Lethal enemy spawn is hella jank...

[Sherene]

Played this game a ton back then from MicroStore, decided to pick this up again during the summer sale only to see lethal mode plastered everywhere like it's the new gold standard content but....


What in the jank is up with the enemy spawn?!


I can appreciate the more deadly take on blood plague mechanic, lesser resource from gathering, etc, at worst it's a tedium that I can learn to circumvent prior to the 1st plague heart kill in a fresh lethal save.

But friggin hell why would you make plague bloater/ blood ferals spawn in front of me out of nowhere?

If it's the normal zeds/ screamer, I can at least have a chuckle with it since they're pre much a non threat. But 3 ferals/ bloater suddenly popping in front of me while I'm already fixated shooting at a horde/ plague heart indoors/ literally just driving ergo my survivors cheated into contracting BP is just..... what?


This isn't difficulty, this is straight up slav jank. At least make them spawn well outside of our LoS.

[Scorp721]

I'm at the point now where if I drive by a screamer and I hear him inhale, I'll slam on the brakes until ♥♥♥♥ spawns in, then start driving again. It's happened way too often that I'll get a bloater spawn so close he either insta explodes or is unavoidable.

They need to spawn in based on player position and give some leeway in the direction the player is moving if they're driving, instead of spawning in based on the screamers location.

[ArtificialQT]

The spawning works exactly the same no matter the difficulty level you select. The only difference is that they changed the numbers so that Freaks are included in the possible zombie spawn list, and the number of zombies that must spawn to all triggers is set really high.

Enemies have always spawned everywhere around you as long as its outside your LoS, including around blind corners and directly behind you. If you're looking down a road and its clear, and then you turn your camera away, wait a few seconds, and then look back, you'll find that the game has spontaneously spawned some zombies on the road.

Their entire spawning system is jank. They can't really change spawning for Freaks specifically without redo-ing their entire spawning system.

[Segovax]

It's not just a jank spawn, seems like driving about a 1/4 mile away from a bloater pops it and fills your car. I use the sliders to leave zed difficulty on NM and jack the other sliders up to lethal because the bloater/feral spawns are so damn tedious.

[Angelo Dante]

Any ideas on how a better spawning system would function, as an alternative to this?

[Segovax]

Include a (larger) straight up spawn deadzone around active players of X radius rather than LOS to avoid disparities in what the game thinks your LOS is and what your actual LOS is. It would also help prevent render issues that make it look like they insta spawn right in front of you. Could even change the radius of the deadzone spawn based on difficulty.

[Protectron]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Angelo Dante:

Any ideas on how a better spawning system would function, as an alternative to this?

Simply stop the Screamer from Screaming as you're driving past it. That makes no sense and is really annoying.

A better system would be to use the semi-persistent Freak system for all zombies. That is - their location is always "known" in the system and then just rendered when they're in your line of sight - and the AI activated when you're in aggro range or make a noise.

That would make the zombies on a map a finite number, so as you kill them off in one area they won't return. This would make killing zombies a good point in and of itself rather than a nuisance like they are now (except Freaks). Of course, the Plague Hearts would then be a source of the zombies replenishing in numbers in the area they control, and would therefore be natural targets in the bid to rid the map of zombies.

[Don Cristobal]

Not sure.... but I feel the same.

But there is also a positive site - at least compared to earlier that year (I have not played the game before)
- Bloaters do not spawn right in front of driving cars
- Zombies spawn in houses before you acctually enter

On the other hand I feel the same about the spwaning while you are out fighting - that was not that "crazy" before the update.
In about 13 in game days I now had a tribble pack of blood farels spawn right in front of me - once already beeing in the attack animation....

For me playing less than leathal is too easy and I do not see a point, but loosing people or even getting wipped without mistakes on my side is not fun....

