xTITANx

I like the hanging idea because if you killed yourself you would come back as a zombie. I like that we would find zombies hanging by their necks around the rural areas.. that would be funny cause they couldn't chase you but would hang there squirming and growling at you.

I guess maybe what your definition of item balance is different from mine and that is where we aren't communicating. The main point of these changes are to keep the spawn rate but reduce the ease that they are obtained. I don't understand why people think it will be easier to obtain an m4 if they are now spawning everywhere but at the same %. If there are only 5 per map, but they aren't centrally located at the military bases then they become very hard to find. You might have to go to the nw trainstop to find one, you don't even know. At that point it becomes more effecient to simply play the game normally and not look for military spawns. Isn't that what we all want?? Less people caring about military gear and simply playing with what they find? I think we can drop the "it's alpha" argument. We know. This isn't about finding a weapon. They are easy to find. It's about making the military gear less of a priority. The need to run north to get military gear to compete will fall away, because it's not there. You then need to run around and search the map to find anything, which is the best part of the game. Eliminating the poi is probably the biggest problem with my argument. I will agree that right now going to a military point is the only place where players interact. However, I feel the benefit to the game would be far greater. We would see a lot fewer fully geared players I think, because it would become much harder to find things. I also think this would cause players to loot everything in every city so they would have to expose themselves even more, which is also what I would hope for with these changes. I also think your point that it "Would make the hunt for military gear boring" is actually part of the appeal to my approach. You want to make gaining a military piece a huge surprise and bonus, but right now it isn't. Right now, it's how long before you are fully decked. My approach forces players to abandon their need to gear up to max and run around. Last, I don't know if the game becomes easier. That might be true. I don't know, but I don't think you can say it will be with any certainty. I think we might actually see more interactions with players because they would be traveling around the map more, exposing themselves to other players instead of camping the military base and waiting.

did i ever mention balanced in any of my posts? I know I didn't because this is not a balance issue. I think the % that they spawn is fine, but the fact that I know exactly where they spawn is bad.

OMG this is so funny because I was just wandering around that area a couple days ago and thinking that it looked like something was being planned. They have roads and stuff laid out but no buildings. It was a little eerie. It will be cool to have some more stuff up there north of the NEAF.

Same here. Logged in to a fresh character. /shrug time to gear up! :D

What problem is that?

I made this comment in another thread but I thought I would start another because I liked the thought. It would be awesome to have a menu->submenu jesture tool. Kind of like how maya works. say you hold down a gesture key( programmable in options ) then a maya style menu pops up, you swipe to a catagory and then swipe to the gesture. For instance you could have categories like, greetings, combat, directions, and emotions. During combat, you could have cool hand gestures like hold or move out, or that you see enemies. Most of this is pointless because of voice coms but still fun to play with :)

Well, being a game designer, it's a simple mechanic to force players to interact. However, as a game designer I really think it's a cheap way to go about this. I can't say I know a better way, but I feel like this sort of mechanic pushes the pvp element of the game and that might be what the devs want. If the premise of the game is survival, killing your rival is the optimal path to your own long life right now. Again, I would rather see Dayz have alternatives to this with cooperation. The problem right now is that the optimal path is to kill. There is no other option. Working as a team only helps you kill more efficiently instead of working together to survive. What needs to happen is more mechanics put in place where people working together is require to survive instead of kill. The only option I see right now is that zombies must be increased to the point that no player can go into a city alone. This would make finding a player to tag team with early very important. The problem with this strategy from a game design perspective is you are forcing grouping. Not everyone wants that. So the question remains, how can you add mechanics to Dayz where it becomes more beneficial to work together instead of working against each other.

This is the point that everyone who doesn't want this change denies but it's the truth. It is completely logical and realistic that the last few soldiers would find themselves alone and would hide out where there are few zombies, like a barn in the middle of nowhere. They would have the military gear, grab as much food as possible and run for the hills. Why?? Why wouldn't they stay in the barracks at the NWAF?? BECAUSE EVERYONE IS THERE TRYING TO KILL PEOPLE. Not to mention the zombies. Logically you would gtfo and hide. Did you read my post? I made clear points on WHY. By spreading out the high end gear you make people play the game instead of running to one point and server hoping until they get what they want. How do you not understand this? Once again a man on his horse strolls in to town. Drop the ego and the patronizing because whether you've manage to wander around and find a watering hole on the north side of the map in the middle of nowhere doesn't make your point any more valid or invalid. I have been to every town on the map and to most of the smaller villages and random houses and barns. That doesn't make my opinion any more right, nor does it make yours. This game isn't hard at all. It's actually very easy. That's the point I've been making. By having the M4s at specific locations it is very easy to find them. I don't server hop I simply run from base to base and I have one pretty quickly with a bunch of rounds and I'm completely geared. However, people do server hop, and the mechanics of this game actually support them.

