Suggested Zombie Behavior Changes

[ZombieHunter]

I think after the upcoming Animation Update, having another look at Zombie Behaviour would be a prudent thing to do.

 

Thumping

Let's talk about s... wait wrong topic.

 

Thumping is an awkward behavior of zombies which is partially resolved with animation update.

Essentially if they touch a destructible item like a window \ door \ player construction, they will keep thumping on it until it breaks.

The zombies don't need to be agroed by anything to begin this behavior, simply touching it is enough. 

 

One Behaviour change I would like to see instead is if they hit a destructible they thump on it a few times and if they don't get any stimulus find a new destination to walk to.  This would make Zombie behavior more believable instead of randomly attacking objects. 

 

For those Curious in the Animation update it seems Zombies don't always attack windows but instead tries to reach 2nd base with them kissing and fondling them.

 

Clumping:

It is a bit weird for zombies to keep "Clumping" up together - in large groups as if they decided to attend a zombie foodie meeting. 

 

Quote

 

Sally Zombie: "So Jane, had any interesting Meals latetly?"

Jane Zombie: "Groog, Brag, Grooooog, Brainss!"

Sally Zombie: "Oh quite fascinating, you say it tastes like Foi Gras? I must have me a bite"

 

 

While I do think Large groups are important - it shouldn't be there every 20 feet. 
I think on average it should be 1 - 3 zombies every 20 sq tile area. 

 

With Large groups are there based on a RNG Event Spawn. 

Which has a possibility of spawning based on Zombie Respawn Timer \ Entering new area.

 

But is limited to "15 Active" Events based on size of town \ zone. 

The amount of Events also depends on player actions. 

Events are less likely to spawn in the area if the player is quiet

More likely to spawn in larger actions take place 

 

Keyword here is active - which means after a period of time the event can also "despawn" removing the extra zombies and replacing with smaller 1 - 3 zombie groups.

 

Low-density areas the number of events are far fewer to 1 - 3. 

The Distance between the events should also limit the number of events possible in a 100 sq tile zone to roughly 2. 

Which may sound little but its actually smaller than one neighborhood block. A small house is around 14 tiles long. 

 

What are the events?

Currently, the only real options are 

Freshly Eaten Body

Group of Survivors that Turned trapped in a room \ building

 

( Has a chance to spawn 5 - 7 zombies at event site ) 

 

Future:

Dog Trapped in Car Barking

Survivor NPC Crying \ Screaming

Survivor NPC sitting on roof playing Guitar

Survivor NPC Sitting on Roof Shooting

Survivor NPC being chased by Zombies

 

( Doesn't spawn zombies but causes nearby ones to be pulled toward event site ) 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2019 by ZombieHunter

[EnigmaGrey]

The thumping thing I agree on and have suggested as much back when we were looking more closely at the issue. I imagine it'll happen at some point (zombies losing interest in the thump-thing if given no indication a delicious meat bag is hiding nearby). 

 

The clumping stuff though? No. The whole point of having it is to keep you from just laying waste to disparate groups of zombies, as you can if they're just evenly spread out. Try it by changing the sandbox variables for zombie grouping and setting uniform instead of urban focus spawns. It's boring and easy. You can fanwank it away, if you need to to, by remembering that they clump up and form hordes in works like The Walking Dead and The Zomibe Survival Guide. At best (in terms of nerfing grouping), I feel they should just be more random instead of all pulling from the same starting values. That is, you don't get consistent group sizes of 20 eventually (that's just weird).

