Zombie Movement

[Belteshazzar]

Kiting is the general behavior that’s being criticized here as I see it, use of obstacles is only a specific instance or subset of kiting. Hence my example involving animals that humans couldn’t outrun, but could outwalk (humans ‘can’ outwalk almost any species on the planet so long as they can keep tracking it.)

I mean, hell, I can just tear up clothing into rags, apply a matchbook and make my own ‘obstacles’ to play Pied Piper with all day if bushes and window frames were removed (reason I eventually stopped doing that was because I lost enough characters and resources to zombies carrying surprise munitions for that to be reduced to a desperation measure instead of standard practice.)

Personally I don’t see pulling uncoordinated foes through difficult terrain to be an issue at all, on the realistic or gamist viewpoint, thus I suggested a mechanic that won’t actually ‘solve’ it, but will add a little more depth to applying it.

[Dominae]

I seriously thought this was a thread necro at first. I mean, we talked this to death already, many times even. ( http://smf.cataclysmdda.com/index.php?topic=4696.0 for instance).

I think the general consensus (ignoring a specific forum poster or two because they exist merely only to shat upon the ideas of others) was that bush-kiting was so effective and easy to do that nearly everyone always does it early game. When a game that touts itself as having lots-o-content and lots-to-do gets defined by one tactic that everyone does because it is “the go-to way to kill zombies on day one” then there is a problem. Options are worthless if one of fundamentally a no-brainer and better than the others.

(Do you want $100 cash, or a $20 gift card to one of the following restaurants … ? … wait, why are you just nodding vigorously and aren’t letting me go through a long list of restaurants?!)

I thought solutions were actually invented in prior discussions.

Obstacles can get smashed to uselessness if you fight in that square.

[ul][li]Realistic: Swing a sledgehammer at a flailing zombie laying on a table or stuck in a bush and odds are the table or shrub takes a good amount of the damage.[/li]
[li]Tactical: Adds an amount of randomness to kiting without removing it, thus adding some excitement as it is no longer a guaranteed win.[/li][/ul]

Vary sizes of bushes. (Full Disclosure: One of my suggestions)

[ul][li]Realistic: All shrubs aren’t gigantic topiary that cannot be traversed. There are variations in nature.[/li]
[li]Tactical: Not EVERY shrub is an I-Win button. You may have to scout out a place to fight and lure zombies to that place, as opposed to “if there is a shrub within X-1 squares of me (where X is the number of squares between you and the zombie) I am guaranteed to win this fight.”[/li][/ul]

There were other ideas too, but those were two that seemed to “adjust” bush-kiting without removing it.

Zombies or animals bashing THROUGH cars to get you seems pretty stupid though, for normal Z’s and animals at least. Waking up to find out your car is destroyed because a bear is chewing through it seems ridiculous. I’d almost suggest normal Z’s and animals not damage vehicles and path around them instead BUT there are many good scenes in zombie movies where they bash on cars with people trapped inside though, and I wouldn’t want that experience to not exist in Cata. Maybe if they ONLY bash out windshields and doors? Having a Z chew its way through a fender and then the engine block for no reason other than it felt “stuck” seems way over the top right now.

And my hope is, when hordes are the norm, they’ll “spill around things” better. So if you’re hiding in a house fighting through a window, when enough Z’s mush up against that window they’ll flow around the building and then start to bash their way in through OTHER windows. That’ll kill a lot of the sit-in-a-window-forever situation and add a scary element to things.

[Sean_Mirrsen]

My take on kiting is stocking up on reusable traps like caltrops and nailboards. Toss a few on the ground and just run around in circles while the horde grates itself to death. I never even used bushes and windows.

As such I can’t even say how to really fix the kind of kiting you people are talking about, but as far as I understand the basic mechanic is that a zombie will become slowed once it enters the bush, allowing you some free attacks of opportunity. I think the best fix to this is mind-bogglingly simple - make leaving an obstructing tile happen at normal speed, and instead entering the obstructing tile will be the slow action. Since the zombie will only ever be slowed for a moment before entering the bush (typically standing on the other side of the bush from you), you will not get any combat advantage for attacking a zombie moving through the bush. Or the window, or whichever. This will effectively mean that the bushes will only become useful for putting distance between you and the zombies (the way I use them now), not for hitting them while they crawl through.

