Horr1d

Real life does indeed suck, BUT make sure you put time aside to play! Perhaps this can be an option for expert servers only? If you log out of one server into another then you spawn in that server and your sleeping body is removed from the other.

I'm getting annoyed at the fact that when I join a server, I have no way of knowing if I have met people in there before. I dont know if they are bandits, friendlys or unknown to me, I have no idea! I was thinking of possible solutions to this, see what you think. Getting a clear look at a players face, lets say 5 seconds at a range of 25m or less (or at large range with scope or binocs) will result in you being able to change the colour of the players HUD nametag to red, yellow, green and purple. (New possible item, face mask?) This will be remembered on server side profile. Any time you see a player who you have previously "remembered" from any range, they will have their "Survivor" tag in that colour when you see them but no name. In order to get names from players, you need to either read their dog tag or ask them. (Scroll mouse wheel after being within 5m proximity for 10 seconds and option to ask appears) Players can give name or not. Players you have put a name to the face/colour will have their tag changed from "Survivor" to "their-name" if you get within 25m (or range scope) What do you think? Im getting sick of not having any kind of user profiles to indicate if someone is good or bad and as a result I now shoot anyone on sight. I really wish I didnt have to :(

Okay Rocket! I will accept that my dream version of dayZ and yours will not be the same thing. I'm a Romero fan and favour slower more numerous and hard to kill zombies while you favour the fewer faster 28 days later type of zombie who is more an infected person than and undead corpse. Here are a few suggestions that I think would improve the experience. (Note, I only play on no crosshair, no 3rd person mode) Study body and social functions needs to be improved. If they died to a zombie, gunshot, starved or dehydrated, along with an estimated time of death, I'd like to know. Unknown death and unknown player 100% of the time is pointless, why is study body even in? It gives me no useful information! After I've interacted with a stranger on the server, I have no way of indicating my experience with them outside of remembering their name. I wish I could tag players names in a colour, either red, yellow or green either when I'm near them or when I'm looking at them with binoculars from any range and from then on, when I get a clear scan on them, their name and colour to be will be remembered. I want more information on the players I'm in the server with the longer I play and more I interact with them. Me and my 2 friends killed over 150 zombies between us over a few hours of play. Not a single one of them dropped anything more useful than a can of pepsi and occasional bandage or heatpack, not a single Makarov clip or gun. Please boost this slightly? I find it pointless to move to loot smaller towns as there is never anything majorly useful there and head instantly for big cities and barns to quickly grab loot and escape north. There are far too many item spawn locations in the big 2 cities compared to the smaller towns and surrounding areas. Really need some kind of graffiti / journal / log to increase the player social experience. Potentially increasing the player count on the servers by way of improved latency efficiency? be nice to have 200+ on a server as I can walk north for hours and find no one. I cant even track peoples footprints. Each map grid reference has a player limit to solve lag and increase player count? Was also toying with the idea of when you log out of the game, the player remains in the server asleep, reducing food/water decay. Loading into a new server removes the sleeper from an old server. This way, people cant just log out in common buildings and need to hide / sleep away from the main towns and can potentially result in your being murdered/robbed in your sleep (log out time) Any news on new items/secrets/mysteries/lore? Be nice if this game had a bit more in terms of exploration and crafting, aka terreria/minecraft elements. Anyway, love the patch. Was way too easy to move before as I just went prone and became invisible. GJ, much love. Oh, I had a friend who cries hard about having no gun. Tbh, I find the zombies easier now even without one, but killing noobs has less reward. Oh oh, how do you work the torch? I can never turn it on!

