Zakificus

Kind of long, but worth a read I think. This isn't meant to be a complaining whiny thread about people on the forums. It's meant to be partially informative, and to hopefully get a few people to take a step back and go "oh, yeah, I guess that is true." Also I like when I see posts by people that aren't freaking out about something, and just want to make sure everyone keeps certain things in mind while playing. It makes everything a little less frustrating when you keep it all in perspective, for me anyways. * We are playing a mod, that is alpha stages, for free: I can't understand why everyone bashes the "It's an alpha" argument. Maybe it's just because I'm a software developer, but that is the most valid explanation for the state of this mod possible. We aren't playing a full game, DayZ is just a mod for Arma 2, so it has to fit the rules of the Arma 2 engine. Not one person in the community has paid a single dollar for DayZ. I bought Arma 2 for DayZ, but that doesn't mean I'm entitled to anything beyond the standard Arma 2 feature-set, (which is actually quite a good amount of fun stuff in and of itself). The game isn't anywhere near yet, and unfortunately if you liked build 1.X.X and hate the direction things are going in 1.Y.Y, well sorry maybe this isn't going to be the mod for you. Or maybe more versions down the line you'll love it again. If you play with the foresight to know that things are 100% guaranteed to NOT be the same thing at the end as when you started, it removes a lot of frustration. * We have more freedom than most (all?) other alpha software tests: If anything I'm happy how things are. Servers could be wiped every 24 hours with complete character resets and forced updates. That would ensure everyone is testing the most recent builds from the ground up, and make Rocket's job a whole lot easier, minimizing confusion over version numbers. It is worth taking a moment to appreciate that we can even have servers that don't update right away and stay on the 'most stable' version for a while. Also, our characters are being kept persistent. Running the master server and the associated resources cost money, and right now DayZ is free, so I'm happy I don't need a new character every time I play, or have to pay a monthly fee to keep my information up to date. That said, I'm okay with losing all my stuff due to a bug I discovered. That means I can report it, and when the time comes to pay for Day Z, I won't be seeing that bug pop up. * Losing your shit every patch just others with fuel for their roflcopters: All the complaints like "I HAET THIS GAME NOW !?!GRATE JOB ROKCET!" and "Let's make Bandits BLEED 10bp/sec FOR EVERY INNOCENT THEY KILL" and "NOT HARDCORE ENOUGH: ADD BUTTONS FOR BREATHING AND BLINKING, THEN IF WE DON'T WE PASS OUT OR OUR EYES DRY UP AND WE GO BLIND!!!!1?!?!!!!one!!!1!!" and it goes on. They aren't productive, hilarious, but ultimately don't help make the game better. Fortunately I see a great number of people that do have sensible responses and don't freak out in all caps every time something changes without them being consulted first. There is a big piece of the community that knows what's going on and isn't up in arms against something every post. I know, I know, it's the internet, I'm wasting my breath. But it's been a long day and typing on here makes it look like I'm being productive since I finished everything for the day but don't want more to do. Besides if karma exists I will be able to laugh all week from the people replying how I'm a retarded care-bear crying on the forums while they are banging my mom with their giant penises. TL;DR: We aren't players, we are testers. The reason we are here, is almost exclusively to find the things that are broken by each update and report them so they can be fixed. Then the process repeats until there is nothing left to experiment with or add. Having fun and guiding development with our opinions is a by-product.

I think it would be worthwhile to remove most of the debug monitor information for a couple of patches time. Specifically, remove zombies killed, headshots, murders, bandits killed, and player name. Keep the following Debug Info. -Blood: Since there is no 'sick' indicator, you have no other way of knowing if you are losing small amounts of blood over time because of illiness. -Zombie Count: Some servers will have no zombies at times, so this would be helpful just to know if you're on a bugged server with no zombies or loot. -Temperature: No other indicator so it will have to do for now. I can't think of any negatives, as it certainly doesn't hinder anything about the game play, and I think it would be interesting to see if it had an affect on the % of kill-on-sight players. I saw a number of posts where people were discussing/comparing kill-counts. Simply not being able to see how many kills you have is a huge step away from "FPS" gameplay, but doesn't actually change anything in game. I would consider this just a small social experiment (within the larger social experiment that is DayZ) to see how players change their behavior when you stop telling them how many kills they have. It's very possible this wouldn't change anything at all in the game. TL;DR: Removing 'kill counts' from debug monitor is a huge step away from "FPS gaming" without actually changing any mechanic or adding any reward/punishment systems.

