Operation Fix Late Game By Killing You Before You Get There

[AJ135]

Yeah I like the idea of of NPC interaction and horde control as a meta. Like planting fireworks or firing a shot in a church, setting it on fire and then getting the hell out of there as a horde marches to its doom. There should definitely be a balance between keeping yourself fed and keeping the area around you safe from hordes and marauders, even if it is only for a few days to a week.

[TheKingLlama]

Will we be getting local coop?

[Madigari]

I would hate to live in the forest for 2 months and then head back into the city for tools and other supplies and find that the city center isn't just the 200-300 zombies that it used to be but one massive pack of zombies that is 2000+.

 

I would actually love that.  One of the things I'm hoping for is dynamic hordes. Where they can grow and split based on how many of them are hearing or seeing the same stimulus, or just following the group because they assume the group has seen or heard something.

[AJ135]

I would be up for that, roaming herds of zombies as little as say 5 or as big as 600. I don't know why but i have a feeling that the majority of zombies would naturally migrate towards the town center so rather that lots of big hordes, in West Point for example there would be one horde in the 1000s in the town center while the herds outside the city would only be like 30-60.

[CaptKaspar]

I feel that zombies would be attracted to protein sources by smell. That is how they would initially begin to horde. They would follow their sense of smell until a more powerful stimuli from hearing or sight redirects them.

I don't love the idea of zombies just congregating downtown in the urban area after migrating. Why would they do that? I am ok with zombies heavily starting there because of population density, but they need a reason to migrate there.

Their smell would very slowly lead them to players, fresh trapped meat, the fridges at Spiffo's, the Gigamart, your safe house fridge etc. This would govern their movement direction. A slow shamble towards smells from a far distance, a more focused shamble towards sounds, and a direct effort to more quickly go after sight.

I am undecided if they should be attracted to rotting meat. I suppose I would like to see that they are, just for the sake of a more varied gameplay.

Why else is there a smell setting in sandbox?

Perhaps there could be a wind system added that blew scents around? Everyone has experienced the scent of a neighbor's BBQ or a baker's fresh bread carried by the wind. Makes cooking on campfires more dangerous when the power goes out.

Wind can also be noisy. It can disguise zombie moans and also bang open windows and doors, attracting zombies.

I also feel players should have a sense of smell. Are you going to open a door that is wafting rotten corpse fumes? Probably not! Also a horde of decaying zombies would smell something fierce!! A player would be aware of a horde if they were downwind of it. Every intelligent hunter knows to stay downwind of its prey for this same basic reason. A simple moodle would work.

[Slendy]

Oh god.. 

I'm going to love this update.

[ughughugh]

How will the horde mechanism work and how will it work in conjuntion with the survivors, that is the player and the NPC survivors?

 

Imagine you got a fresh map with zombies spawning and according to population density there are more in the city center than on the outskirts and in the wilderness. What about the survivors? Will they be evenly spread too? The game starts when the zombies have already taken over and there has got to be some very good reason why you just start in an empty house. Have you been sick and just recovered? And what about the NPCs? The only reason for me to ask those questions is to find out where the survivors will start. So the player will start in a residential zone and the NPCs have built safe houses already and they are evenly spread across the map or are they mostly in residential zones?

 

There has got to be a reason for hordes to form and migrate and they should migrate towards safehouses. Imagine all the safehouses are in a residential zone. Won't the horde just destroy all of those safe houses in one long run? I definately want to distract a horde depending on its size. Like I set fire to a far away buidling which is a stronger stimulus than the food I store or the noise I make.

What are the stimuli for zombies anyway? Vision > hearing > smell? And player > NPC > animal > food > zombie? And how to prevent the zombies from forming one huge blob? If x zombies in area y around zombie => no movement? Or something else like there hasn't been a stimulus for a while and the zombies then try to spread evenly with the one in the middle of the blob causing the ones on the outside to move farther away from the center thus resulting in a density gradient? I like that last idea, because it resets the stage for another act.

 

This game got me thinking and I desperately want to see what it finally turns into.

[SailorWolf]

I think zombies would be sound based..so if you set off a alarm in a house it would likely form a small horde. Then the noise from the small horde would draw more zeds making it grow and begin to snowball into a huge horde. That would force a player to either deal the small horde right away or let it grow into a large horde and end up on their doorstep one day.

