Jex

Movement speed in the MOD was slower than what we have now and my mate and I would jog, not sprint around because the slower you're moving, the more you see. All my replies in this thread have been about making the game better in regards to hiding things as well as pointing out the flaws from the old game to show what was going on back then. Slowing people down isn't going to help at all I'm afraid. To have an effective, the only really effective thing they can do is increase the vegetation and draw distance of it. Someone mentioned limiting the draw distance of tents which I also thought of and like that person went on to say, I also think it's the worst idea but might be the only option we have. To bring the point home, I'll recount experiences in one summary. You might start up the west side of the map. You spread out and just head due north. given the lack of vegetation it's easy to see things. Back then my old laptop was so bad I had to play in low graphics. This makes it even easier to spot things and all you're looking for is a straight line or a different colour which is the easiest thing to spot in the world in arma. So you just carry on and every single time we would find something. A bike, a car, some tents, a chopper....we always came away with something. The other game we played was "Let's look at that!" so we'd be running as a group and someone would say, "That looks like a good place to set a tent" - low and behold - we found a tent almost every single time we looked. Try to picture up north before the airfield. Things flatten out, fields are all over the place. When you're running through it, look around and ask yourself, "where would I put a tent?" You look around, you spot a clump of bushes - that's where camp hunters look. Every clump, every rock and everywhere the draw distance fails the guy trying to hide his shit. What's slightly more aggravating than having your stuff stolen? Being a camp hunter and having your stash found LOL. When you are hunting camps it just pisses you off because you know you have very few places to hide things. It really becomes apparent when you start looking as a regular part of your gameplay. So when normal players are thinking they found a cool spot to hide their shit, they most likely haven't because they haven't experienced the hunting side of it. When you do that, it exposes the map and how small it actually is. There were a few places we found that nobody else did but they were very few and far between. Other people found places too. My advice right now would be use the big cities. Get a barrel and stash it in a building among all the other buildings and be clever where you put it. Remember, 3rd person servers are harder to hide your stuff in ;)

Not sure if this is true but if it is, it's bollocks. Accidents happen when I fall off a roof. I don't need the game dictating additional accidents thanks. This accident thing would be fine if it happened when you were running around and being careless but I'm going to assume that's not the case?

You can be with the only other person on the server and the regularity that you cross each others paths is spooky. Never assume a low server population means you are safe. Countless times my mate and I have seen people, killed them, got killed by them when there were only 3 people on the server and not always at the hot spots.

You're shitting me! FFS is this true? If so might as well make the fucking things spawn in and save the server processes since it's pointless having the zeds there before a player gets there. The whole reason they were put in everywhere I thought was to stop the very thing you're talking about. In the MOD, the zeds would spawn in when a player got near so all you had to do before going into a town was to look at it from a hill and see if you could see zeds. If yes, you knew a player was there. If you had mates, you could coordinate your guys to go get him, easy peasy. Having zeds stationary until you're 600m out then suddenly walking just tells anyone looking "oh there's a player over there" and we're practically back at square one.

NOPE! ;)

If that was the case, how is it the MOD worked so well on the same sized map? Players still spawned along the coast though but you're correct about the spawns - they should be all over the map. The other thing they desperately need to add are POINTS OF INTEREST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! People aren't interested in copy and paste towns. They're good for finding loot but boring. I've mentioned this before but going back to the MOD, the map was more limited which probably increased player interactions. The stores were always areas you needed to be careful in the MOD. Now they're crap and have as much gear as anywhere else so not as important as they used to be. With points of interest they should really go to town with them. This could be anything along the lines of Creepy Carnival The Farm (fields of sweetcorn, big farm house, etc Better castles. - sorry, but copying the same tower is frikkin lazy. You go to one castle you've been to the all. More enterable areas, more ramparts and battlements etc. Not this half arsed lazy attempt in boring. It should be fun to explore and easy to defend. Also, each one of them should be unique so they all feel different. If you want help, look at the UK's castles for ideas. The laboratory - speaks for itself but it'll have all those sealed labs and elevators that take you 3 stories underground - think Umbrella Corp The Camp Site - make a dedicated campsite with tents that are broken and ripped, a pushed over truck - make it so it looks like the campers were over run by zeds Whatever - it doesn't matter what these POI's are but having them would give players places to go and see and loot and increase the chance of interaction. Personally, I love the idea of battling it out on a castle. Shooting from the battlements and in the tunnels, corridors.... I'm the King of the Castle Dover Castle, Kent. Here are some pics of it's tunnels, imagine fighting in these....

