Celt (DayZ)

Well, apparently with the AKM that has been added in experimental, adding a folding stock increases accuracy to a great degree, while with the wood stock you can't hit shit at long range. I had really hoped this shit would stop, but apparently we're just going to have to get used to ridiculous RPGish weaponry and attachments.

So, what's the news? Any changes or rebalances, or is everything still awful? I still haven't heard anything from the devs addressing this issue. I'd love to hear at least something confirming that they've heard our complaints.

Well, it can definitely be lethal... but when 5.56 takes 5 shots to the chest to kill, what's the point in arguing? The current ballistics and damage system makes no sense. IMO, the game should have a sort of damage system similar to Red Orchestra, with vitals very vulnerable to damage. Not sure how hardcore this should be, there would likely be a lot of argument on that. Also, despite what some people say, .22 LR is not going to be really accurate after 100 yards. It slows down significantly and spreads everywhere. The main thing is that .22 LR will kill if it hits a vital area, but so should everything else. If it was balanced according to current game mechanics it would take 10 shots to the chest to incapacitate anyone, because damage is so screwy.

Another funny thing I keep seeing is people arguing over the lethality of .22 LR, due to the 10/22 that will be added soon. Some people say that it can and will kill at close range, others are arguing that it isn't powerful enough. Well, it can definitely be lethal... but when 5.56 takes 5 shots to the chest to kill, what's the point in arguing? The current ballistics and damage system makes no sense. IMO, the game should have a sort of damage system similar to Red Orchestra, with vitals very vulnerable to damage. Not sure how hardcore this should be, there would likely be a lot of argument on that.

Depending on quality, a Mosin can range from pretty accurate to... not so much. They're pretty old rifles and they were built to outfit armies, not a handful of elite snipers. The Russians handpicked the most accurate of what they made for their snipers, but the vast majority were only battle rifles.

I'm not so sure about that... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gfiXFyIbOZw

If they used sway/recoil, they wouldn't have to. Set the gun to semi auto and recover your aim after each shot and you're set. Full auto... well, you're going to be all over the place, but it's good for suppressive fire or panicked close-quarters fighting. The M4 should definitely be a better weapon. It's got a decent effective range, and though its round isn't the most powerful, it can still do some damage. It's useful in almost every situation; close-quarters, it can be used like a submachinegun. At longer ranges, it can hold its own against full-size assault rifles. It should be a lot rarer, though, and if you have one you should have to clean it and care for it thoroughly and frequently so it doesn't jam. It should be a high-maintenance, but potentially very useful, weapon. Same goes for most NATO weapons, honestly. It forces you to make the choice: do you want a good-enough, low-maintenance durable weapon with relatively common ammo, or do you want to invest some time and effort into getting ammo for your high-tech military weapon and into cleaning it up after every fight? The AK is the best of both worlds, really. I think that if durability was factored in, I'd choose the AKM over any other weapon. But it's all a personal choice; do you want to hunt players or just protect yourself from the hordes? Do you have the resources to keep your gun working?

I feel like they got really excited about having the attachment system fleshed out, so figured they needed to have a ton of attachments to showcase it. The only real difference with the stocks and handguards was cosmetic, though, so I guess they made them into magic accuracy generators. Honestly I wouldn't care about what handguard or stock I had on my rifle if it didn't have such a huge gameplay effect. Makes more sense to just have stuff like flashlights and different sights, but since they already have the parts in... If a Magpul stock changed accuracy so much, then why the hell would the military outfit their troops with the awful standard parts?

Maybe not remove it entirely, but make it pretty rare as other weapons are added to the game. I'd like to see a large variety of weapons, so AK74 and AKM make sense. Having a bunch of military weapons is fine as long as there are a lot of civilian weapons too, and the military ones are much rarer. A lot of different ammo types would be great too, but I think some ammo should always spawn with a weapon or at least nearby. It makes sense that it would be stored near the weapon, right? And it allows ammo in general to be much rarer so that you have to ration what little you got with the gun. Remember when having an AK74 in the mod was thought of as being pretty much geared? I'd like to return to those days. An assault rifle is a great practical weapon, large magazine and decent range so it fits a lot of situations. Shouldn't be too common.

Well, it's a step forward. I just hope they flesh out the system a bit more.

I think another big problem is that they're trying to balance the Mosin with the M4. One is a surplus rifle from the World War era, and the other is a high-grade military weapon. The Mosin shouldn't be equal; it's not a precise sniper rifle, just an ordinary battle rifle. It may pack more punch per bullet, but it can't compete with the M4's rate of fire and utility. The main problem is that the M4 was almost as common as the Mosin for the first month or so of the SA. The M4 should be a rare, useful military weapon, not a hopelessly nerfed close-quarters-only weapon.

Don't think a .22 is going to be very effective in terms of damage at 300 meters, or that it can be used to hunt deer (at least, not easily or quickly). Otherwise, great guide! Thanks

I don't think it's that everyone just wants to play it as a deathmatch, but that people want to defend themselves and their gear. The safest way to deal with another player right now is to kill them outright and not risk letting them react at all. I almost never KOS, but I try to avoid conflict in general so usually I don't have to. I do know that if I see someone in full military gear and they don't see me, I'm probably not going to risk doing anything other than sneaking away or killing them.

I still haven't really heard any response from the devs about what was intended and what their future plan is. I'd like to know that they've heard about this issue, at least.

