President Rex

This is one of my core recommendations for improving co-operation. Much like the blood bag, but more useful for keeping a group together, since the only use it has is if you trust your team mate more than you want his stuff. Give a 60-90 second window after someone's blood reaches 0 where a teammate can still resuscitate them (to ridiculously low blood levels). Make it a portable defibrillator that takes a random time between 5 and 20 seconds to revive someone (to help prevent mid-battle resucitation). And for all the people grouping up for PVP and complaining about how a change doesn't help them: this change helps anyone sticking with a group (of people they trust enough to keep alive). Making more zombies would be awesome, but probably won't affect the PVP situation. Every time I've gotten shot it has been someone camping in a barn or chasing after me when I spawn. All the complaining I hear about is people getting sniped in Cherno or Elektro (hurr, don't stand around in big cities and all). ...but none of those 3 core death areas will be changed by adding more zombies.

I'll slightly revise my assessment from page 23: For 1.5.8.4 the temperature mechanics seem to work out decently for daylight, even staying pretty much normal/climbing slowly in light rain. Night is still sort of ridiculous to me. I still stand by my recommendation to add hypothermia/heat exhaustion effects and to completely sever the non-sensical illness from being cold. In the words of Morbo: "COLDS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!" ...wait, that was windmills. Well, same thing.

I'll just point out some Aristotle: "I have gained this by philosophy: that I do without being commanded what others do only from fear of the law." No law, no repercussions, and (complete, since there's no bandit skins) internet anonymity with game mechanics that do little to foster cooperation between strangers? I'd expect people to be shooting people all over the place. Of course, I am ridiculous and out of principle won't shoot people unless they are a direct threat. The only person I have killed in-game was some guy taking pot shots at me while I was laying prone reading a map. Doesn't take a psychology or philosophy major to realize that anonymity breeds anti-social behavior (...alright the theory says "jackassery" but bandits usually at least have some minor rationale for murdering people).

You can't lower the Makarov (and I doubt you can lower other sidearms). The only time I've shot someone so far is because he intentionally shot me first. Not sure how you miss someone laying on the ground reading a map so many times, but now there's no way to ask him. I don't think I've seen enough people to really be able to distinguish the bandit/survivor outfit on the fly, but I figure with the bandit skin being dropped it won't much matter. My bets are that it will tend to make more Charles Whitman-wannabes wandering the land with CZ550s waiting to pick off people the moment they stand still just for the hell of it. My solution has been to mind my own business hunting for zombies and loot ...not that that worked out too well when a guy with an AK came up to the door way of the house I was in after I took out all the zombies around. Not much you can do while bandaging and getting shot. Hanging out with people you know, exploring, looting and taking care of/evading zombies seems like plenty to do.

I think the idea of temperature is good, but the implementation needs serious work. In the effort to make all sorts of other things "survivalist" (concussions, broken bones, blood loss, etc.), the temperature mechanic is completely ridiculous. I would not use this as a mechanic for getting sick (as already mentioned, you don't get "colds" just from being cold). Having to find wood in a heavily forested area is also a bit inane. But the temperature drop is still really ridiculous. No one is going to freeze themselves into hypothermia on even a cold September/October night of 40F/3C. My recommendation: Have the "default" temperature be 50 (or 100 and have it go up to 200). Exertion during daylight should increase temperature substantially (probably to the tune of 1-3 per minute), unless it's raining. Rain and night should slowly drop temperature (slower than the current 1 temp per minute, probably), even if sprinting (humans being one of the best mammals at long-distance running, after all). Staying still during the day should tend to normalize your temperature. Going too hot should cause symptoms of heat stroke and heat exhaustion (blurred vision, muscle spasms and cramps (slowed running) eventually leading to fainting). Going too cold should cause shivers and possibly some minor noise making (clattering inventory, chattering teeth and the like) once temperature gets low enough. The benefit is that staying outside when it's dark and rainy will tend to make you cold; running excessively in daylight will tend you towards heat exhaustion. Illness...well the illness mechanic can surely find better uses. Give it to someone who's chronically cold (pneumonia) or give it a chance of manifesting in people who have been injured, with more blood loss tending towards a higher chance of infections and illness. The cold and flu are mostly from human-human and animal-human transmission and are not really related to body temperature. It is a neat, useful mechanic, but if you're going to pretend any semblance of survivalist mechanics is doesn't make much sense in its current iteration.