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Hola gentlemen, I'm 41 YO male, 6'2", GSoH... No, wait. This isn't the dating site I was looking for. Ahem, anywho, been playing mainly solo on low pop GB server with some duoing with a mate in spain. I'm UK based and looking to get together for some group fun. Steam name is same as my forum name if you want to add me.

End game – Claiming Areas (or how to make looting mean something once you’ve got all the shit you need) Base building has been mooted but why not instead have a mechanic whereby towns/villages already in game are utilised and "claimed" and converted? Please note that I originally wrote this in a very chaotic way and have tried to neaten it up. I have tried to think of a coherent system that fits in the context of the game that provides an ongoing objective for the majority of players. It does marginalise lone wolf players but there should be enough freedom and loot spawns outside of claimable towns to make that play style still viable. Smaller groups of players won’t be able to take over large area unless they join forces with other groups to achieve a common goal but then that is realistic. While I wrote this as an end to end system individual elements can be taken from it and used e.g. the exchange of "junk" loot for cash to exchange for gear you do want. Feel free to be critical of this idea, highlight any potential exploits I’ve not considered, but be objective about it and provide some alternative suggestions if you want. Overview Each town has a central building – church, town hall etc where Group leader(s) can claim or release control over the town. This central building also acts as a bank to convert looted items into, for want of a better term, "cash". This cash isn’t physical money but represents the total gathered resources of food/water, clothing, weapons, tools, parts and is essentially an abstracted barter system which, in a post-apocalyptic world overrun by zombies, is what society would be reduced to. This cash is used to convert buildings to specific purposes and pay for NPC guards (more details below) while a portion goes to contributing players. Members of the claiming Group are all automatically given access to the town and its converted buildings. Alternatively, towns can be declared as Survivor, Bandit or Independent towns. If NPC guards are present players without permission to access the town will be warned and/or shot at. Stealth can be used to infiltrate a town. Assaults, both stealthy and not-so-stealthy are possible. The objective could be to deny a rival Group access to a converted building via sabotage, to take over the town or steal loot. Cities can be taken over but they are split into zones to break up the task of taking these large areas into more manageable chunks (see below for more info). Loot related missions can be picked up from towns or issued by radio to players out in the field. Claiming/Relinquishing a claimed area (for ease of reference all claimed areas are described as towns) The first step to claiming a town is to clear it of zeds. To do this the Group leader goes to the central point and rings the bell, activates a loud speaker or whatever. This attracts a wave of zombies from all over the area to the building where they can be killed. Depending on the size and value of the area being claimed the number of zeds that respond, and the number of waves they come in, can vary. To prevent exploitation and griefing e.g. players activating the bell without any intention to place a claim, the player activating the bell is frozen in place for several seconds to simulate them physically having to ring the bell. A delay in the character logging out would stop Alt+F4 gimps too. The bell might need to be rung more than once until no more zombies respond. A sweep of the town must then be done to kill any remaining zeds. A message is displayed to notify players once the town is clear. This starts a short grace period to allow a Group to begin claiming the town. If no claim is made by the time this grace period is up then zeds spawn normally and the whole process must begin again. Once a town is cleared of zeds then it can be "claimed" by a Group leader by again ringing the bell or activating the loud speaker one final time. Once claimed zombies will not spawn again while at least two survivors are within 50 meters of the central building or while NPC guards are spawned (see below). Groups can claim more than one town, however, the cost to maintain a NPC guard presence in each will eventually become too restrictive. A Group’s claim on a town can be voluntarily relinquished by visiting the central building and releasing control. This must be done by the Group leader and at least one other subordinate. Once control has been released any surplus cash is lost, any converted buildings revert back to normal, any defences will be removed and, after 1 hour, any spawned NPC guards will de-spawn. After that time zombies will begin to spawn as normal. Claimed areas are identifiable by visual indicators e.g. flags with the claiming Group’s emblem or a red cross banner on a roof for example. Survivor and bandit towns require the respective humanity level to enter freely while independent towns will allow anyone in. Cash The central building acts as the hub for the town and also the bank. In a claimed town, looted items are brought by members of the controlling Group to the bank and exchanged for cash. A tax is paid on this cash with a variable percentage being given to the communal pool, the rest goes to the member. This isn’t physical cash and isn’t carried around so can’t be looted. As mentioned above, this cash is a representation of goodwill or a bartering system, your efforts in providing resources are appreciated and that goodwill is represented as this cash figure. Cash value for looted items could be variable depending on supply/demand e.g. bring in a lot of ammo and weapons and their value will go down while food/drink goes up and also on rarity e.g. AS50 is worth more than a Lee