Smart vs Dumb Zombies?

[Roland]

I’m glad this poll brought you out of lurking. The intended behavior is that zombies will path to your location if there exists a path and if there is no path they will go into a frenzy and start destroying blocks to try and collapse your perch.

 

They aren’t supposed to be running around in circles not destroying stuff.

 

I think the comments about tougher AI are mostly in regards to POI exploration because their better pathing puts a lot more pressure on players trying to loot a building.

[lord_ahriman]

I don't think "pathing" in POI's is much of a problem, maybe number of zombies. 7.62/9mm guns will not give you enough crowd control all the time, so you can get outnumbered easily and die. New AI is a lot better, what's "wrong" (=needs balance and fixing) is the block damage and bonuses (because they always attack the same spot), nerfed hp (walls, maybe traps because it's completely useless against strongest zombies) and inneffective explosive weapons.

[SaintPhillip]

Jesus even I understood what he was saying.

 

If zombie AI is not good, bandit Ai is not coming. What is so difficult about that. This time I feel people really ARE making a mountain out of a molehill. Richard could have just NOT posted.

 

So, no bandits then, huh?

[DerValiser]

I'm curious if the fun pimps will follow their line and may show some balls of steel, or if they will change everthing back to dumb ai due to 80 votes. I will pause until 17.1 and decide then if I'm kicking it finally from my channel after 1300 hours lets plays and streams.

 

It's not a question of smart / dumb. You can explain everything with instinct, if they exactly know where you are. They may be dumb, but they now where you are. So finally everyone must be satisfied then.

[Anabella]

Didn't mean to offend or incite anyone. Its easy to make the AI more random or a traditional dumb zombie but its harder to make them smarter and more challenging which has been requested for at least 3 years. Most people want us to close the exploits. At the end of the day its a game and we want to make it fun and a game without challenge is a game that is no longer fun. We have and will continue to attempt to make the game scalable to a wide audience with game options to tweak the simulation. Even then its impossible to please everyone.

 

It's entirely possible in future builds we scale back the zombies and leave the smarter bits for the bandits but only after we get them really great challenge wise.

 

For the record zombies have been climbing ladders since like Alpha 1 and bee-lining too you on blood moons and nobody complained about this

 

Cheers Richard

 

I think the whole problem with them right now making a beeline is how much damage they can do a base if they stack up and get that push effect. If we had a simple way to edit it, say a line in the xml so it could be turned off or better if it was an adjustable number. Heck some of the hardcore people would eat that up being able to make them do even more damage cause they are "crazy" like that.

[faatal]

I'm curious if the fun pimps will follow their line and may show some balls of steel, or if they will change everthing back to dumb ai due to 80 votes. I will pause until 17.1 and decide then if I'm kicking it finally from my channel after 1300 hours lets plays and streams.

 

It's not a question of smart / dumb. You can explain everything with instinct, if they exactly know where you are. They may be dumb, but they now where you are. So finally everyone must be satisfied then.

 

Yep. You can make up whatever logic you want. Zombies are fantasy, not something you can compare to real life. I prefer to think of them as seeing your heat, so weaker materials are more easily seen through, hence more desirable to smash. The same reason zombies in movies come to doors or windows and try to get in, because they can see inside or remember those are weak/entry spots.

 

Making the zombies all dumb, does not make the game better to me. Making variety with some dumb and some smarter is more interesting and you don't build variety on top of buggy systems. You make solid systems and then build the variety on top, which is where we are headed.

[faatal]

I think the whole problem with them right now making a beeline is how much damage they can do a base if they stack up and get that push effect. If we had a simple way to edit it, say a line in the xml so it could be turned off or better if it was an adjustable number. Heck some of the hardcore people would eat that up being able to make them do even more damage cause they are "crazy" like that.

 

AI block damage multiplier option has been discussed and is on my todo list.

[ravend]

personally i will take a large number of dumb ones, over a few smart ones.

