pillock

Having to eat in and drink is a good game mechanic, because it gives the player a problem that they must solve: where do I find food and water? Having to go to the toilet does not pose any such problems: when you need to go, you just go. It's not a useful gameplay element, and it doesn't add anything interesting or important. Furthermore, it would undoubtedly be abused to create unpleasant and degrading situations, which the game really doesn't need at all.

I don't think you should start with a knife (or a torch, even, really), but I do think they should be abundantly found in buildings. I believe loot is limited due to server technical constraints at the moment, but eventually lootable items should be absolutely everywhere (but most of it being pretty useless). It'd be great to have to spend time rummaging through cupboards and boxes of crap in every house to find something that you might find useful or able to be crafted into a tool. Children's toys, bits of string, coat-hangers, cups and plates, ornaments, blankets, cosmetics, stationery, ice-skates, volley-balls - all sorts of crap that you can take with you if you want. I know we're some way off it, but that's my hope.

Do you mean giving things like pens and batteries the same properties as bullets and matches for inventory storage? So you can combine them into the same slot up to a maximum capacity? Cos I can't imagine that would be at all difficult to do for the devs.

That's up to you. I'd still bother, and I think many other people would as well. The crux of the issue for me is this: DayZ is a survival game. IF YOU DO NOT SURVIVE, YOU HAVE FAILED. Staying alive is more important than building a base. If you die, you start again FROM SCRATCH. And tough luck. That's how I'd like to see the game work.

Yeah. Trade cannot work in the current state of the game: "Don't worry, the Magnum and quickloaders that I just traded you for all your food will appear on the ground in a minute or two," you shout, as you run off into the distance, cackling to yourself.

I think the point is that when you die, you should be back to square one. If you can recover your old gear in a "new life", then death is reduced to a minor inconvenience, rather than the disaster it probably should be. What's the point in introducing all these complicated medical dynamics if it's probably easier to just respawn and run back to your loot? Keeping your character alive - the whole survival objective - becomes meaningless. There is still a purpose to basebuilding, even if you can't go back to it after death: you can go back to it as long as you stay alive. Every time you log on to that server (if they're persistent in one server only), you can go there and add more loot to your storage and make improvements to the structure. But when you die, you should lose it - you have to keep youself alive if you want to progress, because it's a survival game. If you die, you've failed, and you must start again.

The ONLY way of creating the type player interaction that you're suggesting is to tie characters to a server. That's it. As long as you can carry over survivors and loot between different servers, bumping into someone in the game who you go on to cooperate with in a meaningful long-term way will remain rare. Although server-tied characters solves an awful lot of gameplay issues (server-hopping, ghosting, persistent storage exploits, post-death gear recovery, etc.), I imagine it creates a lot of technical problems. Maybe we'll see it in the future as servers become more stable and better able to handle more players at once - but it may be that the developers simply don't see this level of "realism" or "immersion" as desirable or important, so it may never happen.

Shop Mobility Scooter.

Carrying two primaries is fine until you get a server reset while you're eating or using other things in your inventory: then the gun you were carrying in your hands is lost forever. Happened to me several times.

Yeah, you're a lot more evil than me, evidently. Wish there was more paper lying around, though - like, loads of it. I'd litter the map with stupid notes.

You need a server that isn't going to get reset very often for this: Treasure Hunt! Leave some rare item in a relatively well hidden place on the map, but with something nearby that's distinguishable; then move to another location and leave a clue as to where the rare item is hidden; then move again and leave another clue as to where the other clue is; and so on. Try to be a bit cryptic. The final clue you leave should be in an obvious place so someone will just come across it. You might also want to include a request that the treasure hunter leaves the clue notes where he finds them, so someone else can pick up the trail if they get bored/lost/dead. Then you can hide and wait for willing participants, and stalk them as they follow the trail. Dunno if there's any servers that stay live long enough between resets for this to work, but it might be fun. I'd do it myself if I wasn't such a lazy arse.

Some respect for the dead, please!

Direct chat is pretty short distance. You can find walkie talkies for in-game long-range comms though.

Yeah, well most people would think of/be able/bother to do that, I'd have thought.