Enfield. However, in a post-apocalyptic world it should not be inconceivable for a tin of beans to be worth more than a gun if the situation is dire enough. Players should not be able to artificially inflate the price they receive for an item too much by purposefully hording one type of item e.g. players shouldn’t benefit significantly by holding back exchanging food in order to "starve" the population to pay more for their beans. Instead, the price should rise to a certain point then stop after which point the price paid for other items not deemed priority will fall until next to worthless. With the addition of "junk" items e.g. clothing, bedding, coal, gas bottles etc these could also be exchanged. The "cash" carried by a player who is killed resets to zero even though the player themselves will still be part of the Group and therefore have access again to the town. There is nothing stopping another group member from gearing the newly spawned player up if they’ve got the cash to spend. Converting buildings The communal cash pool can be spent on converting buildings in the town to a specific function. Some converted buildings act like shops and, for the right price, almost anything can be bought while others provide other benefits. Possible buildings include: First aid station – sells medical supplies. Garage – sells vehicle spare parts. Armoury – sells weapons and ammo including, for the right price, military hardware. Canteen – sells food, sodas and water bottles. Workshop – sells deployable defences like barbed wire, tank traps, sandbags etc. These items are also available from the central building using communal cash as they are generally bought to protect the community as a whole. General goods – sells tool belt items, binoculars and batteries etc. School/Prison – raises/lowers humanity gradually for those in the town. Strong point – a building with sandbags, wire perimeter and MG positions. Generator – a petrol generator that supplies energy for lighting in the town enabling easier spotting at night. Tailor – sells various camo outfits (urban/forest/desert etc), ghillie suits, backpacks, webbing/combat vests etc. Store room – a place for surplus gear to be kept and shared by Group members or stolen by people infiltrating the town. Radio room – enables communication between Group members equipped with radios and the town (to enable orders to be issued to guards, quests to be received etc). Radios could use a specific frequency which can be eavesdropped on by rival groups. [*]Some of these buildings could require prerequisite loot to be found e.g. the radio room might require radio equipment to be looted from a military base for example. [*]Not every building in a town can be converted to a special role as in reality some would need to be kept for everyday civilian use. [*]Group members can spend their portion of cash in the buildings/shops. Again the rarity of the items will influence the price. [*]All spawn locations within a claimed area stop spawning and instead add cash automatically to the communal pool. The quality of the original spawns will determine the amount of cash generated e.g. a general store in the town will generate X cash per spawn cycle while a fire house will generate Y cash per spawn cycle. Guards Once the central bank has some cash in it, it is possible to "pay" for NPC guards to spawn. The Group leader determines how many guards will spawn. Each guard will cost cash per hour. Cash is taken from the communal pool. This represents their drain on the pool in terms of water, food, ammo etc. There are several different load out options for the guards starting off with basic gear e.g. Winchester/Makarov plus flares all the way up to high end military gear with NVGs. However, the better the gear the greater the cost to maintain. Guards, if equipped with radios, will call out locations of visible unknown players (i.e. those not allowed access) when spotted. This will be heard by any Group members who also carry radios. This could be a mechanic for alerting online players to an attack on their town. Should the cash in a communal pool run out then guards immediately start to despawn. This can lead to the town reverting back to an unclaimed state and for zombies to begin spawning again unless players are present to prevent this (see above). NPC guard accuracy and damage should be inline with the single player game i.e. a guard armed with a Lee Enfield shouldn’t be able one shot kill a player otherwise death would become too common and so trivialise it. NPC guards also wear the Group’s emblem patch on their arm. By default they will guard roads into the town but rudimentary orders can be given such as guard a specific location or patrol X, Y or Z area. Also, alert level can be issued which, if there’s enough cash available, can increase temporarily the number of guards on duty. Useful if you suspect attack by another group. The Group leader or subordinates can issue orders via radio if guards are equipped with them. Cities Due to their large size, cities are broken down into zones. Each zone acts like a single town and so has a central building where loot is exchanged and buildings that can be converted. Other zones can be claimed by the same group only if they are adjacent to the first zone. When two adjacent zones are claimed by the same group they create a chain. Opposing groups can break a chain of zones. If this means that some zones are no longer attached to the original one then they immediately start to be relinquished (see above). The cost of NPC guards in a city zone is increased to reflect the constant ammo usage used to ward off wandering zombies from unclaimed parts of the city. Special Events The town may from time to time require specific tasks to be completed. These could include Finding specific loot items e.g. petrol, water, bedding, baby food etc. Tracking down a lost NPC survivor/civilian and escort them back. Find and repair a vehicle and return it. Defending the town from an approaching zombie herd. [*]Some events could have time limits attached