[Madigari]

I had a thought. What about vermin destroying nonperishable food? It might add a new use for mouse traps, if you start seeing items showing up as "mouse-eaten _____". Could still eat it too, but maybe with a smaller hunger reduction, and some unhappiness increase + risk of illness.

[Viceroy]

How about we turn our collective thoughts toward zombie memory for a bit.

 

As Suomiboy mentioned in another thread, having zombies follow you or at least require more effort to shake should be the norm in some cases. Now let's think back to when we had only the test neighbourhood. We often had to zigzag between houses or make a few turns to throw the stenches off your trail before heading back to the safehouse. Whereas currently in the game, the memory settings are way off and they will sometimes cease pursuit when you are still essentially just in front of them. To address this I'd say that the memory of zeds be extended further than it is presently, to a much larger degree I'd even argue.

 

I remember when the MP game came in for the first time, the testing server had a particularly fun 'glitch' which resulted in major memory longevity among the zombies, I remember travelling with Aricane and we hit the police station in MD, retreating through the woods to the tavern, only to be absolutely swamped in zombies a few minutes later. Now granted, this had been a glitch where the zombies *knew* exactly where we were. So naturally I am not in favour of it, but the result... was one of the most harrowing and fun experiences I have ever had in PZ, bar none.

 

So my proposal is as follows: Boost our zombie memory for survival up to what would be regarded as high in sandbox terms, then on top of that -and this is about the result I mentioned previously- add a simple behaviour where when enough zombies are walking in one direction (or even just roughly half of all zombies do this.) they keep walking in that direction even after losing their 'memory'. This would result in cases where if you run up a road the zombies will keep walking up that road for a long time, it would result in the same event as the glitch did previously, except in a fair and manageable way. Aricane and I did indeed just keep going in the direction the zombies last saw us, so the event would still have occured, however if we were aware of it, we would need to anticipate their movements. Resulting in !FUN!

 

This would make for unexpected encounters and hordes moving through an area or catching up to you hours later if you happened to camp on a highway or in the general direction you fled in. Zombies would still repopulate as present and zombies would still be distracted by meta events and other things like animal traps and players/npc's.

 

So in short: Have some zombies keep on walking in the direction they last saw a human moving into (for a much longer time). This would fit with lore and create another believable hazard and potential source of a 'horde'. Also, boost basic zombie memory somewhat.

Edited October 22, 2014 by Viceroy

[AJ135]

Yeah I can imagine running desperately into a random house, killing the zeds in there and then retreating upstairs as the horde arrives. Imagine desperately making a rope sheet just to escape certain doom, not even sure if you are about to land on some zombies. Meta game is definitely missing this gritty excitement!

[Rathlord]

Unfortunately, even if zombie memory was forever they'd just get streamed as soon as they left the loaded area, which is fairly small. After streaming the zombies don't have any movement or anything like that, so it'd require a major revision to work- not that I'm against that.

[Viceroy]

Well I am most certainly making the assumption that the devs have something in mind to manage the movement of meta zombies. Be it taking the population that has a triggered 'migration' event and essentially making the whole horde as one unit, moving it through the meta world up to the point where it would intersect a streamed area, where upon the horde unit realises all of the zombies that it represents. Creating a horde at the edge of the loaded cell and applying a starting order to them so they 'walk into sight' so to speak.

 

NPC's will definitely be moving through the world when unstreamed, so it stands to reason that the very same method could be applied to this 'horde' unit.

 

At least that is off the top of my mind where I'd begin. Certainly the devs -being far more skilled than I- will have some fairly good ideas since the inception of PZ.

[EnigmaGrey]

People already complain vehemently about zombies remembering too much . . . but then I continue to be the advocate for "leave zombies the way they are, but change the way they migrate and the number of them within a group."

They'll already follow you for a full screen length and can do some basic navigation around obstacles, such as trees, and still persist. Increasing it further would effectively mean the only way to escape would be to run as fast as possible in one direction, until no zombies are near you . . . then circle back and hope to hell another zombie doesn't see you, triggering the whole process over again.
 

But then maybe that's a variety of factors creating the illusion that this is all memory.

