Swarming? pt. 2

[Dashi42100]

I was watching another video and saw something a bit wierd. The person who was playing as Zoey was pulled from the group by a smoker. Her group was pretty far away from her so she started to run tword them, when she arrived her ENTIRE GROUP was surrounded and being beaten on. I think one died for good, and the other two were on the floor.

Why did the director leave the vonurable person alone? Does the director choose a person as a target? Can it choose multiple people? Does it just flood an area with infected and whoever is in the area, too bad?

Sorry for another topic on this but the way the game handles swarming looks cool and I want to know how the director play's it out.

[DJTricky]

I'm starting to think the spawned zombies have a single destination/target, and isn't changed after the spawn. Just my theory.

[squerl]

I'm not sure if you can see it in the videos, but infected switch targets a lot. If you're running full sprint away from them, they'll say 'hey, this guy just standing still right next to me is an easier target' and will change who they're attacking. This isn't all the time, so there's no way of being able to figure out 'ok, if i run 20 feet away they'll stop attacking me'.

[Deek]

Like that zombie in Dawn of the Dead remake, the husband chasing his wife as she drives away. He realizes she's no longer an opportune target, so he bee-lines toward some poor sap staggering around his front lawn. Actually kind of funny to watch, the absolute single-mindedness.

[DJTricky]

-infected switch targets a lot
Well, i didn't notice it, it was either they go for one person, or they were too far away to see what person they were going for.

[frogopus]

I'm not sure if you can see it in the videos, but infected switch targets a lot. If you're running full sprint away from them, they'll say 'hey, this guy just standing still right next to me is an easier target' and will change who they're attacking. This isn't all the time, so there's no way of being able to figure out 'ok, if i run 20 feet away they'll stop attacking me'.


I tried playing with something like that, training the zombies onto other people and it definitely seemed random and unpredictable.

[Dashi42100]

Than again if you think about it, if I was a bloodthirsty infected beast, I would start beating on the closest survivor near me. I'd be willing to bet that's how it works! A swarm of infected enter an area, and the closest survivor is chosen as a target who is than swarmed by all of them.

[Ydiss]

The only swarming I've noticed clearly and regularly has been on felled players where the infected are clearly trying to finish off one player as quickly as possible.

It's referred to in other games as "blood lust" and is a common driving impulse in any killer to kill the weakest possible target.

I don't know if TRS have implemented blood lust type AI into their code but it wouldn't surprise me if they did.

I get the feeling this will only affect the common infected and the bosses might act on more intelligent code to prevent the other players interfering and saving their fallen allies.

Most importantly, players will have the biggest responsibility as infected bosses to make quick decisions on their targets and the players that make the best decisions in the shortest time will be the ones that make the survivor's lives the most difficult.