Combat re-think for the announced big rebalance [OFLGBKYBYGT]

[Ohbal]

 

I feel more like a threat for zombies than them being a threat for me.

 

Agreed. In the current build, proper zombies are only dangerous when badly outnumbered and cornered, which pretty much never happens if you are just a bit careful.

 

i don't know how to make proper zombies more of a threat, but your suggestion would be a good start.

 

In the meantime, for increased challenge, I play with Sprinters. As much as I do not like sprinting zombies, it indeed makes them dangerous :

Unseen zombie jumping on you ? Almost garanteed scratch/bite.

1v1 ? Easy, just try not to f*ck up your timing.

1v2 ? Hard but manageable. Low chances to walk out untouched.

1v3+ ? Run like a motherlover (if you can... losing them can be quite tricky).

 

 

No doubt, sprinters are another division of Zombi-Hazard.

 

The thing is, PZ is supposed to have the classic zombi type. In this scenario, most of the long-term survivors should be fine unless they stop being careful. I think that's the core of the Zombie Apocalypse. The question is, can you be careful all the time? In this game, one f'up and you are screwed. If you are able to play 30 hours without making a mistake, it means that you are paying a lot of attention on your playthroughs. Most of the veterans claiming that the game got easy are just very skilled survivors doing the right thing to keep alive.

 

I'm not saying we don't need a combat revamp or some adjustments into the difficulty. They would be absolutely welcome

 

Just wanted to point out that it could be that there are probably a lot of veterans playing this game and basically doing things the way they are supposed to be done... and thus, surviving!

[EvaN]

I prefer slow zombies too, but ingame they are nothing more than an inconvenience. Want to loot that zombie-filled house ? Just lure them out, kite-circle them picking off one at a time. No matter how many, it just takes longer the more there are. It just feels wrong.

 

There are other games out there that opted for the "omniscient" zombie, that will always find you no matter where you hide ("7 days to die" comes to mind), and it just feels wrong too.

 

Revamping exhaustion might be a good way to make players think twice before engaging huge hordes of zombies... Or maybe zombie resistance ? Something like zombies having huge health pool, but vulnerable when downed, thus making it harder to finish them off the ground when there are other zombies around advancing towards you. Not talking about a special "execute move" here, just plain old "hit them on the ground" animation currently in use. Would make horde-farming dangerous, while small groups (1 to 3-4) would still be manageable.

[deprav]

As for my reaction:

• From the sound of it, zombies should be more dangerous than they are, but people do a lot of stuff reflexively to protect themselves - dodging, jerking out of reach, &c. - and that should probably be automatic without player intervention. Instead of instant-scratch, I would say an untrained person should be able to dodge one ordinary zombie for at least 10 seconds, sometimes dodge two ordinary zombies for 5 seconds, and be pretty much screwed if three or more get in arms-reach ... and however many there are, it should be exhausting rather than body-damaging. And, of course, if you're trying to do something else while dodging (e.g. get a non-broken baseball bat out of your bag), it should be much worse.

Thanks for the Tl;dr of my post ;o

I like your suggestions except that passive-dodge idea for 2 reasons :

You can "dodge" zombies simply by walking away from their reach since they're slower than you, and staying in zombies arm range for 5-10s is actually even worst than what's happening now with the current lack of fast punition for letting zeds reach you !

 

 

- Weapons should completely be rid of the ability of "pushing" enemies away, making it more about "firing couple of careful shots at those who get too close and continue fleeing", than "walk back continuously while shooting, reload, push zombies back, repeat until run outta ammo/zombies to kill". Once you're stuck in the "defense" mode with your weapon, while a zombie is pushing you back, you'll need to press "LMB" to shoot a zombie's head with a high critical chance, or continue pressing LMB to "hit" it with a handle, in case you ran out of ammo. That way you can put it down, although it'll greatly damage your weapon's durability, forcing you to count your rounds carefully and make sure not to get caught off guard. Releasing RMB while in defense mode will immediately skip to zombie's "biting" animation, in that moment you'll also be "pulled in" or "held from moving" like you normally are during those encounters. The problem with this is that you'd have too small of a time to get away without getting ANY damage.

I love your suggestions ! Especially the 2 first ones, I've had another idea in mind for your 3rd point, and the 2 last ones sounds very cool but I don't know how much work they would require to be implemented.

Also, the effenciency of your ideas 1, 2, 4 and 5 could totally be related to the character's defense skill, I like much !

