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Why infection is bad for gameplay + suggestion for new gamemode


FauxPass

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Zombie infection is by far the biggest cause of death in the game and is a hindrance for fun gameplay in its current state. Here's why:

 

Anticlimactic

Your game ends before it ends. Got in a little scuffle with a zombie and got infected? You're hopeless, might as well kill yourself.

 

Imbalance

The first aid skill and any occupations focused on it are useless because there's nothing it can do against zombie infection.

Slow Healer is a no-brainer free trait. Fast Healer, First Aider and Former Scout are a waste of points.

 

The problem with simply disabling infection from your game is that it removes the threat from zombies. Turning on sprinters is also hardly ideal because they make the game a constant campfest where you waltz around fences. This is why I want to suggest a new gamemode to get around this, and put sprinters to good use:

 

 

Bloodthirst

A gamemode with no zombie infection. But how are you punished for messing up if there's no infection? Zombies can smell your blood, they will turn into sprinters and your location will be disclosed to them in a radius around you when you are wounded. The size of the radius of attraction depends on the severity of your wounds, whether they are bandaged with clean bandages and the quality of said bandages. Bleeding bites and gashes will attract sprinters in a large area around you, while small bleeding scratches will attract sprinters in a small area. A small fence wound bandaged with a proper clean bandage should not attract sprinters at all.

Why is this good for gameplay?

 

Climactic

Dying in a bloody battle with zombies is far more exciting than dying to a slow acting disease or killing yourself over said disease. You can still use your skill and resourcefulness to save yourself and have more fun doing it. You can fight until your last breath, and until you are chomped down, there is still hope.

 

Balance

The first aid skill is now important, and so are its associated occupations. If you can heal faster to shorten the zombie onslaught, that will greatly increase your chances.

Slow Healer now has an appropriate downside that doesn't make it free points. Fast Healer, First Aider and Former Scout are now appropriately useful.

Medical treatment is now more balanced, you actually have a good motivation to change your dirty bandages, use proper bandages instead of rags, and disinfect wounds. Dirty bandages do not reduce the radius of attraction, using proper bandages reduces the radius more than strips of cloth, and wound infection is going to leave you exposed to danger for longer.

 

Some more clarifications:

-When zombies no longer smell blood, they should go back to normal.

-Zombies are not attracted to rotten zombie blood, only fresh living blood, so being covered in their blood is fine.

Edited by FauxPass
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  • 3 weeks later...

This is an amazing idea and I think it should be implemented! You're very right that death is unfun in this game. "Apple bite sound" *checks health* "Bitten" welp... escape, quit. Since it's so punitive it also forces you to play very safe. Congo lines, outside, clear day. No fences, no windows, no fighting in cramped spaces. For the love of god, no stairs.

 

+1 from me

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On 11/8/2022 at 9:24 PM, Modin said:

Since it's so punitive it also forces you to play very safe. 

Well that's basically the main idea of the game... in a real zombie apocalypse you wouldn't run around, shouting and shooting at everything that moves because IF you'd get bitten it would be the end of you and you know that. And that's what this "zombie apocalypse sim" is all about - how does everyday-bob cope with the situation, when does he get sloppy and how will he go out...

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1. Zombie lore is based on Goerge Romero's zombies (unless I'm wrong, but I remember The Indie Stone said that their zombies are based around someone else's zombies), so yeah bite = death. Also if zombies won't be that dangerous, what will be? What's the point of the game then? It's not The Long Dark that enviorement would kill you. If you want an advice for survival then use Murphy's law (If something might go wrong then it will go wrong) and just be paranoic in general, that should help you survive.

 

2. You have never broken a bone in PZ, have you? Slow healer and low first aid can be a pain in the ass if you have broken a bone. I once died because of that. I didn't have enough supplies and my leg was broken.

 

3. You aren't a hero. You are not meant to be epic zombie slayer, your death are ought to be regular and non cinematic. Why? Because game's aim is realism and not arcadeness. If you would like a sandbox-zombie-slayer game then I guess 7 Days to Die is for you.

 

4. In order not to sound too pesimistic I have to say that zombies smelling your blood and becoming more agitated because of that is a cool idea.

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I don't agree with the strict Romero puritanism, I think it's great to have different views on zombies, which can be contained in their own gamemodes or sandbox options. Modding too, but it seems the technical framework is too limited for many ideas to be modded in properly.

 

On 11/14/2022 at 12:03 PM, TheUltiM8Guy said:

if zombies won't be that dangerous

 

Becoming a sprinter magnet sounds pretty dangerous to me, significantly more so than an infection risk in many instances.

