Can we get rid of the... GPSing zombies when entering/inside a poi?

[Scyris]

I don't know exactly how to word it, but i've noticed, when you enter a poi, any zombie outside of it starts wandering towards that poi, you can even watch this happen. I've cleared around a poi before entering it as I usually do, old alpha habits, however once I go inside a new pack of zombies spawn that aren't a wandering horde that beeline it right for the poi I just entered and usually end up banging on the walls no matter how much stealth I have the second I do anything. Now in Vanilla you don't notice this too much due to how low the spawns are set, but up your zombie spawns, clear around a poi then go inside it, and watch you have 5-10 zombies beating on it by the time you come out.

 

A mod creator I know actually tested this, he cleared out around a ranger tower and inside the tower with a killall console command, which kills every zombie in the chunk/maybe the world. he then sat in the center of the top floor of the ranger poi, doing nothing, and just watched. a min or 2 later, zombies started spawning that beelined it right to him even though he was crouched, not moving and not making a sound, it was not a wandering horde either as those usually show in the console as such, it was at night so he could clearly see they were deliberatly heading to the poi he was in on spawn, and some of these spawned 40+ blocks away from the poi he was in.

 

This crap needs to stop, its not "as" bad in vanilla due to how low the spawn rate is set, but as I said, up it a bit, and you'll see how annoying it is having 5-10 zombies beating on the walls of any poi you enter, no matter how well you clear around it before you go in. This behavior started with alpha 17, and its carried thru to 18 and now 19.1.

[Kalen]

People have been asking for more zombies in the world since forever.... if this works the way you say, this seems like a way to simulate more zombies in the world without taxing a lower end system.   I'm not seeing why this is a bad thing.

[Scyris]

1 minute ago, Kalen said:

People have been asking for more zombies in the world since forever.... if this works the way you say, this seems like a way to simulate more zombies in the world without taxing a lower end system.   I'm not seeing why this is a bad thing.

If I didn't clear outside the poi yes it'd work great, but the point is even if I clear everything around it I can see (and I have view distance set to max), I should not be having 5-10 zombies suddendly banging on the walls as I explore a poi after clearing the area. They don't come all at once it seems every x minutes one will spawn and gps to the poi the player is in. Its just an annoying as hell gameplay mechanic, I mean if I didn't clear the area sure, i'd expect some of them to come to the poi probably, but more shouldn't be spawning just because I am in a poi.

 

I mostly hate it because the constant banging and groaning by the zombies rats on my nerves, I really wish I could turn zombie (and player) sound effects down with a seperate slider for both, without using the master volume, as I feel some of the sound effects are just too damn loud, zombie noises for example.

[Kalen]

2 minutes ago, Scyris said:

I mostly hate it because the constant banging and groaning by the zombies rats on my nerves, I really wish I could turn zombie (and player) sound effects down with a seperate slider for both, without using the master volume, as I feel some of the sound effects are just too damn loud, zombie noises for example.

Ok, I can understand that.

[Laz Man]

What mods are you using to up the biome spawns? 

 

This doesn't happen in vanilla AFAIK but can check.

 

A good test scenario is to pick a specific biome and POI to test the suspicion.

[pApA^LeGBa]

2 hours ago, Kalen said:

People have been asking for more zombies in the world since forever.... if this works the way you say, this seems like a way to simulate more zombies in the world without taxing a lower end system.   I'm not seeing why this is a bad thing.

Wich is a poor and hopefully just temporary solution. Cities and towns are empty and it feels weird if you enter a POI and suddenly it is like there was a zombie at every corner.

 

The world needs more zombies. It´s a confession of failure if you have to reduce the number of zombies so hard that you feel like traveling trough an empty world in a game that is about a zombie apokalypse. I really hope this is just temporary and that optimizing the game will help here.

 

It is like that in vanilla very ofthen also @Laz Man No Z to spot on the way to a quest. Even doing a quick look around the POI and the neighbour houses, no zombie in sight. I enter and after a short while someone bangs on the outside.

 

 

[Laz Man]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

Wich is a poor and hopefully just temporary solution. Cities and towns are empty and it feels weird if you enter a POI and suddenly it is like there was a zombie at every corner.

 

The world needs more zombies. It´s a confession of failure if you have to reduce the number of zombies so hard that you feel like traveling trough an empty world in a game that is about a zombie apokalypse. I really hope this is just temporary and that optimizing the game will help here.

