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...

Ok I've had a few drinks and I'm all gased up and enthusiastic so I need to throw this brilliant insight out here. Dear game developers, make use of a lot of random! Random is fun, unpredictable and can potentially make a game world really come alive. You find a crossbow, it's in shit condition, or is it? It might be in mint condition, or maybe it lacks a vital part like a string? It might be of a particular model with a snazzy sight on it, or of a particular manufacturer, or some home made medieval style weapon? All these possible outcomes are drawn from a pool of possibilities by the ever illusive and ever mysterious hand of random. A pool of brainstormed crossbows. So, you creep up on a settlement that you know well. You've been there numerous times an know the layout and the main spots for loot, like the hospital, the auto shop, the grocery store, but lo, the mighty hand of random dips down from the sky and places RANDOM buildings at key locations each time a server restarts (or whatever. Not sure how it works). So you have a town that is mostly intact from session to session, but you can never know what type of building has spawned, because It's random! There is a system in place in the code through which the hand of random will time and time again dip down into the pool of posibilities and pull out SURPRISES. Keeps you on your toes. When zombies agro the hand of random is the puppeteer. They MIGHT very well go straight for you. They might flail around in agitation but pretty much stay in place. They might attack another zombie. They might run around and fall over. They might trigger a chain reaction which in turn triggers all kinds of glorious randomness! What a sight to behold! Food items might be infected. They might be half full, empty, gone bad, low quality, not to mention all the types and brands for food and drug items in the VAST pool of possible outcomes. This is the domain of the most hallowed of gaming deities. The hand of random. (only competion; The hand of Vecna). Now get crackin! I want to see a bucket line with Rocket and the rest working day and night to fill the pool of random with content! The hand of random commands that it be so, and it shall! (I hope :D ) To clarify: Code(with random) --> A ton of stuff and a ton of zombie behavior (and other things) ---> Surprises ---> Player retention ---> Money thrown at Rocket and the boys ---> Jacuzzi containing sexy chicks

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?

1. Nerf zombie vision and hearing alertness. Being a mindlessly wandering husk of a human being with your body gradually deteriorating should not make you "sharp". Eye-sight and hearing should go down over time. I suspect the devs are working on this for the SA because of the mention of a zombie "life cycle". 2. Have zombies "cluster" when they appear in large numbers. The movement and groans and grunts of their com-padres should trigger "interest" that makes them move towards the source of these sounds, making them cluster together over time to form large congregations and "hordes". 3. When agitated by player actions such as running past, firing guns, throwing grenades and flares and making a ruckus the zombies should not be able to make a b-line towards the player in an unrealistic manner. The infected should not behave like the "Hunter" in Left 4 Dead and zero in on the player straight away. They should get agitated, start growling and "communicating" with other zeds nearby and flail around and look for the source of the agitation, not magically make a b-line straight for the player. 4. Gun shots should not give away the players position to the zeds, but should make them highly agitated so they start running around and PERHAPS find the player according to the rules of line of sight etc.(This would make firing guns to thin out zed numbers around desirable loot locations a more viable strategy, and a fun strategy to boot) 5. Zeds should be more easily suckered by zig zaging around structures an through bushes and in forests etc, but losing a bunch of zeds should not immediately revert them back to their idle state. They should remain agitated for a period of time, running around in all directions looking for the source of the agitation so that the area remains a danger zone for some time. My thoughts.

Just rip a multitude of gear item ideas from "tactical" sites on the net and put stats on them. Easy. People LOVE that type of gear masturbation. Rocket I know you like Jagged Alliance. Gear, gear, GEEAAAARRRRR! "Tons of guns" game mode option! ;D

I agree fully! You shouldn't have to go through that laborious operation of opening your inventory, dropping your rifle and fiddling with the "remove from toolbelt" menue.

Do this: break up all items that logically can be split up, and let players go after the pieces to put them together or make them better. Split up the "stats" associated with having gear into a wide "range" and let a shit ton of interesting loot items affect these stats. Do what mmo's do and put a loot treadmill into the game. Let most actions performed in game be affected by the stats. Medical, survival, combat, misc...etc. Let the stats affect time consumption, yield, success rate ...etc. It works. People like stuff, and they like to put the stuff into slots on their character and gain stat bonuses that affect game play very slightly in small increments. If you have this in place it would not change dayz's core game play in the slightest, it would still be there will all IT'S richness, but going the gear treadmill route is a solid way to hook players into the game and give them something to strive for, just like in other mmo's. Edit: Gray, white, green, blue, purple, LEGENDARY MORPHINE AUTO INJECTOR OF ELDER MIGHT!! Just kidding :D

What I think would be genuinely fun game balance with the zeds is if they congregated around towns and cities, yeah, and when you approached from afar you could pick them off and thin out their numbers with a rifle. (I want to use my weapon. It's fun to shoot weapons! Piew piew!) If you didnt have that you would be forced to go in closer and use a hand gun or some other type of weapon. Even closer; hand to hand with a hatchet or whatever weapon you've got. Or you would have to stealth in if you we're fresh off the beach. Aggro from gun shots should be fairly low, but the zombies should be many more then they are nowm but a set number and no spawning. Gun shots would still ring out across the landscape, and maybey they would "agitate" the infected but they shouldnt home in on you and make a b-line straight away. The main risk with firing a gun would be that you could potentially be heard by other playhers.

