Zombies is About Hordes and Numbers

[saoron666]

I think after playing the game for over 1200hrs with max difficulty i still find it very easy from start to late in the game..

 

this game needs HORDES of zombies! you need numbers of them walking and attacking, surrounding you, getting you cornered!

 

so you cant run by them! if they surround you, you are done!

 

imagine a horde of zombies on sprint mode !!!! now we talking survival skills and that run and gun is worth leveling,...

 

we need to maximize the number of random zombies on the game.

[Roland]

https://community.7daystodie.com/topic/17986-how-to-win-getting-more-zombies-in-your-game/?tab=comments#comment-346916

[ElCabong]

I am totally the opposite and have hord night turned off. I play for the building, survival, and questing.

[pApA^LeGBa]

There is also mods for more zombies if you don´t wanna fiddle around yourself in XML files, wich is why we need this as an option in vanilla also.

 

And you can tell me 1000 times how easy it is to install mods and that it´s just a few tweaks in the XML, doesn´t matter.

 

I know a ton of people that can barely install a game via steam but still enjoy gaming. I had to setup an EA account for a coworker  so he can play dragon age cause he was overwhelmed with creating the account....

Edited November 11, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[Xtrakicking]

Yeah, one of the big problems with this game (imo) is that, from a certain moment in the development, there just weren't enough zombies anymore and it's never really recovered from that; the reason being that too many zombies are a big hit in performance.

 

There was a certain moment back in previous versions when it was pretty much perfect. Instant respawn of zombies in hub cities, which meant you could never clear them, and random wandering hordes composed of 20+ zombies. Sometimes, they would catch you off guard while looting a house, they would clog all exits and corners, and you would have to get lucky or get smart to survive. Those were the days.

 

Anyways, don't expect them to bring all that fun back. Pray that modding will take care of it.

[asmosnuts]

  Dont expect any answers, numbers have been a concern for a long time. If you can mod large numbers in why arent they there already?

 How many less will there be once bandits arrive?

 When will a horde in a horde game be a horde again instead of a few out for a stroll?

  Parts of the world used to be terrifying, now its just empty, horde nights are done by 1am

  Sit back and watch the definitive answers roll in until the great apologist steps in with his " Look at my guide to modding more zombies in routine! " 

   Can you seriously call it a horde crafting game anymore? False advertising innit?

   ( and yes my tongue is firmly in cheek for all you dedicated keyboard hordeless warriors! )

    Anyone remember Zombi on the ZX Spectrum?  That had hordes.

[Roland]

1 hour ago, asmosnuts said:

If you can mod large numbers in why arent they there already?

 

Because the developers have standards for performance that they follow and they need to provide a guarantee of game stability for the default version of the game at the minimum required posted specs.  Modders don't need to worry about any of that.

 

Capiche?

[BFT2020]

2 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

Anyone remember Zombi on the ZX Spectrum?  That had hordes.

Never played that game, but it doesn't look like the game is a fully destructable environment like 7D2D is.  That's like comparing pumpkins (7D2D) to apples.  Games like these can increase the size of hordes because they don't have the same environmental resource requirements like 7D2D does.

[hotpoon]

I'm definitely in the MOAR camp. That's what makes Dying Light exhilarating. You know those zombies are dumb as a pile of rocks, but there's so many of them and that's where the danger lies.  Same with Project Zomboid.   In terms of numbers, A15 was the sweet spot for me. 

 

I can understand why they've dialed back the numbers. When we use mods to get more zombies in, performance is ok during the day and normal nights, but if there's enough people on the server during horde night (causing the number of zombies spawning to increase) it becomes a slideshow in terms of frames . The game can get literally unplayable.

 

From my experience, if they could just figure out how to optimize horde night, more zombies wouldn't be an issue.

[pApA^LeGBa]

@Xtrakicking The performance isn´t bad with more zombies. I don´t own anything fancy. R5 3600 and GTX1070. That´s a 180$ CPU. And i get a stable performance with 4x spawn. They could at least easily go with 2x spawn.

 

Or at least give us the option to turn the spawnrate up. I don´t get that mindset that TFP only wants to cater to people with weaker hardware and do absolutly nothing for people with even just average hardware.

 

Edited November 13, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[asmosnuts]

Quote

  That's like comparing pumpkins (7D2D) to apples. 