And I’d really like to see zombies path around small obstacles. Too frequently zombies are getting stuck inside of cars when I’m trying to gather up a big horde to dispose of it.

[Catfoodbob]

also with the cars thing… on one of my chars at night, they seem to like to bunch up on cars cause they are attracted to noise… they think the player is there so they start hitting the car, more zombies come to check out and start hitting the car… then they just sit there whacking the car to death… even thought player is skirting around murdering them in the night

[pulsefrequency]

[quote=“Kevin Granade, post:13, topic:5402”]Both extremes are wrong (as is usually the case with opposing extremes). the balance is fairly poor right now, with kiting over bushes or windows being so common as to be considered mandatory for combat. The somewhat tricky thing is that taking out a single zombie SHOULD be pretty easy, part of the problem is zombies don’t clump up much, so pulling them one at a time is trivial. if we have a situation where you frequently have to deal with multiple zombies at once, then kiting over bushes becomes far less attractive.
I like the idea of having zombies stagger a bit even when they can see you, one thing they should not be is perfectly predictable.
another anti-bush fix would be to have melee misses bash the square the target is in, so the player could end up bashing the bush out of existence.[/quote]

pretty much this… all discussion henceforth is irrelevant

EDIT: no offense but aside from the following, that has been exactly the case from what ive read. kevin said it best.

@halberdsturgeon

Their rudimentary behaviour is deliberate; basic zombie types aren’t meant to require a great deal of strategy to overcome, which is why I think all of the fuss about bushes and windows is unwarranted. If you want an example of more sophisticated movement behaviour (and justifiably so), play with NPCs on and anger one of them. They’ll path around any movement-penalising terrain to get to you, even an entire row of bushes.

i think it is perfectly fine the way it is… and i think it is balanced. you can just as easily kite them through wreckages or mine fields. or burning buildings. or run them over. or shoot them with the multitude of guns. or just run away.

or you can stand there and fight them. have you ever tried to stand there and fight in the open with decent melee/dodge skill? i find it extremely realistic. there is an important reason why you cant do that with low skill, and why relying on such seemingly “unbalanced” mechanics would seem like a pretty good idea at first. but by the time you build enough skill that you can stand and fight mano a mano, you should have moved on from pulling individual zombies one at a time anyway, and be frying bigger fish.
if you find it mandatory to use bushes and obstacles in melee, then you are being too narrow minded. they are a huge boost and fundamental to game play imho, but they are absolutely in no way mandatory. nothing is mandatory, everything is optional, and i have always found this mechanic to make totally perfect sense.

one last thing: i am seeing way too much of “remove X feature from the game” and “Y mechanic is unbalanced”
i understand this is the drawing board but please, nothing needs to be removed, the game is fine

[Binky]

@Sean Mirrsen

As such I can’t even say how to really fix the kind of kiting you people are talking about, but as far as I understand the basic mechanic is that a zombie will become slowed once it enters the bush, allowing you some free attacks of opportunity. I think the best fix to this is mind-bogglingly simple - make leaving an obstructing tile happen at normal speed, and instead entering the obstructing tile will be the slow action. Since the zombie will only ever be slowed for a moment before entering the bush (typically standing on the other side of the bush from you), you will not get any combat advantage for attacking a zombie moving through the bush. Or the window, or whichever. This will effectively mean that the bushes will only become useful for putting distance between you and the zombies (the way I use them now), not for hitting them while they crawl through.

Good thinking, I literally did not think of that, and it’s pretty much the perfect solution. Sure, you can still use ranged stuff on them, but it fixes the immediate problems. Can anyone weigh in on how feasible this will be with the current system? I’m not sure how the game understands time delay, so this might unfortunately be quite hard to put in.

Pulsefrequency: Although I get your point, the “i understand this is the drawing board but please, nothing needs to be removed, the game is fine” is just as much of an opinion as ‘something needs to be removed’ - this is all the drawing board will ever be for people that don’t have the time to put into doing the coding.

[pulsefrequency]

yes - that may be the thousandth time i have heard that said on this forum. i was simply giving my opinion, since that seems to be what we’re all doing here. thank you.

[Dzlan]

Eh, for the sake of kiting? Can’t we just nerf the penalty for Z’s?
Also, I’v never felt a need to kite, I start with 0 combat skills and hit once with a quick weapon then run back a square then hit again. Cheap but against large amounts of enemies or in small areas, ineffective so I flee.
Works fine for me.