tpenn

Let's run a real experiment shall we? Objective: To minimize confusion and see what happens when you make it clear the gameplay intentions of the mod. To compare the results of a mislabeled and mispresented mod which has no real direction with those of a mod which has clearly labelled gameplay design and aspires to be a game. Hypothesis: When the playerbase realizes they're not playing a zombie apocalypse and probably never will be, there'll be no more confusion due to there will be no more players, except for the deathmatchers (griefers will leave when their prey is gone). Experimental design: 1) First, place the following quote on the Main website:

It doesn't diminsh PK'ers because, hey let's face it, they don't care about Zerbies anyways, and it only adds more zombie content for everyone else in this, y'know, zombie survival game. I think I'll formalize the suggestion so it's a bit clearer: Rage: Every murder increases the Rage of a player (starting at 0) by some factor n. The higher a player's rage the more likely they are to be detected by a Zombie: it increases their visibility on the player and their acoustic tracking. Rage is at minimum when 0 (normal detectability) and will reach some maximum threshold (maximum detection by zombies). It can be treated like humanity where acts of benevolence can affect it, and adjusted with it, or independently (i.e. rage can be impacted greatly and quickly by recent kills but perhaps also fade out more quickly, whereas humanity and being a bandit is more a long-term process). Optional adjustment: on reaching very high-levels of rage, possibility to trigger a horde spawn nearby. (rationale: this will allow Rage to also apply to players who rarely come in contact with zombies) 1) Doesn't restrict PVP or pass judgement only consequence - you're free to kill whom ever you want however many times. But with every passing kill the consequence is your actions will make you more present in the eyes of the horde. 2) Helps reduce city camping - zombies roam cities, the more easily they are alerted to a bandits presence, the less they can simply sit on loot spawns all day for gear without attracting zombies. 3) Increases zombie content - with zombies playing a more active role in both the PK'er gameplay (more targets to shoot at, that's what they want?) and survival gameplay (alerted hordes indicate possible PKer nearby) the whole mod receives a much-needed injection of more zombie goodness.

Firstly, re-read my post, perhaps my fault because I edited or perhaps your fault because reading comprehension. Find the part where I mention I don't want PVP, don't spend too much time on it though. Secondly I can deal quite well with hostile players, if not avoiding completely, I can probably take the lot of them down. But does that mean I want to play the game on their terms? If I have to result to deathmatching I'd rather not play at all. If you could ensure 100% you win every firefight by alt-f4-ing or going 3rd person to peek corners would you? And if I tell you that if you disagree well perhaps you'd better play a mod where there is no alt-f4ing or 3rd-person peeking? Or would you voice-up and claim the mod should be adjusted so that these things don't ruin the way the game is played. So yes, I DO want a different experience, the experience that was here at the beginning, the experience that isn't just another deathmatch mod. And yes, there's a need to continue "complaining" and I'll continue to do so until balance is restored or DayZ is renamed Wild Wild Chernarus and there's no more misrepresenting itself as a zombie survival. As for providing solutions for balance, well, in a game, that's the easy part. Let's start by having murders increase "Rage", and greater rage attracting zombies at larger distances. Then let's do something about the loot spawns and how ridiculously easy it is to get suited up for the next round of deathmatch. Let's not pretend like finding a solution is the hard part here. Agreeing on what the gameplay is supposed to be and what gameplay lends itself to the better game, that's the hard part.

It's a survival simulation that doesn't play "the way I'd actually play" (or most humans) in that situation. To succeed in that situation humans would probably gather up other survivors, form a camp, and start to quarantine/retake the island. But what happens when you're a gamer only set on winning? You don't value your life, just your weapons, you don't value other people's lives, just the +1 frag they give you. I want to play a survival simulation, but the only way to stay alive in this game is to play Quake 3: get the weapons, get the upgrades, shoot for a bit, cycle back in time for the respawns, kill your opponent before they can reach the megahealth, etc. Have you ever heard of an evolutionary stable strategy? That the emergent strategy is the one which offers the best outcomes against all others? Playing the game as a survival sim is not a stable strategy, it gets you less rewards than playing the game as a deathmatch (deathmatchers value kills which come easily and care little about death, survivalists care more for setting their own goals and building their character which is easily destroyed by deathmatchers, however death comes at a higher penalty to survivalists). So that leaves exactly 1 evolutionary stable strategies: Play the winning strategy all the time: deathmatch mode I didn't come from a real pvp game like PR to play some silly little pvp mod with zombies for the deathmatching aspects. Those of us who came here for the zombies will simply leave once it's apparent things aren't going to change. All that will be left are the deathmatchers, whom after having all the easy prey leave (the confused players thikning they're playing a zombie survival game) will only be up against other hardened deathmatchers, at which point they'll all turn to each other and say "well shit, since all that's left is us hardcore deathmatchers why are we bothering with this whole pesky zombie distraction? let's go play ". And so the players who would have enjoyed the survival experience are long gone, and the players who did enjoy the greifing experience will be gone shortly after.

