WBK

Guys this is a touchy subject, but after a brief look through the forums I couldn't find any in-depth examinations into just what the community's opinion on character progression is. So I thought I'd make a poll. For now I'll leave commenting open on this because I think discussion would be important. I tried to cover all the bases with my questions but there's obviously going to be a few things people feel are missing. If you think I left out an important option for one of the questions, just suggest it in the comments and I'll probably put it in. My opinion? I'll save that for later ;)

I don't see why we have to make a distinction between the two types of zombies. Sure, lurchers are more associated with the brain-dead fantasy type zombies and 'infected' zeds are more 28 Days Later-esque. But why do they have to be two completely separate entities? Put both in, with the caveat that they are all infected and not brain dead. That way there'll be at least two different ways of dealing with zeds, rather than the classic 'lure them inside then hatchet them'. Obviously in the SA the zeds won't walk indoors but if there's only one fundamental type of zed then we will quickly discover the best way of dealing with them. At least with two there's a second method you have to worry about. What should happen is that we operate under the pretense that all zeds are infected humans. Not a rage virus like 28 Days, but just an infection that makes them thirst for blood and fresh meat. Obviously like humans they have similar athletic capabilites. And like humans they still need nutrition, so it makes sense that the zeds who are better fed will be able to sprint and chase a survivor, and the ones who haven't eaten in a while are lacking in energy, just huddled in packs waiting for their next feast. They would be the lurchers. So in a high-traffic area like the major cities, the majority of the zeds will be fast running and healthy (relatively speaking), with a few pockets of lurchers), and in the smaller towns there would be pretty much a 50/50 mix. Out in the open countryside there would be huge swarms of zombies just huddled together, lurching, because they haven't eaten for days. I'm thinking in the SA also that they could code in zeds that actually need to eat, so that those that eat a body or an animal recently are the most energetic and those that haven't eaten for a while turn into lurchers.

Ok somehow I deleted the poll... awfully sorry. I'll put it back up in 18-36 hours.

Sorry about that fellas I've updated the poll, now you can be negative in all three boxes! How quaint! But anyway, Leviski that's the sort of character progression a most pro-CPers are advocating. We don't want in your face "You just levelled up!"-type nonsense. Just a subtle, behind the scenes skill boost. The main reason for doing so is purely to increase the value on a character's life, without any game-breaking lack of immersion. Personally I feel a subtle CP system is more realistic than what we have now.

And if you sail southeast in a PBX for 5 cells you'll reach AUSTRALIA!!! Where there is no infection but everything will try to kill you anyway.

This is an awesome - truly awesome - idea. I think this is something that we need more of in these forums; out of the box thinking with ideas that are limited only by our imagination, not the engine. That being said this is definitely something for consideration for DayZ 2, but nonetheless, we do need a bit more ambition in our ideas. DayZ is one of the very few games that made me think "anything is possible". We need that back. Just a question, when leaving a cell and entering another one, do you stay in the same server or switch into another one on the same hive? Not a fan of the safe idea though... EDIT: Re-read, and found the answer to my question, all good.

This all looks great! The Berezino/Krasnostav and Pobeda/Gvodzno roads cutting through the countryside are especially nice. You've obviously put thought into what path the road will take and how it will look. It looks very authentic, unlike a lot of additions people put when using the editor. Just a few suggestions which I'm only making because it looks very real to me and I think you're going for a realistic look: The small town you've made between Pobeda and Gvodzno (which is also great) I think belongs a bit deeper in the forest. If you did that then a few less people would be able to see it from the edge of the forest and it would be more of a little haven when someone is lost up north. Plus it would make encounters with other players a bit more unexpected and tense, IMO.Again with the small town, lose the large barn (I think that's what it is), it doesn't fit in there. Maybe add a few low-value residences, or possibly just leave it purely as a petrol station and convenience store - a pit stop on a journey up north back before the infection broke out.Lose the military camp next to Guba. It doesn't really fit.All just suggestions, take it or leave it :)

