JensTheViking

First of all, I have to say that I am a huge fan of this game. It is my #2 of all time even as an early release. The only thing that I have qualms about is the multiplayer system. I hate the way a server has to be set up, and in my experience, it can only be set up on a Windows computer. Mac seems to have no support. I can't even find the file to open my own server. I hope in time the server creation will be in the game itself. But, my issues do not end there. When I am finally able to play online, it is so laggy, it is unplayable. Parts of the map refuse to load! Regardless of all that, it seems the concentration of developing this game has primarily gone to NPCs, combat, and aesthetics. While these are all perfect things to improve on, the multiplayer has been neglected for too long. There needs to be a whole new revamp to it. As I said before, I am a huge fan, I would just love to play online, hassle-free. 

Dogs have a fine rule of life: "If you can't eat it or screw it, you can still always piss on it"

Without even trying it out, I don't like this about the upcoming build 28:

"Added experimental population management: after an area is abandoned by the player, new zombies will migraite slowly from this point. I’ll need feedback on it."

You want feedback? I'll give ya feedback!

If that's only regarding MP but you just forgot to type it, then don't waste your time reading the shananigans below...

"Slowly FROM this point"...meaning that they spawn into that area and migrate from there? The whole conscept of zombie spawning is a no no for me. How exactly does it work at the moment? Do the zed just randomly spawn or do they appear on the edges of the map and go from there? I wouldn't mind if you revealed the whole zed appearing mechanic.

RatherI would prefer if the zed would start to migrate towards an area that is occupied for a longer period. That would make sence since everything you do makes noise etc etc. Although I prefer neutral radomness over everything. Besides when does an area count as abandoned? Many areas are visited more than once even though just running through them but still.

Without even trying it out, I don't like this about the upcoming build 28:

"Added experimental population management: after an area is abandoned by the player, new zombies will migraite slowly from this point. I’ll need feedback on it."

You want feedback? I'll give ya feedback!

If that's only regarding MP but you just forgot to type it, then don't waste your time reading the shananigans below...

"Slowly FROM this point"...meaning that they spawn into that area and migrate from there? The whole conscept of zombie spawning is a no no for me. How exactly does it work at the moment? Do the zed just randomly spawn or do they appear on the edges of the map and go from there? I wouldn't mind if you revealed the whole zed appearing mechanic.

RatherI would prefer if the zed would start to migrate towards an area that is occupied for a longer period. That would make sence since everything you do makes noise etc etc. Although I prefer neutral radomness over everything. Besides when does an area count as abandoned? Many areas are visited more than once even though just running through them but still.

In your own backyard, or perhaps your neighbour's, how many things do you think are buried that would trigger a metal detector?
Of those, how many would be of any use to you?
 
Perhaps it would be useful for finding scrap metal, or buried pipes (though I don't think any/many underground pipes would be made of metal - more likely concrete, PVC, or ceramic), but the frequency of finding useful objects would probably make it more like searching for a needle in a haystack.
Also, how commonplace is a metal detector? I don't think I personally know anyone with one just laying around at home.

You'd be surprised. If you know what you're doing, you can easily take out three zombies at once with a well placed (and timed) axe strike. Might instagib one, the other two go down, and you've polished off one just as the other stands up... Only to be hit back to the floor for the coup de grace. HOWEVER. This kind of attack is risky. I can do it, sure. Would I do it with two zombies coming up behind the tight cluster of three? No. I'd swing once to knock them down, pull back, and prepare to do it again. Would I do it if I didn't have a bat or fireaxe? Hell no, I know I wouldn't have the damage or reach to pull it off.
 
Remember, you've only ever got one chance in Zomboid. One bite, one scratch, and it's all over. There's a reason why new players are told to avoid combat whenever possible, and to charge up attacks before popping open a bathroom. It's very, very easy to act foolish in game and have it (literally) turn around and bite you on the ass.
 
