BeefBacon

I didn't see a thread on this, so here goes. A simple idea. A concealed carry holster that goes under your clothes. Very rare. In the holster you can store either a small melee weapon like a knife or a pistol. If a bandit handcuffs you and searches through your stuff, they won't be able to see the concealed carry holster. If they steal your backpack or your gun, they'll assume you're unarmed. If you're released or you break free you can use your holdout weapon against them in an attempt to recover your gear... assuming they don't just straight-up shoot you. The concealed carry holster can only be revealed by removing the shirt but, due to its rarity, it'll likely be assumed by the bandit that their victim doesn't have one on, and thus won't check. Could also, perhaps, allow the storage of items such as morphine auto-injectors and can openers; items that might be useful after losing the contents of your backpack. Thoughts?

At the minute it seems as though there are only three melee weapons. The fireaxe, the hatchet and every other melee weapon. I'd expect the machete to do more damage than the baseball bat. Like, a lot more. But it doesn't. I circle around zombies for a full minute slashing at their heads with a pristine machete waiting for them to die. It seems as though you reach your melee endgame when you find a fireaxe, but if you don't have a hatchet or a fireaxe you may as well be using your fists for all the good that crowbar will do you. So I propose that melee weapons be reworked a little bit. Two-handed weapons should be slow, and one handed should be fast. The machete should be able to kill a zombie in 3- 4 hits, not 20. There should also be advantages for different weapons not only based on damage. For example, baseball bats and shovels should be very likely to knock zombies and players down. I've noticed that if you can hit a zombie in the back with a baseball bat it'll go down, but if you smack it in the face while it's sprinting at you then it'll just shrug it off. So I'd like to see further balancing to the melee weapons, giving some weapons advantages over others that aren't based entirely on the damage that they do. Also wouldn't mind a shove mechanic so that melee fights with zombies don't devolve into running in a small circle with them trying to catch up with you. Also also, perhaps a system whereby melee weapons can break entirely, or at least one where the condition actually matters as thus far I've not seen a difference between a badly damaged fireaxe and a pristine one. Feel free to correct me on that. Thoughts?

I know nothing about ballistics, so I've got no idea. Would be a nice feature to have ballistic shields, though, even if they only reduce damage rather than completely mitigating it. On a sort of related note, what does 7.62 x 54mm or 5.56 x 45mm mean? Do those numbers refer to the size of the bullet? If so I'm not sure how unless it's referring to the width in terms of the diameter of the bullet, or something.

In regards to building variety, Chernarus isn't a big place. Small towns here in England are all very similar. I wouldn't expect to see a huge difference between Cherno and any northern cities. The difference between, say, London and Edinburgh, however, is vast, so perhaps it could be cool to have north and south cities have a slightly different architecture. Would definitely be nice to see a couple of different fire/ police station variants, though.

Ballistic shields are in use by SWAT teams, aren't they? I imagine they could stop small calibre fire, and maybe even a Mosin shot from the other side of NWAF. At close range I imagine they'd be considerably less effective, however.

In an RP scenario I think a holdout weapon would be awesome, but I think you're right that for the average server maybe it'd just promote KoS. Granted KoS isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for as long as KoS is especially prevalent perhaps holdout weapons would be more of a liability to the community as a whole. But you must be able to see its applications on, say, a hardcore RP server?

Makes sense that male zombies would be stronger, because males are stronger than females. That's not sexist, it's just a fact. Men typically have around 10% more mass than women. Whether this is due to genetic or cultural factors is irrelevant. However, in the case of zombies I daresay that this 10% difference would be unnoticeable. I do believe, however, that military zombies should be tougher and stronger. They have been trained and are at pique physical condition. They also likely have ballistic armour. They shouldn't be much tougher, maybe 5 - 10% tops, but it'd be nice if they weren't just as tough and as fast as your average farmer.

Precisely my point.

Aw, no. The north is my little hidey-hole. The space between Berezino and NWAF is void of people. It's great. There's so much loot there that people just don't bother with. Will be nice to get some new buildings, though. Really I'd like to see all Arma 2 assets removed or at least retextured, because until that happens it'll still feel like a mod.

I went AFK on some remote hill once. Came back two minutes later and I was dead to the sound of a zombie squeezing out a turd on my corpse. Plus the aggro range of zombies is immense. If they catch a glimpse of you when you're logging in you can bet that they'll lose their shit. It would mean that you'd have to log out out of the line of sight of zombies which in some cases means a 5 -10 minute walk. If I've got to go somewhere or do something IRL I don't want to have to spend 10 minutes going over a hill to make sure I don't die when I spawn in. Oh. So that's why my character was dead when I logged back in. I was getting ready to quit when I saw some zombies running towards me from quite a distance away. I couldn't be asked to deal with them so I quit. Won't be making that mistake again.

