pillock

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.

Automated player/server allocation, characters locked to a single server, forced change of server when you die. That solves most of the exploits surrounding persistent loot storage, as well as many other exploits and gameplay problems that we currently see. I know this requires big changes to the way the game works currently, as well as a big increase in the player capacity of each server. But if it could be done, it would, at a stroke, settle so, so many of the issues that people complain about with the current state of the game.

Giant 50ft trolls that live in the forest and eat Christians, like in that Norwegian film, Troll Hunter.

Is that called Transylvanian Roulette?

Child's backpack. If you don't have that, you can't fill it with rotten fruit or anything.

While we're at it, I've noticed my vision goes blurry if I take hits off zombies. I don't lose colour - just sharpness. Is this part of the same injury mechanics? Because I've discovered I can fix it instantly by entering the graphics settings menu, then returning to the game.

I voted "Yes", but mostly in jest. There's no way it wouldn't lead to the game being banned in most countries, I'd have thought.

Fair point. But then they really would end up as firelighters. Even if they included an English-Russian-English dictionary, I doubt very many people would attempt a translation.

I agree to an extent. Your eyes do adjust, but only if you're out in the open, and there are no clouds: otherwise it is fucking dark out in the boonies at night. Also, your field of view is very limited, and you can easily trip over stuff or bang your head. I think it should be substantially more hazardous to run around in the dark in the game - especially if you don't have your torch on. If you aren't on a road, and you aren't looking where you step with the torch, you should lose your footing easily when you try to run. If you're in a forest, it should be even worse. Forests are VERY dark places at night: you need to watch your every step to avoid getting tripped by roots or rocks or just uneven ground - and constantly looking at your feet means you're likely to get clotheslined by a branch.

[in case the OP hasn't figured out how to read books in-game yet; it took me a while]: Drag it from your inventory on to one of the hotkey slots, and you can open it from there. All the books are old enough to be exempt from copyright, so I think they are all complete volumes (though I've never read one cover to cover). Exit the book by pressing Esc. Some of them aren't even completely irrelevant to the game, and can help you in a practical way.

Unfortunately it is very difficult for a game to simulate those "cold eyes and the emotionless expression" that you would get in a real scenario. Some people just give you the creeps, and you make an excuse to leave if you meet them. But I think it can come across in-game to an extent over the direct coms. I've seen two videos this week of people trying to "prove" that being friendly to people in DayZ is worthless and only gets you killed. Both videos had one thing in common: the guys making them sounded really insincere, distrusting and even semi-aggressive in the tone of their voice while they "experimented with being "friendly" (and they both ended up getting killed by the person they were trying to befriend, so that's two things in common). One of them was like: "Hey you! Stop immediately! Come here! I'm friendly! Now we're going to trade! Give me something!" Personally, I would have run away from this guy, but the character in the video punched him out instead. If people have no social graces whatsoever, it's probably best they do stick to KoS, because they honestly aren't going to get very far with any other method of play.