Zombie Combat needs depth more than anything

[Badgzerz]

*I word in blunt absolutes for brevity and clarity, but this is just my opinion as no mods can do what I request* 

Zombies and combat do not have enough depth, they become very stale and absolutely impossible without abusing game mechanics if playing with sprinters enabled. I want zombies to give me more problems that I cannot just abuse with fences/windows/fire. Being forced to deal with authentic problems in a sensible way makes the game fun to me, I play zomboid for its authenticity. 

 

Zombies need more ways to attack players and to just be all 'round nastier to deal with at all. 

• If I stand on a zombie when its face up it should scratch and bite me below the knees
• If I stand on a zombie at all it should flail around and trip me eventually, only to then roll over and grab me if I am still on the ground not pressing the shove key to 'block' it. 
• They should passively make attacks w/o animation locks from behind w/o an animation lock; to eliminate fence and window abuse. 
• Sprinters need to have limited stamina or more tripping, they are absolutely impossible to play against without abusing fences, windows, or super low population settings. 
• They need varied walking speed so some can walk faster than my character, this eliminates my ability to mindlessly walk away from zombies, there should be the necessity to pay some attention to what is happening behind me. Slightly faster zombies also means I cannot cheese their grab animation time to crouch walk away from them with broken legs. This is a thing I can do, they walk faster than me but still slow enough to not grab me by the time they play their grab animation. I've used it many times to accumulate hordes that I cannot lose by outwalking (for burning/luring), or to start a modded character with a broken legs negative trait. 
• Shoving range ought to be extended with melee weapons equipped, if I was my Zomboid character I would use a spear to shove zombies back/over by the pelvis from a safe distance and leave them behind to trip over themselves. Melee weapon shoves with spears/long blade ought to turn zombies into crawlers. 
• Crawlers ought to be a trip hazard to other zombies and myself. 

 

 

Using melee weapons should have a liability associated with them that is beyond combat error and getting bit.

• Self harm thru poor swings when bad moodles are present and when a weapon breaks. 
• Infection and zombification risk/guarantee when I harm myself with a contaminated weapon. 
• This risk cannot be eliminated, only minimized. 

 

Zombie corpses need more depth

• They should trip me. If walking backwards/strafing the risk is higher, if they are layered deep in a tile I cannot walk over them without tripping. If I sneak I can wade over them and not fall unless I have bad enough moodles or are strafing/walking backwards. 
• They will trip other zombies 
• I need a respirator for prolonged zombie combat.
• They will immediately harm me in some way such as vomiting and perpetual exhaustion because the air is so putrid. Corpse sickness will persist and sicken me with constant hunger, exhaustion and weight loss and it will kill me unless I treat it with more than just staying well fed. Antibiotics, medicinal plants, staying fed and hydrated, not accumulating sickness by being near corpses
• Characters can sensitize to corpse sickness, as in the symptoms of it will become more and more severe with consecutive instances of sickness. The more I am exposed to it, the more sensitive my character becomes to it, I love to take weak immune system traits. 
• They will not ever fully decompose and disappear until I pick them up and drop the corpses to initiate the timer, even then passive decomposition takes more than a month. I want to be forced to dispose of the corpses with some deliberate effort. They can be carried as a primary and secondary now and queued up as a mass action so its a lot less effort and time to load and dump them for burning or deletion in a dumpster.  I want to just dump them on the ground and they will naturally decay fully, burn them, delete them, it just has to be a conscious effort to remove them. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[PoshRocketeer]

Some points I'd like to bring up:

 

Shoves already can create crawlers. There's a chance to create crawlers any time you knock a Z over. It would be cool if knocking a zombie down did damage, especially if they could interact with the environment like curbs, ledges, tables, stair steps etc when falling.

 

Small variance in walk speed and health would be good, though the "random health" aspect is kinda covered by the semi-randomized damage.

