Wep0n

yeah, i was thinking about being able to add very high doses... if you know SS13 you know what i mean... if you are lucky to find enough doses to be harmful and waste them all on one person, which might not even ever eat those beans... i know what you mean xD maby there will be other drugs where lower doses do the trick... or potent poisons which can be added to an arrow tip... if you shoot someone in the leg, and follow his trails you might find him unconcious/dead depending on the dose you used.

really love the idea of using drugs not only as a way to cure disease, but also as a way to solve other problems. this can be expanded alot more... for example rocket mentioned something about a unconciousness meter. when it exceeds the health level you become unconcious. the already existing epi pen (adrenaline) should also be used to hinder unconciousness before it even happens by lowering the unconciousness meter... if your character is in shock, and about to drop unconcious afer a zombie attack or bullet wound an epi pen might get him back up on his feet, make you run faster again, remove the black/white filters and clear your vision. but it will cause twitching and nervousness, and therefore hinder aiming. valium should have the negative effect to increase the unconciousness level a bit, but it should be no problem if you are in good shape. and there is a shitload of drugs which can act in a similar way, with different side effects. by raising or lowering the unconciousness meter and therefore control your mental state in a way. with increasing unconciosness, blurryness and black/white filter will occur, maby also a slower movement and such. so it can defenitely happen, that a person with low health on adrenaline might have a clear vision of the world and behave rather normally, while another person which is actually healthy but got too much valium might actually become unconcious and feel symptoms that normally occur to people on low health. so you should be able for example to poison beans with stuff like valium in very high doses to make a person fall unconcious and rob it whitout having to do violent actions. (also as mentioned on pax, blunt weapons which deal alot of that "unconciousness damage" if aimed at the head)

HES GOING TO EAT YOUR BALLS

@snoww: i want this feature ingame. before you die, you should see a light at the end of the tunnel where rocket is waiting with open hands, just to let you respawn butt naked on the beach again. @lindey: i laughed hard at your last picture

throw items, place items, hide items, rotate items... really love that

this is going to be so much fun :D

there are alot more sicknesses than just cholera, so there will still be a chanche to get the other sicknesses trough looting. if you want to be immune from all sicknesses, lets say there are 10 sicknesses, the chanche that you survive all of them and gain total immunity is (0.2)^10, if we assume that every fifth sick player survives. that would be one out of 10 million. so thats pretty impossible to be able to loot a corpse whitout any possible drawback. immunities are not so overpowered, but are still a good reward for people who survived long and were lucky. its like xcom: out of ten people, 8 will randomly die, but the 2 who survive will become a bit stronger. those survivors will still be very vulnerable, as they only gain one tiny advantage towards a sickness. and it still is prefered to heal yourself with antibiotics, than risk to gain immunity, because you do not want to risk your life for something like that. although if you got lots of food and water, you should have a higher chanche to survive. (if you got cholera and you are out of water, you will most certainly die. if you drink something, well then maby you can survive)

well looking differently than the newly spawned survivor is a great value, and personal progression (having grown a beard) whitout breaking the spirit of dayZ! gaining immunities after surviving a sickness only 1 out of 5 people would survive is a lucky achievement, and you can be proud of yourself. clothing will add a huge amount of value, as your choiche is VERY customized, and also depends partially on luck. and it is in a way personalized, because after you die you got blood, bullet holes and sickness all over the clothing, so yeah, its gone. also they can add attributes wich make sense. good shoes make you quicker, a better backpack might help you carry more weight and so on. makes all the other less authentic ideas like "books" redundant. books should be made by real players, and contain real information which can help you. it can also contain wrong information to lur you in a trap, and that is the exciting thing: everything in it is real and authentic. nothing artificial which makes you magically better.

