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Should zombies be hurt by broadheads?


Springheel

On the subject of zombies:  

18 members have voted

  1. 1. Which of these do you prefer? Zombies should:

    • be immune to broadhead arrows.
      7
    • take minimal damage from broadhead arrows
      7
    • not sure
      4


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In 1.08, zombies (and other undead) are immune to broadhead arrows, and take limited (10%) damage from the sword. It's a bit confusing though, because it's not clear that the arrows are doing no damage...they hit and disappear just like they do on a successful hit.

 

I'd like to hear opinions on this issue. Should broadhead arrows do damage to zombies? What about to other undead like revenants?

 

I think originally I championed the idea that arrows shouldn't hurt zombies because piercing a corpse doesn't seem likely to do enough damage to make it nonfunctional, where a sword could be slicing tendons and muscles that it needs to function. Now after watching the Walking Dead for a few years, I find myself wanting to take out zombies with arrows to the head. :)

 

Allowing players to kill zombies with regular arrows might really decrease the value of holy water, especially since it is not hard to stay ahead of zombies and continue to shoot them from out of range.

 

Opinions?

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Difficult question. Holy Water Arrows (HWA) are *VERY* expensive, consuming precious water arrows and the holy water bottle... for only joy of few tens of seconds. If the undead could be peppered with broadheads, HWAs would not be as useful.

 

With undead, there are no moral constraints or other considerations for killing. In fact, I think people readily kill them on-sight and feel good about it. The only constraint is that dispatching them without HWA's is quite dangerous, almost always resulting in sustained damage. We should NOT remove this danger.

 

Possible arrow damage should be carefully considered: a zombie nor revenant should NOT go down with a single arrow to the head. I think multiple broadheads should still be needed. How much, is difficult to say. Maybe the arrow costs should be used as a guide? One broadhead costs 1 and water arrow costs 5 (plus HW bottle).

 

Concrete suggestion for this change:

For any undead:

Surprise attack with HWA: one hit kills

Normal attack with HWA: two hits kills.

Broadhead arrows: 5-6 hits kills.

 

This way HWA's would be more useful for the cost, stealthy activity is rewarded with more effective HWAs and broadheads could still be used to soften the incoming enemy a bit. Also arrow spamming would not occur as only the last arrow is conserved, making a zombie cost *at least* 5 broadheads. I think HWAs are so expensive that they should be more effective. If they are made more effective, then the broadheads could easily do some damage to the undead.

 

BTW:

Is more damage done to undead if they are hit in the head? We should consider what type of undead exists in the TDM universe:

are they animated flesh and corpses? It should not matter where you hit them, no extra damage for head hits.

are they infected Walking Dead creatures with remaining brain activity? Only head hits would be effective and hitting other parts of the body would be less? Except for HWAs, of course.

 

Tl;Dr;

Holy water arrows should still be the most effective and safest way to eliminate undead.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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My initial instinct is broadhead arrows do damage but very little, so it takes many arrows.

 

I think about it from the perspective of inventory management. You want tools to be broadly useful, and broadhead arrows should be generally useful to take down any enemy (an exception might be elementals made of stone or fire), but you have a finite amount of them. So having them able to take a zombie down but be quite a cost (uses up multiple arrows), makes for good gameplay.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I like the idea of the zombies going down to sleep if they received enough "unholy" damage. You can get rid of them but you still have to have an eye out for them.

 

Beeing able to kill undeads with arrows or sword is something I don't like in general. HWA's or even fire arrows are OK to me, as both things make sense and are quite expensive. You bann the plaque keeping them "alive" (HWA) or you just destroy the hull (Fire arrows).

 

The player should fear undead encounter, that' what make them special. And as far as I interpret the word undead, they are already dead, so there is not much sense in killing them ;)

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

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It's already too easy to take out human AI with arrow shots. Zombies and haunts provide more of a welcome challenge. So I think they shouldn't be harmed by arrows. I didn't even know tjhey could be harmed by swords.Thier supposed to be scary. If you can just take them out with arrows they wont be scary anymore. Leave them alone. I dont think you should even be able to harm them with a sword. How can you kill whats already dead? Holy water kinda makes sense so thats OK.

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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From a game design point of view the more variation the better. Like different levels of zombies, simple ones easy to beat to tougher zombies that require HW to beat and, why not, invincible zombies. It's like the guards that can be blackjacked and the ones that can't. The mapper then chooses the type of zombie suitable for a specific place, creating different challenges.

 

Also, holy water could have a different usage than in thief. The player could drink it making all his actions blessed for a short time, his strikes are more powerful (with whatever weapon) the zombies will even flee when the player is blessed! (pac-man feelings). And maybe he glows in the dark too... or maybe not.

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Hmm, not sure about that. AI should be generally consistent IMO unless there's a very natural & intuitive way that communicates to the player why they should be different ... and I don't think different categories of zombies do that. (Left4Dead can do it, but it's a zombie game with very different looking types & we aren't.)

 

Also keep in mind all the different kinds of FMs there could be, and all the different types of random (& possibly unintended) situations they might fall into. You don't want to lock the player in a situation where s/he can't get rid of an enemy if they have to... Like if both fall down into a well or something. Good game design is always allowing the player a way out in all situations without reloading if possible. And making it possible to hack a zombie or arrow them to death if one has to is part of that IMO.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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It's already too easy to take out human AI with arrow shots

 

That's actually due to an oversight and has been fixed for the next update.

