lachlan04@live.com.au

This is in regards to how noise and stealth in general works in DayZ. I saw some other topics cover it briefly but I thought I could expand on the idea. Currently moving on different surfaces creates different sounds but it does not neccesarily create less sound, some other topics have addressed this as well but it is hard to tell how much noise you are actually making towards other players. Hopefully this system will be more fine-tuned to create a more immersive and stealthy experience but I think that sound improvements and Improved zombie AI alone aren't enough. Currently when you are approaching a village and wish to get in, loot and get out all the while remaining undetected you have a few options: You can use any stealth weapons you happen to have like hatchets, crossbows and silenced weapons to take out zombies that wander into your line of sight or detect you briefly. You can pick around the edge of the town, loot some sheds and smaller structures that don't have zombies around them at that moment and then get out of there with what little gear you acquired. Or the final option is to painstakingly crawl and crouch run through small alleys and slowly loot all of the buildings. The first tactic works fine for a bit while you have a hatchet, but once you find a primary that is a little to good to pass up, axing zeds in their heads (rhyme intended) is no longer a viable option, now you are forced to either find a silenced weapon or do the slow crawl if you want to remain unseen (the big problem here is not so much having to worry about a horde of zombies, but that the screaming horde will in turn attract a bandit). Obviously you cant just find a silenced weapon on call so your best bet now would be to try and loot all the towns slowly and avoid any zed contact. This takes way too long. Now Don't get me wrong im not proposing that the zombies be made dumber or that being stealthy be made easier at all, Instead what I am suggesting is that we need more WAYS to be stealthy, sure we have the smoke grenades to attract zombies and flares and cans can be used for that purpose too, but having a variety of different techniques will be the difference between a fresh spawn who blunders through villages attracting all the zombies in his wake and a very experienced player who knows all the tactics and ticks to silently get in and out of a town with all the best gear it had to offer. Here are some of my suggestions: Stances: Crouch/Prone: A sort of arms and knees crawl that allows players to be almost as stealthy as if they were actually prone but suffer from slightly less accuracy and a higher visibility the perk being that you move faster than if you were prone and you can also get up alot quicker in-case you do happen to get spotted. Crouch/Straight: The In-between of standing tall and crouching this stance would share its attributes in a similar way that the Crouch/Prone stance does, stances like these would also be useful for taking cover behind different objects. Stealth mode: Not suggesting too put an easy mode on for players that is the equivalent of auto-hover but a setting that made your player automatically adjust his speed depending on the surface you are on to create minimal sound would be very useful, especially in the cities where you are going between running on grass to the inside of a building and then out onto the street. Tactics: Smell: This could involve leaving a piece of raw meat out to try and attract/distract zombies to/from a particular location, it could also tie in with the defecation process that is apparently going to be in the SA Sight: Zombies should investigate any corpses they wander across, being fairly dumb creatures though after lingering around the corpse for a bit they will wander off. Also other tactics like perhaps lighting a candle in a building could be used to make all the zeds right nearby wander over to check out what it is, meanwhile you would be looting some buildings that the zeds were originally standing in front of. Sound: This is an important one, although you can chuck cans, being able to pick up a rock off the ground and throw it too distract a zombie would be obviously very useful, other actions like shutting doors and such could be performed slowly and quietly or quickly and run the risk of attracting zombies. This could cover lots of different actions E.g. you could chose whether to eat/drink quickly or slowly depending on whether you think the zombie outside will hear you hastily munching down on some baked beans or not, this could cover actions like refuelling, repairing, reloading and a multitude of other actions that make noise. This would be used for PvP tactics as well, imagine there is a guy inside a building that you want to take out, he doesn't know you are there yet and you have decided to go in for the kill when you realize that your current AK magazine only has 2 shots in it, instead of noisily loading in another mag like you would if there were zombies running after you, you slowly slide out the old mag and slide a fresh one in while barely making any noise, thus remaining silent and giving you the drop on him. Thats all I have for now, remember its my first post so any good criticism is welcome.

Something definitely needs to be done, it's not enough to just say "some people have lower end rig's deal with it" Otherwise the purpose of hiding in foliage is completely ruined because who knows if the next person comes along and spots you because of your settings. I hope that everyone can agree that this at least requires some sort of solution.

I was just curious as to what the overall or personal opinion on Frankie is here. Not trying to start a flame war just want to find out what people think. I remain neutral on the subject.

Yeah, but at least he's no Rhinocrunch

I had figured as much, I know about the whole hacking thing but I feel as if there is something i'm missing.

