Pendulum Effect

That's what I was thinking, too.

I got to the point where I would look for cover when I heard helicopters go overhead in real life. Yeah, I'm a 24 year old college student and I had difficulty differentiating that. Same with my friend. Sad life of a survivor.

Diversity and variation are key in games where you don't have rolling content or events. If things are entirely player driven, there's only so far it can go. With the community and the dev team working in tandem, we can see a lot more interesting content than relying on one or the other.

#Doublepost. :(

This is the kind of PvE that I'm referring to. As it stands right now, zombies pose no threat and you feel no repercussions for firing a loud weapon in the confines of a town. You should fight the dead and fear the living, but it doesn't mean you that the environment and the zombies in large groups can't be equally frightening. Sure, this isn't meant to be a Left4Dead zombie killing spree but technically you could play it that way if you wished (if there were zombies to kill). The notion that the inclusion of these areas would eliminate or ruin PvP is not true by any stretch of the imagination, due to their nature. It could form 3 way wars, where two factions inhabit the island at one time but must also contend with all of the zombies. Do they open fire, ignore each other or do they team up? This is eventually going to be a part of the game by design, even in smaller towns. It adds tensions and uncertainty to an otherwise concrete fact: the two groups will kill each other because they know that it's likely that the others will kill them. The main goal is to survive in this game and currently the environment just doesn't pose enough of a challenge. You should have a greater and greater risks and rewards system and more importantly a better balance of what might kill you; zombies, disease, exposure, hunger, thirst, injury and people. You must brave all of these, tenfold, when you go to the zombie island. It's not changing the way the game plays, but it gives you a higher risk/reward quotient to work with.

I've been looking for a way to say that, so thank you. There doesn't need to be huge, complex ways to provide variety and challenges. They can be simple (at least concept wise) and let them run it's course, which has been what DayZ is all about anyway. Competition for supplies and better loot will always be a part of the game but you could, for a brief moment, put all that aside for and fear the more direct threat of zombies or the absolute unknown. Without adding new stuff, the veterans will very rarely feel the terror of not knowing where everything is on the map or not knowing where people could be sniping from or not knowing how to successfully navigate and loot each and every town. If you come up on a random base, you don't know the exact layout or how many zombies spawn or what the loot table might present. Or the island with nothing but zombies that can tear you to shreds in a heartbeat if you make one wrong move. That gives you a nervous feeling in your gut. That's something you never want to lose.

Thank you for this thoughtful post. Other than a handful of people, most have been too quick to bash without reading or flat out provide no constructiveness. You have demonstrated both higher brain function and common decency, all of which were lost to several users in this particular thread. I love your idea on zombie behavior and I agree 1000%. These are the zombies I hope we all see in the future, with more believable animations and behaviors. While this idea would be better implemented after they have sorted zombies clipping through buildings and attacking through floors and walls, the idea is very compelling for game play and providing a bigger threat for people to cooperate against. I imagine scenarios like (and I cringe to bring this up) when Shane shot Otis, leaving him crippled and unable to get away. This way if you were ever being closed in on by zombies, you could sacrifice your friend while you slipped away from zombies that were curiously approaching your position. This means zombies can still kill the most battle hardened survivor if he slips up and makes too much noise. He could find himself stuck in a house with no where to go. So does he wait for someone to come make more noise to lead the zombies away, or does he try to shoot them all and slip out before more arrive? I imagine much of this zombie behavior being included in my vision for the zombie infested military harbor. I also agree that zombies should be found behind closed doors and buildings. Not all the time, but every once in awhile you should come across one that scares the shit out of you. In that moment you make a knee-jerk reaction: you kill it silently or with a gun. If you fire your weapon, that one mistake just brought a world of hurt to your position. It could be another survivor or the infected; the possibilities are endless with that.

I guess I've never really played on a Private server based on my own prejudice, mainly because of the reasons I have expressed about being able to have several characters at once. I have had a "main" server that I played on quite a bit during the mod because my friends and I had vehicles and tents on there but after awhile we realized that the server became less and less populated due to our success in hoarding all the vehicles and a helicopter in which we were able to use to reclaim our vehicles. I suppose if we find an excellent private Hive to play on, we could give it a shot and see how it goes. I'm intrigued by your reasoning for it, so I feel compelled to take a chance. Do you suggest any private servers? Oh, I agree. I still think there would be far greater dispersion in mentalities than there currently are in this game right now, though. A lot of people would try to cling to their semblance of humanity and law abiding behavior. Some wouldn't kill unless threatened. Some might be more acclimatized to violence. But as it stands right now, most realize it's a kill or be killed scenario. I love the tagline, "Fight the dead, fear the living." Because it's true. But the overall mindset of people in DayZ does not represent what I think a real life scenario might bring. I'm curious if there's a way to simulate that.

I agree. The only problem, the way I see it, is the idea that you could theoretically have many characters and therefore not be as attached to your "one and only." Sure you would have your favorite character on your favorite server, but what if this server becomes full, gets taken down, temporarily offline, or no longer sees people logging on. Then your character and your progress are lost (or unable to be utilized). I'm trying to brain storm ideas that would combine servers in a drop in/drop out mechanic based on proximity, but then you have the issue of player created construction.. I'm curious if you have any ideas.