IF the defibrillator was added to the game, I would say it has to bring you back with only a small fraction of your health, and leave injuries intact. That way if someone dies they don't get a full respawn. Maybe 3000 health and still have any broken bones/pain/ etc they got before they died.

This has been addressed in 1.7.1.4 If it works, you'll have a chance of bleeding stopping.

They're like that on purpose I believe. The other two actually do have limits of how far away they can be seen, but it's much further ranges.

I really like this idea. I think the rates could easily be started on the low end and tweaked upwards throughout testing to find the sweet spot. After all alpha is the time to test and experiment with features. If it ends up making the game too easy or causing everyone to sit around all day regenerating it can easily be removed.

I actually like that idea, quick fix splints for if you can't find medical supplies that only help mobility a little, and could add actual medical splints to the loot table to help with broken bones. Just a little more logical than morphine. After hammering out more features I would like to see bone breaks expanded on, broken leg bone can't walk, broken arm can't aim nearly as well, etc etc. though that might be out of scope.

Unfortunately I disconnected before I could write down server name. But I was up to date with beta and mod versions. When I connected all zombies and animals had white spheres around them. They were the faded transparent ones like you see at the edges of the screen indicating zeds nearby. It was visible through hills/walls and varied in how clearly it was visible and from what range, though usually about 100 meters I would estimate. Also notable I found a bike that had a similar red sphere. It didn't reoccur on any server since. I didn't see any players so I can't confirm If it affected all entities or only those automatically spawned. Also notable, it was pretty laggy during the connecting/loading phase so that may have had some bearing on what caused it.

Latest beta and 1.7.1.1: I had great luck finding everything except food and water. Spawned near Cherno and swept across it once hitting most of the big loot spots. Got killed before I could get out and check other areas though.

I've been having good luck losing them by crouch running. Usually just turning a corner around a house and b-lining it to any other object works. Either that or sprinting to a corner and crouch running the second I get around it. The infected tend to pause a second navigating a corner because they generally hit the wall with their zig zag running. Anyway that's just my experience so far. They may very well trail others too closely to get that few moments to break line of sight and get quiet.

Also, keep in mind bug occur. I've been crouch walking through a building and aggroed 5 zombies surrounding the place. Other times I've crawled 30 feet from a zombie in a field and had it freak and attack haha.

One-time Purchase -Possible cosmetic items for added revenue. Character appearance, maybe weapon or vehicle skins, though this would add few layers of complexity and may not be worth it. Indie Developed - I find they have more freedom to develop THEIR game instead of the studios, unless you're Valve haha Both types of servers. Sell reserved slots if you want to help offset those costs. Definitely Kickstarter, that would give a huge surge to the starter pool of cash to use for the game.

If you're laying down zombies can get almost point blank before they see you. If they're walking past I've tried to get out of the way, but slow crawling they can get within a few meters and not see you. Usually just one will aggro, they don't automatically alert others, but if you're loud the others will catch on independently. Louder noises, larger area of zombie aggro. When you lose blood, screen loses saturation, bad things happen, etc. Read the DayZ Wiki, it has a lot of great info for people starting out. After enough blood loss you begin to pass out. The chain is connection speed. Usually invisible and fine, lag spikes may make it get more red, which means connection is really laggy. Sometimes this might lead to disconnecting and timing out.

The community seems pretty divided on this from what I've seen between multiple threads. I think a huge portion of this argument can be solved by just doing it. This is the alpha stage, this is the time for testing, finding what works and what doesn't. There is absolutely no reason Rocket can't take out all the guns and: A) It works, coastal banditry dies down, people are happier. Starter guns stay out. B) It fails, coastal banditry rises exponentially, people freak out. Starter guns added back in. The absolute worst thing that could happen from this is a few weeks of experimental gameplay.

