In T157950#2180993, @Geez wrote:

Hello Franzuu.
The infected always prioritize the visible targets over the sounds or are switching to players which are closer to them. This behaviour is intended.
Regards,
Geez

I understand that that is exactly how the Zombies are coded and on some level "The infected always prioritize the visible targets over the sounds or are switching to players which are closer to them." makes sense. But the resulting behavior in game is the problem.

It seems to me that in certain situations this breaks the zombies.

Am I correct in assuming that the zombies keep track of multiple targets they have identified and switch to the one that is closer? And that this tracking is just a constantly updated position of the player, not last known location or where they heard the sound? I believe that this causes situations where the zombies will run back and forth or in literal circles because they are constantly aware of all targets. Something is causing this wacky behavior.

That's a bit disappointing if there's no intention of changing or at least improving upon this behavior. I had always assumed it was "placeholder" to some degree, because it results in some silly infected behavior.

In T157950#2181142, @sanguine00 wrote:

That's a bit disappointing if there's no intention of changing or at least improving upon this behavior. I had always assumed it was "placeholder" to some degree, because it results in some silly infected behavior.

The zombies were broken and lagging out servers and as a result their features were cut down for 1.0. They disabled behaviors and made the rest of it work. That is why they feel placeholder.

I think that if intended behavior creates corner cases where the result is less than ideal then it should be regarded as a bug. I guess that we should be lucky that the modders and Twitch revitalized DayZ and we are getting any development on the game at all.