pillock

I'm not a naturalist (or a naturist), but in a map the size of Chernarus, it strikes me that there wouldn't be enough room for more than about 2 or 3 bears and maybe 1 (or 2 absolute maximum) packs of wolves, given the territorial ranges of those animals. I like the idea of predator animals to give the players who hide in the woods away from the zombies and other players something else to worry about, but I don't think you'd be constantly fighting them off everywhere you go. The inclusion of horses and tame dogs is not something I'm particularly excited about - I don't think it's necessary or terribly realistic. But if they do include them, I'd doubt that they'll be very common. I shouldn't think it'll be the case that every man and his dog has a horse, for example. In any case, I don't think it's confirmed that companion animals will definitely make it into the game, and if they do it'll be a long way off after many many other features have changed the balance of the gameplay a great deal from what we have now. I certainly don't think it's something to be getting overly worried about at this point.

Given that Facebook turns people into zombies anyway, perhaps this was the cause of the apocalypse in the first place.

Tee hee. Reminds me of when I used to watch the Scottish Premier League.

Can you tie people up with rope? Haven't had the chance to test it yet.

All we need is bigger server capacities. Then there'll be some proper danger. It's ok at the moment if you;re on a near-full server - Berezino, Elektro, Cherno are fun places to try and infiltrate. But a lot of other towns are mostly empty, which is a shame. I really like the fact that the big towns are full of nutters who kill anything that moves for fun. I don't join in with the PvP combat, particularly, but it makes it a real challenge to try and loot those areas. If they were just empty, it'd be boring. When you spawn on the coast and there's gunfire all around you, it immediately puts you on edge. You have to duck and crawl, keep out of sight and try to get away to safety, wherever you judge that to be. It;s great! Just go with it, try to survive the hostile environment, and enjoy the challenge. I have never once killed another player, (coming up to 100 hours) but I enjoy the danger created by the people who do.

Yeah, it is. But that's, you know, bad. Don't do that.

Before they make you carry them in your hands if you don't have a strap or rope, I'd want to be able to use my two hands independently for carrying. I can carry a rifle in one hand, and an axe in the other while I'm walking around - I only need to use both hands if I'm actually using the gun or axe.

The man Rocket has got to see this.

There are birds in the game already. I'm assuming they're cosmetic in DayZ, but is it not possible to shoot birds in the ArmA games? That'd make a lot of sense within the hunting mechanics - and you could use the feathers for making arrows (or tickling people with).

If the health system really moves forward, and being cold and tired has a big effect on your character's ability to function, maybe matches will become valuable? I mean, bullets aren't a very stable currency, in all honesty: one big gunfight and you've caused an economic crash.

I think tame dogs and horses are a bit far-fetched, personally. To me, it seems more likely that there'd be packs of feral dogs that attack you - a bit like wolves, but in more urban areas - rather than strays that you can buddy up with. And horses... they'd be extremely difficult to catch, for a start. And then you'd have to break it in and teach it carry things, to tolerate a rider, to respond to your commands. And you'd have to learn how to ride, yourself - it's not some innate human behavioural trait. I just don't think it's believable in DayZ's setting. Maybe if you spent a long, long time working on it - weeks or months - but there's no way you should just be able to run up to a horse that's standing about, and just jump on and ride away.

Bears and wolves: to give you another thing to worry about if you're spending your time in the wilderness away from the zombies. Dogs and horses: because... alright, I kind of agree this idea is a bit mad... but I guess just because it's plausible to the scenario?

New wind effects are pretty strong?

I doubt farming's got much relevance to DayZ. You'd have to wait so long for anything to grow that it wouldn't be worth it. But animals are coming, like it or not. The dangerous ones and the food-source ones for sure (and possibly quite soon); the tameable ones not definitely confirmed.

I'm looking forward to wearing an entire bearskin, and running around the woods near the coast shouting, "RRRAAAARRRRGGGHHH" at new spawns

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.