 

         Pumpkins to apples indeed considering the spectrum ran on a massive 48k. Wasnt even attempting to compare it to 7 days just remembering an old game

 

Quote

Because the developers have standards for performance that they follow and they need to provide a guarantee of game stability for the default version of the game

      Ah mister apologist speaks, not really an answer though. Can you call a horde game sans hordes a horde game? Will zs even exist when bandits make it in? Will a20 see more numbers, less or the same? When do we get our zombies back? Just change it to " A crafting game with occasional zombies " or " The lonely planet sim "

     How about restricting building/destruction to the same degree, maybe we would be happier with that. Nerf crafting to 5 single items a day, no one wants to see that.  Yet complain about a lack of zombies in a horde crafting game.

  ok im off to find a horde ......  I may be some time!

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

@Xtrakicking The performance isn´t bad with more zombies. I don´t own anything fancy. R5 3600 and GTX1070. That´s a 180$ CPU. And i get a stable performance with 4x spawn. They could at least easily go with 2x spawn.

 

Or at least give us the option to turn the spawnrate up. I don´t get that mindset that TFP only wants to cater to people with weaker hardware and do absolutly nothing for people with even just average hardware.

 

 

The option is the only viable solution as minimum specs haven't changed (and it isn't without problems to change specs and pull the rug under people with potato hardware). And AFAIK the option IS on the list of things TFP wants to implement. I think that it should be done rather sooner than later.

 

[playlessNamer]

Its absolutely about hordes!

 

1- Do a coop private server, dont join any community server (even when they are awesome, no offense) they steal most of your spawns. Empty cities are usual there.

2- do the easy modlet zombiesx4, x8, x16 like you want.

3- turn up max zombies alive (our 4€ cheap server started lag at around 250 zombies infront of base) turn up horde night spawns.

4- increase your ammo production buy xml or your only gameplay beside shooting zombies will be farming ammo. I doubled the outcome of every ammorecipe, increased amount of blackpowder in loot greatly.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

@meganoth The minimum specs are a dual core CPU with 2.4Ghz and 2GB GPU. That´s like 2005 standard? I mean i understand that you want your game to be able to run on a potato, i really do. But that is just too much tbh. I know that the average PC isn´t great, but i doubt that you have more than 1% of the players actually playing on a dual core with a 2GB GPU. Not even 0.5% tbh.

 

And i could play with 2x spawn on a i5 4460 with no problems before i upgraded my rig. That was a low tier CPU that released in 2013 when the game came out on steam.

 

Designing the game to minimum specs that were outdated 10 years ago is way too much. You gonna make more people unhappy with that than you make people happy.

Edited November 13, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[meganoth]

Its not my game, not my minimum specs. There is no "want" in my case, I just say that TFP is likely to be reluctant to change specs when they can see with telemetry that there are players out there with potatoes still playing the game. And I'm sure they see such players because here in the forum sometimes people with laptops or old PCs complain about performance on horde night.

 

For you getting a new PC might be no problem, but for a player in the Philipines or in Belarus it might be not so easy. Especially since you can't buy a sensible middle class GPU at the moment and even if you could it would cost nearly $500. 

 

So everything points to a setting in the options menue, especially since I seem to remember someone from TFP talking about it.

 

[eXSe]

I feel for us, wanting the horde part of the game, but I also feel for the devs and their reasons for doing what they do, so I'm just grateful that it can be modified to our liking with bigger wandering hordes and wilderness spawns (currently playing the Romero mod and having fun with it).

 

Having said that, I would appreciate the option in game for those settings and not having to rely on third party solutions. Just because that way it would be easier and more accessible to more people.

[RichyYoung]

I completely agree.    I hate the change in ai pathing, you can funnel on horde night and be done in an hour even on max zombies, and you get maybe a couple of roaming ones.  I get that performance is an issue but there’s plenty of games that have devs that can dig deep into performance hangs and find the code that does it, Stellaris has a great example of a code hang up they found in the next patch.   A small change in code resulted in more performance.    If the moneys not there for an extra dev, drop it as a dlc I would buy it just to see improved performance and more zombie option come to life.