After reading trough the posts, i have to get some things off my mind. of course, the progression of the player by learning certain mechanics by yourself is the key of being good at dayZ, and that should be expanded alot more. i am really up for more "simulation". if you heal someone, you have to find the wound, and do proper treatment. if you repair a car, you have to check the enginge, see what is broken by yourself, and fix it. i dont think that an artificial skill should represent your ability to be good at these things. BUT: i also really appreciate the idea of the character progression visually, and mechanically. rocket mentioned, that if you lie in the grass for a while, your pants will become green/muddy. cool things are also scars, and beards, which can also be seen by people around you. creates great story material and distinctions. now all the scars, and immunities and similar indicators for the "toughness" of the character should really only happen when the character was truly ill or injured, and his chanche of survival is low (lets say 80% of people having that degree of injury die, which is defenitely not something people want to grind/achieve and artificially cause that to happen) now to the skill idea: I really love the idea that it can simulate a gunshot wound pretty well. if you get shot, and get healed, you still need a while until your character is truly healed. instead of starting at 50 "points" you could just say you start at 100% vitality or whatever you want to call it. that value can drop due to wounds and sickness, makes you slower/carry less items and whatever. this meter can also be negatively affected by thirst, hunger(or if you eat too much!), temperature, negative effects from medecine, and it should be visually reflected. so instead of making the hud more complicated, replace it with visual effects where you can see what your character suffers from. also positive effects from energy drinks or whatsoever might minimally rise the normal value up to 105%. and if your character gets some points by surviving, fine, aslong as it doesnt affect it too much (lets say 5%) i'm okay if it is balanced well, and doesn't act significantly. adding some randomness, like dropped meat steaks and severity of certain effects make the game more authentic, in a way that you can not metagame and just calculate the damage and such. if you shoot someone in the chest with a makarov, you may kill him instantly, but you can also cause a minor wound not really affecting the character at all. Edit: there is a need for some way of character progression other than gear. my clear favorite is visual progression and maby some immunities if you survived a tough illness with a low survival chanche. gear should be really difficult to hoard, and looting should cause heavy drawbacks like infections and such...

well i am kinda fine with rockets viewpoint, but i agree that only gear can make the game dull as soon as you have a group with a shitload of gear. so there should be limits in gear rarity, maintenance, and difficulty to retreive gear from dead bodies due to infection risk. but also things which do not depend on gear, cosmetic stuff for example, such as a permanent scar, or growing beard can make the game alot more awesome, this is a way the character can progress trough surviving whitout gameplaychanges. the "skill" idea is just too difficult to balance in a way that it doesnt affect gameplay in a negative way, and there is currently better stuff to focus on which can enhanche the experience.

this is the best stupid idea i heard in a long time... i want it! players must be able to make stupid decisions, adds authenticity. Even if noone would actually waste their ammo in the campfire... they always could do it.. if they wanted... but they won't... and that is a good thing. when i think about it... putting ammo in a fire? could be useful afterall... destroying equipment so that bandits who hunt you wont get it is a honorable decision. have some beans sir! Edit: although im not quite sure about bullets being able to seriously injure you when they go off if they are not in a barrel... i mean usually the gas expands in the barrel and drives the bullet forward... but on its own, gas can escape sideways and not transfer any kinetic energy to the bullet itself... but i never tried it, so i'm just speculating.

I agree totally. thats where the standalone is currently heading by making driving helicopters more challenging, and increasing the complexity of the medical system. i still think that there is alot to do. especially hunting should be alot more challenging. your idea with the minigame only works if it is made authentic. aslong as it doesn't look gamey i'm fine with that. how i could imagine the "surgeon minigame" to work is not by making an artificial new interface or something, but just looking at the patient's/your own wounds, and applying one medical treatment after another. so if your leg is wounded and you want your friend to fix it (because a helping hand is usually better in reallife aswell) he will have to find the wound on your body, see if it bleeds, apply alcohol, bandages whatever in real time. that makes it alot more authentic than if the player has some kinda weird interface infront of his face which breaks the authenticity. also by repairing a car, you should be able to go under the car itself and look at the fuel tank for example, detect the destroyed part, and fix it with the proper tools.

