Astral (DayZ)

Game mechanics shouldn't encourage players to act as if they were in an eating competition in order to fill up any respectable amount of blood either. It would force a player to choose between taking it easy and maximizing the amount he would get healed, or burning off the extra food and water by having to run off for safer ground. That kind of decision making is, in my opinion, what makes the mod: You have to do something, but there are few "optimal" ways to do them. Besides, nobody has to idle.

Perhaps in more frequently traversed areas, there could be room for stronger zombies, but I'm against there being any specific loot reward for killing them outside of random drops that normally appear. Mostly for the reasons above. It's not a MMORPG. It's a survival simulation that strives toward realism. You wouldn't get a +5 gun of asskicking just because you killed someone in real life unless they actually had such a gun on them. Since a large majority of people in the cities tend to be civilians, they aren't likely to carry weapons, and this should be reflected (and it is) in the loot tables.

If I've got a good idea in my head of what he's talking about, it may have issues with people respawning; they would either need to be given a new radio number every time they respawn, in order to compensate for getting unique radio IDs, or the same radio ID every time, and I'm not sure if the system in ACRE accounts for duplicate IDs. Also, since radios would be items and hence lootable, people might be able to change their radio ID on a whim if they kill a player, creating more duplicate IDs and persistent items. Another issue I can see is, if radio IDs aren't persistent across servers, it could run into issues where two players have the same one. I'm not sure of the problems it would cause, but I can see it being a big pain in the ass to implement due to the persistent nature of this mod. I do like the idea. Having everyone install TS3 in addition to ACRE, as well as Day Z may be a bit off-putting for certain types of players, though.

I figure having anything over 50-75% would allow for a decent amount of healing over time without being unbalanced, as you would need a constant intake of food and water in order to heal a significant amount over a long period of time.

Another part to add: If it is possible to have weapons degrade in any sense, make it so that the CO2 versions are more powerful and give more distance on shots, but degrade over time (designating the CO2 tank slowly becoming less full), but the hand cranked iterations have a much longer reload time and a bit lower range, as the player would have to manually "pump" the air reservoir or pull back a spring mechanism.

A colorblind option might be implementable, but the main thing you should be looking for is when it starts flashing anyway. Eating before that is just a waste of supplies with the current implementation of food and water usage.

To quote rocket in such a way that sums up this thread:

I'm a humanitarian and I approve of this message. Eating people could also reduce your humanity a bit, showing a slow but sure decline into immorality as a way of survival. Cannablism is one thing' date=' but who in their right mind would eat someone who's still alive? :s [/quote'] Who says any number of the survivors, after experiencing such a traumatic occurrence as the collapse of civilization as we know it, are in their right minds?

Yeah, even a much slower rate of blood gain than what I detailed would give a better feel to it. Say you eat/drink and are in full green for both food and water, you end up regenerating about 1000 over the course of an hour, rather than getting an instant 800 from a slab of cooked meat. It wouldn't be a "main" type of healing unless you had a lot of patience or supplies, but would just supplement blood packs and the like.

Not when the amount of food you would go through for a comparatively small amount of regeneration makes you require copious amounts of food. It would encourage periods of rest, rather than simply sprinting everywhere, but I don't think outright camping would end up happening in most cases.

Yes; if they're too much of a pain, scrap them. A model shouldn't automatically determine what a player thinks of you, since it's not a very accurate identifier of anything. Unless there's some way to make them less of a headache, or a way to improve on how they mark someone as a player killer, there isn't a real need for the model, since every other player is just as likely to shoot you as a bandit modeled player is.

With a greater amount of healing in a shorter amount of time (similar to the number I gave, 10 blood per 5 seconds), it encourages players to play more, allowing them to regenerate at a comparable rate to how they would if they had a similar amount of supplies available to them in such a time. It wouldn't be superhuman healing, but give enough realism for a video game to give people pause if they become significantly wounded. Inversely, with a smaller amount of healing over a larger amount of time (say, 10 blood per minute of being full), it sort of gives incentive to have periods of actual break from the game, as well as stockpiling supplies before logging off (assuming the devs re-implement the ability to consume supplies when logged off). This is also assuming the healing effect would take place if logged off. Otherwise, the amount of healing done in game would be negligible and defeat the purpose of attempting to recuperate while playing. I can see it working either way. I am just not a fan of the "eat a slab of meat to instantly regain 800 blood" system. Keep in mind as well that it would require being fairly full of both resources either way, and constant movement quickly diminishes said resources, so it wouldn't be a constant source of healing unless the player had gathered a significant amount of both. On one hand, it's realism, on the other, it's gameplay, and even when striving for realism you don't want to make the gameplay cumbersome.