Camo netting is useless. They had it in the mod and like I've already said, outside 100m the thing is bigger than your tent and the wrong colour and angular and sticks out like a sore thumb on a sore thumb lol.

Nope - the people you are thinking of that won't find camps easily are the people that don't going looking for them. One of the things my friend and I loved to do in the mod was specifically go looking for hidden items. It was a fun challenge and we got to roam about the map most people never venture and we always found things. We weer not alone. Many people will go out there way to find the stuff you think you've hidden and whilst the map might seem large to us, I can tell you now that the map is tiny having spent 2 years doing this. It's tiny because once you start looking, you figure out all the limited areas on the map you can actually make a camp. You know which routes to take that give you the best viewing area. This is made easy because as everyone knows here, looking into a forest from a few hundred yards away is so easy it's ridiculous. People who say the map is huge don't go wandering about it. To put it into perspective, lets say that there are only 20 spots you can really hide something on the map. How long do you think it'll take for people to find that out. You might think of a great spot that you see on the map only to get there to find someone already put a tent up. That happened loads of times in the mod with us. Once all the good spots are known about, nobody puts their stuff there so what do they do? They put them in rocks and I can't blame anyone for doing that. If the devs could find a way to render forests from miles out with all their vegetation then you are in with a chance. If they could achieve that you would cut the head off the camp hunters as they would then have to increase their search times ten fold.

It was mentioned over and over again that increasing the towns all over the map left nothing for bases. Even the old map on the MOD had few places to put anything because of the way the graphics work. Stand a 100m from a forest and you can see everything inside thew forest. Tents practically glowed and hiding tents underwater became a good place to stash your things. Then they introduced stashes which were the best way to conceal things - the should bring those back (along with the underground bases we can make - has anyone heard anything about those or are we just forgetting that now?) They might not want you glitching things into rocks or water but that's not the players fault. If the game could show more vegetation, have better options for stashing gear. Let's face it, if we all wanted to hide something that nobody else would find it wouldn't be too hard, would it. In DayZ, you can't have a camp because the moment you make one, it'll be discovered, especially in DayZ given the current graphical issues it has. The other and most glaring issue is you can't have a camp because there's no map left to put one in unless you want your camp ransacked over and over again. They need to give us small, camouflaged tents and bring back stashes at a minimum. The barrel thing is asinine.

I guess if you woke up whilst they were teabagging you and you chewed and swallowed the scream, I reckon, Would be heard from Cherno all the way up to the NWAF.

Love it OP great story!

