chambersenator

I am fairly certain that Hicks has said a few times in the past that thermal optics of any kind (scopes, goggles, or binocs) will not be in 'standard/vanilla' DayZ. I have little doubt that it will appear in a few mods when the time comes. That is sure to start quite a few arguments between those for and against them. I would not want thermal vision in vanilla DayZ. I remember how unbalancing they were before SA came along. Once the little bird is added in, it will be doubly OP with someone riding on the bench with one looking for people to kill. If modders want to include it in their creations, go right ahead.

A few things about durability/damage- As clothing/backpacks/footwear gets more damaged, it offers less protection to the items inside it. Ruined items give no protection to their contents. Using damaged ammunition in a pistol/rifle will not only cause misfires (requiring you to hit 'R' to eject the bad round), but will rapidly degrade your weapon. As your weapons and attachments wear out, or you add any attachment/furniture to a gun (optics, buttstocks, suppressors, etc) that is in less than pristine condition, it will affect the accuracy/performance of the weapon. To what degree depends on a lot of factors, some more noticeable than others. So be picky about what you attach to your weapon and keep a weapon repair kit in your inventory. Putting valuable items inside a cooking pot, medical bag, frying pan, ammo case, etc, will give those items an extra layer of protection For example: You have pristine ammo inside a cooking pot in your backpack. You get shot several times in the back, but manage to survive. Your backpack is ruined, along with its contents. However, the ammo inside the pot is still pristine. Why? The cooking pot took the damage hit. If you should get shot again, though, the ammo will be damaged, because both the ruined backpack and the ruined cooking pot provide no protection anymore. Falling will not just break your legs, but ruin your pants, footwear, and their contents (a few boots have slots for combat knives, so if the boot gets ruined, the knife does too). Using ruined footwear (or no footwear at all) will eventually cause blood loss, and may even cause another fracture if not replaced. If you find yourself in that situation, run as little as possible, and find new shoes ASAP. IIRC, even if not ruined, footwear that is worn, damaged, or badly damaged will cause you to become fatigued faster. NEVER, under any circumstances, keep your morphine injector in your pants. 99 times out of 100, if your leg is broken, your pants and its contents have been ruined. If that's where you put your morphine injector, you've just wasted it, and in a combat situation, that's a fatal mistake. Put it in your backpack, or even better, inside one of the containers mentioned above. Currently, pristine shoes do not seem to wear out from just regular use. It's a mechanic that's been either turned off or extremely nerfed. It will return in a future patch, so keep that in mind. I only use pristine footwear (due to the fatigue increase mentioned earlier), so it's possible that any footwear in worn or worse condition may still degrade.

Here is a method that should hopefully reduce your frustrations. It worked for me. Since you start with only a few slots, and it increases that over time as you get new gear, try prioritizing the slots in order of their type and range. For example: When you first start out: Slot 1 is for your stone knife (since you'll be using it a lot at first for making rags, fires, and gutting chickens for making spears/bows/getting food/etc) Slot 2 is your main melee weapon, be it axe, spear, stick, can of tuna, whatever. Slot 3 is for your first gun with ammo Slot 4 is for your ammo for the gun in slot 3 (if needed) As you gear up, the numbers change, but the pattern remains: Slot 1 is your main melee weapon Slot 2 is your pistol Slot 3 is your primary rifle/gun (the one that you actually have ammo for) Slot 4 is for your ammo for the gun in slot 3 (if needed) Slot 5 is for your backup weapon in your pack (probably not as good as your primary, so it takes a back seat) Slot 6 is the ammo for slot 5 (if needed, these guns tend to have magazines) Slot 7 and up is for accessories (bandages, bincocs, etc) And for your fully geared character: Slot 1 is your main melee weapon Slot 2 is your pistol Slot 3 is your backup weapon in your pack Slot 4 is for your ammo for the gun in slot 3 (if needed, these guns tend to have magazines) Slot 5 is for your primary rifle/gun Slot 6 is the ammo for slot 5 Slot 7 and up is for accessories (bandages, bincocs, etc) Once your brain gets used to this pattern (or something like it), it is MUCH easier to hit the correct button in the heat of battle. The key is to always use the same pattern - the higher the number, the more powerful/longer range the item is, until you get to the accessories on the right hand side of the hotbar. Need your pistol? That's always #2. This shouldn't cause you to confuse it with the melee weapon that was there before, because if you have a pistol, it's always in slot 2. Since the new reloading system was put in, if I have a lot of slots and a few guns, but only some have ammo, I leave a blank spot for it until I find ammo to put there. For example, if I have an axe, a hunting pistol (with no ammo) and a Mosin-Nagant with ammo, I'll leave slot 3 blank, so that when I find some .308, so I don't have to shift half my stuff one slot to the left. This way you only have to remember the hotkeys that have ammo assigned to them. If this is still giving you trouble, put a small square piece of brightly colored tape above/on those numbers. Even if you play in the dark and the only light is from your screen, it will be enough to see them in your peripheral vision or simply go by the feel of the keys.