 

Metaevents will probably change at some point. There's no real point bringing NPCs into the mix for the purposes of this discussion, however.  They're not in the game right now so balancing things around them doesn't make much sense. With meta events you do have to remember that real zombies (individual zombies on the map) only exist in the immediate area of the character (it'd be exponentially costly to have a larger area active). This can make things a bit odd when playing, like zombies in your immediate area pathing through your house because it's in the way on their way to the meta event, but it's just a limitation of computer tech at the end of the day; it can't really be "fixed" to be more realistic, imo. (The reason I'm pointing it out is I feel from our last discussion you may have felt that multiple meta-events were occurring over-top your character. That shouldn't actually happen in practice, even though it can certainly feel like it some days. I know i've been suspicious of it, too.  You can change the frequency of meta events in sandbox or start a private MP server to see differences in the active area. It just takes a lot more resources.)

[ZombieHunter]

12 minutes ago, EnigmaGrey said:

The thumping thing I agree on and have suggested as much back when we were looking more closely at the issue. I imagine it'll happen at some point (zombies losing interest in the thump-thing if given no indication a delicious meat bag is hiding nearby). 

 

The clumping stuff though? No. The whole point of having it is to keep you from just laying waste to disparate groups of zombies, as you can if they're just evenly spread out. Try it by changing the sandbox variables for zombie grouping and setting uniform instead of urban focus spawns. It's boring and easy. You can fanwank it away, if you need to to, by remembering that they clump up and form hordes in works like The Walking Dead and The Zomibe Survival Guide.

 

Metaevents will probably change at some point. There's no real point bringing NPCs into the mix for the purposes of this discussion, however.  They're not in the game right now so balancing things around them doesn't make much sense.

 

Clumping still remains dangerous but it gives a "reason" to why the zombies are clumped together.

Cause zombies standing on the street corner in little cliches don't make much sense otherwise. 

 

Quote

Zombie Z: Yo yo yo yo I got that new hot shit, its the best shit yo, the best shit. Its Stephen Hawkz brain yo! This thing is the best shit yo. Who wants a bite?

 

Which would probably be a fun April Fools Event, but unless the Zombies are slinging brains at street corners its one of those issues that look more awkward than useful. 

 

 

Edited September 25, 2019 by ZombieHunter

[EnigmaGrey]

I personally don't feel it has to make sense to everyone, honestly, and am not going to lose much sleep over someone being unable to imagine why a couple of zomibes might stand around in a group, on a street corner. To me, it's either a lack of imagination or being too focused on your own head-canon to come up with a reasonable mechanism to suspend your disbelief. Some of it is also, seemingly, a bias towards having an easier time with the game and trying to rationalize why we should do that (but maybe I'm reading too much into it).

 

And no, as I explained, you can test it yourself. It's not dangerous. Hence why it was changed . . .

[ZombieHunter]

Just now, EnigmaGrey said:

I personally don't feel it has to make sense to everyone, honestly, and am not going to lose much sleep over someone being unable to imagine why a couple of zomibes might stand around in a group, on a street corner. To me, it's either a lack of imagination or being too focused on your own head-canon to come up with a reasonable mechanism to suspend your disbelief.

 

And no, as I explained, you can test it yourself. It's not dangerous.

 

I will test it out, but not until build 41. 

Cause in 40 we both know we can solo 20+ zombies easily.

But we also know that will no longer be possible in future updates. 

[EnigmaGrey]

1 minute ago, ZombieHunter said:

 

 

 

 

Just now, ZombieHunter said:

But we also know that will no longer be possible in future updates. 

It's still possible if you're careful and learns the changes. It's not as radical as it looks/sounds.

 

PZ is not going to change into a different game.

[TheMitu97]

I agree with Thumping part. If you lock yourself somewhere and remain quiet and out of sight, zombies should give up banging on doors/windows after a while. It would make great sense.

[Zapp Brannigan]

I haven't seen new animations for it, but I hope there's also punching/smacking on windows along with thumping. Zombies doing nothing but banging their heads into doors and windows is pretty silly to watch.

[Axezombie]

What would be nice too is making the zombies dumber, right now their pathfinding is way too good, it's easy to see that when you're behind a fence, the zombie should try to bite you through the fence, right? but no instead it goes all the way around the fence even if it's 30 meters long.