 

On 11/14/2022 at 12:03 PM, TheUltiM8Guy said:

2. You have never broken a bone in PZ, have you? Slow healer and low first aid can be a pain in the ass if you have broken a bone. I once died because of that. I didn't have enough supplies and my leg was broken.

 

I've broken bones just to see if I can, but I found it basically impossible to break them in normal gameplay. You need to jump off multiple stories or get in a super high speed car crash, which just doesn't happen with me.

 

On 11/14/2022 at 12:03 PM, TheUltiM8Guy said:

3. You aren't a hero. You are not meant to be epic zombie slayer, your death are ought to be regular and non cinematic. Why? Because game's aim is realism and not arcadeness. If you would like a sandbox-zombie-slayer game then I guess 7 Days to Die is for you.

 

The flagship gamemode Apocalypse kind of does let you be an epic zombie slayer, but doing that will be really hard with hordes sprinters you can't hide from.

 

On 11/14/2022 at 12:03 PM, TheUltiM8Guy said:

4. In order not to sound too pesimistic I have to say that zombies smelling your blood and becoming more agitated because of that is a cool idea.

 

Thanks. This doesn't actually need its own gamemode, if it's implemented as a sandbox setting it can just be used in custom sandbox for the same effect.

Edited by FauxPass
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On 11/11/2022 at 5:27 PM, getstoopid said:

Well that's basically the main idea of the game... in a real zombie apocalypse you wouldn't run around, shouting and shooting at everything that moves because IF you'd get bitten it would be the end of you and you know that. And that's what this "zombie apocalypse sim" is all about - how does everyday-bob cope with the situation, when does he get sloppy and how will he go out...

 

Hmm well in my games, I run around clearing 500+ zombies every day with rows and rows of spears that I somehow craft from tree branches that I get from bushes, and all the knives that the zombies drop. I yell and honk so that I can bring as many zombies as possible to my position, and endlessly stab and stab with my 20 hunting knives while strafing backwards. I am the hero. As FauxPass said, apocalypse lets you do that. But really, I do that in 6 months later and CDDA too. If anything, it gives me more incentive for it: zombies are everywhere so might as well kill them all.

 

Not very apocalyptic. My idea of an actual zombie apocalypse isn't rambo swinging spears in the streets, it's constant despair, setbacks, terror, exhaustion but also hope, careful preparation and planning, stealth, inventiveness, a simpler life, rediscovering nature, etc... but most importantly, surviving together. As is yours, I'm sure.

 

Right now surviving in nature is too easy. Zombies are the only challenge. The only way to deal with them is to simply kill them with the best weapons. And surviving in cities once the zombies are dealt with is also trivial. I'd like to see more: yes NPCs but also, actual stealth mechanics, misdirection, traps, a harsher world with fewer resources, constant danger, overwhelming odds.

 

So I say again: right now bites are the only way I die. Apple bite sound? Open health. Bitten? Quit. Where's the despair, where's the terror, where's the hopelessness, where's the drama? Where's the realistic apocalypse you guys claim I should be thrilled about? Let me struggle for my life as I hold onto a faint glimmer of hope, let me thrash and claw and maybe eventually bleed out, sure, but not just quit, or rush headfirst into the first available zombono to die faster.

 

So yep OP's idea seems pretty good to me, so we can get closer to that actual apocalypse feeling. Not just "oh bitten game over quit".

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Yes you are right and I mean you said it yourself: that's not apocalyptic.. your playstyle. You run around killing whatever is in front of you deliberately ignoring the state of the world, and why? Because you don't get attached to your character.

The reason why we would be in despair and terror is because we fear death (or worse) and maybe not even our own but the death of our loved ones... friends, family, fellow survivors - our pack! You would care and your death would mean something as would your survival. You would try to reshape your small part of the world you live in to return to something like a normal life "as it was before".

 

I honestly don't think you would play this game any other way if you had "only" a 97% chance to die from getting bitten, why would you - the character is just a pile of skill values, layered armor and a weapon.. no personality.. it would just be an annoyance to wait a few days and than die anyway most of the time.

 

I admit the game in its current state gives you not much reason to be emotionally attached because your character lacks background and the only thing you can do for now is providing it yourself, think about your character - immerse yourself. React to your characters moods, not by minimizing the game-mechanical disadvantages but with empathy. Let your character do as _you_ realistically would.

The game is what you make of it!

Try a role playing run for example, maybe with friends. Can be a lot of fun and helps identifying with your character and make him/her a living person you can actually care about.

