From what I can gather from the Day Z forums, what people really want is something like Eve Online, but set in a post-zombie apocalypse world. Popular suggestions in Day Z are things like the ability to settle towns, create forts, trade etc. Presumably this would also lead to territorial disputes with other survivor towns and the like. Like Eve and like Day Z, there would be minimal rules enforced by the servers, and people are free to pursue whatever kind of quasi-role playing game they wish. This, to me, sounds completely f**king awesome. However, the Arma2 engine (so far as I can tell) is completely unable to deliver this sort of experience, ironically the much vaunted 225km2 of Chernarus is too small, and 50 players per server too few. Day Z (as it currently stands) needs a bigger goal than 'survival' because (as mentioned elsewhere) once you have scavenged the good stuff, there is nothing to do with it except kill other players (fun but mean), or kill zombies (boring and pointless). Maybe instead of 'survival' Day Z should be about 'escape' - like reconstructing a downed chopper from rare/hard to obtain parts to fly away from the zombie infested mainland... Imagine if there were five downed choppers randomly scattered across the map, but there were parts for only three at any one time on the server. If the spare parts were difficult to acquire, the sheer time it takes to repair a chopper means that Day Z becomes about survival before escape. It would be possible (but more difficult) to get all the parts single-handed - thus encouraging cooperative play. Do you all search for parts, and then try and locate a downed chopper, or do you find a chopper and leave someone to guard it whilst others go searching...? Imagine if you could steal parts from another chopper (also in the process of being fixed) to place on your own, thus adding elements of 'Capture the Flag' into the mix. Once you escape you get...? This is the tricky part - what do you get as a reward to make you come back to play again and again? Custom skins? Your name on the Day Z leaderboard? I dunno.