@GodOfGrain: generally making skills to direct a player's decisions doesn't work as we've seen so far, because gaining a skill should not be a motivation for an action, and rather happen due to certain random key events connected to heavy trade-off. such as immunities, and the medical system you mentioned. but, as you already said, it defenitely can be a good tool to increase identification with a character if done properly, and this should be the goal. now to your first part: increasing the skills by staying alive is kinda wrong. peope will idle... alot... they will be forced to keep their character on the screen as long as possible, and this may lead to people putting their character in a hidden place with tons of beans, going afk and feeding them every now and then. this defenitely should not happen. any form of gaining skills whitout a heavy drawback, is bad. although visual alteration of the character trough time will alrready be a very good mechanic to increase identification with the character and motivating survival in a not gameplay relevant fashion. to your second part: for the technical skill i really have no idea aswell... i mean the drawback for medical stuff/resistances makes sense, because you have to survive alot of trouble and be lucky until you can profit from a skill (kinda reminds me of xcom) but the technical skill just doesn't seem to be bound to a trade-off at all. i really think that the technical part should actually solely depend on the tools you have and your knowledge of repairing cars.

If knives being rare and used up quickly, is a drawback to the skinning of animals "skill". and there is the problem: if you find knives, you will use them to skin animals, not for the skin, but for the skill. and the appeal of getting a knife should not be in the fact of enhancing one's own skill, but to skin an animal. materials should NEVER be a drawback, because you give the materals an artificial worth, which is not in the sole function of the item itself (eg skinning animals), but additionaly some skill you gain. to the medical idea, which i find pretty good: risking your own life in a reasonable manner, where the potential loss of your character is balanced by a very tiny boost in being able to quicker bandage yourself i find acceptable. noone wants to be bitten by a zombie, this can mean the ultimate death. even if you got enough medical support, the drawback of loosing the character by being infected should be alot bigger than the advantage of being able to bandage yourself a bit quicker. Aslong as the drawback is bigger than the advantage i totally accept it. if a person went trough a shitload of trouble, got bitten by tons of zombies, got shot multiple times, and even managed to survive that with a 1% chanche, well then he should be rewarded for doing so. the reward should be minimal, and in my own opinion a "scar" which prooves your survivability is already more than enough of a reward. and if there should be a reward which changes gameplay (bandaging quicker) then it should be really small, and not able to grind so quickly. you would have your character to live very long, and go trough alot of trouble which will most likely kill him. only the lucky ones get a small boost, and there should be no interest in going trough trouble risking your life just for a tiny boost. the boost should rather reward people who were extremly lucky, but not motivate them for stupid actions. (which is difficult to balance, but maby possible)

some very hot news from twitter, which might stir things up abit:

@Dallas: Survival is indeed one of the mechanisms i want to see extended. focusing more on that, and adding challenging ways to survive is a key element of DayZ. the Question about "How am i going to survive?" is in the current state of the mod just minimalistic. basically eat and drink. the extended medical system, and hopefully also an extended hunting/survival mechanism would add alot to the game and detract from PVP out of boredom in a natural way. (not that i want to see PVP gone, but currently, lets face it: Cherno/Elektro/Airfield are nothing else but a deathmatch field with incredibly long respawn times.) agree with joe here. (I actually did not know that the hero skin has even some gameplay features ^^) The whole humanity system was broken anyway, with or without these features. the skin was so overexploited. bandits were so easily able to give themselves more points by using bloodbags. of the two or three hero's ive ever seen, all of them tried to kill me. (and managed to do so because i was naive and thought they were nice guys) @joe: and to your statement about knowledge: i think many things can be looked up in the wiki. so the people who are interested will know, the others will just either not do it, or let other people do it for them. but there is also a skill element. such as proper sniping or driving helicopters. this is something you have to pratice, and a wiki page will not help you so much. so you got both these knowledge and real skill elements going on. in a group, there will be the wiki nerd who knows everything, another guy is the sniper, and another one is a good pilot. yo got something for everyone, and everyone is distinct from another. i also believe that if hunting gets more complex, you will not only need a good wiki knowledge, but also experience in animal behavior. only the truly patient survivalists will master the art of hunting. a complex enviroment allows for different playstyles and interests, which can lead to value of people based on their skill. being good in everything is almost impossible, and that is good. Edit: @joe: no! microskills the way you mentioned them will not help these mechanisms to work at all! To your idea with the note: people will look up in the wiki what it could mean, and it would force them to check out different things to learn to know their skill. but why would they have to do such tedious work for something they dont care about? they might not be interested in "nature" at all, but they surely want to find out what their skill is... i'm not sure if that would satisfy the majority of the players... being good at something random... its like rolling characters for DnD... you would want to respawn if you get something crappy. sure you could say that you find the notes at random times, and you might find multiple notes the longer you live, but that would just force the players to sit in a corner to live longer to get more skills. (i literally mean wait in a corner... go afk, feed them every now and then...) everything that changes your skills whitout a tough pay-off will generally lead people to exploit something, which is totally against the spirit DoubleEdit: read the stuff GodOfGrain posted on page 8. this explains most of the things....