This is the only issue. I'm fairly new to the game and I heard that this patch made it super tough so I crept and crawled for a good long while after it got implemented, but then i realized that it wasn't very difficult to lose agro. Dodge and weave in bushes and line of site around structures. But the RESPAWN timer needs adjustment. The never ending swarm of zeds is immersion breaking and makes you feel like you can not control the situation at all. There needs to be a SET NUMBER of zeds in a settlement, not "gamey" insta spawns.

How about a hotfix for the insta-spawning? That cant be too hard can it? Just go in there and change the numbers for the spawn timer! :D *clueless about programming* Aside from that issue i love the new patch.

Right. I'm a swede so there might be some weirdness in the language. Hope you can decifer my thoughs. :) A while ago I put a post up on Reddit where I said that eating, bandaging and blood transfusions and the like should take much longer then they do now. I was talking 15-20 seconds for operations like that, and no running cross country while opening cans of beans with your bare hands and chugging down the contents in a second. I tried to make the point that these actions should have players locked down in a vulnerable position. No more "bish bash bosh" type bandaging or blood transfusions while ducking bullets and spewing curses from behind a wall. No takers. It would "go to far with realism" was the sentiment I got from a few responses. I was talking about setting up camp fires and cooking meat on a stick etc and people didnt like it. Then I started thinking. The Arma II engine is rather clunky, but this clunkiness in a sense adds to the panic and frantic feel of certain tense moments. You are fiddling with a door, trying to squeeze through it with your big ass backpack and rifle and all. You fiddle and click around on the inventory screen and miss stuff and have to abandon the operation because of immediate threats. The clunkiness gets on your nerves, but at the same time it adds realism. But what if you take the "clunky" out of this but leave the realism. What if you could graphically represent these actions in a slick way. A more "palatable" way so to speak. Something that would add a "breather" but not a fiddly unintuitive annoyance? A few calm but paranoid moments where you have to spread your gear out and go through it, which would force you to take into consideration the "when an where" to a greater extent than the way it works atm? I'm thinking animations for taking your pack off, placing it in front of you and having the inventory slots pop out, like in the kick started zombie game project "the dead linger". Perhaps a crouching animation as well. There would be proper sound effects for this ofc with straps and buckles and zippers going off etc. Eating a can of beans would have it's particular sound effect. A pack of crackers would have different ones. I'm sure you get the general idea.(Some food items could be consumed faster, or while on the move, but would affect hunger/health/stamina to a lesser extent than prepared foods, or canned goods.) Now! If gear is to be the way your character progress in the stand alone, I think that the different gear items in the world should impact how well and how fast you can accomplish various tasks. I mean there are TONS of gear-boner inducing, manly tactical vests and holsters and stuff on the market, and we love it all, right? Imagine finding a cool tactical vest that would let you distribute key items on different parts of your body for easier accessibility. Finding stuff like that would be GOLDEN, and they would majorily affect how well your character can perform. Imagine gutting an animal with a shitty kitchen knife (takes a long time, poor success rate/outcome/yield) compared to a survivalist style Rambo knife. Do you get what I'm trying to say here? I wont ramble on any furher. Make gear VERY diverse (can openers anyone? (quickly open cans) as opposed to having to knife open your Heinz. Add sound effects!) and make it have VERY diverse effects on how quickly and how well you can perform actions. We could go further with this thinking about skills and books and all that type of stuff but my main point is that certain actions should take a considerable and realistic amount of time to perform, and the way to make your character "better" would be to get all decked out in gear that makes life easier for you. Gear that makes you more mobile, more combat effective etc. TLDR; Keep actions time consuming, but have a diverse spread of gear items affect how well you can perform. Lock these two aspects into each other. Present actions in a slick, non-annoying way but keep the time aspect. Let players affect the time aspect by gearing up. Edit: Top of the list! CAN OPENERS! I am new to the forums and to DayZ as well so I do apologize if you guys have like, gone over this a million times already. But I hope my thoughts can add something to the discussion.

Is the "clunky" going to be in SA or is movement (especially first person) being reworked? I really dislike the way you are "stuck" in various animations like when you vault over a fence or throw a flare or just in general the way it feels to move around. Hows it coming along boys? I know you have a ton of work to do but perhaps we could get a statement on this topic. What are your plans? :)