PC Smart vs Dumb Zombies?

Smart vs Dumb Zombies?

  • The zombie behavior of pre-A17

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • The zombie behavior of post-A17

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    0
I have no doubt most people would like a mix of both just looking at the mixed results of the poll but nobody has actually played with zombies that are mix of both.
It's simple. You've played with pre-A17 zombies and you've played with A17 zombies. Now, which did you like best out of the reality and history of what you actually did and not out of the speculation of what might be?
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Voter suppression!

;)

...still a16 I think. Just fits better with my pre conceived idea of zombies.

 
Alpha 1 - is the best AI for zombies.

...and...return their faces, looking at the player from the bottom up.

Do not waste CPU-time.

(let the horse thinks - because her big head)

upd: and let them run in an unlit place!

 
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It's great you're doing these polls. It's interesting but also sad to see the amount of division in the results. When TFP gets A17 all sorted out maybe we could do some more polls for A18, but this time do the polls before they start creating A18. I know it's their game and they can do whatever the hell they want, but if TFP cares about feedback it would make sense to get feedback first, rather than spending two years working on big changes and asking for feedback after the fact. Just spitballing ideas and trying to be constructive and proactive.

 
I personally like dumb zombies, I liked the smell mechanic too!

I'd like toggle-able options for various settings: Jumping (on/off), digging (on/off), horde night digging (on/off), zombies landing on their face from a 3+ meter drop (on/off), climbing zombies (on/off).

End of the day I want zombies like the ones in the Walking Dead, dumb and want your brains and will just walk towards you no matter what's in the way, I also want more zombie spawns to ramp up the difficulty but lower the xp from kills to balance the extra zombies. This smart/dumb option should also be toggle-able.

 
I think the new behavior is good, but in limited quantities. Like others have said on the forum, the zombie AI needs variation. The average zombie shouldn't be intelligent enough to look for weak points in blocks and the shortest path to the player.

 
Previous, totally.

I wanted you to improve the AI, I really did. But I wanted you to improve it so that they didnt get stuck in loops. Or that there was less ways to make defenses that broke their AI and made them not able to do anything. But the improved AI actually encourages this even more.

Most of all, I want that building perimeter defense bases is better than path exploiting defenses. Sure, I still do them now, but 95% of my base is wasted effort.

I want zombies to surround my base. I want the AI to be smart, while making the enemies look dumb. That means, they dont need to look like they have a GPS implanted, they dont need to look smart, it's the AI behind that which needs to be smart so they dont get stuck in a loop or by exploiting pathing in our builds.

Before a17 experimental, improved AI was the feature I was mostly excited about. And now its what I complain most about. There were buildings that broke the zombie AI and they started to do nothing, or loops. I wanted that fixed, I wanted more buildings to be possible without exploiting their AI. But you did the oposite. Its more easy to exploit the AI now, even if they look smarter.

You made the enemy smarter and the AI dumber, while I wanted the enemy dumb but the AI smart

 
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I like the new AI for the most part, but for horde night as others have said I'd like to see some of the old style Z's mixed in. I present this scenario of what I envision, You are fighting watching your killbox or zombie treadmill ramp when suddenly the flow of zombies have stopped. One of the dum dums has punched a hole in one of your walls while you were distracted and made an even more ideal path for the smarty zombos, which are now working their way up to your perch.

 
The zombies should be smarter or dumber depending on the level of difficulty set. That would allow players on insane to experience harder to kill and harder to trick zombies and allow players on scavenger to kill zombies easy that are pretty dumb.

 
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I voted pre A17e because zombies are supposed to be stupid as mud...that's why they want to eat our brains, because they know they don't have any of their own :D

 
Well to be honest a vote for a mixture of both would have to be a vote for the post A17 zombie AI. Good AI knows everything and all optimal paths and choices but then is limited in choosing the best path through obfuscation via random actions, simulated mistakes, and purposeful choosing of suboptimal paths at times. In A16 the zombies don't know anything. They are given a list of tasks to do in priority and that's it. faatal gave them the entire picture for A17 but has not yet had time to obfuscate their knowledge. He has done some things though. For example they forget about you after 30 seconds of not seeing you once they've reached your last known location. This makes them extremely easy to dodge at night because it is open but dark so you have many directions to sprint off to and crouch quietly and they can't see you. I have seen them run to my last known location and then go back to wandering mode many many times.
But faatal has more things planned to make it so they don't act like geniuses all the time. But without the full knowledge that is gimped down through different means there is no way to be able to make the zombies of A16 with their simple list of prioritized tasks to behave in a way that is threatening at all.
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Yeah, but as you've pointed out repeatedly, "post-A17" AI wasn't an option - only A16 AI and A17 AI; one of which is too far in one direction and the other too far in the other direction.

Although, in the rest of my post which you didn't quote, I did explain that my ideal choice would be to have a small number of special "hero" zombies who (while not necessarily any tougher than the others) are smarter and the masses being dumb as rocks but who will follow the "hero" zombies if there is one around. In fact, that could be an ideal rationalisation for why you get groups of zombies wandering around together (i.e. wandering hordes) - they could be a "hero" zombie plus followers.

 
I voted PRE because it's a question of dumb vs smart.

Although all the fixes and capabilities are much better now so we actually need a mixture as many are saying.

