PC You've lost that loving feeling.... (Well its changed a lot. A12.5 vs Now

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Dayhawk

New member
Having played this game since ~ Alpha 10 to now this game has really changed a lot. Almost all of the changes have been really good for the game. Recently I started playing A12.5 again because I was nostalgic and noticed that hordes were really hordes. The amount of roaming zombies is staggering. When you enter a city it feels like a city of the dead.

Sleepers were really required as you could just enter a building and loot with all abandon. But the game feels like all the zombies just hang out in the buildings.

There should be a balance between roamers and sleepers. Some mods actually do this and the game play difference is huge. If you watch zombie movies there are plenty of zombies randomly in the houses but the majority are wondering the streets. This is how the old alpha's felt and I miss those days. A12.5 has tons of bugs but I had more fun playing that at times then I have had during A17.

Perhaps I am alone in this.

Thanks for your time.

 
Having played this game since ~ Alpha 10 to now this game has really changed a lot. Almost all of the changes have been really good for the game. Recently I started playing A12.5 again because I was nostalgic and noticed that hordes were really hordes. The amount of roaming zombies is staggering. When you enter a city it feels like a city of the dead.
Sleepers were really required as you could just enter a building and loot with all abandon. But the game feels like all the zombies just hang out in the buildings.

There should be a balance between roamers and sleepers. Some mods actually do this and the game play difference is huge. If you watch zombie movies there are plenty of zombies randomly in the houses but the majority are wondering the streets. This is how the old alpha's felt and I miss those days. A12.5 has tons of bugs but I had more fun playing that at times then I have had during A17.

Perhaps I am alone in this.

Thanks for your time.
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I would have to agree 100% with adding more roaming zombies.

 
...XML mods to the rescue
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Yeah, I believe that is what the modded servers are doing. But there is something to be said about playing as intended. My point was that with the introduction of sleepers, there was a huge change in the way the game plays.

A mix of the two feels like it would follow more of the zombie world that is commonly seen in pop culture as well as making sleepers scarier. Right now I just know there are sleepers and I drag them into the street. But what if dragging them into the street means dragging them into more zombies? Also when every room has a sleeper it doesn't really create the same tension.

It as just an observation about how the game has changed and how hordes in 12.5 were the real deal. Now a horde is a moving queue of 8 mobs....

 
But there is something to be said about playing as intended.
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There is little to no intended gameplay yet. We won't know the intended game play until the game goes gold and the developers say they are done changing things. As you said, the game has changed a lot and you can go back and play Alpha 12 and experience that moment in the development process but that is all it was: a moment in the progress and not the intended design.

Neither A17.4 nor the upcoming A18 are anything more than the current and next stepping stones in the development process and they also are not going to be fully the intended design. It will be closer and more aspects of the game will be locked in to the way they will forever be but the truth is that none of us are playing the intended way even if it is the currently released way.

So I don't think there is anything wrong with changing settings and tweaking zombie spawn numbers to your heart's content. Could be that the way you change things may end up being the intended version when all is said and done. We just don't know what they will be able to do with zombie spawns once they have everything optimized and aren't looking for extra space to include bandits and what not.

 
I wouldn't mind more zombies on the streets, being Knee Deep in the Dead sounds fun 😉

Even so, too much would be too much, unless they would be a bit easier to kill.

 
I have been tweaking the XMLs on our servers to get more steady flows of zombies and more undead in our world. We make some tweaks to the difficulty, amount of zombies on screen, the trickle of zombies on a regular basis. We've been doing this on active servers regularly, trying to create more balance and intensity without absolutely crushing our frame rates. It's a work in progress and it's open enough that you can get that balance on your own. It is so easy to change a few numbers/settings in the XMLs and get it to be, pretty much how you want it to play...even in Alpha, assuming you have a system that can handle it in pre-optimized format.

 
I've rewritten this post so many times now but bear with me because I've got an idea that might interest both you and the developers.

I firmly believe the entire spawning system of the zombies must be overhauled.

First I would remove most of the zombie sleepers. The cities are now flooding with wandering zombies

outside of the buildings .

The screamers as they are now "magically " summon hordes of zombies and other screamers needs to go. It has nothing to do with a zombie apocalypse and it's more related to a demonic invasion than a zombie apocalypse .

As such I propose the removal of the screamers as scouts . Instead I suggest they become the city's new guardians, the "sirens". The sirens randomly wander in the city , watching and listening to anything that appears to be fresh (incluing fresh meat and even animals) . Occasionally they will find a new victim to satiate their hunger (you) and so they call with their screams many blocks in diameter of the city's zombies into your general location . Stealth now plays a very important role early on .

Of course that also means that the bigger a city is the highest the chance for mutant sirens to appear . Brave adventurers can barricade the buildings of those huge mutant infested cities and use the sirens to attract massive amounts of zombies each city contains.

As such they can be used as a means to deplete a city's zombie defenses and allow you to haplessly extend your miserable journey by the now zombie-free loot .

So what are we going to do with screamer scouts you may ask. I suggest for now instead of getting an interdimensional screamer we get plain old wandering hordes , preferably appearing from the swamp and the dark woods, trying to pry the defenses of your base...and your fresh brain. Perhaps add a daily horde passing through your general location for immersion.

However, if you want to have an infinite amount of zombies coming to your direction you wouldn't simply make a bridge and keep summoning a few dozen zombies by abusing slowed screamers. Instead you'd have to go to the nearest huge city, barricade yourself in a building of your own choosing and better be prepared to face hundreds of zombies to your location.

P.S. Yes that means the game engine has to be upgraded and the limit increased from 70 actors to at least a couple hundred.

Such immersive atmosphere requires an amazing game engine. I think A18 looks promising to make me believe these ideas should be in the next patch.

 
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Having played this game since ~ Alpha 10 to now this game has really changed a lot. Almost all of the changes have been really good for the game. Recently I started playing A12.5 again because I was nostalgic and noticed that hordes were really hordes. The amount of roaming zombies is staggering. When you enter a city it feels like a city of the dead.
Sleepers were really required as you could just enter a building and loot with all abandon. But the game feels like all the zombies just hang out in the buildings.

There should be a balance between roamers and sleepers. Some mods actually do this and the game play difference is huge. If you watch zombie movies there are plenty of zombies randomly in the houses but the majority are wondering the streets. This is how the old alpha's felt and I miss those days. A12.5 has tons of bugs but I had more fun playing that at times then I have had during A17.

Perhaps I am alone in this.

Thanks for your time.
Click to expand...
I completely agree. I remember making the cites extra hard by adding many hard zeds in the cities, sadly that possibility is gone I think :(

 
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