Hey Everybody,
Wow! Lots of replies! Thanks for all the great discussion! And a HUGE thanks to our Moderators and Fun Pimp Staff who have taken the time to read and reply!! Thank you so much for taking the time to read all my post and give some feedback.
I know that some of my post has an 'us' versus 'you' kind of language, but I just want to reiterate that in no way am I trying to make any kind of personal attack, and that the purposes of these posts are purely to present a point of view which I hope will help the Fun Pimps in their development endeavors. I have nothing but respect for how hard all these guys work, and I wouldn't bother writing these if I didn't care about the awesome game they've created. You guys are awesome. Thanks again for reading and replying to this thread.
Also, this reply ran a bit long, so I'll have to post the second part to it in another reply post. Please forgive me for double posting but it wouldn't let me post something this long.
So, with all that said, I want post a bit of a rebuttal to some of the counterarguments here. Here are the two main ones I've seen:
1) The nerfs and changes have been done in order to achieve acceptable zombie behavior.
I can agree, to an extent, that this kind of modification is necessary. Yes, zombies being able to jump reasonable distances seems warranted. And yes, zombies going into a 'berserk' mode and attacking things around them if they can't reach you also seems appropriate as well. Giving zombies the ability to dig down also, yes, seems like a thing a zombie should reasonably be able to do. And yes, being able to attack storage boxes seems completely reasonable.
However, this behavior modification has gone to some lengths that I think far surpass what reasonable zombies could do. For example, they can sense you through solid objects, regardless of distance - a sense that cannot be fooled by any sort of decoy. They can also psychically detect the shortest route into your base. They can also smash stone with their bare hands. And, at full health they can fall any distance and survive.
So, I wouldn't so much have a problem with zombies digging, but I would expect they would do the same damage to stone as my character would do to stone with their bare fists. But, since the desired behavior is to oust players from their subterranean lairs, the zombies behavior includes a massive boost to damage to objects. This seems inconsistent because, despite their ability to do massive damage to blocks they have had no damage boost to players. Also, it seems inconsistent with player expectations. A player expects an unarmed humanoid to break rocks at the same rate at which their character does (their character also being an unarmed humanoid).
The fact that a zombie, at full health, can survive a fall of any distance seems at odds with the goal of zombies achieving acceptable behavior. If I was in Halo, and I saw a grunt fall from the top of the map onto the ground, and it didn't die, I would instantly assume that was a glitch or oversight. Why would I not assume that same thing for 7 Days to Die? It seems inconsistent with the rules that the player is presented with.
In short, I'm not criticizing all the updates that have been made to the zeds. Certainly giving them the ability to leap, dig and attack storage boxes seems completely reasonable. But it also seems like a number of abilities have been massively improved solely for the purposes of overcoming obstacles the players might set up.
I want to talk about how it's okay for zombies to be stupid and flawed. If the developers create an AI which the players can manipulate and take advantage of, well, that's just humans being humans.
For example, when catching lobsters, fishermen lower a crate into the ocean with a special opening. Lobsters crawl in to get the bait but can't get out, at which point the crate is hauled up. Catching the lobsters requires ZERO effort on behalf of the fishermen once the trap is laid. In fact, lost traps can even continue to kill, as the lobsters inside will die, which will attract other animals to get inside, and die, and so on and so on. All with zero effort from the fishermen who laid the trap to begin with. Is this an exploit? Are the fishermen abusing broken lobster A.I.? No, this is simply humans being humans in our problem solving. We look for patterns and use them to our advantage. No matter how sophisticated your A.I. gets, people will always do this.
The same is true when seeking places of shelter. When you're being stalked by a sabertooth tiger and you get into a cave and close up most of the entrance with large rocks, you've put yourself in a position where that threat cannot harm you anymore - which was your goal to begin with. You're literally exploiting the fact that creatures cannot penetrate rock, which humans have done forever. But in 7 Days to Die, the zeds are given the ability to specifically circumvent that strategy, completely ignoring the reality of that situation, which is inconsistent with how the zeds are portrayed.
What I'm trying to convey through my argument here is, updating the zombie's A.I. so it can do new things is fine, but in some cases it has far surpassed what a reasonable zombie-survivalist might expect. In specific, the zeds have adapted to counter certain player strategies, but not others. Like the fact the zeds can tunnel through stone, but don't do absolutely absurd amounts of melee damage. Or the fact that no single fall can kill a full health zombie. I am trying to say that I find the zombie's behavior very inconsistent given that they are clearly identified as 'zombies'.
I would go one step further to say that these inconsistencies of behavior have not been included out of any desire to achieve an 'ideal' behavior for a zombie, but rather are included specifically to thwart certain player strategies.
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