Zombies should NOT spawn in an area I'd personally put at 150/200m to allow full clearance and holding of an area. Me and a friend wanted to hold a town or small house as our base then rescue people but constant zombie pops close to us make it too dangerous and ammo thirsty. The new AI is alot better, just need to make the zombies slightly slower and more consistent. If zombies can spawn inside of the noise and vision radius of most normal weapons/sounds then it will result in constant surprise attacks, thus making the scouting out of a town from afar far less beneficial and the game more unrealistic. Aside from that, I like the new starting items but you kinda need to make the Makarov a bit more common OR have more ammo dropping from zombies. Lets say 10 rounds per clip, 10 headshots = perfect ammo/dead zed ratio in terms of efficiency. Set the spawning of a basic Makarov clip on a zombie to be on average every 9th zombie. Math = good!

Yes, it will force people to use cans and shit to distract zombies. Also teamwork, one can run and bait the other can loot. DIRECT CHAT NEEDS TO BE ENABLED THOUGH!

I was thinking of a few real life scenarios of how people would leave behind something for others to know of their lives while playing DayZ, how would others know about them and their experiences? What legacy can you leave? This needs to remains consistent with the hardcore realism of the mod. Graffiti spray cans - Can spray any man made structure in the game such as the houses and buildings, bridges and lighthouses. Graffiti will fade over time once the artist dies, fades anyway if sprayed somewhere outside and it rains, perhaps 3 nights of raining will clear it completely, open to ideas here. Dictaphone + tapes - Upon finding both items, player can push record and have up to 5 mins per tape of audio recording using the direct communication push to talk key. These tapes can be dropped for others to find, or taken and listened to from your corpse. Journal - I think these have been mentioned before, good idea!!! Camcorder + tape - Allows up to 5 mins per tape of in eyes visual and audio. I dont know if this is currently a possibility because of engine constraints, but it would be a fun item. Id try and get a "best of" recording of all my murders for others to view after my death! Body decoration items - These could be things you just find in the world like hats, skins, boots etc, but I was thinking of a way people could identify bandits and other undesirables without them getting a different skin or being forced to look different and that is through taking trophy's off victims. If you personally killed the target and have a combat knife, you can choose to "behead", "scalp", "cut off ears" or perhaps something even more grizzly depending on your humanity level, take skulls like predator? Ears could only be taken by someone of negative morality and be made into a necklace and worn, #of ears would tend to show your success at banditry IF you choose to wear it. Be-heading could only be done by people of high morality, to someone of low morality. The head can be an inventory item and say "Head of xxx" This way if people want a certain person dead, whoever does the kill can get proof they have done the deed. (attention, nothing to do with topic) I was also toying with ideas of perma death, no re spawns on hardcore servers once you play there and die until x amount of time has passed, lets say 1 week. This way people will try a damn sight harder on these servers, they wont see their life as cheap like the way I see life too. If you released this as a FTP stand alone game, you could have 5 lives granted per month across all servers for free. Once these lives have gone it costs players $0.20 per life to play again. I know people hate the thought of "capitalism" but thats because they dont understand that people need to make money to maintain anything in this world and you need to make the most money possible because government will try and steal from you as much as they can no matter how much you earn! It was just an thought on how to make money from a game like this. If you have seen Red Dwarf and the episode 'better than life', this is the idea I'm thinking of with this kind of payment system.