 

I agree with one thing though - simply surviving in the wild is too easy most of the time, there would be plenty more ways to die horribly out there aside from walking corpses eating you.

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No, on the contrary. If I had 3% chance to survive, if the character I just poured hundreds of hours into to survive to month 3, with which I've grinded all the skills to 10 and had so much fun and memories with, if that character got bitten and had 3% chance of surviving? I'd stick around till the very end and do everything in my power to maximize the chances of survival. I'd want that guy to stay around and hell, if they did, I'd grow even more attached to them. Unless you could be 100% sure the toon would die before the very end of course. I'd quit the moment I knew there was nothing to do.

 

If I died (and I already do that), I wouldn't just go "oh well" and boot another game. I'd just give it several minutes of silence, quietly sob, rant about how this game's bullshit, give it a few days and then maybe start a new game.

 

It's not because I completely disregard what the usual zombie apocalypse ambience would have me do (which is completely contradicted by the game and was my whole point: a zombie apocalypse is about X, the game pushes you to do Y - some form of dissonance there, hence me saying the game needs more ways to deal with zombies without just backpedal swipe swipe swipe stab stab stab, yadda yadda), that I don't grow attached to my toons. After all, I make them in my image and play them in my image. It's the same with any game that leaves me free to decide what my character does and thinks and why they do it and think it. Zomboid is more an RPG in that sense than say Skyrim. My toons are an extension of me and so of course I develop a sort of relationship with them. So does everyone in every game.

 

Anyway either OP's idea, or yes, a ridiculously low chance of actually surviving a bite that kicks in at the very last second that you'd die. Something that makes me stick to the very end. Imo that improves the game.

 

Edit: I make my own character's background on the go because it's fun and there's nothing else to do. And we humans like stories and coming up with reasons for everything. Every character I play, I attribute some vague idea of a personality based on their appearance/traits/how I feel like this particular day, and the more I play them, the more I almost subconsciously come up with reasons for that personality - who they were before the apocalypse, who they knew, what happened to them, how they feel about all of it, what're their goals etc... Of course almost all of them invariably are badasses capable of killing 500 zombies a day with spears and knives but that's just how the game is for now... And there are still ways to think up many different reasons for that.

Edited by Modin
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I totally agree with you that the game needs more ways of dealing with the zombies. It should give me more options to distract a horde or lure them into a nice mass-killing trap or whatever.

How you build up your character, yes that's what I was talking about! =) But then what I don't get is why you take your buddy in the middle of a zombiehorde going slayer-barbarian-hero on them and ranting about him dying... if it was his story to lose his wits and start rampaging or just being that type of guy who always dreamed of this than it's also his story to die eventually caused by this one misstep. The only question is when will it happen... no small chance of surviving a bite would change that, no? The only thing that may change is that you got this one heroic bastard who even defied death the first time he got bitten! HA! Well, two weeks later he died after the second one *g

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  • 1 month later...

My last 5 games ended because I got infected from a laceration. The fact that there are other sicknesses in the game that have the same symptoms makes it feel like you're being trolled by the game designers. I wouldn't remove it, but a status indicator "You're screwed" would be nice. That way I don't spend 6 hours trying to save a dead horse.

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On 11/14/2022 at 10:03 AM, TheUltiM8Guy said:

Zombie lore is based on Goerge Romero's zombies (unless I'm wrong, but I remember The Indie Stone said that their zombies are based around someone else's zombies)

 

You're correct -- the official primary reference cited by the devs is Max Brooks's World War Z (the book, not the movie).  

 

If I recall correctly, the WWZ book zombies are very much Romero-ish, however -- so saying the lore is based on Romero is not wrong.  

 

(Fun fact:  Max Brooks is the son of Mel Brooks of Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs fame.)

 

Edited by Bullet_Magnate
edited to fix typo
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  • 2 weeks later...

I love this. While I respect the developers for sticking to their zombie lore, as OP said, it is a terrible game mechanic.

 

I would add that that a faint smell of blood should gradually draw zombies, not sprinting but from a farther distance. The mechanic being like a delayed siren as it takes a minute for the smell to spread.  This way, even a scratch from a lone, suprirse zombie or an accident ramps up the tension. You have to move but in doing so you might encounter zombies that would become sprinters.

 

Bloodlust brings so much more excitement to the game than a bad role of the RNG and your game being abruptly over.  Medical skill would be valuable to cure wounds and mask the smell. A place to quickly bathe would be needed. Mechanics involving sealed rooms could come into play.  Do you try to clean those blood patches or run and surrender the area to the horde?

 

If this never becomes part of the core game, I would love to see it as a mod.

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