It would be awesome to have a menu->submenu jesture tool. Kind of like how maya works. say you hold down a gesture key( programmable in options ) then a maya style menu pops up, you swipe to a catagory and then swipe to the gesture. For instance you could have categories like, greetings, combat, directions, and emotions. During combat, you could have cool hand gestures like hold or move out, or that you see enemies. Most of this is pointless because of voice coms but still fun to play with :)

This was my first instinct! This would be awesome.

I still say it's more realistic to find things randomly around the map than in one central location but no one wants to listen. I'm starting to assume those people are all KOS campers who just like a good spot to kill bambies. The problem with having them in one location is it's very easy to get them! DO YOU NOT REALIZE THIS?? It doesn't matter what % you make them spawn at if a player can simply log out at the military camps and swap server to server to server to find the damn weapon he wants. If you decentralize them and keep the same percentage they would be very hard to find. No one would be able to server hop to gear because everything is spread out and YOU WOULD HAVE TO SEARCH FOR IT. That's the whole damn point of the game. No it wouldn't because when you take the say 5 or 6 m4s that spawn per reset and spread them over the entire map instead of at 5 specific places they become damn hard to find.

with the amount of cardio we do in the game it would be impossible to store much body fat. Also, since everyone here likes to bang the realism drum, when your stomach is empty you feel hunger pains. When you lack energy, you feel tired not hungry. Go to the gym and do too much work, you don't ever feel hungry until you are done and home and thinking of eating again, and once you have something in your stomach you don't feel hungry but you still feel tired because your energy is not "full". If you want to stress this energy thing as realism, it should tell me I feel tired, or sapped of energy. If my stomach is empty it should grumble and a message should tell me I feel hungry.

I think all of this is spot on. Dead players need to rise as zombies. Loot spawns should not be static, but very random to relate how items have been moved around. Loot should also not just be sitting around but on dead people. There should be loot on zombies and on corpses. Imagine how awesome it would be to run up to a corpse to loot only to find out the dude is a zombie and wants to eat your face.

All of this stuff is great. One of my main gripes is that people don't seem to understand that the game lacks a lived in feel. I point this out when they bitch about guns only spawning in certain places. People should be dead. EVERYWHERE. There needs to be corpses lying around, military road blocks and crashes should be everywhere. The buildings that I can't go in should be boarded up like someone might be hiding inside. One of the main misconceptions I see is that everything should spawn or "BE" exactly where it should be. Like a jacket should be in a closet or medical supplies should only be at the hospital. Why?? People would have scavenged all of that stuff and spread it out during their survival. Like the M4 spawning in barracks. Why?? Think about your own survival. You went to a base to get a gun. Do you only die in the barracks?? Another great idea the OP has is the zombie horde. This is needed. Right now there is no real threat to a player except other players. By having massive hordes of zombies to deal with on occasion (random roaming mobs would be awesome) but at key points would be great too. I would love to see the NWAF just be a zombie field. You should need a team to get through it and that would create good reasons to cooperate. Instead of KOS, you might actually want to interact with a stranger because he can now help you. Imagine you are running west, you've scraped together a small backpack and a hoodie, a few cans of food and you filled up on water from a well. You managed to find a good fire axe so you feel safe to head towards the bigger cities. The birds are chirping and the sun is shining as you run through the woods. The air is crips and your breath steams and floats away as you stop to catch your breath.. wait what happened to the birds... it's so quiet.. Is that movement?? Is that a zombie in the forest????!? NO.. It's fifty zombies. And they want to eat you.

Just thought of something else. Adding to the loot system it would be great to find different saddle bags, saddles, bit and bridles, but also horseshoes. I think that would be something awesome because it would allow your horse to travel farther while remaining fresh. I would also like to have some weapon slot to store an extra rifle, as a reserve, on the saddle.