 

It is like that in vanilla very ofthen also @Laz Man No Z to spot on the way to a quest. Even doing a quick look around the POI and the neighbour houses, no zombie in sight. I enter and after a short while someone bangs on the outside.

 

 

If you have a POI/Biome in mind let me know as I just tested this and no GPS zombies (Vanilla).

 

Test Case: house_old_ranch_10 / Forest Biome / Navezgane SP / A19.1 B8.

 

I entered the POI and didn't even bother clearing the biome spawns around the house and still no GPS behavior that I could see.  See video below.

 

 

[Laz Man]

4 hours ago, Scyris said:

A mod creator I know actually tested this, he cleared out around a ranger tower and inside the tower with a killall console command, which kills every zombie in the chunk/maybe the world. he then sat in the center of the top floor of the ranger poi, doing nothing, and just watched. a min or 2 later, zombies started spawning that beelined it right to him even though he was crouched, not moving and not making a sound, it was not a wandering horde either as those usually show in the console as such, it was at night so he could clearly see they were deliberatly heading to the poi he was in on spawn, and some of these spawned 40+ blocks away from the poi he was in.

FYI, the killall command doesn't count as a kill so those zombies will respawn immediately and not trigger the defined respawn delay in that given area.

[pApA^LeGBa]

No specific biome or POI in mind. It´s generally like that. Once i am in a POI i get visitors from outside in most cases. I can stroll trough a town and i don´t see any zombie outside. Until i goi into a POI then i get visitors. It´s not everytime. But often enough. I can wrench a ton of cars on the streets with no zombies, but if i wrench a radiator in a house i mostly get a visitor.

 

But actually all that doesn´t matter. We need more zombies. Then this discussion is pointless. What good is a game about zombies that runs on a potatoe when you have an empty world?

[Sjustus548]

We've noticed something like this happening but I always attribute it to me being loud inside of the POIs.  I go in and start smashing doors or taking things apart so I figured that's what was drawing in the zombies.  Seems like this wouldn't be that hard to test out.  I'll see what I can figure out and get back with you.

[Mastermind]

That is even more noticeable in the wasteland at night.  I was doing Shamway's factory on navezgane. I had wave after wave after wave of zombies flooding in. It was scarier than a blood moon.

[Tehnomaag]

22 hours ago, Kalen said:

People have been asking for more zombies in the world since forever.... if this works the way you say, this seems like a way to simulate more zombies in the world without taxing a lower end system.   I'm not seeing why this is a bad thing.

This is a bad thing because it removes a player agency. They come srtraight to you regardless of what you do. Why do they do that? How do they know you are there if you do nothing? How come a zed 40m out in the wilderness can hear you breathing on the 6th floor while the zed standing in the corner 3m out can not?

Could be, ofcourse, yet another confirmation of the dev-hate towards stealth gameplay I was complaining about in the other thread. Or could be a bug. Although as things stand I'd be more inclined to believe the first option than the second. 

[Kalen]

3 minutes ago, Tehnomaag said:

This is a bad thing because it removes a player agency. They come srtraight to you regardless of what you do. Why do they do that? How do they know you are there if you do nothing? How come a zed 40m out in the wilderness can hear you breathing on the 6th floor while the zed standing in the corner 3m out can not?

Could be, ofcourse, yet another confirmation of the dev-hate towards stealth gameplay I was complaining about in the other thread. Or could be a bug. Although as things stand I'd be more inclined to believe the first option than the second. 

How do they find you?   Maybe the same way the blood moon horde finds you?  

 

Thats assuming it even works the way that its been presented here.   

 

And seriously, if the dev's hated stealth they probably wouldn't have even added it to the game, no?

[Tehnomaag]

53 minutes ago, Kalen said:

How do they find you?   Maybe the same way the blood moon horde finds you?  

 

Thats assuming it even works the way that its been presented here.   

 

And seriously, if the dev's hated stealth they probably wouldn't have even added it to the game, no?

I have observed the described behavior in the wasteland myself. Group of us went to do a mission in there and ended up running into night - at which point we were getting basically waves upon waves of zeds rushing the building and beelining straight to us. 

 

I do not how they find you. Might be the same GPS they have during the blood moon, possible. But you will still get the stealth damage bonus on them when attacking from crouch as they are, supposedly, "unaware" of you, although they are beelining straight to you and are attempting to bring down the building if they do not find a path. 

