pillock

I got nothing, anyway.

This one's better: I can't go to the doctors any more. I'm barred. There was a big misunderstanding last time I had cold.

What do you wipe on your dog's balls then? [EDIT: Sorry, couldn't resist that. Genuinely, I apologise. Pure childishness. I'm ashamed.]

You wipe your nose on your dog's balls?

I'd prefer it if there' wasn't a fixed number of anything - vehicles especially. If you know there's only one per server, and then you see it being used by someone else, you aren't going to keep looking for your own one. It'd be better if there was some random element to it (within some limitations).

All of them. All of them feel like a man after doing this. Which is nice, because they can't feel like a man at any other point during their miserable existence.

That's as maybe. But I reckon you can usually gauge people's intentions/mood over direct chat to an extent, and make up your mind if they're worth interacting with. Some people are roleplaying, some people are larking about, some people are just dicks: but you can often tell which ones are which, in my experience. I got held up in Cherno recently - they guy relieved me of some ammo, but then let me go (I didn't have a gun). I bumped into him about 20 minutes later, and he said, "Oh, it's you again. I've just killed a sniper on that tower over there - I'll cover you if you want to go and loot the body." So I did, and got myself some excellent gear out of it. He then got me into a firefight with the dead sniper's angry mates and I nearly died - but it was good fun and a bit of variety from my usual solo wanderings. Player interactions are what make the game different and interesting for me - I don't care for the kill-or-be-killed mentality.

Getting shot dead isn't that much of a loss in the current state of the game - especially if you're a bambi. But participating in hold ups - either as victim or perpetrator - can provide some of the more amusing and interesting pieces of DayZ experience. I think it's worth the risk trying to cooperate. For me, i'd rather risk death than risk not ever having any fun interactions.

Presumably fuel is going to be your biggest problem with running a vehicle? If fuel is scarce - as I think it should be - then presumably this is going to be a big factor in curtailing helicopter use? Can you even run a helicopter on normal retail-standard petrol that you'd be able to scavenge from roadside petrol stations or jerry cans in people's garages? Perhaps the airbases would have some stocks, but it strikes me that it'd be fairly easy for someone to come along and blow it up. But the biggest factor for me is that I don't think that our survivor characters would have the first clue how to repair and maintain an aircraft, let alone fly one. My first instinct is that helicopters would utterly break the survival-led gameplay I'm looking for in DayZ - but on reading this thread, I guess they would be a lot of fun in potential. And it does fit the scenario that there might be a salvageable helicopter or two lying about... I'm not convinced. If they are included, I just hope they're extremely difficult to actually use.

Yes, but it's clearly not a river in DayZ, and it's clearly not the Czech Republic either. So I don't think you can really use that as a justification for what weapons might be there. It's a fictional scenario and a fictional place - so you can probably explain away pretty much anything that's found there... if there is a background story. Do we know what it is?

Except for the Russian language. And the coast.

Except for the coast...

My story doesn't have helicopters. Sorry.

Enforce walking. Exhaustion for prolonged running. It is the answer. Yes.

I never KoS - in fact, I've never killed another player in over 100 hours of DayZ. But if I ever did decide to change play-style and go on a rampage, I'd probably go on a server with a name like that. Just to spite the idiots who think it's acceptable to try and have PvE-only servers.

This is exactly what I'd like to see. But it does pose potential problems for implementing persistent objects like storage, barricades, camps/bases, etc., doesn't it? It might need to be coupled with increased player-server capacity as well as locking of characters to the server where they first spawn (and allowing players to have multiple characters so they can play with friends/clans at will with separate characters). From my point of view, third-party servers are fine for a mod, but seem to be a pretty down-market solution for a proper standalone title, as DayZ will eventually be on release - especially one that's sold so well.

Yeah, I really don't think that reading a book should give any artificial boost to any skills. Perhaps if the book actually gives practical hints or explains certain mechanics and how to perform certain actions in game, then that knowledge could be put into practice to improve a certain ability. But not just reading in itself. For example, when you find a wrecked-up vehicle you go looking for parts to make it run - but you don't know which parts you need, or how to combine them with other parts in the correct way. You could find a book that explains what does what, and thereby gain the knowledge to fix up your vehicle - but until you actually do it, your skill doesn't improve. Similarly, when the medical system is fully fleshed out, it's hopefully going to be complicated enough that your average player won't be able to effectively help an injured or unconscious player without knowledge of how to apply the various medical actions, and in which cases each is appropriate - you'd need to read a medical manual to get this knowledge, or else learn by trial and error (error in this case being the death of your patient!)

I think we're jumping the gun here. We don't know what type of skills are being considered, and we don't really know how they'll work in terms of players improving them. But if people 'farm' skills by doing endless repetitive tasks, then isn't that up to them? Sounds boring as shit to me, especially if it takes many hundreds of repetitions to get an improvement. But how is that any different from people practicing a skill in real life? If you want to get good at something, you repeat it over and over again, often without any other purpose than improving the skill. Trainee mechanics will assemble and dismantle an engine over and over for no reason other than improving their competence - it's boring and repetitive at the time, but it benefits you for when you need to do it for real. I don't really have a problem with people spending hours of in-game time deliberately breaking and mending loot items (for example) so that they can boost their skill, if that's what they want to do.

I don't think the addition of practice-based skills does encourage KoS. If people are going to do it, they're going to do it regardless. It just makes it more of a loss when it happens to you. (Which is fine by me.) Encouraging cooperation and discouraging KoS, or vice-versa, is a very debatable subject (and not for this thread). But it's a completely separate issue from character skills. It's not the point of them to either encourage or discourage KoS - implementation of new character features are for their own purpose, and carry their own importance within the gameplay, independent of any prevailing play-style trends. And it just doesn't make sense for a brand new survivor spawning on the coast to have ANY previously-acquired character traits.

I don;t care about people crying on the forums - it doesn't change my gameplay experience. You're dead, you're dead. All bambis are equal. I think that's quite a fundamental principle for this game. Exploits will reduce as development progresses, anyway, and for the moment they're just part of the testing process. Anyone who gets upset about them has misunderstood the whole "Early Access" concept.

No no non noo non non nonn oo noo no. No. If DayZ is going to be a survival game, then survival needs to be your top priority. Anything that allows you to carry things over from one life to the next diminishes this. If you lose your character to KoS, tough luck, in my opinion. It's not that hard to get over it. The point of skills is to give value to your character, so you try extra hard not to get killed - if these skills get carried over after you die, then your character has no value whatsoever.

As a general idea, I'd say "decommissioning" firearms should be possible, yes. But maybe not until we also have the ability to mend things? And as I think I said in your previous thread, you shouldn't be able to ruin ammo by hitting it with a melee weapon, unless you're also able to, in so doing, inadvertently blow your own feet off.

While we're (sort of) on the subject, will it ever be possible to properly mummify someone with bandages?

Make this your signature, sir. On subduing a fellow survivor, I usually just ask them to hold still a minute while I shove this here bag over their head, please. Usually works.

I'm not sure that hitting a clip of bullets with an axe is a terribly sensible thing to do, if that's what you're talking about.