[The Fun Pimp]

I think the whole problem with them right now making a beeline is how much damage they can do a base if they stack up and get that push effect. If we had a simple way to edit it, say a line in the xml so it could be turned off or better if it was an adjustable number. Heck some of the hardcore people would eat that up being able to make them do even more damage cause they are "crazy" like that.

 

Annabelle you have touched on something our team has been discussing which is a zombie block damage game setting with the default being what we have now move it up or down as you please.

[faatal]

personally i will take a large number of dumb ones, over a few smart ones.

 

Many zombies is currently a performance issue. It is not the smarts that makes them slow. The character controller has a lot of overhead and then add the colliders, bones and animation and even a zombie with no AI walking in a straight line is expensive. We need to find ways to reduce that overhead to get more.

[sickboysid]

In my 7daystodie servers i dont like scumbagging. no falldamage traps no mazes & you have to fight zombies on horde. and the new zombies pathing seems more exploitable.

 

i feel like the experience would be best if the zombie traps ai was smart and hordnight ai dumb. keeps those scary traps still scary and keep hordnight feeling like a total bombardment of your base.

 

to have the ai being a game setting would be sexy as ♥♥♥♥

[Cadamier]

Before A17, zombies behaved differently than they do now.

 

 

Which do you prefer and why?

 

 

You are a good person no matter which choice you make.

 

 

Except Guppy who is always incorrigibly bad.

 

 

Yay?

 

Well - there are no "canon zeds" BUT... All are relatively dumb and many are mindless! Mindless!!! They were at least fairly dumb before and that's the way they should remain. I thought that's the way they where going to be...

 

In Single Player they already over whelm the player, when they're smart as they are now you literally don't have enough time to obtain the necessary resources to properly defend yourself. Even at max time settings. Unless you go into creative mode to get some serious defenses...

- there is virtually no chance to get the yellow bag loot drops. The one time in SP I actually dropped down 4 blocks to grab a bag - I died trying to get back up... But I digress...

 

So Zeds? No - they need to be dumb. In A17 B240 the drop rate for an auger - which would help you obtain the resources needed - is 0.35 from rareTools... Unless you're able to do all of the quests and get it in the GradeCLoot... With the zeds digging on top of being smart makes the game extremely hard for the causal player. In multiplayer - everyone has to work together and hopefully you have a decent size group of at least 4 or more. But then when they're smart - just one little mistake in mp can cause your entire group to wipe. Speaking for one of our players - it wasn't fun to have her spawn into the game be chased by zeds, wolves and an endless stream of vultures... Die like 4 or 5 times and then she just doesn't log back in and hasn't since. It'd be a shame to have new players in gold come in with their preconceptions of zeds to come here and find them smart and soo much more...

[SnakeWildlife]

For the record zombies have been climbing ladders since like Alpha 1 and bee-lining too you on blood moons and nobody complained about this

 

Cheers Richard

 

Climbing ladders is fine, its a game and we understand that theyre doing that as a means of balancing, however i take issue with the rest of your sentance as dismissive yet not answering giltirns very valid complaint.

 

Zombies bee-lining has always been a thing yes, but Zombies used to run into your wall and start smashing at many parts of that wall (making your defensive objects or spikes more useful), and when breached there becomes a large gap in the wall, usually 2-5 blocks wide, his complaint is that in A17 all the zombies focus their damage on one block. This means building a huge base with concrete walls is a pointless waste of time and resources, now you might aswell just use a very large U shaped base with a gap at the end because the zombies in A17 make your lovely structural integrity systems rendered void and un-used. What a waste of developer time.

 

One of the epic moments of this game was a tower i made, and the zombies tore down the structure enough for the integrity to fail and the whole thing collapsed, killing me in the process.

 

Bee-lining isnt the problem, the GPS predictability is. Yes, they are two very different things that drastically and negative effect those kinds of experiences.

