I think there should be a longer timer for zombie spawns. In a real zombie apocalypse, once an area would be completely picked clean it would usually be a little while before more would show up I would think, especially in such an open country. maybe make it so zombies won't spawn for 5 minutes or so in an area (plenty of time to loot and get out) or have the zombies not re spawn until no survivors are within 200-300 meters of their re spawn area. Hell, I would be happy even with more than 25+ zombies crawling around in an area to compensate for this. Not sure how hard the coding would be for this, or if it's even possible, just a thought.

Zombie speed is also an issue in my opinion, mostly linked to the buggy arma engine when moving at those speeds. I would recommend a 40%-50% decrease in running zombie speed and a 30% or so increase in monkey speeds. This will be enough to make hitting a zombie on the run still challenging but more possible, and making monkeys more of a threat as well. Also, they will still be moving at around twice the speed of a survivor at this decreased rate.

A possible fix to the classic arma bug of AI moving right through walls would be maybe a damage system to walls/barbed wire/sandbags and the like. Where if a zed contacts one of these physically he either takes heavy damage over time or dies outright. Even better if it can even be detected, if a zed actually makes it through a wall in any way, auto death. Any of these if possible will need extensive testing of course for balance issues. Don't want to make it too easy after all. This could reduce the "wall hacker zombie" issue if at all codable without damaging survivors as well. Again, I'm not a coder but it's simply an idea. It's frustrating to be killed by a zombie through a wall without even seeing him clip through to avoid being hit through it.

These suggestions aren't any form of "we're entitled to this!" but more of an idea kick around for an alpha mod that I am absolutely ADDICTED to. This has quite quickly become my favorite mod for a game that I already loved to death. Any specific things you want us to test would be appreciated and I would love to help the dev team tweak and polish this mod. This is the game I've been waiting for. Again, thank you for all your hard work and time put in.

PS. On a completely unrelated note to zombie mechanics, I understand that low velocity rounds work best with a supressed weapon in real life, but I think separating the ammo types is a BIT much. The rarity of silenced weapons and concurrent ammo for them is enough to balance out their power as it is I think, I would even support more rarity in this area if the ammo was to be consolidated.

[Gotrek (DayZ) 1]

I agree with annoying too often zombie spawns. Also monkeying is concern of AI in ArmA2. I think it would be cool if walkers would be a bit slower and running straightforward in ArmA3 BUT at cost of infection on bite. Player would need to find antidote in hospital/clinic or reconsider shooting himself :p.

This could also affect multiplier of zombies in spawn. What do I mean? When player turns into zombie, the plague spreads (more zombies per spawn) and when some freaks enter a town to massacre zombies, they decrease it a bit. Of course there should be bottom and upper limits for this "bonus" but those things could really add tons of fun. Is that guy bandit? Or maybe he's infected?

For making it harder, shooting down "normal" people should also increase zombie spawns in game. There will be guys who don't care anyway and rest will have hard time deciding what to do with met survivor :D

[madsglahder@gmail.com 0]

Do something about zombie pathing, it's silly having a hard time killing multiple zombies because they run around you instead of towards you.

[warpoet 2]

Massive support. Boiled down, this is more or less the biggest fundamental change I think is necessary.

Only thing I'd add is that overall zed numbers near low pop areas and buildings are WAY too high in general.

[oktyabr 53]

Would zombies spawning off the map and migrating towards the coast cause any more problems than the current spawn system? Obviously you would want some to spawn around the towns and villages just to get things going but I agree, once those are gone it feels a bit artificially stacked against the players to just have a bunch more spawn there. This is especially true around small villages and farms.

[penguinacity 0]

The speed of zombie spawning should be exponential to a limit. I.E. When there are 0 zombies in a town, 1 will spawn every 2 minutes. When there are 5 zombies, 1 will spawn every minute. 20 Zombies, 1 will spawn every 30 seconds.

All adjusted for balance and gameplay.

[priestizzle 1]

I have to say I'm impressed with the forum community, great constructive posts. I really like the idea of zombies spawning off view and walking into towns and such, would add some more random elements to traveling as well. As long as they don't end up all getting bunched up by choke points in the terrain.