I might get flamed for this, but this was one of the few things I liked about console. Everybody was on a level playing field in terms of graphics and controllers. (Yeah I know, modded controllers but still). If only they could find some way of making the forest still look dense while putting minimal load on the system. Maybe some sort of really low res texture that sticks out in the same places whereas somebody on a higher res system would usually see HD branches and such?

Just a quick suggestion. It may have been said before but it needs to be said again. Let water bottles/canteens have 3 or at least 2 uses, right now they require to much effort having to fill them up, make a fireplace and then boil them before you can use them. Its easier to just carry around sodas instead of space wasting canteens. That being said I don't want them removed just improved. I would love to carry around a single canteen that is filled and boiled and can be used 3 times rather than take up space with coke's and pepsi's.

Lovin these on-topic responses

Alt+f4ing is one of the biggest problems that needs to be fixed. Even more than glitchy zombies. Me and a friend were at green mountain when we spotted a guy running up the hill with a DMR and some other good gear. I took the shot with my Enfield and knocked him unconscious. not 2 seconds before he hit the ground while I was lining up the kill shot he completely disappeared. We decided to wait him out but instead got ambushed by his friends who he had obviously called to come and clear the area so he could get blood bagged and back to full health.

That's what I was thinking, rarer but more useful. Something that will actually make you be bothered to pick up canteens and boil them.

IEDs could be really cool, imagine rigging just one tent in your camp-site to explode and making it the most obvious, after the would-be looters watch one of their buddy's get blown apart they will be a little less enthusiastic to plunder the rest of your camp. As for the UAVs? I think not. But a cool substitute could be perhaps a live feed camera hooked up to video receiver of some sort. Could be useful if you wanted to monitor a high traffic area or your camp-site. Imagine this: "Johnson, ya wanna check the camera to see if there's any movement"? "Sure thing bill, gimme a sec its loading... awww shit, looks like we got some looters checking out our tents!" "Goddamn it Johnson, radio the chopper!" "This is Johnson to roflcopter, come in"...."This is roflcopter go ahead" "We got some looters at the campsite! divert and engage, how copy?" "Roflcopter copy's all, proceeding to engagement". *Roflcopter subsequently explodes due to a shoddy engine nobody could be bothered to repair*

It might be just me but I swear the zombies have gotten more sensitive in the recent patches. They also seem extremely unpredictable. I was crawling through the grass when a hopper zombie that was about 150m away from me and parallel with the direction I was crawling suddenly got agro, I looked around for another player then realised that it was actually on me. Other times I will sprint straight in front of a zombie and be in their direct LOS for a few seconds and they won't even care. Hopefully this is all sorted in the standalone though.

How about a hatchet that is actually a hatchet? You know, like a small one handed axe that is a useful tool in a variety of situations, is a fast but short ranged melee weapon and can easily get clipped onto your belt. And then you would have the axe, a big two handed weapon that is heavy and takes up more room, it requires lots of momentum so you can't hit as fast as some other weapons but it would have some serious brute force and cutting damage and would easily knock somebody out with a few blunt hits or make them bleed profusely after a few angled blows. Both would have their pros and cons.

^This Making it so you can't just get a quick transfusion, take some painkillers and bandage yourself and be ready for another fight is a good idea. After an intense fire-fight you and your friends have to try and get somewhere safe and secluded to patch yourself's up well and good. Some of the stuff could include digging out bullets/pellets, disinfecting and bandaging any cuts or bruises, inspecting any heavy blows you may have taken and maybe even having to pop a joint back into place or using a splint to support a fractured bone. Helps to add to the realism and will also help discourage city murder sprees by bandits armed with Lee Enfields, blood bags and the knowledge that after a fire-fight they can easily get back to full strength to kill the next innocent survivor.

Melee: Left Leg Pistol: Right Leg Primary: Chest/Hands

I think that no starting gear besides you clothes is the best idea, the storywise reason for this could be that perhaps a large evacuation plane was leaving Chernarus with survivors and a mechanical failure caused everyone to don their parachutes and eject out over the ocean, strong winds caused everybody fan out over a large area near the coast and the survivors (and you of course) eventually landed in the ocean and swam ashore with nothing. This is probably a plausible prelude to why everyone is washed up on the beach with nothing. The unenterable areas could work as long as the effects are too damaging. Maybe just coughing and blurred vision for duration of time you are in there. I do give you beans for the jet crash-sites though, these could be very rare and maybe usually only spawn near airfields or city's A big C-130 wreck with lots of dead civilians or military personnel inside would be awesome. Maybe even badly damaged motorbikes or quad-bikes could be found in the storage area of big planes? That would be pretty cool.

