PC The Boss Question.

A

asmosnuts

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I would like to get a consensus of those for/against "boss" zombies.

For me, they are immersion breaking tools to destroy bases. You could argue for irradiated zombies somehow being stronger and more resistant to damage. But building buster cops spitting block destroying goo really destroys immersion for me.

If we have to have these things, as stated elsewhere, why cant it be escaped animals doing the damage? zombie rhinos, elephants, simians climbing buildings etc.

Seems to be more natural than acid spitting cops from arcade hell. Could even have animals turning wildlife in an area forcing you to move on for food.

My opinion of course! wanting more Romero than Resident evil. Be very interested in other opinions on how you view these things and i think a lot of it depends on when you began playing games.

Being the old fart i am and starting with a zx81 and traditional zombie tropes sort of defines my tastes, over to you.

How do YOU view it?

 
I've always been a zombie traditionalist myself, but I don't know if there's much point to this discussion. TFP like mutants with weird powers and there's not much we can do about it except mod them out.

 
I am also for a more classic "Romero-style" of lore and feel that "supers" like climbing, barfing, irradiated zeds break immersion. Heck, I don't even like zeds running at night! They should be stupid and slow, but dangerous in large numbers or if the player is careless or desperate.

It seems like this game is incorporating all types of lore and there may not be much we can do about that except mod out things we don't like (which I do heavily).

Your idea of undead packs of animals like rhinos, elephants, etc is kind of interesting and would definitely test base strength.

If the game could handle really large packs of zombies (like hundreds) that would also test your base and also be consistent with lore such as we see in The Walking Dead series.

 
Well not necessarily, primarily because the talent who do the amazing mods may take up the challenge for us "traditionalists". Question being, are there enough of us to make it worthwhile and I am genuinely interested in how people view things as they are.

Far better have a healthy discussion that modder's might like to weigh in on and see how viable such things are and who, if anyone, would be interested.

Like most I love the game and like to hear others opinions while we all await a17.

 
I agree 100% and always voiced the concern that the game is becoming more of a random monster apocalypse and tags/descriptions of the game will have to change. Thankfully, at least hornets went away. To claim that there can't be challenge without superpower zombies/dogs/flying creatures etc is silly and can be easily debunked. Bandits will also be added in the future to cover any gaps.

Not completely against dogs/wolves/vultures, they can add to the atmosphere as long as the zombies do not take the backseat, because at the moment canines are much more intimidating than normal zombies. I hope you are trolling about zombie rhinos and elephants :p

As for special superpower zombies, they could have been designed in a much more traditional zombie-friendly way. For example every cop mutating into a bloated acid spitting cop that can snipe you, could instead be random zombies with the ability to realistically vomit in order to infect you. I won't even comment on the irradiated glow zombies, they completely break immersion.

Also there is no way mods will be able to achieve turning it into a balanced traditional zombie game, especially in the future, since the whole game and mechanics will be balanced around vanilla monsters.

TFP seem kind of divided on whether they want a zombie game or a fallout-style game.

 
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Here are mods I do right away for every release:

- No running zeds

- Subtract dogs, wolves, zombie bears, and all "super" zeds (irradiated, barfing cops, spiders)

- Make body shots do zero damage

- Increase damage of headshots for certain weapons for balance

- Tweak AI slightly so zed response to player presence is more realistic

- Spike traps only do body damage so they can cripple zeds but will not kill them

In terms of overall gameplay, the above tweaks make the game less extraterrestrial sci-fi and combat alot harder. You can pump rounds into zeds all day, but if you don't shoot them in the head, they keep coming. Early game play sucks due to poor weapons and rusty aim (as it should).

 
Not trolling at all, just suggesting better ways of destroying bases than spitting zombies being there solely for that purpose. Destroys immersion for me and at least animals are not acid spitting supercops!

I would be far more likely to believe animals attacking and destroying a base, rhino, elephant etc than spitting zombies destroying walls. More immersive and more true to life for want of better words.

 
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Here are mods I do right away for every release:
- No running zeds

- Subtract dogs, wolves, zombie bears, and all "super" zeds (irradiated, barfing cops, spiders)

- Make body shots do zero damage

- Increase damage of headshots for certain weapons for balance

- Tweak AI slightly so zed response to player presence is more realistic

- Spike traps only do body damage so they can cripple zeds but will not kill them

In terms of overall gameplay, the above tweaks make the game less extraterrestrial sci-fi and combat alot harder. You can pump rounds into zeds all day, but if you don't shoot them in the head, they keep coming. Early game play sucks due to poor weapons and rusty aim (as it should).
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The problem with handling damage that way is that eventually any weapon will sever a limb or destroy a torso, even if that means simply destroying enough muscle or bone to render it immobile. This would be the largest factor with a shotgun that can put holes in a body easily, or large rifle bullets that can easily destroy a bone in an arm or leg.

 
See, I don't particularly see how people believe that the game can be balanced with "Romero style" zombies honestly, the game can't support truly large hordes sure some largish hordes can be supported by high-end computers but many people who play this game don't have that kind of computer. Sure you could say bandits would be a solution but bandits you can only do so much with, even when they do come I don't expect bandits to be that great with their AI, most games, even AAA ones, can't get AI right for human enemies so expecting TFP's to do so is expecting a miracle, no offense meant to TFP's of course. So, the current path they are on with special zombies is one of the only routes they really can go to make the game any sort of challenge I feel. Perhaps though for those who don't want them they should have an option to play without any special zombies, if you ask me that would make the game boring (especially in its current state) but to each their own and of course I wouldn't be against more options even if I'd personally never use them.

