oompah

solid work , beans

gotta leave third person in, it's just a more fun play style regardless of immersion

the game doesn't need to be hard... so you need other people to survive, the game needs to be hard so you take surviving seriously enough to want to not have to respawn. The game becomes a deathmatch moreso because respawning isn't really much of a penalty; just a minor inconvenience. So players are very careless about getting into shoot-outs. If survivng had a bit more to it players would be very leary about putting themselves intoa situation where there might be a confrontation. This also adds greatly to the inevitable player vs player confrontation. When i first played Dayz seeing another player literally skyrocketed my heart rate, now it's like "oh well should I kill this dude or not"

looting a dead body is such a fun part of the game though, like opening a gift on christmas morning. Would hate to see that changed. There must be a good way to organically promote cooperation and team work without building in penalties and such

You have to make the choice of deciding to shoot a player impactful. If I shoot this player (who is not a bandit) the result is punative for me, maybe I lose X,Y, and Z - which makes surviving much harder for me How to go about this? I mentioned the safe zone thing, where bandits don't get access to certain helpful zones that have resources. I don't know if I like that idea in practice, but the concept might work. I shoot people on sight a lot just because I don't want them shooting me first - that really sucks. I don't even mind bandits in the game, I think that's awesome. I hate being forced into a bad situation though because ultimately I simply can't take any chances and there is no penalty killing a guy before he kills you. No one should be an accidental bandit, it should be a choice and i think bandits would actualyl enjoy the extra challenge of being "penalized" - making their sort of badge of honor that more meaningful for them. One area though you would have to resolve is killing a person in self defense. If the game could know you were shot at first by a player you killed you shouldnt become a bandit for that, especially if being a bandit become a more challenging way to play.

re: Frankie's comments on KoS I agree with him, the first month or so of discovering Dayz was awesome - this of course was when players would have a tendency to be friendly and team up to survive, at least more so than now. The reason is pretty easy to understand, once a player learns the game very well the entire process of surviving becomes streamlined/optimized so dying isn't a big deal, so you play the game more like a PvP deathmatch than a survival sim. I can't see anyway around this in the SA. If you make surviving too daunting a task then new players will be put off and quit playing and even seasoned players will get frustrated with the process. There is so much to do in the game: fix vehicles, find gear, explore, make friends, make enemies, survive (food, water, etc...) etc... If you make the game so that any one part becomes to daunting then you take away from all the other aspects. For instance if you want to hop on and try to get a car working, well that by itself can be a 2 or 3 hour ordeal, couple that with getting infected constantly or blinking for food every 5 minutes you are not going to end up with a fun experience. The main threat should always been other humans, zombies and survival secondary - however that is just my opinion. So how do you make the SA not ultimately turn into a KoS game and also not water down the fun parts with too big of an emphasis on just surviving? The solution is to punish players for being bandits or reward players for being heroes/survivors It's hard to do that organically, the only way to do it that I can think of is to use some immersion breaking mechanic. Such as having safe zones in the game where heroes/survivors can freely share resources, players could also game plan how to go get a bandit, share information on what they've encountered etc... (or something like that) and these areas would have to be off limits to bandits. Need a bloodbag? Try to make it to pusta, a town for survivors only, see if anyone ise there to help you. need a bloodbag and you are a bandit you are SOL, good luck. I dunno, but it does seem important to somehow draw a better line between bandits and survivors so the game just doesn't become a deathmatch session.

link goes to a blank page now; it used to be a good place to check out new info. So, what's the deal?

ok then so what is the latest news? lol

all for notes (or being able to write on walls or whatever), that would be AWESOME

