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Stunlocks are not a fun or engaging game mechanic. Allow me to at least try to escape.


Lynexia

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Ok, so I never expect this game to be easy. Even if some of the mechanics in game feel a bit dumb I can understand a lot of them. However what I will never understand why for the love of all things I can be stunlocked in place at any point and I've found that when it happens I literally just restore my character using admin power (I only play on a server) because how I died was not due to lack of skill, it was due to poor game mechanics.. This is straight up why stunlocks should not be a thing.

 

Nobody should ever feel like the game gave them literally no chance to survive, If I die, it 1. should be my fault and 2. Should allow me to rectify my error rather than that error being a guaranteed death sentence. Now if I make several mistakes in a row.. sure I should die, but one slight error shouldn't be a death, that's why most game have health pools to begin with, but with the current system the health bar is almost redundant outside of being a timer for not bandaging and carrying too much for too long.

 

So my suggestion is pretty simple; Just remove animation locking, Literally nobody likes being locked into animations. Even if the zombie STILL gets a bite or scratch on us allow us to push it away. 

 

Also I just want to add, that every time this seems to happen to people, even in games I've seen people playing online and on youtube it's almost always because the PZ controls failed them some way and allowed that first zombie to stun them, and then ofc it's just being chain stunned until dead.

 

If nothing else, it's just NOT FUN.. Games are meant to be fun. Every other type of death in this game is fun. You even seem to understand that being stunlocked isn't fun and feels bad.. it's probably the entire reason you guys put the "Drag Down" system in.. But at least I can turn that off because it's also a stupid mechanic since it can trigger even when you're fighting just one zombie (yikes).... You can't just put bad systems into the game and expect people to just live with it.

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You have a skill issue as you've said you don't. You only play on a server and you restore your character every time you die to a zombie, because zombies can only hurt you by engaging you in an animation that involves them grabbing you. If you got grabbed by zombies that you out walk, you died to a lack of caution and planning on your part. The only problematic zombie animations are crawler lunges, I don't know why I cannot spin my character around to jog/run/walk out of that animation. Currently I exit that animation by careening backwards into a dead stop, only to spend half a second straightening my legs to leave the animation standing motionless. That anim is bogus. 

They do have to make it possible for zombies to lunge attack you across a passenger seat or fence/window though. Sleeping in cars up against a wall is cheese, and so is standing with my back up against a fence/open window to bash in zombie heads where they can't lunge me.  

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4 hours ago, Badgzerz said:

You have a skill issue as you've said you don't. You only play on a server and you restore your character every time you die to a zombie, because zombies can only hurt you by engaging you in an animation that involves them grabbing you. If you got grabbed by zombies that you out walk, you died to a lack of caution and planning on your part. The only problematic zombie animations are crawler lunges, I don't know why I cannot spin my character around to jog/run/walk out of that animation. Currently I exit that animation by careening backwards into a dead stop, only to spend half a second straightening my legs to leave the animation standing motionless. That anim is bogus. 

They do have to make it possible for zombies to lunge attack you across a passenger seat or fence/window though. Sleeping in cars up against a wall is cheese, and so is standing with my back up against a fence/open window to bash in zombie heads where they can't lunge me.  

Yeah, we're not particularly happy with the way fence-zombie lunges sometimes go, so there'll be addressed later.

 

You can just disable it in Sandbox, OP, but I feel badgzerz is right: you're letting yourself get pantsed by 3 human-sized entities who are dedicated to eating you. It's not really something you should be able to fight out of.

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You can escape stunlocks...if it's only like 1 or 2, if it's more you're dead. So I wouldn't say it's not a skill issue, because the only people I see getting stun locked on my server are people who do dumb crap.

 

"Almost every death is because of the controls failing." What? That's just not true...

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14 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Yeah, we're not particularly happy with the way fence-zombie lunges sometimes go, so there'll be addressed later.

 

You can just disable it in Sandbox, OP, but I feel badgzerz is right: you're letting yourself get pantsed by 3 human-sized entities who are dedicated to eating you. It's not really something you should be able to fight out of.

 

wow you bros are really in denial huh?

 

Dumb developer with a shi1ty attitude towards feedback lol. The death that prompted this post was after approx 5000 zombie kills all of which were in massive hoards on a server with mixed zombie population (75% fast shamblers, 25% sprinters) and it was a solo adventure getting meds for my group at the Louisville hospital. And sure maybe I made one mistake in my massive hospital adventure but the fact that, that is death is purely bad game design. I'm sorry your feelings are hurt because I called your game bad.

 

No I've been in bad situations that  I bit off more than I could chew, had bad positioning for a fight and gotten overwhelmed, been trapped in somewhere with hoards coming at me from all sides, and in those cases yeah I probably deserved to die but get real mate take the design L and change it. atm it doesn't even take into account your characters stats..