to crank up the pressure. [*]Failing an important quest could result in loss of goodwill and therefore cash both communal and personal. This could have interesting ramifications if the loss of cash resulted in being unable to afford to pay the guards to prevent zeds from spawning. [*]Rewards could be items or cash. [*]Quests can be communicated to players via radios. What does it add? Assuming changes to military loot spawns are made (less concentrated spawns locations and lower frequency) then this should be an equally viable alternative way for people to get access to that high end gear without forcing people to go to a specific place where the campers wait. The loot mechanic gives an ongoing objective to players with a claimed town and makes every piece of loot a valuable commodity. That AK-74 might take up 10 spaces in a backpack but are 10 cans of beans worth more to my town? It also encourages exploration as any building could be home to a particularly valued item. The drive to loot will inevitably force Groups, particularly those with larger towns to look after, towards areas with a high number of loot spawns. If there are several such areas then there is greater unpredictability to the chances of PvP than there are now where groups head to Stary and NWAF because they know these are high traffic areas for players. With the addition of radios and messages, events or quests sent via them, these provide a means to inject a change of pace or direction. One minute your group could be sneaking into a town the next a message comes through that the town urgently need some first aid supplies in the next 20 minutes and so a mad rush ensues as you search frantically for the supplies and run back to town. Such situations can raise interesting moral dilemmas – do I let my town down by ignoring their pleas and potentially lose the town or go out of my way to help it? Considerations Obviously, a claimed town will be server specific and not persistent just like vehicles and tents. This then raises questions about how players manage and defend their towns if a group can’t get on to the server because it is very popular and consistently full. The NPC guard idea attempts to at least provide some degree of offline protection. Similarly, how would someone who logs out in an unclaimed town then hops to another server where the town is claimed be addressed?

Controls/Interface Please! For the sake of my middle finger, give us an auto-run button. More configurable buttons specifically for multi-button mice would be great. Better grenade throwing indicator. A power bar or something to indicate how far you are throwing an object. I seem to either throw cans, bottles etc 5’ or 200’ never a happy medium. Different Zeds NVZ or the night vision zeds. A rare or very rare strain of zed whose eyes glow green at night and who can see in the dark just as well as normal zeds can in the day. Shouldn’t be so common as to completely negate the benefit of players using the night to raid areas/move around. Can be identified by his luminous green eyes. Sprinter Zeds. A rare breed of Zed that can run faster than a player with an attack animation that doesn’t stop them moving. It doesn’t do as much damage as a normal zombie hit but should be enough to force a player to deal with the threat as opposed to just legging it. These can be identified by their Adidas/Nike/Puma/whatever tracksuits. The survivor zed. A very rare breed of zombie created when a survivor doesn’t quite… survive. They have slightly more loot than normal zeds and a chance of having military gear. They also have the ability to shoot their guns but their accuracy is terrible, however, the side effect is that the shots alert nearby zeds who come running over. Survivor zeds also have some latent memories and can often be seen crouching near bushes and walls or crawling along the ground. To the distant observer they could be mistaken for a live survivor. Zed Spawning Someone else has mentioned it earlier but at the moment zombie spawns indicate players are present in an area. There should be times when no zombies spawn as players approach/explore a location. Zombies may spawn after a random period of time if players are still in the location but that would depend on loot quality - higher the quality of loot the greater the chance and higher the number of zombies spawning. This will add a) an element of uncertainty as seeing no zombies in a town is now not confirmation there aren’t any players there B) an element of tension as you might only have a short amount of time before a sh*t load of zombies turn up. Animations Don’t have a stationary animation for weapon switching. I should be able to shoulder a rifle and draw a pistol, or vice versa, and run at the same time. It might slow you down somewhat but you shouldn’t stand still. Of course, dipping into your backpack makes you stationary and crouched. Military loot & loot spawns in general Military gear in general should be less common at the camps/bases but to compensate there should be chances to find gear elsewhere such as in wrecked jeeps, on dead soldiers etc. The best military gear shouldn’t spawn in the same place all the time. This encourages server hopping and, what is arguably, the lowest form of PvP – the griefer sniper who camps these places with the sole aim of killing people for no material gain i.e. not to rob them but just to feck up their day. The best gear should be rare as rocking horse sh*t but there should be a chance to find it anywhere there is/was a military presence. Wearing a ghillie suit restricts the amount of gear that can be carried e.g. you have to stow your backpack somewhere. Alternatively, make the backpack visible while wearing a ghillie. Give NVGs a battery life to balance their night time awesomeness. Additional loot items Different camouflage suit patterns e.g. urban, desert etc dependent on setting environment. Camo face paint Camo netting for vehicles Radios Spray paint to camo up your bright red Skoda in a variety of camo paint schemes e.g. desert, artic etc. More