Droidlife

Zeds need to be a threat like in Left 4 Dead. Plain and simple. They need to be a game mechanic element that you are forced to co-op against.

43 year old swede here. I was wondering if I need to log on to IRC first to get on quake net web chat? I had a look at the thing but the registration process confuses me, and I dont care for confusion. I dont care for it much at all... *cocks shotgun* I haven't been on IRC since the late ninetees when I used to pick up chicks through it. :D

So you're saying that an infinite number of infected people in a village or town is realistic? Now, they are going to fix this issue with the never ending horde of the undead in the next patch by adding a proper spawn timer, but I cant understand why some people would argue FOR a system where a player had no control what so ever over a situation where the zeds aggroed on him other than to start running. Running is not fun game play. There needs to be a use for guns in SA because people love to fire guns in games. Look around you, how many FPS games, single player or on online are there where the main satisfaction of plying is "sneaking around"? That shit gets tired fast if there isn't a good amount of violence involved to break up the sneaking or running around. How many mmo's are there where there is no option for violence from players, just sneaking around or fleeing? Gun play needs to be a viable option in the SA or the game will lack appeal. Make it so that you can pick off zombies from a distance if you're hidden. Thin out their numbers before approaching a town. Make towns and villages and areas around the map have SET numbers of zombies that you can pick off, after which there is a "breather" during which a spawn timer ticks away. Have the zeds congregate in great numbers around loot spots. Make ammo limited and very desirable and sought after. Implement a kick ass hand to hand combat system that makes you feel that with planning and skill you can take on situations or make an escape through violence if you're getting surrounded. Zombie AI should react to loud noises of course, but without "super senses" through which they can just pin point your location the use of guns would become a much more fun and rewarding strategy. Even if the stupid infected can not find you, the threat of giving away your location to other players would still be there. Gun fire in a town should have the zombies agitated and on "alert", looking around trying to find the source of the agitation. This would become a danger for all players present in the town, no matter who started the ruckus. There is much that can be said about this but if the SA goes the route of making guns useless for dealing with the zeds I think it will lose a lot of potential appeal. There are many, many people out there who like to swing baseball bats and fire shotguns at the infected and feel like they can potentially control a situation in that way. A zombie game shouldn't be solely about running through bushes or through forests with a zed train after you. There should be the option to progress with the gear to a point where you can "bad ass" your way through certain situations. Just my thoughts.

Take blood bags out. Take insta healing out. Make blood regen fairly quick, the rate affected by food item consumed. Give pain killers and possibly other medications more of a role in keeping you up and running, like the pain killers in L4D for example. I would like the whole "blood" thing dropped and a new concept of "health" in it's place. An overall health condition that can be affected by a number of things through a number of strategies / opportunities. Food items --> Regens health over time. (not realistic time, but "gamey" time) Drugs / medicine --> Gives a temp health boost to keep you running while going after permanent health regen.

I sure hope the SA goes the route of making gun fire more of a viable option when dealing with zeds. Running around with a train dodging through bushes and weaving through trees just ain't fun. It is not fun game play. I think the core of it should be mowing down zombies with guns because that's fun, but there should be risk associated with that ofc, but to me it would be a more rewarding experience overall if the guns you find are your main tool for dealing with zeds rather than running around with a train after you. To make this happen the AI must be more sophisticated. Zeds should be agitated by loud bangs but not able to pin point your location etc. There should be MORE of them congregated around desirable loot locations so you have to take ammo count into consideration. To me, lying prone in the grass outside a city and "thinning out the numbers" should be a good strategy and the main risk involved in that approach would be from other players being able to use the wit of a human mind to work out where you are, not zombies with supernatural sensory powers. When you draw nearer to a location the zeds would become more of a immediate threat ofc, but with a good load of ammo I think it would be more rewarding for players to have the option of hunkering down inside a building and having a shoot out with zeds that dont INFINITELY spawn. I really hope the SA goes the route of making guns your most valued possession and your main tool for survival, and not just the silenced ones. People like guns, and if SA does not let people unload into the zeds in a rewarding manner the game as a whole will not have the potential "zombie survival appeal" that it could. Tldr; the main threat of firing guns should come from other survivors being able to tell that you are near and work out your general location, not the zeds.

