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Official Build 32 Zombie Population Feedback Thread


Batsphinx

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snip

After a month of living in the forest.. it's not that bad, I mean, they found me, they started coming from every direction. I used up 8 boxes of shells on 'em (I refuse to leave this hideout until I get my fresh Tomatoes) and they seem to have stopped coming so at least I found one instance in which using guns is not instant suicide.

Forests are not safe anymore, and that's good news. Surviving for months is no longer a boring chore, it's fun like hell.

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Hell no !

I left my house for a couple of minutes and when I'm back there are zeds inside my house??? This is not acceptable.

I know the zombie generation system is in early stage but this is a deal breaker, so it has to be fixed quickly cause I'm not playing PZ if the only safe place you have is not safe anymore.

This sounds like a bug to me. As I understand it, the way zombies spawn is something like this:

Prior to actually spawning a zombie, the game runs a check to see if there's a clear path from the edge of the map to the location in question. If there is, spawning continues in that location. If there isn't, it doesn't. Having all windows barricaded and all doors closed "should" prevent spawning with the current system. In theory, anyway.

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Eh, I take back what I said about the forests, they seem to be very safe. While shooting a shotgun in most populated places can bring out hordes of 1000-2000 zombies, doing the same in the forest results in an echo at worst and 50 zombies at best.

The few encounters I had with zombies were it. I figure this is because most of those cells have a very, very low Desired Population. It should be cranked up a little.

Or how about an option that causes zombie population to go from Urban Focused to Uniform as time goes by?

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As time went by, me and Svarog have done a collaboration together to find out the best zombies.ini settings that would work with the zombie respawn system. We're still working on developing it (there are some numbers regarding how zombies form that we still have to go through), but so far we've developed a stand on a few things :

 

Depending on how the developers envision the "Survival" gamemode, some specific calculations work just right - the game starts off with the normal zombie population, and there are enough numbers to claim that looting houses is a tough job. Surviving the first weeks in the town is incredibly overwhelming, and each night you go through without zombies completely obliterating your hideout and eating you in your sleep feels like an achievement.

Other calculations give the players a room to breathe and spawn little numbers of zombies, allowing the player to loot through the houses quickly and get working on their safehouse straight away. First weeks in the town feel like nothing but a light breeze, and if you spawn as a specific profession, you get to build defenses rather safely with barely any zombies disturbing you. However, as time goes on, the zombie numbers multiply at alarming rate and in as little as 100 days, the zombie numbers become high. So high, in fact, that it will prove more of a challenge as days go through to keep defending your base. Sooner or later the horde becomes so big that you won't be able to handle it.

One setting kicks you right in the guts from the start of the game and allows little room to breathe, forcing you to make immediate decisions regarding the fleeing of the town and where each night of sleep is an achievement, while the other gives you a false sense of security and encourages you to build the base early on inside the city, only to have you regret being forced to flee later on when hordes tear through your walls.

 

It would be really helpful if we could get a definitive answer about how IndieStone envisions the ideal experience in "survival", so we can further expand our research on the zombies.ini file. So far I like the results, and it's been fun working alongside of Svarog :P

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Honestly, after giving it some thought, I'd say for now the game could kick the player's ass right from the start as there is little else to do but loot and try to stay alive. So I'd say what you've got with your settings would be about right for PZ now, challenging, and requiring quick thinking to survive.

As PZ expands we will get NPCs and Story which will be a game changer, from what I understand the story in PZ will have the players placed in the beginning of an outbreak where there should be little zombies, some NPCs and general room to breath so we can soak in the radio\TV broadcasts in peace, do some looting, maybe fortify, get a group together before the hordes become big and breathing becomes harder, eventually forcing the survivors to run into less populated areas and eventually placing the player and NPCs at the ultimate test when zombies become commonplace everywhere (My suggestion about zombie population going uniform)

I think we both found good settings for two different times in PZ. You nailed it for what PZ is right now, a survival game where survival is pretty much the only thing we can do in SP, a challenge from start to finish while I've got something that would probably work with a game that needs to show some story to the player and at the same time allow them to meet NPCs and set up basic defenses before utilities go out and hordes start growing faster, story giving place to pure survival.

My personal opinion, for now, survival mode should kick the player's ass because there really is little else to go for and do. Once we get some story and NPCs we will need the room to breathe, soak everything in, build a community, get the sense of false security and then get our asses handed to us.

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Well, I've been surviving Bear Grylls style for a year now (probably my new personal record... I guess I should switch to real life ASAP :)) and all I needed was a trowel, a couple of water storaging stuff, a saw and a secluded cabin. Yes, as said for thousand times by various people, NPCs would be he game changer, but maybe they should make zeds something like 30% in woods and the rest in towns?