The engine is their own, as sneakydude said. You should take a look at the tools that are currently available for ArmA 3 for creating missions/mods. They have a visual editor for placing various assets, triggers, and such, and an interface for editing code and tying that in to external scripts. While I would not expect something like that to come to SA for quite a while after modding is permitted, it's not unreasonable to think that SA would be the logical place to test out such a system when the time is right. That said, I highly doubt that modders will be left with no visual element to the mod creation process. It's probably a safe bet that at first we'll have something along the lines of the ArmA 2 editor at the very least. A great deal will probably depend on what can be brought over from ArmA 3 (I'm particularly curious about the feasibility of bringing ArmA's Zeus system over in some form as well), and how difficult it will be to port/adapt it for use with SA. No reason to rewrite a new editor from scratch if there's an existing one that was just redone in the last two years that can be tailored to fit SA's needs, even if at first it lacks a number of bells and whistles.

- waving one or both arms above the head - a knocking animation (not punching) that could be done with the left hand without have to completely shoulder/drop your weapon. The weapon would be momentarily lowered, and would require a brief moment to bring it back up after the knock is complete. Not just for knocking on doors, but could be used on any surface you are next to and are looking at (floor/wall/tree/road/cooking pot/dumpster/etc) to create a sound for use in various forms of nonverbal communication between friendly players, or to attract/distract others. - holding a weapon/item horizontally above your head when activating the 'surrender' animation when there is something in your hands (at that point, one could either double click that button to drop the item from the hands without lowering them, a single click would return the arms to the normal position)

I've been doing that far too much in the past year, and I think I've become 'too good' at avoiding people and only engaging when I am deliberately looking for a fight or a possible friend, but I am trying to change that. I had my go-to low-traffic places I could go when I was in the mood to be a hermit, and when I felt like exchanging words or bullets with others, I'd go to the regular high-traffic areas. This new spawn and tent configuration has changed everything about that for me. It seems like almost everywhere could suddenly become a high-traffic area now for a few minutes at least. There are no more 'fairly safe spots' for me now, nor is there be a 'somewhat safe' route to them if there were any. I am constantly on guard and watching my back (in 1pp, doing that all the time really wears you out). Just getting geared up and going halfway across the map is surprisingly more stressful as a lone wolf, and actually tires me out IRL after a few hours. And you know what? I dig it. Thank you devs, for forcing me out of my comfort zone, and removing the idea that there is anywhere on the map I can truly relax. "The fear" is back in a way I was not expecting.

That's why I only hunt bears with light field artillery. My grandfather used to go bear hunting in the 1930s-1950s with just a Model 1892 25/20 lever-action Winchester. While to me that sounds like madness, he rarely came back empty handed. I tried to find a decent size comparison picture, but as that caliber has fallen out of popular use, the best I could find was this. The 25-20 is the third one from the left. From left to right - 44mag, 357mag, 25-20WCF, and 30 Herrett

I think the gun looks fantastic, and the two kinds of mags are a nice touch as well. I'm curious as to what are the zeroing options going to be. But the questions I have really come down to what happens after I pull the trigger, but that has a lot to do with aspects beyond the rifle itself, such as optics, velocity, and the differences of ballistics with A2/A3/SA, etc. I'll make a separate thread about that elsewhere on the forums for that. Also, one other thing: Great comment, -Gews-, that's the kind of in-depth stuff I hope to find each time I come to this forum.

