bfisher

Zombie mechanics have long been established by shows like The Walking Dead and films like 28 Days Later and the George A Romero movies starting almost 50 years ago. I think what the game needs to decide is what should the player interaction with the zombies be like? Right now they are just a player early warning system to let anyone who can see further than 300 m that someone is in town. Or even worse, they point you to some bambi running with a trail of 5 zombies behind him.

I'll usually make the Balota to Electro run when I start out just to get the basic gear. Sometimes I make the run up to Vybor. Lots of deer stands and supermarkets without all the snipers and bandit a-holes. But usually the best I come away with is a revolver and either an Enfield or AK. The other day, I did find a dead sniper on the streets in Cherno minutes after I spawned. He had EVERYTHING....except guns.

the problem is that first person gives you an unrealistically narrower field of vision than 3rd person.

I think it would be cool if the zombies were more "persistent" as objects on the map and less tied to towns. That is to say, they spawn randomly in the cities but then slowly roam all over the map, attracted to sound or motion (including each other), forming packs at whatnot. So you might have an area that seems clear of zombies. But then all of a sudden you spot a herd of a hundred of them on the horizon coming towards you. Travel between the towns becomes more challenging as well, since you would need to figure out routes around the roaming packs. Might be too much of a technical challenge though.

I swear to god I think tents are more rare than AS50s. I can never seem to find them. If I actually found a tent, maybe I'd pick inside some random small building along the road. Or maybe just outside of Kamenka. Everyone seems to try to get the heck out of there as soon as they can.

I haven't played those versions, but IMHO if zombies are that much more dangerous, then having more vehicles or better way to secure a building is that much more important (iow no punching or teleporting through walls!). The thing is, I recall old YouTube videos back when I first started playing where a guy would shoot an Enfield in Cherno or get trapped in a church or other building with one exit. I'd watch in horror as they would run out of bullets long before they ran out of zombies. That was before I realized you could kill every zombie in town with an ax.

The Lee Endfield is highly underrated. It's not some crappy BB gun. It's a powerful battle rifle similar to the M-14 (which we all know as the DMR sniper version). The only problem is that it doesn't have long range optics and it's slow to reload, making it the worst of both worlds in game. But if you do hit someone they ain't gettin' up any time soon.

To set the scene, I've been playing on a private hive with extra vehicles that sometimes spawn with non-offical Dayz weapons. Nothing crazy, but enough vehicles you can pretty much get one when you need one, some bikes at the more isolated spawns and non-standard weapons like the KSVK anti-material rifle in my pack (which ironically, can't be fired while wearing the pack making it wildly impractical). At this point I also have a ghillie suit, silenced M4 with the dot sight and a silenced pistol plus all the supplies and gear (except, oddly enough, a hunting knife). I decide to hit up the Balota airfield to try and find some STANAG mags because I'm running low. I recon the base for awhile from a hiltop to the north. I don't see much except for a UAZ on the road heading off towards Cherno and some side channel chatter from some Bambis in Kamarovo looking for a ride to Balota. The sun is to my east so I decide to circle around and approach from that direction to give me an additional advantage over any snipers. So far all this is pretty stealth. On my way, I find a UAZ jeep sitting on the road. After a few minutes of verifying that it's not a trap, I take the UAZ and decide I'm going to storm Balota with it from the east. I stop at the east end of the runway to set up with the KSVK to make sure all is clear. So far, nothing around except for a bus, a Ural truck, some and some motorbikes. Not ususual on this sever as I said before. All of a sudden, everything goes to shit... While I'm dicking around with my giant gun, I see two UAZs heading directly towards me. I'm not set and rather get caught without my pack and M4, I switch back to them, put the sniper rifle back in the bag and get back in my UAZ to get the hell out of there. The two other UAZs manage to catch up and pin me between them. We all come to a stop and jump out of our trucks. These two jackholes are straight-up bandits with scarfs and AKs and everything. We start firing and I hear 7.62mm rounds wizzing past me. What the first bandit DOESN'T hear is the sound of my silenced M4 playing some chin-music on his face. He goes down. I run around the trio of crashed UAZs and reload. I see the other bandit trying to crawl under one of the jeeps to take a shot at me, so I give him an encore performance. I'm pretty psyched since I just killed two bandits. Unfortunately, they prefer the cheap Russian crap, so no STANAG mags, but I did get a hunting knife off them. I probably should have hid the bodies, but maybe some Bambis these idiots would have killed will now have a chance in life. And had I left it at that, things would have been ok... That's when I se ANOTHER UAZ. Now I don't know if this guys is with them or not, but I can't take any chances. I turn to get into one of the crashed jeeps, but then you might recall that Ural I mentioned earlier. It's not far, so I hop in and give chase. First thing I do is smash through the pile of UAZs because I can. Then I chase down the other UAZ. I'm blasting the horn "FRIENDLY!" but he beeps back "FUCK YOU DUDE!". I chase him down the road bumping him a couple times then let him go. Later I meet a girl! I'm driving the Ural up and down the road between Cherno and Kamenka, Maximum Overdrive style. Basically blasting the horn and smashing into anything I see. All of a sudden I see a girl getting ready to hop on one of the Bambi Bikes the server spawns near Kamarovo. Instead, she decides to jup in my manly truck and I think "Great! Now we can repopulate Chernarus!" I'm not sure if it was monsterous blood-soaked ghillie suited visage, my crashing into a telephone pole trying to turn the truck around or maybe I actually spoke that last part over side chat, but she jumped out of the truck and probably broke her legs. Ah well..better to have loved and lost:( And now everything really goes to shit! Saddened by the end of my relationship, I'm driving back towards Balota when someone opens up on me with a freakin machinegun! Possibly from a helicopter! I start heading cross country but both me and the truck start taking some serious damage. The truck is no longer drivable and my legs are busted so I flop out and switch to the KSVK, using the truck for cover. With all the pain and blood loss, I can't see shit. But no one is shooting at this point, so I grab my pack, inject some morphene and blindly run the heck out of there. Sadly I lost the KSVK without ever getting a chance to fire it. But I am glad I didn't give the last of my morphine to that girl! Final tally: 2 bandits dead 1 female Bambi really fucked up and probably going to die soon 3 UAZs and 1 Ural destroyed Multiple other vehicles damaged or destroyed Most of my STANAG ammo gone Lost my KSVK sniper rifle I'm in pretty bad shape physically (and emotionally). I did end up finding a hunting knife though!

