Zapp Brannigan

Yup thanks! We're really proud, only a year to rewrite huge portions of the game is way better than we anticipated, and yes we feel very close now.

Internal tester's quote that I think should relax a few people in here:
 
"I usually bolt to the hardware store in West Point first thing. Couldn't grab much this time before they knocked the door down and chased me out. Very narrowly avoided getting bitten: Survival margins when fighting 3 at once indoors are near zero now. Even 2 can be tough if they both come at you at once! "
 
Also:
 
 

I've seen a lot of people making the same oversight.
If you read what the devs have said, the combat in the current developer build is insanely difficult. They aren't making it easy compared to what we have so far, they're making it easier than what THEY have so far.

"
A big aspect in build 41 has been the combat balancing. We wanted to make the one on one combat feel a lot easier, where fighting with groups would be much much more deadly.
This however has been too successful if anything, and we ended up with groups being SO deadly it was actually near impossible to survive a few fights with small groups, which ended up way too punishing even for ours, the most masochistic of gaming communities. (Sorry)"
 
To reiterate, you haven't played build 41. You're comparing it to 40, but as we've stated repeatedly, the entire combat system has been 100% replaced, rewritten from scratch, from what you're playing already, so we're balancing based on that, not what you're currently playing. Where you can get grabbed and bitten at a moment's notice. Where if at any point three zombies get close to you they will right there and then drag you to the ground and kill you instantly? Where any zombie that sneaks up behind you is almost guaranteed to take a chunk out of your neck? Where basically ANY 1v2 fight are not only difficult but ends 99% with you getting a bite the moment you swing at one of them, are unable to move, and the other gets into range during your swing?
 
Without the strafe moving, build 41 was literally about 10x harder than build 40 that you're playing, and everyone including extremely seasoned players in closed testing agreed it was way too punishing and would piss everyone off, and every one of them to a man/woman were celebrating the strafing combat as 'that's the last piece of the puzzle, and exactly what was needed', and you're making judgement calls on balance we're doing to build 41 based on 'it already being too easy' in build 40 - its kinda frustrating as I said above we're considering the ramifications of strafe moving on kiting etc to make sure it doesn't break the difficulty, just provides more scope for players to avoid certain death within their first few encounters.
 
We already stated we're going to ensure that difficulty is not compromised by kiting, we're balancing hit damage, zombie reactions, chance of knockdowns, speed of backward strafing, all manner of things to make sure strafing is not OP. But the game being IMPOSSIBLE to survive for a decent playlength was not good balance either. Our end goal for the balance is it will be deadly to try and fight against 3+ zombies with a start character. But taking on a couple of zombies at once you'll have a chance of getting away alive, and killing a single zombie on its own will be not too bad providing it doesn't get the jump on you. We have a very specific plan for balance and the goal is that groups will be much scarier than they are in build 40, but if we go too far (how it was prior to this addition) it will turn off all but the most skilled players and even those may get extremely frustrated before long.

Ooh, I dont much like that strafe thing you guys just did.
 
I feel thats going to significantly dumb down the combat where I can just hold a direction and mash click the attack button and the horde will never get me and I will eventually chew through their health. A lot of the danger seems like itll be gone if this change is implemented and I feel you guys should immediately check this and make sure this isnt an issue. One of the things ive always liked about the combat is how you really have to commit to a swing, hordes cant be kited as easily because your swing stops your movement, with that gone I feel the games combat difficulty is going to decrease by a lot and I feel that guns are going to be even weaker as a result because now I dont even need a gun for big engagements (which only brings more enemies to me in the first place and has always been hard to justify) since I can just infinitely kite enemies so long as my melee weapon isnt broken. 
 
Please dont make this mistake, assuming it is one. I hope you guys test it because I already saw glimpses of it in the video.

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?

That's what Im talking about! This is what I love to hear. Makes all the difference when I am building in the map. Appreciate the Kind words!
 
TCO

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

Currently, the only time you get in trouble by zombies is getting surrounded and grabbed when you are standing still. Other than that, zombies are not much of a threat, especially when you're running. There have been countless times where I can just carelessly run right up against a horde of zombies, even giant, spread out hordes, and I just slide through the zombies.