 

Random critical misses where you hurt yourself is, to be blunt, not a super solid idea. That has never been a fun game mechanic in any game where it is present, and has been removed  from some games because it was unfun to play with, or relegated to a status effect.  Having a random chance to just get infected instantly by your weapon because you missed or just because you're unlucky sounds like a genuine dealbreaker for me. I can handle a lot of cruelty in games but I refuse to play a game where I can just randomly kill myself because of a dice roll.

 

Respirator idea is not great imo, lore of the game states pretty directly that we're immune, but could fit in with a "susceptible" trait idea, a mod already does this in fact. Not a fan of the idea of puking during combat either, regardless of how vile things get. The weight loss and hunger thing makes not much sense at all? 

 

The decomposing corpse idea is also kind of silly, doesn't make sense at all. You're just making the players do extra chores for essentially no reason. I guess you could argue it's got a gameplay purpose, but think of how frustrating it'd be to just go pick up and drop every corpse in a horde or they won't decompose. Hours and hours of tedious click-click-clicking. Forcing players to tend to their immediate surroundings makes sense to me, even increasing the decomposition timer to a few in game months makes sense to me, heck even reducing soil quality and the like in the region makes sense to me, but defying the laws of nature to force the players to manually touch every body so it'll rot is not it man.

 

 

 

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Unamelable]

On 11/12/2023 at 5:59 AM, PoshRocketeer said:

Some points I'd like to bring up:

 

Shoves already can create crawlers. There's a chance to create crawlers any time you knock a Z over. It would be cool if knocking a zombie down did damage, especially if they could interact with the environment like curbs, ledges, tables, stair steps etc when falling.

 

Small variance in walk speed and health would be good, though the "random health" aspect is kinda covered by the semi-randomized damage.

 

Random critical misses where you hurt yourself is, to be blunt, is a bad idea. That has never been a fun game mechanic in any game where it is present, and has been removed  from some games because it was unfun to play with, or relegated to a status effect.  Having a random chance to just get infected instantly by your weapon because you missed or just because you're unlucky sounds like a genuine dealbreaker for me. I can handle a lot of cruelty in games but I refuse to play a game where I can just randomly kill myself because of a dice roll.

 

Respirator idea is not great imo, lore of the game states pretty directly that we're immune, but could fit in with a "susceptible" trait idea, a mod already does this in fact. Not a fan of the idea of puking during combat either, regardless of how vile things get. The weight loss and hunger thing makes not much sense at all? 

 

The decomposing corpse idea is also kind of silly, doesn't make sense at all. You're just making the players do extra chores for essentially no reason. I guess you could argue it's got a gameplay purpose, but think of how frustrating it'd be to just go pick up and drop every corpse in a horde or they won't decompose. Hours and hours of tedious click-click-clicking. Forcing players to tend to their immediate surroundings makes sense to me, even increasing the decomposition timer to a few in game months makes sense to me, heck even reducing soil quality and the like in the region makes sense to me, but defying the laws of nature to force the players to manually touch every body so it'll rot is not it man.

 

I agree that the mechanics with "randomly" killing yourself from - for failing to use the weapon and its bloody. Knowing that the wound on the arm significantly interferes with productivity and speed - it just makes no sense and makes the character literally crippled for some time

Regarding the respirator or gas mask. They should have implemented that originally, but now there is already a mod for it. If respirators would reduce the rate of gaining sickness, it would be a good and not useless accessory

Zombies can't take a player to the ground if a zombie is coming through a fence/window it's ridiculous in general. I think they fixed this in build 43.
 

Knowing the "Zambies" mod the zombies have dynamic speed, but there it's done more annoyingly and randomly. If you put them speed with "hand to character animation" a bit random. That the player couldn't just walk, but has to run away a bit. That would make the game a bit more fair.

 

Making it possible to stumble hordes of zombies sounds right since it will make the game more realistic.