I think rocket made a point earlier (don't quote me on this, it was late and I don't remember where he said it) that 5 seconds was the time limit because longer than that people with great connections and pc's can log out and log back in before their character is gone, essentially creating a free stack of double everything they had on them, or at the very least a clone that is exactly where they are when they spawn.

I just had an idea, as I was reading a few of these forum posts. Now in a perfect world this would be easy to implement and it would behave like we wanted, but alas we have limitations so I don't know how reasonable this actually is: After humanity dips below a certain threshold, after a kill (or some number of kills), a response unit comes in. Basically, bring in an NPC 'tracker/policeman' type character who is hunting the bandit. Spawn them a good distance away, 100/200 meters, moving toward the bandit. I don't know the specifics of this system so it may or may not be trivial to make it friendly to everyone except the target NPC, or even scale hostility based on humanity. He would essentially seek out the bandit, then engage him in battle. This indirectly helps survivors by occupying bandits with something else to do. The NPC could have some small amount of loot on him. This could have a huge range of things, a military person with that gear, or a cop, or some random farmer, etc etc. Bandits aren't exactly punished because they could run away by placing a time limit on the amount of time the NPC has to find him before it despawns. The bandit could also stay and fight for potential loot (could be limited so it isn't an incentive to BE a bandit, maybe just food and occasional ammo). This system could be expanded, perhaps friendly NPC's for groups of survivors helping each other. Random limits on how often they can spawn and what they carry. If the system allows for it, this is a hugely expandable addition to the game. It even adds a little more life to the servers that have lower populations. Anyway this is just a quick outline of an idea and I think with all our minds we could optimize this into something that would only help the game. Of course it requires overcoming many technical limitations and needs to fit the existing system of the game engine. TL;DR: Have context sensitve NPC's spawn based on bandit behavior or cooperation between players. Each case enhancing the RISK/REWARD of your choice of playstyle.

I just don't see this as punishment. If an easy AI came after you it isn't punishment, it's simulating a group of survivors saying "hey did you hear there's a bandit around nwaf? Someone should do something about him." Then you either relocate (should probably be doing that anyway) or just hold your ground and kill it, which is what you were in theory doing anyway. I view it more as a rogue survivor going after them wanting to do some justice and not as an actual military engagement.

Yes This is subtle, and leaves much room for further development/complexity. Maybe too much, but if someone is aiming at you, you hear *very faint* heartbeat. Or AOE instead of LOS, to simulate 'uncomfortable feeling of being watched' or 'something isn't right here'. Edit: With the first suggestion, then you can't tell someone is a bandit until they're aiming at you. So it's not just a quick 6th sense you know they're bad kinda thing.

Just my two cents being thrown in, but I think the tension of "is this a bandit or a survivor" is a huge part of player interactions. Despite being more subtle, this still HUGELY affects how you interact with people, and that tension is totally lost. I personally don't think any solution that involves the equivalent of "Hey I killed people... well I should make sure everyone I meet knows that" will be a consequence without punishment. Rocket's 'crows in the sky' idea is still my favorite suggestion. It's subtle enough that when you're in town, and you see birds overhead you don't know who is the bandit right away. This still leaves some tension of "who am I dealing with, there is a bandit close but this might not be him." And if fits realistic requirements too. As he said, crows are among the smartest birds and it is possible they'd realize following a particular person keeps leading them to food. It even solves the 'forced-self-proclamation of bandit-hood' Lastly, the crows idea leaves room for surprises since it isn't a straight out give-away. For example: "I've been running around with this guy for a while now, he seems nice... wait... are those crows following us....FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

Is storage space in vehicles/tents segregated like in your player's inventory, or is it one large pool like in your pack? Example: Say you have a car with 50/10/2 storage space, can that hold 50 misc items AND 10 weapons AND 2 bags, or by adding a pistol do I now have room for only 45 more items? I have read contradicting information about how this works, so if anyone can confirm this that would be awesome to have a final say on the matter.

Awesome thanks for clearing that up for me :D.