I believe that an AI is always supposed to simulate the intelligence of the entity controlled by it, as mentioned in earlier posts here.
While a game will always grant the AI more insight then a player would have, it should not mean that players always have a chess-master style AI opponent to deal with. That is in the hand of the programmers.
AI knows all, ok, uses all to it's advantage, not ok.
Realism is achieved if the AI does make the entities (in this case Zeds) act and react as well as behave like what we would expect from essentially stupid or at least lead by basic instincts (food) creatures. Be it a dog or vulture, a human or a animal zed should not (imho) have much different intellect. The fact that human zombies can still walk on 2 legs is also questionable but that would go too deep.
Suggestion:
Zombies can smell/hear/see
(randomise that pls, given their rotten/missing noses or ears/eyes, are those even still working ?? benefit of doubt)
In that regard, why not just let them wander (with a certain ranged noise radar) and if they stumble over some noise they get attracted and stick around for a while.
Should there be any other signal, they can get a ping to simulate a possible sight/hear or smell, that ping tho should be seen as a ranged scan that can fail if the hiding player is not moving/smelling and out of sight.
Given the situation of a player hiding from multiple zombies eventually surrounded, he would have run or make a stand as zombies that found a player could make a noise and thus inform other zombies to follow suit. Sure, not calling i found food, but honestly, i would not expect them to have any selfishness in their rotting brains left, as such following their instinct of being happy they found food they would most likely make a noise and start attacking.
In regards of attacking, line of sight is key, if they can see a player through a gap, that gap needs to be made bigger.
If there is a pit, well it needs to be passed, the first ones may try and fail, but the later ones would certainly have the advantage there (depending on the depth of the pit).
If no sight, and only a direction, well .. humans would go and find a way around ... zombies do not think, they could try to break through and if that is not giving a result and the noise is still keeping their attention, they could move slightly to try the wall aside the one they tried. Eventually going back and forth between them and tearing down the wall (or their arms... if realism is involved).
All this said, humans are not stupid and knowing or at least predicting and studying how zeds behave would fast lead to a playstyle that would make it impossible for zombies to succeed, it's a game with advantage for the player after all (Infinite lives).
Playing a game that has zombies that behave like what we would expect (how do we know what to expect anyway), would be a simulator.
How realistic that simulation is would be based on how realistic the capabilities of the players are as well.
So the more the player get's to be able to do, the more the zombies would fall in disadvantage.
To make the game challenging again, the programmers pimp(hehe .. fitting wordplay here) the zombies AI and here we are.
Zombies that make you build a base to try and trick them, just so they need to get "pimped" again to keep the challenge up.
Long story short, see Zeds as monsters, we have no clue how intelligent zeds are, can be, but when something tries to kill you for food or fun, don't underestimate them
Good luck out there and happy hunting.
@developers: I would not mind having more realistic zeds in regard of what i mentioned earlier, but i understand that the game needs to have a certain challenge. It's after all not a simulator, but something to keep the player busy with a sense of danger and horror. Thanks for the game.