From what I've gathered in DayZ and the general attitude of the community, the Zeds are an entity with poor eyesight and slightly below average hearing. However, other senses play a part in animals hunting and general living habits. Obviously if a zombie is touching or tasting you it's already lights out, and they're not relevant senses beyond the confines of the physical body of the individual anyway. But what about smell? Outside of the comforts of normal life without showers and deodorant etc. people would start to stink pretty quickly. Obviously it's the hormones and such that the zombies would pick up on, but I'm using smell as a cover all. Also, blood has a very distinct scent to predator animals like sharks and so on, so bleeding would greatly increase the 'smell-o-meter'. I'm thinking that it acts like a timed meter, much in the same way the food and drink systems work, albeit it grows with time rather than diminishes. Physical activities like running, sprinting, or bike riding will make it increase faster, sitting/resting (at tent) would make it not grow or perhaps even slowly diminish it. Being engaged in a tense situation for a long time - being in combat, being around zeds, having low health for a long time, etc. - would also make it rise. Bleeding would make it immediately increase, and bandaging a wound would slowly decrease it to pre-bleeding levels. Possible countermeasures would include bathing in lakes (which would make people head inland a little more often too), washing in the rain, applying a masking agent (like deodorant), rolling around in mud (you might stink but it would block the scent of hormones - might also need a negative consequence for doing this otherwise it would just be a quick action to do everytime) and so on. It would require the need for a few more items, soap and deodorant for starters, maybe more. Using the old 5 bar system of sight and sound meters, I imagine that the highest the meter would go without bleeding is 3 bars, light bleeding automatically takes it to 3 and slowly drives it up to 5, heavy bleeding starts it at 4 and quickly goes to 5. I think that this would be good because it adds another aspect to dodging zeds. I mean, you might be hidden, immobile and not making a noise, but if you are bleeding, every zed within a 50 metre radius is gonna get a whiff! As always, I'd love to hear any thoughts, suggestions and criticisms.

This belongs in the Private Hive forum. EDIT: Doesn't stuff about non-vanilla DayZ go in the Private Hive discussion? I seem to recall that somewhere...

Bump.

DayZ is infected. It has 3000 blood. It'll die soon. Liek this if u want Daisy 2 liv. 1 liek = 1 antebiotic.

Fairly accurate comparison, and the performance boost alone in DayZero (DZ) almost makes it worth it. However, DZ seems to be more PvP oriented to me, especially since it adds quite a few military spawn sites. Loot in general is easier to get in DZ, I find. So despite the polish of it I stuck with vanilla in the end. I would say objectively DZ is superior, and I don't intend any disrespect to R4Z0R and the team, but seeing as DZ aims to be a polished version of vanilla and updates itself after vanilla with several tweaks you would hope it would be. But for pure enjoyment and gameplay experience I cannot go past vanilla, it is simply the truest representation of what DayZ was intended to be.

WBK is short for William Butler Keats, which is a reference to the poet W.B. Yeats. The pronunciation is different, but hey... it's only a username. I changed it to Keats because it's a bastardisation of part of my name. I thought it kind of sounds cool and I decided if I ever have a rap career that would be my name because I am a poet and a wordsmith. I do not intend to have a rap career, but always plan ahead, kids!

I personally favour a less harsh approach to combat loggers. Killing them is far too much of a penalty. Just strip them of their gear. Make it magically fall on to the ground in say, a 20 foot radius? From then on an AI controlled clone will replace them, and it opens up a new list of commands for the kidnapper, i.e. 'walk 5/10/20 paces ahead/behind' 'stay' etc., all of which are followed by the AI clone 100% of the time. If the hostage-taker decides to let them go, they run/walk/crawl in a random direction for 30 seconds before disappearing. I see only benefits here: The hostage is still alive (yay!)The hostage taker gets whatever gear they desire, without having to kill the player for it thus removing any degradationThe hostage taker can do whatever they want with the hostage. Maybe use them as cover or bait when scouting an area. Or maybe just fulfill all of your sadistic tendencies on them. The choice is yours.If you are of the sadistic persuasion, you can break their legs, lower their blood, and set them free so that when they log on next time, they are not at the beach with full health, but in the middle of nowhere with no health, no use of their legs, and no easy way to die soon.If you are a kind bandit, you can give them some of their gear back and let them go, so when they log back on it's simply as if you knocked them out for a while and have no memory of what happened.My favourite aspect of this is that the players who love KoS cannot stand being out of control for one second - which is why they always choose a gunfight when ambushed. That way they either die or live, but aren't in the hands of another person. This way, it won't make much difference, i.e. they'll still be going for the gunfight if they think they're about to be kidnapped, but those who are hopeless will try and find ways of actively killing themselves just so they can respawn on the beach, as opposed to being stranded near *shudder* Guglovo. My 2 cents.

