Not sure if this is an issue or I need to tweak settings or something, but I ran into a hostile survivor.

Regular clothes, wooden spear. I had a meat cleaver, so I thought I could take him, but as I approached him, he pushed me over, which immediately caused a "Deep Wound" (nice), and I couldn't even get back up to fight, as the frequency of his attacks surpassed my animation to get up by a long shot.

Is this normal? Do I need to turn settings down? I've also seen that regular NPCs absolutely destroy zombies, far faster than any experienced human player can in this game.

What's going on here?