This has been discussed before but time to bring it up again with a few maybe new ideas. Human beings cannot 720 in a millisecond. The human body can only move so fast and is not immune for momentum. I don't know a single game that even bothers to approximate this and the reason for that is that it would probably feel completely alien to everyone who have been brought up on unrealistic "twitch shooters" Running should be re-engineered to fit closer to how the human body works in the real world and really by now, game developers should be working on the Human Body Engine v1.0 (or whatever they want to call it). What this engine would do is the following type of things. - It would put everyone on exactly the same playing field much like FPS's do today. It might be worth adding in variables but that would be for niche products. Everyone needs to be on a level playing field as far as your AV moves in it's environment. - Whilst moving around the world, the body would act realistically and interact realistically. You run into a tree at full sprint (Something we've all done in DayZ) you're going to hurt yourself if you have no head protection. Your head will move independently from your body (like we have currently). You will turn like a human being and not like some mutated ninja which means if you're sprinting one direction you cannot immediately turn and sprint the other way. Turning, as in rotating yourself will depend on the state of your body. If you're standing still it would be fast. If you're sprinting your ability to turn would be hampered. All times and motions would be tested first by observing how real people move. - The world would be a different place. Already in games we are seeing our AV's leap over and under things. This needs to be the new standard in games. No longer is that 6 foot fence going to block us. We're going to be able to climb over it and we're not going to be stuck with 3 ridiculous stances either but have a multi stance system like we see in Arma 3 (and needs to be put into DayZ and quite frankly, every other FPS). Ravensheld did it really well where it was completely fluid (not staged like in Arma) and a fluid stance system is the way forward. - Items will have weight. You carry heavier things you slow down. A pistol lets your aim it quicker than an M60. The difference once again should be taken from real world tests and there won't be much in it. It will still be down to the players reflexes and skill in aiming to shoot the other guy. Things in your inventory will be accessible depending on where they are. Things in your backpack are unreachable from the main part of it, side pockets maybe but you are not pulling out a can of beans from the bottom of your pack whilst it's still on your back. If you want it, the pack must come off or get a friend to get it for you. Medical - This one is a little trickier as we are playing a game and we don't want to be dying or sat in a corner with broken arms and legs. This part of the system could be massively complex allowing it to be tailored to the needs of the game. In DayZ, we see a rudimentary system already in place. Injuries should make players move slower in all ways but it would be dependent on the injury and where it was. A FPS might not need a system for diseases, but it should certainly have a skeleton and bones. To keep players in the game, it shouldn't go completely into real life (though that should be an option) but I'll reference Raven Shield again - when you got wounded in that, you could only limp around the map and your aim was worse as well (I think). This is not a complete list of things and we're not going to see anything like this anytime soon but in a game like DayZ this would work extremely well and to anyone who is bored of twitch shooters and wants some real depth to their games, having a system like this that is scale-able could add so much more to gameplay allowing things like useful and challenging combat medic roles (In Arma ACE they had a really good system that made playing medic fun (well, when all your friends were getting shot LOL). We would all love the benefit of being able to climb up or over almost anything and making movement more realistic (so no bunny-hopping BS or zigzagging) will make people think about the decisions they're about to make when moving. This isn't to say that those type of elements are wrong in a game but having something deeper makes for a better experience and this isn't going to replace twitch shooters but should offer something along side it for when players want to have a bit more in their gameplay.

Thanks for the responses. Rather than reply to everyone I'll just add a few other things. The idea of the post was to get my thoughts out and not necessarily define the way it should be but rather give an idea of what we could have. As computing power increases, this kind of complexity can be achieved putting a lot more emphasis on how you behave in the real world. If you sprint into an object, yes, you should hurt. People don't need to be wary of objects because there's no penalty but if there was, people would adapt accordingly. I should have also mentioned movement speeds akin to splinter cell - have 5 different speeds so we can define our movement how we want it to be rather than being stuck with 3 types. Like I said, there are a ton of FPS's already that have twitch shooter mechanics and I think it's time to up the game and give something with more depth to it. It would have to be done right though so it felt fluid enough. If the weapon weight was hated, then it wasn't done right, perhaps. It needs to be what you would expect in real life and we can move things pretty fast that are in our hands. What it doesn't need to be is ridiculously slow to the point where everyone is wtf'ing. I added in things like interacting with backpacks because it is our bodies that do this. Like I said, it would need to be done not like real life but a close enough approximation to simulate ourselves in our avatars and hopefully provide more immersion.

You're playing a broken game that is in alpha that is constantly going to change has no zombies and is not feature complete. The game isn't even finished and people are already burning themselves out on it. Do NOT play DayZ until it is finished and find something else to play - you're only going to ruin it for yourself. Keep an eye on the change logs for anything that looks like it's worth checking out but playing it like it's a complete game like some people do I don't get - by the time it's a finished product they won't be playing. The woefully shortsighted completion date of the new rendering engine is something to complain about, things like animations are not (which are getting changed anyway afaik) and the loot system is going to be all over the place whilst it gets tested and it's not going to be guns all over the place. I see you're embracing the true survival aspect of the game. The things I want to be finding first is rope, a stick and a burlap sack so I can make a backpack before I find a bigger one plus an axe. Thinking about the improvised back pack, should it carry a little bit more in both its variants?