[RestInPieces]

Many zombies is currently a performance issue. It is not the smarts that makes them slow. The character controller has a lot of overhead and then add the colliders, bones and animation and even a zombie with no AI walking in a straight line is expensive. We need to find ways to reduce that overhead to get more.

 

What kind of collider/hit detection are you using guys?

 

Bee-lining isnt the problem, the GPS predictability is. Yes, they are two very different things that drastically and negative effect those kinds of experiences.

 

The worse AI may have made the horde seem more random in the past, so from a thematic perspective I can see why many people would vote for it. Like Roland said, if the AI is randomized, like e.g. zombies having slightly different AI profiles, not every one of them using the optimal path, or not every one of them following you to the next pylon on a stilt base when they can't reach you and keep hitting the current one, a few zombies wondering around for flavor/throwing a fit, zombies detecting how many zombies are currently hitting the same block and opt to hit a adjacent block instead etc.

 

I believe that adding these behaviors will solve more or less, the block damage problem and will make zombies look like a mindless horde, while most of them will be hitting the blocks they have to hit and threatening you properly - just a bit less effectively.

[SnakeWildlife]

Many zombies is currently a performance issue. It is not the smarts that makes them slow. The character controller has a lot of overhead and then add the colliders, bones and animation and even a zombie with no AI walking in a straight line is expensive. We need to find ways to reduce that overhead to get more.

 

Dead Rising 1 on Xbox (first xbox) could render over 150 zombies on screen with a 1core 733mhz processor, of which they too had dismemberment, multiple run speeds, small ledge climbing + pathing, and all that jazz.

 

3 generations of hardware later...and we're struggling to go over 30?

 

We all know quite a bit about computers here, but at this point i think many of us are quite concerned over what exactly is the performance problems you are having. Is it simply the Unity engine having poor count limits? What is the detailed and exact reason that prevents more zombies.

 

Servers are literally Zombiless because of how little of them spawn.

[moeghund]

As a SP player smarter zombies are what got me back to A17 as A16 became way to easy - they still need to be a lot smarter/random.

Also - what happened that all the zombies pour out of the POIs in b240 - it was great that you couldn't easily lure all of them out.

[Laz Man]

Dead Rising 1 on Xbox (first xbox) could render over 150 zombies on screen with a 1core 733mhz processor, of which they too had dismemberment, multiple run speeds, small ledge climbing + pathing, and all that jazz.

 

3 generations of hardware later...and we're struggling to go over 30?

 

We all know quite a bit about computers here, but at this point i think many of us are quite concerned over what exactly is the performance problems you are having. Is it simply the Unity engine having poor count limits? What is the detailed and exact reason that prevents more zombies.

 

Servers are literally Zombiless because of how little of them spawn.

 

2 completely different type of games. The main difference being that dead rising is not a voxel game.

[Laz Man]

As a SP player smarter zombies are what got me back to A17 as A16 became way to easy - they still need to be a lot smarter/random.

Also - what happened that all the zombies pour out of the POIs in b240 - it was great that you couldn't easily lure all of them out.

 

I agree with you for the most part.

 

However, The waking up zombies from the outside is not such a bad thing anymore since the redesign of POIs. Maybe because of multi level sleeper volumes? The Bear Den Bar POI is a great example of this.

 

More often then not, you wont be able to wake all of them up which feels like a good balance to me.

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

personally i will take a large number of dumb ones, over a few smart ones.

 

More is not always better especially if the threat could easily be overcome.

[SnakeWildlife]

2 completely different type of games. The main difference being that dead rising is not a voxel game.

 

Because Minecraft was so intensive right. It could run on a toaster.

[Laz Man]

Because Minecraft was so intensive right. It could run on a toaster.

 

You have played minecraft right? Graphics from the 80s.

 

Also it might be alittle dated but here is a link to a minecraft forum mentioning a cap of around ~70 mobs. So in comparison 7d2d is not far from the norm here.

