mat9813004

Wild animals attracted to food yes. The Z's? Perhaps food and light, place a stereo with music playing to attract Z's. The logic of Walking Dead was that the Z's prime sense is smell as their sight and hearing was bad. They did science to it.

Sure, I tend to play on particular white list servers...

Best of luck incidentally.

I am too old and don't have a sense of humour. So apologies.

Your material is good. I would like to plug "The Mist" again as some kind of source material.

I don't mind the running.It reflects the scale of the map and ability of players to do their own thing and stake out their territory.... I play music credence clearwater revival & Snow patrol. With the spooky graphics and the possibility of being sniped at every moment it gives it a certain ambience...

It doesn't have to be a win beat the game scenario, just there are large scale events in which the players are caught up in, and they can help out or not. Perhaps a military battalion arrives to try and control the situation, players with enough humanity can assist the military or not. Perhaps there is an origin that the players can find and transport to scientists etc. It doesn't change the situation in the long term.

Such as deep, deep into the map there are massive, strange things that are very lethal and to be avoided unless approached with a coordinated attack with some kind of appropriate incentive to do so...Also, mist. I digress...

Has anyone seen "The Mist", it has an isolated survival narrative that could be interpreted within the DayZ game.

Perhaps with the different characters there are different "quests" such as a civilian is trying to rescue a relative at location x, a military person is serve on the line of a high combat area killing bandits or dangerous Z type, medic to heal x number of personell etc. The military personell could be spawned as a group in a seiged army base being attacked, making survival of the starting zone problematic. Perhaps the specifics of the idea isn't realistic but the concept of a randomised quest for the characters that could serve as a long term goal, find x and escort to location y. Some sort of narrative component...

The need to repair tents idea above is actually quite good.

Actually I think being able to hoard items in tents doesn't really hurt my experience of the game. It makes dangerous trips into the cities through the hidden bandit snipers less irritating when you suddenly die from sniped from a long distance away by a waiting and hidden bandit. It makes me adopt an approach, taking the bare neccessities, then I will leave my more precious items in the tent taking a large backpack and single weapon appropriate for the mission. If you need to rationalize it, it makes the possibility that the tents is part of a community of tents and you take only what you need from your hoard so that others can used your acquired goods. Which is happening to an extent as I am sharing my equipment with other survivors and the tents do facilitate this. Also stealing is an aspect of the game and quite often if I find a tent I will leave excess items I have purely out of good will, a sort of altruism. Obviously I am not fond of bandits at the moment.

The dog reacting to other human players according to humanity is actually a good idea.

Perhaps a screen with days survived and significant accomplishments achieved, a map with a recorded journey as a line or even a kind of narrative document and a statement about how they died. It could be presented in the form of a autopsy report. An autopsy report including details such as the body found was well nourished/ emaciated, with a bullet wound to the head or wounds consistent with blunt trauma and human mandible biting. Perhaps if killed by zombies a slow animation scene where the body/ high viral loaded body shambles to life with creepy music.

I think domesticated dogs should be somewhat more rare and possibly start of as hostile in packs, where the player has to try to domesticate them/ it. But you certainly have the idea.

I like the idea of storylines but there should be several possible grand narratives, set by the server admin and the players won't know which one. The electricity idea is actually quite cool. Many good ideas there actually.

Actually this idea is pretty cool, the events the player experiences are recorded as particular sentences that over time form a narrative, as a diary. When (because its not if) they player gets killed if people examine the body there is a diary attached, like the current "The persons name is x and he died of ... " but a narrative of the events the player survived through. Thus when you snipe that moving pixel from a distance and move up to loot the corpse you can also get an idea of the narrative behind the now corpse that you are stealing beans from.

Toilet paper and razors should be used for player hygiene in the long term. Posession of said items should reduce the incidence of a "spontaneous" infection occuring in players over long term ie survivors past 7 or x number of days. So required for long term survival.

Different types of animals, some animals could be hostile ie Carnivora such as bears, wolves, dogs or big cats dependant on the type of setting. Also ungulates could be attracted to water holes to drink, so waiting at a water hole for an animal could be a valid strategy. It would be kind of neat to domesticate dogs for example and if there are horses you would get the whole horse thing, but I suspect that would probably change the nature of the game as horses would not need fuel and you would probably get a whole mounted with AK 47 raider groups forming. Having a dog for pet would make the whole isolated survivor experience more meaningful, but the dog behaviour would have to be done right or it could become a liability towards the players survival.

I would like to join a squad that specifically hunts down bandits..

Perhaps tents could be destroyed by the roving zombie packs, making the protection of settlements a priority...

Because the topic is pack behaviour, how about hostile wild life, such as feral dogs, rare bears, snakes and other creatures, selectable by admins as appropriate for the environment. Perhaps the ability to domesticate dogs as pets, facilitated by dog food found in supermarkets. They could be left at tents or settlements as guards perhaps when not travelling with the player? Also It would be neat for player characters when killed to by zombies to become zombies, perhaps high functioning zombies that retain some kind of memory of their home and carry the previous kit, and have limited equipment use ie weapons. So that the player may end up having to kill a variation of his previous character, it would be a moment with much pathos.

I think removing tents on player death would be too cruel and also unrealistic, perhaps players should have the ability to remove tents themselves. An idea also would be to leave messages in tents, such as on a clip board so that the player can potentially leave messages for each other (probably abusive but such is the medium).