 

Something else I noticed is that when zombies are thumping on windows/doors etc they ignore totally sounds, you can scream right next to them they'll keep thumping.

 

Talking about meta events only gunshots and helicopters attract zombies, people screaming, dogs barking... do nothing but I guess it's a bug

[Livio Persemprio]

some things are here for an interesting gameplay, but some makes sense with the zombie lore. 

zombie thumping on stuff until they break it makes sense because the zombie is too dumb to understand he's the one causing the noise, so he will keep believing something is causing the noise and will keep trying to get in forever, and other zombies will be attracted by the noise and they will convince each other there's a reason for that thumping. 

same goes for groups, any noise a zombie causes will make other zombies follow, they'll end up grouping up in no time

 

[ZombieHunter]

On 9/26/2019 at 12:43 PM, Livio Persemprio said:

some things are here for an interesting gameplay, but some makes sense with the zombie lore. 

zombie thumping on stuff until they break it makes sense because the zombie is too dumb to understand he's the one causing the noise, so he will keep believing something is causing the noise and will keep trying to get in forever, and other zombies will be attracted by the noise and they will convince each other there's a reason for that thumping. 

same goes for groups, any noise a zombie causes will make other zombies follow, they'll end up grouping up in no time

 

 

If that were true zombies would run around in circles because every step they make would make noise. You would see thousands of zombies chasing their own tails.

[EnigmaGrey]

32 minutes ago, ZombieHunter said:

 

If that were true zombies would run around in circles because every step they make would make noise. You would see thousands of zombies chasing their own tails.

With the notable omission that foot steps are much quieter than a human angrily beating down things in their way.

 

...

 

If you wanted to convince me that you're not willing to accept anything other than your own idea, then you've done a fine job with this post.

[ZombieHunter]

14 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

With the notable omission that foot steps are much quieter than a human angrily beating down things in their way.

 

...

 

If you wanted to convince me that you're not willing to accept anything other than your own idea, then you've done a fine job with this post.

 

It has nothing to do with any of that.

I am talking about it in a philosophical sense if zombies were attracted to noise they made, because they wouldn't be aware they are the origin of that noise.

 

IF you take other scenarios in game 

If a zombie walks through a window you don't see other zombies being pulled to the noise of zombie breaking the window.

Or if a House with a TV \ Radio on you don't see zombies huddling around those objects.

 

Which means gameplay wise the game only cares about 2 things

1. Event noises

2. Player made noises.

 

All other circumstances of zombie actions are essentially pathing and not related to noise. 

Edited September 28, 2019 by ZombieHunter

[Okamikurainya]

I must admit, I feel a lot of the artificial grouping could be avoided if the zombies reacted to more noises in game.

[EnigmaGrey]

3 hours ago, ZombieHunter said:

 

It has nothing to do with any of that.

I am talking about it in a philosophical sense if zombies were attracted to noise they made, because they wouldn't be aware they are the origin of that noise.

 

IF you take other scenarios in game 

If a zombie walks through a window you don't see other zombies being pulled to the noise of zombie breaking the window.

Or if a House with a TV \ Radio on you don't see zombies huddling around those objects.

 

Which means gameplay wise the game only cares about 2 things

1. Event noises

2. Player made noises.

 

All other circumstances of zombie actions are essentially pathing and not related to noise. 

I'm not interested in philosophical smoke-blowing.

 

You can already see that zombies care about other zombies making noise if it's loud enough. They follow one another when one makes a sufficiently loud sound, such as loud groaning when they spot the player.

 

You're wrong about this.

[ZombieHunter]

4 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

I'm not interested in philosophical smoke-blowing.

 

You can already see that zombies care about other zombies making noise if it's loud enough. They follow one another when one makes a sufficiently loud sound, such as loud groaning when they spot the player.

 

You're wrong about this.

 

That is player induced.  You just said when they spots the player.

Zombie groaning when it doesn't see the player, does not attract other zombies.