Not too long ago, I'd mainly been playing Zomboid in multiplayer, and we all know how forgiving the multiplayer experience is when it comes to being grabbed by zombies. Duck through hordes? Sure! Zombies starting to block the front door? No problem. Just sprint right through and everything's fine. Then I went back to playing singleplayer. I kept dying. I'd gotten complacent from my time in multiplayer and accumulated a bunch of bad habits. I sprinted everywhere, I wasn't checking locked rooms, and I was moving about at night. I had to almost relearn all the tricks to moving and avoiding zombies when running about in game. I acted foolish, and got punished for it.
 
It sounds like what people are confusing in here is 'slow-down-near-a-zombie' with 'being-grappled-by-a-zombie'. Remember, Zomboid is STILL in development. I wouldn't be surprised if the 'slow-down' is replaced by an animation of the player character struggling with, then shoving back, a zombie when their movement speed is cut. Same with a zombie grabbing you from behind. That already has consequences in game, right now. You can't see the zombie/s that grabbed you. In the time it takes to turn to flee or attack, you're probably already bitten. In the future, your character would probably struggle and squirm in an attempt to break free, and you'd see the whole scene played out in gorey detail.
 
It's like Zombies vaulting over low fences and into windows. Everyone would rather see zombies stumbling, lurching, tripping and falling over low obstacles, but right now, wasting development time on making all those custom animations is a bit pointless. Better to use the player-character-vaulting animation for now as a placeholder, and put in something nice and cool looking when the gameplay is straightened out.

This is a HUGE issue in my opinion. The animation of the zombie even indicates that he is 'Grabbing' you and then biting, yet it has no effect on speed. The same thing goes double for MP where the grab range seems to be nerfed compared to survival.
 
A zombie stumbling is practically the only time it should not have an effect on grappling you. As it stands this is a major contributing factor to zombies not being dangerous. A single zombie is easy since you can push him away, however if you *have* to actually push it to keep from being hurt, you can get cornered more easily. Which would make one ore two other zombies a lot more dangerous.
 
I do hope this gets addressed.

Here is a video to prove the point that when you move past a zombie while you're in its reach it doesn't grab you, it usually just bites the air.

 
This should not happen! The zombies are way to easy to handle. You can pretty much eliminate a horde with an axe!
Will this be fixed?

I think the problem here lies in that there lacks a way of representing to the player, why the zombies are moving. Many got frustrated when the zombies "found you instantly" when in reality they just might've stumbled there by accident.
The gunshots are a start and I think once we get live animals and NPCs drawing the zombies and maybe make them wander longer after their prey, this'll be better. That added to the migration should cover it imo.

*Attempting to beat-down a small horde* -- "What happened to my bat?" -- *Tries to equip a Corndog*

"Hey you!"

"I'm just gonna press this green square on the bottom right of the screen in the middle of 5 players. What harm can it do?"

I got scratched and started to fall ill.

My friend: "Stand outside, I want to see you die."
 
Me: "Okay" *sadface
 
A while later.
 
Me: "I've been stood out in the rain in my pants for 2 days now....I'm freezing, in agony, soaked, fever, starving, and thirsty. Still on full health."
 
*After 3 days.
 
Me: "At last! I'm dying!" *falls down dead*
       "FFS I WASN'T EVEN INFECTED!"
 
Turns out I hadn't been infected, I had gotten ill from being wet. I then sped up my demise by standing naked in october in the raid for 3 days.
 
Last thing my character heard as his life gently ebbed away.
 
 
"Shit, man. Now I've got a corpse on my lawn....."

"Right, here's the plan..."

"Did we check the bathroom yet?"

"Hey check out this move!"

shitshitshitSHITSHITSHITSHIT!!!!

I have never been to the mall in PZ (yet), though I'm fairly certain this is how it will go down.
 
Step 1. - Approach mall.
Step 2. - See large amount of Zeds.
Step 3. - Evacuate bowels.
Step 4. - Yakkity Sax.
Step 5. - ???
Step 6. - Start new character.

Hi.
 
I'm experiencing the same problems as in build 26:

"The gameplay is very glitchy and the zed dissapear every now and then. The map won't load fast enough so you end up running against a black wall until it does." -exluding the black walls (i didn't play for very long)

Also the logging in process takes quite a while. So does anyone have any idea what to do? And no, it's not about the power of my computer that would be the issue.
 
