VKX

Disposable batteries wouldn't be much better than making them rarer since you could find batteries during the day just incidentally while looking for other things and always have them at night just like the permanent item. I would balance them by making a battery and a solar trickle charger combo in the gear section. Picking up certain items (NVG's, flashlights, etc.) would give you the gear item for that battery type (OR make the player find the battery separately sometimes/always... up to devs...) and the solar trickle charger would be it's own gear item drop and auto charge all batteries in the inventory during the daylight. The devs could tweak NVG availability on several levels that way. Instead of just drop rates of the goggles or batteries, they could decide how much time you can use the NVG's or other battery operated items per time spent in the sun charging them. NVG's might not be as much of a problem if you couldn't use them ALL NIGHT and EVERY NIGHT to just camp somewhere or something because you couldn't get a full night's charge from a full day's charging, or maybe you couldn't use them except in very short bursts because that day had been cloudy/rainy. Most importantly, people couldn't just play at night with NVG's all the time and log off when it's daylight. The whole NVG thing baffles me though. I have been in the woods before and even on a new moon it is never as dark as DayZ got. People told me to up my gamma/brightness, but it's obvious this is unintended. It doesn't look like you're seeing a less-dark night, it looks like you you made the graphics glitch out. Somehow everyone defends this nonsense of super pitch perfect dark that is no fun to play in and cannot be enforced so everyone just cheats anyway... then they act like NVG's are the problem. Make night less retarded and NVG will balance themselves just fine as an improvement rather than going from blind to seeing.

End-game. They come for the guns and zombies and to see what the game is like. If they last long enough (as a secondary start type that doesn't care) to hit the milestones and play a survivor then obviously they are in line with us and want to survive rather than just shoot zombies. You're right though. The free model was a bad idea, as it would not demonstrate DayZ in and of itself and would be a bad 'first impression' for someone looking for a 'demo' and that's exactly who would encounter it. Since you're wrong about me, I'll just assume you wouldn't have been such a dick if that person hadn't brought their baggage to my thread.

lol... changed so much? Rocket launchers? 99%? Exaggerating instead of arguing or discussing. you're just compelled to post because you don't like being wrong at this point. You will thumb down anything and everything because you're such a fanboi you think the alpha mod has a complete feature list for the late beta of a standalone and you can't find a way to come to terms with the absurdity of your position. Go back to the topic or leave my thread alone please. Adding gameplay to this excellent game, by giving a secondary spawn type to attract the players DayZ already has and always will have, who insist on focusing on combat, and CONTROLLING their interaction with survivor types through terrain and supplies, rather than just whining about people doing dumb stuff on the coast all day.

I like it. I think people are having a knee jerk reaction because you chose to call them 'classes' but a small change to starting equipment and skin type would go a long way to adding variety. Especially when you DIE... instead of "Oh damn, now I have to start over..." you will have players saying "THIS TIME, I'll be a... " . You can compensate for what was bothering you by starting right off with a gun, or not having to worry about finding a backpack and going right into hording loot. Did you bleed to death and get pissed because you couldn't find a bandage? This time you were a doctor before the outbreak and you've got a bunch in your bag going in. You still start with squat overall... but it relieves frustrations, you see? To all, please note:

No. When you fix glitches hax and cheats, you've fixed glitches hax and cheats... gratz you now have a non buggy and secure alpha. That's not a finished game, and you're still contradicting yourself. You can play word games all you like. You're still talking about an unfinished game and reffering to any advancement towards finishing it as 'CHANGE' instead of addition or refinement. DayZ is NOT FINISHED you do not just loot until you have your favorite gun and a thousand hours of food and water then wander around waiting to get shot in the back of the head. The obvious intent is that there be more to see and do, more challenges to overcome. Were vehicles a 'DRASTIC CHANGE" that people who like vehicles need to 'GO PLAY A RACING GAME'? If we put a gun on them are we just idiots who need to 'GO PLAY TWISTED METAL'? Of course not. They add gameplay and awesome interesting things to go do and encounter. Your position is nonsense. Why are you even reading the suggestion and idea section if all the game needs is tech updates?