We don't have zombie crawlers in the regular spawner yet. But this will make their presence is not useless, they are in vanilla so far useless because they do not herald danger unless you do not play with regular and crawlers together. The character is initially aimed at the head so I don't see the point of making a crawler after killing a regular zombie. Unless it's reanimation of course.
 

On the corpse idea, I can still understand them attracting other zombies. Which would make it right to destroy them. But so they can't decompose? That sounds stupid. They're doing their job perfectly now so I don't see the point in changing anything on their side.

[PoshRocketeer]

4 hours ago, Unamelable said:

 

I agree that the mechanics with "randomly" killing yourself from - for failing to use the weapon and its bloody. Knowing that the wound on the arm significantly interferes with productivity and speed - it just makes no sense and makes the character literally crippled for some time

Regarding the respirator or gas mask. They should have implemented that originally, but now there is already a mod for it. If respirators would reduce the rate of gaining sickness, it would be a good and not useless accessory

Zombies can't take a player to the ground if a zombie is coming through a fence/window it's ridiculous in general. I think they fixed this in build 43.
 

Knowing the "Zambies" mod the zombies have dynamic speed, but there it's done more annoyingly and randomly. If you put them speed with "hand to character animation" a bit random. That the player couldn't just walk, but has to run away a bit. That would make the game a bit more fair.

 

Making it possible to stumble hordes of zombies sounds right since it will make the game more realistic.

We don't have zombie crawlers in the regular spawner yet. But this will make their presence is not useless, they are in vanilla so far useless because they do not herald danger unless you do not play with regular and crawlers together. The character is initially aimed at the head so I don't see the point of making a crawler after killing a regular zombie. Unless it's reanimation of course.
 

On the corpse idea, I can still understand them attracting other zombies. Which would make it right to destroy them. But so they can't decompose? That sounds stupid. They're doing their job perfectly now so I don't see the point in changing anything on their side.

I agree that masks should decrease corpse sickness gain when you're around them, but that's not what the user was suggesting.

 

Vaulting Zombies CAN take you to the ground, they can lunge at you when they land and knock you over, which is usually a death sentence.

 

Agree that it's weird that no crawlers every spawn naturally. Hard to imagine some zombies didn't fall out of a second story window or get bashed around a bit before we came along.

 

 

Edited November 13, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Badgzerz]

On 11/11/2023 at 10:59 PM, PoshRocketeer said:

Random critical misses where you hurt yourself is, to be blunt, not a super solid idea. That has never been a fun game mechanic in any game where it is present, and has been removed  from some games because it was unfun to play with, or relegated to a status effect.  Having a random chance to just get infected instantly by your weapon because you missed or just because you're unlucky sounds like a genuine dealbreaker for me. I can handle a lot of cruelty in games but I refuse to play a game where I can just randomly kill myself because of a dice roll.

Its not random, you had bad moodles, no clothing protection, and bloody clothes/weapons. You failed in 2 preventable ways. People send themselves to the hospital all the time for using a tool recklessly. Flailing your arms at walking biohazards with sharp objects is no different. Manage ur moodles, armor, keep your base clothing layers clean and u'll be fine. 

On 11/11/2023 at 10:59 PM, PoshRocketeer said:

Respirator idea is not great imo, lore of the game states pretty directly that we're immune, but could fit in with a "susceptible" trait idea, a mod already does this in fact. Not a fan of the idea of puking during combat either, regardless of how vile things get. The weight loss and hunger thing makes not much sense at all? 

We aren't immune or special in any way in PZ. The game says this is how you died.  Puking just means you are suddenly hungry there doesnt have to be an animation. Inhaling hazmat from dozens/hundreds of rotting diseased corpses is going to get you sick with so many things and this is the least bs way to still make zombie corpses lethal w/o being hopelessly fatal. 

