pillock

I think my first game was Hang On on the... Master System? Or maybe Crazy Cars on the C64. Anyway, does anyone else think that DayZ is the natural successor to Hunter on the Amiga?

It's happened to me once since February.

Oh well. If you can only enjoy DayZ by finding guns and shooting stuff, then I guess it's your loss. Just don't expect me to respect you for it.

I don't do it to be a douchebag, I do it to reduce the chance of me being shot! I think that's fair enough. I don't see the game as a loot-collection exercise, much less a gun-finding sim. I don't need a gun to have fun playing DayZ - if other people do need a gun, then to me that means they are the type of player who likes shooting people. Therefore, I don't want that type of person to find a gun and/or ammo in the same server and the same near location as me. Hence, I hide guns and ammo. Players who, like me, don't need a gun in order to enjoy the game will not inconvenienced by my actions and therefore I am not being a douchebag towards them; players who would like to use a gun or ammo which I leave behind to kill me are themselves douchebags in my book, and if I'm being a douchebag to them then that's OK by me. It might be true that you can get further with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word. But it's also true that you can get further with a kind word if the other guy doesn't have a gun.

I think the time it takes to fall unconscious should be lengthened, but only if (when!) they introduce gradually debilitating effects on your character. It'd add to the gameplay if you could survive for a long time malnourished and thirsty, but in the process have severe restrictions on your speed, stamina, strength, vision, etc. Even better, they could introduce appropriate animations, like stumbling and crawling, for starving or very sick characters. Right now, the hunger/thirst/illness statuses are just ticking timers towards unconsciousness - while the timer is running, you carry on as before, like nothing's the matter. It doesn't feel right. High hopes for future development!

I have always made a point of hiding guns that I find if I don't need them, even before respawning and persistence was implemented. It just seems like the sensible thing to do. I also take ammo I don't need, and maybe dump it somewhere if I run out of inventory slots. I don't think I'm ruining anyone else's game by doing this. The fewer loaded guns there are in other people's hands, the better it is for me, surely?

A little garlic, a little salt, a little rosemary. Then into a hot oven.

It's not that there is too much loot - it's more the type of loot that's too abundant. Namely, that is food and guns and ammo. I think there being lots of loot spawning is great, but it should mostly be everyday junk and tools: clothes, hammers, knives, duct tape, etc. But anyway, balanced gameplay isn't the priority right now, so it doesn't really matter. If they put us back to 0.49, the game wouldn't make progress.

Probably about 20 minutes...

I agree with you in principle, but my experience is that you can quite easily live peacefully in solitude on full servers. I personally don't see the point in playing on empty/near empty servers, because to do so would remove a lot of the tension in the game, which is part of the appeal for me. It also feels like you're missing out on a part of the experience, which is interacting with other players. I am extremely cowardly when it comes to meeting other players, and I am a terrible shot. But I would never want to eliminate the possibility of getting murdered, because that's part of the scenario - the danger. Besides, I tend to find that away from the larger cities and military areas the majority of those you meet are not hostile. Trying to live off the land as a hermit forest-dweller is more entertaining and challenging when you know there are other people roaming about, not less. I always play on the fullest servers I can get on, and I'd highly recommend it, even to those who don't want to play at soldiers - especially to those people, in fact. Being the hunted is just, if not more, exciting and interesting than being the hunter, for one thing; for another, friendly player interactions, when you can get them, are the best thing about the whole game.

We need to have the Benny Hill theme start up when being chased by 2+ zombies

Absolute crap. Surely you mean this?

Regular wipes are bad. But I don't mind how frequent they are. Just every now and then to clear the database when required.

If you see a rabbit near your camp, don't follow it...

How long do the plants take to grow?

In Beefore: more terrible puns. Moove along now folks, nothing to see here... You've just upped the steaks.

If the top-end, most valuable loot is restricted to dynamic spawnpoints (and only appear in a random few of those across the hive), then server hopping for those items will be pretty pointless. If you don't go looking, you're less likely to find the top stuff - isn't that right?

But they won't know if the M4 has or hasn't spawned on their server, will they? It could be that they just haven't looked in the right place yet. There's just as much chance of it spawning in one server as any other. But it does all come down to the numbers in the end - exactly how rare these things will be is unknown to us right now.

