mithrawndo

Any mechanic that allows for meta gaming is immersion breaking and should not be introduced*. This includes state based login/logout timers. Flat timer: 5 minutes until character despawn on logout, instant login. *...but, the game currently seems to work on the principle of creating a network bubble around yourself. It would probably not be hard to implement and instant logout when there is noone inside the same network bubble as you, but a timer when there is.

Beans sir. One of those little things that's really annoying.

They also have serious drawbacks: They are in no way subtle and are incredibly loud. They are also filled with flammable fluids, and when full are a Four-for-One kill shit.

Did a tl;dr on this thread* so this has probably been said already. So I alt-f4 in the airfield because I heard breathing and immediately respawn a kilometre away, set my range and move in? A log out timer makes a lot more sense, and is a tried and tested mechanism. Given the ambulatory pace of DayZ I feel this timer needs to be exceptionally long: 5 minutes seems appropriate* to me. This would have the benefit of discouraging server hopping for any purpose, as each disconnection leaves your character vulnerable and unattended for some considerable time, and thus you would be downright foolish not to make yourself safe before disconnection. In the event of a connection failure for any reason, you'd still be vulnerable for 5 minutes. In the age of the SSD, even in the event of a full blown crash and reboot situation you can be back in the game within 2 minutes - 3 tops. We can then remove these god awful server join timers. You know, the ones that are just really annoying. Whose bright idea was it to make us sit and look at a 30 second timer anyway?

This might work. No more than three seconds after the server spawns you seems fair.

I don't think a skill tree is the right way to go. Simply some skills that one can learn. Adding prerequisites and chains of skills that require learned overcomplicates things and leads to potential min/max outcomes, something a large portion of the (vocal) community do not want to see - myself included. Single skills that gradually and invisibly unlock abilities - with the durations required to learn them moderated by various external influences, such as your health and activity levels - could lead to small improvements without overdoing the pain when, inevitably, you die.

I once had someone log in right in front of me. I felt sorry for them, so I reached for the caps lock key and told them to walk out of the room. They spun like a top and blew my face off. That was the last time I will ever give anyone a chance if they log in on front of me.

Buy another copy of the game.

Too many guns, no thank you. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Number_of_guns_per_capita_by_country If we're being authentic™ then there are less than 1 gun for every 10 of the population pre-apocalypse in Russia. Given the very, very large scale of the country and the very small scale relatively of the region in which we're inhabiting, it's incredibly unlikely we'd see a large enough sample space to ever see some of these spawn - ergo they are a waste of development time and energy.

Can you not already do this with disinfectant and fruit, for example?

1) Group Spawns: No. Any matchmaking system is just horribly open to abuse. I set up my new character in your little group and pretend to play with you whilst chatting to my mates on "Another Voice Comm". When you finally find enough to either make it worth robbing you or just to emphasise the hurt, we spring our trap. Rinse and repeat. I get it, I do. It's lonely out here sometimes and it would be nice to be able to find like minded people - but that's actually what the game is, to my mind, all about. That's what makes it so damn hard, and so damn good! 2) I'm all in favour of mechanisms involving repair or resource gathering requiring 2 to 20 people to complete. 3) Sure, why not. The way these recipes are delivered to the client is a topic in itself. 4) Game breaking suggestion, sorry but that's a no from me. If you want a safe zone, make one by policing it yourselves in game!

I see no problem with some form of invisible mechanism that ensure you must be actively doing something to learn. What I wish to avoid is any form of pre defined challenge - as this would become a repetitive grind. For example: You spawn on the beach and after tending to your initial requirements, you start learning some form of cooking. It's going to take you 72 hours to learn how to repeatedly make good, wholesome rabbit stew (though you don't know this when you start - the time is kept hidden from you). However every hour you need to make another batch of rabbit stew, or else your skill training will pause. Finally you finish, and you hear a rustling in the bushes... You spawn on the beach and after tending to your initial requirements, you start learning some form of cooking. It's going to take you 72 hours to learn how to repeatedly make good, wholesome rabbit stew... You spawn on the beach and after tending to your initial requirements, you start learning some form of cooking... See where I'm going here? Having to repeat the same actions again and again and again to train a skill on top of the day to day survival mechanics and the countless other little bits and pieces the game will eventually end up with will quickly get overwhelming. However some form of server side activity monitor - the game currently knows whether you are idle or active for example to calculate your energy consumption - might be beneficial. Hypothetically, of course.

