stophboy7

Yeah, beards is perfect. Not sure what to do for female characters though...hair length I guess. Head hair I mean...

Just a quick idea to spice up the game: Keep track of the hours survived, and somehow display this information to other players. Would be a great badge of honor for a player to survive for a very long time, and it would also make them somewhat more of a target, whether some players want to defend him or some want to end his marathon =)

Adding character progression in a game like Day Z is dangerous, particularly in the area of over-doing it. I've seen suggestions ranging from a few random perks that characters begin with at spawn all the way to Elder Scrolls style skill points. The danger here is twofold: 1. We don't want to take away from the game's current strengths (or potential strengths once it comes nearer to completion). Gear progression is a huge strength, and adding too complicated a character progression system will decrease not only the importance of gear progression, but also the time developers will be able to spend on gear in general. So the first rule is: not complicated, easy to implement. 2. If we under-do character talents, they become pointless. Having a couple of random perks upon spawn is just that: A one and done roulette that really doesn't offer much in the long run, except perhaps a little easier time in certain situations. Here is my suggestion: Create (depending upon how many 'useable gear themes' are eventually added to the game) 6 - 10 proficiencies with perhaps 3 or 4 tiers. For instance, one proficiency (when vehicles are added) could be mechanical. All new players would start with the lowest tier in each proficiency except for the one that matches his or her 'pre-apocalypse job', which could be either maxed or close to it. The proficiencies would act as modifiers for how efficient and successful a character is when using the gear associated with it. A military proficiency would influence accuracy or weapon modification. Mechanical proficiency would influence the ability to repair and upkeep vehicles and other machines. These proficiencies would raise in tier when the character had attempted them many times, thus allowing characters to eventually max out all proficiencies. This would add much value to character death, as well as give the game a greater sense of progression, and wouldn't be too hard to implement.

Make character creation by server. A character created on a server must stay on that server. Allow each player to have 1 character per server at a time as opposed to 1 character overall at a time. If you want to play on another server with your friends, make a new character on that server - if they are already geared, they can help you out to lessen the restart effect.

This is an excellent idea! The issue of server hopping needs to be solved, and can easily be solved, in another way: Character creation is by server, as in most MMOs. The only caveat for Day Z is that each server would only allow a player to have one character on it at any given time.