pillock

No thanks. I wouldn't enter that old hag for all the money in the world. She wasn't even attractive when she was younger. Brrrrrrr.

I agree with everything except your pessimism about the future of the game.

I'm not entirely convinced that windows should be breakable by throwing empty cans at them. Full cans, maybe. Or if you could fill an empty can with dirt first. But empty cans couldn't break a window unless the glass had been replaced with single-ply tissue paper.

Third-party private servers are ok for a mod or an online add-on to a single player game, but in a fully-fledged standalone online game, the servers should be centrally controlled and run. I think that's the only viable way to run the game when it gets closer to release. Once you have that, you can lock characters to servers, which allows you to eliminate server hopping and ghosting, and makes persistent storage work properly. If people want to play on different servers with their friends or a clan they should be allowed to keep multiple characters on the go at once, but each time you join a new server you should have to start again as a new spawn. I don't see a problem with that - you could limit it to, say, 5 characters per player. That's the only way to really create the persistent game-world that's required to fulfill DayZ's potential. And yeah, you should be allocated your server automatically, with group formation tool in the game menu. The system in place now is fine at the moment, while new features are introduced and tested; but it would be a bit Mickey Mouse for the finished game to operate in the same way.

I like the idea that you arrive on the coast. It makes sense. I also like the idea that the interior of the map is something you explore over time. Perhaps if they made it so the better guns and medical supplies are much rarer in coastal areas compared to inland it would give a better balance? But yeah, I think spawning at a random coastal position could be a good thing.

Do you not even know the difference between grammar and spelling? They are two entirely separate things.

I once found myself being approached by a do-gooder. He insisted on giving me food and protection, but when I said I just wanted to explore the map on my own he got annoyed and blasted me with his shotgun. I don't trust those helpful fuckers any more.

We must discover how to exploit this deliberately and reliably. Place Your Bets Zombie Boxing Mini-game™?

And we should be able to clip through buildings like a zombie, and hit people with melee weapons when they are on the floor above us. For camoflage.

I liked your post, but I just wanted to point out that fresh spawns who run up and down the coastal road deserve to be shot.

There is a word to describe the following posts: It is this: Bollocks.

You know a forum is good when the moderators derail threads with stuff like that.

I started reading Sun Tzu's The Art of War yesterday, but it was boring as fuck so I dropped it in a pond.

Why does the game need a deterrent to KoS? Sorry, did I miss something?

There needs to be some way for the game to tell you when you are injured and where you are injured without looking at the inventory. The greyness and blurriness + "fuck that hurts" every 5 seconds is very far from being good enough. I think text is probably the best way - it's clear, it's obvious and it allows for variety.

Quite an entertaining story. I enjoyed it. I believe your playstyle can be accurately describes as "Complete Bastard".

I think the game is progressing nicely. It's bare bones right now, but the feel of the game is great. Survival does need to be harder, and I think should be your main focus while playing - for it to be a genuine challenge just to keep your character from succumbing to cold, wet, hunger, thirst, tiredness, sickness and injury. If we get a good grounding in those things, then the rest of it sits happily on top. The player interaction, gunfighting, crafting, building camps, character/gear customisation, etc: they're the optional bits that make up the sandbox and give us ways to form objectives for ourselves. But the survival bits are the basis of it all - and it should be as difficult to succeed in that as they can possibly make it, while maintaining a level of intuitiveness.

Surely if you want a humanity system, you'll be able to mod the game after full release and use that on your server? If such a system is implemented into the vanilla game, I will stop playing it immediately.

Next time you find a disinfectant bottle, take it with you. If you ever run out of sticks or morphine and then break your legs, there's your suicide option.

I don't think KoS players really give a toss whether or not they're ruining someone's day. They have guns: they want to shoot stuff. They don't see you as a player, they see you as a target. It doesn't matter if you're geared up or if you're an obvious bambi. You are in their gun sight, and they will take the shot. I generally think that 'justifications' such as, "They might gear up later", "they might sneak up on me", "they might be a bandit looking for quick loot", etc. are just excuses. There's no moral justification for it one way or the other - a kill is a kill is a kill. And that's what they're playing for. The more you shoot, the better you get at shooting: they're just practicing the game the way they want to play it. I think they do the game a service, personally. They keep the rest of us on our toes.

This is true, but there is still a gameplay balance issue with the fact that freshspawns can be successful doing this. The reason they try it on is that they have a decent chance of success. The game would improve, in my opinion, if it was easier for geared-up survivors to fight them off. If the success rate of bambis boxing with armed commandos was less, they would try it on less. I think.

Tramp. I generally just womble, but I have also tried sitting down on Elektro High Street and asking passers by if they have any spare change. I got shot though.

Respawn timers are a very heavy handed solution to this. The way to prevent freshspawns from behaving aggressively towards visibly geared-up players is to make it much less worth the effort: that is, improve melee combat. It shouldn't be so easy to knock someone out with your fists - it should be much easier to defend yourself if you have a bat/shovel/crowbar etc. Melee weapons should give you greater reach than someone fighting with their fists, so you can break their arm (or their skull) if they get too close. Also, freshspawns should be tired, hungry and thirsty until they've spent time looting and sorting themselves out - therefore their fist-attacks should be weaker than a healthy, hardened survivor, thereby putting them at a big disadvantage. This problem doesn't need an arbitrary punishment like a locking-out timer for people who die, because that would affect everyone - not just the brawling freshspawns. What it needs is some gameplay balance to discourage such unrealistic behaviour. Hopefully, this will sort itself out as new mechanics are introduced and fleshed out. In the mean time, you can order them to keep their distance and shoot them in the leg if they don't!

It would give the forest hermits something to think about!