Reading the forum recently, I noticed there are some observations about banditry and how the mod is feeling like a death match. http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=7927 is a hot topic. I figure as I myself play the role of a consistent backstabbing bandit, I think that every bandit wants to be the biggest, baddest and most feared bandit on the server, a leader of the assassins guild type of character or cut-throat type of psychopath... or some such fantasy, that's my thinking at least and currently thats becoming more of a fun option than RPing a friendly survivor. As I see it, the limited to non existent lore, lack of hidden secrets, poor coop rewards, easy zombie AI and bountiful amounts of food and water are just not a huge drive right now to play the game like its me vs the sandbox world, its me vs the Players. That means to me its just way more fun to stalk, deceive, toy with and kill the other players than it is to interact with the world. I saw 2 strangers walking into Kamenka yesterday from 2 different directions. I watched them meet up, one of them saluted and the other held his gun in the air; the primitive indications of peace communication seeing as direct chat does not yet work. They started to move out together to the West along the road. I leaned out from behind my tree in the woods and fired a single shot into the leg of the guy in front. The guy spun around and shot his new friend following him 2 or 3 times into the body making me laugh irl. The friend refused to return fire as he knew it was not him that fired the shot, but soon passed out from his wounds. The other guy loots his body, I move forward, take aim and kill him while he is busy, run to the unconscious guy and shoot him in the head too. Then take all the food/water/ammo I can carry and head North, my first 2 murders of the life. I understood this was so much more fun than playing vs the actual world rocket has created pretty quickly, more and more people are too hence the rising bandit / survivor ratios. As a counter to this I suggested allowing the players to alter their in game appearances at their own will and choice in another thread about legacy. http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=9070 TLDR Let people like me who choose to be evil, take ears from the corpses and make necklaces, take skulls from the bodies of players I've killed and wear them on my belt. Let me eat corpses and get blood around my mouth like a mad-dog. Let people see my actions on my skin, to know if I should be shot or I can be worked with. Let me "tag" my turf with graffiti, create audio-logs and journals and drop them in churches to install fear. Things like this to give deeper purpose and legacy. Conversely Make people who play the role of a hero survivor like Jim from 28 days later be able to change his appearance in the world based on the amount of bandits you kill or coop acts you engage in. I dont play as a hero, so what kind of things people want to have as skin decoration I dont know. I'd like to know though! Perhaps you can loot a police badge from the police station? then again, I'd wear this too if i were evil. This is how you punish death in this game, let everything you worked for fade away. When you die, it all goes back in the box. Any graffiti you sprayed will be gone after a few server cycles, the tapes will "snap" after a few days too. The Ears on the necklace will deteriorate.... What do you think?

I had ideas on leaving behind something in the world, so people knew of your life, what you did etc, thread here, http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=9070 Ideas include graffiti, voice recorder, camcorder, journals, player appearance based on choices in the world, scalping/collecting ear necklaces for bandits.

I understand what almost everyone else wants too and why its exploded to be potentially the best game/mod ever made. We want the PvP, we want the Co-op, we want the Solo. We want FREEDOM as gamers to play whatever type of game we want to play, NOT some linear hand holding experience we've been having for years now. We want player driven scenarios where anything can go, where the story has not yet been written..... Now, I hate to ram it down everyone's throats to carry on complaining about zombie AI, perhaps I should just submit to the leader of the mighty Rocket and his vision, but its only because this mod is one of the most exciting things to happen to gaming in years and I want it to reach its potential. You do this by increasing the immersiveness of the world itself and the lore all around you, not by directly holding anyones hand and telling them what story they are going to hear, not to give us answers but to let us and our imaginations tell the story and find the answers ourselves. To give extra weight to this world you have created, you make it the most realistic and hardcore game ever devised, where anything can go. I understand that design point and I'm on your side Rocket. Its just that for me, to make this world believable, I need to care about the area around me and it needs to be realistic. I need to be kept on my toes from something other than other players, I need to be scared of the world itself. Something dark, evil and alien....... even if its not the undead but one of Stalins/Hitlers/Omaba's evil experiments and the result are infected people and not zombies. But please, improve the AI of these zombies to the level I was trying to put across in an earlier post. I'll skip the details of the mechanics, they were a suggestion. The real suggestion here is let the zombies live in the world too, let them have their own life cycles and their own adventures and experiences. Make this mod a sandbox, not only for players but for the zombies too. Picture yourself as a zombie and ask yourself the question "If I was a zombie, how would I survive?" Now picture yourself in the game from the perspective of the zombie in DayZ, not a survivor. You see very limited vision, like wearing flying goggles that have mist on them, warm flesh shows up as red vapours if you get close enough. Sound is dulled, like you are submerged in water, but you can roughly make out the direction of any sound, but cant precisely say where from. --- Now go, survive, eat warm flesh to win! Imagine the game being like this for you and what kind of things you would get up to. It would no doubt go like this... I need food NOW, my bar is flashing red and if I dont get flesh I'll start to get slower and slower until I crawl and eventually die. Where is flesh? and you wander the land, looking for food. The only thing to give hints to food are sight and sound, sight is near useless for long range scanning but sound is your best bet. This sound could be flesh, but it could also be a door creaking, the wind... you dont know, you have to check it out. Replicate this for 10,000 zombies or such on the server and see what happens. We see player strategies emerging now as how to survive as a zombie? what would the players do? Now try and copy this player thought process and replicate the AI of the current zombies with it. Wouldnt this be amazing? But to complete the fantasy and immersion, we really need a more living breathing world and a backstory, that is if you expect players to be the life of it. If not then I congratulate you on a fantastic Survival Sim and will buy it anyway, play it for a few weeks, and put it back on the pile with the other fps games.