Can we start thinking about changing the time it takes to do things so "the right tool for the job" is worth something? I can open a can of food with a can opener in exactly the same time it takes me to do it with an axe. I've opened cans with knives before and it takes ages compared to a can opener. I'm not even sure how you would open a can with an axe. If I use a badly damaged sewing kit to repair my trousers, it should take a lot longer to do than a pristine set. Tasks should be taking a lot longer when using the wrong tools and then get faster with better tools.... Open a can of.... Screwdriver.....30 second Knife............20 seconds Can opener.....5 seconds

I like the idea of having things to do around camp. It's meant to be a survival game so what do people do in a survival situation - they store and gather food and water, they make clothing or repair it, they mend tools or make them, they clean weapons - all those things become so much more important when it's your life that's on the line and become a part of every day life. Who's going out to get food and water? Who's fixing the car? Who's tending to the crops? Who's sharpening the blades? Everything should have an animation for it and take time to do - this instant fix BS needs to go and if you don't like waiting, then go searching around the map for better gear so it doesn't take as long and give better items meaning to the game.

There's 2 problems with that. The first is that I'm never going to lose food opening a can with a knife vs a can opener. So whilst yes, the penalty is there to make the can opener worth it, the loss of food is too ridiculous to be believable but also, with the current rate of food spawning, there's too much so this wouldn't be an issue really anyway. If they get food to a point it's rare, the game won't be fun if you're starving all the time and that 50% loss is going to make a huge difference to you - if it gets to that point, you'll be spending all your time looking for food and that's pretty much it. I doubt very much food is going to ever be that scarce but we'll see. The only other alternative I can think of is better tools do things quicker. You could stab the food open and be done real quick with it but then just remove all the losses of food if that the case but increase the chance of injuring yourself and getting infected. If a screwdriver was so quick and easy, people wouldn't be buying can openers and a hole is only good for liquid (well, it depends on the type of hole I suppose and what it's good for ;)). So now we have this wet hole that we pierced with our rod but now we have to poke our fingers inside it and wiggle it around to get at the meat? oh lawd....

You disagree with the fact that everybody uses can openers and not knives to open cans therefore we should use axes? 90% of can openers suck? I'm sure you have the relevant study at hand that you can cite to back up such a ridiculous claim. If they suck so badly, why aren't we using other things and my can opener at home is working fine thanks. You obviously have no idea what DayZ is and has been as a game and there's no power - it's an apocalypse so how are you going to power a PC? In what way does my suggestion "turn games into something tedious"?

The point is to give value to items. U have a rock - that makes every other implement in the game useless as it does it as well. The whole reason for making things take longer is because they would. You go and try and gut a cow with a stone knife and I'll do the same with a nice sharp steel one and we'll see who takes longer. Time is the thing players don't like to waste so that's why you make the timings more realistic to the quality of the tool being used. If you don't like spending 30 seconds gutting with a stone knife, find a real knife and do it in 10. What this does is it pushes people to want to find better gear because it has a real in game benefit to them. That benefit then transfers into fear when they get into a firefight. Meaningless gear nobody cares about - look at COD - you always start fully geared. DayZ, you spend 3 hours looking for gear, getting the right clothes for the look you have and collecting the best tools in the game you are going to feel the game coming to get you when you realise you could lose it all. That's the reason everyone played DayZ in the first place.

You're exactly the type of person I keep talking about. You overplayed the game and now you're burnt out - it happens to us all at some point but are you likely to want to come back to it later? Had you not played so much and waited, you might have gotten to play the game rather than a buggy unfinished product? This is why EA games are NOT worth investing time in until they release the game so you can get the full experience though 3000 hours lol - I think you got you monies worth it's a pity it wasn't the the whole game and it was bug ridden as hell. As for development, there is nothing in the game that has me wanting to come back to it and it's been like that for months but yeah, the year is out and what have we got in return - fuck all by the look of things. Where's the new rendering engine, where's the zombie and animal AI these dedicated teams have been working on? Patient I have been but it's running thin now though saying that, I have tons of games to play so it's not like I can't wait but it does get annoying to see an apparent lack of progress and their woefully shit approximations of when things would be out.

Fuck me the beans for this comment were a little delayed, weren't they??? LOL

Yes a real blade made from steel would be better but I like the idea of using the stone knife you make on the beach rather than having to find bone?

Why not the stone knife for the spear - I would have thought that would have been the obvious choice?

Sounds like the shotgun needs to go through some actual testing rather than using these examples as any definitive proof. Need to test on static and moving targets, ideally.