 

Yet it is not blood moon. So it brings us back to the question that how and why do they find the player. They cant see him/her, they sure as hell can not sense them normally, if a zed 5 blocks out can not bother waking up. Is it bug? Is it intended? Regardless of which it is a problem, in my opinion. 

I get it that some players prefer to play 7d2d like Killing Floor. That is fine. they have plenty of options to "cheese" themselves a horde (abusing screamers, for example), there is even a setting to allow blood moon every night. But not all players prefer to play it like that. So these players could use some kind of explanation - if this is an intended behavior or is it a bug?

[Kalen]

2 minutes ago, Tehnomaag said:

I get it that some players prefer to play 7d2d like Killing Floor. That is fine. they have plenty of options to "cheese" themselves a horde (abusing screamers, for example), there is even a setting to allow blood moon every night. But not all players prefer to play it like that. So these players could use some kind of explanation - if this is an intended behavior or is it a bug?

I find it best not to over think things.... as long as I'm having fun, I'm not going to worry too much about some of the mechanics.   But, if you feel its a bug, it would probably be best to open a bug report.  I doubt anyone reading this thread would be able to answer whether its intended or not.   Or even exists.  I get that you've seen it in the wasteland... but I don't think I've ever seen this kind of zombie behavior.

[Scyris]

2 minutes ago, Kalen said:

I find it best not to over think things.... as long as I'm having fun, I'm not going to worry too much about some of the mechanics.   But, if you feel its a bug, it would probably be best to open a bug report.  I doubt anyone reading this thread would be able to answer whether its intended or not.   Or even exists.  I get that you've seen it in the wasteland... but I don't think I've ever seen this kind of zombie behavior.

Its hard to say if its a bug or intended unless a dev says something, as it started in a17 and has been around since, but a17 had a ton of ai changes so it could be a byproduct of that. Either way its really damn annoying because these zombies, NEVER stop screaming and trying to break things normally they give up after a minute, but these ones for some reason will keep banging on things till they get to you even if its 30+ minutes later.

[AtomicUs5000]

Yeah, this is the breadcrumb-following AI that started in A17. It has nothing to do with POIs. They aren't spawning in and entering the POI just because you happen to be in a POI. It could be a box you just made, or even a hole in a cliffside. I always thought it should just be called smell, because it seems to work that way to me. When zombies spawn, there is a chance that it will cross some point in your breadcrumb trail. Once reached, there is some random chance that it will investigate towards the next node in the trail or deviate from it.
 
Madmole even mentioned that they turned down world zombies because of this... it was too annoying. So, I imagine modding to turn it back up will result in annoyance. To bring back the feel of world zombies, their intention is to use the event-driven system that has been in the works since the beginning of A18, but nothing recent about its progress has been given, unless I missed it. 
 
Best thing to do is simply block the entrance you came in. They aren't aggro'd, so they shouldn't bust through (sometimes wandering hordes do though), unless you're making a ton of noise.

[unholyjoe]

20 hours ago, Laz Man said:

FYI, the killall command doesn't count as a kill so those zombies will respawn immediately and not trigger the defined respawn delay in that given area.

simple proof is look at your kill count and notice it never changes when you use killall.

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, Tehnomaag said:

This is a bad thing because it removes a player agency. They come srtraight to you regardless of what you do. Why do they do that? How do they know you are there if you do nothing? How come a zed 40m out in the wilderness can hear you breathing on the 6th floor while the zed standing in the corner 3m out can not?

Could be, ofcourse, yet another confirmation of the dev-hate towards stealth gameplay I was complaining about in the other thread. Or could be a bug. Although as things stand I'd be more inclined to believe the first option than the second. 

Now lets read that again in the light of what AtomicUS5000 said.

 

[Liesel Weppen]

1 hour ago, Tehnomaag said:

I have observed the described behavior in the wasteland myself. Group of us went to do a mission in there and ended up running into night - at which point we were getting basically waves upon waves of zeds rushing the building and beelining straight to us.

I never saw that behaviour in vanilla.

 

When climbing up one of the skyscrapers there are multiple parts where you go outside the building and can see the sourroundings. I often have seen Zs walking arount, but none heading directly into the building. They start running to the building, or better say do direct pathing to the player, once they got attracted by you, because of noise or shooting around. Like any other zombies do. Some zombies may also enter the building with their randome pathing, by they will not acitvely head to the player as long as they are not attracted.