[syfy]

ok, how about tiered memory based on the zombies "age". it seems like we have basically 4 types of zombies

Fast

Walkers

Limpers

Crawlers

 

use simple math and give the Fast ones 75% memory

Walkers 50%

Limpers 25%

Crawlers could be a wildcard. we all hate them, but give a crawler 75% memory and it could suddenly become a real threat as it keeps following you in tall grass and you don't know hes there

[Viceroy]

-snip-

 

Zombie memory would still only be memory, they wouldn't go where they didn't see you go, so in effect you'd just have to lose them indeed. That is sort of the point of expanding their memory and adjusting how they handle losing a target. And if people vehemently complain about zombie memory I have yet to encounter it personally so it would just be another individual's opinion. And they are welcome to it, however we are debating ways of enhancing the zombie threat, and memory is a nice (existing) factor to tweak. Meaning in beginner mode it can be as it is currently anyway.

 

However for people like me, the ability to adjust zombie memory is a much needed and constantly used sandbox option. One that has a very nice effect on zombie behaviour and your tactics when losing them, that is why I suggest it be expanded to allow for longer terms of memory as well (retaining current terms as well.). Or at the very least allow a state for zombies when they lose memory of a target to just mindlessly stroll on ahead until other factors intervene.

 

The prior would make zombies inside a building a danger since they wouldn't lose the memory of you when you pop out a window and enter another room. You can clearly see zombies forgetting about a pursuit when you are very clearly still supposed to be a current target for a zombie (like seriously they lose you on open ground). The latter would allow for you as player to more effectively 'lure' zombies away into a direction you have no intent of using. Increasing the number of factors you have to manage if you want to keep your overall risk low.

 

That way when you make a racket somewhere and the zombies go there without you being visible or noticed, some of them would keep walking and others would stop as they do presently. Thus providing a means to manage the threat and to avoid them.

 

It is more a suggested shakeup of the (pursuit) behaviour in general than as much a singleminded tweak towards difficulty alone. Still this is my opinion and you are certainly welcome to oppose it. I am merely thinking about the interplay different factors have on gameplay as well as difficulty and fun. I personally think the added behaviour of them sometimes doing the johnny walker thing would make for some surprising situations when you are looting resulting in more fun and emergent events.

[ughughugh]

After playing around with the sandbox mode I like my zeds with excellent memory, smell and hearing, but normal vision. And a bit of seasoning. With a fresh character, who easily panicks, there have been a number of nice surprises and I can't just walk to any destination. Unfortunately I can still effectively clear an area and create huge safe zones, which just makes reaching the late game a bit harder. So simply adding more grinding to the game doesn't solve the problem of static zombies. And I have quickly reached the late game nonetheless.

 

I am not opposed to zombies walking in the direction of the last stimulus till the bang into an obstacle though, they already follow me from off the screen.

[Ohbal]

(Love this thread)

 

We are pointing out the core problems one by one, with nice suggestions that may lead the way to fix them!

 

I'll get into this one in particular:

 

After playing around with the sandbox mode I like my zeds with excellent memory, smell and hearing, but normal vision. And a bit of seasoning. With a fresh character, who easily panicks, there have been a number of nice surprises and I can't just walk to any destination. Unfortunately I can still effectively clear an area and create huge safe zones, which just makes reaching the late game a bit harder. So simply adding more grinding to the game doesn't solve the problem of static zombies. And I have quickly reached the late game nonetheless.

 

I am not opposed to zombies walking in the direction of the last stimulus till the bang into an obstacle though, they already follow me from off the screen.

 

We really need to find a way to make this harder than its now. Baseball bat is already devastating once you are skilled with the controls. I'll say nothing about the axe. I'm not running away from alarms anymore. I just get outside, find a clear field, and dispatch them as they arrive. It should be nearly impossible to keep the current fighting pace. The same tireness that gets you when using the sledgehammer should happen with every weapon based on its weight. 

[ughughugh]

I wonder what can be done with the gameplay mechanics we currently got. I am fine with low zombie density and low repopulation if you have a safehouse in the outskirts of the town. Once hordes are back in even those safe places will hopefully not be completely safe.

 

To get to the point, I wonder if it should be an option to fight a lot. I don't see that smell works at all. It is an option in sandbox mode though and I guess it is there to make zombies move very slowly to an area with high player activity. Really dead flesh like killed zombies should instantly and slowly attract zeds with a say three day fadeout and by then the corpses have turned into skeletons. I don't want the corpses to totally dissapear, but some indication of my previous deeds and some visuals to show me how attractive that area still is (like three stages of decaying corpses and the final skeleton stage).