I am not joking. I think it'd work really well. It's on as standard and really annoying to mute yourself.

I think possibly you should have to hold the key down to turn your DayZ voice off rather than on? So you have to make a conscious extra effort if you want to be quiet in game while you chat third-party. And hard-fix the key-bind to something really awkward like Ctrl + ]

Maybe specific exceptions would be good if possible? KoS only has 3 letters...

If I've understood the various bits of information I've seen and heard correctly, heart attacks are not an additional way for the game to kill you: they are a more detailed mechanism for already-implemented methods of killing you. Currently, you get hit by a bullet or a melee weapon or a zombie, or you fall off a roof, and you either die or go unconscious or stay alive with a broken limb and bleed or whatever. Now, the injury system is getting more fleshed out, so blood loss and blood pressure changes caused by your injury may in turn cause a heart attack if you're not treated. It's making medical revival more detailed, with more variables involved. It's means having a knowledgeable medic on hand is more useful - you need to know how to treat someone who's been badly hurt, and you can use certain kit or actions accordingly. If you find someone unconscious and you want to revive them, there won't be any generic method of doing so - you'll have to know why they are unconscious, what their injuries are, what treatment is appropriate and what treatment might do further damage. A heart attack is not just going to kill you because you've been running around a lot and eating crap food: that would be stupid.

This is the way I understand how it's being put into the game. You aren't going to get heart attacks out of the blue, or from running too much. What it is is a fleshing out of the mechanics for when you suffer a massive injury (like being shot, as you say). So instead of just having alive/unconscious/dead, there'll be a bunch of other things that can happen to you - more detail in the way you character suffers from trauma, and more ways to be saved from it. It's about dealing with medical emergencies, not about giving players sudden unavoidable death when they're not expecting it.

I am a game developer, and this is how new features are implemented: We sit in an office chucking screwed up bits of paper at each other until someone comes up with a new idea. Then we talk about how cool it'd be for about 5 minutes. Then we go on the computer and open up the word document with the game's code in it and type something like "Put tents in game". Then we release it into the internet, and people start playing with the new feature. The only reason we don't add everything in instantly is because we get paid an hourly rate by the publishers, and we need to string development out for a year or two in order to feed our families.

I think they should replace all in-game sound effects with ones done by Rocket's voice into a mic. That'd be hilarious. When you fire your M4, you hear Rocket going "ATATATATATATATA!" I'm looking forward to when they introduce cars, most: "Brrrrrrrrrrm, Brrrrm Brrrr, Brrrrrrrrrrrm"

I'm kind-of expecting these things in the fullness of time, to be honest (not that I have any firm facts to back up this expectation: it's just optimism, really!). More sound effects, generally, and sound that carries over much bigger distances. Doors and gates creaking Louder footsteps Louder gunshots (obvs) People dropping objects People opening their backpacks, fiddling with inventory So if you're not being deliberately quiet and slow, someone's going to know if you';re in the same building or outdoor proximity as them.

Lost count of the number of times I've put my rifle down in the ground, or my yellow boxes and med kits, so that I can fiddle with my inventory, and then seen the server reset timer and lost all my cool stuff! Actually, I haven't lost count: it's happened 4 times. Server restart warnings would be very welcome!

I assume you'll only get cardiac arrest if you've been beaten senseless or shot, and lost a lot of blood? There's no way that diet or physical over-exertion could cause a heart attack in the timeframe of an average DayZ life, and it would be ludicrous for the game to use heart attacks as a deterrent to players doing too much running! I cannot believe that that's how it'll work, and I'm not expecting it to be the case. Having watched the video where Rocket talks about heart attacks in the game, it seems that this is a feature for refining the process between being fit and fighting, through to being unconscious, through to being dead - when you suffer a massive trauma like being shot or battered or stabbed. They're making this process more detailed, more complicated, more realistic, and giving more potential for medical emergencies and recovery (rather than simply being unconscious/dead). I don't think it'll have any impact upon people who're just going about their business of looting or traversing the map.

Text colour is one indication. Also note that the "fake" status notes written by the server admin use the correct form of the present tense, whereas the real game status messages get their English wrong - it's a real giveaway.