as long as it was a very simple add to gameplay I'd say hell yes add some ropes

I've been having this debate with a few fellow survivors and it's been spirited. What are the general thoughts of having locks and keys in the game (or something similiar locks-combinations, whatever) these items would have to be instance specific, like tents and cars. The idea would be to allow these items to be found in pairs, spawned in randomly and rarely, and work exclusively together. This is how the mechanic would work. Locks could be used to lock buildings or rooms inside of buildings. The door then could only be opened with the key (silently) or by breaking the lock. Possibly an axe or a crowbar could be used to break the lock. The process of breaking the lock would destroy or have a chance to destroy the axe or crowbar and would be very loud and take a little time to do, attracting both zeds and players. Since buildings are typically in open areas this high profile action would put the player at risk and would even probably encourage trying a break in at night. Imagine cresting a hill and hearing a banging sound coming from a small group of houses in the distance - would be the similiar thrill to hearing gun shots. Since axes serve many purposes like chopping wood and melee fighting, if they became a bit more rare and could be destroyed while breaking a lock it would put a little more empahsis on the decision to try to break a lock. Players then could use buildings as outposts / camps - possibly even coordinated clans would patrol their area. The ability to store large amounts of supplies would entice rogue players to try to break into buildings that are visibly locked (and that would have to have high readability - seeing a lock on a door). Is there a refrigerator full of cooked meat and water inside? Logisitcs items inside - maps, compasses, radios? is there a cache of guns and ammo? Plyers storing notes and sharing raid schedules? Would the building 'owner' be smart enough to store items out of view of the windows? What if you found a key on a body? Could you use the new fingerprinting system to try to track the players movements to locate a possible base camp? Would word spead that the [akm] clan players have a base in vybor? Would they be stalked for their keys? Would players use the new radio system to ask for any info about the player whose body had the key saying they would split the bounty if some assisted on a building location? It would work best if the game would randomly spawn in locked building too that were more or less red herrings - keep it rare and unusual - maybe along the lines of crash site occurences. I would add that the owner of a lock and key combo could deploy the lock and also remove it and put it back in their inventory to use it an a different door if so desired. Would this add immersion and a new aspect of dicovery and exploration? Would this be better than tents? Would more players take more chances by using buildings more? Would that add to player interaction (which to me the game is all about)? Would rumors spread on the server about a locked building up north, giving players more quests? Would seldom explored areas suddenly become more important? thoughts? Most people I have talked to don't like the idea. I guess I was a bit surprised. I know there would be some server ID issues but I think think the idea wouldn't be terribly hard to implement and as long as breaking the lock was possible (if not a bit risky) any issue with the key being lost wouldn't be a deal breaker for the idea. Might be best to have they matching key be destoryed also when a lock is broken to avoid a flood of keys.

thing is you can't base game mechanics on complete realism, as if having a toolbox would allow you to fix a helicopter rotor assembly or a car engine. What about a lift to get the engine block out? So I just hate the "realism argument" They key/lock thing would only work if windows couldn't be entered and I hate to add too many barricade mechanics and if breaking them with an axe ran a high risk of breaking the axe. These ideas should be simple and pack some fun. The key/lock idea would be simple, not necessary (so those who don't like it can ignore it) and pack some good fun into the story telling part of the game, which imo is the best part of Dayz.

you'd probably have to have a limited amount of keys + locks per server say maybe 50 total, each with a matching ID (1 through 50) and when a lock would get destroyed, or lost, or a key lost (possibly it was in a car's gear when it exploded) all keys/locsk with that ID would have to be destroyed - just to keep down confusion and make sure finding a kwy would be meaningful. I still think overall the addition would add immersion, add to tension and create new sub quests in the end adding a new layer to "your story"

in the mod there are many places windows can be shot out, the hospital allows you to enter via a broken window. i think you cna vault through other broken windows, however that might not be by design

in the SA are there plans to have general buildings be able to be entered through a broken window? Would be interesting, should the lock and key idea ever be pursued to think about adding garages next to buildings and allowing a player to hide a car away and lock the garage. Again there would have to be a certain amount of false locked doors/garages (possibly spawned in by the game) to ensure a locked area isn't a guarantee to finding anything valuable, and the process of breaking a lock would have to be a bit risky, loud and time consuming, almost to the point where you'd nearly need two people to pull it off (one to cover the locksmith while he hacks away at it) - and at the cost of the item you are using (axe or crowbar) - so you couldn't just use one axe to break 10 locks, the axe would have a hgih probably of breaking itself during or after the process.

lol I guess I should have asked "has this been thought of before?" - it's no revolutionary idea and I suppose it's probably already been suggested. But I had a good strong cup of coffe this AM and felt the urge to post it. I did a quick google on Epoch, i see it's a mod for the the dayz mod also - they do locks and keys there? How does it work? Can you break them?

have they gotten to feature set lock yet? If they have definitely locked the features they want to "launch" with and are just making them work and tweaking/optimizing them (assuming the features are largely coded) my guess would be we could see the first public release within the next 6 months. This also assumes no scope creep.