pockets for loot/ammo from additional vests/webbing Small flashlight that can be taped to any long barrelled gun Electrical tape for the small flashlight Deployable claymores and mines Petrol bombs and other IEDs made from other loot items e.g. fertilizer in farms Batteries (for NVGs and flashlights) More junk items, clothing, coal, gas bottles, baby food, bedding etc that might be useful for civilian survivors i.e. those people who aren’t prowling the woods with AK-74s (see "End game" later). Shocked! The longer you’ve survived the more resistant you become to getting "shocked" by zombie attacks. When in shock your stealth indicators fluctuate to represent making a mistake while panicked e.g. stepping on a twig, not checking those corners sufficiently etc. Random encounters/events As others have mentioned already some random events to break up the routine. A wandering NPC survivor needs help looking for his family so you escort him a specific coordinates. Or just shoot him in the face if that’s your bag. Your radio picks up a signal from X, Y or Z giving a grid reference to a crashed heli, camp swamped by zeds or whatever so starting a treasure hunt. Message is broadcast to all players within a certain range so you might not be the only survivor heading there. A dying NPC asks for you to kill him (humanity loss) before he turns Zed but asks you to carry his body back to his home where he left his family (humanity gain). A small outpost of NPC survivors or bandits who will barter gear. If approached by someone of the opposite persuasion e.g. a bandit approaches a survivor camp they will be warned off or shot at. Tents and vehicles Limit them to one per person per server to stop the mass camp sites, loot hoarding, garage forecourts going on. Increase tent storage capacity slightly to compensate, or have bigger tents available. Other tents can be picked up and used but the contents will not be saved. To change your vehicle you "release" it and then select another and save it to your character. Customisable vehicles so players can add armour plating, spikes/blades, guns e.g. pick-up trucks with .50 cals on the back, bullet proof tyres/glass etc. Group mechanics - Squads/Platoons/Groups/Coalitions Squad are for 2-5 players including one who is designated leader. Platoon is made up of 2-3 squads with one overall leader. Squads and platoons are temporary and usually last for a session of play. Everyone in a squad or platoon can see the WP set by the leader, plus markers set by everyone else in the squad/platoon on their maps. Members of a squad or platoon, if made up of people from different groups, can wear a coloured armband to make identifying each other easier. Or you can just frantically lean left and right while someone in your squad screams "Is that you Derrick? Kneeling by that bush? IS THAT YOU?!?!?" <Rat-a-tat-tat!!>. A Group is a permanent organisation much like guilds or clans in other games. Being part of these grants access to some group related benefits (see "End Game" below). Each group picks a unique military style arm patch which all members sport on their player model’s arm. A Coalition is a number of Groups formed to enable closer cooperation. It doesn’t confer any protection from friendly fire from others within the group/coalition. Members of a Coalition have coloured patches on their backpacks to help identify them. Ghillie’d players take their chances of FF you ninja bastards you. Friendly fire is still possible in all situations and may even be intentional if a spy has infiltrated a Group to facilitate access to a claimed area (see "End game" below). Map Map markers and WPs should not be visible to other players unless in the same group/platoon. Can we drag a border around a section of the map which is then "folded" so it can be on the same screen as the first/third person view in a similar way to GPS, watches, compasses etc. People in the same squad/platoon/group equipped with GPS can see each others’ positions on the map. Better lighting or more ambient light – I’ve read that darkness isn’t as crippling in Arma3 so this might be a moot point Allow military flashlights to be attached to the body so they don’t need to be held in hand or in the secondary weapon slot. They light up in the direction the body is pointing. Towns and villages have generators that require fuel to power lights in the area. This provides a faint ambient light out to a larger area and the glow can be seen from a distance. Some guns already have an inbuilt flashlight but there should be the possibility of taping a small flashlight to a suitable gun. Food/Drink (more detailed/convoluted food system) Change the way food and drink work. Call it calories and fluids. You start at 100% and each element slowly empties over the course of 24 hours. When it reaches 0% you begin to starve. Each food/drink item restores a percentage of the pool and potentially the amount restored could vary e.g. beans restore 10%, cooked meat 20%, soda 10%, canteen of water 20%. A side effect of reduced calories/fluids is not being able to run as fast, increased chance of passing out from low blood, catching colds, being knocked out. Say for each 10% lost from fluids or calories you lose 1% speed and increased negative effects probability by 1%. Therefore, if you’re nearly starving/dehydrated (10% left in both) you’ll be 18% slower and more prone to negative effects. When actually starving you don’t bleed but vision gets blurred, sprinting is impossible and you get intermittent shaking, If after another 24 hours and no food/drink has been consumed then bleeding starts until dead. Grass cover while prone Grass cover is meaningless at medium to long range distances because it isn’t rendered. Wearing a ghillie confers no benefit beyond short range as there’s no grass cover to blend in with. Either make survivors harder to spot at longer distances when prone (make them opaque perhaps?) or hard set the grass rendering to about 2km. No idea if that’s going to make graphics card around the world cry out in pain though.