PC Will cities ever be scary again?

T

TheQuicksilver

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Generally speaking, I really roll with the punches regarding all the changes from alpha to alpha, and mostly across the board, I'm one who's pretty happy with where the game is at and going.

One thing I really miss though from back in the A14-15 days was how dangerous cities were. Cities felt like a real goal to go after. You'd start out in the middle of nowhere, search for a small neighborhood to loot to get started, move up to a town, take some time getting better, then finally go after a city.

Back then, trying to rush into a city meant absolute, certain death over and over at low level. That, to me at least, really made the work to get good gear and get better really pay off when you finally walked into the city and held your own. You'd sneak around, dodge dogs, snipe cops, but you had to respect the threat it all posed, even if it was sort of a cheap threat from sneaky dogs.

I feel like that's totally gone now. Cities don't feel dangerous at all, and often, early game is just about racing to find one, hide on top of a store for a couple nights, then get right to looting. Has there been any talk bringing some danger level back to the cities at all? Or are there any mods that try to make that happen?

 
Basically they have thinned sleeper zombies in most POIs and also thinned world zombies to make way for a more controlled, event driven system. The initial stages of it should be in A18 where instead of zombies spawning in and out constantly that you never even get to see, they spawn in following your "breadcrumb trail". They won't follow the trail precisely, but depending on random luck, they could eventually get closer and closer until they spot you. Simply put, the concept is to randomly bring the fights to you, but in a natural way that gives the impression that the world is loaded with zombies without all of the performance loss and wasted resources. It can also be used to ensure that random encounters are equally distributed throughout a multiplayer server so that one unlucky person doesn't keep getting wandering hordes, wolf packs, or bandits when others don't at all.

To answer your question though, nothing has been done just yet to bring cities back to what they once were. I did ask madmole about using the event driven system particularly in cities:

In a city you could increase the chance or frequency of a random encounter and make it feel pretty busy. A18 POI balance feels great to me. Pacing is important. I'm sure we'll land on a decent setup in another alpha or so.
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One thing I know for certain is that the wasteland will eventually be the most difficult place, loaded with the strongest zombies, having the best loot, and requiring radiation resistance to even step in. For A18, I believe it's already been amped up with zombie count, especially at night.

 
I would like it when noise in citys would wake more sleepers. like raining Z´s from a Scyscaper next to you ^^ And I think relative silent Streets are stylisch in combination with the risk of massiv escalation^^

 
I would like it when noise in citys would wake more sleepers. like raining Z´s from a Scyscaper next to you ^^ And I think relative silent Streets are stylisch in combination with the risk of massiv escalation^^
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That would need spawning all of the sleepers in various POIs you are next to. As much as it would be interesting, imagine the hundreds of sleepers spawned all around (especially if you had big buildings around you). I'm pretty sure it's attainable, but not at this very moment due to performance issues. Perhaps in the future, when they'll have better ways to manage sleepers that are not seen (on bigger distances, inside POIs, in closed rooms, etc.), although with the event system in place, i presume it's not going to change a lot.

Although i understand the problem of "lifeless cities". I remember i think in A16 i played on one of the mods (i think it was Tin's mod) where Zs had extra big range for seeing and sensing the player, upping also the amounts that spawned a little (i think). That didn't stop me from making a base in a city, where walking onto a street gathered attention from far away enemies. I just killed all of them quickly and walked around empty streets, even though they came after me easier. So i'll welcome higher frequency of spawning enemies in cities/wasteland, although i would mind if it was mostly feral or rads at later stages (let's leave them for POIs and HN).

 
Maybe A19? :) Once they get random encounters into the game as opposed to the boring wandering hordes, you could imagine random encounters triggering based on biome/location.

Ie, out in the wilderness maybe a small group of zombies attacking a boar and eating it.

In a forest small town, some roaming bands of feral zombies (following player breadcrumb trail?)

In a wasteland city, large aggressive groups of feral/radiated zombies sniffing out the player.

Personally I would love such a system, and then add onto it random encounters for blood moon horde day, such that maybe small/growing groups of zombies hit over the afternoon/evening leading up to the full assault at night, to keep the players on their toes and not just "Oh I'm safe until 10pm" kind of view.

Possibilities are plenty.

But, A19? :)

 
Generally speaking, I really roll with the punches regarding all the changes from alpha to alpha, and mostly across the board, I'm one who's pretty happy with where the game is at and going.
One thing I really miss though from back in the A14-15 days was how dangerous cities were. Cities felt like a real goal to go after. You'd start out in the middle of nowhere, search for a small neighborhood to loot to get started, move up to a town, take some time getting better, then finally go after a city.

Back then, trying to rush into a city meant absolute, certain death over and over at low level. That, to me at least, really made the work to get good gear and get better really pay off when you finally walked into the city and held your own. You'd sneak around, dodge dogs, snipe cops, but you had to respect the threat it all posed, even if it was sort of a cheap threat from sneaky dogs.