The new spawn points, FOBs and tent redistribution has thrown a monkeywrench into most people's go-to looting routes that haven't changed all that much in months/years (depending on how you usually play). I've seen very few players as well, but I am seeing an increase in certain spots as people adapt. People will adjust, and new routes and hotspots will emerge in the coming weeks, but the 'main destinations' are still along an imaginary line going through Stary/Vybor/NWAF/Novya Petrovka/Tisy. Tisy seems to have significantly more action with the new tents and loot opportunities, but from what I've seen, most people aren't staying in Tisy very long right now (as most people still need to get to know the most likely places to watch out for an ambush/sniper to attack from, so many people are very paranoid about hanging around there right now for any length of time). Also, the areas of Staroye & Gorka are seeing a lot more frequent traffic it seems - the people I've been seeing have been a varied mix of the well-geared and the barely geared. The new camps and spawns change things up a lot, so abandon your old tried and tested routes, and expect to start running into more people moving between those locations listed above more than at the locations themselves.

I had this problem, and I was able to resolve it by doing the following: Removed all Battleye files (IIRC, one in in programsx86/common, the other is in your hidden appdata/local folder in your user folder, and the one in the steam/steamapps/common/DayZ folder) then verify the game cache. If you dont see BE files in the appdata folder, don't worry. Don't start the program until you complete the rest of the steps. Temporarily uninstalled my antivirus program (not just disable, but uninstall) I had Symantec Endpoint Protection (I know, it sucks, but it was leftover from my previous job that required it) Uninstalled any remote access software, such as teamviewer. Try running it - if there is still a problem, Complete reinstall of graphics drivers and associated apps (geforce experience, for example). since you already did an OS install, you may want to try using the previous driver release instead) Somewhere during this process, I was able to start the game, but it would close when I tried to connect to the server. Doing all those things fixed it though. Also, I should say that I was able to run ArmA 3 fine, so it seems like it is specifically related to the whatever DayZ specific BE files were sent out. My guess is that the BE client doesn't like something it sees, and quits out rather than telling you about it. I think this bug happens when it finds files it doesn't like, but have been deactivated (services stopped, etc) and since there's no running app to tell you about, it gets confused and just closes the app.

I think it's safe to say that nearly all of us at one point or another have fallen victim to another player that is glitched inside a building. While certainly not a game-breaking issue, it is an irritant that happens frequently enough that players have to adjust their behavior when near these buildings to minimize the risk. We all know that the problems with those buildings will be addressed in the future, and to do a full review and overhaul of those models takes time - time that right now, should be spent on higher priority issues. However, waiting for the fixed models is not the only option, and if a significantly less time-consuming alternative is possible as a temporary measure for at least some of these buildings, the overall benefits to the everyday player experience could arguably make it worth the time of the dev team. Rather than rattle off list off a bunch of buildings, I'd like to just focus on what seems to be the most problematic and well-known building - the "camo building/military jail" (IIRC, it's called Prison or Command Center in the assets - pic here). The loot spawns were removed from this building some time ago, which did help the situation by reducing player traffic inside the building, but it still meant it could be used and exploited against players outside the building. My suggestion is this: why not simply replace the current building model with the ruined destroyed model? There would be no new models to make, as there are two models to choose from - the original ruined model from A2, and the 'enhanced' ruined model in SA, which can be seen just north of the ATC tower and Fire Station at the NWAF, or in Turovo. No loot spawn points would need to be removed or disabled, as that has already been done ages ago in .56. I've been around ArmA & DayZ long enough to know that "an easy fix" is as rare as hen's teeth, and something that seems as simple as a changing a model from 'normal' to 'ruined' sometimes can open up a surprisingly huge can of worms. Only when compared to the time required to overhaul a building model would one feel fairly safe suggesting that it's at least 'significantly easier.' As I understand it, once you change the model, a certain amount of internal QA would need to be done to ensure there's no surprise problems (players getting stuck, or perhaps even glitching through the ground and dying, for example). So to reduce the total amount of time spent on this for the maximum benefit, it seems logical to focus only on the locations where they are the most problematic. Out of the 9 places that there are intact Prisons/Command Centers, changing only 3 of them would give the most benefit to the players (listed here in descending order of importance). - NWAF, by the northernmost hangar - Zelenogorsk, by the barracks - Bashnya, north of the NWAF tents The remaining Prisons/Command Centers can wait, as their location, terrain, surrounding structures, and frequency of player traffic around them make them less attractive to those that would seek to exploit them. The ones at Balota and the SW corner of the NWAF I would be nice to see, but nowhere near as important as those three. If this or something like it were to be implemented in one of the patches in the (hopefully near) future, I have little doubt that the player base would consider it time well spent (aside from the glitchers, of course) I would welcome any input/corrections/explanations from the devs and those more knowledgeable than I about the process, problems, and feasibility of this proposal.

