Bob Sherunkle

And one other thing - I dont accept that the game has to be dominated by bandits. That seems like a convenient excuse for playing like a douche.

I am not really bothered about bandits all that much. Its just that I have encountered too many people on teamspeak and elsewhere who say "Im bored with the game so now I just kill other players". Banditry should not equal greifing. Also - I dont propose doing away with bandits but simply having some sort of consequence to banditry. I do think there should also be a way for bandits to avoid the penaly by doing the odd good deed. It wont kill of bandits or ruin PvP and might make new players not feel like cannon fodder. I tried introducing a friend who just thought it was too much like MW3 as he kept getting killed by other players whilst noobing.

Bandits - Love em or hate em they add flavour to the game. But there is a limit to flavour and its a bit sour after a while. There has to be some cost to pay in killing other players, otherwise a crucial dynamic is lost. It is easy to ambush and kill others, harder to play honestly. My own personal faveorite suggestion would be that too many kills lowers humanity and the player becomes infected and, like the pass out phases, becomes a Z for intermediate amounts of time. Too much humanity lost and they become a full time Z and can only watch as thier charactes tumbles around, fully equipped yet mindless and just waiting for someone to shoot and loot them. Humanity can be regained by actively helping others.

So, DayZ. What a fantastic concept and what an addictive game. Horror / Survival / FPS at its best. I have been playing for some months now but have finally decided to give up. Ok, well, maybe give up is a bit strong. Let me rather lay it out like this: What I love / hate about the game: Zombies/Infected - Brilliant. The variety is good too. Nothing gives you the motivation to survive more than being hunted by mindless drones (and scary ones at that). I particularly like the motion / movement (very uncanny valley). I am not too fond of the spawning mechanics. Too often Zombies are an idication of someone already in an area and nothing pisses off more than when they spawn next to you or somewhere stupid (like in a wall or some such). I am sure this is a limitation of the engine and can be fixed in a standalone module. Loot - Too much crap loot. I understand the dynamic to limit the goods but sometimes the odds are a bit too stacked against you. I once played for hours encountering almost every kind of ammuntion but never getting anyting I could fire with. and the amounts of times I was deperate for food or water was idotic. And how can you be thirsy in the rain anyhow? Now I know this is a minor gripe but sometimes its just too much, especially when you spawn far away from Electro / Cherno and have little choice about where to go. It leads me onto the next issue... Transport - There needs to be something we can do about this (maybe some kinds of limited distance single use vehicles in remote locatiopns or that can get you from city to city, just) - Getting around on foot really sucks big time. I appreciate the dynamic at first for a while but after a bit it just gets tedious. When you spawn out in the middle of nowhere it gets tiresome really quick when you run for 30 mins only to get chomped by Z's or killed by bandits... Bandits - Love em or hate em they add flavour to the game. But there is a limit to flavour and its a bit sour after a while. There has to be some cost to pay in killing other players, otherwise a crucial dynamic is lost. It is easy to ambush and kill others, harder to play honestly. My own personal faveorite suggestion would be that too many kills lowers humanity and the player becomes infected and, like the pass out phases, becomes a Z for intermediate amounts of time. Too much humanity lost and they become a full time Z and can only watch as thier charactes tumbles around, fully equipped yet mindless and just waiting for someone to shoot them. Or injure them... Injuries - I like this idea, but ARMA doesent do it well. I broke my leg closing a door ffs! jumping down 2 stairs and bam - break. Too easy to break, too difficult to fix. And is that the only medical condition?... Medical & environmental conditions - Bring back the cold and fevers. It made the game tougher on a more useful level. Obvs needing a campfire drew bandits but its only because there was no bandit penaly that that didnt work out. If temp doesent matter anymore then for gods sake stop dropping heatpacks as loot then! Food is an awesome idea that is well done. I like the dynamic a lot, especially killing / gutting / cooking. Very cool. Finally - Hacking - Ok... so ARMA II has so many bugs its silly and so many security holes it is unreal. BattleEye is good and deters script kiddies but it is by no means secure. The number of times I got transported into a thunderdome or wilderness maze. Once i was turned into a goat! Or hows about that time I shot that dude 6 times in the head with a Lee Enfield and he just laughed and beat me to death with a crowbar? Just as an experiment I decided to test out how easy it would be to become a hacker. A simple google search was all it took to start messing with the system. BattleEye was a bit problematic but took around 30 mins to bypass the global ban and from then on in it was plain sailing. Now before you start - I never messed with the other players or the game (no group bombs or teleports) but I did realise how trivial it was to do anyting on any of the servers. I know that the ARMA engine and Bohemia are doing what they can but seriously, without massively stronger server side game management and cheat detection it is simply too easy to get away with naughtiness. The fact is, this game will piss people off by its nature, and pissed of people will go to great lengths to get revenge, even educate themselves on how to cheat the system. Also, global bans encourage a worse kind of hack... key stealers and account hacks. I think something cleverer is called for, maybe some kind of degrading performance or secret handicap for suspected cheats? There also needs to be some kind of redemption system where someone can rebuild thier status and not be driven into worse offenses as a result of global / server bans. I guess thats my piece, I hope the dedicated game is as good as we all hope and captures what makes DayZ an awesome concept. Laters folks. Bob