Jump to content

Horde Event


Jatta Pake

Recommended Posts

I think it would be cool if some horde events took place. These could be triggered randomly after a few months in game. How it would work:

At the far edge of a unoccupied cell adjacent to the player or a random player in MP, hundreds of zombies are spawned. These zombies are given an initial move target of the tile the selected player is standing on. The zombies pathfind to this point unless something distracts them. Other meta events in the area would be suspended for a short time to avoid re-routing the horde.

What this does:

1. Provides a built in challenge. If a selected player happens to be in a safe house, the defenses will be tested!

2. Models lore like The Walking Dead that have large hordes traveling out of their own volition.

3. Adds tactics in MP. Scouts and guards have something to worry about.

4. Because the horde is spawning away from players, they have time to react. It will also feel more "natural" like the horde came from somewhere rather than just appeared.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dont like the idea. That way it would be simple to kill a player at any moment during the game.

 

The game is already hardcore and although I like a chalenge (I love then) it would be a sure kill event because:

 

A) Barricades are not that strong because you cant make brick walls and such, so eventually the zombies destroi your walls/doors and eat you. That is a treat already with a few zombies, a horde is overkill.

 

B) The aim system used dont allow for target selection. You dont know on who you are firing so you cant (even if you have enough ammo) bottle neck the horde and deal with then with your pistol.

 

C) The event, being random, could happen at any time, even during the hours you are sleeping.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the replies! I should qualify that I'm a veteran player so my perspective on hardcore may differ. To discuss your points:

A) I agree that zombies can be a threat to a young or low quality base, but the random zombie isn't much of a threat from an established base. Especially when an area has been cleared. Late game safe houses are nearly immune from zombies.

B) You can bottleneck zombies, you just need to be creative with the terrain and building.

C) The event wouldn't happen anytime. It should be a later game event, several months after Day 1. The zombies would have to cross an entire cell to reach the player. Plenty of time to wake up. Especially if the Horde has to cross trees.

Hrot) Zombies are currently spawned in this manner. If I'm mistaken, then I suggest spawning them in whatever manner they are currently spawning. The actual mechanics are irrelevant, ultimately. I don't think this detracts from "realism" as lore is filled with wandering hordes. The "Day By Day" series has hordes forming and moving like weather patterns. The Horde is a big antagonist in the Walking Dead comics. In The Walking Dead TV show there are multiple examples, like the end of Season 2.

There are plenty of defenses against hordes. Lure them away. Blow them away with guns. Burn em. Or keep a handy Bug out bag and a good bug out plan.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the replies! I should qualify that I'm a veteran player so my perspective on hardcore may differ. To discuss your points:

A) I agree that zombies can be a threat to a young or low quality base, but the random zombie isn't much of a threat from an established base. Especially when an area has been cleared. Late game safe houses are nearly immune from zombies.

B) You can bottleneck zombies, you just need to be creative with the terrain and building.

C) The event wouldn't happen anytime. It should be a later game event, several months after Day 1. The zombies would have to cross an entire cell to reach the player. Plenty of time to wake up. Especially if the Horde has to cross trees.

Hrot) Zombies are currently spawned in this manner. If I'm mistaken, then I suggest spawning them in whatever manner they are currently spawning. The actual mechanics are irrelevant, ultimately. I don't think this detracts from "realism" as lore is filled with wandering hordes. The "Day By Day" series has hordes forming and moving like weather patterns. The Horde is a big antagonist in the Walking Dead comics. In The Walking Dead TV show there are multiple examples, like the end of Season 2.

There are plenty of defenses against hordes. Lure them away. Blow them away with guns. Burn em. Or keep a handy Bug out bag and a good bug out plan.

Ok...

 

A) First, unless I am wrong, there is no brick/concrete walls so even a well estabilished base is vunerable to zombie attacks of any kind. Doors are particularilly vulnerable since the best door you can make is still a wooden one.

 

B) Using terrain is always a option, but without a proper way to discern on who you are firing, accuracy suffer a lot with the game right now.

