militantsausage

After coming back to playing DayZ after a few months, I was quite surprised, now I am going to refer to these people as hackers since that is what people are used to hearing, when in fact I do live mission editing for my group often on COOP nights, essentially it involves taking advantage of arma's scripting without abusing it like lots of people in DayZ do. After coming back I did have a few alright moments, like making a run for a double barreled shotgun inside a barn with 2 zombies chasing me, and having to outsmart zombies when I was unarmed. These incidents however were soon irrelevant, as I ran into a barn to pick up some loot, a player comes in, and points his weapon directly at me, straight away he catches two double barreled rounds to the chest and I soon hear his squeaky 12 year old voice over direct chat, saying "Oh I guess you're not friendly then". I soon hide behind a bale of hay and wait for him to approach me via the stairs, of course he does, he gets a M1911 magazine all into the chest and head before he goes below the stairs, then I hear "nice try", He comes up again, and as he reveals his head it cops a shotgun round to the face, but I take 2 makarov rounds, nothing to be worried about. for the next minute or two I use all my magazines on him as he hides below the wooden floor. As soon as I run out of ammo I decide to not waste my time with a hacker and I go to my menu, select abort and then log out, takes me 15 seconds or so, surprised he didn't come up to shoot me. Remembering the days when hackers were usually skilled, they could create a pattern of Guided bomb explosions on the ground or something, or even just up everyone's contrast ingame to the max settings using color filter changing commands for fun. Now is it that easy for hackers that a little kid can accomplish a hack and then not know what to do with it really? he would have just used an allowDamage false command for sure, but it surprises me that what is apparently meant to be an issue being dealt with has allowed such easy hacking. I am positive that he was hacking, as I have been hit by shotgun and M1911 rounds in DayZ before, and they usually at least result in some form of incapacitation, while this kid was just popping straight back up every time.

No it wouldn't, the animation needs to trigger while Alt-F4ing not while hitting "sleep" on the menu, lol

As most people who have played the game past 1 or 2 deaths would agree, the atmosphere of DayZ doesn't fully capture all the elements that a survival horror game should. Although it is hard to find supplies to keep yourself going, which creates a good survival atmosphere in which most people are either struggling for supplies or constantly looking for them. The horror side of DayZ though is another story, a game cannot have a eerie sense about it if it is predictable, there is nothing frightening about predictability at all. So how is this fixed? The opposite of being predictable is being surprising, and a surprise is caused by the unknown. The unknown is usually what creates fear and suspense, think about it, say if any of you have played Stalker Call of Pripyat, the first area and the second area both had more mutants roaming in the open, yet Pripyat is largely empty, which creates a feeling of being alone, so when you see that one flash of a mutant running through the buildings in the distance towards you, then you suddenly lose sight, it becomes infinitely more scary than taking on a nest of 5 mutants when you know they are there, yet in reality the fight against 5 of them is probably harder. The best way to improve this aspect would probably be to stop the whole zombie spawn system spawning 20-70 zombies in a town at least half the time, but rather conceal them, or use different monsters or mutants, which are not seen so easily (this obviously requires a lot of work to be done, including getting a new creatures AI right), so when a player enters a town instead of normally going in just shooting up zombies or crawling past them all, he may find himself slowly walking in, not sure where the threat will come from, until suddenly a powerful monster or zombie or whatever attacks from behind, either making him panic and lots of ammunition its way, or run and flee the area. A DayZ example of this, is how for most people 20 zombies which you see first then engage are less scary and only require certain techniques such as waiting indoors or just plain good shooting to win and not get hurt, but when a player thinks he is safe, then the last zombie in the town runs up behind him and hits him in the back, he will be much more started, sometimes shrieking over the microphone. If zombie numbers in towns decreased, maybe it would allow more server power for creating roving packs of zombies in forests, or something similar, as not being able to predict when you are going to be attacked makes the environment generally more eerie, while at the moment you know it will always be near settlements where you are attacked. Something else which would improve atmosphere a lot would be a proper backstory and setting, at the moment you have perfectly fine weather, sometimes including bright blue skies, infact the place is perfectly fine for human settlement, the environment gives off no hostility whatsoever and besides other players the whole landscape is perfectly safe bar any settlements. What about possibly using color filters, fog or wind like scripts including maybe howling wind, and adjustment of contrast? It can create a much more intense environment, I did up a bit of code to create my own environmental post apocalyptic feel, including having a radioactive zone. Also the one thing DayZ really has over survival horror games which are Singleplayer, is the online part and the potential for coop, yet 90% of encounters with other players in DayZ involve shooting each other. DayZ doesn't need to become a completely friendly coop game either, the bandit types are a part of the game now, but they are too much or a part. A solution would be to have safe zones, not large ones, but large enough to allow players to meet without weapons ready, and perhaps discuss ventures between players, or trade equipment. Perhaps more cooperation could be gained out of this while still keeping bandits around. So to sum up really the main points of this, a great way to improve the game would be to create a more fearful atmosphere, possibly including new types of monsters, a better setting and harsher environment, and adding safezones to allow players to meet in a friendly way, while still keeping the bandit role a viable option, just slightly less rewarding perhaps balancing the overall system more.

Yeah the edge of the map thing would be a good idea I guess. On the safe zones topic, if there was a way to stop people from camping them say if a holster weapon system was added, if someone was seen within 500m of the site with a weapon out, they would be warned to holster it, then shot by CDF guards or something. I don't see how a couple of safe areas would destroy detract from freedom, a safe zone is not a compulsory visit, and if zombies and stuff were roaming the place and not attached to their houses, a safer area may well be appreciated by many, also a bandit may be a worse idea if the zombies were more of a threat, at the moment killing another player means loot and cool stuff, but if you were being attacked by a large creature in the forest you couldn't see, another player would be a great person to team up with, increasing your survival chances to a far higher point than what it might be with an extra couple cans of food and drink, and another weapon even though you can only use one at a time. Perhaps a more dynamic idea of allowing players to clear a town and not having zombies spawn in it, or give them the chance to build their own safe zone, might go well with a radio system in which it could broadcast their location across to everyone.

Yeah I completely agree with you.

well, having occasional examples of how things once were would certainly add to a background and atmosphere, but at the moment the only thing that this "zombie apocalypse" has brought to civilization is well... zombies, besides them everything is unchanged from say Chernarus during the Harvest Red campaign. Also music should not be relied to on too much for atmosphere, as generally it is an artificial way of doing it, not actually being in the situation. It is like saying fighting zombies at 3am with all lights off is better, it certainly makes it more frightening but the game isn't really creating all of that. A howling wind and abandoned landscape and towns certainly would give me the chills.

Banicks the AI system has been in use for 3 years, with improvements made along the way, not 5 years. Many people seem to forget the AI are made for military simulation, not zombies, so don't expect the AI to be great with zombies, as they were never designed for them. DayZ has limitations same as any other Arma 2 mod unfortunately. Also I don't see the point of a thread offering criticism, yet none of it constructive.