Absolutely. As a longtime ArmA/DayZ player who enjoys learning whatever I can about what's 'under the hood' in these games, and trying to figure out what can and can't be done on our end, it's easy to fall into the pattern of thinking in terms of workarounds, as the 'root issues' are often inaccessible. Also, while we know the new player controller will be the foundation of a system that will solve so many issues and open up a vast array of new possibilities, it's not easy to wrap our brains around the full extent of its capabilities and reach. We know it should effectively address a great number of issues and open up new possibilities (with the understanding that this is only the first public version of it). However, I suspect that many of those like myself who try to keep themselves fairly well informed and have full faith in the project and the dev team, and understand the importance and significance of the player controller at a general level, we'll only really start to understand the full extent of it once we experience it for ourselves, and have those limits pushed by the dev team, and modders later on. In a lot of ways it's similar to how one can say the Sahara desert is big by looking at a map, but not really understand how big until you try to walk from Morocco to Cairo.

Well then, I feel rather silly. I'm really surprised I missed that. Usually I'm the one that is citing dev reports/updates to people's questions. In any case, I'm glad it's part of the new controller and won't require a overhaul of the models.

I can answer that, I believe. To the best of my understanding, this kind of issue has already been resolved. You might remember about 6-8 months ago, there was a huge issue regarding accelerated time and the thirst/hunger system, where people were suddenly dying of thirst and hunger about 10 minutes after spawning. IIRC, it turned out the timer for the consumption of food/water somehow got directly linked to the 'ticks' of time on the server. So accelerated time = accelerated digestion. It didn't take long for the issue to be fixed and the timers separated, so one could assume that the timer for this proposed idea would be separate from the server's accelerated time as well.