 

If there was a way to know on who is your mark, like the highlight the key system gives us now to dicern which door is the key from, then using firearms other than shotguns could be a option for defense (accuracy would still be dependent on your skill) and then the hazard of terrain could be useful to protect your base.

 

C) It dont matter if it is later in the game. If for some reason the event occur while you are sleeping in your base or while you are on a scavenging mission you will not have time to prepare yourself.

 

Also the fact that the zombies need to cross terrain to reach you dont matter because there will be no alarm to tell you of their presence. Like in the end of the first episode of the Walking Dead. The guys turns a corver in a street and bump into a horde, thousand strong, in front of him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

First of all, I don't agree with the idea of having ready time or any sort of alarm warning. That would be a really gamey mechanic that wouldn't fit into the game world at all.

 

About the idea itself, I have mixed feelings.

 

On the one hand, one of my SP games is on the "beginner" difficulty setting, and my safehouse is pretty f*cking strong. Of course it's not invincible, but with the zombie density set to low and the craploads of nails and ammo I've been able to hoard, it's been weeks since a single Z wandered within two cells of my home. Aside from the occasional ohshitohshithshit moment I get while scavenging, there does seem to be a lack of difficulty in late game single player (half my in-game time is spent farming or nurturing my constantly-broken feet ^^). That being said, the apparent lack of difficulty is counterbalanced by the fact that if you fuck up, you're done.

 

On the other hand, I feel like it would be quite horrible to have your base overrun months into the game because of a meta-game gimmic. I agree that the hordes could realisticaly fit in to the game world, but I feel like it would be better to increase the zombie density if you want to get that sort of mob effect.

 

Ultimately I feel like this idea could be better used for a new challenge: you start out in an already fortified house and have to make as big a dent as possible in the attacking horde before kicking the bucket.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the idea.

At the moment there is nearly no way to simply kill the player in this game at any moment. :P

 

It would add to the difficulty (which is everything but hardcore after you played it for some hours) and it would actually bring some meaning to building a safe house, which the game lacks at the moment. Why fortify, if there aren't any threats left after clearing your vicinity.

 

Never had a zombie break a barricade yet. It already takes time to break an unbarricade window. It will take longer to break four planks plus the window. Please, give me some "overkill"... :rolleyes:

 

Some sort of horde-mechanic is mandatory for this game, imo. The subject is "This is how you die" and not "This is how you killed thousands of zombies step by step and died of boredomness in teh late game".

 

Also, in this type of lore the zombies aren't strong but become a danger by their numbers. The biggest killers are a) carelessness and b) hordes.

 

You can't defend your base? Well, then run! You did not build an escape route? You forgot to add a sheet rope? Maybe you can learn from that.

Try to escape. Maybe you are lucky. Maybe not. All hail, difficulty!

 

 

Also, it is confirmed, that there will be some sort of horde mechanic ingame at some point, afaik.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the idea.

At the moment there is nearly no way to simply kill the player in this game at any moment. :P

 

It would add to the difficulty (which is everything but hardcore after you played it for some hours) and it would actually bring some meaning to building a safe house, which the game lacks at the moment. Why fortify, if there aren't any threats left after clearing your vicinity.

 

Never had a zombie break a barricade yet. It already takes time to break an unbarricade window. It will take longer to break four planks plus the window. Please, give me some "overkill"... :rolleyes:

 

Some sort of horde-mechanic is mandatory for this game, imo. The subject is "This is how you die" and not "This is how you killed thousands of zombies step by step and died of boredomness in teh late game".

 

Also, in this type of lore the zombies aren't strong but become a danger by their numbers. The biggest killers are a) carelessness and b) hordes.

 

You can't defend your base? Well, then run! You did not build an escape route? You forgot to add a sheet rope? Maybe you can learn from that.

Try to escape. Maybe you are lucky. Maybe not. All hail, difficulty!

 

 

Also, it is confirmed, that there will be some sort of horde mechanic ingame at some point, afaik.

Let's go by parts, as Jack the Ripper said

 

First there's plenty of ways to kill the player at the moment. Its quite easy for a player to get overrun by zombies, principally in later parts of the game when the quantity of zombies on the street is insanelly high.

