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If you're desperate, something that looks like it could shoot you is still useful. Just having something threatening in your hand can give you an extra second to escape or gain a momentary advantage over someone. I wouldn't recommend making them too common, just so people don't expect the bluff all the time, and many of them should have passing resemblance to actual guns if they're not straight replicas. Toys could be found in homes or cars, and the DayZ equivalent of vendor trash in barns or deer stands. Junked guns could also be melted down whenever that becomes a thing. I'd like to see things like: - Rusted out service pistols - Guns missing triggers or cylinders - Cracked chambers, etc. - Brightly colored plastic guns (Can spraypaint black) - Cap guns (Sounds a little like a .22, useful for signaling or distracting) See Airheads, the robbery from Bandits, or the Father's revolver with wooden bullets in The Road for examples of how these types of items would be useful.

I'm surprised nobody mentions Snake Eater's medical system when this comes up. That seems like a good basis for DZ, I loved it.

NOT YUCKY D:

The game doesn't punish you for not killing everyone on sight. People do. DZ is the *least* restrictive game when it comes to player behavior. It sounds to me like you need to step up your control game and keep your head down.

Contradictory accounts are a great idea. The confusion allows for a lot of headcanon, gets folks interested in finding out for themselves. This is also intriguing! An item set-dependent unique spawn with randomized references to specific towns or landmarks could be a HUGE motivation for exploration and group play. You never know when you're going to run across the final piece, and have to rush as fast as you can to the final spot before Johnny Newspawn happens upon it.

Says who? Humans are animals.

I'm basically hardwired to give people the benefit of the doubt and be trusting, so DZ helps me practice my 'Waitaminute' reflex. It also helps with indecisiveness. Can't muck about if you want to live a long time.

Reinforcing clothing is an excellent suggestion. I'm also in love with the leather ammo carrier. Being able to store a bit of ammo in a slot attached to your rifle would be heaven.

Hicks is my spirit animal. Whenever I have a vision quest, he appears on wings made of baked beans, his face wreathed in a glowing halo of 9V batteries.

Burying the dead is a good idea, but preventing looting with a pile of rocks seems arbitrary. Not that you shouldn't be able to use rocks, but if you wanted to send your comrade off with their gear a proper pyre would be better. Better still if you could build a pyre on a dinghy and send them out to sea. [Edit: Or in a car. Filled with explosives. Straight into a rival base.] Burying your friends is huge. I really want to see it included, leaving them dead in the street to be eaten or looted is no way to go.

Hey, the GAZ Volga is mentioned in the new status report. :D Jesus, it's like a VW bug and a dump truck had a baby and fed it steroids. I WANT IT.

Cooking via stick! Stamina! More vehicles! Parade!

Remember that if we could rotate items, you could fit a full-size rifle in any bag bigger than a Taloon. It'll require you to stop and pull off your bag before accessing it in order to keep people from quick-drawing their secret AKM while at a full run.

It doesn't have ear lumps! It's like a stubby mushroom cap.

Having belts as a counts-as vest is a neat idea, at least until the inventory/clothing system gets fleshed out. I would prefer to have both belts and vests for obvious reasons. You hit the nail on the head about cookie-cutter appearances, and I like this as a way to add variety, not to mention a place to put all the damn tools we have to lug around.

Do you remember the NYC Blackout of 1977? That was just a power outage. For ONE DAY. Imagine losing ALL of your infrastructure AND your neighbors are trying to eat you. Forever. Living takes precedence over morality, I'm afraid.

That settles it, I love this idea. +1 canopener. CLE really turned everything on its head, and I'm so glad for it. Also, I thought you were talking about NWAF specifically when you mentioned 'coast -> NW' in the OP. Got it now.

I'm not sure I can get behind this 100%, though I do want to see features that take into account your mental state (Things like night terrors when you 'wake up' from being logged out). Penalizing players for some of the things you listed fall under the category of 'influencing play styles', something the Devs will absolutely not do. I think morale and your mental faculty is something best kept in your head, rather than a game feature.

That's an interesting idea. A couple thoughts: Now that we have CLE, there is no more coast-to-airfield beeline. Anything can spawn anywhere there aren't players (Though I'm certain this will be reworked several times before release). Setting everyone on the server to spawn in a single loot-laden area could spark a panicked mini-deathmatch as they scramble to grab it all up and respawn in the same place until all the loot is gone and it starts again in a different spot. Then again, this might only be a problem in ultra-high population servers, and it's certainly arguable that this isn't really a problem at all. It gets you bumping into people and can increase the likelihood that groups of friends start closer to each other without implementing some silly clan spawn beacon shenanigans. Really, the more I think about it, the more I like it. Interested to see this discussed.

Everybody shut up. Nanomachines.

It's already established that players are immune to the infection, but it would be cool to see infected that have a backpack or other goods, like they dodged the outbreak for a little while longer than everyone else before succumbing to it.

Whoa, really? That's awesome!

That's true, I hadn't considered the server load, but they don't have to be common. I'd just like them to be included.

Realistic expectations of the game's current state. Not related to potential development. Referring to the OP: Judgement like this is fine if you're critiquing a game you bought at the store after a full closed development cycle. DZ works differently, being open to anyone who wants to buy in. The entire point of making it EA is to bring in the biggest team of alpha testers ever. It worked for Minecraft, and it's working here. The game will be broken by full release standards. It will do things that would get complete games pulled from stores and the developers shamed. But that's how alpha builds are, and it won't be that way forever. Alpha testers need to criticize their game, but as a work in progress. Zombies are changing, food/health is changing, durability is changing. Dump on the game when it's done.

I want to go have a drink with my son. I also want to take him shooting, work on my car with him, and see him graduate college. But he's three. So I don't judge him based on these wants. You know DZ is in alpha development. It's still growing and going through drastic changes while all the final bits are developed and put together. If you want to talk about realism, let's talk about realistic expectations. Things like balance and optimization come later on.