Fear of death will always be present in DayZ; lack of content will not (hopefully!). Either way, whether or not someone chooses to kill another player they encounter will always depend on their individual playstyle and attitude - not everyone is as coldly calculating as you apparently are! Personally, I don't regard DayZ as a loot-collection game, so I am unlikely to kill someone just because they have more/better stuff than me. My point is that some weapons are just simply better than others - and in order for the lesser ones not be rendered completely worthless, the higher-end ones should be restricted in terms of how often they spawn. It doesn't make sense not to do this, as far as I see it. Whatever mechanic is used to achieve rarity (global restriction or something different) is by the by: the important thing is that it works effectively to make higher-end equipment rare. Dean Rocket Hall does not personally decide which servers spawn which loot (I presume you knew this already?): the idea is that the global loot economy would be randomly distributed across all public servers. If your server doesn't have a particular item, it doesn't mean that it never will; there won't be any favouritism, and noone will know which servers have spawned which gear until they find it. The next time that particular rare item spawns, it is likely to be in a different, entirely random, server. The same goes for vehicle parts and other gear that gives significant advantages over the more 'basic' stuff.

Invisible sharks.

I'll all for greater variety, and I don't have a problem with the heavier military weaponry being included; but I firmly believe that it must be kept rare, either by global restriction across the hive, or whatever other mechanic they decide to use to make rarity effective. The reason, as I said before, is not to do with what sort of guns might or might not be present in Chernarus, based on the scenario and backstory: the reason is gameplay balance. If military weaponry isn't rare, then it means every man and his dog and his dog's brother will have an assault rifle - and that makes all the lower-level firearms completely redundant in the game (you have an SKS - you must be a freshspawn, because you haven't found anything better yet, etc).Having any sort of gun should be something to be coveted, in my opinion - not just "Oh, I'll keep this Sporter for now until I've found an AK in the next police station I look in." I also think that military weaponry encourages gunfighting and deathmatching. Now, that's OK in itself, but given how much more there is to DayZ beyond that (planned for the future, if not in the game yet), I think commonplace assault rifles would tip the balance too far in that direction and take away from the survival mechanics. Like I said, military weapons have their place in the game, but if owning one was something rare that you've had to invest serious time and effort into finding, then you'd feel all the better for having done it - the more common they are, the cheaper that achievement is.

I see what you're saying about cars - perhaps there should be plenty to go around. But things like helicopters and military firearms absolutely must be rare, in my opinion. If they aren't rare, then it means everyone's got one - and if that's the case, you make all the lower-level survival mechanics redundant. Fixable cars could be made fairly common, but things like fuel and specific working engines parts could be made much rarer, in order to provide balance.

I think there is a way around this. Every spawnpoint should have a % chance of spawning any item, except those restricted to dynamic locations like heli/vehicle wrecks. Spawnpoints would still be weighted towards certain items - so, for example, guns are more likely to appear in military bases while tools are more likely to appear in sheds, etc; however, there'd always be a small chance that something would appear in any given random location, thereby removing the current tendency for certain buildings being totally ignored because players know what will and won't spawn there. The rarest and most coveted items, such as vehicle parts and high-end weapons, should be limited to dynamic loot locations (of which there should eventually be more per server, in terms of both number and type), so that you can't just hop one single spot and expect to get a decent return on the time you put in to find the highest-level of loot that you might be looking for. The development of barricading will also probably affect the viability of server-hopping, especially if players are prevented from spawning in inside locked areas. The central hive is here to stay, and, therefore, so is some degree of server-hopping. But it can be reduced if the rewards for doing so are more limited - and there are many ways to do that.

With private shards, I'd expect this to be possible - ie. everything is potentially available within that shard. That's also where communities will develop. Problem is, you might end up having to pay to get on those servers, owing to the fact that they're more expensive to host.

It would encourage a different type of server hopping. If working helicopters were truly rare, then word would get out (on these here forums, probably) that such-and-such server has one. Then, people would flock to that server to try and find it and strip it of parts. The owners of the helicopter would realise this, and may well resort to stripping it down themselves before logging off, and hiding the parts in different other servers for safe keeping. Either way, it's likely to encourage various types of meta-gaming, including jumping between servers to look for stuff. This is not necessarily a bad thing, and it'll be interesting to see how it affects player behaviour.