I thought the temp thing was a little brutal, even running around outside does not increase my temp and I used to do that IRL in Winter when going back home from town on a Friday night to avoid rip off taxi fares! The only way I can see this system being realistic is to make only staying in the Rain give you a chance of catching a cold at a point 30 mins to 2h into the future, this chance increases the colder and more wet you get. Catching a cold allows zeds and other players to hear you sneeze. There is no need for it to be so brutal at right now that is unrealistic, you can just make it shake the x-hair to simulate shivering, that is punishment enough for being cold! Also I'd love a fatigue meter that, when reaching empty from sprinting, drains your water level rapidly. Make the zombies a little slower to compensate too and if possible, make animations such as using pack, throwing a flare etc all usable while moving or sped up if you are panicked. Having to watch the painfully slow animations usually stops me from any other actions apart from sprint and shoot.

Good points, but I'm afraid you are in the wrong here if you look at the big picture. When does a zombie apocalypse occur and you just happen to be with all your friends? I want to join a server and meet strangers in there, just like a real apocalypse. Getting on a TS channel is just cheating on a game such as this, it should be direct communication only, with radios added as an item to stay in touch over long distances. I want to meet new survivors, new enemies... right now as a survivor, I just dont feel threatened by the sandbox environment at all, its far too easy, reducing the need for coop. I do however feel threatened by players, they are my biggest concern about staying alive 99% of the time and as a result I play this game as a deathmatch. Make the world a more punishing, scary and dangerous place and then I might consider getting friends to help me progress because right now, I dont need them.

Agree with the OP, but this is because the zombie AI is currently terrible and no real threat. If you were under constant fear of the zombies, just as equal as bandit attacks, you would see way more coop play. Until then, see you on the beach when I steal your beans

I gave you negative rep because that was the most pathetic post I've ever heard. You are the type of guy who back in the 1800's said, "Oh no, we cant possibly release the slaves! How will they find jobs and who will do the work in their place!?" Having zombies that have an updated AI code will not break the game because of lag and even if it did, a better way of saying that could be... "I like the idea, but would this be possible with constraints of bandwidth currently in operation on the server?" Then potentially offer a solution that will progress the game for the better. If this was a Christian or Muslim forum, you have pretty much just said "You cant do that, the gods will get angry"

