PC I hate sleepers

V

Vomkat

New member
:bi_polo:

This game was fun before it got all crazy with sleepers and dungeons and green zombies and fancy perks and vehicles. Sleepers are just the worst, how did all these sleepy zombies wind up crammed inside all these buildings? I miss the old wandering hordes that shuffled about instead of sleeping all the time. Why did every house in this city have 50 people living in it??

Meanwhile, the developers seem stuck in a cycle of adding new perks and buffs to the player, which means they have to add newer crazier faster regenerating glowing flying exploding zombies. It was a better game before all that.

I feel like the first day and night are the most enjoyable, and its just downhill from there.

I started playing Alpha 14/15, and every update since then has just made the game more of a levelup grind fest and less of a fun survival game.

I wish they would at least add some setting options to NERF the player's progress (skill/stamina/hitpoints) and at the same time NERF the zombies - so slow shambling stupid occasional zombies might actually be a threat. The first day is ALWAYS the most fun and interesting, I wish it would just stay like that. I don't want perks or steel or vehicles or helicopters, and I also don't want glowing green spider zombies.

 
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You're talking about removing like half the game. Obviously they aren't going to do that.

I know it's an answer you see often, but maybe you should look into modding to make your game more enjoyable. Wouldn't be too hard to get rid of the vehicles and zombies you hate. Perks would be a bit more involved, but still doable.

 
The thing with sleepers was that they were supposed to offer a surprise factor between normal zombie fights. But instead every room is predictably packed only with sleepers, achieving the exact opposite.

 
You can nerf both your progress and the zombies. You can nerf you own exp which, more than anything else, will enormously slow down the progress of the game if you put it at 25%. Lower gamestage means less zombies and easier zombies and since this is directly tied to leveling it should be a simple fix if it's all you're interested in fixing. You can also then extend each day up to 120 minutes which will even more greatly slow it down. Then you can slow it down even more by putting hordes beyond the normal 7 days. After that you can turn down zombie block damage which will make even the worst of bases practically impenetrable even if you are absurdly slow with progression - zombies at 25% block damage will make for super easy horde night and super easy building clearings if you just knock out a block beside a door or knock out a block that is a part of a wall and agro zombies inside.

I personally play at super high difficulty and impose my own restrictions so it's easy to nerf yourself. I play on insane with nightmare speed and hordes every 4 days. But beyond that I use zero meds/bandages for healing, play perma-death and limit the types of high end firepower I have access to. I come across many things I could theoretically use but either just throw them out or scrap them or sell them to the trader if they're worth something.

So really if you want you can easily nerf the heck out of zombies just with settings alone. They won't hit you for barely anything and they won't damage blocks for anything either. Then you can nerf the heck out of yourself through both settings and personal limitations you decide to stick to even when you come across them while playing the game. Then turn up the settings or change your ruleset as you progress. I find that playing by my own special rules that go beyond game settings has greatly increased my interest in the game it's just that I'm all for making things harder but you can easily go the other way too.

 
:bi_polo:
This game was fun before it got all crazy with sleepers and dungeons and green zombies and fancy perks and vehicles. Sleepers are just the worst, how did all these sleepy zombies wind up crammed inside all these buildings? I miss the old wandering hordes that shuffled about instead of sleeping all the time. Why did every house in this city have 50 people living in it??

Meanwhile, the developers seem stuck in a cycle of adding new perks and buffs to the player, which means they have to add newer crazier faster regenerating glowing flying exploding zombies. It was a better game before all that.

I feel like the first day and night are the most enjoyable, and its just downhill from there.

I started playing Alpha 14/15, and every update since then has just made the game more of a levelup grind fest and less of a fun survival game.

I wish they would at least add some setting options to NERF the player's progress (skill/stamina/hitpoints) and at the same time NERF the zombies - so slow shambling stupid occasional zombies might actually be a threat. The first day is ALWAYS the most fun and interesting, I wish it would just stay like that. I don't want perks or steel or vehicles or helicopters, and I also don't want glowing green spider zombies.
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100% agree.

(and no matter how effectively and what problem they solve - if this does not work for the gameplay it is unnecessary)

 
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No, sleepers were introduced together with less random/biome spawns to improve game performance.
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That's what they unfortunately ended up being, just a way to increase performance. It's not what the community wanted them for, long before they were introduced, or what they could be used for gameplay-wise.

 
The 'Sleep' pros:

Allows zombies to be placed in prefabs, so bldgs are not empty.

Allows the zombies to be controlled, so the entire prefab doesn't just wake up and path to the player(s) all at once.

*Which makes game play overly easy in itself*

They help with performance.

Cons:

The 'wake' portion of the system needs to be adjusted.

Too many sleepers just sleep through everything at inappropriate times.

Performance gains was diverted to other areas, instead of increasing 'active' zombie population counts (at least from my perspective).

Made entering towns/cities overly easy.

Do all Towns/Cities need to be overrun? No.

On one hand: Entering a 'town' that is mostly quite does give a dread ambiance to it. Cool!

On the other hand: Entering a 'city' is disappointing. :(

From my perspective: The "non-sleeping" zombie population, should be 'increasing', the more you go towards the Downtown areas in cities.

Maybe they need to treat the 'zoning' (Residential/ Commercial/ Industrial/ Downtown), like the biome spawns. So each zone can have their own spawn density set, in a town or city.

Overall:

The sleeper system: Is good

The Wake portion: Is lacking and needs work.

