Jack Dant

Everyone checks the vehicle spawn points, you will rarely find them there. Most non-terrible vehicles are parked in hiding spots away from civilization. Trawl the forests west and north of the map and you should find some. Or just setup an ambush at a fuel station or well travelled road and wait (and wait, and wait).

Nice combat disconnect you got there.

Supported. Fix this then. Who cares if it was on purpose or not? Don't log off with the shock icon or you die, it's easy. If you want to log off, wait 5 minutes. If you can't wait 5 minutes, whatever you are doing is more important than some pixels. Don't get attached to your pixels. Logging off takes all of 5 seconds and you retain sound and video while in the menu. Odds of getting shock in that time are low to none. Unless you are logging off as soon as you see another player. For exploiters.

Are you sure it wasn't the drinking sound? Those sounds are bugged and replay the first time you approach someone who has drunk/eaten during that session.

With the short range of directional, if someone talks to you over it, they are already too close for comfort. The rational thing to do is to run away or take them out. While I understand the reasoning for taking out sidechat, it actually hurt player interaction in the game a lot. I've had friendly chats with people I've killed or who have killed me in other games. Most of the people I play DayZ with are EVE players I met while fighting them in that game. That whole dynamic is impossible in DayZ now.

Glad we agree :) To elaborate, what I strongly dislike are binary or discrete skills. Real life is not generally about "I have changed ten tires already, I can now magically fix punctures without new tires". Any realistic skill should be as continuous and gradual as possible. In real life, it would be more like "I think I fixed the puncture, lets see how long it lasts" then 5 minutes later then tire is flat again. Yea, that's what I meant by training. Getting better at stuff because you have done it more often. I agree with your intentions, but I don't think minimal is the right word. You should be able to overcome the disadvantages with smart gameplay. But they should be noticeable enough that you care about dying even if you can get back to your corpse or have a camp full of all the best equipment.

I like some of your ideas, but some of them feel a bit gamey. I think most of the room for "skills" can come from what we would call "training". While DayZ has close to no backstory, I think it's safe to assume our characters are civilian survivors, not military. So, for instance, they shouldn't be as good with guns as they are. A civilian who is not very familiar with guns and picks up one won't be able to aim steadily. When he shoots, the recoil will most likely surprise him. The game could realistically increase aim shaking and recoil for new spawns. Then as you fire more shots and kill more people/zombies/animals, your character becomes more familiar with the gun and he can be as effective as we currently are. There are other examples, but I think they should mostly related to new spawns doing things badly, then getting better at it. Wasting blood on transfusions, fuel when using jerry cans, etc. Ideally we could get some physical training done, but since our characters never really get tired, it's not easy.

They are 0.11% chance to spawn in the barracks. They could be hacked in. Or they could be the infinite dupes of a single satchel charge spawn. Or someone could have farmed the barracks for an entire week. Take your pick.

This. A couple weeks ago, two of us chased and ambushed an offroad with 6-7 people on it. When it was over, there were 3 corpses and nobody in sight, even tho we had hit most of them. Then they uploaded a . The guys that were hit crawled behind the car and logged off, then waited to log on until their buddies arrived with medical supplies.

I'm experiencing some issues with refilling water bottles. I refill my empty water bottle, move away from the pond, and log off. When I log back on I'm at the right location but my water bottle is empty. If I do the same, but move any item between my backpack and main inventory before logging off, my water bottle is full when I log back on. It's as if the inventory wasn't saved unless directly manipulated. Maybe related, I seem to have a near-infinite supply of hand grenades. I had two grenades in my inventory, and threw one. The counter didn't go down, so I kept throwing. The counter only went down to one when maybe 8 grenades had been thrown. Then upon relogging, I had two grenades again. This is all wearing a ghillie suit, which may or may not be influencing things.

Sandbox games in a nutshell :)

I'm using a ghillie suit I had in inventory from 1.7.1.5 without problems. However, camo and ghillies are gone from the loot tables according to third party sites. Is this correct?

They certainly have dissapeared from the DayZDB loot tables. It seems their drop percentage was re-assigned to other items, too. Defensive coding to avoid triggering the bugs? Or removed permanently?

I don't really like the word endgame either, but please explain the difference between DayZ and an instanced MMO. What DayZ needs is not endgame in the WoW sense. People playing the game as if it was WoW with the sole purpose of getting "rare weaponz" won't ever be satisfied with the sandbox. The closest thing to good "endgame" we have now is vehicles. You find them, you repair them (usually in a group), they get stolen the next day, then you steal them back, and so on and on. Something like that, but played over weeks instead of hours is what we need. Something you can do over and over but it's never the same (this requires a PVP factor to it, because AI is always the same).

Clearly, the green bike is the adult state of vehicles. The UAZ and ATV are just larvae.

You certainly have a higher concept of the human race than I do. In the case of any apocalypse, with it's collapse of civilization, I wouldn't expect peaceful cooperation between all people. You would see some acts of heroism, sure. But much more suspicion, selfishness and greed. No, there would probably not be many people shooting rifles indiscriminately from the roofs. But thieves and scavengers would be more dangerous than the zombies. That is a common theme in all apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies and stories. Ultimately, what makes realistic dynamics impossible is the fact that this is a game. No matter what I do, if I'm killed, I can respawn and try again, so it's fine to run risks. And why bother robbing that guy at gunpoint, if I can achieve exactly the same thing killing him? He respawns somewhere else, and I keep his stuff. But back to "endgame", I see it mostly revolving around group conflict, relating to the above. The hard part is finding the right mechanics for groups to want to fight each other (other than "it's fun").

The fear of losing all my gear to a guy I didn't see, and the paranoia it causes, is at least half of the fun of the game.

I, for one, will make sure to ask the OP if he's in the mood for being killed before I start shooting. Wait, no, I won't.

Are you talking from first hand experience here? Because surviving for several weeks is not particularly hard if you avoid towns and get your high-end gear from heli crashes.

What's the difference between DayZ and an instanced MMO?

Nope, I don't. I've been thinking about it for a while, and I just can't find anything that's not a copy of EVE's timer system. And that's something every single player hates with all his heart. Sure. But I am allowed to point out holes in suggestions. Aren't I? I mean, that's what a forum is for. :)

So? What he did was well within the game rules and mechanics. Then he got killed by an exploiter who magically teleported into his back. It's not like it's hard to legitimately shoot people who snipe from that hospital roof. There's plenty of locations that let you fire on the entire roof, and once you start shooting their only way out is through the exposed ladders (or alt-f4).

Cool, you do that one night. Then you go to bed, go to work next day, and when you come back, a bunch of people from the other side of the world have taken over your settlement and blown up your tents. We are the same point we are now with tents and barbed wire. So, what mechanics can we use to avoid that?

Building bases/settlements is the obvious next step. It's very much in line with the progression you would expect in a real collapse of civilization. First you survive, then you form a community, then you defend it against other groups, with the environment/zombies becoming less of a threat. However, I can't think of a decent way to protect those settlements from other people around the clock. I do not want the free-form world of DayZ to become a rule-driven siege game. Also, some basic "crafting" would also be welcome. In another thread I mentioned making molotov cocktails from empty bottles and jerry cans. Anything along those lines would add to the atmosphere.

No :-( I wish we could take an empty bottle of whisky, a jerry can, a bandage and a box of matches, and do the obvious.