Trio of new players have some recommendations

[tender plover]

Hey fellas, myself and 2 buddies picked up the game to try for the free weekend today. Initially on our playthrough, we were having a fantastic time. Weapons felt nice, melee was crunchy in the best way, and looting felt purposeful. We were heavily invested in completing the objectives... for the first hour or so. As we entered hour 2 of our playthrough, objective fatigue began to set in. Having to re-clear rooms/areas for the 5th or 6th time in a row began to lower our morale. Finally, after nearly 3 hours, we hit the wall. Nearly infinity zombies spawning on a "keep this small area clear" objective type. It was practically impossible with just the 3 of us. After some discussion, we have some suggestions.

1. Shorten these missions. The fact that we took probably 10-15min between objectives and there was 3+ hrs of playtime is ludicrous. There is simply no good reason why a game mode set to casual should take 3+hrs to complete. There is nothing casual about playing a game that takes longer to complete than watching a LotR movie.

2. The sheer amount of zombies near the end felt... off. Again, playing on casual with new characters, we had 30+ zombies spawning at once with multiple bursters, sprinters, armoreds, armored sprinters etc. It was completely overwhelming, especially since the spawning was endless, and very close by. We would kill a horde, and then a second would appear nearly instantly from the same room we just cleared.

Thanks for your consideration.

[merry storm]

Hello, thanks for the feedback! Would you happen to know which map(s) you played on? It'll help me give some context when giving this feedback to the team

[proven perch]

3 hours on a single game????

thats insane

sounds like youre trying to clear every single zombie

[viscid pumice]

So the match times definitely decrease when you know what to do and how to effectively do it

I understand as a new player how it can be frustrating, but I did the same you guys did, except with duos

3 separate times. All of them were new

Yes, it took us about 2 hours, but that's because there really is a lot to understand about the game

The main thing you want to focus on, is time efficiency. You never want to spend too much time in one place, and you also want to keep the noise down. That's how you attract a lot of undead

But once you know the map layout, things get significantly easier, I promise

Matches are usually 30 mins to an hour, depending on if you take your time or not

[iron obsidian]

I'm a little confused here? You state on point number 2 that runners, Armored zombies and armored runners were hording but that should not be happening on casual as those zombies are disabled on that difficulty same with prime/blood zombies was there a possibility that you guys were playing on a harder difficulty?

[tender plover]

we played the hospital map. that was part of the running back and forth thing. there were multiple objectives in each large building complex, and trying to sneak our way through to the other side to conserve ammunition was what led to the extended game time im sure.

[tender plover]

i am absolutely positive that we played casual. the first thing we did was read the difficulty descriptions, and when we saw that "normal" had a recommended rating of 15+ and we were all level 1, we decided to switch it to casual. my terminology may have also been off, because i understand that armored zombies may actually refer to a juggernaut type that sometimes has a shield. we did not have those, but we did have sprinting helmeted zombies (soldiers and construction workers). the soldiers had basic chest rigs and seemed to take much more damage to put down than the rest when you missed your headshots both in melee and with firearms. these are the zombies i was referring to as armored

[tender plover]

no, we were doing our best to try and sneak around to not cause hording. this led to a fairly slow traverse speed. there is also loads of back and forth on the hospital map, having to go back and forth between different buildings multiple times. we probably did a full traverse of the map 3 times over before we got to the hold section.

[iron obsidian]

Very odd then, I haven't paid attention to zombie types on casual but from what's stated it spawning in construction zeds makes sense but it shouldn't be spawning in military or riot cop zombies. As of right not shield zombie spawns are bugged on nightmare so they don't spawn in at all. I guess I'll try going into casual and checking this out because it's makes me wonder if the game bugged spawns or something else occured.

Oh wait I just realized you had an objective that was keeping an area clear was that on hospital or power plant? Those bio scanner objectives are rough the first go around as bio scanners act as alarm systems and make zombies spawn much more frequently. If so then this kind of helps finding out how the devs can balance those out a bit.

[tender plover]

it was the hospital. but we encountered multiple soldier zombies before the end hold objective. they started spawning around threat level 5 or 6. the sprinting soldiers started spawning at max threat level, while we were replacing the fuses in the fuse boxes.

[iron obsidian]

Yeah that definitely helps a bit more I'll try queueing for casual at some point and checking this out because either A. Soldier zombies aren't considered as "armored zombies" despite having heavier armor than riots or B. Spawns are bugged for those objectives on casual which would be rough for a new player as even on nightmare those zombies are a struggle