Wayze

Sure, the stars and the moon are painted on the sky. If there was no light around, even animals couldn't see sh*t, you genius. Eyes are able to adapt to darkness, but if you were ever like more than 1 hour outside in the darkness with no lightsource, you would know that.

Totally realistic: Or even better, you can see the stars:

Lazy players? No way man, never heard of something like that! Seriously, you obviously have no idea of game design. If you do something and people just don't like it and do not use it, it is not the fault of the players but of the developers. The player does always what he wants. What you do not understand is that a bad design decision does not have to break a game. Players are lazy, yes. But like I said the designer has to have this in mind. Dean never wanted the nights to be like freaking dark, it was forced by the arma engine. If 97 of 100 people do not like the way you talk to them, you just tell them "Oh, it's your fault, you f*ckers do not understand me!"?. I agree. However I think DayZ turned into a battlefield when hardcoreplayers got bored. Then, because the game turned into a battlefield, the casual players came and played it. That's however how I expirienced it.

As we all know, Dean is right know working on how to make the character you play valuable to you besides the gear he is wearing. The problem is that for example if someone is robbing you, you have no point to surrender. He would steal your gear and after that you would just be at the beginning. This is really restricting the player interaction, because your life is not important to you, it is just the gear you carry. That means we need something what makes the lose of a character hurtful, even if he lost all his gear. How could we manage that? There are two options I can think of right now, these are surely not new ideas and I will just present them again. Statistics This one is pretty simple, but has a few disadvantages. Whatever you do in a characters life is recorded: The number of players, zombie and animals you killed. The time you have survived. The number of vehicles you have repaired. The number of people you have treated etc. etc. These statistics would then go into something like an account, recording everything you do. You could compare this to others and like in Battlefield or Call of Duty you would have some kind of motivation. It would be some kind of Highscores list for every aspect of the game. But like I said there are disadvantages: - many people do not care about statistics, including me - it would be kind of immersion breaking having statistics in the game - the motivation for killing others could be statistics (increased Deathmatch-KoS) - maybe the statistic would not work out like they are supposed to Skillsystem This is something I really would like to have in the standalone. It is pretty simple, everything your characters does has impact to some attributes. There are so many things I could think of: - repairing vehicles, clothes, equipment, weapons etc. - crafting (from gadgets to all kinds of weapons) - making food - using different kinds of medical treatments on others or yourself - running (the more you run the faster you run if your - aiming (the more you aim the better you do) - swimming - making a fire - driving a car/flying a helicopter - gutting an animal - mental state (if you survived longer you don't panic as much if you are hurt, you don't shake as much as others) This would get DayZ into a whole new level. Just imagine, if you play the game and you found a broken car, but you need someone who actually is able to repair the care decently, you would have to search for someone like this or just learn it. Let us stay with the repair example. If you want to repair the motor, maybe it is something more difficult. When you try to do it the game gives you feedback like "You are not sure if you can do that, do you want to try anyway?". If you try to do that the motor could break, but you have learned something. Maybe you do it 10 times and it worked like 2 times. But after these 10 times (this is just an example) you would increase that skill. So next time you try to repair a motor it would ask you "You feel confident that you are able to do that, do you want to try?". If you do it like 50 times it will ask "You know what you are doing, do you want to try?". The better your skill is the higher the chance is that it will work and not break the item. Maybe before you can repair a helicopter you would have to repair many other things, because otherwise it would destroy the heli parts with a 98% chance or something. I think you get the idea, it could work everywhere. If you bandage yourself maybe the bleeding does not stop fully, after doing it a few times you get a higher chance to bandage yourself well. If you want to remove a bullet from yourself you would have to have way lesser chances to do it without hurting yourself (or others if you try to help someone) if you have no expirience in the medical skills. Aiming the same, if you want to aim with a sniperrifle if would be very difficult at the beginning. The more you aim the steadier it gets. Also there could be items which maybe increase the chance of doing something with success. A special bandage increases the chance of stopping the bleeding. Skills and certain items would effect the probablities to do things. What would this do to the game? Well, at first there would be things way more important than gear. If you want to fly a helicopter you need someone able to repair it, it doesn't matter how well you are geared. So now you have something to do. You either can go and repair things for hours until you are well skilled or you go and search for someone who is able to do that. You go into cherno and ask for people who can help you. This would change the way people interact with each other in such a way we never saw in DayZ. People would group up and act way more realistic. Skills are something that are very valuable in a survival scenario. But what is another player able to do for you right know in DayZ? You can group up and the only thing you get from it is more manpower and maybe some medical treatments. If we had a skillssystem every member in a group would be very important and essential. Someone who is able to repair a helicopter would have to be protected, if you want to repair a heli. People would probably talk way more with each other, team up and build groups. Besides all this there would be a very positive effect to the value of your own character. If you survived 10 hours, being able to repair a helicopter or crafting a cool silencer you would do everything to survive. You don't give a sh*t about your gear. If a group surrounds you, you will put your weapon down and beg for mercy. I mean, it would be so much more immersive. How would you feel if you lose a character you spend days, weeks or maybe months? It would really create the kind of feeling you would also have if your life is in danger (probably not near as extreme but anyway kind of the same). You just don't want to die, you will give the other guy all you have just to let your character live. Also you would be very careful in everything you do, because naturally you do not want to die. I think such a system would increase the expirience of the game so much and make it even more immersive. It would be very simple to implement into the standalone, even I as an amature programmer would know how to manage this. But I realise there are also some negative aspects: - the game would be more frustrating, maybe people would even cry because of losing their characters - after death you would have to achieve the skills you need again, if you want to repair a helicopter you would either have to find another player or again spend hours in repairing things But this would get the game into a point where endgame is way harder to reach. Just flying a helicopter would be a huge attempt. Having someone who is able to repair a helicopter and then having someone who is able to fly it would be so much difficult than right know. Like I said I know these ideas are not new, but I really don't know why people are talking about this. It is something so essential and one or probably the core element of the game. So how do you think should Dean manage this? Maybe you have some other ideas how to make a character valuable or you don't even want that to happen. Let the discussion begin.

