Zapp Brannigan

I haven't seen new animations for it, but I hope there's also punching/smacking on windows along with thumping. Zombies doing nothing but banging their heads into doors and windows is pretty silly to watch.

Well damn, that looks (and sounds) friggin' amazing!

Thank you for your response. I apologize, I was unaware of what the balancing was based on. My misconception was you guys were making it easier based on the current build, not what's upcoming. It's more clear to me now and I really do appreciate that.

That's my bad, I wasn't aware. I thought they were making combat easier from Build 40, not 41's own overhauled combat system. If you set them to Superhuman strength, I meant. Even then have you ever seen Day of the Dead? Peak classic Romero zombies? Even one or two of them can easily overpower an adult soldier if they get the drop on them. If Romero's what the standard settings aim for, they're pretty damn strong by merit of exerting as much as they can with no regard to strain, pain, or tiredness.

I'm also not keen on the combat changes or strafing. Maybe if it's implemented in a way that tires the player out faster I think it could work, but otherwise zombie combat (zombat?) is already too easy. Zombies, alone or in groups, need to be more of a threat, not less, IMO. I miss the old days where even one zombie could end you if you were careless. That doesn't happen anymore, not unless you're using Sprinters.

Looking at the newest blog post, I'm a little confused. Why is 1-1 combat being made easier? Zombies are already so much easier than they were a few years ago. Their animation's been slowed down and their hit registry feels off to the point I can stand in one place, let one keep doing its thing at me, and not get "hit" for a good 2 or 3 seconds. Especially on higher strength or speed settings zombies should be dangerous. If anything, they should be buffed. More pulling, clawing, punching, and tackling with the new animations, better hit responses to where if they do their animation, you get hit. You shouldn't be able to treat even small groups of zombies like a joke, but you can right now and apparently the group buffs are being dialed back. I don't think this is the way it needs to go, or maybe there should be a zed difficulty setting added that changes exactly how powerful they are more than the vague options we have now. My suggestion would be to either revert whatever nerfs or changes are coming to make individual fights easier, keep whatever group buffs there are after tuning them, and implement more concise, effective options for zombie difficulty. Superhuman strength should let them pull you down and hit you hard when they hit. Higher sense should give them better reactions. That sorta thing. I remember back in the DayZ days people complained zombies were too hard and they nerfed them big time, and in the recent game Hunt: Showdown similar complaints led its zombie-ish monsters to get nerfed into pointless distractions. I don't want that to happen with PZ. Zombies should be a threat you have to be careful with and learn to manage, not something you can easily strafe around and stunlock solo or even in groups, which you can do now. One shouldn't be instant death, not at all, but it shouldn't get any easier than it is right now.

Muting or toning down the zombie door-slamming would also help a ton. I hate sneaking into a huge, dark building, not knowing what's around the corner, only to hear door or window thumping from several stories up. Kills the suspense. They should only be audible when you're close by.

That'd lead to trouble with sprinters though, who should be able to vault over things as easily as the player and NPCs.

We can go up, and soon we can go underground, but one of Kentucky's most prominent features is its rolling hills and mountains. It's the "Coal State", after all. PZ as-is is completely flat. The engine might limit this, but is there any chance in the future we'll see natural elevations? Hills, mountains, cliffs?

This times a thousand. Their attacks should also be sped up. You kinda have to deliberately stand still for their hits to register.

Loving Louisiana. Can't wait for this to be released.

This is amazing.

You can wake up from gunshots or other ambient events randomly. Would like a wake-up from discomfort though.

It's pretty disappointing that, while PZ's zombies are highly lethal, they don't feel highly lethal. You can run into a group of six or seven with Superhuman strength as the setting and still last for a minute or more, getting pushed around lightly and occasionally scratched or bitten -- sometimes you don't even GET scratched or bitten! Seeing zombies do things like give you fractures from their slams and hits, pin you down, tear you up, do more damage in general. This could also play in to the (hopefully) upcoming amputation system, zombies biting limbs or something and ripping them off. Have some bites give you deep wounds needing to be stitched (maybe you'll get lucky). Overall, I'd like to see more injuries, particularly related to zombies, have the player die much faster when completely surrounded, and have generally more things happen when zombies attack you other than scratch, bite, or neither. Zombie hit detection could also be improved.

Makes sense. Hope it's something we see soon.

Problem currently is PZ's limited on firearms and ammo types for legal reasons. Sure, mods can add others, but TIS is stuck with mostly generic ammos. Not by choice, but by law. For example, our pistol ammo is just that, "Pistol Ammo", when in reality some pistols are strong enough to punch through walls, some aren't. Same with rifles, shotguns, and other weapons. They'd either have to make ALL pistol bullets penetrate walls, or none. I'd like to see it happen but unless we get a wide ammo variety I think it'd be difficult to pull it off in a realistic way.

The Food Build is very much an unstable test version according to the devs meant almost solely for food/nutrition testing. Bugs like what you described are inevitable. I'd like a "Killed By" or "Died From" message though.

I like playing Sandbox games with Sprinting Zombies enabled - gives a 28 Days Later or Dawn of the Dead Remake feel to things. One thing I really don't like though is that with Sprinters on, zombies do nothing but sprint. Even when moving a few feet they sprint fully. I think it'd be great if even Sprinters just shambled when idle, but when they get alerted by noise, an event, light, players, (and later) NPCs and animals, they break into a full sprint. As it stands Sprinters don't even seem to move around that much when idle to begin with, sticking in clumped groups. DotD Remake-style, if they could idly walk around when not alerted, I think that'd add some immersion and be less weird than them sprinting every time they move, even if it's just a foot or two. Maybe add it as a new option to the zombies? "Slow Sprinters"? Then for 28 Days Later style zombies, "Fast Sprinters"?

This would make it too easy. All attacks by zombies need to be dangerous; even small scratches need to possibly infect you. I'm pretty sure the sandbox allows you to change this anyway.

I hope NPCs get merged well with cars. IIRC the devs a long time ago said they plan to make vehicles as usable by the AI as it they are by you.

I know animals, both neutral and predatory, will be added, but I've not seen horse travel mentioned anywhere. It's pretty common in some other zombie games, like Dead State. Kentucky's famous for its horses, and Churchill Downs is considered the horse capital of the world, after all. Will we get horses to ride around for when cars are too noisy or we don't have the gasoline? A fast, low-maintenance transit method without the physical requirements of bike riding that's quieter and uses less resources than cars, but leaves you fairly exposed and adds the potential of your horse getting attacked by zombies too?

I've seen some people complain about the list of "No's", but keep in mind those are only developer no's. PZ's heavily moddable and the devs encourage mods a lot, so if you're bummed out that you can't smoke joints or fire named weapons in vanilla, keep in mind that modders can, will, and already have added them and other things, and will keep on adding content as we go. tl;dr just because the devs don't put something in themselves doesn't mean they'll forbid players from putting it in.

Again, I absolutely hate the idea of zombies weakening or dying off. The PZ server lag and unoptimized zombie coding makes them way too easy to kill anyway. Making them weaker just makes the combat even more laughably boring. I suggest, until optimization comes in, to have zombies that get stronger.

I'd prefer to see them evolve and grow stronger. I think "decay" would take too long and make things too easy. Either you'd have to make them decay very quick, or be realistic and make it take several in-game years, either way of which wouldn't be too fun, IMO. I'd prefer to see their virus rapidly mutate, rather than die off.

Two friends and I noticed a lot of bugs on the server. Hope the hard reset comes soon.