 

most if not all the change is surviving to get that first base up and that’s about it.  After that it’s raiding the same poi’s and surviving the first couple of hordes, game stage scaling is just no where near hard enough.  
 

all these of course should be options for people can customise but brutal and hard should be exactly that not just making them hit harder and run faster.  But about these mega bases that become untouchable.      Maybe ran some hordes that use the old path finding and will take the shortest path to your location. 
 

more and harder please

[pApA^LeGBa]

3 hours ago, meganoth said:

Its not my game, not my minimum specs. There is no "want" in my case, I just say that TFP is likely to be reluctant to change specs when they can see with telemetry that there are players out there with potatoes still playing the game. And I'm sure they see such players because here in the forum sometimes people with laptops or old PCs complain about performance on horde night.

 

For you getting a new PC might be no problem, but for a player in the Philipines or in Belarus it might be not so easy. Especially since you can't buy a sensible middle class GPU at the moment and even if you could it would cost nearly $500. 

 

So everything points to a setting in the options menue, especially since I seem to remember someone from TFP talking about it.

 

 

Well that´s good to hear. But those specs where ancient already before the GPU situation. Even in those countries you mention there won´t be a lot playing on actual minimum specs. I would bet money that under 1% of all players only have minimum specs.

 

And catering to such a small part by balancing the game to those low spawn numbers hurts the rest of the players.

 

Like i said, even on old cpu´s from 2013, that where really cheap back then it will run smooth with more zombies than we have now.

Edited November 13, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[meganoth]

43 minutes ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

 

Well that´s good to hear. But those specs where ancient already before the GPU situation. Even in those countries you mention there won´t be a lot playing on actual minimum specs. I would bet money that under 1% of all players only have minimum specs.

 

And catering to such a small part by balancing the game to those low spawn numbers hurts the rest of the players.

 

Like i said, even on old cpu´s from 2013, that where really cheap back then it will run smooth with more zombies than we have now.

 

And other people have different experiences. My old pc had an AMD FX-8370, with realistically 4 cores and 4Ghz clock. The CPU is from 2014

 

The FPS leave hardly room for more and I need to turn down resolution quite far, though I suspect in this case the similarily old GPU has some part in this.

 

In the last 10 years many people bought laptops for their gaming and they will have nominally "fast" CPUs that will throttle down after 10 seconds. Under 1%? Maybe not.

 

 

 

[Roland]

7 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

  Ah mister apologist speaks, not really an answer though.

 

How is THE answer to why the developers support less zombies while modders easily put more in not really an answer. I'm sorry my answer wasn't to your liking but it IS the answer and I'm not going to just give you what you want to hear if it isn't true.  You can believe that I'm trying to defend or excuse but I'm not. I mod more zombies into my own game so I definitely am not happy or satisfied with the status quo. But the literal answer to the question that was asked is the answer that I gave and there is no other answer that can be given.

 

If you want my opinion then I believe they should increase the minimum specs and add more zombies in. But if you want the factual answer to the question that was asked then you're stuck with the one I gave.

 

7 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

Can you call a horde game sans hordes a horde game?

 

The game has huge hordes on Blood Moon night and the wandering hordes get large once your gamestage progresses far enough. So the fact that there are not more wilderness spawns everywhere does not disqualify the game from being called a horde game. It is still very much a horde game. But once again, I am all in favor of ramping up the wilderness spawns and starting the wandering hordes out at 20 spawns instead of 3 as it is currently.

 

7 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

Will zs even exist when bandits make it in?

 

Of course they will. The current numbers were implemented in order to make room for bandits and NPCs. One other factor I failed to mention about the difference between developers and modders is that developers know what is coming and have before them the entire plan and they know what the memory requirements are going to be. Modders only know what the requirements currently are and have no idea what is going to be added and what new systems will need to integrate with current systems and what demands that will all make on the game.

 

7 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

Will a20 see more numbers, less or the same?

 

More in the downtown areas. faatal just recently posted in the dev diary that he made changes to the spawning so that the spawn numbers and respawn delay numbers can be tweaked using tags such as "downtown" so that in specific places you can have more zombies that respawn faster and feel very horde-like in that area. In addition, the new feral sense setting in A20 will cause zombies in a much greater radius around the player to notice the player and start moving in towards them. In A19 there are actually quite a few wilderness spawns in the surround chunks but often you never encounter them. With feral sense you encounter pretty much all of them. I'm sure as A20 progresses there will be adjustments to the new spawn coding to create pockets of infestation in specific areas that will bring the horde feeling back again.