The crux of it is as you suspect: It is impossible to balance, so don't try. 24 euroes isn't a lot of money. There are very few people who are willing and able to purchase one copy of this game who would be worried about the expense of a second copy. Therefore, players who wish to have multiple characters and go and play on another one when the heat is too much on their main can easily do so, for a one time fee of 24 euroes. The benefit (or drawback depending on the reasons for wishing to play a secondary character) is that your second copy isn't even linked to your main account, and thus you are anonymous. I see no real problem with this myself. I have no desire for a second character myself. However it's a precedent that says it's acceptable for a bandit who has ruffled too many feathers on his server and finds himself unable to play the way he wants to because he's constantly the chicken rather than the fox can instead of dealing with the issue in game simply jump on to his other character. Conversely, If you're hunting someone and they get wind of you or even just get a little spooked, they can do exactly the same. For money. To follow this to it's inevitable conclusion: If I am able to buy a second copy of the game and reap the benefits of having two character - be that as I outline above, to mule gear for you main or for some reason I am yet to anticipate - why should Bohemia not simply allow players to purchase an additional character slot on their existing account? Sounds pretty crap when it's put like that, don't you think?

Heh, I actually stopped playing eve regularly shortly after the removal of ghost training. I still jump on from time to time for a month or two's subscription (I have a 2003 character, why wouldn't I?) but I feel I've played it to death, and to be honest in many ways it's become overcomplicated: There are too many toys in the sandbox, a lesson I hope DayZ remembers. For those of you unaware, for the first 6 years or so of Eve Online you could set a skill to train that would take you three months, and even if your paid subscription ran out the skills would continue to train. A lot of people complained about this - I really don't know why - and eventually CCP removed this so-called ghost training. Since then you've been required to have an active subscription to learn skills. It's not strictly relevant here, but it's an interesting point of trivia. True, this alpha is so engaging I sometimes forget that it's missing so many core features! I'm really not comfortable with being set challenges to make you better. I feel that as almost every other mechanic in the game is passive and invisible, so skills should be to. No quests, no objectives, no maps, no meters. As for the hypothetical example: At no point should any skill brought into this game give you an advantage over another player once trained. Being able to repair something, or identify something as useful for a recipe you are aware of would be good examples of how this could work. As soon as you deploy skills that make you "better", they become mandatory for anyone who wants to take the game seriously. See every single RPG style game ever made for reasons why this is a bad idea: Particularly eve online, where the skill system - the one I'm suggesting here - actually creates a huge barrier for new players as to get involved they have to learn a lot of prerequisite skills. At least a month's worth of training before you are not a "noob". Nothing about that facet is desirable, and so the solution is to ensure that skills add only flavour rather than strength. That means no weapon skills and no physical enhancements. Probably more too, but you get the idea I'm sure. In my opinion the only things that can work and retain authenticity are things that don't matter, but make the game world better: Examples could be: Tailoring: Anyone can sew, but most of us are pretty ham fisted and at best can repair our clothes up to "Damaged". A week of training in tailoring and this could be up to "Worn" and after a month, maybe any clothes could be repaired to "Pristine". Further, rarer books could allow for further knowledge of other materials and the ability to repair different types of gear - assuming you can find the materials to do it. Cooking: Anyone can make an edible rabbit stew, but there's a real art in making a tasty one. A slight numerical improvement (or better yet, a reduction of the drawbacks - rabbit stew is a good example here as you can't live on rabbit alone as it lacks some key nutrients.) from learning out of recipe books would seem quite apt, and certainly wouldn't harm any game balance. Gunmaker: Anyone can saw the stock and barrel from a shotgun, but it's takes a skilled hand and eye to rifle a barrel. A month or so of training and a skilled Gunmaker could counter bore your damaged Mosin, returning it to near it's former glory. Just some thoughts. The key is small additions - nothing that would fundamentally change the nature of the game. Evolution, not Revolution.