It's an AK74 that they're adding, so it uses 5.45x39.

Yeah, it's 7.62 but it's a different kind. The Mosin Nagant uses 7.62x54mm, which is a full rifle cartridge. The SKS uses 7.62x39mm, an intermediate round designed for assault rifles and carbines. This is the same round that the AK47/AKM use. Meanwhile the AK74, which is also being added, uses 5.45x39mm. This is more accurate but less powerful than 7.62x39mm. They're adding the AK74, which uses a lighter round similar to 5.56x45mm (the round the M4 uses). Probably, the AKM will be added at some point as well.

What I really want is for using a gun to be hard. I don't want it to be arbitrarily inaccurate unless you have the right parts; I want it to require a certain level of personal skill. As it is now, with a bipod and a proper scope anyone can make a 400m or greater headshot with the Mosin or M4. It's not a question of "untrained civilians", because as soon as you find the right attachments you're near 100% accurate. I want to see a complex, difficult system for ballistics and weapon handling, in the spirit of the medical system or all the other complicated systems in the standalone. Don't make it so that you "gain experience" and gain accuracy over time; make it detailed enough that the actual player must gain personal experience and learn to shoot more accurately. Breath control and stance aren't a very big factor in DayZ right now, but they could be very important factors in this system.

Main issue is how inaccurate the M4 is by default. It's a frustrating change from realistic ballistics and sensible effects in Arma 2 to a RPGish, nonsensical use of attachments.

The main difference here is that with sway and recoil, you can tell when you're going to be less accurate. It may be annoying, but I think that it's more annoying to not know what to expect when I pull the trigger. When it comes right down to it, the whole trick of firearms is being able to point at something. It's a lot harder than you might think, especially since a typical gun is heavier and bulkier than a laser pointer, and what you're aiming at is probably a good bit further away. As long as sway is controllable (through breath control and stance) you shouldn't have too much of a problem lining up a shot. Getting a quick shot off may be difficult, but that's kinda the point- accuracy isn't just a cone of fire, it's about how you handle the gun.

I understand what their aim (heh) is here; I always thought that weapons were a bit too accurate in DayZ Mod, and it seems they're trying to balance things a bit. I think there are much better ways to do this, though; adding heavy sway, recoil, etc. would all be realistic and less frustrating alternatives. At least with sway and recoil, an experienced player can line up shots at longer ranges by lying down, catching/holding their breath, and trigger discipline, like in real life. It's hard enough to hold a rifle steady in standing position, even without being out of breath. You shouldn't be able to hit a target beyond close range right after you stop running, not without taking a knee and catching your breath. But if weapon accuracy is that poor regardless of what the player does? I don't think that's well balanced, just frustrating.

One game in particular that I think gets this almost perfectly is Dwarf Fortress. In Dwarf Fortress, many wounds aren't instantly fatal but will proceed to kill you if not quickly dealt with. Every wound causes some sort of debilitating effect; there's nerve damage that can make you lose grasping ability or lose use of a limb entirely. There's different severity of bleeding, from light from a small cut to heavy, unstaunchable bleeding from a nicked artery. You die of suffocation with two pierced lungs; you instantly die from most brain damage. This is sort of a long rant but I feel like DayZ needs more of these effects and less "this weapon deals a set amount of damage, two shots will kill". It should really vary depending on where you were hit. Shot through a lung? Maybe you'll survive, but you're probably not going to be running around afterward. A buddy could patch you up with proper medical equipment and maybe keep you alive, or you could just give up and die (hit Respawn). Shot in the leg? Bleeding and infection are your worst worries, but you're not going to die immediately. Shot in the head? You're (almost definitely) dead. Beaten up by zombies? You're in quite a lot of pain, maybe bleeding, maybe some cracked ribs or broken bones. Nicked artery, gushing blood? You'll survive the initial attack, but the bleeding is too heavy to stop; you quickly pass out and die. This sort of variety would really make surviving the apocalypse and caring for yourself much more complex and nuanced than the simpler system in place right now.

I don't want it to be incredibly hard to find ammo or guns. However, I think that now that we have single rounds, there should be far less ammo whenever you DO find it. As it is now, whenever you find any ammo it's in large groups; I'd prefer a handful of 5-10 rounds, not huge ammo boxes. As well, I'd love for weapon condition to make a large difference in accuracy, as well as having other effects. One of the reasons the AK series is renowned is because it is so easy to clean and care for, and so hard to damage. Perhaps the AK would almost never jam and have little difference between pristine and almost ruined condition compared to an M16, which would foul and become far less accurate at lower conditions. The AK is never going to be as accurate as the M16 series at top condition, but I think that it could stay almost the same regardless of its condition. This makes for a trade-off: would you rather have a finicky but potentially accurate rifle that takes a lot of work to keep in shape, or a "good-enough", reliable weapon that you couldn't break if you tried?

I was really excited when I first started playing the standalone, because I could hardly scrape together any gear, and I was constantly searching for food and never quite comfortably stocked with anything. I soon realized that this was because I was playing on a 40 player server which hadn't been restarted in ages, so all the good loot was gone. I'd like to see a more even dispersal of loot over time, rather than a huge influx at certain times. If you know when and where to look, you can easily get all you'll ever need in the standalone right now, and I hope to retain that sort of desperate scavenging and survival in the future by making ammo, weapons, pretty much everything scarcer (but more evenly over time). Does that make any sense? I'm pretty tired right now