 

Second, by standard the respawn of zombies is daily, so you can never really clean your vicinity, principally after some months ingame.

 

I am not against a horde-mechanic. What I am against is that this horde-mechanic be random activated and automatically target on the player (does zombies now have a sixth sense to find humans?).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

As I understand it, the game only spawns zeds within a certain distance of the player, i.e. if you aren't there, neither are the zombies.

What we need, I think, is a sort of dynamic, persistent "horde" system. One that wouldn't require the engine to render and control dozens of individual zombies at once, but rather would keep track of two or three "groups", more or less simply moving a few number around the map from one area to another. One group of numbers run into each other, badabing, they merge into a larger horde.

When any of these "hordes" enter a cell where the player is, the engine checks the number value attached to that "horde" and spawns in, out of sight of the player, the appropriate amount.

Taking it a step further, these numeric hordes should also be influenced by the already present metagame. If, for example, a cluster is moving through Sector D, and a helicopter flies over Sector C, the engine recognizes that the zombie cluster was close enough to hear that, and changes direction towards the sound. The same could be applied to player made sounds.

TL;DR: We need a mechanic that places wandering numeric values on the map, effected by sounds, that only manifest into actual ZOMBIES when the player is close enough for them to.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

First there's plenty of ways to kill the player at the moment. Its quite easy for a player to get overrun by zombies, principally in later parts of the game when the quantity of zombies on the street is insanelly high.

 

 

Does the zombie count actually evolve as your save gets older?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 

 

First there's plenty of ways to kill the player at the moment. Its quite easy for a player to get overrun by zombies, principally in later parts of the game when the quantity of zombies on the street is insanelly high.

 

 

Does the zombie count actually evolve as your save gets older?

 

Actually it does.

 

The number of zombies increase with each month that pass, up to a specific limit (I dont know the limite but there's one).

 

A good guess on that limit is presented in the sandbox configuration. The settings for a sandbox game 8 months after the outbreak place the number of zombies on the streets as "Insane".

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think as long as the hoardes were an option with settings and stuff you could specify like how big a hoarde, strength of zombies in the hoarde, how often one might appear or the chances of one appearing, and finally some sort of audio que like a car alarm going off in the background or lots of moaning or any of the other background sound effects like shots being fired and what not that currently doesnt do anything then... yea Id be fine with it :)

 

I do like how if your the admin of a server though you can spawn a bunch of zombies. Ive yet to do it but I have noticed the command for it.

 

createhorde = Use this to spawn a horde near you, user : /create horde count, ex /createhorde 150

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The idea of the undead horde is ok with a game like this one. The only problem is implementation.

 

One (the devs) must carefully set that mechanic so that the horde is not too easy to avoid/defeat nor its too difficult.

 

Although a lot of people here quote "Thats how you died" as the only outcome of the game, that dont mean that a sure-kill mechanic should be implemented. Otherwise it would not be a game. It will be a movie.

 

"A game is a system in which players engage in an artificial conflict, defined by rules, that results in a quantifiable outcome."

 

That been said, the horde mechanic should follow the simple structure:

 

1- Zombie Horde spawn time is set.

 

2- Zombie horde is spawned

 

3- Zombie horde speed/navigation is set

 

4- Zombie horde is set in a random direction

 

After that is a matter of luck for the player.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I am not against a horde-mechanic. What I am against is that this horde-mechanic be random activated and automatically target on the player (does zombies now have a sixth sense to find humans?).

 

Ah, ok. Didn't get that from your first post. Now, as you state it that way, I have to agree with you.

 

Also, I did play a few hours this weekend on build 31.10 and I do have the impression now, that it already got a bit more life threatening than before. At least in the first hours of a playthrough.

 

Brought a new player to PZ and he seems to love the game as much as I do. <3

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I hate this idea it reminds of me of the random zombie hordes that would spawn right next to your base in the old builds which were extremely annoying, if there is a horde of zombies coming to attack my base I want it to be for some logical reason like I was making a bunch of noise, or a helicopter flew over my base. I don't want it to be because the death gods want me dead and they have summoned a horde of zombies to do their bidding.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...