mr_sev

This is a good idea. It would appeal to the 'live off the land' survivalists. Having said that, I would suggest there be some additional threats added to the wilderness to make things a little more difficult. For example - potential to encounter ticks through prolonged exposure to woods. There should be some things that can't be addressed (or only to a minimal degree) through natural remedies. Likewise there should be some status effects that are better treated through natural remedies. Something to make woodland survivalists head into cities, and city slickers head into the woods (or encourage trading between the two).

There are so many completely abandoned towns and villages up north it's not funny. I've gotten to the point of almost ignoring watching for other players in certain 'low-traffic' zones. I have survived off barns and deer huts and am overloaded with good gear. There are even supermarkets in some of these near-abandoned towns (I won't say which I'm talking about, but look at the map and where most people congregate). When I watch videos of people playing deathmatch at the coast, I can't help but shake my head and wonder why they don't just play COD.

There are a couple of concepts that need to be in place for this idea to work: 1. Radios 2. NPCs 3. Being able trigger NPCs to travel to a certain location 4. A currency or ‘player balance’ The idea is this: Traders would be a fantastic way to trade the items you don’t need and obtain the ones you want. Unfortunately if they were in static locations they would be camped to death... so don’t make them in static locations. Traders travel via Blackhawk to any suitable location on the map. Players who obtain radios are able to either request traders travel to their location, or alternatively – traders may ‘announce’ that they will be at certain locations in-game at a certain time (potentially much easier to script). The traders travel to and from the specified coordinates via helicopter. Players who are at the right place at the right time are able to approach and trade items. Their ‘balance’ is maintained by the trader (serverside) and is reset on death. Another alternative is the ability to request via radio “supply drops”, prevalent on having an existing balance with the trader. Balance requirements: If it’s a call-on-demand implementation, need to prevent individuals or groups ‘hogging/spamming’ the helicopter: o Traders can only be called by radio o Radios are incredibly rare o Traders can only be called once per hour o They can only be called once per 48h by a given radio (this is to prevent a group of players sharing their radio around to get past 48h restrictions) - Traders should have a restricted supply of high-end items. This is not a one-stop shop for NVGs, etc. The idea is that if you manage to survive long-enough, you can build up a balance. You might even be able to request a ‘priority delivery’ (at an inflated price to guarantee an item). - Traders should be somewhat unkillable (or really heavily defended by NPCs). This is to restrict the ability for a group of people to kill and loot high-end items easily. Without knowing the ARMA2 scripting engine, I don’t know how much of this is possible, or even feasible in the DayZ environment. Something like this could be implemented by roleplaying gamers I suppose...

In my head I kind of imagined a scenario where Blackwater/Xe-type groups would hoard supplies and trade with the remaining survivors (I had images of "Jericho" in my head). The addition of a 'trader balance' that is only stored on the traders would (1) prevent people killing others for on-body money (and ruining economy by farming survivors), and (2) provide yet another penalty in the event of death (your trader balance would have to be built up again).

At present, in order to obtain the potential reward of supplies, I have to face the risk of zombies and players in cities and villages. If I want to avoid that risk, I go the the woods. As I was saying to a friend, until there's reward in the forest - there better not be any zombies.

Part of the problem is that server admins changed the times so that it's daylight during evening hours. Then on the weekend and people want to play during the day and it's now dark... My advice - learn to love the dark and less travelled places.

Put some of these in your room: http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=chemlight&_sacat=0&_odkw=military+stick&_osacat=0