Zombies eating corpses

[Jawface]

Recently re-watched the first season of The Walking Dead. At the beginning of the apocalypse a lot of zombies can be seen eating corpses, which makes sense. I think this is a great feature that could be added to PZ (while obviously zombies would not eat other zombie corpses). While the zombies are doing this, they could be less aware of what is going on around them and less likely to notice the player. This would serve to lower the difficulty at the beginning of the game. After the first couple of days the frequency of this event should smoothly reduce to zero, as there are less survivors left. The animations for zombies consuming flesh are already in the game (as can be seen when the player is devoured). Due to this I think this feature could be added to the game easily.
I feel this addition would enhance the atmosphere of the game and make the world seem more real and frightening.
What do you think?

[MadDan]

This is already a thing, though? Maybe you're playing on Build 40 so you're on a very outdated version.

You can get Build 41 by doing this:

 

https://imgur.com/vEZ34gz

[Jawface]

Oh I'm sorry I thought this wasn't a thing, I have been playing a little bit of build 41 but I guess I just haven't noticed the changes. My apologies.

[MadDan]

Tends to only be on fresher spawns I think, and it's not all too common so it's more of a 'oh that's cool' rather than being everywhere.
When you, eventually, succumb to inevitable death I'm sure you'll notice them feasting on you.

[Eddy63]

I would like to bump this idea because I think it could be an interesting game mechanic, if it was implemented a little differently ...

At the moment zombies eating corpses is rather a "first contact" thing almost like a scripted event. 
However they never do it again on their own, like deciding to sit against a wall.

Imagine if they do would eat even dead zombie corpses. Hey the bodies are not moving anymore so they wouldn't be considered as "fellow zombies" anymore,
but as the only low grade flesh source around. Better this than nothing ey?
This could lead to lots of dead bodies lying around attracting even more zombies to that location by smell for a feast.
Making it even more critical to remove dead bodies from your base than just sickness, but also to not lure any more Zombies to your location.

This of course should be an optional setting in the zombie lore for those who want it.

On the other hand this way zombies could even assist with the "garbage collection" in the game world, by stripping bodies to the bones, making the decomposing time faster "naturally".
Of course this could also be done once wild animals get introduced.

[ZombieHunter]

42 minutes ago, Eddy63 said:

At the moment zombies eating corpses is rather a "first contact" thing almost like a scripted event. 

 

Pretty sure it is a scripted event, one of those "mini" randomly generated stories

[CannedRat]

I figure that zombies don't eat each other because they push each other away or they have a sense of smell for "old meat". But it would be intersting if zombies include an idle where occasionally they fight each other or one goes down and gets mobbed into food.  It may attract other zombies and create locally meaningful "meta" events.   It would also add some chaos when the zombies loose track of the player and start eating any that the player has recently killed  or even just eat the crawlers.   

 

It would also introduce another dynamic that the player could exploit to escape a horde.   Modelling zombie hunger could make for some intersting dynamics.   Seeing the zombies chasing one of their own for a change might bring some joy to the survivor. 

 

Would be fun if the survivor could put some fresh meat on a zombie or drop it as bait and get the horde to fight over it.

Edited August 12, 2022 by CannedRat
extra idea

[Bullet_Magnate]

I like the idea.  In the mean time, there is a mod that does this -- called "Please Don't Feed the Zombies," I believe.