Two things. 1. I guess server admins need to re-install 1.7.5.1 for this rather huge fix to affect their servers, right? If so: is this being properly communicated? As far as I can tell the official name for the patch is 1.7.5.1. (For anyone not aware of the "hotfix" or what you wanna call it, I'm talking about the bit of code that took care of infinitely spawning zombies and lowered their aggro and communication abilities) 2. Would it be possible to make the hatchet a handgun class item so that we can switch between it and a rifle the same as we can a rifle and a hand gun? The inventory management here is driving me nuts. Thanks.

So will this new patch mean that we have to download the patch again, or update via Commander?

Vehicles abundant, as per normal realism logic................fuel? Hey! SCARCE!

Short but fully sufficient answer: Kids, tweens, teens and youngsters around the age of twenty. It is the teen mentality in effect basically. DayZ provides a sand box for "having fun" in various ways involving the standard kid / teen mind state. But there are obstacles between the teen and DayZ's tantalizing offer of a vast playground where you can "pwn" your peers in various ways and shit talk in the side chat. Server admins and modders can remove these obstacles so that youngsters can get straight to it without having to through the whole "survival" milark, and behold, server admins provided DayZ "pwn fun land" for all the young bucking lord of the flies-warriors and they saw that it was good...

The more I think about the random buildings idea the more I realize how retarded it is. What dayZ SA will be about is surviving and stock piling items for future use by the characters that follow in the footsteps of their dead predecessors. Having things like semi-permanent tents and camps and bases and stuff would not fit with the game world changing in the way that I suggest in the OP, in my drunken stupor! Each new life is not a clean slate, it's a link in a chain and the world needs to remain consistent. But there are many other ways to heed the law of the random! Many many ways indeed!.

Yes, I agree. I saw Rocket on Youtube from some convention where he said that what they are doing now is putting together a solid foundation,and once that is in place (the SA), all depends on how successful they are, and what kind of money starts rolling in. If Dayz SA is a success, thats when things can really start to kick off. I suspect the project would move in the direction of a proper mmo. But I also suspect that when Rocket and the rest of the devs started working on this and the end of 2012 drew nearer, they came up with a lot of ideas that made the project expand more then they had first planned, therefore the delay. I hope one of the devs see this little thread from a zombie survival starved gamer and take my suggestion into considferation and brings it to the front so that it can affect all facets of SA and further development of this concept down the line. The reason I felt I wanted to stress this is because I followed the development of SWTOR closely, and I was really hoping for a rich world full of life and surprises and unpredictability and "fluff" and "lore" and "fun things" left right and center. They did not deliver........ Boys, always remember the RANDOM, the SURPRISES, the periodic CHANGE and MIXING UP of game elements. This makes the world come alive and players will throw lots of love and money your way. Look at Rockets latest call for assistance with the book idea. Exactly what I'm talking about. Fluff and unexpected turns and twists.

I can see where you are coming from mate, but you do not grasp the situation here that has now been remedied. The thing was that when you shot down a wave of zombies in a town, a new wave would spawn immediately after, rendering your efforts totally useless. They just spawned and spawned. Thats why Razor now has tweaked the respawn timer to two minutes. That gives you a "window" of some time to go in and loot before zeds respawn, are you with me?

I'm totally old enough to get that ;D Yeah, I've given it some thought now and randomizing structures might disconnect players from the world rather than pull them into it. People wouldn't like Orgrimmar och Undercity to hop around. But apart from that I think that the devs for SA should try to mix things up as much as possible.

It's a flow chart!

Having a couple of Swedish brand brewskies; Pripps Blå. (Pripps Blue) The random building idea might be a bit far out but I was thinking that cities and towns could have key locations where there is like a spot, an area in place where various buildings could fit in. I was thinking this would mix up the whole map (but keep the basic structure of it intact. I'm not talking about whole towns.) and have players uncertain every time the server restarts or whatever, or along some other timer. This would pretty much void any type of "loot run" style of game play. You would never know where key structures are going to pop up during a play session. But nvm that idea, might be a bit to much perhaps, but it would surely help with the "sense of disorientation" that Dean so often talks about. It would make every session unique and fresh. Again and again you would be lost in a bleak, surreal hell-scape without a clue WHERE to go to find a box of matches. The main thing I'm trying to get across here is that random elements are always good in games of this type. Attention to that aspect in all parts of development will result in a world that feels alive, constantly changing and unpredictable. Do you want the world to be predictable so you can go on your runs and gear up? Surely not? :) I'm sure the developers of this game are aware of this but I'm starting this thread to stress it, and suggest that it be kept in mind in all aspects of development. Maybe we could have a discussion around how this philosophy could apply to various aspects of DayZ? What can we randomize? What can we diversify and make uncertain?