I don't think you understand how game designing works. You know, games are supposed to make fun. It is the problem of the developers to fix the problem, because the players won't do it anyway. Like I said, same problem with first person...

You still haven't replied to "a bad gameplay decision", because as you see it just is one. Anyways, I don't want to talk about how it is in real life, because I am pretty sure it is not like in DayZ. The point is nobody want to play in dark because it sucks, so make it better. Like I said the same with first person, make it better and remove third person, so everyone is able to enjoy.

The problem is like I said humans are able to feel their enviourment, they know where they step and no matter how dark it is they can see like 5 feets infront of them atleast. Additional to that in DayZ it is cloudy in dark like almost always, which is really annoying and not realistic. Also from a gameplay perspective it is a really bad design decision, because people are able to just switch the servers. They do not want to risk it and as they are able to avoid it very easily, they just won't expirience the nights, but they can be so cool and we all know that. The same with first person. People have the choice to play third person and because they do not want to risk they gear due to first person they just switch to third person. But actually most of the players would just enjoy more on first person, if it was optimized and the only option.

It's just too dark, even if the moon is overcast. Not kinda like real life. And if it is cloudy in DayZ it is like everywhere. In real life there are mostly just some clouds, but also spots which let starlight through. And what you forget, a human is able to feel he enviorment and adapting his eyes to the dark. Both is not possible in DayZ (although you see a bit better in dark if you've been there long enough).

It is just really unrealistic dark in Arma 2, I could unterstand if it was that dark in forests, but open field and you can't even see yourself? No way.

Exactly!

Well, ofcourse there are cases where "learning from your mistakes" does not apply. But they are probably way more which actually do. If I put something into my food and it tastes like sh*t I know I won't do this again. If I try to craft something and it breaks, I know how to do it better next time. If I bandage myself, and it kind of doesn't work, I know how to not do it next time ... ... ...

It is not only your pc, but also the servers. Sometimes I get 50-60 fps on a server and on another one 15-20 (same mod).

Well, I think private servers are more popular then public because they are mostly hacker free. Additional to that on private servers you have the option for 1000 helis. I hope DayZ will never support mods!

Did you even read my post? I wrote exactly what you did, just that I took repairing as an example. The more you repair the better you get in it.

Huh? I never said I want that, but as there are messages anyway, it would be just logical to do that. If there are no messages in the game this would be pretty stupid ofcourse. And these messages do not appear when you level up. They just appear when doing someting. Like I said, if you repair a car the first time it shows you before you repair it "You feel uncertain about this action, do you want to continue". This would be important so people realise that the probablity doing what they are going to do is very low. I mean, in real life you know too if you are not capable of doing something, right? So this message pops up just when you want to repair. If you are skilled in repairing the message changes into something like "You feel certain about this action, do you want to continue?". How the message looks is not important, but I think you know what I mean. The players need something to know how difficult it is. If you repair a helicopter rotor you know before you do it if you can do it or not. This can only be implemented by a text message, and as there are text messages in the game this would be no problem.