I hope there is some fade in till smell reaches its full effect, so I can get rid of the corpses around my safe house. And I also want rain to effectively negate the smell, so I can sneak around while it is raining with the risk of a cold. Imagine you made it to your destination, a bookshop, a gunshop or a warehouse all wet and start coughing and sneezing. Oh boy! 

 

Right now the player is a hotspot, but only with a small area of effect, even with pinpoint hearing for the zeds. By the time smell is the dominant sense for zeds and hearing and vision are poor, sneaking around will be more of an option. As it stands now zeds should be afraid of me.

I want to sneek into town and if everything goes as planned carefully make my way back to the safe house. Because plans always go wrong and I make a mistake or a zed notices me just by pure chance, I quickly gather the loot I need, fight a little and then run for my life into the wilderness, where I am hungry, wet, panicking, depressed and all that good stuff till I finally make it back home with a long detour. That is the kind of gameplay I am after. For leveling purposes I can still walk into a low zed density area and kill some zeds without the risk of attracting a horde.

[IronCoffins]

I never thought about that one for the zombies, since if the npc's are to be busy on and off screen all over the map doing there thing, then why not be able to apply that to zombies so to speak. I'm thinking in this way you can have the zombies travel around the map, especially for the horde migration movements. But that's another thing, is the zombies and the npc's applied the same as far as the coding is involved, for how they act & behave, ect.

[Rathlord]

I'm pretty confident (read: 100% sure) it takes more than 3 days for a body to decompose into a skeleton XD

[Blasted_Taco]

I'm pretty confident (read: 100% sure) it takes more than 3 days for a body to decompose into a skeleton XD

 

The real skeleton gets out of your body and fills it with dirt while looking for a toy skeleton to leave as a decoy, they take 3 days to steal a fake skeleton so the real skeleton can be free.

[Gorkhun]

This whole memory and all reminds me a bit of a game mechanic where fights of troops occuring out the game processing real time activity, would resolve under chances based on how many allies vs enemies are on a given grid.  Maybe it would be possible to do that kind of thing with the zombies? 

 

Let's say the game has a range of given numbers of zombies for each grid/square, of which, given where players are or are not, trigger them to move somewhere.  So we're talking some kind of passive/simulated "rng" of each zombie in the given grids that are out of the actively processed ones.  The more zombies there are, the higher chances some of them move to a player closest to them as a slow search from smell, possibly hearing if loud enough things are happening. 

 

When it is determined one starts moving to a location, there are chances other zombies follow, of which the amount of them increases exponentially as they are stimulated by the movement of the others.  This could steadily create hordes overtime because even if it starts as a small group, it is well possible that the next passive grid they enter, some zombies that are located there will follow and once the game determines the next grid that is going to be entered will be an actively processed one, the zombies are truly generated/spawned/real time. 

 

I'm not sure if I made the idea somewhat easy to understand, it's very late (well, early actually) and I still didn't sleep xD

 

What I like about this idea is that even if you manage to get away from another bunch or get rid of them and establish a safe perimeter, something might show up at any time, in any numbers.  I think it would give us a large sense of insecurity and risk intake.  We might find peace after a fight but for how long?  We might decide to escape instead but maybe we'll lose them only to trigger another bunch and end up running straight towards a horde that has been slowly looking for you.

As far as the zombie types, it could be nice to provide them with their sensory attributes that are not entirely the same, whether fast or slow; any of them might have good smell etc.  Would be nice to see some that tend to alert others that are sleepy more easily because they would start screeching loudly and so on.  Maybe some could also have little twist/perks such as being a brickwall (impossible to knockdown, only stutters a small amount only), some could ignore hits once they start a grab/attack animation, some could go berserk and have a sudden boost in speed and strength, etc. 

 

All in the snowball.  All in the incertainty of ANYTHING.

 

Btw, that idea about crawlers with long memory being sneaky under tall grass is awesome xD

[CaptKaspar]

1) Zombies need to migrate towards stimuli. That should be smell, hearing, and sight (I feel in that order). This would attract them to the player, to safe-houses when the player isn't there, to food storage locations (spiffos, gigamart, etc), traps with bait/animal, rotting foods/garbage, blood, and of course NPCs.

