Astral (DayZ)

TL;DR: Having full, or near full amounts of Food and Water, while remaining in a "rested" state (See: not breathing heavy) will slowly increase your blood rating over time. The current implementation of food is nice, but I would like to see it being more long term based rather than feeling like I'm scrounging for food just to scarf it while attempting to beat Kobayashi in a hot dog and bean eating contest in order to regain paltry amounts of blood. At a rate of 10 every 5 seconds, it would take 10 minutes to restore 1200 blood, and one hour, forty minutes in order to heal to full. Keep in mind, these are just arbitrary numbers I'm throwing out there, and are not accounting for the fact that moving around significantly depletes your food/water in such a way that you wouldn't be likely to experience a large amount of healing time while attempting to be mobile. Once your food and water drop below the "green" level, it would be assumed that you're at a neutral state and the body simply uses the rest of it for basic operation; anything above that level is used for regeneration. I'm not entirely sure, but I believe if you let your food and water levels drop to flashing red each, you will begin to slowly lose blood due to starvation and dehydration at a rate of 20 every 2 seconds; this would provide a nice parallel for that system, and encourage players to be a bit less frugal with the nourishment they can find. Also, since the rate of healing is fairly small, you would have less incentive (when in need of significant recovery time) to run full bore, wasting what precious food you've found on a sprinting spree instead of sitting tight and recuperating for a bit. Inversely, if you're able to find food but need to waste it, it creates more of a need to save it until in a safer location. Attempting to sprint would cancel the healing portion of being full, as it is somewhat harder for a body to regenerate while doing stressful activities; really, if you're low on blood you've likely been hit a lot and sprinting should accelerate any bleeding you've left un-bandaged. Since you can currently survive on just a single resource, unless it's a bug to be able to survive with no blood loss with 0 food yet full water, as water can be found fairly easily and water bottles being infinite in their use, if you find a well or similar source of replenishment.

Bumping for support, as I had a similar idea but didn't feel like typing it out. A background in something major, as well as a trait or two that enable minor specializations, would add a bit more customization to players repertoire and make for interesting interactions. Someone may be 20% more effective at healing you, but they'd be 20% less effective at a firearm as a result. Maybe keep the bonuses and downsides a bit more minimal, and allow for a background that is analogous to the current "know it all" class that would enable a player to do everything, just not as effective as a specialization would be. A jack of all trades, master of none, with no ability to pick traits, and a good starter/newb class for someone to get their bearings in the game. I don't think they'd want to restrict players too heavily with a system like this, but it would be nice to consider long down the road.

Good to see that this is still getting thrown around from time to time. With the new sicknesses capable of draining blood to some extent as well, having yourself full and hydrated could act as another parallel system to becoming ill, countering those losses to some extent, and enabling you to recover from the ailments more quickly than if you were starving and dehydrated.

It would promote the kind of mechanic in MMOs known as farming, where people could simply PvE their way to decent weaponry in a far off corner of the map, rather than having to possibly encounter players. Just no.

It may be considered further down the line, but I think rocket's main goal right now is to get the mechanics and framework down for the time being. Once we have a fuller game, then a map switch will likely be considered, if only because 75% of Chernarus' buildings aren't able to be entered.

For free, and online 24/7? Sounds... heh.

The benefit is not getting a bandit skin and being 50% more likely to be shot on sight. Besides, not every player has "great gear," as most of them tend to not survive past the coast.

Plus, imagine how much harder it would be to loot a town when you're actually in need of antibiotics or similar medicines. Sneaking through a horde of zombies, then suddenly-- ACHOO. Shit.

Morale would have a fairly decent place in a sandbox simulation. Think about it: In a "real" zombies apocalypse, one would have to keep their hopes high to some extent, or risk mental degeneration. The Vietnam War had an abnormally high number of soldiers running on low morale due to the hopeless feeling of the war, and subsequently had a large number of soldiers using drugs to maintain their sanity (or get rid of the feeling of boredom, dread, etc). If it were possible to implement morale, then reaching the extreme end of a low morale could impart different debuffs in the form of mental diseases; interface screws that would affect how or how much information the player gets from their character. Becoming bipolar would mean that your humanity swings between two different points; if possible, the highest and lowest points the player has achieved, meaning that players who haven't lost any humanity are still fairly sane. Depression would make you move slightly more slowly, as you just can't be arsed to really care. Numbness (unless I find something that would more accurately describe it) would obscure your food, water and health meters for a short time, but they would still go down normally. Schizophrenia would cause you to hear phantom sounds, and possibly zombies that aren't real. And so on. On the other hand, players can sometimes accurately simulate their own morale system. If in high spirits, they may be a bit more quick to help you. Neutral, they tend towards cautiousness and scouting out areas before rushing in. Low morale means they usually died recently due to someone shooting them and either run around aimlessly after respawning or go bitch on the forums as to how bandits are overpowered.

I swear I saw someone at an airfield the other day that had a military outfit (greenish camouflage) similar to the screenshots, while I myself do not own the DLC. Is that something that normally happens?

The main thing that would be an issue: Putting a bunch of work into the current framework for another game, or being allowed the freedom of your own engine, but needing the extra time in order to build said engine, and having wasted some portion of the time working up to this point. Sure, the ideas are there, but needing to switch to a different engine, map, and having to build the vast majority of the resources we take for granted in ArmA2 (aiming, movement, even just trees, buildings and cans of beans) from scratch would take a while for a transfer. I think it'd be worth it, in the end, because then they wouldn't have to wait for ArmA2's dev team to push out updates in an attempt to update their older game while they gear up for ArmA3. But for now, it's a matter of trying to develop and solidify content, I suppose.