 

people will always eventually be caught off guard by a zombie, no matter how good they are, so no not a skill issue sometimes you can miss the straggler behind you while fighting the 100. Developers replaying "skill issue" to feedback is super cringe btw.

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14 hours ago, EnigmaGrey said:

Yeah, we're not particularly happy with the way fence-zombie lunges sometimes go, so there'll be addressed later.

 

You can just disable it in Sandbox, OP, but I feel badgzerz is right: you're letting yourself get pantsed by 3 human-sized entities who are dedicated to eating you. It's not really something you should be able to fight out of.

 

Also lol at calling it a skill issue when zombies can be spawned behind you without notice. Maybe get zombie spawns right in multiplayer first then talk about skill issues, go back to single player 

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20 hours ago, Badgzerz said:

You have a skill issue as you've said you don't. You only play on a server and you restore your character every time you die to a zombie, because zombies can only hurt you by engaging you in an animation that involves them grabbing you. If you got grabbed by zombies that you out walk, you died to a lack of caution and planning on your part. The only problematic zombie animations are crawler lunges, I don't know why I cannot spin my character around to jog/run/walk out of that animation. Currently I exit that animation by careening backwards into a dead stop, only to spend half a second straightening my legs to leave the animation standing motionless. That anim is bogus. 

They do have to make it possible for zombies to lunge attack you across a passenger seat or fence/window though. Sleeping in cars up against a wall is cheese, and so is standing with my back up against a fence/open window to bash in zombie heads where they can't lunge me.  

 

lol my dude, zombies in multiplayer can literally spawn while your back is turned in less that one second and they can spawn basically on top of you. literally you can be fucked over by this game by their shitty spawn code. if all you play is single player you're not going to notice this since it's a DS related issue.

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I felt much the same way when I was newer to Project Zomboid. It's not for everyone, but the thing is that "trying to escape" isn't the point, the point is to prevent getting grabbed in the first place. Your head needs to be on a constant swivel, you can't let your guard down. The more you play, the more you'll start to appreciate the simple brutality of it, if you choose to keep playing.

 

As for the assertion of zombies "spawning on top of you", this simply is not possible. Zombies do not spawn in the same cell as you unless you're using a mod such as Horde Night to override that, and on most servers zombies won't spawn in tiles that players have been to in the last day or so.

 

I think it's a little dismissive to just say "skill issue" without elaborating, but this really is something you just need to get better at managing. If you're not paying attention, you get grabbed. That's just the way it is, and picking fights with people who tell you so isn't going to make you feel better, it'll just keep you worked up.

Edited by PoshRocketeer
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42 minutes ago, PoshRocketeer said:

I felt much the same way when I was newer to Project Zomboid. It's not for everyone, but the thing is that "trying to escape" isn't the point, the point is to prevent getting grabbed in the first place. Your head needs to be on a constant swivel, you can't let your guard down. The more you play, the more you'll start to appreciate the simple brutality of it, if you choose to keep playing.

 

As for the assertion of zombies "spawning on top of you", this simply is not possible. Zombies do not spawn in the same cell as you unless you're using a mod such as Horde Night to override that, and on most servers zombies won't spawn in tiles that players have been to in the last day or so.

 

I think it's a little dismissive to just say "skill issue" without elaborating, but this really is something you just need to get better at managing. If you're not paying attention, you get grabbed. That's just the way it is, and picking fights with people who tell you so isn't going to make you feel better, it'll just keep you worked up.

 

It's been proven many times that zombies can in fact spawn on top of you. Just because it's never happened to you doesn't mean it doesn't happen. We've actually caught it happening once before on my server where we literally turned around after hearing a zombie coming from behind and watched SEVERAL spawn in front of us, it may only be happening when you're close to a chunk border or something it absolutely happens. I don't know where you got the idea that it's not possible for it to happen because it absolutely is and I think if the devs have said it's impossible they either don't know about the bug or more likely just lie about it because it's "not that big an issue if players just get good" - What I imagine they'd say about this.

 

There's literally even a mod that attempts to fix it but it only works to an extent and the issues can still come up rarely. 

 

The same bug also causes massive hoards to straight up despawn too (which is why the mod doesn't fully take care of the issue, it was more for making sure hoards don't despawn) which many more people have noticed. So while you may not have noticed it happening, it absolutely is a real bug that happens.  

 

So no it's not a skill issue. You don't kill thousands of zombies on 6x population with a mix of fast shambs and sprinters if you're low skill. I keep an eye on my back at all times  but obviously it's not possible to just constantly to look behind me at all times. eventually EVERYONE is going to get jumped and it should NOT be instant death due to an animation lock it should be BIG damage that is hard and stressful to deal with but not a guaranteed death that IS POOR GAME DESIGN.