No, death messages are gameplay and immersion breaking. I too don't like the messages, but like Dean said there is no other way. Death messages though could be removed, they are simply useless and stupid.

I totally agree with you, except of point 3. Survival is very much about luck. In real life and also in DayZ mod. What you find defines how many chances you have to survive. This gives the game a unique flow and more importantly it is not repetative. You die and begin a new life. This life could be way different from the life before, due to gear you find. Like I said there should be items, like in the real world, that make things easier for someone. These items should be not permanite and very rare. Something you are happy about when finding it. However the rest I agree 100%. Especially the thing with the perks. Perks would be really weird, like I said doing something better than before is the only thing that you should achieve. You should always be able to repair a heli, but in the beginning the odds for succeeding should be very low. Actually 1., 2., and 4. are no problems of the system, because they do not exist. You know, you said like "If it was like that it would be bad", but it isn't so the problems do not appear. Why RPG? What has this to do with a RPG? It is just character developement, to create a value for individual characters. Don't exaggerate, if you run 100km you could probably sprint longer than before running these 100km, right? It is just authentic like that, and adds a real value to a players life.

There will be messages anyway, so it wouldn't change anything.

Guys, can you take this serious please? xD

I really don't get what you mean? Why would it be immersion breaking? What do you mean with hidden? If you do something, it is not like there is a message poping up and saying "Your repairing skill increased by 2.04%!". It is just when you try to repair a vehicle next time there will be another message than before. You know, the messages like "You feel hungry". There surely will be messages like "You repaired car engine". And I thought of something like "You don't feel confident about succeding this action", message before you do it. And if you are at a certain level of skill, the message will change like "You feel confident about succeding this action". Sure there will be people who do not take advantage of it. There will always people who will troll, but what has this to do with the skill system? Sounds like we got a WoW player here.

Right, why are we even talking about this? In DayZ it should be hard to survive, not hard to maintain a big bisceps. ^^ I think it would be to hard like that. If you fail you learn something, maybe you do not learn as much as before but you learn a bit, don't you? If you do something wrong, you don't do it again. It's like you are saying "Never learn from your mistakes!", but actually mistakes are the things you learn the most of. Also, it would kind of be very, probably too, frustrating if you lose a part and additionally to that do not learn anything.

There is no difference. Do you think a guy having muscles and running faster is having a huge advantage in a survival apocalypse? In the apocalypse it is about the skills you achieve, the intelligence. Having muscles and running faster sure will help you, but it isn't really that important.

Do you know why we humans actually are where we are right now? It is not because we are "fit" but because we skilled ourselfs, because we learned things. It is not the health that distinguishes us from the animals, it is our skills. Actually survival of the fittest means more like "Survival or the individual which fits best in his enviourment".

Yes, at first I thought also about something like that. But keep in mind, if what you lose is not very valuable you won't care. If it is just doing something faster, it is not something special. Sure, I can gut a animal faster, but I don't need that right? I can do it slowly, it won't hurt. I can fix something slowing, there is enough time, especially in DayZ. Like the healthsystem KoS was talking about, I don't think that doing something faster is enough to create a real value for a character. I still will shoot everyone on sight, why wouldn't I? At best the other guy could repair a heli faster than me, but I can do it alone. You know what I mean? I think this should be really testet out in the alpha, because that is what an alpha is for. Test a view ways and look what works best.

But why would I care about my health? Obviously I can survive without this health, but it doesn't help me in any way but combat. You say it should not prevent players from what the want. But it doesn't. If you want to fly a helicopter you need the parts. Does the fact that you don't have the parts from the beginning mean that the lootsystem prevents you from doing it? No, you go and search for the loot. The same with the skill system, if you want to fly a heli you need to skill yourself or find someone else to do that. You cannot just go and repair what you want, because that is not how it works and I really don't think it should work like that in the game. This would just create realistic character builds, everyone is able to specialise himself in doing something, like in real life. If you see someone else you don't just shoot him, he is a human, maybe he is able to help you in something. If it is just the gear another person is able to give you, there is no reason to spare his life. We just need something that makes a naked veteran character from value and a health system is surely not enough.