Now about that 3rd idea ;

I don't think we should get rid of firearms ability to push zombies away, maybe replacing the push by a hilt hit animation, damaging your weapon as you suggested, but not only when empty on ammo ! A RMB hilt hit could be a nice solution to save your bullets in certain case, or if you don't want to start shooting & alert all the surrounding zeds yet.

Tho I totally agree with "walk back continuously while shooting, reload, push zombies back, repeat until run outta ammo/zombies to kill" being a problem the game have to get rid off. I don't know if you experienced the hard reload difficulty when it was still working, but imo that's where the solution to that problem lies. Reloading shouldn't be a trivial action you can do while panicky and walking away from zeds (maybe at level 4 or 5 for the reloading skill tho), but you should prepare your run/mission : load your magazine bullet by bullet, maybe grab & load a couple more in case you do need to reload quickly during your mission. But once your prep mags are empty, there's no quick reloading if you didn't planned it further, you either gotta use your melee weapon or run away.

 

 

As far as the classic zombie lore goes, zombies are both easy to dodge and easy to out run. 

[...]

 

2. Human Error (over confidence)

;o ;o ;o ;o ;o ;o

Zombies sure are slower and dumber than living people, but that doesn't make it a 100% probability when it comes to surviving an encounter with 1 or 2 of them. It's all about situational danger ! You could be cornered, there could be only one way to escape - blocked by 2 zeds, your weapon is about to break or you just ran out of ammo etc... you're pretty much dead. But not with the actual state of combat/zombies, you could just run your way through without the slightest injury.

Or you could be in a way less desperate situation, but one of them would trip and grab your pants/leg and make you fall with it (I'm talking "irl", not in game), considering they still weigh a human weight.

So, for that situational danger to be a real thing zombies need to be tweaked to be harder, to be the actual threat that bringed the humanity close to extinction. They need to be dangerous ; slow and stupid, but dangerous nonetheless !

Thinking they're easy to deal with is pretty much the presage of your incoming death !

 

 

Just wanted to point out that it could be that there are probably a lot of veterans playing this game and basically doing things the way they are supposed to be done... and thus, surviving!

 

But that's the point, even veterans should die at some point, we're not doing crazy stuffs to stay alive ! Surviving for a long time should come under an extreme caution, extreme preparation, a well organized group... pushing the gameplay and offered possibilities to their limits !

Right now we can survive forever, by ourself, without much effort but basic precautions.

[Packbat]

I like your suggestions except that passive-dodge idea for 2 reasons :

You can "dodge" zombies simply by walking away from their reach since they're slower than you, and staying in zombies arm range for 5-10s is actually even worst than what's happening now with the current lack of fast punition for letting zeds reach you !

 

Reading my suggestion again, I think we might be closer in opinion than I thought. I can't see the justification for a guaranteed instant scratch unless your character is caught completely off guard - after all, if we're talking about the classic Romero-style zombie, their hand-to-hand combat skills are going to be roughly equivalent to a toddler's - but a zombie that does grab you is major trouble. In my mind, the zombie threat scale looks something like this:

1. Oblivious: no threat - can sneak past or avoid entirely.
2. Following: potential threat - can be evaded or attacked with a ranged weapon.
3. Approaching: imminent threat - either flee now, shoot now, or start swinging with a reach weapon (baseball bat, golf club, &c.).
4. Attacking: actual threat - needs to be shoved away or killed immediately.
5. Grappling: physically holding on, pulling, tearing, and biting - needs to be pulled off, and it may already be too late.

What I was getting at with the "passive dodge" proposal is that a zombie doesn't skip straight from 3 to 5 the moment it gets within arm's reach. In ideal circumstances - say, a single zombie plainly visible in front of your character, no distractions - it would not take too much luck to avoid being bitten or grabbed for ten seconds at two feet away even without training. (Scratches ... well, you can probably avoid that for a second or two. Probably.) If a zombie has started a grapple, a scratch is basically guaranteed whatever you do and a bite is likely every second it can hold on ... but an immediate grapple is only likely if you didn't know the zombie was there before it reached you (and even then you might get away with just a scratch).

[deprav]

 

 

I think I get what you're describing now ! The game's zombie lore is pretty close from classic the classic Romero's one but the devs are taking the liberty to balance it in order to keep an interesting and challenging gameplay.

Else yeah, we've pretty close opinions on the matter ! I think your main idea with the passive dodge is well answered by Leolvanov in his first idea :

"- While you're in "defense" mode with holding down the right mouse button, a single zombie would actually "continue" walking towards you and push you backwards (not stopping to play "biting" animation), while having  a low chance of scratching you, and a minimal chance of taking a bite. It all could crash down to zero if you are being grabbed by more than 1, of course, but holding 1, maximum 2 zombie mouths away shouldn't be a big deal, just grab em by their necks, or hold your wide handle of a weapon by their throats and push back."