I feel like that's totally gone now. Cities don't feel dangerous at all, and often, early game is just about racing to find one, hide on top of a store for a couple nights, then get right to looting. Has there been any talk bringing some danger level back to the cities at all? Or are there any mods that try to make that happen?
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I agree 100%. I have some of the best experiences from trying to sneak in and loot cities at lower levels. I really miss that it was possible to decide what zeds that spawned in different cities, towns etc, and how many. It made it diverse, interesting, challenging and fun. Now everything is just the same.

Its one of many things that have been removed/changed in the last Alphas. Seem to me the development is not going in a good direction, they are not building on their strengths and whats unique about the game, and is trying to "streamline" it so it one day it become just another survival crafting game.

 
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they should add fog to citys like in A16, so they can "put more details into citys while reducing the draw distance to save performence"

 
(A18) I have a custom built 16 k map 9500 POI's, 11 traders, with some huge cities,

I made their biome wasteland so lots of dogs an bears and vultures exist.

Nighttime is especially scary with cops and more dogs etc.

Give it a spin. :)

Do or Die Fun Forever

IP: 45.35.132.146 PORT: 28600

 
There were also large roaming hordes outside of cities. One issue if loading cities with zombies is xp balance. I would advise using Roland 0xp mod if you increase city spawn.

 
Maybe a simple answer is have screamers naturally spawn in the cities. Perhaps add a new variety called the "bebop" screamer that has a head that randomly moves around to make stealth snipers hard, and if it sees you spawns in a screamer horde?

and inside each city have a "zombie nest" poi that has irradiated Wright sleepers, and spawns a wandering horde out of the building once an ingame hour.

 
i would love to see something like this again. Granted there are ways to Up zombie spawns via Changing code and mods but not everyone wants to do that. so here's a few ideas

Bloodfog: Blood fog can be a event were when it gets foggy the fog could turn a grey and red color and zombies will spawn in the dense fog, they move slowly however can have a few special zombies spawn. think of it as a Surprise Bloodmoon horde but in the day.

Screamers found in a few POIS: some places like schools , some homes , Hospitals and stores can have at least one Screamer.

Zombie Spawn setting: like the old days, you could change the zombie spawns but maybe like this. None: Zero , very low: 0.5 , low 1x , mid 2x , High 3x , very high 4xs and extreme 6xs

Zombie horde settings: spawns the amount of random hordes that spawn.

Lure zombie: a zombie that smells so bad that zombies follow him and leads hordes!

they follow animals like deer

City areas. where ever a large group of POIS are it would count as a "city" and it will up zombie spawns by 3xs

 
...or you could edit your spawning.xml and get as many zombies as you want (up to the cap) by bumping up the count. We bumped our wasteland and burnt biomes zombie count significantly. It feels just like the old days on our server. It takes literally less than a minute to adjust.

 
...or you could edit your spawning.xml and get as many zombies as you want (up to the cap) by bumping up the count. We bumped our wasteland and burnt biomes zombie count significantly. It feels just like the old days on our server. It takes literally less than a minute to adjust.
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well its a Pain in my ass to do that. i barley understand. all i get is the spawn rate but even then its confusing. and it would just be nice to have "Wild/roaming Zombie spawn"

convents is always a plus

and before you say it. YES i am lazy

 
well its a Pain in my ass to do that. i barley understand. all i get is the spawn rate but even then its confusing. and it would just be nice to have "Wild/roaming Zombie spawn"
convents is always a plus

and before you say it. YES i am lazy
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You are welcome to be as lazy as you want. I'll spoon feed you the exact lines and what to change them to in the spawning.xml

Just bump them up a little and see what effect it has from the default. Too many zombies? Just drop it down a number or two. We did 18 in city a few maps back and it was a bit too intense for our users so we backed it down to this. It's right near the very top of the file.

<biome name="city">

<spawn maxcount="7" respawndelay="1" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

<spawn maxcount="7" respawndelay="1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="1" time="Any" entitygroup="ZombieDogGroup" />

 
You are welcome to be as lazy as you want. I'll spoon feed you the exact lines and what to change them to in the spawning.xml
Just bump them up a little and see what effect it has from the default. Too many zombies? Just drop it down a number or two. We did 18 in city a few maps back and it was a bit too intense for our users so we backed it down to this. It's right near the very top of the file.

<biome name="city">

<spawn maxcount="7" respawndelay="1" time="Day" entitygroup="ZombiesAll" />

<spawn maxcount="7" respawndelay="1" time="Night" entitygroup="ZombiesNight" />

<spawn maxcount="2" respawndelay="1" time="Any" entitygroup="ZombieDogGroup" />
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yum thxs

 
I made a custom map and put all cities in a Wasteland Biome. it helps a lot.

Outside of cities I have no wasteland as they are just that...wasted land where no one goes much.

Using them over cities gives a strong bear and dog population and some cops at night...

 
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