I was thinking of an idea to make it a possibility to have player ran towns operating in this game while keeping balance, and the true player driven spirit of the game. **So Note** I am not advocating any NPC's in any way shape or form, no safe zones, nothing to help anyone so please don't imagine I'm calling for anything like this, as it would kill the magic of this game. The way I see towns now are as chests that contain random loot, I have to navigate the puzzle of zombie avoiding to acquire the items I need to meet my basic needs of Food/water/heat, with ammo allowing me to defend myself from any mistakes I make in the puzzle, and other players attacking me. The towns 'puzzles' differ with the physical features of buildings etc, and the type of loot that commonly spawns in them. Anyway I was exploring these towns and thinking to myself how cool it would be if you could fix the infrastructure, and this got me thinking... Implement the following items: Generator repair kit *** would fix any generator when combined with fuel and allow access to the towns street lights. Packet of seeds + Miracle plant food *** When combined with soil like on the pumpkin patches, food will grow vegetables in 1 hour. Wood and Hammer + Nails *** Allows the building of those hunting posts you sometimes find built near army camps. Broadcast system, to amplify in game voice distance heard from. Chickens and Pigs *** Chickens lay eggs over time, Pigs breed if you have 2 of them and can be used for meat supply. Can be shot and killed. Now, if the town has a water supply too, it could be possible to "live" in the town, (zombies will not respawn when a town is occupied, neither will loot), so this gives incentives for groups to clear a town of zombies, and set-up in it, offering sanctuary to other survivors. At night, turn on the generator to light the town. Alternatively, you can find a farmhouse out in the country and try and live solo in one. Same rules could apply for farm houses, they have smaller generators and smaller workable land. Now, this would be a bad idea if it were just zombies in the game as you would live forever, but its other players too, people doing this would attract bandit attacks and supplies ie AMMO would eventually have to be collected by someone to allow them to defend themselves or be forced to abandon the property. Think Mad Max 2 with the bandits trying to gain access to their resources, and survivors hanging on in there, ammo forever running lower. Do you guys have any other ideas for items that can be used in the town to provide resources or role play?

I agree that loot and zombies should not spawn in a town. All you can do in towns would be transfer goods of one type to another. Seeds + Miracle grow become vegetables. #of veg spawned is random to add unknown variable. Rope + Bucket allow you to use the wells. Rope "snaps" after x amount of water drawn out. Fuel cans allow you to power on the town, granting access to street lighting, heating system and perhaps powering on doors/gates that the zeds will have trouble getting past. Holes in the town can be covered by barb wire kits. Now, no one will currently decide to "settle" a town unless they bring sufficient ammo, seeds, rope, fuel and defences. So this will be a prepared and thought out effort to hold a town. Thinking along the same lines as the tent system where your items will only be available on that server, you could have a "vault" in a town. That only becomes usable for storing loot when the town is powered on. The ambient lights make the town easier to see on a pitch black night and combined with the noise from the Generator will attract zombies from a wide area. It will also attract other players who may want to help you, kill you, or steal from you so it will be difficult to maintain without the following... A good group of trusted people. (Spies and backstabbers anyone?) A good defence to channel zombies down certain roads where you can best kill them and LOTS of ammo. Bandits will no doubt try to pull zombies towards your town, and ones with a tool kit can sabotage the defences if you dont see and shoot them. A high supply of seeds, fuel and rope so you can continue to gain food/water/heat, enough for everyone with you. Lots of trade with other players. You need them to provide ammo/seed/fuel in exchange for protection in the night, food/water and heat. I would have alot of fun trying to reclaim and hold a town, I would also have much fun trying to sabotage other towns.

Okay perhaps I should have linked to my suggestion where the mechanics are explained, because I've done this too. I was trying to give the idea of the overall vision, rather than the specifics, which I have already been thinking through. http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=7597 My quick AI changes are all there, they will ofc need testing. If this world is a dangerous one because of PvP as it stands right now, then after a few weeks people will realise its just battlefield 3 with a twist and stop playing. I'm just trying to help and give suggestions to make this game grow. Even if the changes are ignored completely, they are fun to discuss with people (not people who are useless, bitter and pathetic, who try and pull people down over the internet, much to their failure at doing this too as well as failing in their own lives). And so what If I do want to be a designer one day? After only a few days on this mod, I have its system and all it has to offer me figured out. I get the menu and use system, the combining of items to make different items, I also know the zombie AI is pathetic and results in un-realistic, easy predictable Zeds. (Yes Rocket will clean up the pathing and bugs, imo making them even easier in the process, they are currently only a threat when they bug out through a wall and get me in the back) The infected need to more intelligently track their prey. Perhaps they can roam to the woods because they have chased a deer or rabbit in there, who knows... The point of this post compared to the other one I just linked is to try and imagine how zombies would act if you were a zombie in dayZ, try and get you to see that this would could be alive even with no players inside it. How would you make it balanced and fair to stand a chance of getting to a survivor if you could program the AI? Or, (imagine rocket has new animations and bug fixes on zeds) why do you find them and their proximity, homing missile AI to be better?