Except the scratch probability that should be high if grabbed.

I prefere Leo's approach which requires active defense and awarness as you have to use your RMB to save yourself instead of a passive solution that feels much closer from the actual combat system ! But your point is entirely valid.

Maybe you could keep 2 zombies away for a short time if you're stout/strong or have a good guard level, and only 1 for basic strenght and low guard level.

 

[Packbat]

I'd rather not make the player hold down RMB to defend - if you're in combat stance at all, you're either on the defensive or on the offensive - but the point about passivity is a good one. Actually, it might make sense to say that you are only dodging if you are moving - if (for example) you're trying to stop a zombie from getting through a doorway while your friend grabs emergency supplies, dodging is not exactly an option, but if you're trying to get past that zombie to run away, you might be able to evade its initial swipe and get through before it can swipe again.

[Ohbal]

 

Just wanted to point out that it could be that there are probably a lot of veterans playing this game and basically doing things the way they are supposed to be done... and thus, surviving!

 

But that's the point, even veterans should die at some point, we're not doing crazy stuffs to stay alive ! Surviving for a long time should come under an extreme caution, extreme preparation, a well organized group... pushing the gameplay and offered possibilities to their limits !

Right now we can survive forever, by ourself, without much effort but basic precautions.

 

 

We are all going to die... eventually   

 

I don't know about you, but I'm doing "crazy" stuff to stay alive. Looking around each and every corner, carefully getting in any building, looking through the windows, trying to stealthy clean up the path and making sure I have an escape route everytime. I look like a paranoid!  

 

I mean, if you compare my way of playing now with how I played four months ago when I got the game...  it’s absolutely different. However, even with all the precautions I take, every now and then I enter a house and inside I get surprised by a few zeds I didn't see, and if I don't react quickly things would get nasty. Or I don't plan properly a long trip and I end up trying to find a place while I keep attracting tons of Zeds due to running. There are many things that can go wrong. In fact, if not for the "thick skin" trait, I would be dead for sure. A lot of scratches have gone to "minor damage" and thus no risk of infection... but without this trait (which may need nerfing btw) my survival days would have ended for sure. 

 

But this is all Off Topic... sorry for kidnaping the thread. 

[MrBlackAttack]

I'd rather not make the player hold down RMB to defend - if you're in combat stance at all, you're either on the defensive or on the offensive - but the point about passivity is a good one. Actually, it might make sense to say that you are only dodging if you are moving - if (for example) you're trying to stop a zombie from getting through a doorway while your friend grabs emergency supplies, dodging is not exactly an option, but if you're trying to get past that zombie to run away, you might be able to evade its initial swipe and get through before it can swipe again.

What if you didn't have to hold the RMB, instead use timed blocks to keep zeds at bay? At a certain point there would be just too many that blocking would become useless and you'd be overwhelmed.

[Packbat]

What if you didn't have to hold the RMB, instead use timed blocks to keep zeds at bay? At a certain point there would be just too many that blocking would become useless and you'd be overwhelmed.

 

Oh heck yes.

 

Let me see if I'm understanding you correctly: instead of automated combat within hand-to-hand range, zombies would have attack animations that the player could identify and interrupt with a block/shove. A stronger shove would still be better (more knockback, longer delay before another attack) but a well-timed shove would also be better, because it would catch the zombie off-balance. Instead of needing enough brute force to push three zombies away at once, a skilled survivor could hold them off with quick parries. In fact, if you were good enough at the game, you wouldn't need a weapon to take on a single zombie: the timing would be a lot tighter, but you could parry a zombie's initial charge, knock it down when it tried to attack again, and literally curb-stomp it to death.

 

I can think of two extensions to that as well:

• If you are not in combat stance, interacting with a zombie (E or left-click) should a fast block/shove. This makes fleeing easier and evading ambushes possible.
• You can block while moving to do a running check. That would be the technique for slipping past a zombie guarding a door, per my hypothetical.

This is sounding like a pretty solid setup for a two-button brawler combat interface. That's a very good thing.

[Suomiboi]

The thing with this idea is that I don't want to hit every time I want to look around and I also want to look where my character is walking, and not where the mouse happens to be pointing. Maybe having right click while holding the left one to dismiss an attack, but even that seems a bit clunky. And I don't want the pinky killer CTRL back either.

[Bloody Mary]

Anything that'd make zombies harder.