Edit: yes, digging worms whole year round is boring, but it gets the job done better than it should, I think...

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My testing of the current mechanic tells me that everything must be carefully balanced. With the current system you get overwhelming quite quickly, in a matter of weeks only. Also there's the problem of total population of zombies for each location.

 

I know by the lore that the outbreak spread to other areas of KY and that you would have zombies coming from other communities/cities, but as I said in another thread, we are talking about zombies and not about someone using vehicles. They would not arrive fast or in a organized way. Total population of zombies should be dynamic.

 

We have the information of total population of the two current starting locations, and those numbers should more or less be followed when setting the total zombie/spawn rate.

 

What I mean (sorry my english) is that if we have a 3000 human population in a given city, the devs must decide how many of all those peoples become infected and turn into zombies.

 

Lets say 70% ok? That means a total of 2100 zombies in that city.

 

After that the devs must specify how many zombies migrate from other areas, be those areas in the current maps or "spawned" to simulate zombies coming from other regions and the interval between the migration.

 

The last part is to make the total number of zombies "finite" in the sense that zombies dont multiply by meiosis. So if a player or group of players in a server manages to kill around 1200 zombies in their imediate area (using the above example), that area would be "safer" than before thanks to the low number of zombies in the city now.

 

That dont mean that zombies would not come from other areas in the map or from other regions (the migration system), and depending on how that migration is defined the player will never be at ease.

 

Add in the future NPCs and you would have a good system of chalenges implemented to kill the player.

 

Just remember that the "whole picture" of the game is not comprised of only zombies, but also human NPCs (the hostile ones ok?), starvation, diseases, dehydradation and weather (cold in the winter).

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Okay, I have now survived for 7 months, after being kicked out of my original safehouse in the suburbs by a horde I moved to a forest, like I've said the forest is safe, there are some exploits that allow to survive winter off farming without jarring that I've reported and should be fixed soon but it's not about that.

 

As LeoIvanov said, we have been collaborating to get good settings in zombie.ini but I think we both agree on one thing, once zombies form hordes they only exist as hordes, there are no loners\stragglers anywhere, some cells become (or at least feel) completely "empty", they are not empty but for a player, they might as well be because all zombies are formed into a horde somewhere in the corner and the player might never encounter them.

 

A possible fix for this could be making it so that a certain % zombies does not join hordes, they would instead simply wander alone or in small (up to 5-10) groups to keep all cells filled to at least some degree.

Now, I will give a report of those 7 months with the zombies.ini setting I gave somewhere above.

First two months were easy, I set up base, gathered supplies, on the third month a horde forced me to relocate, I moved to the forest, I was safe for a month until I grew short on supplies, I went to a looting run to Trailer Park, there were hordes but I avoided them to find that one area was clear of them completely allowing me to get what I needed, after coming back to my safehouse I encountered a horde of 100 or so zombies around, I managed to take them all out with a shotgun until they stopped coming out of the forest. The next two months were peaceful and I don't count 10 zombies per 2 weeks as a threat.

On month 6 I went out of nails so I went to loot, zombies were plentiful around interest areas but I killed 200 of them on my way o get a box of nails, I came back to my safehouse after 6 days and had no zombie sightings since.

Overall, Like I said, the new system works beautifully but needs tweaks to low population areas, those areas need to see some increase in zombie population over time and migration system doesn't do that, we need forest areas to be semi-safe after some time, a zombie attack should at the very least be a weekly thing, not a monthly thing in those areas.

I have now survived more than I ever did and that's only because the new system kept me entertained, before Build 32 I "died of boredom" by going on berserk trips because I've had 2 months of nothing.

 

I believe the only two problems with the new system lies in the facts that after zombies form a horde it becomes next to impossible to see a zombie outside a horde and forest areas are very, very safe from attacks.

 

That will probably be my last piece of feedback on zombie population. Thanks for the great update that is Build 32 and I hope it helps make it even better ;)

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snip

Indeed it keep things more interesting for a long time, but like I said the whole of the game is not made up of zombies and the treat of death at their hands. There's a lot more to the game than that.

 

That's why I made my earlier post.

 

Keep things balanced (all of then) and you would have a real nightmare to give your players in the end.

 

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Okay, so this is a centralised repository for all the community's thoughts on the new zombie population / migration stuff in the build that's currently in the IWBUMS branch (at the time of writing 32.3) so that EasyPickins and the team in general can have a single place to look while we're balancing it all.

 

We're especially interested in the mid-late game stuff.