If you leave a building quickly, thinking you have already cleared it, you run over trash or make whatever sounds that will attract any nearby zombies, even such that are around or accidentially already came into the building. But even these cases are rare from what i saw. Most of zombies coming from the outside are attracted by noise. Just like the same way you can wake up sleapers inside of a poi by making noise at the outside. But they will not do anything if you don't make noise.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Liesel Weppen The point, is where do they suddenly come from? I recently wrenched all the cars around higashi tower. No Z showed up. As soon as i started using the wrench inside they were starting to come.

 

It´s like they hide all the time you are outside and only come out when you are inside.

[Roland]

They were on their way. If you would have stayed outside just a little longer they would have shown up...

 

Another way to test whether they are bee lining to YOU or just following your smell trail as Atomic pointed out is to throw a rock out a window and se if they abandon the poi to go chase the rock. If they do then you know they are not aware of you because if they were, they would ignore the rock. 
 

I don’t  see the problem with staggered zombie spawning outside while you are inside. The OP is complaining about something that only has a noticeable and annoying impact when the game is modded. It’s doubtful the devs are going to compensate for a mod. 
 

When I first started playing around with this part of the xml I went  crazy with 8x the normal zombie counts because why not?  I noticed what the OP is talking about right away and it made it impossible to fully explore- especially POIs with basements. Those were 100% death traps. 
 

Eventually, I settled on 2x with a shorter respawn rate because that gave more outdoor zombies without the constant visitors to POIs Inwas clearing. You still get some but it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes they get in and find their way to where I am but most of the time they are just banging on the walls in a nonaggro state. 

[Laz Man]

33 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Liesel Weppen The point, is where do they suddenly come from? I recently wrenched all the cars around higashi tower. No Z showed up. As soon as i started using the wrench inside they were starting to come.

 

It´s like they hide all the time you are outside and only come out when you are inside.

Another easy way to check is to enable debug mode and detach camara and fly around outside like in my video.  

 

You can even press numpad 0 which will turn on an info panel above any nearby zombie and what they are targeting.

 

As far as the wasteland is concerned, the respawn delay there is shorter then anywhere else.  At night its instantaneous.  If the biome spawns are coming into the POI its probably because your making too much noise.

[Kyonshi]

27 minutes ago, Roland said:

They were on their way. If you would have stayed outside just a little longer they would have shown up...

 

Another way to test whether they are bee lining to YOU or just following your smell trail as Atomic pointed out is to throw a rock out a window and se if they abandon the poi to go chase the rock. If they do then you know they are not aware of you because if they were, they would ignore the rock. 
 

I don’t  see the problem with staggered zombie spawning outside while you are inside. The OP is complaining about something that only has a noticeable and annoying impact when the game is modded. It’s doubtful the devs are going to compensate for a mod. 
 

When I first started playing around with this part of the xml I went  crazy with 8x the normal zombie counts because why not?  I noticed what the OP is talking about right away and it made it impossible to fully explore- especially POIs with basements. Those were 100% death traps. 
 

Eventually, I settled on 2x with a shorter respawn rate because that gave more outdoor zombies without the constant visitors to POIs Inwas clearing. You still get some but it doesn’t bother me. Sometimes they get in and find their way to where I am but most of the time they are just banging on the walls in a nonaggro state. 

Same for me. I currently play with a 4x more Zombies setting, with a 0.5 respawn rate, on a 4k map. I dont see that kind of excessive behavior that the OP talks about, except on few occasions that i break a window, wrench a radiator, axe a door. I take it like i make noise or i generate a heat signature. Just like i does happen when i use many workstations in my hideout.

 

With the high Z count and their spawn rate, i should have Zs almost 100% of the time bothering me and they run at Sprint, but its clearly not what i observe. Some do spawn in the vincinity of the POI im raiding but that would just be a normal occurence with the settings i have. Most of the time, 6 to 8 of them are just strolling by, as i can see them when im on the roof. But its fine because i want to be threading in a constantly risky environment.

[meganoth]

40 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Liesel Weppen The point, is where do they suddenly come from? I recently wrenched all the cars around higashi tower. No Z showed up. As soon as i started using the wrench inside they were starting to come.

 

It´s like they hide all the time you are outside and only come out when you are inside.

Yes, and someone winning on his first lottery ticket will tell you you win all the time. Not saying you are wrong, but you should at least try this 3 times with varying durations of staying outside before you claim this is anything but a coincidence.