Overused at the detriment of city game play.

 
What if it worked this way:

1) Buildings attract zombies, but aren't filled with sleepers, like it was in A15 (and 16? skipped that alpha, was playing console)

2) Game spawns an appropriate maximum # of zombies around the player at all times (like within a few-chunk radius, not immediately in your face), with some delay built in so if you kill your neighboring zombies they don't insta-respawn

3) Here is the special sauce: being within a POI has the effect of attracting all zombies within a 2- or 3-chunk radius (or so; balance as needed).

So while you aren't going to have the One True Path through the POI, where jump-scare sleepers are pre-set to get you, you will have all those zombies outside coming to your POI to find you. Fighting your way OUT will become a bigger deal than fighting your way IN.

The POIs are now just designer-scripted events. It's fine, sometimes enjoyable (usually when I screw up and cause all sleepers to wake up simultaneously), but I do wish it were more organic. The occasional sleeper is fine especially if it's placed to appear as an unfortunate citizen who fell where he/she died, but hiding in a breakaway armoire? Ugh, alright POI designer, you "got me".

The whole idea of the One True Path (helpfully illuminated!) rubs me the wrong way anyhow in a game where I can destroy any block and craft numerous blocks right from inventory. I'd rather the buildings were more intact, with multiple available pathways. Heck, make it so constructing pathways is part of the POI. Instead of breaking out the stairs, putting up barbed wire, and having little table flashlight point me at the broken window to the ledge, just let me figure out that I need to make new stairs. Or rebuild the ladder in the elevator shaft, or add a ladder to reach the roof. Etc. and such as.

It's very strip-mall haunted house right now. This is the path; take it and you will see all the jump scares in their proper order.

 
Well for starters what they could do with the current system imo is:

-More dead body props that never wake up.

-More randomization of the distribution of sleeper zombies in each POI.

-Greatly randomizing their range of waking up and jump scare random delays (of cupboard zombies etc).

-Have some zombies wake up, wander and do random actions when the player enters the POI/greater vincinity, even when they don't directly sense and follow the player. Less control of the player over waking up zombies.

-Like Boidster said, even if MM had said that he hates being sandwiched, random triggers that rarely attract/spawn zombies that enter the POI from the outside.

 
maybe you should look into modding
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I have. Removing the ugly green flying zombies, increasing the spawn rates of the normal wandering zombies, removing the overpowered excessive loot and perks... and then by the time I do, there's a new update, and I have to do it all over again. So I've just stopped bothering.

The game was better before sleepers and green zombies.

 
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I have. Removing the ugly green flying zombies, increasing the spawn rates of the normal wandering zombies, removing the overpowered excessive loot and perks... and then by the time I do, there's a new update, and I have to do it all over again. So I've just stopped bothering.
The game was better before sleepers and green zombies.
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whats wrong with Glow stick zombies???

 
whats wrong with Glow stick zombies???
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Bro, I just want to play a survival game with slow shuffling stupid zombies. They aren't generally a threat, but sometimes there are lots of them, and one bite is all it takes to kill you. This game just keeps getting further and further away from that.

I want to be hunting and scavenging and searching for fresh water, with zombies. Maybe I eventually find a pistol, and I've got like three bullets. Instead, it's becoming just run and gun with an assault rifle, in full body armor, and smack the green zombies with a sledgehammer.

I feel that there must be a difference of opinion amongst the developers, one of them is trying to create an action game, and one of them is trying to create a survival game - and I wish they'd get back to their roots and focus on the survival aspect.

I want to build trashy wooden bases, not reinforced concrete bunkers with automated machine guns, and maybe I might eventually manage to build a blunderbuss or a spiked club. The game right now is just chock full of overpowered high end content, like rocket launchers which literally fall from the sky.

I think, like a lot of people here, some of us just want a slower paced game. We want to be struggling to harvest scrap iron, not racing around to mass produce steel girders.

 
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Bro, I just want to play a game with slow shuffling stupid zombies. They aren't generally a threat, but sometimes there are lots of them, and one bite is all it takes to kill you. This game just keeps getting further and further away from that.
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imo i like the smart zombies, it throws people too a loop cuz most people think of zombies as brain dead, but these zeds can solve basic problems like go to a weak spot on a base, and with radioactive zombies its too add some challenge. it would be boring if all zombies where just basic, even with the special zombies. you know your in trouble if your in a room with a radioactive feral and he thinks you look tasty. Now some zeds could be tone down or add a weaknesses, (like of you shoot a cop zombies belly enough it will pop and they cant blow up or spit, or demolishes legs could be cripple easily to slow down.)

 
While I'm complaining, I also HATE HATE HATE the snow biome. Like there's this one lumberjack zombie, over and over and over. Like come on, its so repetitive.

 
While I'm complaining, I also HATE HATE HATE the snow biome. Like there's this one lumberjack zombie, over and over and over. Like come on, its so repetitive.
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yeah i got to agree (KINDA), i dont hate it but i think the lumberjack should be replaced with some zombie called "the Frozen Walker" where they have they same HP and strength but there look like a staved Zombie almost like a mummy, but there skin is white and ice blue with frozen blood all over him. and they teeth like a feral but hollow eyes.

 
I mean, they could just have the snow biome generate the same zombies as elsewhere, with the addition of the snow zombie. It's like a quick fix in the xml files, I'm not sure why they keep insisting that there should only be one zombie in the snow.

 
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