 

To quote the forthcoming Mondoid: 

 

From this point onward with Build 32 EP will be tweaking and experimenting with the new system until we hit a point that we’re happy with. We need a difficulty and population numbers that don’t necessarily lock off survival content [farming, fishing etc] for experienced players, but still throws in some curveballs. Then again, through making the challenge surmountable we don’t want to lose the added feeling of danger that we’ve reintroduced to the game.

 

It’s a tricky biting point to find, and this is where you come in! We need your reports from the game, generally from a few weeks/months into your playthroughs. Don’t just play in Survival mode either, but experiment with the new sandbox options – having more/less zeds in your game, and increasing and decreasing spawn times. 

 

I'll start a separate thread for feedback on the Build 32 challenges.

 

EDIT: Oh, and if you could be sure to tell us which gameplay settings you're playing on that'd also be swell x

 

is it possible to make an server option that new zombies spawn outside the map and slowly walk in the map or to the other zombies that are already on the map?

and disable at the same time that any zombie can new spawn inside the map ? i mean from the logic outside the map is the world and you cant know how many are out there and that hordes or groups of zombies wandering around and get interestet in your town os possible too :D

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I do believe that when you leave a cell, the Z's #'s are taken note of, but not their position. So that when you re-open the cell, the Z's spawn (randomly?) based on your settings. I think it's pretty annoying, but when I explain how that happens on my server to my family that plays w/ me, I explain it like this:

 

Some guy came over while we were gone and died in the bathroom. Or that some bandit trapped some Z's in there for kicks.

 

Zombies' position is actually saved along with their numbers when you leave the cell, the times when they "change" positions happen depending if they're tightly grouped up together - then every X hours, depending on your zombies.ini, zombies will occupy the empty space and "spread out" in the cell. New zombies also come from surrounding cells if meta-noise draws them towards it. New zombies "spawn" around only when you leave the cell for a certain amount of time (a day for example), and only if the population of the cell is lower than "desired".

 

Ahh.... I see! The game is evolving o.o

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I haven't been keeping track of my last few runs but I had 6-7 attempts. I i found that the with new respawn the 1st week or so has gotten a lot harder and the majority of the time I died in the first couple days. it does seem to get easier after that but there are occasional clumps of zombies.

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I have a few suggestions of my own to add to the list regarding these key points :

 

a) - Zombie threat is still low to non-existant in rural, outskirt areas. Farmhouses, small huts in the woods, etc - surrounding cells don't hold enough zombies to pose a "Huge zombie horde" threat, and if it's far enough from the city, meta-events are likely never going to reach you down from the city.

 

Suggestion : Aside from already suggested slow, gradual transition to "uniform" zombie distribution the longer you survive, I want to suggest the "Horde cells". Now hear out this idea :

Horde cell - is a normal map cell which has been assigned the "random horde" algorithm. It works like this : Whenever a living player reaches it, the sequence starts which spawns numerous amount of "zombie clumps" heading into one single direction from one side of the cell into the other. Each horde cell will have an assigned number of "zombies" in it which will add up to the current population of a cell.

For example : A cell with 15/15 zombie population was randomly assigned a "horde" cell with 400 zombies. Gradually, over the course of the in game day, and if a player has been within the area of the cell for over an in game hour, evenly spread out clumps of zombies will continuously wander from one part of the cell to the other, until the number of zombies assigned to the horde cell is met.

That collection of zombie clumps (or horde) will continue moving into a single direction for 3 in game days. If no outside force (meta-event, player-made distractions like gunshots etc) distracts them, they will disappear from virtual zombie population.

 

Each visible cell that is literally the edge of the map can have the "horde cell" assigned to them automatically, which will send the hordes in an opposite direction from the edge, forcing the players to relocate. 

 

Every in-game week, 10-15 horde cells change their coordinates randomly. Horde cells specifically avoid being set in areas that already have zombie population assigned to them by default (since we can already naturally witness zombie movement within the cities), and become exclusive to the rural/outskirt areas. 

 

Player gunshots or meta-events in close proximity of the horde cells, with the 2 hours pause, will make the horde cell turn into virtual zombie clumps with population equaling to the one assigned to the horde cell. Those zombie clumps will head into the direction of the gunshot or meta-event. For example : Think of The Walking Dead, season 2, when a single shot lead a stray horde to Herschel's farm. 

 

b) - The event which forces virtual zombies to "spread out" and populate empty spaces only happens outside of player's view. Sometimes, those wondering into new spot get into the loaded area, and you can witness those zombies walking around and minding their own business. That's alright, however - it does never seem to happen with loaded zombies. They never "wander away to occupy empty cells" on their own when they're loaded into a player's surrounding area. 