I like better pathing and fixed bugs but for better immersion, the pathing should be based on more primitive things. Zs should react to seeing and hearing you. It is immersion breaking that they target the weakest block when even the player has no idea which on it is. And Zs should be able to path around walls (and boulders) to the place where they are closest to the sound they're hearing (up to certain distance) but after thet they should try to break through.

You should be able to lead them with gunfire and running on a wall with a torch but instead, they ignore you because the "math says" there's a weak block on the other side of the base that leads to stairs to the wall.

If the Zs are too smart then the best base designs are too meta driven and unintuitive.

BTW, I love that Zs can now jump on each other to reach you!

 
It depends on how you play and what you want out of the game.

I prefer a17 ai because in choosing not to cheese the ai. At least not too much lol. That ramp defense is amazing but way to easy.

A16 had it's fair share of cheese too though. I ignored most of it lol. But the spinning in circles is gone and that's a huge thing for me.

Just had my day 7 horde and the attention the zombies played to my walls was scary. I thought I had it in the bag but I was worried after they just kept beating on the walls. I'm in a mad scramble now for lvl 40 and reinforced cc.

I must say though, I'm not a fan of maze builds. I might try them for video purposes but I kinda hate the idea.

And idea I love, and always have, is choke points. And that seems to be a real possibility in a17.

 
It depends on how you play and what you want out of the game.
I prefer a17 ai because in choosing not to cheese the ai. At least not too much lol. That ramp defense is amazing but way to easy.

A16 had it's fair share of cheese too though. I ignored most of it lol. But the spinning in circles is gone and that's a huge thing for me.

Just had my day 7 horde and the attention the zombies played to my walls was scary. I thought I had it in the bag but I was worried after they just kept beating on the walls. I'm in a mad scramble now for lvl 40 and reinforced cc.

I must say though, I'm not a fan of maze builds. I might try them for video purposes but I kinda hate the idea.

And idea I love, and always have, is choke points. And that seems to be a real possibility in a17.
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Its almost like comparing an old behaviour with and new behaviour attached to a bunch of exploit fixes dosent really work.

 
Its almost like comparing an old behaviour with and new behaviour attached to a bunch of exploit fixes dosent really work.
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Yea, especially since the exploit fixes just created new, and I would argue worse, exploits. I wish the fun pimps would stop trying to squash exploits, an impossible task, and just focus on putting in more fun mechanics.

 
Not a great poll because I LOVE the zombie behaviour outside of horde night and HATE it on horde night. I voted for A16 though if that's the choice.

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So many games have dumb enemies. Easy to cheeze opponents. The game gets boring if there are no surprises.
So I rather have them have unrealistically good pathfinding, than a sub-par one, that can be tricked too easily.
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It is FAR easier to cheese them in A17 than ever before.

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but retard zed took some spikes and a box made of stone to withstand. Thats it. make a 5x5 box, stand onto of it and put a few layers of spikes around the box. Then move around during horde night. At least with the smarter ones you have to put some thought into how you'll withstand it.
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Will utterly fail once gs gets higher.

 
Yea, especially since the exploit fixes just created new, and I would argue worse, exploits. I wish the fun pimps would stop trying to squash exploits, an impossible task, and just focus on putting in more fun mechanics.
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I disagree here, fixing expliots and bugs is great, the more the better.

Whats not great is lumping this is with the new behaviour. (Pathing around spikes)

Id rather see an indepth discussion about specfic behaviours within the AI than a 'which is better, old or updated'

I dont belive zombies should activly avoid traps or all attack the same block at the same time. Id like to be able to represent this opinon without saying 'bring back spinning in place zombies' but that option is not allowed apparently.

 
While I voted for the current AI, I miss the old AI as well.

I wish it were somewhat like A16, where perhaps the zombies are not all smart, and will randomly be super intelligent in their pathing.

Right now, its like it is just a line, zoomed straight on me and it can be predictable.

It would be nice for a randomness to it. Some to choose blocks randomly to get to me, especially on horde night. They should just break whatever is in front of them trying to get to me, not worried about block value.

Maybe once and a while roll a new path to try so they don't get stuck and keep me on my toes.

 
I disagree here, fixing expliots and bugs is great, the more the better.
Whats not great is lumping this is with the new behaviour. (Pathing around spikes)

Id rather see an indepth discussion about specfic behaviours within the AI than a 'which is better, old or updated'

I dont belive zombies should activly avoid traps or all attack the same block at the same time. Id like to be able to represent this opinon without saying 'bring back spinning in place zombies' but that option is not allowed apparently.
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I'm all about fixing bugs. And some exploits, like the frames giving more burn time than the wood used to make them.

But trying to defeat players with ai is not only a losing battle I think it's a poor use of the devs time. Players will always figure out a way to cheese.

I agree with you, its dumb to have zombies avoid traps. These aren't even zombies anymore. Zombies are supposed to be a force of nature, not thinking beings. Save that stuff for the bandits.

 
I'm all about fixing bugs. And some exploits, like the frames giving more burn time than the wood used to make them.
But trying to defeat players with ai is not only a losing battle I think it's a poor use of the devs time. Players will always figure out a way to cheese.

I agree with you, its dumb to have zombies avoid traps. These aren't even zombies anymore. Zombies are supposed to be a force of nature, not thinking beings. Save that stuff for the bandits.
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Everyone is so hyped for bandits and im just here hoping and praying TFP rember to give us an option to disable them. No interest in fighting other players (PVP), even less intrest in having that type of gameplay being shoehorned and forced.

 
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