Sorry I took a while to reply to this, it's an interesting conversation and a good dissertation. I just had a couple of months off from DayZ though. When you made this argument I was trying to look at it from a real world perspective, as opposed to the DayZ perspective, so that accounts for a lot of differences in our opinion. Based around that definition of morality, I agree with pretty much everything that follows. While I agree with what you say when you make it from your POV, I can't take empathy and mutual survival out of the equation in a real world scenario. Also, continuation of the human race is ingrained in us, like it is every living species, so that is always a factor. But seeing as you were talking about it from a DayZ scenario rather than real world, I'll let that argument go haha. Yeah no arguments here. As a lone wolf it is better to stay a lone wolf. Baggage is baggage. The point I was making was that there is no coincidence that every civilisation - and by proxy every human - feels that there is something deeply wrong with killing another human. There doesn't need to be a civilisation to enforce those rules, people will not kill people without provocation. It's as simple as that. Rules get thrown out the window during an apocalypse because it is completely unlike anything experienced IRL. But morals do not. People will still feel bad for killing another person. It will take time to adjust to killing people, and the repetetive act of doing so will only numb the persons emotional response as a defense mechanism. People don't kill other people easily, and they feel horrible for doing it. That will never change. Admittedly, this is a case of a real-world argument vs. a DayZ argument but I felt that this was a large enough part of what I was saying to justify it. I agree it is the right and rational thing to do because it ensures your survival, but that doesn't make it morally sound. Obviously we have slightly differing views on the definition of morality but it's where most of our disagreement lies! As far as I can tell, you define morals as 'what is the most logical thing to do in a given situation?' whereas I define it more as 'a code that humans live by'. Your way defines morals as absolute and unbreakable. Mine allows for morals to be broken in terms of behaviour, but someone will kill someone and still feel bad, because their morals tell them it's wrong. It's a wonky argument but I hope it's clear enough :)

Yeah good point, I did completely overlook that detail making that comparison. While I think that a zed is just an infected human and their overall sensual capacities remain the same as any other human, they live for one purpose and only care about one thing: blood. So their senses would slowly but surely hone in on locating sources of fresh blood. And seeing as they have shitty vision and less than great hearing, I'm imagining (purely poetic license, but let me have my moment) that their sense of smell would become dominant and in turn, superior to normal humans - at least in recognising the scent of blood and/or uninfected human hormones and general odour.

Because people who are against looting their own body are often also against using 3rd party VoIP. It's not a double standard if we want them both gone.

If you play on a server with clans or groups, they will obviously have the ability to find and maintain all the best gear. And the people who aren't in those groups either fight amongst themselves or make it their mission to annoy the hell out of the clans. I am one such of the latter. This. Especially if you play on a monitored private hive there will almost definitely no chance of hacking, so it is wise to remember that those who don't belong to a group on your server often want to bring you guys down a notch. It doesn't take long to find out that most hiding spots are in the north or west boundaries of the map, and the rest are near obscure landmarks in the middle of it. So we take your shit to make your DayZ life just a teensy bit harder. Why on earth does a lone wolf need a helicopter? They don't, but the gear in it will be nice and then they'll take off and crash it so you pricks in clans have to do it all over again. It's the cycle of life, my friend.

Yeah thanks for the feedback. I agree that the zeds are just infected humans, and comparing them to predators like sharks was a bit of a stretch. And yeah the zeds would stink like all get out. But we all agree that zeds don't eat each other because they don't like infected blood. Seeing as they're dumbed down humans with one goal (eat meat), I don't think they're using their eyes to discern that we are meat because that requires conscious thought, i.e. "that person looks relatively clean and isn't spewing blood left right and centre so they must be fresh meat!", and they certainly aren't using their ears to decide that we are tasty. So I think they can smell something different in human blood and infected blood, and following on from that they can also tell the difference between human hormones and infected hormones. Just my take on it. I did love the 'shitting' quote though haha, I woke up my housemate laughing :lol:

I dunno about up in Brissy, but in Melbourne the NZ servers have pretty much identical ping to AU ones. I could recommend Snap DayZ, which is a kiwi server. It's a fairly PvP oriented server with two or three clans fighting each other a lot, but I enjoyed being a lone wolf on it. It's really well maintained and administrated too. I don't play it anymore because it's a bit too PvP for me now, but it has a very good community, updated frequently and great antihax. Their FB page is: /SnapDayz?fref=ts if you wanna check it out. The server IP is: 111.69.54.46:2302 They've also got a Namalsk server, an Origins server, an Overwatch server, and soon to have an Epoch server.