Well, again, not necessarily. It could be helpful for someone who's getting held up and it could be useful for a bandit if a hero turns his back. It has multiple applications, even down to just being an alternative to a regular holster. I don't know about you, but I don't like it when people can see how well I'm armed, and I don't necessarily want to use up inventory space, especially considering that I tend to favour the DIY bags and hunter packs rather than mountain packs. Everything in this game comes down to its application and its circumstances. Is a player sitting on a hill above a town with a sniper looking to snipe new spawns or is he looking for bandits? I can, of course, see the validity of your objections.

I like it. Some movements should be dependent on the animation - such as rolling while prone - but for the most part the animations should be subservient to the movement. At the very least animations should blend better. Can't tell you how many times I've been hit by zombies when I stop running to slowly put my rifle away and take out my axe, or I've been crouched and have had to play out the whole standing up animation before I can move. For now I always just walk when I'm inside buildings or when I'm on balconies or roofs, just to minimise the risks of falling.

It is annoying, though. I hate having to reconnect because my character got reset. But it's only 5 minutes. I just go make a cup of tea.

Could work the other way round. A hero meets a player who would have KoSed if he had the chance. The hero disarms him, assumes he's safe and gets shot in the head when he turns around.

They're not 'lying in wait' in the predatory sense. They're doing it because they've got nothing else to do. If they're just infected people they'll still get tired. Why would they stand around for days on end? It makes the world more immersive. Hell, in 28 Days Later which is what these zombies seem to be most similar to, that's exactly what they do in the church scene. What's his name walks into a room full of dead people, calls out and a couple of them get up. That goes without saying. Optimisation is important, but it isn't my concern.

I like this. Lore issues aside I think it'd make a really interesting addition to the game, especially if you go back to find your corpse only to find that it's wandered off. Some random player could come across your loot 5km from where you died. But perhaps there needs to be a few caveats to appease the people obsessed with the lore which seems to extend to "there's a virus and there are zombies. Have at 'em". Perhaps only players that have starved to death or have died from disease or bled out can come back? There's nothing to suggest that zombies need blood because when you hit them they don't start bleeding. I've never seen zombies eating any players so they presumably don't need food. Disease is really self-explanatory. In regards to the coding, Arma 2 had a feature where you could essentially leave the game and then AI would control your player, implying that player characters and NPCs are the same, only the latter is controlled by the AI. You get a similar sort of system in games like Fallout and, to a lesser degree, STALKER. Same thing could happen here. You character dies and so the AI takes over with zombie behaviour. Of course this wouldn't be a revolutionary idea to the devs, but it helps to explain a way it could possibly be achieved.

I'd like to see this with all weapons. Take the SKS and the Mosin for example. You can load those instantly even without the clip. Same goes for the revolver. These weapons should be slow to load, making the clips/speedloaders very valuable when in combat.

Well. Maybe. Isn't that subject to change? I'd quite like to see zombies that are generally docile, but then freak out when the prospect of a fresh man sandwich arrives. If the snack evades them then they return to their original docile state. In regards to the running up hill thing - yes. Please fix that. When I'm running away from zombies I have to make sure I'm going down hill, because when I'm forced to jog or walk by an incline then they just keep on sprinting.

Hm. Fair enough. I have to agree. I like seeing my character running through forests and stuff - seeing him blend into the scenery if he's camouflaged, so I'm missing that in hardcore. Still, the idea that people can peek round walls in third person bothers me a little bit, but I suppose you're right. Honestly I'm probably going to play on regular servers from now on since I only joined hardcore by accident. I've gotten used to being able to peek round walls and such.

I learned today that you can chamber single rounds into pistols without the need for a magazine. Seems fair to me. Magazines should be a little more common, though, but I now think that pisols shouldn't necessarily spawn with one already attached.

Heh, my character is very similar. Grey jeans, green wool jacket, grey flat cap and boots. Don't even have a bag - couldn't find a burlap sack. Got a Mosin instead of a shotgun, though.

I don't expect to have to be on edge when I only spawned in 5 minutes ago. Only a twat snipes people who clearly don't have any valuable gear or who aren't a threat.

Yeah, I've often left a server because it was too laggy or was about to restart, only to have to wait 5 minutes to join another server. 5 minutes isn't much of a wait, but if this were made to be a more severe 'punishment' then I think it'd probably affect players like myself rather than combat loggers. However, I do believe that there needs to be something to deter combat logging and server hopping. I think this is something that requires a serious discussion.

Yeah, walking through walls is normal. I know the game is alpha but I'm really surprised noclipping zombies is still an issue. Feels like the zombie AI and pathing should have been the first thing to get right, yet the devs seem to be prioritising new guns and hats? Don't get me wrong, I'm enjoying DayZ immensely, it just seems odd that the devs appear to be adding new things rather than fixing the game at its core. Stealth is something I'd really like to see. I'm fed up of freshly spawning and trying to find a can of beans or a screwdriver and having to dance around the half-a-dozen zombies that have somehow spotted me. Staying behind zombies, unless you make a sound, means they won't notice you, though.

Would also be nice if you could use a rifle scope as a monocular.