I love the ideas here guys and the problems you mention I'm sure can be tweaked and worked around. I like the idea of a power grid. You could power up one of the large electricity gens and light up certain areas of the town. Lets say Elektro has 3 sections, each section will have a fuel per hour cost, lighting another section will add the fuel cost together, so it costs alot of fuel to maintain an entire functioning town. The growth of animals and crops for food need to be kept to an amount that can sustain smaller numbers of people for longer, but be harder to defend. The end result will always be scavenging or trading needed. Lets say we have Elektro, it has farmland and fresh water. Lets say we have Cherno, it has farmland and an Oil pump which gives enough oil to keep the Gen running, but no water supply.... im sure you can see where this idea is going. There could be mutual trade, with runners delivering resources to each other. Bandits watch the routes....

Fuck it anyway, I cba trying to get a good debate going on here and wont post any long, thought out ideas again. No one has pointed out any holes at all in what i'm saying, other than "No" or "the engine cannot handle it" or "rocket said no" or "TLDR" or "too laggy" or whatever else useless comment has been posted that adds NOTHING to the debate. I was planning out an idea on keycards\Keys being hidden in the world in the different army barracks and outposts, all need to be inserted into a control console (which needs power) at the same time to access an underground fallout style bunker which can reveal the location of ... oops sorry there I go again, getting inspired by a great mod.

See if people who cooperate start trading in them and giving them an actual value in trade for items or see if people deem currency as worthless. I think it would be worthless and I'd hang on to my beans... but if long term servers started to set up their communities here, they might use it? Thoughts?

All I suggested was the addition of a gold coin item and perhaps a money pouch that takes up an inventory slot. Why do so many people put up these straw man arguments and then knock them down on this forum? I'm just trying to come up with ideas that could make this a more rich, role-playing and lore driven experience. Even if you put gold coin and paper money in the game, I'm not asking for any special "addon" and never did. You could perhaps use paper money to extend the life of the fires you build. Gold coin would be widely perceived as useless, but you never know what can happen with a player driven content sandbox do you? Guess we will never find out, because there are too many sophists and people who scream "Heretic!" when something they personally are not interested in is suggested as an idea.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=7597 "My change would work like this... Zombies have the same range of hearing that human players do, but vastly restricted vision. Zombie attack mode or aggro would only occur when the zombie has a visual confirmation of the human within lets say 50m to 150m, varying from zombie to zombie (more variance = more fun). Until a visual has been confirmed, zombies will slowly move towards the direction of the sound or light source (at night time), regardless of what weapon or movement made the sound, with the same range as human players hearing. When a visual is confirmed, they will move at 2x walking speed towards the human for an infinite period of time until killed or vision is lost. When vision is lost, zombies go back into roaming mode, but will roam the location of its last visual confirmation. Hiding will only keep you safe for so long...." This is my basic idea, its a tweak of AI. It doesn't change the NPC Zombies to anything other than more intelligent, hence more difficult to outsmart and more potential for things to go wrong. They dont have to be Zombies, they can be infected people and move fast, but just make them more intelligent as their current AI is terrible as proximity based aggro is something out of mobs on World of Warcraft. Make getting hit do way more damage with a chance to infect you, requiring an anti toxin item along side food/water/heat to make surviving harder. Why cant we improve the game, so that even if the humans were removed, the zombies will still go about their natural lives as if in a sandbox of their own? I think this would be really realistic and pretty cool too!

