Combat fun

[Morrn40]

So lately I've posted a couple of times about my dis-like of some of the new animation system. It has some issues that I hope get optimized. This time I want to post about some FUN that I just had BECAUSE of the new animation update. I had a new character. I was in my house. I curtained all the windows, turned off all the lights. I was sneaking around in sneak mode. Now one thing I DONT like, is that even though I was doing all of that my house got attacked by like 5-6 zombies, where as in the old game, that wouldnt happen. Now its like the zombies have GPS on the player. Needs fixing I think.

   So I grabbed a kitchen knife as my windows start busting in, and boom, 2 zeds corner me in my kitchen.I start swinging my knife and one zed goes down fast. That was awesome. Another takes its place. I start pushing them and I was able to get them both on the ground. I swing the knife downward into the zed. The new animations look great and make the fighting so much more immersive compared to the old system.

   I sustained 2 bites during this. I go outside and I notice one of the zeds I thought I killed, is dragging itself along the ground after me, which I dont remember ever seeing before in the old system. I start stomping it and Im stomping it in the chest. I must have stomped this zed 45 times with no result. So I moved up a smidge and 1 or 2 stomps to the head killed it. Now I dont know if that was just coincidence or if you can actually target their heads now.

   I go back in to take stock and things look like a war zone. Glass all over the floor that crunches as I walk over it. Blood just covering my characters clothing, and the floor and walls of my kitchen look like The Manson Family just rolled through. Just that single 2 minute ambush provided a ton of fun, that in the old system would have been just more of the same old boring non-dynamic combat. It looks cool, it felt cool. I just think the ease at which you get bitten now should be toned down a bit, and the way the zeds seem to have the player on auto find needs to be fixed. But all in all, pretty good stuff, especially when you consider that this is all brand new. Its a new base for the devs to build upon, which I think will lead to some really cool game play in the future.

[TheVastator]

Yeah, you have to aim a bit towards the head (upper torso seem to work as well) in order to stomp correctly.

 

[feral_donkey]

I had a fun thing happen where I thought I was bit,   heard the chomping animation,    but had no wounds.     A few minutes later I noticed my workman's vest was missing the front.    They chomped my clothes instead.

 

EDIT:     At least,  I think that's what happened.  Maybe it was already damaged.

[Rass]

30 minutes ago, feral_donkey said:

I had a fun thing happen where I thought I was bit,   heard the chomping animation,    but had no wounds.     A few minutes later I noticed my workman's vest was missing the front.    They chomped my clothes instead.

 

EDIT:     At least,  I think that's what happened.  Maybe it was already damaged.

I'm pretty sure that's how all pants/shirt/jacket items work. When they protect you, the place where the attack would've landed gets damaged or torn off and the item no longer provides protection in that area. 

[Morrn40]

Yea Im still not liking how sluggish combat seems now. Im getting bit WAY WAY more often now to the point where I dont even want to engage zombies at all now. In a game where a single bite can kill you, I  dont think you should be getting bit every encounter lol.

[ZombieHunter]

They didn't change the Zombie Ai  ( they just optimized the animation handling ) 

So nothing actually was different than before 

 

The problem seems to be a known bug - that the developers can't reproduce reliably. 

I still suspect it is because of order of operations - if a zombie loads in it does pathing first before it calculates if line of sight is possible or not. 

[Zapp Brannigan]

The whole point of zombies is not to let them get close to you. If you take a knife and go against a group of zombies in a small room you shouldn't expect to get out alive, or at least unbitten. Zombies are slow, easily dodged, and weak in the open, but they kill you quick if you let your guard down and should be avoided in tight spaces. That's true, classic Romero lore. They also don't bite any more often now that I can tell, the animations are just better. Before they had to go through a bite animation at you like three times before a scratch/bite would even register.

[Morrn40]

I have no idea about animations or any of that. All I know, is that before the update I would only suffer bites and such if I was dumb or did something dumb. Now Im getting bitten constantly. I've seen a bunch of others saying the same, so I know its not just me either lol. I get the point of zombies. Before I was able to deal with 1-2 zombies attacking me, now that same scenario is almost a certain bite.

  Now Im not saying this to try and be a smart-@ss, but I find it kinda weird that we just had a huge update that totally changed a major part of the game and those of us that are saying we are having issues with the zombies biting us non-stop are being met with people that are saying "nah there's nothing wrong". lol. I mean it would go to reason that being that we just had a huge update that changed the animations portion of the game, and now some people are saying the combat animations are sluggish leading to constant bites, that there might be an issue there.

  As my character does his attack animation, alot of times the zombie will get off bites, while Im in mid-animation, or so it seems. Sometimes my character seems to lose focus and suddenly not be facing the zombie correctly anymore and then, here come the bites. I KNOW there is an issue somewhere because Im getting bitten WAY more than I used to in the same circumstances. Now, whether that is a bug or a feature, I guess is the issue lol.

[ZombieHunter]

2 hours ago, Morrn40 said:

I have no idea about animations or any of that. All I know, is that before the update I would only suffer bites and such if I was dumb or did something dumb. Now Im getting bitten constantly. I've seen a bunch of others saying the same, so I know its not just me either lol. I get the point of zombies. Before I was able to deal with 1-2 zombies attacking me, now that same scenario is almost a certain bite.

 

Just to be clear I was replying only to the GPS tracking part earlier.

 

The bites are a different thing all together. 

They wanted to make combat deadlier so it is likely zombies actually bite if they complete the full animation unlike before. So you need to essentially "prevent them" from completing a full animation either by pushing them back, or whacking them in the head.