Debug monitor will be toggleable in the near future.

The best part is where he's removing peoples' reputation because they don't agree with him and he cannot form a coherent argument against it. I'll just leave this here, just because I love the quote so much, and it accurately sums up 95% of the "nerf bandits" threads (which they're likely to remove bandit skins anyway):

I think you'd have to send them an email in order to reset, rather than posting in the forum. dayzdevteam@gmail.com

Game purchase, most definitely. No need for a monthly fee if people are going to host their own servers, or at least have the option to.

I've heard that it is part of an anti-cheesing system. Long story short, if you take damage before you disconnect, the next time you log in you'll be unconscious for two minutes. Also, if you're low on blood then you have a random chance to pass out.

This. Money isn't needed in this game; once society collapses, you don't need things that act as pieces of value. The stuff that is valued is stuff that is useful, like guns, bullets and food. Not pieces of paper with dead people on them. Not having currency means that players determine the value of things on their own, and based on what you actually need.

TL;DR: A paintball gun modified to shoot pellets that do no damage, but with varying effects based on the ammo found. The words in combination made me laugh, then think for a second. Out of the blue, almost as if it was a real commercial or museum entry, the following occurred to me: "And here we see the Mossberg Tactical Sh*tgun. Heralded in the Z wars of eras past, and gruesome in its application, it had two variations: a spring loaded, hand cranked version that saw some usage by people making their own weapons of mass excretion, and a more mainline model propelled by CO2 similar to paintball guns of days long past. It enabled users to fire a foul smelling fluid, origins known only to the creator of the device itself, encased in a material similar to paintballs at foes, often prompting nearby lone zombies, if not entire hordes, to immediately seek out whatever poor sod had been pelted with it. Conversely, a misfire in a densely infested town could be deadly to the wielder, and handling of the piss pellets required great care." The gun itself would likely be a pistol slot item, and do zero damage when fired on a player or zombie. However, the power and utility of the gun would be in the varied ammunition. Ammo effects could (depending on script limitations) fire rounds that attract zombies via smell (specifically when fired on players), cause noise similar to throwing a whiskey bottle where they are fired (similarly attracting zombies), acting as a much smaller radius and duration flare, causing whiteout effects similar to a flashbang, or even poisons that could be of varying strengths and effect a person's ability to run, aim, regain blood, or drain his food/water/blood outright. If crafting becomes present in the mod in any great degree, a player could even use a blood bag to create paintballs that would cause zombies to attack each other. The fact that they are paintball guns would mean that they make little to no sound, or at least sound comparable to a silenced weapon with subsonic rounds. Shots would be somewhat balanced by the fact that they have less of a force behind them, meaning you have to lead targets more, and ammo would be fairly uncommon or a pain to make. It would make for some interesting, varied playstyles, too. In a game where guns are your only weapon, why not have some (aside from the smoke rounds for a grenade launcher) that launch more than just lead at people? I can imagine a player being able to put something like this to great use, either herding zombies in more useful fashion to get at loot, using the zombies against other players or each other, or simply scaring the crap out of another player with a quick flash or sharp noise without actually harming them. Just a thought.

Well, the CO2 canister itself would just act as a propellant. I suppose that this version would act as just a weapon, firing steel ball bearings or something similar (needing the extra force behind it). The CO2 canister and ball bearing set would end up together as one part. I can't think of anything better at the moment due to the way ArmA2 handles ammunition, though. The "custom" spring loaded version could have the separate ammunition types that do no direct damage but have all kinds of fun effects. Since it would shoot at a closer range, and have a much higher reload time, it ends up becoming a tradeoff for utility and versatility against range and damage.

That's a crazy thought. Might kill the huge number of "will design concept art for six figures" thing that has been going on lately.

The way ballistics currently work take into account the fact that you should be wearing body armor, at least. I'm not even sure if different tiers of armor are possible, either, due to limitations of the Arma 2 engine. I would like it, but being more resilient almost defeats the point of the mod. You should feel vulnerable, like life could end at any point. Besides, it should only have a decent affect against other players; Kevlar is not good at stopping blunt force trauma, and heavier armors would make it much harder to move silently, making you a slowly walking dinner bell.

Punishing players for playing the game the way they want is not something that will be included in this mod.

Reposting this, again, partially because I love the quote, but also because people need to stop suggesting things that turn this into an MMO with rules that punish players for playing the game the way they want.

It's not as difficult or intricate as certain mods may be. A folder within a folder, within which you unzip files, is paltry compared to the amount of work I've done in order to get mods in Fallout or similar titles to work. As you mentioned, it is an alpha, so user friendliness isn't exactly the theme here. It's not like it's difficult to do, though, and accounting for either players who have it through Steam or directly via ArmA would be a chore distracting from actual gameplay in its current state.

There's a difference between spoonfed, meaning arbitrary quests that you are pretty much entitled and required to do, as opposed to something that you come across in a random loot spawn or a survivor's journal on a dead body. It is a sandbox; players shouldn't be rewarded outside of the possibilities of what you might come across normally. It lets players set their own difficulty level, in a way, and may players aren't accustomed to something that doesn't point them in a direction, a la Skyrim.