I know how the system works. My character is healthy and every time I eat I have to waste my time with those annoying animations of him putting the food away every frickin bite. It's stupid and a waste of my time. I might have been unclear but I would want a system like the one you stated. I click an item and my character eats the whole can until he's full or the can is empty. I will then have to click another can to start eating again. I'm fine with that. On to your second point. IRL you shouldn't over eat bro. Maybe you want to go longer between meals but it's actually better for your metabolism to eat smaller and more often. Back to the game, I think this is exactly how the mechanics should work. I feel like right now, it takes too many cans to fill your stomach. I think it should be smaller, but empty faster. You should be eating often, but fill it up quickly. I shouldn't have to sit and eat 3 cans of tuna and 3-4 cans of beans and still not be full. That is ridiculous. I would be happy with a 2 cans of tuna, or a can of beans to be satified or "full". After say 10-15 min you should be hungry again, especially if you are running or sprinting around.

I actually think this should be implemented. For instance, I have about 3 full containers of amo, consisting of about 900 rounds, plus food, an axe and an m4. Walking should be difficult much less sprinting full speed for 10 min.. which I do when running from the NWAF to Pavlovo. It would make the game more of a challenge, which is why most people here are complaining about it, but I think that's a good thing. Once we have tents or player structures, hoarding everything on your person will drop dramatically. At that point the detriment will lessen while adding a lot more gameplay and realism.

This is actually one thing I have been championing. I really feel like the zombies should be some form of loot caches. When you kill them, they should be lootable and have a random drop, which could spawn on their deaths. You would be able to loot it but also would need the disinfectant spray to clean those items or you might become sick. I also have been hoping that when players die, they would also become zombies instead of being hidden. The game could easily store a list of items the player had on death and respawn them when the zombie was killed by a new player. It would change the game a lot to see a player character standing around as a zombie in full gear.

Ah right, so maybe you can take them to a stream or pond and they auto graze/drink?

This is one of the best ideas i have read! :) Great idea. How would you feed them?

One of the biggest issues for me is the animations in the game at the moment. With the status being alpha, I can certainly understand why they are still unpolished. However, I really hope they take the time to fix some of the glaring issues that the animations cause. The big one I would like to see fixed is the melee combat animations. The mod wasn't build to have melee combat in any real functional way, but I think with the standalone they should really address this. First off the "hack" that we get is pretty lame. Not only is my character using the axe left handed, which I don't think should be default, but he also short arms the swing in a semi diagonal swipe. This is not at all how I would swing an axe to defend myself against a screaming blood thirsty zombie. We all know that a blow to the head is the best way to kill them. The default animation needs to be a strong overhead strike, coming down in a vertical manner. This is the best way to kill your opponent when they have no defense, like a zombie, because you are splitting them in two. Second, they need to get us multiple strikes to use. If anyone has played Chivalry, I think something like that ( I know this game will never be a close quarters combat sim ) would help alot. Side swipes, over head chops, REVERSE ANGLES, would all help tremendously and make the game a lot more fun when you go melee. It would also make for a fun time if you didn't have a gun and managed to sneak up on another player. I really hope they take the time to polish this part of Dayz SA. I think it would make a huge difference and maybe even allow for a few more zombies, since the players would be able to kill them easier. How can you not like more zombies!?

Hey I don't care which way a man swings "cough", but don't push your agenda on me! Dayz is set in Russia btw.. you know the laws ;)

Humanity would be interesting only in that it should be like a food refill. Interacting with a player in a positive way like trading or being around them working together would raise your humanity, while being alone would lower it. I would not have any sort of identifying mark but I think your character should slowly go insane if alone for too long. This would mean working together, where as "heroes" or "bandits" is irrelevant, but working together would be promoted.

hahaha we I would just like to kill a zombie without running around in circles and swinging and missing because I don't have a good overhead or sideways swipe! Those damn left handed axes are the problem! Thanks for the response! :) Nice to hear they are going to upgrade it. Can I also suggest a shield? I mentioned this in another thread about using items with one hand. I think some weapons, like a knife, wrench, bat, or hatchet should be used one handed and allow us freedom with our other hand. Adding something awesome like a bullet proof riot shield would be ridiculously fun for squad play where you wanted to assault a group hunkered down at say the NWAF. Those are awesome ideas. I really like the "shove and grab" kind of like Battlefield where you can counter a knife attack, but I think the shove would work better as a kick, maybe? It seems more natural while you have a weapon in hand to kick to push a player back.