IDex (DayZ)

When a zed spawns literally on you while you're crawling there is something horribly wrong with the spawns.

If we devs wanted to appeal to newbie casuals we'd still have skins.

Hive is down again?

Protip: If all players have the same problem it's hive related.

Going into towns unarmed is not advisable, try going through barns on the country-side and other smaller targets which often spawn low tier guns. Barns are also perfect to loose all zeds running behind you as they quickly loose track of you as you can out run them as they can't run inside buildings. Big towns are high risk, high reward so of course it's hard if you always go in them.

OP your suggestions are bad and you should feel bad. No. The game is supposed to be immersive, disconnecting character's psyche from player's own pretty much ruins the immersion. Any artificial effects/incentives are to be removed or denied.

Here is the problem. It would have to emulate your character somehow as you are not present. Many games have this as a bug, so I doubt it would be that hard to implement as a feature. And it wouldn't really have to emulate anything you just lie there while being eaten by zeds.

Found three after 1.6.0.1 update, no loot what so ever. One had smoke coming out of it.

If nothing else helps you might want to record your installation attempt with something like CamStudio and upload it to Youtube and link here, just to make sure there aren't any missing steps. Another tip is to google all the error messages you get. It's highly likely someone on the internet got that same message and already solved in on some other forum or the like. Especially Direct3D seems like something that could be solved in a flash with exact error message. Also, stop redownloading the whole game, that is not helpful in the slightest. Use the "verify game integrity" of Steam to fix anything you may have screwed up with your DayZ installation attempts, a lot faster and you'll probably solve your problem faster too. To add my short video tutorial( http://youtu.be/HRK1t6tXpbw ), though I'm rather sure you've already tried this. Just replace Arma 2: Free with your normal version of Arma 2.

I would probably be classified as a "carebear" as I tend to help people in need quite easily and have never killed anyone. None the less, artificial restraint on killing basically cuts of choices you have when you encounter a person. Survivor will be punished for taking the shot with a life long stigma and bandits pretty much had to either shoot survivors or run off as any survivor who had any survival instinct would shoot on sight or run off. Everyone is a bandit and everyone is a survivor. This brought me one of my tensest moments in the game today as I saw a person in bushes near my location but didn't have any idea whether to run, or hide until they were gone. If we still had skins I could have calmly left the area without any worries if they turned out to be "survivor" as this would have meant that there was a 95% chance that I wouldn't have gotten shot in the back. I expect to meet some great situations and worthwhile with the current mechanic.

If you happen kill a bunch and try to loot the area afterwards chances are they spawn on top of you and aggro again. Had this happen to me twice in row. Lost half of my blood. Making the decision of clearing an area should have the natural benefit of the area remaining clear for at least some time. This gives advantage to players with fire power, like team of survivors and such. What's the point in teaming up if you can't use the power of multiple guns to your benefit when looting? Being able to clear a city is also quite realistic.

Can't wait for removed bandit skins.

*cough*Perfect solution fallacy*cough* A survivor who has been in a week in the woods probably looks like a dirty hobo and smells like piss. I really doubt you can judge much about their personality at that point.

As someone suggested before: Timer that you have to remain stationary (for like 20seconds) before logging out. Alt+F4 leaves you character in-game for this time and if zeds catch him the timer resets after every hit until he's either dead or the attacks have been stopped. If you log out in a city your char will be moved to outskirts when you relog. I.e. you log out in some building in cherno and when you come back you find yourself 100meters outside of the city. This prevent's sneaking behind people. It shouldn't be impossible to implement a system that moves you 100meters away from buildings, if there are any, when spawning.

The suggestion in the OP doesn't fix anything. Complex system that leads same results as the current "humanity". This is my main concern. The main problem with as things are currently is the game forcing player to a certain playstyle. When I have met survivors trust has ALWAYS been non-issue. I've never been shot at by a survivor in the wilderness and teamed up two times yesterday. As when I see a bandit skin I immediately get the kneejerk reaction of shoot-on-sight, which I, against the "game's will", have always regressed from and usually let bandits go even if I managed to find myself few meters behind one who was so engaged in sniping that he hadn't noticed me, this was purely to give a big "fuck you" to the system. The game really urges you to engage bandits(even the main page has the following "guide": http://i.imgur.com/JMNi3.png , which made me cringe.) The "us against them" mentality stimulated by this system decides for you who to trust and who to not, who you should hunt for loot and who you should team up with for support. It's no wonder people are shooting eachother when the game basically screams at you: "It's cops and robbers, a full-blown team deathmatch fire at will!" Which is against the "spirit of the game" as I see it, a series of grave decisions. Your suggestion pretty much enforces this idea of giving a "mold" for player to fit their playstyle in. It streamlines all the choices in to one big decision: "which class would you like to pick?" The rest of decisions are weighed for the procedure of the mold from there on. Going against the flow, even when it would feel only natural, is punished. I want a game where I have to make spontaneous decisions based on the immediate actions of other players. I may have to shoot one person just to happen to stuck travelling with another right after. I don't want to feel safe when I tag along with another survivor or see a survivor moving in nearby treeline, and I neither want to to be artificially encouraged to take the shot against an oblivious bandit who I happened to catch pants down in a bush. I want the fear, paranoia and my survival instincts to actually get to me. Another notable criticism about the playstyle-forcing system we have at the moment, is the fact that they don't hinder COD kids and shoot-on-sight bandits, they could care less if their "humanity" or "predator" level lowers/rises this doesn't affect their gameplay significantly, amount of shitheads isn't lowered by any of these measures, but the immersed players have to pay gravely for diverging from the path the game has set out for you (i.e. killing to survive, for example) as when you have reached a bandit status you pretty much won't face anything but a bullet from fellow survivors. To add to you psychology ramblings. Unlike in the movies killing is actually surprisingly easy and requires no great effort, though this varies from situation to situation and person to person. There is no universal mechanism which stops you from committing horrible acts, especially when your mind is engaged in "survival mode" where your life is on the line. Morality fades as the environment becomes more and more unforgiving. Overall I find your view on the psychology of killing to be quite naive. The more restricted the gameplay mechanics are the less this is a sandbox survival and more of a zombie MMORPG DTM.

IMO this makes zeds dangerous enough already. Contrary to run-and-gun FPS like L4D survival games are hard because of the survival aspects, the real threats/challenges should be inventory management, navigating, planning safest course of action, player contact etc. and not about killing zeds.