The solutions that I found:
1) Taking the occational loss once in a while and see it as a chalange
2) Exit the game and load back into it - you should be in the same place as before, but without the zombies. Just be aware that your current mission will be canceled.... but be carefull with that one -> fells like cheating and might kill the fun completly. I advice to only use it when it is a question of getting close to a comunity whipe

Still in my eyes one of the best games I ever play - specially when I look at my long time motivation =)

[DarkMagic]

I feel ya the game will sometimes spawn bloaters right infront of my car as i'm going max speed and I sometimes hit them doesn't happen too often but often enough to piss you off. I would much prefer if the game spawned enemies up to a certain distance away instead of LOS because that way if I kill off a horde that got alerted to me I wont have to fight off a second horde the spawned in then 2 more hordes that spawned in while killing the first one that spawned in then having to kill off a feral that spawned in and then a bloater and possible 1-2 jugs. Specially when you have a follower for a quest that has a loud gun and wont stop shooting or the sounds of beating enemies attracts more zeds that spawned in to fill the max enemy number. let these enemies spawn in a area near the player and don't spawn anymore next to the player to have them continue to feed into mosh pit. Stealth killing zeds seems pointless other then leveling it up to get crouched sprint so you can sneak around faster and after that don't bother killing any zeds cause they'll just respawn right being you. Had a incident were me and a buddy were clearing out a infestation and there was this HUGE yard that we snuck around back to find and kill the screamers, the whole back yard was empty but yet I still had a bloater spawn right next to me and go off cause there is no way he hopped the fence and walked over to me in like the 10 seconds we took our eyes off that corner of the yard. Or how I'm sneaking up to a supply drop I called in and as I turn around to go back the way I came a horde of 15 zeds and like 2 ferals spawned right behind me far enough not to get attacked but still stupid. Another thing that is dumb is why the hell do we have a scream special infected when all the zombies scream themselves and bring the whole area down on you anyway? and since they zeds respawn as you kill them who needs a screamer to spawn more? so for real spawn zeds far enough away from the player that they aren't within gunshot range and maybe it will feel more fair and way less artificial when it comes to difficulty.

Oh yea forgot to mention stop zeds from spawning/respawning in the house you are currently in, Like what the hell? I go into a house and my guy goes "It's all clear" then there is a zombie laying on the floor or I go and check a room and see no zeds and I start looting then suddenly I see a sleeping one right next to what I just looted, also why do sleeping zeds instantly pop up and lunge at you while you are sneaking, seems a bit unfair you can't stealth kill them which most of the time forces noise for more zeds to rush into the house.

[Ἀφροδίτη]

Yes ,one time i try to clear out a plague heart
and before i do anything,i go to the observation point to look
there's no any special type of Zed
and then as soon as i take one shot to the plague heart
3 ferals spawn in front of my face

[boo!]

there is almost always a feral that spawn near you when you hit a plague heart in nightmare mode, so 3 of them in lethal mode sounds normal ....

[ArtificialQT]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Pure:

Yes ,one time i try to clear out a plague heart
and before i do anything,i go to the observation point to look
there's no any special type of Zed
and then as soon as i take one shot to the plague heart
3 ferals spawn in front of my face

Opprinnelig skrevet av boo!:

there is almost always a feral that spawn near you when you hit a plague heart in nightmare mode, so 3 of them in lethal mode sounds normal ....

Yup. Attacking a Plague Heart is a trigger for a wave to spawn around you out of your LOS. On Nightmare, 1 Feral is a guaranteed spawn. On Lethal, its 3 Ferals.

This will always occur. It doesn't matter how well you clear the surroundings before you start. There is literally nothing you can do to prevent the wave and the Ferals from spawning, you can only be ready to deal with them when they do spawn.

But, at least the Plague Heart is predictable.

When you're fighting a horde in the open, there's no telling what's going to spawn around you and when. Reversing and kiting doesn't work, because stuff can and will spawn behind you. You essentially have to flick your view 180 every 2 to 3 seconds just to check if the game spawned something.