Seconding Funkdoc's recommendation to check out the ACE medical system (both the old A2 and new A3 versions). The ACE med sys can give you a reasonable idea of what is generally possible with the ArmA engine. Even though SA has a number of 'under the hood' differences, you'll be able to see more of the overall logic of both the constraints of the engine and the clever workarounds they were able to create. I wouldn't want to simply see an ACE med system clone become part of 'vanilla' SA, as I think the system might go a bit too far for the general player base (though I wouldn't mind it being part of a mod for SA when that time comes). However, I think there's a reasonable balance between that and the current system that would be really nice to see. I like your ideas, and have a few thoughts on them Separating the different kinds of wounds (slashes, punctures, bullet wounds with either significant or minimal internal damage, 'gut shots' that would bleed slower but nearly guarantee sepsis, compound fractures, etc) that require different kinds of attention would require a ton of work by the devs, but could be worth it if designed so that it can be added in increments over time with minimal re-designs of the system at each stage. Something that complex may have to wait for a mid-version expansion, if they decide to to that. That said, I think there could be a significant amount done with the current system just by clearly separating the levels of blood loss from wounds into two categories - heavy and light - and make the player aware of which one they have. Heavy bleeding would require a pressure bandage, made either by your suggestion of gauze+rags, but also by using either 2 bandages or two rags. Using only one bandage should slow the bleeding rate somewhat, but would 'consume' the bandage at a faster rate, and even faster if the player is running in such a state. The bandaging animation for heavy bleeding should take at least 2x as long to vaguely simulate the additional time required to apply pressure to the wound. If necessary, the animation could be cancelled at any point by the player, but rather than a binary 'bandaged/unbandaged' state, it would at least count the time you were bandaging/applying pressure so that you could reduce bleeding in 25% increments, depending on when you cancelled it (this would be similar to how the planned 'partial eating/drinking' calculation for actions cancelled in mid-animation would be handled). Additionally, at heli crashes and some military sites, there should be a relatively rare, 6-slot 'military medkit' that spawns, that in addition to the standard medkit items, includes some form of pressure bandage with a coagulating agent and either a morphine injector or some form of topical antibiotic that reduces the chance for infection/sepsis (anything from old sulfa-based powders or sealed alcohol gauze/swabs). An improvised (but of course, less effective) method should be available as well, in the form of high-proof alcohol or even honey, to be used when changing bandages of serious wounds. Of course, the key here is to balance the realism with practical gameplay. A serious torso or leg injury with heavy bleeding should require only two actions - one right after the injury, and later on, one bandage change (requiring at least 2 bandages again) with some form of antibiotic agent added, if available. Constant running while so injured should significantly slow the healing process, consume the bandages faster, and if ignored for long enough, the wounds open and bleeding begins again. The player should get messages throughout this process, such as "my wounds are bleeding heavily, my wounds are bleeding less, my wounds have stopped bleeding, my wound has re-opened, my bandages are drenched in blood, my wounds seem slightly/somewhat/very infected, I'm feeling light-headed, etc. I also hope that SA will include different kinds of walking/jogging/stumbling/running animations that would work with this sort of medical system. IIRC, there has been some mention of this in the past. I hope at least we can have something that replaces the 'morphine and splints makes all the boo-boos go away and we can instantly start running on leg we just broke a minute before' situation we have now. Even just forcing a stumbling/limping run for 30 minutes after 'fixing' a broken leg would be great to see.

The following contains a great deal of guessing, conjecture, and memories of information I heard second- and third-hand years ago. If there is a dev or anyone else who can correct me, I'd appreciate it. In the very early days of the alpha/pre-alpha, if I remember this right, there was sort of a two-part plan in regards to map development: The first was to add the new towns and generally expand the 'civilized' parts of Chernarus, and the second was that the overall map size was going to be increased to the north and west, so that SA would not only have a more developed areas in the north, the map size expansion would add more wilderness as well to balance that out. However, that idea was thought up a long time ago, and from a practical point of view, doing both at once just wasn't possible. What they have done to the north of the map so far is a beautiful piece of work, even though I too miss places like Skalka, Podeba Dam, and the expansive forests of the original Chernarus. The wilderness is still there though, maybe not as much as I'd like, but for now, it'll do. We still could see an expansion of the map size in the future, though, but I strongly suspect that it's not just as easy as simply adding more terrain. From my understanding, everything in the map is tied to a coordinate reference point - in this case, the reference point (IIRC) is in the NW corner of the map. Every piece of map information, from the several layers of terrain data to every tree, house, and spawn location share this reference point. So, I'd venture to guess that this setup gives you two options. The first is to move the reference point to the new NW edge of the map and then adjust every piece of position information to account for the change (no small feat in itself). The second option is to just add the new areas and keep the reference point right where it is, and it simply is not in the far NW corner anymore. Now that second option seems easier at first glance, but I have a suspicion that a good many old chunks of code deep inside of the good old ArmA engine might have a problem with this, as the new coordinates may have values it was never expected to handle when it was written. While it still may be able to be done this way, you'd probably end up with an enormous amount of debugging, correcting and/or replacing a ton of little problems, and what you may end up with is a patchwork of fixes and workarounds that are designed for an engine that they are working on replacing/refitting/modernizing anyway. If what I just said is anywhere near correct, an expansion of the map size could be a long way down the road, perhaps as either part of some sort of expansion DLC 18-24 months after 1.0, or for a sequel, perhaps combined in some way with a release of ArmA 4. I don't see BI just abandoning Chernarus after SA runs its course, either. Chernarus is a big country, and we've only seen a tiny fraction of it. Chernarus is simply too valuable not to expand upon, and as time goes on, we might have an engine that could handle something several times larger.

