nkato

Can always come up with some kind of analogue to the decay concept for the "infected", then. The concept is there, it just has to be reworded to reflect the actual lore of DayZ. :)

Alright, I think this deserves its own thread, as I have my own set of gameplay ideas to suggest for the Standalone version of DayZ. Here goes! Concept 1: Hub Towns The concept design is inspired by Metro 2033 and Fallout 3. You have about four or five designated, pre-fabricated small towns that are ringed by defensive walls and guard towers, and have only two entry points. These hub towns, when fed with raw resources such as scrap metal, water, and other resources, can produce commodities such as painkillers, food, water, and ammunition. This in effect creates a localized economy that encourages the following group activities: Perimeter Defense and Policing (To prevent enemy raiders or zombies from invading the hub town and stealing/damaging your facilities) Resource gathering parties or "viking-style" raid parties that are sent out to scrounge up materiel for the hub town's industry. Expand the base's defenses by adding more bunkers, barriers, towers, etc. This requires resources. Anything else you'd like to suggest? Here's a scenario of what you'd typically experience in an encounter with a hub town... Concept 2: Levels of Zombie Decay (LoZD) This is an interesting concept. Since these zombies are clearly "undead" of a sort, they could be afflicted with varying degrees of decay that determine their effectiveness in the world of DayZ. There would be a visible indicator of the decay such as more chunks of body missing, maybe half the head is gone, or something like that. This allows players to more easily estimate their chances of successfully raiding a town or building. Here's how it works: The more decayed the zombie is, the crappier the eyesight/hearing the zombie has, the less health he has, and he's also slower. This means the zombie has been infected for a VERY long time, and decay has had enough time to set in to really affect its capabilities. However, fresher zombies will be more quicker, more alert, and have more health. Now, how do we determine what levels of decay are present in the persistent world? That's easy: Model it after biological transmission vectors that we know about for various pathogens. People who are farther from population centers will take longer to become infected, while people in high population areas will rapidly become infected. So it stands to reason that cities like Chernogorsk will be full of heavily decayed zombies with a few "newer" zombies thrown into the mix. This allows you to create a "zombie swarm" in cities, similar to what you'd experience in Left 4 Dead. Newer, or "fresher" zombies, will be found in rural areas as well as on military bases, because of their relative isolation from major population centers. A major determining factor for the level of "freshness" of the zombies should be the listed populations for each city, town, and location. A town with 80 people will have mostly fresher zombies, with a few decayed zombies, while a city of 5,000 will have 75% of its zombie population as heavily decayed. Tell me what you think, guys! :D I'm interested in feedback.

Okay, well. I finally got back into DayZ, and to my chagrin, I found that the Global Chat had been removed. Why am I upset about this? The answer is simple: I am Deaf. Now, there are varying degrees of deafness. I am on the end of the spectrum where I have no hearing in my left ear, and only passable hearing in the right with a hearing aid. I can hear explosions and such, but not the direction from which they come, nor can I comprehend what people are saying over the microphone. So, the lack of ability to communicate with people effectively for me to relearn this game (I played it for a short while before the chat channels were removed), along with an extremely unforgiving environment, has made it very, very difficult for me to enjoy this game. In fact, I have begun to loath this game inside of the first 30 minutes of playing this game, because I have died repeatedly without knowing why, and the severe lack of information hurts a lot. I do not like the prospect of having to treat every moving object as 100% hostile and eventually turning bandit against my wishes. From my perspective, this kind of game design is what could end up shutting out small subset of gamers - and that is backwards-thinking in today's game industry. Considering that DayZ will have a commercial release in its future, this will be a product that flies in the face of decency standards for game development. (Ubisoft was one of the last few publishers to finally institute a policy of requiring subtitles in all of their releases.) So, the key here? Communication tools. Coordination tools. The ability to actually enjoy the fricking game. A game experience will die very quickly for some people if it's just full of problems that cannot be overcome in any reasonable capacity. If you have any suggestions to make on how to resolve these issues, I'm open to hearing it - although I have long given up on actually believing that people are decent enough to respect the kinds of problems I have had with these kinds of games. You don't wanna know the long story, because it's full of crap.