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1 hour ago, PoshRocketeer said:

I felt much the same way when I was newer to Project Zomboid. It's not for everyone, but the thing is that "trying to escape" isn't the point, the point is to prevent getting grabbed in the first place. Your head needs to be on a constant swivel, you can't let your guard down. The more you play, the more you'll start to appreciate the simple brutality of it, if you choose to keep playing.

 

As for the assertion of zombies "spawning on top of you", this simply is not possible. Zombies do not spawn in the same cell as you unless you're using a mod such as Horde Night to override that, and on most servers zombies won't spawn in tiles that players have been to in the last day or so.

 

I think it's a little dismissive to just say "skill issue" without elaborating, but this really is something you just need to get better at managing. If you're not paying attention, you get grabbed. That's just the way it is, and picking fights with people who tell you so isn't going to make you feel better, it'll just keep you worked up.

Also I'm not new. I've owned the game for Years, there have not always been animation locks and the game got worse when they were added.

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8 minutes ago, Lynexia said:

Also I'm not new. I've owned the game for Years, there have not always been animation locks and the game got worse when they were added.

Ah, okay, you're just unreasonable and making things up to try and fit your tirade.

 

 

Edited by PoshRocketeer
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My friend you died because you're bad at the game and decided to come complain about stunlocks, then when people told you that you were bad you brought up an unrelated bug that may or may not even exist

1 minute ago, Lynexia said:

I'm not the one refusing to read posts because you think you're right and I'm wrong. Seems like you're just being stubborn for the sake of not feeling like you're wrong

 

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11 minutes ago, Lynexia said:

I'm not the one refusing to read posts because you think you're right and I'm wrong. Seems like you're just being stubborn for the sake of not feeling like you're wrong

I'd also like to point out that if I'm stubborn for thinking you're unreasonable,

 

18 minutes ago, Lynexia said:

Also I'm not new. I've owned the game for Years, there have not always been animation locks and the game got worse when they were added.

Wouldn't this make you even more stubborn for refusing to adapt to a gameplay change that's been in the game for several years, then demanding that it be reverted back because it makes you feel bad when you can't just run around like an action hero? Even the strongest characters with the easiest gamesettings possible without removing zombies entirely has to be cautious, because the game is designed to punish you for playing carelessly. You don't treat your character's life like the precious thing that it is, and they die. It's that simple.

 

have you considered that maybe, just maybe, you're projecting a little bit? It seems like you're kicking and screaming really hard to try and justify your take when numerous people are telling you that you are playing with the wrong mindset, that being that you don't have to suffer the consequences for your lack of caution.

 

If you're not new to the game, then this is really just kind of sad, man.

Edited by PoshRocketeer
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As said, there are sandbox options if you'd prefer not to have it.

 

Would be a good idea to check if your server is running out of RAM before blaming stunlocks for this. That can cause zombie behavior to become strange.

 

Zombies shouldn't otherwise "spawn on top of" you and we'd not be balancing animations around such a thing regardless. Instead, we'd want to fix that bug.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 3/9/2023 at 10:15 PM, Lynexia said:

 

wow you bros are really in denial huh?

 

Dumb developer with a shi1ty attitude towards feedback lol. The death that prompted this post was after approx 5000 zombie kills all of which were in massive hoards on a server with mixed zombie population (75% fast shamblers, 25% sprinters) and it was a solo adventure getting meds for my group at the Louisville hospital. And sure maybe I made one mistake in my massive hospital adventure but the fact that, that is death is purely bad game design. I'm sorry your feelings are hurt because I called your game bad.

 

No I've been in bad situations that  I bit off more than I could chew, had bad positioning for a fight and gotten overwhelmed, been trapped in somewhere with hoards coming at me from all sides, and in those cases yeah I probably deserved to die but get real mate take the design L and change it. atm it doesn't even take into account your characters stats..

 

people will always eventually be caught off guard by a zombie, no matter how good they are, so no not a skill issue sometimes you can miss the straggler behind you while fighting the 100. Developers replaying "skill issue" to feedback is super cringe btw.

You dress yourself up real nicely with those insults. You made a whole bunch of mistakes going into LV with 25% sprinters solo for some basic meds. You didn't bother to fortify a safehouse with a kill funnel that uses a few layers of fence? You didn't bring a buddy? No escape route(s)? Nobody's feelings are hurt here.  Getting caught off guard by a zombie is a skill issue, you weren't playing at your best and had to die somehow, or are you just going to live forever going on high risk missions until you get bored and delete the save? The only zombie grabs that are truly fatal are getting grabbed from behind or getting swarmed, that's how it should be. 

 

We have a tremendous instinctive fear of getting grabbed by the neck from behind for a very good reason. Kids got clocked in school all the time for that 'prank' where they slip a hand down the back of somebody's neck when they weren't paying attention.  

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