I think zombies should be able to grab you while you're walking or running, by lunging or something of that sort. This way, if you are cocky and are walking next to a horde, you can still get grabbed and eaten alive by 20 zombies.

I literally just made a hill speculation thread over in the general discussion forums
Anyways, I know it's been brought up before but to be honest I don't remember if it was confirmed or not. I certainly think it would be a good addition. The only thing is though, so much of the map has been done and would have to be redone if land elevation was added.

Minor tweak
 
Can we set the frequencies to include odd decimal numbers? Currently we can only use even decimal numbers.
 
I use communication radios everyday for work and all of the frequencies that I would love to use for RP purposes I can not use.
 
The emergency distress frequency is 121.5, my local control tower is 118.5, and the unrestricted pilot-to-pilot frequency is 123.45 (fingers). Even the standard uni-com is 122.95.
 
Typically most radios are tunable to 0.025mhz. For example: 118.50, 118.52(5), 118.55, 118.57(5). The numbers in () are typically not displayed.
 
I can't use any of them!
 
Obviously not a must for any benefit to game-play (other than weirdos like me in RP), but for the sake of realism I wanted to point it out.

I recently learned that you can remove ash, but you can only do it with a sledgehammer.
 
Does this make sense to anyone?
 
I am glad we can remove it! But, I think it would be more appropriate to do so with a shovel. Maybe a broom or mop?

How about incorporating a timer for both despawning (logging out) and respawning back into a server.
 
Without these two 'features' the game can easily be exploited in MP.
 
Ex 1: You and a friend are being chased by zombies. You are over burdened and have become exhausted and can no longer run effectively. You log out while your friend stays in the game and lures the zombies away from where you logged out. Once the area is cleared, you log back in and continue your journey.
 
Ex 2: A friend is trapped in an upstairs bathroom. They have no nails and can not attach a sheet rope to a window to escape. Zombies are pounding on the door and will break in any second. They simply log out. You run to where they were and lure the zombies away or eradicate them. Your friend logs back in and continues on their journey.
 
Ex 3: You fall twice during a construction project and break both of your legs. You have critical injuries. You survive initially but head to your fridge/food stores to get your healing boost. You eat through all of your food stores but you are still critically injured and will die when your healing boost wears off. You simply log out, create another character, log the new character in and farm some food. Put it in the fridge then log your original character back in and eat the food waiting for him/her. (Admins do now have the ability to restrict the number of characters an account can make).
 
Ex 4: You are on a loot run, but you need a RL bio break. You simply log your character out since this is by far the safest option. You can't get hurt, you don't burn calories, you don't drink water, you don't get bored. You take no risk.
 
Ex 5: You create a suicidal BS character that you use to help clear the mall. You and your brother head to the mall with your main characters. You both log them out and log in the suicide characters. They run through the mall blasting their guns and shouting to attract as many zombies as possible before either getting killed or running out of the mall to lure the zombies away. You then log in your main characters and loot a relatively cleared area.
 
If you use your imagination you can come up with dozens of instances where you could exploit this.
 
How about having a despawn timer that takes 30 seconds (maybe a minute?) to log your character out. You need to remain motionless for that time before you can log out. During that time you still have control of your character, but you will not log out until you remain motionless for a full 30 seconds. This would allow the thing that is about to kill you to still have the opportunity to kill you.
 
Also have a respawn timer for characters. If you log out you can't log that same character (or any characters?) in for 5 minutes? 10 minutes?
 
The idea to both of these is to discourage a player from taking advantage of this safety loop hole.

Sandbox setings tend to be there because, in part, they're one of the simpler ways to enable custmoization. For sprinters, the most likely "simplest way" was just to increase their speed.
 
They'd probably need separate sprinter-specific alterates for their behavior to be altered. This, of course, doesn't mean it won't just happen, it's just why we have what we have now.

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"?

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"?

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"?

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"?

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 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 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 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'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.

Hope you'll reconsider bringing it back up. I think the main issue is PZ's multiplayer client simply isn't stable enough. Even when the server isn't lagging at all (chat messages come through instantly, looting is fine, opening doors/windows work), issues with zombies freezing and parts of the map not loading are still there. Hopefully we'll get a more optimized MP release in the future.