Bug or Bad Design?

[Plinto]

Going after a hostile community, killed all but the last one. She's shooting me unobstructed as every nearby zombie rushes my character, and only my character. All z's rushing past her to get to me. Even when I drop or get grappled. Even when she was the only one still shooting.

I dropped her four, maybe even five times during the fight, shot at her while she was down, when that didnt work rushed and tried to melee her while she was down. She never died, got right back up (ignoring all of my melee attacks), shot me and downed me, proceeded to melee attack me until dead. (NIghtmare difficulty btw)

Was she bugged out and unkillable? Is there something I'm missing in terms of mechanics that explains how she was able to take so many hits without dying? Or why I couldn't kill her while she was down?

[Protectron]

killing a hostile NPC in melee on Nightmare and Lethal is almost impossible. You can't deal enough damage quickly enough that way. When they're down, 3-4 suppressed 7.62 bullets to the head should do the trick. If you have lower calibres, you'd need more rounds. I doubt that a bolt or lever-action gun can fire quickly enough, but it might work... barely.

NPCs work exactly like you do in terms of health and damage. You won't die when the health bar goes to zero either - it is the grey bar underneath that counts. That one is lowered through injuries and trauma. The most effective way to accumulate trauma is to damage the NPC when the health bar is gone. It's when the grey "trauma bar" reaches zero that a character dies. Before that happens, the character will get up again after a few seconds and regain a bit of health.

And yes the game world and the zombies only revolve around you. If the zombies see you, it's you they care about and this becomes very obvious on Nightmare and Lethal. The game was designed around Normal difficulty, where this is still the case but the zombie aggression and density is low enough that it's not that noticeable. The AI, zombie spawn and physics engine systems are all groaning and creaking already at Dread.

I have a theory that the hostile NPCs that are more difficult to kill have some traits that makes their health bar bigger than normal, or a trait that reduces the amount of trauma accrued.

[rtwjunkie]

Just a tip for the finisher. Once they go down douse them with a fuel bomb or a bloater cloud grenade. Heck, the bloater cloud grenades are useful to kill them from perfectly healthy. To really drive the death home, throw a Molotov on that bloater cloud they are choking in. Spectacular end to their existence.

[Wibstozbin]

In Lethal Zone (nightmare zone is only one degree different), they have the NPC's tuned ridiculously high in damage and amount they can take.
If we are talking about the relative strengths of all the enemies, the NPC enemy humans should be as difficult to kill as you are. They're closer to your level of difficulty than the plague zombies are. It makes sense that its easier to kill those then it would be to kill another survivor. When I know that I need to kill other survivors, I will grab my .50 caliber rifle and head over there. I park with the driver side facing the street and park in front of their house. I jump out, aim, and fire the .50 cal from behind the partial cover of the car. It only takes a single bullet from a .50 cal headshot.

[Philthy]

even in green zone you cant kill npc with 0,22 bullets. be sure to use high caliber and as mentioned above, bloater gass. my favorite is the gas-granate launcher!

[Sc0rpiTr0n]

Originally posted by Philthy:

even in green zone you cant kill npc with 0,22 bullets. be sure to use high caliber and as mentioned above, bloater gass. my favorite is the gas-granate launcher!

I use 22 caliber rifles to kill NPCs on lethal all the time.

As long as you headshot them 2 or 3 times to down them and few more to kill them
22 caliber weapons are more than fine against NPCs.

[Cultist]

There are many ways to approach this problem, but I find that the most important thing is doing as much damage you can as quickly as possible. Like others have said, if they don't die completely when they get downed, hostile humans will get up again and regenerate some of their health. But even on lethal it is possible to finish them off the first time they go down, if you can drop their health low enough before they can recover.

You'll see this in quests where you team up with friendly NPCs against hostile ones if you outnumber the hostiles (like the quest where one enclave member is accused of murder, but another is framing them). If you join in the circle beating, the hostile NPC usually dies the first time they go down, because 2-3 characters are just wailing on them while they try to recover.

If you are outnumbered, approach with extreme caution. Sniping from afar is probably the safest approach, but remember hostile humans have AI bot aim and on higher difficulties, can instantly down or even kill you with peashooters while you will struggle to kill a single one with millitary-grade sniper rifles and headshots.

[WarMage]

Originally posted by Protectron:

killing a hostile NPC in melee on Nightmare and Lethal is almost impossible. You can't deal enough damage quickly enough that way. When they're down, 3-4 suppressed 7.62 bullets to the head should do the trick.

Seriously ? That's so lame. Well, now I know I'll never play Nightmare. I don't care for that kind of stupidity. Facing a challenge is great but when it's that dumb it's pointless.

I like playing SoD2, really, but I do so under my own terms and I won't go past the point where the game mechanics stop making sense. It's already bad enough that the Z ignore everyone but the player going for NPC that spongy is just bad design. A coping mechanism for low level easy to program dumb AI.