pillock

What it comes down to is the balance of the game. At the moment, people kill other people because there is nothing else to do that challenges them. That means the game is badly balanced, in my opinion (or rather, the gameplay balancing hasn't been worked out fully yet). There is an important difference between people like the OP choosing manhunting and murder as their preferred playstyle, and people just killing everything they see because that's what you do in most other games and therefore by default that's what you do in DayZ as well. At this stage of its development, DayZ is not very good at presenting other playstyles to the average user. This is because survival is too easy, and the gameplay elements that would encourage cooperation between strangers are yet not functioning fully - or at all, in some cases. "Yet" is the operative word. But there is also a danger of playstyles becoming entrenched, making habits difficult to change once there is a gameplay alternative to kill-or-be-killed gameplay. There is huge potential in DayZ, because of the tension created by not knowing if the player you've just spotted is friendly or is a psychotic killer. In order for this tension to be maintained in the long term development of the game, there needs to be players who are friendly - otherwise the tension is lost, because you know everyone else is hostile. And at the moment, there is a big imbalance of friendly versus hostile in favour of the hostile. This might become a problem in the longer term, as long-entrenched habits can be difficult to change, and this is probably why people try to 'encourage' certain in-game behaviour when they discuss it here on the forums. Is it because the players base is 'a bunch of dicks'? Or is it because of the gameplay they are presented with? Even if upcoming new features will encourage more cooperation between players, it might be too late by the time they are implemented. Not killing people needs to be at least as appealing as a gameplay feature as killing people is - otherwise, there is no tension, and half of what makes Dayz great (for me, anyway) will be lost. If the developers want DayZ ultimately to be a mass deathmatch, then they're doing great; if they don't, then I tend to think that that they probably need to consider the gameplay balance sooner rather than later.

You're right. I think in the Dev blog, it does say that terrain and movement speed will affect shoe degradation, so your wish is granted (hopefully). If you don't want your shoes to degrade, you can just walk around slowly on soft terrain and avoid bad weather. Everyone's happy.

I think somewhere between, say 6 and 12 game hours would be reasonable for your bog-standard freshspawn trainers to wear out form Piristine to Ruined, depending on how much abuse you give them. It'd be a bit more for running shoes, I'd expect, and significantly more for military-type boots. But yeah, different footwear should eventually affect your movement speed, your foot condition and the amount of noise you make. That'd make sense, and would feel authentic to the scenario, plus add a level of depth to your decision-making in gameplay terms. But they do also need to refine the health mechanics so that it's not possible to fall unconscious and die just because your feet are in bad nick.

I wish I was as cool as you.

I was wearing them all day every day (a bit like you do in DayZ). And they were probably a cheaper model, to be fair. But, the athletic shoes you get as a freshspawn probably aren't the best quality, either. It's different if you're on softer ground, but paved surfaces and rocky terrain are the death of shoes. On the other hand, ill-fitting boots or wellies fuck your feet up just as much isf you're wearing them all the time, because there's no give to them.

I've found myself (or caused myself to be, possibly, but I won't get into that) falling on hard times in the past. Times where I've spend the majority of the majority of days just trudging streets. A pair of shoes I had, which looked not unlike the ones pictures above, lasted less than two weeks. Point is, you spend a lot of time on your feet, and you will wear your shoes out. And then your feet will start to hurt. And then you won't be able to move around much. And in an apocalypse, that could be very, very serious. Somebody earlier in this thread said foot condition was "asinine"; they couldn't have been further from the truth. It is absolutely authentic and necessary for this feature to be in the game, in some form or other.

It's a first implementation of an absolutely necessary mechanic. I'm very interested in seeing how it develops. Different footwear should allow different running speeds on different terrains, and have different levels of comfort, waterproofing and durability, eventually. It'll add a lot to the game, especially in its feeling of authenticity - the condition of your feet would in reality be probably the most important consideration in this scenario, after food and water. EDIT: of course you should never die from having bad feet, but that could be said about many other mechanics that are/will be in the game as well. Sudden unconsciousness/death from any and all maladies is something that needs to be changed at some point - but I'm assuming it will be?

I write random swear words on pieces of paper that I find. I sometimes even tear pages out of books and leave reviews next to them: "Read this book, it's shit." etc. I don't know why.

Excellent. Any tramp will tell you that the most important possession you can have in this situation is a decent set of boots. (And DayZ survivors are, essentially, tramps.) Also looking forward to being able to whack someone over the head with half-eaten cucumber.

Well, that's true. You'd never really sleep, I guess, unless you had a few trusted and capable mates standing guard. But if you were on your own, I don;t think you'd EVER move about in the dark unless you had no choice.

So it's safer to sleep during broad daylight, is it?