 

Suggestion: Much simpler than the previous. Just allow the loaded in clumps of zombies head outside of loaded area to occupy another empty area.

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Here is some overall thoughts and feedback on what I expect. Currently PZ is most of what I need from a survival game but it does get boring after a while, I'm currently 9 months in, It's slow again, I get bored, I start taking bigger risks just for fun, I live in the woods like I said but just for the hell of it I reclaimed my old house and started looting again.

What I usually want from games is pacing, I like when it begins slowly and escalates.

In PZ, when the game starts, I like to be able to be close to supplies, loot places, kill some zombies, get a base close to various POIs, fortify it and start feeling safe, after a while I forget about the peak day, I forget that the difficulty will increase because I'm fortified, I'm like "Come at me, zeds!"

Then they come, and I fight, I defend what's mine, my base I built over 3 months, it took a lot of work to get it to where it is, no way I'll just run, but they keep coming, and coming, eventually I'm forced to leave with nothing but whatever I managed to pack in panic.

So I start anew away from urban areas, I have enough to barricade but I don't feel safe after what heppened, suddenly I realize that my food storage is over run, I need farming or trapping, I need water, I can't go back to my old base, it's overrun, all other houses there are looted, I find myself needing to figure stuff out like it's day 1 all over again.

I start to rebuild, I need supplies so I take my chances and go looting, most urban areas are overrun with zeds by now but I have to take the risk, I need the Trovel, I need seeds, I need Garbage Bags!

I take the risk, I avoid the hordes which I used to fight because I could retreat, now I can not because my home is so far away, I can't risk it.

I succed, I got my garbage bags, my skill books, my tools and my nails, I get the same feeling I had when I first found some canned food, I can now survive for more time.

I go back to my safe house, I build what I will need and I live...

8 Months Pass and now... I get bored.

Before Build 32, I got bored in 3 months and that's only if I built a base, otherwise I got bored in 2 weeks. In survival, I already figured out I can't live anywhere close to good looting spots so I feel like running away from the start, SO I only look for stuff needed for long term survival, take it, and go.

 

End Game (Which for me is 6-12 Months in) is still too easy, it could be fixed by zombie population going uniform at which point even surviving in the forest is a chore.

 

After 1 year I don't imagine the game getting harder, survival would become a complete chore and would cease being fun no matter what (until NPCs).

PZ needs a steady progression system.

1: Survive from looting, live in the outskirts of Muldraugh or West Point (1-4 Months)

2: Survive from farming, foraging, trapping, maybe get a generator, live in the woods (4-7 Months)

 

3: Z Population goes uniform, they're everywhere, Be on the move almost constantly due to zombies being everywhere and any safe spot only being safe for so long until you run out of stuff and where you just barricade a random house for 3 nights and pray for another day (7-12)

I do realize it contradicts what I said earlier about the game needing to kick the players ass from the start but I tried survival and it's just... too easy, too predictable and paced wrongly.

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I had a char survived for more than 1 year.the first day with the newest build ne went to find something useful and at the back ha round MANY zeds clumping on his barricades.so he killed them home and entered home.1 minute later an huge horde was trying to enter.so huge that ne di ed fighting,because he hadn't an emercency exit because che never needed it.lesson learned.

Overall is a great system but surely nerds something more realistic and random

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just did a multiplayer test and i have noticed that hordes are everywhere. they need to have only certain horde spots so they all don't clump up and wreck your day.

this would really work or having them spread then leaders com into play around the same time water and power go out. or something like that.

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I know you guys fixed the zombie population system and everything but to me there are still way to many zombies ,in one of my games I started as soon as I spawned in my house there was a hoard of about 12 zombies outside the window and they seen me right then and there. And when I ran out of the house because they were swarming in it there was another big hoard right outside . It's like every time I play I never see a single zombie by its self they are always in the giant hoards. I just hope later on down the line you guys do something with the zombie population again because until then I really don't think I can play the game even tho I love what you guys are doing with it.

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I know you guys fixed the zombie population system and everything but to me there are still way to many zombies ,in one of my games I started as soon as I spawned in my house there was a hoard of about 12 zombies outside the window and they seen me right then and there. And when I ran out of the house because they were swarming in it there was another big hoard right outside . It's like every time I play I never see a single zombie by its self they are always in the giant hoards. I just hope later on down the line you guys do something with the zombie population again because until then I really don't think I can play the game even tho I love what you guys are doing with it.

Please consider playing sandbox if Survival is too difficult. It's there to give you a custom experience.

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