[MrBlackAttack]

The thing with this idea is that I don't want to hit every time I want to look around and I also want to look where my character is walking, and not where the mouse happens to be pointing. Maybe having right click while holding the left one to dismiss an attack, but even that seems a bit clunky. And I don't want the pinky killer CTRL back either.

I wouldn't mind holding LCTRL just to glance around at my surroundings. I guess I'm just used to that pinky action though.

[MrBlackAttack]

What I, personally, would like to see with the combat mechanics:

 

1. Timed blocks and timed attacks.

 

2. More combat animations.

 

3. Zombie hordes being more threatening.

 

4. Firearm accuracy mattering more.

[CaptKaspar]

 

Thanks !

The "stabbing through jaw" animation is already a thing with knives ! (and maybe screwdrivers, not sure) But the neck snapping sounds kinda overpowered, you could pretty much wander bare-handed and kill everything ;o

I'm pretty sure the crouching animation for sneaking is already planned, but I don't think the "attack the legs when crouching" mechanics will be a thing ! Plus from a technical combat pov, as zombies don't feel pain, knocking them down would have to be done by pure strenght, snapping their legs, and it's pretty hard to generate such strenght while in a crouching pose. Would be easier to do with a golf club in standing position. But that's the kind of mechanics I'm talking about when I say "the game is not built to have a realistic combat simulation."

I like the running attack idea tho !

 

 

Sorry, let me specify a little bit. Snapping necks would have to be done only with high accuracy. Meaning you couldn't just go around taking zeds out one by one with ease. However, if you did have high accuracy in unarmed (which I honestly can't believe isn't a skill branch yet) this would be much easier. Also you would be putting yourself at high risk of scratch/bite in that range.

 

Secondly, you are right about the knock down from a crouch attack. It would require a loss of strength, due to loss of full body motion. Although, I do think if you were to hit one behind the kneecap you would have a good chance to knock them down.

 

 

Would breaking the neck of a zombie kill it or even paralyze it? I would guess that based on normal lore, you would end up with a chomping head that can't move its body? Does the zombie still need its nervous system to move? I think the one thing we can all agree on is that you need to destroy the brain to definitely kill a zombie. However, a chomping head attached to a immobile body would be an easy zombie to finish off.

[MrBlackAttack]

 

 

Thanks !

The "stabbing through jaw" animation is already a thing with knives ! (and maybe screwdrivers, not sure) But the neck snapping sounds kinda overpowered, you could pretty much wander bare-handed and kill everything ;o

I'm pretty sure the crouching animation for sneaking is already planned, but I don't think the "attack the legs when crouching" mechanics will be a thing ! Plus from a technical combat pov, as zombies don't feel pain, knocking them down would have to be done by pure strenght, snapping their legs, and it's pretty hard to generate such strenght while in a crouching pose. Would be easier to do with a golf club in standing position. But that's the kind of mechanics I'm talking about when I say "the game is not built to have a realistic combat simulation."

I like the running attack idea tho !

 

 

Sorry, let me specify a little bit. Snapping necks would have to be done only with high accuracy. Meaning you couldn't just go around taking zeds out one by one with ease. However, if you did have high accuracy in unarmed (which I honestly can't believe isn't a skill branch yet) this would be much easier. Also you would be putting yourself at high risk of scratch/bite in that range.

 

Secondly, you are right about the knock down from a crouch attack. It would require a loss of strength, due to loss of full body motion. Although, I do think if you were to hit one behind the kneecap you would have a good chance to knock them down.

 

 

Would breaking the neck of a zombie kill it or even paralyze it? I would guess that based on normal lore, you would end up with a chomping head that can't move its body? Does the zombie still need its nervous system to move? I think the one thing we can all agree on is that you need to destroy the brain to definitely kill a zombie. However, a chomping head attached to a immobile body would be an easy zombie to finish off.

 

For the sake of the game. I think it should just kill them...

[Packbat]

I don't know how zombies work in this game - it may well be that snapping the neck, crushing the heart, collapsing the lungs, or other well-known fatal wounds would kill just as easily. If it has to be the head, that would explain why the current unarmed combat technique is "knock it down and stomp".

[CaptKaspar]

I like the two button ideas for combat.

 

LMB: Normal melee swing.

RMB: Guards, pushes when released.

[azeis]

I too like the idea of toggle and two button combat, and the increase of danger by giving zombies more abilities such as grappling, grabbing and immobilizing, etc.

Good post. Punishments however I would modify a little wee bit.

[Wolfen]

I like the two button ideas for combat.

 

LMB: Normal melee swing.

RMB: Guards, pushes when released.

 

Agreed, a bat would either be winding up for a swing OR in front of you between the zeds and you

 

Great post OP +1