 

They should back to the "sleeping" behaviour after getting certain amount of physical damage and wake up again if player was loud... just like in Thief

 

That's not an option right now. It would take a lot of coding work to set something like that up.

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That's not an option right now. It would take a lot of coding work to set something like that up.

 

Yeah, can imagine with the ragdoll and everything...

 

But all in all I quite like that behavior from Thief, that undead sorta fall over but they don't die through conventional means.

Kinda like the original Quake. Zombies are immune to the ordinary weapons- you gotta blow them up.

 

But omitting that as a possibility... I think it's just best they do not take damage from broadheads. The undead wouldn't care much for wounds since they are already dead. So the only option would be kill them using fire or holy water.

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I've added a poll to the top. Certainly if zombies can be damaged by arrows, it will take a good number of them. At least 6-7+.

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As far as I am concerned the thing with zombies is to avoid them wherever possible mind you I usually try to ghost missions unless it involves a lot of hunting for items when I knock out guards to make it a bit less boring

I don't kill guards except in rare circumstances - the only mission I can remember off hand is NHAT2 I think where I had to go down the sewers to collect the smugglers loot and I never did find a way of doing that without taking some of them out either by blackjack or broadhead

I voted immune

Edited by Oldjim
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Maybe I'm just an old school taffer but I like having an AI that forces you to ghost. Although its up to the mapper to take this into account and make sure there are areas for the player to ghost adequately.

 

I like the challenge of eliminating zombies and haunts AI being different from other AI. I can kill them with holy water but holy water only lasts for 30 seconds. What I try and do is lure as many of the zombies in to one area and use the holy water and eliminate as many as I can before the 30 secs are up.

 

Leave Da Zombehs alone

"I believe that what doesn't kill you simply makes you... stranger"

 

The Joker

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Zombies may be rotting, but they still require minimal intact muscle tissue to move around. "Realistically" speaking, one should at least be able to immobilize a zombie by shooting multiple arrows at his legs. Perhaps the legs should be their only point that takes damage from broadheads.

Edited by zergrush
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Voted immune. The explanation I've already posted.

That's not an option right now. It would take a lot of coding work to set something like that up.

Makes my fingers itch for scripting :smile:

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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"Realistically" speaking, one should at least be able to immobilize a zombie by shooting multiple arrows at his legs. Perhaps the legs should be their only point that takes damage from broadheads.

"Realistically" speaking, zombies aren't really realistic ;)

 

I wouldn't bother with believeability in this matter, as it's something out of the realms of fantasy. It should be discussed as a matter of proper gameplay.

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

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How hard would it be to have it so that zombies become slower and more sluggish if they take enough damage?

 

It kind of makes sense that it wouldn't be practical to kill (or re-kill) them with arrows, but at the same time holes are holes and most stuff tends not to work as well given enough holes.

 

If they get hit with an arrows or swords enough then it would make sense that they'd become at least somewhat impaired and wouldn't be quite as able as they were.

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How hard would it be to have it so that zombies become slower and more sluggish if they take enough damage?

From the mappers side: low health script + animation speed. (so one script and two spawnargs per zombie)

FM's: Builder Roads, Old Habits, Old Habits Rebuild

Mapping and Scripting: Apples and Peaches

Sculptris Models and Tutorials: Obsttortes Models

My wiki articles: Obstipedia

Texture Blending in DR: DR ASE Blend Exporter

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I say, the Dead has to be feared. That make them special in gameplay and atmosphere. It should be full of risks to kill them. Shooting cheap broadhead arrows from distance is not.

 

So I'm with you guys saying undead should be only killable be special means like fire and holy water. Also I can think of magic (set by the mapper) and physical destroyment (crushed to pieces by an elevator for example if technically possible) as a possible way to have the player get rid of the undead in some FM.

"To rush is without doubt the most important enemy of joy" ~ Thieves Saying

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Hmm, not sure about that. AI should be generally consistent IMO unless there's a very natural & intuitive way that communicates to the player why they should be different ... and I don't think different categories of zombies do that. (Left4Dead can do it, but it's a zombie game with very different looking types & we aren't.)

 

Also keep in mind all the different kinds of FMs there could be, and all the different types of random (& possibly unintended) situations they might fall into. You don't want to lock the player in a situation where s/he can't get rid of an enemy if they have to... Like if both fall down into a well or something. Good game design is always allowing the player a way out in all situations without reloading if possible. And making it possible to hack a zombie or arrow them to death if one has to is part of that IMO.

 

It would definitely need visual indication. Different models.

 

But I agree with you on the second argument, this does create the possibility of impossible situations, and considering how TDM relies so much on improvisation that's not a good thing.

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Voted "immune" like in "really really minimal damage". :)

 

I'm with the Quake 1 / Thief crowd -- normal weapons should send them to sleep after a while, blowing them up (or HWA) resolves their contradictio-in-adjecto life-style (death-style) for good.

 

Also, T2X did an awesome job here (though I didn't like the vomiting). You could cut a zombie's limbs off with the sword. Without the head and the arms it no longer posed a threat.

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The issue with sending them to sleep is, if I recall correctly, that there currently isn't a good way to get them in and out of ragdoll.

 

I suppose to suggest an alternative, there could also be a hurt/crippled animation that avoids having to deal with ragdoll. This could be something like stumbling into kneeling on one knee or down on all fours position and slowly getting back upright to continue and such.

Of course that would require having yet another animation which isn't a small thing, so that might not be that viable either.

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