Zombie spawns are being reduced the more I play

[ammonitia]

In the beginning, zombies were everywhere, on streets, sidewalks, in woods, all in rural areas, but as I'm nearing day 200, zombies will now only spawn in the big cities (aside from wandering hordes and screamers). Never in the rural parts. Just emptiness now, except for wildlife. I've left certain areas that previously had many zombies alone for a long time, but still no zombies upon return. What is happening? Will they ever bring back zombie spawn sliders? This is on console.

[RipClaw]

When you kill an entity, be it an animal or a zombie, there is a timeout until respawn. How long this timeout is depends on the biome and the environment. In the center of the city, zombies respawn quite quickly, while in the wilderness it takes a long time. The fastest respawn is in the Wasteland. At night the zombies respawn immediately.

 

[slicksister]

Is that timeout configurable?  Gotta admit after a while the game gets rather boring during the daytime.  Have to go out at night to find any zombies to boogie.

[Jugginator]

I have actually launched an investigation into this, not sure what it is yet, but I'm looking for information in debugging to pass to Faatal to look at when he has time.

 

That is interesting how you pointed out it's only in the wilderness/rural areas. 

 

For what it's worth, I have somewhat spotted a reduction in spawns in the wasteland in some tests, but some always spawned. Anyway, it's being looked into

 

If you're on PC, you can configure this in the spawning.xml file. Look for these: 

 

The numbers make a big difference, although I believe there is some other issue in code not related to this at all, but you can have a play with these if you want. 

[warmer]

I have a similar issue in the sense that the world feels too stop/start with the spawning. Some people like the breathing room of clearing out a chink. Me personally, I like to have a steady stream for xp reasons. I went through the spawn.xml and reduced the respawn delay to 1/3 for all entries except the wasteland. Now I never run out of enemies in my day. If you reduce it to less than .5 it will respawn after 12hrs. Anymore than that and you will be constantly fighting zeds near your base. I also bumped up the min/max spawn to 3x. Most of my friends that I play with feel this is too much. For me I love it.

[SylenThunder]

3 hours ago, Jugginator said:

I have actually launched an investigation into this

This seven guy on Steam claims he reported it back in a19

https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/1/4753075008184812520/

[ammonitia]

2 hours ago, warmer said:

I have a similar issue in the sense that the world feels too stop/start with the spawning. Some people like the breathing room of clearing out a chink. Me personally, I like to have a steady stream for xp reasons. I went through the spawn.xml and reduced the respawn delay to 1/3 for all entries except the wasteland. Now I never run out of enemies in my day. If you reduce it to less than .5 it will respawn after 12hrs. Anymore than that and you will be constantly fighting zeds near your base. I also bumped up the min/max spawn to 3x. Most of my friends that I play with feel this is too much. For me I love it.

Sadly, consoles don't have those options. Someone else said the spawns are on a timer, but we're talking about 100 hours or more and no spawns. But wildlife keeps spawning as well as sleeper zombies inside POIs. 

27 minutes ago, SylenThunder said:

This seven guy on Steam claims he reported it back in a19

https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/1/4753075008184812520/

Yikes. This has been around for years and has not been fixed? I'm find myself sparing zombies that just mingle around because I don't want an empty map. I want to feel like I'm in a zombie apocalypse. Even the cities only spawn 3 or 4 now.

 

Could the animal spawns be taking up all the spawn slots?

[Jugginator]

It's not animals. Not too sure what it is at the moment, but typically this only happens in the Forest biomes, when you hit desert/snow/wasteland it isn't an issue, although in testing I did find a reduction in biome spawns compared to the start of the tests, but I was still getting decent spawn numbers.

21 minutes ago, ammonitia said:

Sadly, consoles don't have those options. Someone else said the spawns are on a timer, but we're talking about 100 hours or more and no spawns. But wildlife keeps spawning as well as sleeper zombies inside POIs. 

Yikes. This has been around for years and has not been fixed? I'm find myself sparing zombies that just mingle around because I don't want an empty map. I want to feel like I'm in a zombie apocalypse. Even the cities only spawn 3 or 4 now.

 

Could the animal spawns be taking up all the spawn slots?

 

[warmer]

54 minutes ago, ammonitia said:

Sadly, consoles don't have those options. Someone else said the spawns are on a timer, but we're talking about 100 hours or more and no spawns. But wildlife keeps spawning as well as sleeper zombies inside POIs. 

What console version are you playing? There are two very different versions out there. This is in the wrong forum as well. Console has a different thread

Edited September 13 by warmer (see edit history)

[ammonitia]

1 hour ago, Jugginator said:

It's not animals. Not too sure what it is at the moment, but typically this only happens in the Forest biomes, when you hit desert/snow/wasteland it isn't an issue, although in testing I did find a reduction in biome spawns compared to the start of the tests, but I was still getting decent spawn numbers.

 

In my game the spawning issue is present in every biome except wasteland (which I've haven't explored much). For example, there's a stretch of road from my base in the forest biome to my second base in the burnt forest (90% of this road is located in burnt forest). When I first travelled down this road, it was crawling with zombies. You couldn't loot a car without zombies breathing down your neck. Now it's barren and it has been like this for like 100 or so days. I don't think TFPs want us treating zombies like an endangered species but that's what I'm doing. Most chunks with zombie spawns are now zombie preservation reserves. It saddens me when they despawn. I had a fat mama pet zombie that would I check up on every now and then, but to my horror she recently despawned, and I doubt that street will ever see any more zombies.  lol

 

This is on 1.0 BTW.

