pillock

The only form of character improvement I want to see is physical fitness/conditioning - and no friggin XP points or skill trees, neither: the game should just calculate it and make subtle changes that you only really notice once you get killed and realise how feeble and crap your newspawn is in comparison to the hardened survivor you just lost.

I want violin cases that can be used to put tommy guns in. [Edit: You can have violins as well if you want]

That's really helpful, cheers. But I still cannot understand why they're even thinking about such complicated medical dynamics, when there is zero indication to the player that they are happening. I don't know if my character was severely shocked by fighting off that zombie, or if he just thought to himself "Wow, that was cool - let's do it again!" I don't know if my heart rate is up (they could easily add a sound effect for this, couldn't they?). I don't know if I'm injured, I don't know how much blood I've lost, I don't know if I'm tired or exhausted, I don't know if I'm suffering pain. These are pretty basic things to have in place, I'd have thought, before you giving people heart attacks. It just seems to me like they're implementing new things in a bit of an illogical order.

If you could get heart attacks from eating crap for a day or two, or doing overly strenuous exercise when you're not used to it, I wouldn't be alive in real life. No, I don't know how the nuts and bolts of this game mechanic are being implemented, but I REALLY don't like the sound of it.

I think the devs need kick this idea into the long grass. You can't even get tired yet, and they're introducing heart attacks? Insane.

Google Translate must be punished!

Shame there aren't any foxes, eh? Have to use newspawns instead. But things like checkers, chess, backgammon, cards - that could really work and not require complicated physics

More zombies. After that, they can add more zombies. Then add more zombies.

Bull. Shit.

...or you end up hitting your client over the head with an machete because you're both starving and you just found a single low-stock bag of rice between you. Edit: Still better than golf, though, I agree.

I still say it's largely cobblers. I spend 90% of my time going from small town to small town in the middle/north of the map. I've found about 5 rifles and one shotgun in those places in about 80 hours. You find more than that in 30 minutes if you go to the big towns or military bases (as long as you're good at dodging bullets, natch). Either the 'big secret of veteran players' is a bullshit myth, or I'm very unlucky.

You really don't find very many guns or much ammo in those places, in all honesty. They are there sometimes, but not very often. Food, cans of pop, med kits, clothes, backpacks, melee weapons: yeah. The reason people go to the big towns and the military places is that they know they'll get armed up there.

Yeah, but it does feel a bit naff. The fact that you can respawn and collect the exact same loot you had before you died is crap, in my opinion. It's not a feature that should be left in the final version. Just because it exists now in the SA alpha, and it may have existed in the Mod, it doesn't make it a desirable feature. Maybe if you were disallowed for respawning in the same server you died, and couldn't hop back to it for a substantial amount of time, it'd sort it out a bit. Your stuff, either in a storage container or on your corpse, remains in the server where you left it - but YOU don't.

I think you're missing out on the fun if all you do is run away or draw a weapon if someone tries to hold you up. It doesn't matter AT ALL if you die; it doesn't matter AT ALL if you're robbed of your stuff. Being held up has actually provided some of the most amusing moments in my DayZ experience so far. It's not a fucking competition. It doesn't matter if some scrub robs you: no-one's going to know.

Consequences are good. But Psychological trauma is just not going to happen. It's too complex, too imprecise, too problematic to form the basis of a gameplay mechanic. I agree that consequences for actions are good, but this is not a good example. It's a bad idea, and unworkable. It'd be great if bandits could build up some sort of infamy, could be identified, so other players could form posses and hunt them down to administer some form of justice - that would be a good consequence, befitting the scenario. But I fear this isn't very feasible without locking characters inside a single server (which is what I'd like to see happen, albeit unlikely).