Seconded. I mean it's not bad, they've made some nice additions for both gameplay and performance, but it is definitely more of a PvP style mod than Vanilla. I haven't given the others enough of a go to review though.

Server load permitting, this has to be implemented. Brilliant idea Mr. Planck. A dream list would involve seasonal variation and a living breathing ecosystem that removed the need for manufactured ambient noises, but I don't think that's happening anytime soon. Larger attention paid to wildlife though would be great. I mean even now I hatchet a cow and the bugger saunters off casually. Adding in birds that are more than glorified sprites - even a singular generic species - would be great for seeing them react to gunshots and whatnot. Also because they're quite cautious and have that 360 degree vision they would be quite a good indicator of general disturbance. I mean if we're being serious, in a survival situation you'd utilise and rely on the environment as much as your own senses. You'd see a bird fly off and wonder "is that just a coincidence or did they see something?" A genuine wind system would be great, because it would not only create different noises at different speeds, but also enable swinging, banging doors and gates, and limbs falling off trees as well as dozens of other scenarios. Plus it would at a whole new aspect to shooting people, especially from range. Crickets, insects and other animals need to at least be heard also. Although mosquitoes are bad enough, we don't need zombie mosquitoes... I have heaps of other ideas but this is the crux of it. Again Max, great suggestion and I think the atmosphere of DayZ is something that is overlooked too often when considering gameplay improvements.

Haha each to their own. I did die from a glitch once so I was super happy to get back to my body in time. But seeing as the server won't be able to discern whether you die from a glitch or a genuine death, I'd rather a blanket 'no loot for you' as opposed to 'come get it if you've got the time'.

Yeah seeing as perma-death is one of the main features it's a bit ridiculous. I have looted my own body in the past, but it feels hollow and it makes you value your characters life less. I'd like to see something like an item tagger that associates items with the person who dies and so they can't use any of those items again, even if their friends pick them up for use later. Other than that I really liked the idea of zeds and wild animals ravaging the dead bodies.

You've enticed me out of hibernation Airborne. Damn you. Damn you to hell! A plague o' both your houses! Now that I've got that out of my system... DayZ is riddled with KoS. Do I like it? No. However, something to be aware of is the simple fact that every single fps regresses towards KoS, regardless of - and sometimes due to - forced countermeasures. You could make a claim that DayZ defies traditional fps boundaries, and it does, but at its core it is a survival game and guns are a core aspect. I'm not saying that DayZ will forever have KoS and we should just accept that and move on. But banditry and honourable banditry (robbing w/o killing etc.) are essential aspects of DayZ. Should there be - as you say - a 95% KoS ratio? No, but as anyone I'm sure will agree a healthy ratio of KoS makes the game better. Without it, there would be no point being a hero. If everyone only kills people who are a distinct threat to them, then everyone would just learn not to be threatening and DayZ would be a happy land with rainbows and smiles and no one would play. As for actual suggestions as opposed to commentary, humanity is flawed. It creates as many problems as it solves - arguably more - but when it comes down to it, it's plain unrealistic and quite immersion breaking IMO. Let someone's observable actions determine how you perceive them, not some piece of clothing. It's a bullshit system and one of the few things I hate about DayZ. Going back to how I said countermeasures to KoS can actually induce it, the only plausible suggestion I can make is to strip back DayZ, and make it more about survival. Make the zombies tougher. Remove high-end weaponry, or at least severely limit how many there are on the map. Remove helicopters. Lower ammo spawn rates. These suggestions probably won't be popular, and too much change will destroy DayZ's popularity (personally I would rather a game that catered to my niche but let's be honest DayZ would be nowhere without the huge community that loves it so let's not alienate the majority too much). But I think this is the general direction it should go. As someone said - I think applejaxc - I would also love to see TS, Skype etc. blocked, but that won't happen. So these are the general ideas that would make it better. Also dude, stop with the constant references to WarZ. It's like you want people to hate you.