I get where your coming from, and that is one way to play it. There are also other completely valid ways of looking at this game at this stage of development - to understand as much as possible about what is going on 'under the hood' and why, and be able to identify when things are not behaving as they are supposed to, and help the development process along by reporting it and discussing suggestions and their merits and problems. The question is valid, and such questions do not always mean the person asking is looking for tips to exploit the system. Finding exploits now means they can be addressed and fixed so they can't be used later on, making the game better AND more organic. All these coy, joking responses... it's disappointing. Oh well.

I don't mind the map parts, but I forgot that the names on the map are not in Russian. That bugs me too. I wouldn't mind having both on the loot tables and the English one being crazy rare, though. Like most of the old-timers, we don't really need the map, but I like occasionally having one to plan out routes once I have collected the bare essentials, and not have to wait until I am not playing the game to do that.

While IIRC, there was a brief time, maybe 6-8 months or more ago, when there was an issue with combining maps, but that was fixed ages ago. However, combining maps still has rules: 1) Maps are spawned either in 2 parts (North/South, East/West) or 4 parts (NW, NE, SW, SE) 2) Any 4-part map piece can be combined with an adjoining 4-part map piece to create a 2-part map piece (i.e., NE + NW = North Map, NW + SE= East Map) 3) NOTE: 2-part maps cannot be combined with 4-part maps. You will never be able to create a 3/4 map, for example (i.e., West Map and a SE Map will not combine). You must combine quarter-maps into half-maps, and then combine the half-maps to create a whole map. There are only two things about the maps in SA that I really dislike. One, there are no markings for natural bodies of water inland, such as ponds. I have no problem with there being no markings for wells in the new version. Pond/lake markings were in the map in the A2 mod version, and their removal in SA takes a great deal of value out of having one. Two, the inward zoom limit is frustratingly restricted. I really can't see the value in not being able to zoom in closer - it's not as if the map is going to suddenly give you more detailed information, and why it has to block my character from doing something as natural and simple as moving the map closer to my face to focus on a small area is beyond me. Lastly, I hope one day the actual condition of the map translates to what the player sees. A damaged or worn map should look damaged or worn - varying degrees of holes, burn marks, tears, coffee stains, extensive fold marks that create narrow lines of featureless bumps, etc. Ideally there should be a set of different states and areas of damage that can be applied so that to some degree, different maps look different - One may be missing a corner or have a big ink or blood stain in a certain area, while another has some burn marks and a coffee stain that you can still make out what's underneath, but at times can be difficult.

You know that feeling of relief, a few minutes(hopefully) after you spawn, when you finally find something that's reasonably good at killing zombies? That little rush that comes with a momentarily realization that maybe, just maybe, you're not totally fucked? When the new zombies come, stronger and more numerous than ever before, and after you've died a half a dozen times or more in the first two minutes after spawning, and the game seems impossible now, that when you finally manage to get your hands on a badly damaged pickaxe or even some brass knuckles, that little momentary feeling of relief is going to be exponentially stronger, as if you were just given a shot of morphine. That right there is what's going to let you know that the sometimes hard to find 'old DayZ feeling' that so many pine for is back and stronger than ever. The newspaper joke is also in ArmA 3, where a newspaper's headlines talk about all the furniture on Altis and Stratis suddenly disappearing, and IIRC, the paper suggests aliens or some such nonsense are to blame. (For those who don't know, due to performance concerns, there is almost no furniture inside any of the buildings on Altis or Stratis.) NOTE TO DEVS: Please increase the spawn chance of bananas at the wreck of the cargo ship tenfold. Add crates FULL of bananas - hundreds of bananas - enough to make every player on a full server throw up several times over. With one little addition to those specific bananas - a chance of some variant of the infection, or whatever caused all this. Maybe identify the bananas with a different model, that looks the same but has some little sticker that you can only see if you inspect it. Watch what happens. People will be leaving infected bananas all around the map to kill unobservant players, or playing "Banana Roulette" or "Three Banana Monte" with captured survivors, mixing good and bad ones around in a bag, handing the bag to someone else, who randomly picks one and force feeds it to the prisoner. You're not giving away any critical backstory or saying "this is how it happened" - the newspapers added ages ago to the game already made the possible connection. Maybe they're just bad bananas with some tropical bug that has nothing to do with the zombies, who knows?