great conclusion GodOfGrain, you pointed the major things out ^^ and i am more than happy for this thread aswell. It made us think about good and bad mechanisms, and the thread had some really good suggestions. i am more than amazed with what people came up with.

oh boy now it gets really exciting, i thing we got some things boiled down and added new branches to the discussion. alright we got some interesting points here. YES player progression is a good thing. how can a character "progress"? general things first: all character progression should be visualized in some way, as a clear indicator of how progressed someone is. no invisible mathematical numbers which affect the character whitout him knowing it. while gear and basebuilding are self explanatory, the passive skills defenitely require some visual feedback. getting gear: Positive Aspect: works really well for a fresh start. Getting better stuff constantly, and having to make tough decisions what to carry is a key point of DayZ Negative Aspect can be broken if you are in a group which hoards gear. No real "loss" of gear countering that negative aspect: -Guns require maintenance and therefore attention. a lot of micromanagement/preservation measures hinder hoarding a bit. -Looting bodies (for example the teammate) will have alot of consequences, including sicknesses. -Sicknesses can wipe out whole groups. (assuming the groups hoard alot of medica treatment, a sickness still can ruin a group, as you do not recover instantly, and there is always a chanche of death even with medecine) Building Bases: Positive aspects: a long term goal. it requires permanent expansion and maintenance. fuel needs to be brought, base needs to be defended, vulnerable versus sabotage. negative aslects: i dont know... could lead to overpowerdness, but on the other hand it is a tough job to keep things running, and it is a target by many people who like sabotaging stuff. Visual Character progression: positive aspects: A character who survives longer will become distinct from newly spawned ones... grows a beard... gets scars as a sign of a brutal event in the past... visual indications for immunity... Negative aspects: People start caring about surviving longer, which is good i guess... but they might even activly try to manipulate their behavior just to get a certain look, which could be a gamebreaker. someone who lets him wound by zombies just to get scars, and has friends around to aid him. Possible solution: To make this work, there needs to be a balance between gain and loss. and if you intend to "get a scar" there should be a real chanche to get critically wounded and die, no matter how many friends try to aid you. and don't think about being able to get your loot back. noone wants to touch your rotting corpse which is filled with all kinds of diseases! Character progression by Passive abilities gained trough life: now this is a tough one, and the main discussion on this thread Now let me cut this down into two parts, there clearly needs a distinguishment of two ways to deal with it: Gaining of passive skills with a heavy trade off. happens randomly, difficult to exploit: an example for this would be an immunity against a sickness. this immunity is heavily balanced, because people might not want to exploit this. infact, it is a sign for something very negative which happened to you and made you stronger. this is especially something which we will not be able to see in large groups, because noone wants to be infected. the risk of death and permanent loss of gear should be just too high to make this profitable. This example prooves, that indeed, passive abilities may work under certain circumstances. but just for the fact that there is a big payoff for this ability, and is very difficult to intend to get a certain sickness and then survive it. (depends on randomness, luck to survive, and will cause possible isolation from a group) similar passive abilities can be: Gaining passive skills/progression by doing stuff. not dependent on a random chanche/event. (let's call them micro skills) for my part these kinds of passive skills can be very bad and lack authenticity. the fact that there is no trade off, and a guaranteed mathematical chanche that people advance by doing actions which require no risk at all just ruins it. If these skills really want to succeed, they really require some risk and visual feedback on progression, and a random factor which keeps it away from exploiting. gaining passive skills by running around, which doesn't involve any form of trade off or difficulty is just not the way it should be. the only trade-off there might be is the greater hunger you get, which requires to eat more beans, which depends on the gear you find. but the people who actually came up with that idea, were the guys who criticized the progression trough gear in the first place, so i don't see any logic in that argument. the reason team fortress 2 works, is because casual people are rewarded points for doing actions beneficial for their team. (more or less, i know that pro players do it differently) casual people care about stats, and team fortress is a arcady game. it doesn't live from its authenticity. the fact that there is a leaderbord doesn't hurt most games, because they are not meant to be authentic. but DayZ is a game which depends highly on authenticity. this is one of the highest goals rocket has set to himself. and one of the biggest reasons why it is so popular as a game. and microskills are in no way helping to shape that authenticity, instead the make it feel artificial and unintuitive.