It feels extremely fake and immersion breaking. I don't think I'm fighting a zombie horde anymore. I'm fighting a game that's trying to cheat me to death.

[Defektiv]

Lethal is all about sneaking everywhere and stealth kills. Using guns simply creates an endless horde mode every time. Rolling 3 unskilled randoms is going to make it that much slower as well. Start with at least one Marathon/Stealth skilled survivor and/or someone with 50-100 infection resist and you make it a bit easier. Putting outposts up around your base helps tremendously in the beginning. With the right coverage you can make a pretty large safe area around your base using just 2-3 outposts, which gives you some breathing room to operate.

[Akameka]

They should really have done the respawning like it works in Project Zomboid.
The goal is to imitate zombie migration, not allow them to spawn out of thin air. Obviously if an area is cleared,it should stay like this for a while, there is no way zombies will get back here in a matter of seconds.

In PZ, the map is divided into chunks, and when you are in a chunk, zombies stop respawning in this one. If you are not inside a chunk for a long time, zombie respawn by 1/10 of the targeted population each day. Obviously, noises, explosions, car, gunshots can draw zombies in a large area from one chunk to the other, and the noises created by zombies hordes tend to draw stray zombies along their path.

Right now, the fact that noise allows zombies to spawn out of thin air behind you is just horrendous in higher difficulties. You can litteraly go from 1 Zombie in an empty area to 20+ and a feral in five seconds if they all decide to scream as their first action. It leads to stupid, cheap and unavoidable difficulty spikes where you goes from zero risk to whole group anihilation risk in the span of a few seconds. At least it's tollerable in multiplayer, because most players tend to feel the mood and decide if they should fight, run or shoot, but as for AI controlled followers, they are way too stupid to survive this kind of ordeal and often even draw thoses on themselves and on you by acting inapropriately.

[Validus]

Respawning deadzone around the active character is the only way forwards. The whole idea behind the game is fun, and it loses that to frustration when a jump scare surprise turns out to be a bad mechanic, not something you missed.
Just try lethal with scouting maxed. The radar pings show how bad it is at the moment. And really spoils the enjoyment. Otherwise, an excellent game.

[DarkMagic]

I would like to add to this again, While I was playing in my friends game with him in the police station far north of one of the maps (I Can't remember the name of the map) I was in my personal stash and a bloater spawned inside the base right next to me to my right, Now to my right in this police station there are only 2 ways in a window divided into 3 vertical windows and a door both of which were untouched, door was closed, glass unbroken and even if the bloater didn't spawn outside and came through the window and it simply refreshed the window the bloater would of exploded after jumping through it because they die from trying to go over a guardrail but this dude blew up right on top of me and damaged me with zero sound prior to this, so with the evidence given and how both the window and door were untouched/closed the only thing I can think of is this bloater spawned in either the back room next to the windows or spawned outside my LOS further right of that door Either way it spawned just a few feet from me. Also What the hell is the point of the game saying "Permanent safe zone" when you grab a base or outpost if zombies can just spawn inside these things cause that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bloater sure did and my friends front of his base was being raided by zombies not during a siege for like a whole minute and if zombie didn't spawn inside these safe zones why were they constantly pouring in for a constant minute, probably killed like a good 50 or so zombies. Now I know this is lethal zone but honestly this ♥♥♥♥ feels so artificial that it feels like you are fighting one of those bosses were your ment to loose but still let you game play fight them instead of a cinematic and even if you do really good it still auto looses you at a threshold of health because the developers know if you reach this point you might actually win. This game would be a whole lot better if they change how the spawning works cause it's so frustrating to stealth kill a enemy only for the AI to blast said zed with it's head already gone because you stealth killed already it with a unsilenced gun and attract every zed in the area, and have them constantly respawn causing a endless horde over and over, or trying to go to a trader only to have them constantly go into fighting mode because their loud guns keep attracting more and more zeds even tho you snuck in and a zed wondered just a bit close for them to all shoot at it.