I don't know what I was seeing, but one time on the road west of Electro, I came across these three guys laughing and dancing around a female Bambi who was just standing there. If I had a weapon, I would have killed all of them.

Because it's one thing to get killed by bandits and snipers which are part of the game (and which people still whine like bitches about). It's another to just be walking through the woods and suddenly drop dead for no reason because some fuckhead decided to spoil everyone's game.

It's ok. But there are some things that definitely need to be fixed or improved: Packs "eating" weapons if there is no room The whole "remove from toolbelt" thing to use flashlights or hatchets. They should just be cycled with F like flares and other weapons. For that matter, F should also cycle from your main weapon to your sidearm. Not being able to see the contents of the pack unless you are picking up items. If I'm looting a tent, body or vehicles storage, it's not always clear if I'm moving an object to the pack, my inventory, dropping it on the ground or to the tent/body/vehicle.

I think it would be cool if Green Mountain, the ATC towers and some other structures or vehicles had fixed radios players could use to broadcast messages or communicate with each other or any player with a portable radio. Sort of acting the way Side Channel works. But in general, I like the idea of little easter eggs and whatnot hidden in various places around the map.

If Rocket wants to make the game more realistic, he should add this to the standalone: <Put wheel on sniper's head <Light tire on fire That's what happens to snipers IRL when they get caught.

Keep scanning all around you, frequently zooming in and out. Gunfights are usually won by the person who spots the other first. Many a time I've turned around to find some bandit or ghillie suit stalking me just it time to shoot them in the face. A big problem for noobspawns is that they don't have any optics like binocs, rangefinders, or scoped weapons. A shooter 300m out looks like a dot. But they can still kill you before you can aquire them. When it doubt, sprint through cover. Everyone runs at the same speed and you can't shoot while running. If someone stops to shoot at you, they eventually fall behind. But keep in mind that you can't outrun bullets!

I haven't played that map, but I watched a YouTube video showing Bloodsuckers and the EMP pulse. Bloodsuckers definitely stupid. Aren't regular zombified humans enough? Why does the map need some sort of Resident Evil supermutant monstrosities with inviso power? And while all the abandoned military and telecom facilities on many of the maps gives the game a bit of a Dharma Initiative feel. I'm not sure being randomly blasted with some sort of cosmic radiation adds much to the game.

Of course it's douchey. But it's also part of the game. The whole point of the game is that a significant number of players are going to act like psychopathic assholes. You have to assume that some sniper is camped in every hilltop. You don't know if that helicopter is going to give you a lift or blast you with it's door gun. And yet I still see packs of noobspawns running down the middle of the street. But like I told some douchebag sniper bandit this afternoon. Don't think you're a big man because you happened to catch me at Balota Airfield right after I spawned. Because you still fired 20 shots, missed all of them and were forced to come nearly within hatchet range to take me out. Shooting bambis on the road to Kamenka might be part of the game. But it doesn't mean you're awesome at it.

Most of winning a gunfight is spotting the other guy first. You need to be constantly scanning around you,

I don't know. I usually find it deserted. But I also don't find any loot there either. The place is creepy as hell. Yes, I do like to watch you from on top of the tower.

I leave the body as a warning to others.

You're a big man!

Three moments in accending order: That moment when you hear something, turn, see a bandit, sniper or other player stalking you, he sees you see him seeing you and you both know it's "on". The next moment when you hear the sound of flies buzzing over the gunfire and you realize you've won. That third moment when you discovery he had a sniper rifle, pistol, ammo, food, canteen, jerry can, GPS and all the tools when you just had an AKM and your Noob Bambi Starter Kit.

I made a friend once in DayZ...I had to kill him for his beans.

Anyone want to meet up in Electro?

How about random herds of zombies? I don't know what it would be from a technical standpoint, but I think it would add an additional element of danger if you had packs of 5 to 50 zombies just wandering the countryside. Maybe you go into an empty town to loot but then you have to decide if you are going to quietly lay low until that huge herd wanders through.

I do think zombies need to be more of a threat so the game isn't "PvP, occassionally being charged by drunken hobos". The running gunbattles and sniper duels in Cherno and Electro should, theoretically, attract a never end swarm of zeds. I'm fine with zombies dragging you from a car AFTER THEY BREAK THE GLASS. I don't think they should just snatch you from a speeding car though.