The thing is, even with 100 people on a server I am pretty sure I could easily find a hole to hide myself away in and go to watch TV whilst my skill trains. Is this desirable from a gameplay perspective? This means people not playing the game, using up bandwidth and slots to train their abilities. Making the ability totally passive nets the same result without having the need to use bandwidth or server slots. It's authentic, rather than realistic. In short, if people are going to go afk to do this, maybe we should just let them legitimately? Perhaps it should simply be a slight acceleration when logged in? I'm sure you can tell I'm very undecided on this fact!*This was my initial thought, but as I've pondered the idea further I'm not sure it's practical - see my above statement. A simpler mechanic would be that you must have the book in your inventory (information already stored by the central hive), and whilst you do you passively and VERY, VERY SLOWLY learn about the subject you choose. Only one subject at a time, so there would be no point in stocking up on books. Many subjects would require several books to learn, and all would require you to own a pen and paper. You won't learn anything if you don't take notes!**My thinking exactly. Don't add anything that makes a new spawned survivor less effective than a 90 day veteran, simply give those veterans a few perks - for as long as they remain alive. Let them feel the potential soul crushing that losing those perks brings, but allow them to come to the realisation that they can (after they have finished throwing their toys out of the pram) come right back in without any real disadvantage. Better in fact, as they have made a mistake... and that's the only real way to learn!The possibilities are limitless!Thank you for the kind comments so far, it's humbling to see a few people of like mind. As for the comments regarding timescales: These were very much an off the cuff figure and would require a large amount of tweaking if ever deployed. As I am not aware of the figure for the average player's survival time, I could not even begin to estimate as to what could be considered a reasonable scale - however regarding eve online, the timescales involved are frequently years in the case of effective control of regions as opposed to months. *It just occurred to me that the result of this proposal is actually the restoration of civilization: People sitting in houses reading books and learning to make stuff, whilst other people guard them. I'm not sure I'm OK with this anymore! **It's even potentially possible that your notes could become a valuable commodity, perhaps allowing for marginal acceleration in learning times.

It's not fixable, that was exactly my point. You can't fix this problem so why try? Just allow multiple characters, because people are going to do it anyway. By preventing people who only paid once from doing this, all you are saying is that you support Pay To Win. That's fine too, but I then say: If you're going to allow that, you might as well just sell items too! None of which I want, I'm just say that's how it is.

Having to repeatedly fix broken equipment to max your skills* would be a stupid design decision in anything other than a pay-monthly game. I hope DayZ doesn't plan to go this route, but I respect rocket's decision if this turns out to be the case. *Don't doubt that, just like in the world of warcraft and all it's like, you'd sit and craft a billion things you don't need to get your skillpoints. We don't need that time sink, we already have cross country running!

It's presently possible to have as many characters as you wish. Simply pay bohemia a further 23.99 euroes for each additional copy of dayz and enjoy your perks... Yeah. Fix this or every argument against multiple characters is moot.

Spend some time studying the map: There appear to be two fairly large city layouts planned in the north already - one north of the NWAF, another northwest of the NEAF on the new(ish) railway line.

If time allows, Dayz should include a skill tree. This skill true will do nothing but include flavour text, allowing you to customize your character to no end and for no good reason. Think of it like adding cowbell to a drum solo. This idea should only be considered if, by 2026 when this game is finally due for full public release, the development team have run out of other things to do. Beards on the other hand would be a wonderful metric by which one could add value to a character. Imagine this: You're keeping low inside the treeline, tracking another survivor as he makes his way along the road. You've still not seen his face, but you can see he's decently geared. Finally, you manage to flank around and are able to incapacitate him. When you finally see his face, you see a beard that must have taken three months to grow out, and with a moustache that has been waxed to a tip and extends practically a full six inches to each side of his upper lip. You and I both know, you can't kill this guy. He'd have to start growing that wonderful creation all over again!

...and the world would be a better place for it!

I think most MMOs have a policy that it's against the terms of use to let anyone other than a dependent use an account you own. I suspect BI will probably have the same terms in place when it comes around to sorting out all the legalities closer to release. Change your post Gangrene to read "son", and you have a point. As for the muling: What you describe is exactly what we used to do in Diablo 2. They tried to fix that too by putting a login timer in place. It didn't work.

This discussion would be much easier if we could just censor anyone who suggests any form of censorship. Regardless, beans to you good sir!

Pretty sure it's already possible to create a second character. Here's how: Create a new steam accountPurchase another copy of DayZ on this accountLog in. Simultaneously, if you wish. Makes you wonder about the abuse this could lead to, and how perhaps allowing character selection might not be such a bad idea. Sorry.

Plenty of unpleasant situations with current mechanics, and the game has barely been out. People will think of more ways to be an absolute asshat, as that's what asshats do. As for what it adds: When you take a leak or a poop, like eating you are incapacitated. Only more so, as you could drop your tin of beans and grab your rifle. If you've got your pants round your ankles in the bushes when some zombies or another player stumbles on you, you're in deep shit! Rule #3 Man, Beware of bathrooms!