 

7 hours ago, asmosnuts said:

When do we get our zombies back?

 

Today, if you edit the xml yourself while waiting to see what the devs ultimately do. The edits needed are simple and fast. It may seem stupid to you that a zombie horde game has such a small density of zombies roaming around. But what is even more stupid is to want more zombies but refuse to get more zombies immediately. There is zero reason why you can't have what you say you want while you wait to see where things go.

 

[pApA^LeGBa]

The simple reason is simple. If you wanna play with others and there is people who can barely install a game on steam and yet they enjoy gaming. Not everyone who plays games it tech savy. And with the abandoned console version there is a bunch of people that  first came to PC gaming for 7 days. 

 

Modding isn´t the solution to make a game that has horde in the title to a game that actually deserves that title. That´s the job of the devs tbh.

You can´t just rely on modders to make this a zombie game that actually has zombies.

 

And not to forget that it will mess up the balance if they game is balanced for default. So that´s just a workaround and not a real solution. It´s half assed. 

Edited November 14, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)

[BFT2020]

3 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

The simple reason is simple. If you wanna play with others and there is people who can barely install a game on steam and yet they enjoy gaming. Not everyone who plays games it tech savy. And with the abandoned console version there is a bunch of people that  first came to PC gaming for 7 days. 

 

Modding isn´t the solution to make a game that has horde in the title to a game that actually deserves that title. That´s the job of the devs tbh.

You can´t just rely on modders to make this a zombie game that actually has zombies.

 

And not to forget that it will mess up the balance if they game is balanced for default. So that´s just a workaround and not a real solution. It´s half assed. 

Maybe if you are nice, someone will make a modlet which is easy to install and increase the number of zombies in the world for you.

[pApA^LeGBa]

You didn´t read my post obviously.

[meganoth]

13 hours ago, pApA^LeGBa said:

The simple reason is simple. If you wanna play with others and there is people who can barely install a game on steam and yet they enjoy gaming. Not everyone who plays games it tech savy. And with the abandoned console version there is a bunch of people that  first came to PC gaming for 7 days. 

 

Modding isn´t the solution to make a game that has horde in the title to a game that actually deserves that title. That´s the job of the devs tbh.

You can´t just rely on modders to make this a zombie game that actually has zombies.

 

And not to forget that it will mess up the balance if they game is balanced for default. So that´s just a workaround and not a real solution. It´s half assed. 

 

If multiple people are involved the chance that none of them are able to install one XML only mod on the server (i.e. unpack a zip in a specific directory) is rather small I would say. And only the server needs the mod, everyone else gets it automatically.

 

With steam workshop this should be even easier in many cases eventually.

 

By the way, you are arguing here for leaving some people with potato PCs behind so that other people with noob skills are not left behind. Make it an option in the settings and nobody will be left behind.

 

There is some influence on balance, yes. You waste more ammo and get more xp without more loot. Both makes the game slightly more difficult (in addition to more zombies) which seems ok to me. In other words, I don't see a moderate increase like 2 times the zombies to upset the balance and the upsetting is into the "right direction"

 

 

 

Edited November 14, 2021 by meganoth (see edit history)

[pApA^LeGBa]

This is my PC gaming history in a nutshell. Never having a top tier PC always gettings things years after release. Yes, i am basically asking to leave a few people behind same as i was always behind for a very long time. And i will be in the same boat again pretty soon, because i am not gonna upgrade for quite while for sure.

 

Still convinced we are talking about verry few people tough. It runs fine with any older 4 core CPU from around the release date on 2x the spawn. You resolution problem was only to blame on the GPU.  

 

I just can´t see why releasing a game with an empty world get´s defended so badly. It falls back on TFP beeing a huge design flaw. Will be a point for critics and already is among players. No, feral sense won´t help. 8 zombies per chunk is not enough, even if they will sense and find you.

 

It´s 12% of people on steam who only have 2 cores btw. So i guess you would leave about 5% of 7 days players behind. Do they really wanna balance the game for the 5%? Even if it´s 10% that a questionable decision tbh.

Edited November 14, 2021 by pApA^LeGBa (see edit history)