Found a way to make buzzards fun..

[ElCabong]

[bigstep70]

Dangit now I wanna go watch Conan the Barbarian... for the 53rdt time.

[doughphunghus]

43 minutes ago, ElCabong said:

This would be an amazing mechanic. Especially if it “distracted” the animal from going after someone else. You would be attacked and your team would leap into the air, teeth first, hoping to live another day but not caring if this were their last. Just to watch it happen would be glorious. Or an early game dog. Horde or bear goes after you and you just decide to bite it

 

[Maharin]

WoW had buzzard bites... maybe we could get something, too?

[bigstep70]

I remember when buzzards/vultures first appeared in 7 days and the community was like, "WTF we hate this, they are to hard" and I just laughed as I jumped into the air and smashed them with my level 1 club... bigstep 1 - buzzard 0.

[Crater Creator]

Vultures were fine until they were changed to attack simply because you're on a vehicle.  On horde night, I can forgive it as a necessary game-ism, so that horde night isn't too easy.  But the rest of the week?  It's set up as if you're just not supposed to use vehicles in the desert.  That makes no sense to me.

 

Yes, you can see and hear them coming.  You can step off your vehicle and kill them with one hit.  But what is achieved by prompting you to exit your vehicle every 30 seconds?

 

I don't mind when there's a discrete swarm (wandering horde) of vultures.  That feels like a dynamic event with a start and finish, like encountering a pack of dogs.  It's the nonstop trickle of vultures that is so annoying.

 

I modified the vulture's attack speed so they can be outrun on vehicles.  But that re-introduces the ability to outrun them on horde night too.  What we really need is a more refined approach to what triggers them to dive bomb you, and when.

[Maharin]

34 minutes ago, Crater Creator said:

I modified the vulture's attack speed so they can be outrun on vehicles.  But that re-introduces the ability to outrun them on horde night too.  What we really need is a more refined approach to what triggers them to dive bomb you, and when.

 

I think the answer is to have buzzards either use the zombie walk/run speed setting (adjusted to their pace) or have a setting just for flying things.

[Crater Creator]

4 hours ago, Maharin said:

I think the answer is to have buzzards either use the zombie walk/run speed setting (adjusted to their pace) or have a setting just for flying things.

 

I would say the problem lies in when they choose to attack you.  If from a design standpoint it's the right time for them to attempt attacking you, then it doesn't do much good if they're too slow to pull it off.  An aggravated enemy that has no actual effect on the player is wasting CPU cycles.  I know that's exactly what I did by modding them to be slower, but that was only for lack of a better solution using the xml hooks available.

 

The ideal design in my view is to make this attack-if-on-vehicle behavior conditional so it only applies on horde night.  There can be other situations that trigger vultures to attack, like if your health is low or the sleeper volume told them to.  But the 'player is on vehicle' trigger shouldn't apply by default.

 

Vultures don't hate vehicles.  There's no reason for them to 'see red' just because you're on a vehicle... except on horde night, where it's implemented as a necessary evil to correct an imbalance.  Even on horde night, there's probably a more sensible way to address the imbalance of fleeing the Blood Moon horde with a vehicle.

 

---

 

You know, it's funny.  Long ago I raised the hypothetical of zombie ghosts: entities that could fly straight to the player, at unlimited speed, right through any block.  My purpose was to illustrate that the devs could always 'win' against whatever tactic players come up with, if they really wanted to.  Except for the going through blocks part, that's exactly what they did with vultures.  But it comes back to what behavior they're trying to discourage as 'wrong'.  I see the case for hampering the player from avoiding the Blood Moon horde they elected to have turned on.  Hampering the player from using vehicles in the desert, not so much.

[pApA^LeGBa]

It´s not really a big deal for me tbh. In like 80% of my games i didn´t even find the desert before i had the minibike. Unless you are on a bicycle there is really no reason to stop for every vulture. 

 

Things like that show how desperate they try to create a "challenge". Kinda understandable if you can´t have a lot of enemies at once.

[meganoth]

IMO motorized vehicles should not only draw vultures to you but ALL zombies. Noise is zombie magnet no.1.

 

 

 

[ElDudorino]

Yeah, I never go to the desert because it's ridiculous how they punish you for using vehicles there. And yet I can get a way higher lootstage bonus just for going to the snow biome where there's nothing flying after me, and meat is miraculously everywhere.

 

[meganoth]

1 hour ago, ElDudorino said:

Yeah, I never go to the desert because it's ridiculous how they punish you for using vehicles there. And yet I can get a way higher lootstage bonus just for going to the snow biome where there's nothing flying after me, and meat is miraculously everywhere.

 

 

I on the other hand like how vultures liven up the scenery. I've seen hundreds of complaints about too few zombies around but when they actually attack at "inconvenient" times it isn't right as well. Do we need a catalouge in the game where everyone orders zombies from? "I'm travelling to Jonestown, I want 5 cops here at the crossing and 4 basic zombies here at the POI. And I want the free coke with it" 😁