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Targeting?


OhmoebaTheGamer

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First, I'd like to apologize in advance if this is something that has already been suggested - I'm new to the official PZ forums (although I have 'haunted' the subreddit for a while now) and although I've looked into the 'Often suggested suggestions' and the hard 'yes/no' list, I haven't seen any mention *thus far* of this, although admittedly, I haven't spent a long, long time actively searching for a post that actually lists this, so - if I am indeed guilty of re-posting an already posted suggestion, sorry! Hoping to become a little more familiar with the forums in general  - and thus becoming more familiar with what's already been mentioned. :)

Hello, forums! 

So, I've been playing the game for a couple of years now off and on, it's become a ritual for myself and a few friends to always revisit this game around the beginning of October because, hey - it's spooky season, Halloween is in the air, and who can resist playing some good old fashioned zombie games. But - I've tended to avoid playing the beta/new builds for quite some time because of the MP ability. (Not a complaint btw, totally understand it's a process, and takes time to implement such things!) However this year, since my buddies and I keep finding the old build rather 'too easy' to survive in, we wanted to try out (separately) the new beta version (IWBUMS) and, to be frank - we love it!! The *one* issue that we've all been consistently, and rather persistently running into is there seems to be an odd way in which the targeting system works for a lot of us. On *so* many occasions that we've been having is the tendency for our characters to - for whatever reason - shove, or swing, or push away, a zombie, and somehow missing it. I've also found it quite common for us to sometimes have a zombie fall on top of another corpse we've killed, and when we go to stomp said zombie - our character will seemingly stomp the already dead corpse while the other stumbles to its feet and even if we move to get away from the rising one, it still manages to catch us and give us damage (a bite, laceration, scratch, etc.) 

This problem also seems to happen if we're ever in a situation where we're in melee combat with more than one at a time. We'll be swinging a weapon and while it looks like we're swinging at one of the two zombies, he somehow misses and hits nothing but air. With that happening, we often can't activate our character to swing again, or to turn around fast enough to avoid a bite or other form of damage. This keeps repeatedly leading to a situation where we get damaged early in the first 24-48 hours of a new character and having to start all over again. While we do very much so enjoy the extra difficulty of the game's new IWBUMS version, we do think there's a couple of kinks that need to be worked out with how our character deals with zombie threats perhaps. 


So, the suggestion, or rather the question, is there any way to implement a more intuitive targeting system for your character in combat? Perhaps something similar to the way in which the old resident evil games we used to play would help us to automatically target the nearest threat rather than *solely* relying on hoping that they're aiming correctly. There's so many occasions where we think they're looking or about to aim directly at the threat, but somehow we miss. Even being armed with a baseball bat, we'll move to shove away a potential threatening zombie and somehow he ends up pushing at nothing but air - I can understand this can sometimes be caused by panic, but if panic is in fact the reason our characters are having such a consistent issue with being able to accurately target a threat, is there a chance this can be perhaps dialed back a bit? Or maybe panic could cause some sort of other ill-effect on the character, perhaps causing them to become more exhausted from hyper-ventilating or something? 
I don't want to suggest or, sound like I'm suggesting we do away entirely with the current free looking system we use now, but perhaps clicking the middle mouse wheel or something to help us more quickly 'lock-on' to which direction the closest threat is coming from? 

Again - I'd like to apologize if this has already been suggestion, or if perhaps the post itself is done in poor form (I did read some of the 'how to write a good suggestion' and I hope I've managed to accomplish that! I know sometimes I can be a bit 'wordy' in writing (I'm actually a novelist and short-story author - so the long-winded tendency here is probably one born from this!) so I hope this comes out as well fleshed-out and not just long-winded blathering D: 

If this has already been suggested, I'll happily delete the post itself. 
Otherwise, I'm ready for the incoming comments, criticisms, questions and so forth from the community and (possibly?) the devs themselves!

Final Note: Dear Devs, I love the game! I recognize that development is a process, one that takes time, effort and energy so I hope this post doesn't come across as a scathing criticism of any kind and as more of a query with suggested undertones rather than just an angry gamer coming to unload a complaint.

Thanks for reading, survivors!

-OhmoebaTheGamer

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