I hate posted "hey wouldn't this be a cool idea" topics in here, sif the devs aren't killing themselves as is. But I will anyway. I don't like in the mod how these little out crops of houses are of almost no value, you can't enter them, they usualy have a few zeds lurking so they serve no real purpose. How about allowing players to use these buildings as loot stashes and be able to lock the door (locks would have to be items found in game). Perhaps random buildings would be locked and you would not know which ones were player stashes and which ones were spawned in locked. Locks could possibly be hacked off with an axe (maybe that would also destroy the axe?) and the noise would bring a swarm in on you. I dunno, I've always wanted to bust into a little building and find out the farmer who lives their had a stash of weapons hidden inside - would be cool to apply that theme to the SA and also make searching those little hidden outpots of building worthwhile

would be cool to have locks associated with keys and then killing a guy for his key or finding a key on a body and wondering if it's worth trying to find the lock. Would be an interesting new mechanism to see a guy locking a building then stalking him to get the key off of him then go loot his building. I'm all in for more immersion and adventure

would be cool to bust into an old locked shed if you had an axe and kick out a floorboard to reveal and cellar full of guns and ammo. Would be interesting to have the ability to leave notes behind (take a gun leave a gun - we catch you we shoot you) - stuff like that. I dunno would add to the story line for me. And if hacking off a lock did break an axe (and make a lot of noise) you'd have to selective in how you used your axe.

I really like this discussion. I think there are a few viewpoints to take on this, I dunno who is right. on one hand you want zombies to be real viable forces that you need to burn up resources to deal with. However with how big and open the world is and when played in a true survival mode (not a server with 500 fully working vehicles) - you are asking an awful lot from a player in terms of committment (time and energy) when you make it extremely difficult to get loot. If it takes 20 hours to get the parts you need to get a car working because zombies are so hard to deal with I don't know who you are appealing to (especially when you factor in human encounters). I only have a few hours a week to play, the most recent core patch made it so hard to get started - zombies were knocking me down constantly, infecting me, it wasn't that much fun. If I had more time maybe but it's asking alot. On the other hand if you make zombies weak and they basically just become background noise then why even have them. And why even have them is a good question. Would Dayz be just as good without zombies and just humans. I think you have a pretty good argument from some that it would be. I think to some the biggest benefit you get from zombies is how they alert you to other humans, that mechanism could easily be done in other ways. To some, a 20 hour gaming session where you are crawling past zombies is fun, to others it's tedious.

I have no idea how I did this but Dayz starts (using Dayz Commander) windowized now, I looked in the Dayz Commander settings and start windowized is not checked. How on earth did i do this and how do I change it back? Thanks gents...

beans to you

I think the dev team is thinking about having zombies knock you off balance or over and stuff like that as opposed to just running up and punching you. Didn't we hear that in a blog post or video once? I agree adding some balance physics to running around zombie mobs would be pretty cool. Then again remember the stated goal (for the first open release) is for environment interaction immersion, and not so much physics or even graphics. Once the service release hits and the game opens up and revenue builds and the team gets more time I believe they have stated they have all kinds of plans to improve the game, so I suppose the options are wait another two years and have the team build in all the features we want and improve upon the ones that need some work, or get the game soon and know they are committed to an iterative, continuous improvement approach.

I've been in two high profile alphas in the past year (one game got sort of canceled, the other is closing in on a service release, using the same model here, like minecraft) The Dayz approach has been pretty interesting, although I'm not in the alpha here, I am surprised at how open the dev team is to showing raw footage. The community here should be reminded of what that means, you're not getting "tweaked" PR snapshot videos of set peice builds all polished up. The guys have been, at least to date, pretty honest about the process. It's raw, it will take a while and their focus is on environment interaction immersion and new functionality (all built totally from the ground up in the new client/server MMO architecture) - not graphics or physics realism. Not sure why some of you get hung up on that. The team also seems to say that in enough time with enough dev progression they will improve those areas (better animations, etc...) but right now, espeically at their first public release those areas won't be a high priority. Think of their progress to date and it's kind of amazing gone from a mostly non supported arma 2 mod to a brand new engine (yes they have said it is basically a brand new engine, and it had to be since arma never supported the MMO style archicteture) redeveloped the entire 225 km world made 90% of the building enterable re coded the zombies (including animations) added new major functionality (crafting, stances, weapon facing rules, shoot while moving) brand new parts, like volumetric clouds overhual of the inventory system supporting 150 players per instance Those are just a few examples of probably hundreds all with ongoing QA with evolving builds, stress tests, private alpha testing, marketing and PR you have to step back and thing how much has been accomplished and how open the team has been, it's quite an achievement thus far.