I'm fine with the torch thing. I drop mine, but I'd keep the battery if walkie-talkies worked. I'd also possibly use the torch if night-time wasn't so shit. I'm expecting both of these to be fixed before ever-so-long, so I don;t see a problem with keeping torches in. The other thing they do is provide new players with a (very, extremely) basic introduction to the rudimentary crafting system. Having said that... There's no FUCKING way you'd move about at night in a zombie apocalypse, even with a flashlight, but definitely not without one. People who say stuff like "I've been camping, and you can still see a bit at night" are, quite frankly, talking out of their arse (even if they are a B.I. employee!). Yes, you can see a bit, but you can't see nearly enough for it to be worth the risk of being attacked by something you can't see, or of tripping over and twisting your ankle or impaling yourself on something sharp or banging your head. Plus you wouldn't be able to see what you were looting and you;d lose stuff out of your kit, so it'd be pointless.

Military boots (not combat or jungle). Never seen a combat knife, though, so it's irrelevant.

Again, I disagree. Disorganised mobs of casuals assaulting an organised group's defences? Sounds brilliant to me! Then if the mob succeeds in taking the building, they probably start fighting amongst themselves over the loot. I think that would be hilarious and a lot of fun. And on a public hive server, your "base" would be under threat from other organised groups, who could hop into your server and much more effectively launch an assault anyway. Again, it would give purpose to that PvP aspect, rather than people fighting each other just for 'something to do'.

I think this is where we differ. I would answer "yes" to that question. Having organised groups holding territory is absolutely what I expect DayZ to be like, eventually. If you want to live on that server, you could try trading with them, or you could stay out of their way, or you could try to form a group of your own to break their dominance. They aren't going to control the whole map, after all - there'll always be places for you to go. Otherwise, the game won't progress from what it is now: it'll just be random individuals running around doing their own thing, ignoring or killing each other whenever they meet. Useful, longer-lasting barricades will give the game different dynamic - for the better.

But if it were easy to break down the barricades, I don't think people would bother building them in the first place - and that would be a shame. They certainly wouldn't risk storing their collected surplus gear there. I think it would be fun and enjoyable to have an organised group board up the key loot locations in a small town - it would make lone survival from looting more difficult and force people on to the land to survive, if that's how they want to play; it would encourage people to team up with strangers to break through the barricades; it would give a deeper sense of player involvement in the environment, allowing a server to evolve more dynamically. I'm not suggesting for a minute that breaking barricades should be impossible - but it should be difficult enough for them to be worth building. By tying physically strenuous activity like construction and dismantling to stamina, you'd make players pay for their decisions in real gameplay terms. If you;re hungry and/or sick, fatigued, injured, etc, you;re not going to try and break into a fortified structure - you;re going to get yourself strong first, or you're going to team up, before you take on those sorts of challenges. Adds longevity and purpose to the other survival aspects in the game.

Well... If a building is boarded up (ie. all available entrances are locked/barricaded) then that building should stop spawning new loot. The building itself would become a 'persistent storage container', but would no longer function as a loot spawn point until someone broke it open again. Also, if you barricade a building shut, then YOU would no longer be able to get in (or out) without the right tools, either. If you want to collect a backpack full of food, then barricade yourself into a firestation or ATC tower, then that should be possible - but you shouldn't be able to loot-cycle all to yourself. And if you barricade it shut from the outside, then all you;re doing is griefing the freshspawns who run straight to these places from the beach (and those people deserve to be griefed). Anyway, it should never be impossible to break a barricade - it would just be quite difficult and require specific tools and lots of manpower (or time).

I've suggested this before, probably in more detail, but the most obvious way I can think of to make barricading viable in terms of time investment and theft risk is to tie building and dismantling such structures to specific (uncommon) tools and, most importantly, to a comprehensive stamina system. That way, you can spend time and (character) energy on building up a solid defensive fortification in the knowledge that not every Tom, Dick or Harry Bandit loner who passes by is going to be able to break in (or else it will be prohibitively time and energy consuming for them to do so). You shouldn't expect to be able to knock up a near-impregnable fortress within a matter of minutes, but neither should you expect to be able to break into one without considerable time and effort, and without it taking a significant toll on your character's physical fitness. That way, it could be balanced, and there would be no need for arbitrary bullshit like "player ownership" of loot or barricaded parts of the map, or for disappearing stashes or suchlike.

Don't let simple-minded dolts like me put you off. There are plenty of proper people here as well - it's not such a bad place, really.

I have a better solution: If 'your' stuff get raided, tough shit. It's an apocalypse, remember?

Yep. The game needs a general slowing down in all aspects. Running, eating, crafting, hunger, sickness, healing... everything.

I wasn't expecting the wolf to say that.

There are a couple of different magazines for it - it's not so crap then.

I can't wait until they overhaul the controls settings menu. The current version is mind-pickling, and I'm scared of it.

You might want to try adjusting looking at your graphics settings...