This is solely a standalone idea. Immersion is good, that's why I thought that DayZ needs more things that make you feel connected into the game, a good way to do this is to add in-game activities and such. Now before you jump the gun about what I am talking about, hear me out. I am not talking about some sort of zombie killing mini-game or other things like that. What I am suggesting is decks of cards or maybe board games that can be found in-game as loot and played with your survivor buddys. Think of Red Dead Redemption, or Far Cry and games like that, sometimes I found myself sitting there for almost an hour playing blackjack against A.I. for cash, and what added to it was the fact that sometimes your opponent would get violent with you after losing. A game like DayZ could have massive potential with something like this, picture these two situations. Situation 1: This is a simple one, you and your friend are waiting in your underground base out in the forest (Rocket has talked lots about underground bases in the SA) for a buddy to get back from Berezino with a car that he is currently repairing. Instead of you and your friend disconnecting until your buddy gets back you decide to set-up a game of poker, chess, checkers, whatever you feel like (providing that you actually have that game). You and your buddy play a few rounds and the winner gets the beans, or maybe cash? Your friend arrives later and you continue to loot the town 1 Km South. Situation 2: 2 well known clans have arranged to meet up in an abandoned warehouse to trade some weapons and equipment, one of the leaders suggests a game of poker on the side with a large amount of cash in play. Clan 1 wins the poker match and takes the pot. After this the Clan 2 decides that they don't like the fact that they lost alot of money and starts accusing that they have been ripped off. A large shoot-out takes place and several survivors are killed, the rest of the men from both clans retreat to their own vehicles and get out of there with what they have. The games themselves could usually be found as moderate loot in residential areas but stacks of cards could be found in most areas after a bit of searching (For example in one of the dorms at an airfield, or in a drawer in a shed) cards could be versatile and used for a variety of different games, chess and checkers sets could maybe be found as-well but would be rarer in military and industrial areas. The games themselves could be played to pass time or to win loot. Cash is an option here too, but that has already been discussed in many other threads. Personally I think money is a good idea as servers would naturally begin to establish their own economy's and average selling prices depending on how much cash is in circulation between players. Anyway that's all, constructive criticism is welcome as long as it isn't along the lines of "I play DayZ to loot stuff and kill survivors and zombies, I don't want to play some stupid in-game poker or chess" Nobody is making you pick up the games or play them with your friends, it is completely optional and nothing is stopping you from killing people and taking their stuff instead of gambling for it. Thanks for reading and sorry if this has been suggested before, I only had a quick search.

I have had that idea for awhile too, although I think I remember somebody saying that they couldn't allow that because players would be able to broadcast copyrighted music to other players. But It would still be cool if they at least had in-game tapes, CDs and Cassettes of non-copyrighted music that you could find and play in a vehicle. Even though it would probably have to be mostly foreign lyrics and songs you had never heard before to make sense with the location.

About the currency, It was just a little idea on the side and I think I agree with you guys now that bullets and other gear is a much better form of payment then money, It will also be enhanced in the standalone since Rocket confirmed that bullets and magazines will will be individual in the SA. So the pot in a card game could be different amounts of bullets and magazines. Yes! bandits forcing players to try and win their lives would be awesome, also Chernarussian roulette that was mentioned earlier would be cool to.

I agree, now all they need is stuff to reduce the bore when going for long runs between locations, that's why I am looking forward to dangerous animals being implemented. Having to look out for bears or wolves while trekking through the forest would really keep you on your toes.

Well I hoped that by reading how I wrote and structured my suggestion you would at least think I was mature. I do try to put some effort in to make it at least easy to read and understand even if you don't like the suggestion.

Like I said it's about the play style, many people like the role-playing and immersive side of DayZ and want it to be enhanced but people like yourself perhaps enjoy the action and looting more than the other little things, to each their own.

Some people like myself might want to wait a bit for a teammate to arrive because they don't feel confident going in a group of 2 due to the many gunshots that were heard before. Also I often leave a bit of room for some stuff in my inventory and never have it completely full. also you don't have to play the in-game things, like I said its optional. But I could understand if you wanted the devs to spend more time on other things instead. You do make some good points though.

Thanks! Yea I know that it would require alot of development but it would be a really cool feature

Im REALLY looking forward to what they do with they animation system, crisp and fluid animations like in Far Cry 3 really help you get immersed in the world, even little things like reload animations and bandaging animations would be awesome. Also stuff like giving yourself a Morphine injection and you actually seeing the little morphine stick get stabbed into your thigh would be awesome, and things like opening the doors when getting in and out of cars etc. Did I mention that I like animations?