My gameplay experience mostly revolves around yomping the countryside, exploring the map and finding places I've never seen before. I walk for the most part - I like to take in the surroundings because I remember them better that way, and can build up a better mental picture of the environment and layout. The problem with this is that I don't come across many other people, and it can become repetitive after a while; it's also difficult to find medical supplies, firearms and ammo in the smaller, out-of-the-way towns, barns and factories. So, occasionally, I'll head towards somewhere like Elektro or Berezino to look for items I'm lacking. This is a risk, because that's where all the KoS bandits seem to hang out after they've geared up, looking for action. Now, I don't go too near military bases, because I don't want military kit - I have enough carrying space in my backpack and clothes for what I need, and I don't like carrying visible guns. Having a rifle on my shoulder makes me nervous - I feel like a target. My theory is, if someone sees me from a distance (before I see them) and I'm ambling along in civilian clothes with no visible weapon, they are more likely to either ignore me or else act in a friendly way if they do decide to approach. This has been generally proven by my experience so far - I've mostly had amicable player interactions. But if I'm running about in military garb with an M4 on my back, someone who sees me is, in my estimation, likely to either track me in a hostile way or try to put me down as soon as they can, so they can steal my kit or reduce the risk to themselves by my presence. By entering the likes of Elektro, though, I know I am taking a risk, whatever my outfit. The people there don't want me there - I am a potential threat, and I might take loot that they want for themselves. But I need to go there if I want my medical stuff or a sidearm to ward off axe-maniacs or over-aggressive newspawns or those trade exchanges that turn bad. And here's the main point: If it wasn't for the KoS bandits, it wouldn't be so tense and nerve-wracking to do the incursions into high-loot areas. They are what makes the game fun for me. It fits my idea of what I want the gameplay experience to be like that there are dangerous criminals who kill for fun in these types of areas. I run and duck between doorways, I try to avoid contact, I'm fucking careful in everything I do, because I don't want to die. I deliberately play highly populated servers, because these give me the best level of balance between my quiet woodland walks and my high-pressure, heart-thumping raids on big towns. When I approach these towns, the crackle of gunfire gets the excitement going: how can I best get in there and get out again alive with the loot I'm looking for? I don't want to stay in these places long and join in the combat - that's not how I want to play. But if there weren't people - the majority of people, even - who did want to do this, it would ruin my gameplay! They are doing me a service by creating the tense atmosphere I want from the game. If it wasn't for the prevalence of KoS bandits, I'd be bored and I'd probably give DayZ up. I found a pristine SKS is Berezino yesterday. As soon as I was a safe distance from the city, I dropped it in a field. You're welcome to your PvP urban combat, and I'll keep enjoying my wilderness apocalypse survival: the best thing is, we can all do it in the same game.

In a way, I kind of hope that the devs DO introduce psychological effects on characters. Then everyone will see for themselves first hand how fucking stupid and annoying and gamebreaking the whole idea is. And then they will remove it.

this ^^ should be copied and pasted on every thread about this subject multiple times until they are locked.

I think the main point here is not that "This is a game, and this mechanic isn't needed or wouldn't be fun". In an ideal world, it would be pretty amazing if psychological effects happened to your character, and they became unhinged or depressed depending on what you made them do or not do. The main point is, it's nigh-on impossible for the devs to actually achieve it. A half-baked or arbitrary version would almost certainly detract from the experience and cause frustration: therefore, it's not worth opening that can of worms. Psychology is too imprecise and complex a subject to be implemented in this game in a way that could be balanced.

I think this could be gotten around. As a suggestion, what if you could buddy up with Steam Friends in the game menu before entering? Then the game knows you're playing together, and puts you in the same server. It probably would require multiple characters per player (one for playing alone, one with this group of friends, one for that group, one for a clan game, etc), and you'd have to start again from scratch each time you wanted to play on a new server with specific people. But that would be ok, wouldn't it? It could be limited to, say, 5 characters per account, so if you want to keep swapping around, you'd have to suicide one of your existing characters and keep starting again... but people could deal with that. For me, the advantages of removing server hopping, ghosting, combat logging, storage exploits, loot hogging, post-death loot-location knowledge, etc in one fell swoop outweighs everything else. The only problem I can see with it is that it requires such a big change to the server management system - but I would hope this could be gotten around as well.

Nice one! If you get 'psychological' penalties for KoSing, then you also get them for not KoSing. Best way to shoot down an argument is to turn it on its head. Just shows how impractical and ill-thought-out the whole suggestion of psychological effects is. My beans to you, sir.

There needs to be more fatigue and physical fitness mechanics before sickness will work properly. Fatigue should: -reduce your running speed -eventually stop you from being able to run at all -increase speed at which you get hungry and thirsty -reduce power of your melee strikes -reduce resistance to zombie and other players' melee strikes -increase risk of stumbling (could cause injury) -increase risk of sickness -reduce resistance to effects of cold and wet If your character had an overall 'Fitness' level, which was built up over a long time, then all the variables above (+ plus others, maybe) could be affected by it (so you recover from fatigue effects more quickly, depending on your overall fitness). It could also allow you to top out your hunger/thirst/energy/strength status at a higher level than an 'unfit' or 'ill' character (like a newspawn?).

Maybe some system where you can buddy up your characters in the server menu, then join together on the same part of the map?

Simply by giving players other things to do besides fighting, it will reduce instances of KoS. Some people will always shoot anything that moves, because that's how they want to play the game. But other people will occupy their time doing the survival and crafting stuff instead - this stuff doesn't exist yet, so it's pretty obvious that the majority of players currently spend their time doing the one thing that is possible: deathmatch.

I don't think that's viable. It's just too complicated, and would be incredibly difficult to balance properly. Trying to simulate human psychology in a computer programme in any sort of realistic way would be an absolute nightmare. It's a can of worms that this game doesn't need to open.