Really, if all the intentional misdirection were stopped: the above would read: The whole Zombie theme needs to be turned WAY down and/or dropped completely (does ARMA 2 feature a rabbit theme because rabbits roam its countryside?). The theme and colors should be standard green camo, with say the logo being a criss-crossed pair of rifles, backdrop to a skull. The titling font should be redone into standard military cut-out font or maybe a variation thereof to indicate para/post-military forces. What's going on at the moment is nothing short of repackaging PR, doing up some artwork in a space theme, calling it "Space Wars", then when the thousands of space-sim fans come pouring in wanting to know where the space simulation part of the game is, you tell them that it's all an experiment and that they're fighting a battle. On Earth. And Earth is in space.

And if you take non-PVP damage? or is there such a thing anymore?

It has nothing to do with zombie sway or timing or breath or proximity or ballistics (and most likely not lag either), I can assure you that none of these apply when firing from 5m directly behind a zombie moving with zero transversal. There is a neon-green upward arrow "tip" which seems like it wants to be the forward sight, but don't ever use that because it doesn't line up anything. I haven't seen anything about "two parallel lines" unless you mean the edges of the rails, but in either case it amounts to more or less guess work. I'm actually having a hard time finding crossbows *without* some sort of optics: http://store.hortonarchery.com/Crossbows/ http://www.barnettcrossbows.com/ http://www.excaliburcrossbow.com/

Read the thread instead of speaking from your rear! I myself have already listed at least 1 suggestion that would work and there are many others: killing players increases the "Rage" of a player. Rage increases the ease at which you are detected by zombies. This brings back the impact of Zombies, and hey since PKers' all have their "l33t skillz" then let them test them out on a horde since they're "dying" for something to shoot right? It also helps to detect when PKers are around if they get sloppy (though it won't do much about that sniper in the woods 500m off, but it's a start) As for complaining, I've been fairly active in this thread but I've been tk'd at most maybe 3 or 4 times. You don't have to be personally wronged to realize when a wrong exists. Finally, if we're going to decide that PVP is going to remain as-is then immediately this mod needs to stop billing itself as a Zombie apocalypse. Tear down the whole false "zombie" theme, label it what it is (a Deathmatch mod) and I guarantee the interest in this mod will drop below half.

Where most games are designed to succeed' date=' most experiments fail. I just hope you get enough results to start making a proper game... before you run out of lab rats ;) There is no real or brutal consequence to deathmatching all day in this game. Until one is introduced, your experimental design is flawed (unless the experiment is to see how many deathmatchers/griefers you can attract, in which case that experiment has been done countless times before, do your literature review!) I bet so too, but they'd be the nutjobs few and far between and certainly not on every corner block, you might want to review your population sampling strategy, it isn't representative at all (unless, as above, you're sampling griefers). Essentially (if the mod is to continue as you describe) you've made any other ARMA deathmatch mod, except with zombies in place of rabbits and loot in place of ammo crates.

The crossbow sounds nice on paper, stealthy, infinite re-use, but in-practice it's a liability. First, the ironsights are off. Way off. the bolt actually travels much higher and slightly to the left (it's possible to confirm this easily on servers with crosshairs). Secondly, even at point-blank range the bolts seem to randomly miss (could be because of above, or lag also). Third, as another thread mentions, the bolts have a tendency to magically disappear or otherwise become unrecoverable. I really would love to see this weapon work as it brings a unique side to gameplay but at the moment it's almost always going to get you killed, especially since stealth doesn't really work at the moment (zombies seeing through walls, homing missiles etc).