Thank you! I do want the game to live up to its potential first in the basic implementation of everything that has been discussed thus far. That is the first priority. However, it's never too early to foster great ideas to keep the development team and community interested in the long term success of this game. The more ideas we come up with collectively, the longer the lifespan of this game. It is the true nature of MMO style games in contrast to non multi-player games. Even games that are of non MMO architecture recognize that in order to stay relevant, they must continue to add new features and areas to explore. As humans we crave that which is new. So this, adding features concept, extends far beyond the KOS issue. It is entirely possible that it will become something entirely different by the time the framework is updated. If what Dean is working on now is considered the skeleton of the game, this would surely be considered the meat.

The only reason why I suggest the island being a thing, is because I don't think they are technically going to be able to sustain the number of zombies that I'm suggesting at the island across multiple towns. Dean says the goal is 10000 per sever due to the use of a network bubble, but I can only imagine the server load being quite high. If a town carries 100 zombies, a city has 1000, then i'm thinking that this island (the size of cherno or elektro in overall area) would have 5000. Yes, this is an over generalization of what I'm thinking of and obviously there are serious gameplay, latency and overall bad design implications, but I don't think we should be limited on the variations of locales we can see. Dean can, and has, take ideas from other mods of DayZ. This island would only be added after the serious and more pressing concerns are evaluated and solved. Realistically speaking, it could be added within the next two years as a form of "expansion" or "rolling end game content." I'm all for making more zombies in existing towns, solving other problems and bugs first. The points you bring up are extremely valid and I agree that they should be addressed first. But the devs need to realize that every once in awhile there's a need for them to "steer" the economy or social climate at certain way, to make things balanced. What if people stockpile shit loads of food, but the server keeps spawning more? People live longer, they no longer have to scavenge as hard for food. There's no current system that suggests time has passed (other than day or night) like the seasons. Why is food always available? To my knowledge, they said seasons are impossible with their current engine. To simulate the progress of time, they could introduce other areas with higher challenges and greater risk to even out that economy. Just a hasty thought, I can clarify more when I'm not on my phone. No, he doesn't. He's a career troll on these forums. He should be banned by the admin, as I don't think he's made one constructive post during his tenure here.

Of course being in a clan is "the way to go" if you want a friendly experience. But like I said, finding one in the forums is immersion breaking and having an incentive to have more friendly encounters IN GAME should be a part of the DayZ. You can not deny that without more end-game content or persistent base building with stashes, etc. that this game literally is a death match with high character customization. I love perma-death, because there's nothing more exhilarating than when you get shot at and your heart stops. You care about your character! What's the point in building your character if you just lose everything once you die? Yes, perma-death is part of the game but besides my body, what am I leaving behind? Nothing. I haven't really changed the world in which I live in. I'm not leaving behind a heavily fortified base, or house, or car behind. No matter if you spend 10 minutes or 1000 hours, the world is going to look the same. Yes, these are going to be fixed down the road, but people playing the game have already started off on the wrong foot. They look at this game as a giant death match. CoD for example offers character customization, but no stake on the world you inhabit. You cannot persistently change the world. Therefore it is a "lets play dress up and murder each other sim." This is literally what DayZ is becoming if they don't add interesting things to the game that provide people outlets to tackle new challenges or reasons to interact. Yes, the whole charm of the game is that you don't know who will shoot you and when. But again, for the MILLIONTH time, KoS should not be the only thing keeping this game alive otherwise it is a post-apocalyptic mil sim. The ideas in my post provide more flavor to the game without straying from Dean's visions and giving more avenues for the dev team to explore by varying the loot tables found at each of my locations. Yeah, people are idiots. I updated the TD;LR to show that even Rocket wants to change how banditry works by adding realistic challenges to circumvent KoS. It's not a matter of my opinion, it's Rocket's opinion that KoS should make people think more than it currently does. That's why he has items being damage on the character when they're shot. He wants more ideas to make robbery or tentative cooperation to be a part of the game more than it is. Uneasy alliances are just as scary as the possibility of behind KoS'd. Thanks for your support, it's been getting annoying with people either not reading or just saying I'm a crybaby for not liking KoS. Where are they getting the idea that I don't like KoS?! Jeez.. haha.

Literally.. it's like.. people are stupid.. I really don't have words. I just said KoS isn't the fucking problem. I kill on sight every time. I expect to be killed on sight. I LOVE KILL ON SIGHT. Jesus, I'm giving reasons to make it not the only part of the game. You're stupid, you add nothing to this conversation, you didn't read. Good day.

Yeah, that's why I was worried about putting a TDLR up there.. Oh well. Hope it's compelling enough to warrant a full read through.

Exactly. You don't need to limit the way the game is played. You can add interesting areas without being too gimmicky, and still satisfying the core mantra of DayZ. It's still a survivors story, it's just adding a more interesting and fleshed out world to inhabit. You didn't read. Good for you. I will when I'm not on my cell phone.