Even statically created, this would spice up the wilderness a bit, especially if they had loot tables associated with them and the possible range of settings. Say, one is an abandoned medical facility once used during the war, one perhaps a secret barracks, another a kooky end of the world survivalist's shelter. Coming across one of these could be a player's dream... or a nightmare, if they find it to be populated with its former, reanimated inhabitants in a tightly enclosed area. A sort of high risk/high reward system, random enough to not be common, but useful enough to be worth the risk.

Not sure about you' date=' but if comes down to survival or dignity, the people dying off can be as proud as they want. I'll be living, though. Also, meet Bear Grylls. A man (memetically) famous for drinking his own urine to survive. I think it would be an interesting feature, but not something that should be implemented for a while. The thought of "marking" someone from a high tower to draw zombies from your position made me laugh, but the opposite (missing) and drawing even more zombies beneath your position might not be worth the risk.

The main issue I can see is that an increase in the amount of objects created, depending on the number of players emitting them, would decrease server stability by a good amount. Things such as terrain differences could also create some wonky effects when placing footprints, specifically on inclines: you might see vertical prints, or prints that disappear halfway into terrain. I like the idea, though. It would make tracking players more interesting than "hey, I saw that guy, lets just run after him for a half hour." Also as a side note, you can find a GPS, but they appear to be fairly rare. I haven't even found one, so I'm not sure how it would work, but they are there in the loot tables, and I have heard them referenced by other players.

Disclaimer: I'm not even sure if these would be possible given the constraints of the Arma 2 engine, which is why I added them in the wish list rather than as separate suggestions. To add to this wish list, since we now have a tool box, I would love to see some form of basic ingame crafting. The tool box, given certain materials, would allow for players to create (with scrap metal, tin cans, and maybe a few choice chemicals) a rudimentary loading bench, enabling players to craft hand loaded ammunition, a la Metro 2033 or Fallout New Vegas. If not craftable, then making such objects in cities (or back woods barns, for the gun-crazed farmer) would make for some interesting interactions as players seek out these places. Military grade ammunition could be made more rare as a result, but home made ammo would be weaker, less accurate and prone to being duds, if not exploding outright. Having to search for more materials, such as the primers, powders, and bullets (or simply including them as implied in a generic "kit"), as well as shell casings from used ammunition (with a variable being thrown in for how much is actually saved) would allow players to recycle their spent ammo, granting convenience in exchange for less effectiveness with a weapon. More custom weapons such as the crossbow would be nice. Also drawing inspiration from Metro 2033, things such as pneumatically powered rifles (super BB guns) would be feasible in the setting, as the guns have been in use for a few hundred years and could even bring down deer or boar; it's not unrealistic to say that a subsonic round could pierce a human skull. The trade off would be slightly more ammo per "magazine," as lead pellets aren't exactly bulky, but drastically less damage than a real firearm. If not true air rifles, then something similar to a lever action spring piston rifle, in effect pumping the rifle with each shot.

This pretty much sums it up. Friendly NPCs would become walking supply drops for many players, as the incentive to "help" them would be very little, and you could easily drop them with a head shot in order to get whatever they're carrying.

The current PvP system adds a lot of "fun" to the game, and a bit more realism. The zombies, at least, are predictable: All they want to do is eat your (blood) brains. Players add that uncertainty to the game. You never know if the bandit you meet is going to be your best friend for the next hour, or if the regular looking player has two friends with rifles trained on you, ready to take you out if they deem you worth less what you're carrying. Having a PvP mode would diminish from this experience, and make the game entirely too forgiving, like all too many games in this day and age.