[Jugginator]

1 hour ago, ammonitia said:

In my game the spawning issue is present in every biome except wasteland (which I've haven't explored much). For example, there's a stretch of road from my base in the forest biome to my second base in the burnt forest (90% of this road is located in burnt forest). When I first travelled down this road, it was crawling with zombies. You couldn't loot a car without zombies breathing down your neck. Now it's barren and it has been like this for like 100 or so days. I don't think TFPs want us treating zombies like an endangered species but that's what I'm doing. Most chunks with zombie spawns are now zombie preservation reserves. It saddens me when they despawn. I had a fat mama pet zombie that would I check up on every now and then, but to my horror she recently despawned, and I doubt that street will ever see any more zombies.  lol

 

This is on 1.0 BTW.

 

Yeah for sure, thanks for sharing, that's good to know it's the wasteland that's the only one working. It's definitely not intended; the causation of it is... tricky but that info could help narrow it down.

Also, the more people we have responding here about this the better, if you all don't mind. Just general description on how you (and your friends) play and explore, where you base, and such can help.

[Arez]

Ok, so this is possibly a bug.

 

I've only been playing since the beginning of A21 and it was happening since then too. 

During the first 2 or 3 days the forest is nicely populated with zombies at night. You can hear them walking around your house and you're afraid to move. 

By around the 4th night, you can damn near have a block party outside and be lucky to see one zombie. 

 

I thought it was deliberate. I was figuring you give players a taste of the danger of nighttime and then ease up so they can go out and explore and/or hunt animals.  

 

It always was a bit of a disappointment for me.

I even set feral sense to all, expecting it to ramp up nighttime activity in the forest, but to no avail.

 

I usually set my forest home in a building as close as possible to the trader, on Navezgane or on random maps. So on random maps it could be very close to the trader and on Navezgane it will be one of the two closest houses west or east of Rekt. 

Downtown forest (I assume on Navezgane that means the area where the Bear Den is) there is guaranteed more activity at night.

 

I started a new game on a random map with a friend the other day. Yesterday we hit day/night 4 and he asked, "what happened to all the zombies?". Our house was about 400 meters from Rekt.

 

And a quick sidenote: on night 5 he was breaking stuff to clear out the house to make more room and we were also running the campfire and it summoned 4 screamers. I've never seen that before. I've gotten 2 and once I killed them that was it for awhile, but they wouldn't stop spawning. If we didn't get overwhelmed and killed, more than 4 might've spawned.

Edited Saturday at 05:06 PM by Arez (see edit history)

[ammonitia]

20 hours ago, Jugginator said:

 

Yeah for sure, thanks for sharing, that's good to know it's the wasteland that's the only one working. It's definitely not intended; the causation of it is... tricky but that info could help narrow it down.

Also, the more people we have responding here about this the better, if you all don't mind. Just general description on how you (and your friends) play and explore, where you base, and such can help.

Two bases, both POIs. One in burnt forest and one in forest. Offline. I just do all mission types and horde night. Nothing special other than preserving zombie stragglers. The bug may have manifested when I increased zombie speed to sprint in the daytime.

 

4 hours ago, Arez said:

Ok, so this is possibly a bug.

 

I've only been playing since the beginning of A21 and it was happening since then too. 

During the first 2 or 3 days the forest is nicely populated with zombies at night. You can hear them walking around your house and you're afraid to move. 

By around the 4th night, you can damn near have a block party outside and be lucky to see one zombie. 

 

I thought it was deliberate. I was figuring you give players a taste of the danger of nighttime and then ease up so they can go out and explore and/or hunt animals.  

 

It always was a bit of a disappointment for me.

I even set feral sense to all, expecting it to ramp up nighttime activity in the forest, but to no avail.

 

I usually set my forest home in a building as close as possible to the trader, on Navezgane or on random maps. So on random maps it could be very close to the trader and on Navezgane it will be one of the two closest houses west or east of Rekt. 

Downtown forest (I assume on Navezgane that means the area where the Bear Den is) there is guaranteed more activity at night.

 

I started a new game on a random map with a friend the other day. Yesterday we hit day/night 4 and he asked, "what happened to all the zombies?". Our house was about 400 meters from Rekt.

 

And a quick sidenote: on night 5 he was breaking stuff to clear out the house to make more room and we were also running the campfire and it summoned 4 screamers. I've never seen that before. I've gotten 2 and once I killed them that was it for awhile, but they wouldn't stop spawning. If we didn't get overwhelmed and killed, more than 4 might've spawned.

When I cranked up zombie senses and speed, I killed all the zombies in my neighborhood in a day. They could now spot me from further away and track me down much faster. This meant that I encountered the last of the zombies very quickly. Now my neighborhood is a ghost town...until the screamers show up. Thank god for screamers!

Edited Saturday at 09:11 PM by ammonitia (see edit history)

[seven]

On 9/13/2024 at 1:30 PM, SylenThunder said:

This seven guy on Steam claims he reported it back in a19

https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/1/4753075008184812520/

 

Well, I didn't make an official bug report, but I started a topic on it back in Jan 2021.  https://steamcommunity.com/app/251570/discussions/1/2997674644686696756/

 

Essentially all of Navezgane was a ghost town. Even the wasteland. This was admittedly on a really long play, but I see the same thing on short plays. In a couple game weeks I seldom see zombies local to my base anymore.

 

What I found in the past was if I made changes to the biome spawning the zombies returned. Even minor changes like setting respawndelay from 2.9 to to 2.7, things like that.