Wouldnt it be a cool mechanic that when a zombie dies and its body goes into the ground, a body will rise up on a random grid square to take its place, simulating the dead rising from their graves. They would spawn 3 or 4 times more often on an unoccupied town square than a farm square or rares still on a forest square. This would solve the problem of people complaining about no zombies in the woods ever, but not fit your lore.

Hey again guys, I've been playing this mod solidly now for days, in fact I'm logged in right now camping out my favourite road with a sniper rifle between two popular towns, waiting for my morning beans and Pepsi... but enough of my antics, I will have a stream up soon showing you all my style of play. I currently see the mod in its present state as a simple puzzle game, I need during the daylight, a set amount of food and water per hour. At night time, I need a heat source too. I have to balance the inventory space of my character between items that keep me alive, items that protect me, and items that recover my health/condition when I make a mistake. Survival take priority over everything and currently, banditry is the most efficient and fun way I can spend my time in this mod as zombie AI is awful :( When my victims have no items I need for survival, I go to a nearby town, abusing the zombies basic mechanics to avoid making them "aggro" me, usually by going prone when there are lots of them around, crouching when there are not so many and looting buildings for cool items / ammo and survival items. In cities I usually avoid shooting because the zombies are a major bore to successfully deal with and draw far too much unwanted attention. "Aggroing" the current zombies I find to be too mathematically predictable, they either hear me from my footsteps or see me and instantly become super fast sprinters who, strangely enough have also been trained in fire and manoeuvre like soldiers have because of the way they zig zag at lightening speed towards you, making shooting them almost impossible unless you can bug out the environment and make them walk again, like running to stairs or a doorway for easy headshots. If abusing the environment is not possible, I just walk backwards, letting them hit me while I fire careful shots into their heads. This happens every time I encounter a zombie, there is no variance. Anyway, zombie AI currently works as follows and I suggest it is changed to a much more fun and deeper mechanic to allow intelligent manipulation of the zombie to a clever player or for role play purposes. Zombies will spawn near to buildings and other once populated places. They will stagger around randomly within the boundaries of the town until they hear a noise, the loudness of this noise depends on the type of sound made or weapon fired. A Crossbow makes no noise at all (but is totally useless as accuracy is horrendous, even when prone at short range), a Winchester rifle is very loud and will send zombies into instant attack mode at nearly double the range of firing the default pistol. This noise from firing or moving will aggro all nearby zombies upto a certain radius, depending on weapon used or noise made. I was in electro earlier, camping up high with a rifle and all around me the undead. About 300m / 400m away, deeper into the town, I heard pistol shots which instantly made me try and find a visual confirmation. I noticed that the zombies, even ones closer to the gunshot didnt move at all. I clearly heard the shot from much further away than the zombie did, but it didn't react because the sound was outside of the zombies personal radius of hearing. I eventually saw who made the shot, climbing onto a roof. I took aim with my rifle and fired, hitting him with the second shot but not killing him. The zombies around a 150m radius from my gunshot instantly went aggro mode, sprinting and going mental. They had my position locked in instantly.... now look at ANY decent zombie film, this really is not how zombies work at all. My change would work like this... Zombies have the same range of hearing that human players do, but vastly restricted vision. Zombie attack mode or aggro would only occur when the zombie has a visual confirmation of the human within lets say 50m to 150m, varying from zombie to zombie (more variance = more fun). Until a visual has been confirmed, zombies will slowly move towards the direction of the sound or light source (at night time), regardless of what weapon or movement made the sound, with the same range as human players hearing. When a visual is confirmed, they will move at 2x walking speed towards the human for an infinite period of time until killed or vision is lost. When vision is lost, zombies go back into roaming mode, but will roam the location of its last visual confirmation. Hiding will only keep you safe for so long.... In the same above scenario, but with my changed mechanics it would work as follows. The pistol gunshot I clearly heard from deeper in the town would have been heard by all the zombies around me too, but it would have been impossible for them to gain a visual. The zombies would have faced the direction of the sound and began moving in that direction, scanning for a visual confirmation. Their FoV (field of view) will be reduced to 20/45 with a distance of 50-150meters so they are not eagle eyed, for balance. When I fired with a much louder noise, the zombies much closer to me will begin to look in the direction of the shot and those within the 50-150meter range will spot me if there are no walls blocking vision, and enter aggro mode. The ones outside of 150meters will turn to my direction and begin moving to the latest sound. Yes, this can be considered a more easy zombie to evade with them being so slow, but this is why zombie attacks will be much more deadly when they hit you, causing 1000 to 2000 blood loss with each hit. Every hit will also result in a 50% chance of you becoming infected with the zombie virus and require you to need another survival item to keep the level of infection down, the same way you currently do for food/water/heat. If you get no antidote or die from blood loss resulting from zombie attacks, you will eventually turn into a zombie. Player turned zombies are not controlled by the human, but the new AI with increased FoV and will run at 4x the normal aggro speed of basic NPC zombies, similar to the speed they move at now. This way, we get traditional slow zombies and faster, crimson head zombies. To stop this being abused, sprinting will be limited and a stamina/fatigue meter introduced. The size of the stamina meter will depend on how many items you are carrying (weight) and the level of food / water you currently are at, giving an incentive to eat and drink before the food/water meter actually flashes in order to gain more maximum stamina or stashing heavy items nearby before beginning a raid. When the meter is depleted, walking or stopping will slowly regenerate the meter, continuing to sprint when its depleted will result in a slower sprint speed, but the rapid burning of the water meter. Introduction of something like this will result in stray zombies migrating to sounds they hear in the forests, perhaps from wild animals or the faint glow of a fire. Regardless, it make it possible to gather a pack of zombies to a location. It will require intelligent planning and management of stamina, food and water to manipulate the zombies well, as 1 bite could be fatal or a major problem if you become infected. A system such as this will result in much more interesting interactions with zombies instead of what is now a fight or flight system. If the code for zombie AI is available, I'd be happy to look at it and see if such a system is workable. TLDR ----- Go watch the original Dawn and Day of the dead movies. Zombies like this please!!!!!!