After seeing the very promising test footage of the new zombies and the potential as they develop to create a truly insanely difficult apocalyptic world to survive in, I have been thinking about not only the challenges they will bring, but also how it will affect playstyles, strategies, and player behavior that would come long with it, as well as how such a drastic new development would create certain amount of complaints from a portion of the player base. Most of the reactions to the high zombie population, the swarms/hordes, and their strenghs I've seen and heard in various places have been very positive. There are some that think it might end up being too much, for reasons varying from 'too hard - solo survival will be impossible' to 'how will I be able to have cool squad/solo PVP action with all these zombies? I want to fight real people, not AI all the time!' I think these are fairly reasonable questions, and as development moves onward, I think there could be a better way to find a balance, test the limits of SA, and still have something for everyone, by making a separate set of 1st-only and 1st/3rd person hives that focus on high populations of the new zombies. To fully explain where I am coming from and what I am proposing, I need to say a bit about how I see zombies in DayZ as they are now, and how I would like to see them in the future. (full disclosure - parts of this are from a comment I posted on the DayZ subreddit (yes, I know) in reply to someone who was concerned of it becoming 'too difficult' and after I wrote it, I felt it was worth building upon and talking about here, where there is a better chance of having a good discussion about the pros and cons. My current post/comment count is low, but I used to be much more active on the old forums, and have been playing DayZ since May of 2012) First off, I want to be terrified of them - not distracted, not inconvenienced - terrified. The fact is the zombies won. We show up afterwards. Think about that. They defeated everything the militaries of Russia, the neighboring former Soviet states, and NATO's spec ops could throw at them. The assorted wreckage and remains of the fight are scattered all over Chernarus. However, they did not go down without a fight. Now you might say "but the infection probably got most of them before anything could be done." You're right - but it didn't happen all at once. There is a good bit of evidence that the whole thing took only a few weeks from the start - the scattered newspapers on the ground mention something about some contamination coming from a banana shipment (probably the last issue of the newspaper), the most of the camps and military presence were there before to deal with the rebellion (covered in ArmA 2), but the destroyed armor columns (such as the one north of Krasnoe) and the NATO and Spetnaz helicopter crashes indicate various failed reinforcements/recon attempts, the piles of burned bodies and disposal ops (such as in the underground bunker east of Kamensk) indicate they were not all taken by surprise and attempts were made to stop the zombies. The patterns of heli crashes and wrecks seem to indicate the surviving forces and civilians moved northward/westward from the coast, but the infection moved faster than they did. The infection and the zombies were able to do what neither Hitler or Napoleon could - defeat them on their own ground. That means these zombies have to be a lot tougher and way more numerous. For an area of the world that has a reputation of the centuries for being resistant to invasion and enduring incredible hardships to defeat an invading foe by by organized and irregular forces, that is no small feat. As it is right now, 3-5 civilians with small arms, 100-year old rifles, axes and fire extinguishers could easily clear Chernarus of zombies in less than 8 hours with barely a scratch (not counting respawns, of course). Even if only a single platoon or a couple squads from the military survived and rallied, they could probably clear it in less 2-3 hours with minimal effort by splitting into teams. So, to make the reality of the current situation jive with how things apparently went down, zombies have to be crazy tough and numerous enough to swarm and overwhelm most small forces. The ones we encounter are the ones that survived what the military threw at it - either by being strong enough to survive the fights, or not being in combat yet - that's why the varying levels of strength, age, and speed makes total sense. Surviving a solo looting trip to Cherno should feel like an insane idea and a foolish undertaking, and not a standard supply stop while gearing up or an easy PVP playground (don't get me wrong, PVP is cool by me, its just irritating when PVP is the only logical option). I say bring it on - bring the hordes, the swarms, the door-bashing down zeds that know you're hiding in that building and will not stop for anything. But I also can see such a crazy tough world being not for everybody, and that's OK. I'd love to see a third master hive set created once the zeds are worked out - a set of separate 1st/3rd hives with the zeds "cranked up to 11," alongside the 'standard' 1st/3rd hives, where zeds are still more numerous and stronger than now, but not as much as the insane, limit-pushing apocalypse of these new servers. Such a server set might be the answer to those seeking more than just PVP. This kind of tough situation would make finding another survivor a wonderful thing - together you just might live through the day, not to mention raising the stakes and tension when it comes to trust, betrayals and banditry. This idea gives something for everyone, I think. It perhaps offers a faster way to find the right balance of zombie numbers by having a set of high-pop and mid-pop zombie hives. It also gives the option to keep both sets once we're at a 1.0 version for a true 'hardcore' option. Each one will require new play styles, challenges, and strategies for the players that will bring about new ideas and methods neither the devs nor the players have considered. And simply from a PR/player politics viewpoint, offering the extreme high-pop servers as an option to explore rather than a 'command from on high' will make the transition to the newer, much more dangerous world a great deal smoother.