 

https://www.minecraftforum.net/forums/minecraft-editions/minecraft-xbox-one-edition/mcxone-discussion/2789807-max-number-of-mobs-in-flat-world

[SnakeWildlife]

Graphics from the 80's isnt the point. We're talking about CPU here.

 

What is the absolute problem in 7D2D that prevents us from having more zombies. My GTX 1060 sure as hell aint being pushed by 7D2D.

[DrStrangechicken]

I'd like zombies that are dumber and actually weaker, but that have higher volumes. Or perhaps that some are smarter or stronger, but only specific zombie types. Also that any zombie will only die from head damage. Any other damage can affect their mobility etc, but only die from headshots etc.

[webskorpion]

... The intended behavior is that zombies will path to your location if there exists a path and if there is no path they will go into a frenzy and start destroying blocks to try and collapse your perch. ...

 

I think that pure destruction mode is a bad option. Few players will find fun fixing their heavily destroyed base. Destruction mode should only be considered as the last option by "artificial intelligence." It would be better if the zombies try to hit a staircase in walls in several groups to get to the player. That should be a priority. That the zombies can't get directly to the player on Horde Night is the rule! So the destruction mode would also be the rule! And that, unfortunately, is what it looks like at the moment.

 

... It's entirely possible in future builds we scale back the zombies and leave the smarter bits for the bandits but only after we get them really great challenge wise.

 

I would like to see zombies and bandits attack the player together on Horde Night (for example, from Gamestage 200) in the future. The bandits should conduct long-distance combat. For example, a sniper and a bandit with rockets to enable the zombies ' breakthrough. Just such a scenario happens in movies like "The Walking Dead." The zombies are used by humans as the first line of attack. They themselves form the second line of attack. In doing so, you would create a real challenge.

 

It's not about stupid or smart zombies. It's about zombies being challenging. Especially if you set a higher level of difficulty. A game that offers no-interesting-challenge is no fun. Especially at Horde Night.

 

A "working stiff" or "book store" can be secured by simple means against collapse and build a small shelter on the roof (because of vultures). That's enough to go at the highest level of difficulty at Gamestage 300 away from keyboard at Horde Night.

 

You're always preparing for a strong horde that never comes.

 

The trend has been going away from stupid zombies in movies and series for years to zombies with rudimentary "intelligence" or to zombies with instincts (for example, "Land of the Dead," "Warm Bodies" and "Resident Evil" see "wikipedia List of zombie films"). Zombies don't have to be so stupid that they can't find the way.

 

Currently, you can easily control the zombies "artificial intelligence" by putting a wooden frame up or taking it away again. So clear the way or block it again. The zombies behave like remote-controlled "7 dwarfs" from the fairy tale Snow White and walk in a row. It would be better if a random factor were incorporated and the zombies follow two different possible paths. And don't always break those paths immediately just because you put a wooden frame or take it away.

 

In my opinion, you should prioritize what promises the most gameplay. For Horde Night (from Gamestage 200), you could also occasionally turn up bandits to Horde Night in waves that act as remote fighters. To do this, the bandits do not have to be programmed with a great deal of intelligence. In doing so, they would also send a signal for further development. And zombies should be able to hit stairs in wall to get to the player.

 

(Unfortunately, I can only speak very little English. I have used translation program German - English.)

[JaxTeller718]

Because Minecraft was so intensive right. It could run on a toaster.

 

You're actually VERY wrong. Some Minecraft mods run WORSE for me than 7 Days ever could.

[DaChibii]

You're actually VERY wrong. Some Minecraft mods run WORSE for me than 7 Days ever could.

If I recall correctly the early versions of Minecraft were so poorly optimized because Notch wasn't that great of a programmer. But to be fair most designers that start out as lone developers rarely are. Which is fine since we all can't be good at everything (despite what Skyrim has taught you).