What are the specs of the server?
- [EVENTS][PVE]Central Europe, IP 46.127.2.128
  What OS is the server running on?
- Windows 7, fully updated
  What is your connection speed? speedtest.net
- it varies but from 22 Mb/s to 50Mb/s
  Did you try to fix your problem and how?
- no, don't know where to begin
  What's the issue, exactly and what did you try to fix it?
- The gameplay is very glitchy / laggy and the zed dissapear every now and then. Also the logging in process takes quite a while.
  Is the server being run on a VPS or home computer?
- I dunno...  

It'd be nice to see different sizes and shapes on the zombie models, but nothing too major. Despite Zomboid being set in America I doubt we're going to see any ambulatory undead landwhales
 
From what I gather, the reason all player and zombie models share the same height/shape is do to the difficulties of working with sprites. Even with the new 3D-model-to-sprite-look-alike change that been going on, every size and shape of character model in game requires a new sprite for each piece of equipment and clothing. Which means when you start adding in tall, short, skinny and fat models to the existing one, you've now got four times the amount of sprites, and sprite animations, to work on.
 
Not the best use of your time when you're still adding features to the game. After all, the Indie Stone isn't that big. It's pretty likely they'll start working on cosmetic stuff like this in the future though.
 
I look forward to the day when I can see that the zombies lagging behind the group chasing me is comprised of heavily decayed, overweight, or elderly zombies. Until then, I'll keep crapping myself every time a faster one pops out of the front of the pack

It's so ridiculously pointless to try to rationalize what a zombie would and would not do. If you need to apply a thin veneer of science fiction to justify the fantasy to yourself, go ahead. But any reference to instincts, brain cells, motor controls, etc is just playing with buzz words. You can no more justify your headcanon version of zombies with science than I can prove the existence of dragons with wikipedia.
 
I happen to prefer the true Romero zombie. I'm not going to try to prove it's somehow the only logical zombie because dead muscle cells can't contract fast enough to sprint.

It's not ridiculously pointless. It serves a purpose and that is to create a logical explanation to why things are happening. Romero does this too. There are tons of "experts" in his movies who always notice a patter and then deduct why it is so. It's very much in the grain of zombie fiction.
Max Brooks says zombies are like insects, Romero says they have memories... Neither is more right than the other considering their lore, but in the case of pz that's how I see it and I want to provide "proof" why it would be so. You can't just dismiss the whole notion of human physics just because it's fiction.
Edited typo.

Ah, I can't wait for the day that I roll up a cripplingly superobese octogenarian and buzz around through the supermarket on my comically small electric wheelchair filling my basket with chocolate bars and orange soda. I'll make it until power goes out, when I have to heave myself out of my wheelchair to slowly waddle away from Zed, my age-thinned calf bones bowed to snapping from a reckless lifetime of lugging my freakish bulk around from meal to meal.
 
If we're implementing obesity, I demand that we implement eating Zed. I want to Kirby a bitch.

Why no obese or overweight people?
 
Every zombie just finished a triathlon it looks like. Same for characters.
 
It'd be nice to have larger zombies that were harder to kill, maybe they could just fall on you and trap you like that.
 
But no. Why's that?

Beforehand, a zombie is dead.. his braincells have perished, all he has left is a short memory and "not" the brains to use a weapon, tool or any other object usuable as some sort of weapon. 
 
So!, we probably all do agree a zombie was a human, or lorewise they were us before, so it would make alot of sense that the zombies that are around do carry in their hands whatever they were carrying or carried through fixed memory in life, just not the knowledge to use it.
A zombie carrying a hammer or a knife because he defended himself with it in life looks pretty okay to me, maybe even a small chance he might actually cut you with it by stupidity and ofcourse the animition of a zombie carrying the weapon/tool the "wrong" way would add some more reality to the game.
If a person dies the muscles will freeze, and so will the hands holding an object.
 
That's just my 2 cents about it,
Cheers.