 
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i dunno, headshot only and traps don´t kill them but slow them down plus finally using more than 2 cpu cores wich makes more Z´s better to handle, does sound challenging without special Z´s also.

Add a better injury system, where you can break your hand also plus an infection actually becomes dangerous and it´s even more challenging.

Now imagine it also gets harder to find food and water and the challenge is complete.

 
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Count me in as another Romero traditionalist.

I don't like the fact that the zombies run at night, but I'll accept it on the grounds of gameplay (although to be totally honest I'd prefer it if they ran during the day instead - it's easier to rationalise that as them runing when they're in the warm sunshine but cooling down at night; besides, having to stay hidden during the day and sneak out at night to do your scavanging would be an interesting twist).

I definitely don't like the idea of "boss" zombies or "mutant" zombies. The spitting cops, ferals, and regenerating zombies all annoy me because they seem out of place, and I don't like to think what new "bosses" await at the end of the "dungeon POIs".

Having said that, I don't mind the Screamers or Spider Zombies. With examples like Bub (from Day of the Dead) and Big Daddy (from Land of the Dead) I don't object to the occasional smarter zombie that is a bit better at problem solving and can rally other zombies.

 
Well not necessarily, primarily because the talent who do the amazing mods may take up the challenge for us "traditionalists". Question being, are there enough of us to make it worthwhile and I am genuinely interested in how people view things as they are.Far better have a healthy discussion that modder's might like to weigh in on and see how viable such things are and who, if anyone, would be interested.

Like most I love the game and like to hear others opinions while we all await a17.
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I'm pretty sure there are a LOT of us traditionalists...maybe a significant majority...still, it has never influenced the direction of development and modders don't lack for inspiration.

 
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Be very interested in other opinions on how you view these things and i think a lot of it depends on when you began playing games... ...How do YOU view it?
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I go back a bit further than you with what I define as "traditional". My favorite zombies were the supernatural "undead" variety ("curse" zombies, etc.). They were often very similar to the mindless munchers we see en mass in the Romero movies, but were usually tougher (sometimes impossible) to kill. They often weren't infectious, which would make them highly divergent from Romero style zombies, but they captured the same dread in their ability to slowly and inexorably shuffle toward you. I find them more immersive than the plague zombies because you only need to suspend your disbelief once and accept the animating power that is supposed to have created them.

Plague zombies are problematic because there are so many scientific principles they defy that by the time you create a house of cards justifying how x, y and z are possible, you might as well just have said it was the "ancient cursed artifact" and be done with it ;)

I remember my utter shock playing "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" which I'd presumed was pretty much a military FPS in the same vein as the oldest top-down games....and then

happens. I still remember that one soldier retreating and firing at a zombie shuffling without pity toward him. He said something like "Go back to Hell!!" as he and retreats out of sight...and then you hear his screams. Amazing stuff in 2001.
Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Plague zombies are pretty much sick people (a bit like rabies). The horror isn't that you can't kill them or out-think them or run from them...it's the terror when you realize that you're getting tired, and they are not. Your food, ammo and luck are all running out.

Oh bosses.....I'm OK with them, but I think they should only be in special places. Labs, government facilities, bunkers....that sort of stuff where you're looking for trouble.

-Morloc

 
Yea, never was a fan of the "super" type zombies. Zombies to me are slow stupid shuffling things that are only a threat in numbers. They don't break thru concrete and steel either. Bandits should be the real threat, hopefully one day that can be accomplished and the "supers" retired at that point to keep the balance.

 
I like them. I'd like more variety. And I don't get hung up on the word "zombie" or limitations imposed on the definition of that word. I'm okay with it being a survival horror game against "monsters" and it is easier to remove something than to add something that doesn't exist so modding should be tilted towards allowing the devs to create whatever they dream up and then removing what you personally can't stomach.

I liked the original lava monster. Would've been cool to have lava too. I wanted more giant mutant insects to go with the hornets.

So yes to Bosses from me.

 
I am an above-ground builder. The challenge has always been for me the constant race to build and improve a fortification for each 7th night horde. After about week 7, the Romero zombies become gift bags of loot instead of a threat. Thats when cops come in. And that threat is another level of emergency to overcome.

Now, I personally do not care for the exploding or the spitting. In Starvation, there are quite a few boss zombies added that make the cop seem rather comic. Each has special abilities and they really only spawn on 7th nights or very special circumstances (quests). The dont start coming until week 7, and provide a needed challenge to keep the race going well into week 30.

But if your a nomad kind of player, I can see that Romero only zombies are just the right challenge.

 
But if your a nomad kind of player, I can see that Romero only zombies are just the right challenge.
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I don't know about the others but my preferences on this matter have nothing to do with the level of challenge. I am just a horror fan and believe that better levels of horror can be achieved with traditional zombie horror rather than with a variety of fantasy monsters.

If anything I find the challenge that some special zombies bring (e.g sniping, bulletsponge) is gimmicky and superficial/cheap. It's a given that higher levels of challenge can be achieved with more intuitive means like, for example, certain random zombie behavior in combat that afaik faatal is working on and many other more creative ways that also don't make enemies look (to me) like they have come out of a cartoon.

 
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