Pusta - Day - Two men come aross a stranger standing in the middle of the main street in town We slowly walk around our new found friend, and examine him closely. He's not responded to any questions, adn does not seem to react to our presence. He seems to be doing a very good impersonation of one of those mimes who pretends to be a statue. However, if it wasnt the apocalyspe, this guy would be raking in the cash as a Vegas act, OK, maybe not Vegas, but at least as a opener for Rob Zombie or Danzig since he is also somehow figured out a way to continuously produce fountains of blood from his body, spraying with enough force to actually blast through his clothing, making that classic scene in Carrie seem like a simple bloody nose. My associate, straightens his 'hat' with one hand, which looks more like a bloodstained and hastily improvised turban than a legitimate piece of headwear, and asks me in a somewhat confused and slurred voice, "Well Doc, what do ya think?" I stop and step back for a moment, and give my diagnosis. "Well, there's two possibilities: He's either the world's most amazing street performer, or he's dead. Seeing as we havent exactly found a thriving art scene in this weirdass country since we got here, I'm putting my money on 'dead'." "And quit calling me Doc. Just because I wrapped a torn shirt on your head to stop the bleeding from your massive head injury when I found you and then stopped you from drinking an entire bottle of disinfectant fifteen minutes later because you thought it was Blueberry Soy Milk does not make me a doctor." ---------- But seriously, though, I really like the way these ideas are going - I like the blood pressure method to determine the number of blood points you have, but it should be vague (a margin of error of maybe +/- 1000 or so) and give incorrect information if there are mitigating circumstances like those listed above (shock, illness, stressfull activity, etc.) At this point, I wouldnt worry too much about making it too complicated for players to figure out - that's part of the game. For those players who dont want to bother with it, let them stay with the ways we have now, like blood transfusions, resting, and eating. Keep a lot of the mechanics under the hood, and the procedures and devices only perform at their best when used properly, and if misused, the treatment could be detrimental or the information given would be wrong. For those players who want to 'geek out' on it, have some of those books that we find everywhere be basic medical survival manuals, and learn what to look for, and follow the proper procedures, we'll end up with some players who will have more skill than others, and end up with actual medics without needing to implement some form of skill mechanic. The same process could eventually be used for other complex tasks that other games just use a skill mechanic for, such as learning how to fix up automobiles and machinery and become a car mechanic. When you think about it, as far as the game is concerned, in many ways a car is no different than a player, and the 'health system' for cars could follow similar rules, but instead of doctor's equipment, blood, and medicine, you need tools, parts, and fluids. With the vehicle repair concept, I'm thinking long term here. Nothing like this could happen anytime soon. If the devs wanted to go down this route, it would really need to be planned out, programmed, and implemented, which would not show up until late next year at the earliest.