I don’t know if that’s the correct version since I’m away from the computer, yadda yadda
I fired up Zomboid after watching this movie but I thought I’d play around with the guns first instead of going straight into a new playthrough.
So with the debug console open, cheats active, and Base.Pistol in hand, I took some shots at some 'boids. And it’s incredible.
You know how in Counter-Strike, its a classic joke to say it’s the game where your bullets can come out of the gun and make a 90° turn? Zomboid seems to have taken notes.
You can’t seriously be saying that I can knock a zomboid to the ground, stand on top of them, aim my gun one foot from their head, fully intent on executing them; pulling the trigger and watch the debug console as it says I hit them somewhere ridiculous like the lower torso or the hands and arms.
Bullets don’t feel real in this version. It really is just gambling which body parts you’re “calculated” to have hit, instead of calculating your chances of hitting your designated target. The Aiming skill just feels like a modifier for your chance to hit, and your crosshair is just a designator for which entity to run the calculations against. The crosshair doesn’t feel like it’s guiding a bullet to a target anymore.
And the salt on the wound is that the animation system acknowledges my intent to headshot most of the time. There’s a slight disconnect between the physical model and the hitboxes (I suspect its because the hitboxes aren’t rotating properly with perspective, center-of-mass is always fine) but otherwise the animation system is a delight.
Man, what I’ve just written feels off. Either way let’s talk about these gun changes. They feel really bad right now.
I take the aspect of gun play as someone at zero skill shooting a gun - and with the consideration I have hit targets but seldom hit it where I want to which I think is fair for someone with no experience shooting at a moving target while panicking a bit and taking some time to aim.
One has to throw some disbelief in as Zomboid is attempting for that “realism” spectrum of game (granted there are a lot of areas that needs work, one needs to take that into consideration a little). Hunting animals is a little easier than killing the undead at least - so in that way, one can think (although not animated) that the swaying and erratic of a shambling corpse (so hitting arms, legs, etc is a character’s (that the player is playing with) skill issue and is harder for them to hit another “person” until they get skilled at shooting (developing proper form, knowing how much pressure on the trigger, getting over “killing” a human, etc).
Standing on top of them doesn’t necessarily mean they are not “moving” (again it is output to the player that could be better) so I imagine that hitting them in other body parts can be the equivalent of bullet being deflected as the target is flailing about (granted it isn’t animated - that could be a reasonable assumption if one allows themselves to consider the “realism”)
When one has gotten more levels then the aiming (I would say around aiming 5 is where is feels better) is more consistent and (especially when not panicking) one tends to hit where they target within reasonable range
The game isn’t perfect, but I try to think of things in a “realism” lens and try and work with what is there
If that is not your thing, that is fine - you can always customise a sandbox world and create a world that more suits your needs and once mods are brought up to build 42, then that can be further tweaked to personal preference
It takes some time getting used to
I admit it is janky and I have died to the jankiness, but if one takes it into consideration it isn’t too bad and one can work around it to enjoy the other aspects of the game - granted I enjoy retreating to the country-side so I can enjoy its better aspects and any combat I get into is very controlled encounters where I can peel off zomboids at my leisure (and this is coming from someone killing them with tree branches)
I’ve been more-frustrated about combat than just the guns alone.
I like Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead more than Project Zomboid. A very large part of that is that I just don’t like the combat in Project Zomboid. I find the combat to be repetitive and not involve a lot of interesting decisions, but to demand close concentration and not be very permissive of errors (timing matters, plus the game has uncurable bites). Over the past couple years, I’ll every now-and-then pick the game up again and then set it down over not liking the combat.
I do like other things about the game. But the combat just has always frustrated me.
Here are others complaining about virtually the same points, so it’s not just me:
https://old.reddit.com/r/projectzomboid/comments/vm5h1b/combat_is_horrible/
Combat is horrible
I got this game yesterday and I enjoy every aspect other than combat, one second I’m infront of a zombie killing it next second it’s behind me and I can’t hit it so then it bites me and I get infected boom run over.
Zomboid has the worst combat of any game ever made. As fiddly and clunky and bug-ridden as they can possibly design it to be, with permadeath waiting for any misstep - then the creators and gambling addicts that stan for it, literally, can go on about “replayablility.”
I’d like the game more if the combat were just redone from the ground up. Some games use real-time movement except when in combat – that could work. Or maybe keep it real-time, but make the combat more-interesting, where one has to make more interesting decisions about what’s going on, and be more-permissive of occasional errors.
The combat is like…air-to-air refueling or something. The task you have to do isn’t very sophisticated, doesn’t require a lot of strategic decision-making, but it requires constant close attention and has very little tolerance for error.