You are contradicting yourself...it's an ALPHA mod. He is.. MAKING... a good game... but then you act like that means nothing should change or be added. In process Future tense, not past. Add to, continue, improve, not 'drastically change'. You are entitled to an opinion of my idea, sure, but when I say 'add gameplay' and you guys come back with 'doesn't need something for everyone' and 'go play L4D' it's just really depressing. That wasn't my goal, I play a survivor and I already own other shooter games. You say Rocket just needs to make his game, but looting buildings and players is not a complete game. You end up holding everything you need and standing there going DUH... WUT NOW? You need something in the world to go interact with. It's called dynamic content. Player driven dynamic content is the holy grail of end-games.

Gave my beans because I agree with the main point. The DayZ community has turned into rabid conservationists who don't want anything added except graphic variety in guns/skins/etc for fear of change, but the game is not strong enough as-is to hold a common gamer for very long. It needs dynamic gameplay, and for a survivor game that means interesting enough things to risk going and doing, but the only things the community will get behind are chores. That's not going to work. You need STUFF going on that the survivor is interested in disrupting, joining, or capitalizing on. People keep bringing up classes and perks. I don't really think that has a place in DayZ, but the logic behind the recurring suggestion is important. People focus on the 'exp bar' mechanic, but the reason that's popular isn't REALLY the perks and classes of other games, but that it drives the player in no particular direction. Shooting games let you advance all perks or get tokens to spend on them by getting achievements from a huge list, using any weapon to defeat people, or winning with objectives. MMO's let you defeat enemies, crafting, dynamic event participation, PvP and so on, all just to move the same EXP bar and manage rewards on the other side of it separately. Lots of things to do, one goal. DayZ needs it's own carrot to keep the jackasses moving, without dead-ending them. Multiple ways to accomplish something the survivor wants (guns, food, water, gear, transport) means adding more than just variety to what we already have. It means adding NEW gameplay. Buildings, other players....what else could we put in for them to interact with?

Of course not, but when I give an idea to tap other markets to add new gameplay elements for me to encounter as a survivor, and they tell me to go play another game... that's definitely the idea going over their head. I don't buy for a second that a game should avoid a feature because of lore. You just change the lore... pockets of military are left but have to wear hazmat suits constantly and remain in installations with air filtration etc... maybe CDC or equivalent?... the end. It sounds like the major reason people don't like it deals with the size of the current mod map. Despite how large it is, it's not so big that you could suddenly start spawning a second player type without screwing with a lot of the current trends. Lets say instead of setting aside existing area, the map was expanded in some direction, maybe with some natural barrier as part of the herding effect we'd put on them... a mountainous area to the north with one large town, and a mountain bunker with only the main road to town and two or three mountain paths out, made rigid by cliffs and sheer rock walls... but survivors APPROACHING the area would have lots of options to go towards it. Adjust details or rewrite as you like, but the point is, if it became VERY difficult for them to reach the existing play area, would you be more accepting of a second player group that just wants to shoot up zeds and get killed, doing their thing in their own new area as added gamplay for survivors to go find and interact with if they chose to?

Please ignore the short sighted posters who let the point go over their head and stay on topic I just think of them as free bumps for the idea.

No looting, only refilling their limited capacity of ammo/water/food at specific locations. This would a domestication of the L4D/CoD/KF crowd, not an invitation to play as equals. Their draw would be shooting zombies for no reason but to rack up kills and then die in hillarious ways.Not sure how we would satisfy variety... maybe let them pick their military weapon(s) from an armory so they have lots of choices? Suggestion related to reply: Have the military style be the free to play option. No box cost of any kind, just access to this. After playing as a soldier for X hours survived, Y zombies killed, and Z miles run, you gain the option to convert JUST THAT CHARACTER to a survivor... so if they find they like life as a survivor and have evolved to the point of a DayZ noob, they will then buy the game. Again, remember we can tailor the mechanics that limit their range. This would not invade the entire game, only the area where they can reach before starving/parching/running out of ammo from their nearest refill point. That is an excellent strategy to NOT tap the largest market in the industry, throw away countless tears and lulz, and write off much needed dynamic generation of gameplay.