 

2) Zombies need to not break pursuit when you are still within their stimuli range. Increasing memory in sandbox seems to do this for me and is a must for every new game I start. I find it arcade like that they stop pursuit when you are still short distance away and obviously insight unless the zombies eye have cataracts or something!

 

3) Zombies need to break through all objects, not just windows and doors. But, it should take them damn near close to forever to break down a wall unless they have a few dozen buddies. I am ok with them congregating towards doors and windows though, it fits the stimuli behavior profile. Smells, sounds, and sights are all going to be easier to detect at a door or window. But there should be a threat of an entire wall coming down because dozens of zombies are pushing on it, not just the doors and windows.

 

4) Make combat slightly more varied/dynamic and manually controlled. My simple suggestion would be to add a "kick" and/or a "push" button that is keybound. To kick a zombie you need to push the "F" key or something. This would most likely knock them to the ground based on strength/fatigue. The "push" button would push zombies back, instead of a seemingly random animation from the character when a zombie gets close. This would put those actions (one is already animated in the game) into the players control. Do I want to knock them back this swing with a push or do I want to go for a killing blow? Both actions are decided by the player manually. A simple version of this with just the push could be coded in relatively quickly I imagine since the actions and the animations are already in game. Just change the action occurrence to be a key-bound event. Would also be fun to be able to shove characters and NPCs

 

Fix those issues and the game play will be greatly improved through all stages of the game. Threat of survival will be increased and the combat game play would be more varied and become tedious/repetitive at a slower rate. Combat would also be potentially more difficult without it being much more complicated. Simple game play, but more challenging for most players.

[Knifeswitch]

Joined just to reply to this and put in my two cents

As I see it, the game needs more hazards.

Everyone eventually moves toward building a stronghold or safehouse of some description, and this siginficantly reduces the hazards the player is exposed to. In order to counter this, I feel as though we should be presented with more temptation.

Generators, vehicles and chainsaws.

Generators, concievebly something players would want for their stronghold, but the noise would make the stronghold more of a target, and the need to replenish fuel would add a further requirement to scavenging and looting. Steam-engine style generators could be made to be sustainable, but would futher attract zombies from the visible smoke plume.

Vehicles, for getting around, looting appliances, furniture, and larger objects. Allowing players to do more excessive looting to deck out their strongholds, but with engine noise that would attract zombies like nobodies business. Temptation. If players can loot it, they're going to try to. Hybrid cars could also add an interesting gameplay mechanic, Being able to run on fuel or electric charge, and being silent at lower speeds. Players could also find themselves sifoning fuel to power their generator, or to fuel their...

...Chainsaw. How I haven't seen requests for this I do not know. Loud. Attracts zombies. Requires fuel. Can cleave. Perfect for if you have to chew through a horde in a pinch, but of course, anything that gives the players the bravado to take on a horde is a hazard in itself.

Improvised explosive devices would be a good addition, and would combine with car alarms well, turning a vehicle into a zombie death trap. Giving the player the ability to craft and use explosives, a definite risk to safety, and one that I thouroughly support. In a similar vein, giving the player to light things on fire more easilly would present more hazard, and a more novel gameplay experience. 

I'd also like to see construction get a bit easier to do without putting yourself at risk of serious injury. Something like a cart to help you collect lumber/planks. Spray paint to mark buildings that have been looted would also be useful, while I'm adding irrelevent suggestions to this post.

Having zombies that pretend to be dead, then get up is a great idea. Adds an extra element of the unexpected for the player to fear.

A good amount of pages in this thread have been dedicated to farming. While I like the realism of the game, If I wanted to play farming simulator 2014 I'd have bought it in the last steam sale. Farming is needed as part of a good safehouse building and sustainable development strategy, but it should be kept at a level where it doesn't overtake the core gameplay. Right now a lot of the late-gamers are going and looking for trouble, because they're bored shitless with their sustainable zombie-safe lives... In my opinion this offers us good insight into how to introduce more hazard to the player.

You lead them into temptation. You make sure there's no shortage of decadence or idiotic-yet-amusing things they can do. Even if the difficulty is ramped up the wazoo, people are going to make relatively secure safehouses one way or another. Give me powertools, a chainsaw, a still, the ability to grow hemp/tobacco, illegal fireworks, two katanas, and a motorcycle with a cowcatcher attached to the front and I will probably kill myself a lot faster through bad judgement than any zombie horde will ever be able to do on it's own.

Lead me unto temptation What could possibly go wrong?