hmm kinda difficult to implement, since alot of complex situations may break that system. think about multiple impacts from differnent guns, or same guns but from different shooters. and think about te timespan between shots has to be calculated aswell to register if each bullet hitting the victim really belongs to the same "event/gunfight" But you can bind the "exponential chanche to die" directly on the health you currently got. The chanche system on each shot can be expanded to fit the realism. sometimes they do more or less damage, and sometimes critical if they are lucky or aimed correctly. and the "exponential chanche to die" can be implemented in the health itself. the less health you have, the bigger the chanche to start bleeding for example, or bigger the chanche to receive a critical hit. also i love your "fall down backwards" idea... i think there was once a thread about the character reacting to impact/explosions... really exciting subject, i don't understand why this thread doesn't get more attention...

totally agree on that one. adding a certain "chanche" factor makes it alot more tense. also if you shoot someone with the makarav, you have a pretty good chanche to kill him with a single bullet if you aim correctly. and a makarov will be also more feared since it has the chanche to kill you pretty quickly. BUT you can be also lucky sometimes and survive ten bullets at once. *putting it on my wishlist of VERY high priority for standalone*

this thread already explains how it can be solved: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/38742-suggestions-for-the-dayz-standalone-thinking-outside-of-the-limitations-of-an-arma-2-mod/ by using single bullets which you can remove out of the magazine, place them into your inventory, and if you wish you can insert them in another mag which uses the same caliber. kinda makes "mag conversion" and "combining clips" redundant.

that thread kinda has a very extensive look on most of these subjects: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/38742-suggestions-for-the-dayz-standalone-thinking-outside-of-the-limitations-of-an-arma-2-mod/ it was even mentioned, that you could insert single bullets. and if there are different bullet types, you could alternate between two different bullet types in one mag. pretty mazing, isn't it?

me neither... well that thread already startet beautifully...

I never play on servers with crosshair, it is unrealistic and lacks authenticity. casual people who are "used" to crosshairs will have to heavily change their habits anyways. DayZ is alot more complex and difficult, with or without crosshairs. so the argument about the removing of crosshairs being "too demanding" is invalid anyways. the whole game is demanding. one element more or less will not change the audience at all. and the fact that it heavily hinders hackers makes me support that decision even more.

a minigame can be a horrible idea in most cases, except in lockpicking maby, but most things do not require a minigame to represent one's own skill or knowledge. as a medic you must find a diagnose. finding the correct treatment depends highly on your knowledge, and an extended system should be used to simulate that. same thing for repairing vehicles. you should be able to see what is broken by yourself. either make an interface which shows you the car parts, or even better, make it possible to crawl under the car and see what needs to be fixed. you need a basic knowledge on car parts. of course most of the things will be on the wiki, and you can learn it easily if it interests you, but it feels alot more achieving if you actually check out the problem by yourself, instead of a menu which tells you exactly what part needs to be replaced, or give you a stupid "chanche" of being able to fix something depending on the amount of vehicles your character already repaired. A clear progress of the character can only be realized by the player's knowledge or visual effects on the character himself. everything else is artificial and doesn't add anything to the game. everything which is not based on your own skill/knowledge/clothing/gear just makes the game feel unauthentic. Edit: and adding resistances to sicknesses is a decent idea, but it would be neat if you add some visual effectcs on your character, so you can find something that distinguishes the resistant from the nonresistant. there needs to be some kind of visual feedback on progress, and not be a invisible factor the player might not even know about. maby some different facial colour or something else that shows the fact that you are hardened.