TL;DR: Adding gameplay to this excellent game, by giving a secondary spawn type to attract the players DayZ already has and always will have, who insist on focusing on combat, and CONTROLLING their interaction with survivor types through terrain and supplies, rather than just whining about people doing dumb stuff on the coast all day. How would the DayZ community feel about abusing and exploiting the CoD kids instead of pushing them away? (edit-- because people don't seem to read the title... ALTERNATE SPAWN OPTION not a replacement for the standard survivor the game is based around) In short, a military spawn point of some kind allowing players to spawn with military weapons at the expense of some significant handicap like a giant brightly colored hazmat suit that can't go prone or sprint. These players would be on their own loot terms, unable to take survivor loot (ignoring it as trash and junk) and having a loot-drop table for their corpses instead of actually being a lootable player (though any body options like drag/hide/inspect would still work). Using in-game restrictions, you could make these guys fodder for any survivalist who could reach their area. Things like no sprinting, no prone, brightly colored hazmat suits, needing to get ammo from their starting location or specific places (military installation armories that they have key-cards to -which would be on their loot drop table), maybe give them sitting duck objectives on spawn like 'go to location X and set up this super noisy machine and defend it'. It would also help with spawn camping issues. The distance from places they can refill resources compared to zombies and travel time would restrict them to certain areas, or at least certain routes between such points, meaning not only that that type of ammo farting person would not spawn next to the ARMA type person who is crawling into a town hoping to find a compass and beans, but also that they could not reliably abuse their starting condition to hunt new survivor characters. They would think it was badass spawning vs tons of zombies without much ammo and would keep playing because of the respawn-try-again mentality (and our devs would get their money), but the ARMA types could farm tears and supplies because of the way they're herded by game design. It would also be a second source of player zombies if they go ahead with the idea of making players killed by zombies become zombies with their loot (which would be player MILITARY zombies and again use a loot table instead of direct looting). The herding mechanics would also mean they wouldn't be breaking any kind of immersion. You would find military v zombie firefights with lots of zombies attracted, zombified military players, etc... around military bases... It would also serve to segregate suggestions and ideas. Instead of a push and pull between people who want more action and people who want more survival, the forum trolls could just say GO BACK TO MILITARY SPAWN IF YOUR CoD SERVER IS DOWN KID, or the military people could tell the survivors to STFU and go back to the coast if they don't like not having silencers or don't think the Hazmat suit is realistic. All of it adds gameplay to the survivor type. Letting noisy soldier types attract attention for you, survivors attacking military points full of soldier players to get lewt. Classic banditry like telling soldier types that you'll help them, then killing them after they've opened a keycarded gate or coded door. Yet all of it is OPTIONAL to the survivor type. The herding mechanics and restrictions mean some significant portion of the map is very difficult for them to access and so survivors there could play as usual. Choice. CoD kid's mom's money. Tear farming. What's not to love? EDIT 1: Suggestion related to reply: Have the military style be the free to play option. No box cost of any kind, just access to this. After playing as a soldier for X hours survived, Y zombies killed, and Z miles run, you gain the option to convert JUST THAT CHARACTER to a survivor... so if they find they like life as a survivor and have evolved to the point of a DayZ noob, they will then buy the game. Again, remember we can tailor the mechanics that limit their range. This would not invade the entire game, only the area where they can reach before starving/parching/running out of ammo from their nearest refill point. EDIT 2--- Adjust details or rewrite as you like, but the point is, if it became VERY difficult for them to reach the existing play area, would you be more accepting of a second player group that just wants to shoot up zeds and get killed, doing their thing in their own new area as added gamplay for survivors to go find and interact with if they chose to? This is not my thread for asking for free weapons, people. I already own and play Killing Floor for that. I'm talking about content and gameplay for survivors. If we bring in this demographic and give them something basic to do for free, that's a new and interesting thing going on in the world. You could encounter them doing missions, looking for something, or find a group of them in trouble and overwhelmed to help... or finish off.... ---