pillock

Seeing this picture really highlights the fact that belt holsters for pistols are glaringly absent from the game.

My god. that's not t a very good advert for the game.

I totally agree with this bit. Starvation should be much longer and slower, but it should have debilitating effects that stagger the process, rather than just being a ticking timer towards sudden unconsciousness. Similarly, the "Healthy" status needs to be much harder and take much longer to attain, again with staggered effects along the way. This would give so much more depth to the survival aspect of the game, and I'm looking forward to when they start beefing up the health mechanics and adding stamina and such like.

I've found mountain backpacks in those isolated wooden sheds with the ramps going up to the entrance (what are they supposed to be, feed stores or something?) while searching,unsuccessfully, for tents.

I'm not sure it makes a great deal of difference. There's so many people who will shoot anyone they see, regardless of how well geared they look, that even if you aren't "visibly" armed you still have to approach every player with the same degree of caution you would if you are obviously tooled up. I guess the main advantage comes from being able to ward off fuckwit new spawn chancers that see better clothes than they've got and try to fist fight you for them.

It isn't a problem, though. Players not using all the map is not a problem at the moment, because it doesn't matter at all at this stage of development. There is no reason to expect the way players behave now with the current set of features, mechanics and spawn locations will be the same as the way they behave once more features and different balances are added. To me, there doesn't seem to be any point in suggesting ways to balance the game in terms of playability when many of those aspects that are important to this side of DayZ are not present in the game yet. With the way that updates have increased in frequency recently, player behaviour will probably be changing with it, and just as often.

The man Accolyte posted the other day that they were deliberately concentrating spawns in the north at the moment because that's where the new towns they're adding are and that's where they want the higher player concentrations. It's not a permanent feature, and gameplay balance is not a priority yet.

a motorbike would fit the bill pretty well. Perhaps a quad, so that they don't have to worry so much about falling-off physics.

Unicycle. Or... space shuttle?

Trying to shrug off respawning zombies outside Novy Sobor, some dude with a AK turns up and helps me kill them off, then leads me into town where his mates are. We chat, all's friendly, then they handcuff me and start shooting zombies again. Then they fucked off and left me to get beaten to death while I couldn't run away from the respawns.

It's very unlikely that there will ever be any centrally-organised currency items in the game. Perhaps the community will come up with certain conventions involving ammo or food or hats or whatever, or involving accepted trade values for various items; but players will always be able to barter with each other for whatever they like. At this stage in development it isn't really possible to really think about what trade value you give to what specific item, because loot rarity is changing, as well as new items appearing, all the time.

I think that's the longer-term aim for the respawn system. But to start with, dropped stuff will just disappear as it is replaced by newly-spawned loot, I think.

I wouldn't mind if there was a more drawn-out fade-to-black thing when you die, instead of insta-blackness. Especially if you die from sickness or hunger, but also from a non-head gunshot? I also like the idea of being knocked down when shot, unable to move, but not dead and still able to see.

I've thought this for a while. Lootable and craftable slings to carry larger items on your back are far preferable to artificial 'slots'. If you find a rifle, but have no sling and nothing to make one out of, you have to carry it, and put it down whenever you need to use your hands for something else. Same with larger melee weapons. (there's also no way that double-handed melee weapons should fit into backpacks, unless there is a mechanism for an exterior strap).

Good grief. Is copy/pasting PR material with a few sarcastic comments inserted the only thing you need to be able to do to be a games journalist these days?

Think about it: You trespass in abandoned buildings; you go camping and build bases out in the woods; you play games of "goodies against baddies" with pretend guns; you make fires and put random stuff in it to see what will burn; you kill or maim defenceless wild animals; you catch fish with improvised fishing rods... It's basically a digital version of what 10 year-old boys do in the summer holidays.

Kind of a "Woodland Ninja" look.

I guess my concern stems from the timing element of it. It irks me that it only takes about 5 seconds to chop down a massive tree with a fire axe, for example. And I'm worried that overly-accelerated crop harvesting will further detract from authenticity. In a scenario where I'd have thought mobility would be of prime importance, in order to escape bandit attack or roving zombie hoards, would people really faff about trying to grow spuds? The time and energy investment is quite high when you're growing food, and doesn't really happen in reality unless you have a stable society to support it. And I don't think of Chernarus as a particularly suitable place to be setting up a long-term home.

Well, I think of DayZ as more of a hand-to-mouth scenario. You're scavenging the leftovers of society just to get by another day. Once you start investing time and energy into setting up horticulture you're re-establishing civilisation, and I think that removes us too much from the apocalyptic setting. It becomes less "survival" and more "settlers".

I always thought this was a bit of a strange idea for DayZ. I guess I'll reserve judgment til I've seen it working, but I'm not convinced the concept really fits the scenario.

It sounds like the new town north-east of Novo - begins with K. The big red barn full of hay bales, overlooked by rock formations, the military building down the road, near the coast.

Yes, it is!

Hopefully they can get 100 up and running on stable before all that much longer. Then we can all see how it works out for a while. On the face of it, it doesn't sound too many to me - I'd like to see if 150 would work if that's possible from a technical standpoint.

Epilogue: 7.) Logged into the official forum to discuss the game with the community. Received nothing but sarcasm and vitriol in return. Logged out in disappointment?

Maybe DayZ should stream commercials on to the "You are unconscious" screen? Y'know, give you something to look at while you wait?