On 11/11/2023 at 10:59 PM, PoshRocketeer said:

The decomposing corpse idea is also kind of silly, doesn't make sense at all. You're just making the players do extra chores for essentially no reason. I guess you could argue it's got a gameplay purpose, but think of how frustrating it'd be to just go pick up and drop every corpse in a horde or they won't decompose. Hours and hours of tedious click-click-clicking. Forcing players to tend to their immediate surroundings makes sense to me, even increasing the decomposition timer to a few in game months makes sense to me, heck even reducing soil quality and the like in the region makes sense to me, but defying the laws of nature to force the players to manually touch every body so it'll rot is not it man.

Then disable it in settings. I listed carrying 2 corpses at once to double corpse management speed along with a queued mass action to save hundreds of clicks. There is no emphasis on the logistics of dealing with thousands of corpses beyond clearing a road, farm patch, and the interior space you live in. Dont feed the zombies is a great mod IMO that I forgot to bring up the function of. 

[PoshRocketeer]

30 minutes ago, Badgzerz said:

Its not random, you had bad moodles, no clothing protection, and bloody clothes/weapons. You failed in 2 preventable ways. People send themselves to the hospital all the time for using a tool recklessly. Flailing your arms at walking biohazards with sharp objects is no different. Manage ur moodles, armor, keep your base clothing layers clean and u'll be fine. 

We aren't immune or special in any way in PZ. The game says this is how you died.  Puking just means you are suddenly hungry there doesnt have to be an animation. Inhaling hazmat from dozens/hundreds of rotting diseased corpses is going to get you sick with so many things and this is the least bs way to still make zombie corpses lethal w/o being hopelessly fatal. 

Then disable it in settings. I listed carrying 2 corpses at once to double corpse management speed along with a queued mass action to save hundreds of clicks. There is no emphasis on the logistics of dealing with thousands of corpses beyond clearing a road, farm patch, and the interior space you live in. Dont feed the zombies is a great mod IMO that I forgot to bring up the function of. 

1: That's still random critical misses, regardless of moodles. It would be so unbelievably unfun to try and attack a zomboid and just instantly kill yourself because you hit yourself with a bloody weapon. Combat with zombies should be difficult because they're a relentless force that are genuinely threatening on their own, the threat shouldn't come from the player just bonking themselves like a lemming.

 

2: We are literally outright STATED TO BE IMMUNE to the airborne strain of the virus. We are literally, objectively 'special' compared to the rest of the population. We can be infected through bites, but that's it.

 

3: How about just not adding it?

 

None of these 3 suggestions would add anything to the game, and would just make it frustrating and unfun.

Edited November 18, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Badgzerz]

29 minutes ago, PoshRocketeer said:

1: That's still random critical misses, regardless of moodles. It would be so unbelievably unfun to try and attack a zomboid and just instantly kill yourself because you hit yourself with a bloody weapon. Combat with zombies should be difficult because they're a relentless force that are genuinely threatening on their own, the threat shouldn't come from the player just bonking themselves like a lemming.

 

2: We are literally outright STATED TO BE IMMUNE to the airborne strain of the virus. We are literally, objectively 'special' compared to the rest of the population. We can be infected through bites, but that's it.

 

3: How about just not adding it?

 

None of these 3 suggestions would add anything to the game, and would just make it frustrating and unfun.

1. I never said instant kill. You injured urself and risk the infection because u fought with bad moodles, a weapon too heavy for u to handle, and broke ur bloodied weapon with it in your unprotected hands. You screwed up in 4 preventable ways and died from infection due to recklessness. When private lime can survive for over a week on a no arms run its entirely ur fault for dying in combat. 

2. U will still catch random assorted nasty bacterial infections from being near literal tons of decaying hazmat from an amalgamation of fetid corpses.

3. Add as much choice to vanilla for the player as possible w/o needing mods. You are just being stuck up cuz I want the game harder when I also listed carrying 2 corpses at once and queueing a mass action that currently takes hundreds of clicks that u conveniently forgot about. 

 

The game isn't fun, its immersive and realistic. Thats why its so niche. 