I can kill the zombies easily, they currently shamble about like real zombies when not on aggro mode as they aggro based on proximity to sound and sight, which is predictable and obvious. I dont know precise ranges here, but let me guess that a 0 to 4 range on the HUD indicate a 0m to 100m range on zombie aggro mode trigger, increasing to 150m to 300m depending on the type of gun fired or noise made, I dont even think they react properly to the light from flares. If the Crossbow was not so horrendously inaccurate and therefore useless to carry incase of PvP, I bet I could kill many many Zeds with it one by one, abusing their stupidly easy AI to tail them and shoot them in the head. If ammo was plentiful, I can lead huge packs of zombie to places where they are forced to use the walk animation and shoot them easily in the head too. I currently CAN kill running ones, but I dont have the ammo to waste on the coin toss that is if the zombie zigs and I hit or he zags and I miss. With my AI tweaks, zombies will hear gunshots at the same range humans can, sending them walking towards it. Noise such as running or stepping on a loud surface will perk the zombies interest and draw nearby ones in for a closer look, NOT turning them into homing missiles (i love that analogy) that instantly know where I am like they have a wallhack. They need visual confirmation of the human to begin attack animation, this could be as fast as you like, just improve the AI and stop the unrealistic zombie/infected person run animations while they sprint at me so I can line up my headshot. I know you said zeds will be improved Rocket, but does an AI system like mine not sound a better one? I dont want to sound ungrateful, this mod has opened many minds to the ideas you have founded, but now you have opened up a can of worms that I hope cant be stopped. You can use this mods ideas to create an Aliens theme, Predator theme and Fallout theme for maps and "Zeds" I look forward to the new animations and skins for the infected. Can we have easter egg ones that look like famous zombies from films like Bub from day of the dead or Bill Murray in Zombieland? Oh, and if they are infected people, why call it DayZ? Which I thought stood for Day of the Zombie..