[PoshRocketeer]

On 11/18/2023 at 12:30 AM, Badgzerz said:

1. I never said instant kill. You injured urself and risk the infection because u fought with bad moodles, a weapon too heavy for u to handle, and broke ur bloodied weapon with it in your unprotected hands. You screwed up in 4 preventable ways and died from infection due to recklessness. When private lime can survive for over a week on a no arms run its entirely ur fault for dying in combat. 

2. U will still catch random assorted nasty bacterial infections from being near literal tons of decaying hazmat from an amalgamation of fetid corpses.

3. Add as much choice to vanilla for the player as possible w/o needing mods. You are just being stuck up cuz I want the game harder when I also listed carrying 2 corpses at once and queueing a mass action that currently takes hundreds of clicks that u conveniently forgot about. 

 

The game isn't fun, its immersive and realistic. Thats why its so niche. 

1: Getting infected IS instant death. Once you have the knox virus, it's over, you may as well restart because you are a dead man walking, in more ways than one at that.

 

2: Sure, that's what corpse sickness is for. It's a system we already have in the game. If you wanted to extend that to living zombies, minus giving you the knox infection, I'd say that's fair enough, being around big hordes of them is sure to have some negative impacts on your sanity at the very least, if not your health, but that would make 'final stand' situations way more punishing and that's something to keep in mind. Absolutely opposed to randomly getting the knox virus for attacking zombies without wearing your N95 filtered masks that you got at the local pharmacy at the start of covid.

 

3: No, I'm not "being stuck up" because I don't want the game to be harder, you literally reacted to a post where I said that combat should be harder and less cheese-able, I just think your idea is just not very well thought out and is a frustrating chore at worst and distracting busywork at best. Also didn't say that carrying 2 corpses was a problem, I think that would be GREAT if your character is strong enough to do it. I didn't "forget" that moving corpses is already a chore, I think that your idea of forcing people to interact with EVERY SINGLE CORPSE just so that decomposition can take place is just making it even worse for literally no good reason. This suggestion is not a strong one, and I don't think it should be in the game at all. If you want it, you are more than welcome to mod it in or pay someone to do it for you, but I cannot imagine the developers signing off on that because it just doesn't make any sense. You're being needlessly hostile rn man, I just don't like the suggestion.

 

4: "immersive" is not at odds with being fun, nor is "realistic", but Zomboid is NOT realistic at all. It has elements of pseudo-realistic survival, but in general, it is a fun game that gives you a lot of liberties for the sake of being fun. The developers have turned down many a "realistic" suggestions because it just isn't fun. If you think utter realism is the goal, then why don't we have to shit or piss? Why are there zombies at all? Zombies aren't realistic. 

 

You're waxing on about how things need to be super realistic, but you didn't seem to mind a lack of realism when suggesting that you should have to touch corpses before they decompose. So which is it? Does everything have to be hardcore and uber-realistic, or can we make concessions for gameplay reasons?

 

Zomboid is "grounded fantasy", fantastical circumstances that could never occur in real life with gameplay mechanics that are not true to life, with elements of semi-realistic hardcore survival to shape the gameplay. Not everything has to be realistic to the letter. Gameplay always trumps realism in any game that is not a true-to-life simulator. Even Green Hell, a game that prides itself on relative realism took a lot of liberties in the sake of gameplay. So did Long Dark, so does Project Zomboid.

 

"Difficult" doesn't have to mean completely unfair and randomly handing out punishments for engaging with the game, and "immersive" doesn't mean sacrificing gameplay to make the player do chores, or making the game extra realistic at the cost of the game actually being fun to play.

Edited November 20, 2023 by PoshRocketeer

[Badgzerz]

Wow thats a lot of words. Im not reading all that. 

[PoshRocketeer]

5 hours ago, Badgzerz said:

Wow thats a lot of words. Im not reading all that. 

Bruh that's something people say as a JOKE, cannot believe that you just said that unironically and thought it was a good idea

Edited November 20, 2023 by PoshRocketeer