BeefBacon

I think it probably goes without saying that it'll be fixed. No doubt it'll be fixed automatically by the new player controller, since that handles interactions, but even if it isn't I'm sure the devs are aware of it.

Spoopy zeds yelling at you in the night seems kind of arbitrary, but it'd be neat if their behaviour changed at night, somehow - perhaps a select few (the more 'aware' ones) could go into a sort of hunter mode where they actively stalk players and animals. It'd certainly add extra tension to night time since it's usually pretty safe to loot at night considering the zombies (whoops, I mean infected) are pretty much blind. Then again, I suppose part of the meta is that looting at night is easier in regards to PvE, so maybe that shouldn't be messed with too much. I'd like to see a greater range of weather types. Heavy fog inland would be nice. Drizzle would be cool as a mild alternative to either full-on rain or thunder storms. Sleet as well - that'd be super dangerous. Roaming groups of zeds would be great too, as well as zeds spawning inside of buildings. I don't want to see forced spookiness. As an aside, I'd really like to see way more animals - particularly small animals like rabbits, foxes and birds. Maybe even something like a muntjac if they're region-appropriate. Chernarus always feels so dead - wildlife should be everywhere. Deer and cows, being fairly easy to kill and yielding a lot of meat and other resources, should still be fairly rare, however.

I suppose DayZ is in what could be more accurately called a pre-alpha, and is about to move into a traditional alpha with .63 when they actually start adding gameplay features. I've a feeling that the move to "beta" is more of a marketing thing, because they can't really say "now after 3 years of development, DayZ is finally ready to enter alpha!" People would lose their shit, but it would be hilarious. It is, obviously, a new stage of development however and it deserves a new name to reflect that progress. Beta works. I'll treat .62 like I've treated every patch. Play it every now and then for a couple of weeks, then give it a rest. I wish development was faster, but it isn't. I know that the final product is going to be great, but I'm not desperate to play it. I'm happy to patiently wait and play other games in the mean time.

Chernarus is great, but can we expect to see any other maps? It's thought that certain maps that were popular in the mod might make a reappearance, but might we also see a completely new map some time in the future as well? If so, what sort of theme might it have? If not, what sort of maps would you like to see developed by the community? What is your most and least favourite aspect of Chernarus? How will the map border be addressed? Will we ever see running water?

I don't know. Even if I knew how to make gunpowder, I don't think my first response in any survival situation would be "I should make an arquebus." But then I suppose I don't have anything against it being in the game so long as it's purely crafted or, perhaps, can be found in a museum building. I'd actually love a museum. Would be a great place for the great helmet and the sword to spawn, as well as the Mosin and any other outdated weapons or items... I mean, sure, I doubt that realistically those weapons would actually still function, and the sword wouldn't be exactly sharp, but eh. Would still be cool.

It must be so frustrating for the devs to see negative comments about DayZ's development. I've long held the belief that the only real mistake made in DayZ's development so far has been the decision to go into Early Access so early. Even then, it wasn't necessarily a mistake at the time because the scope for what DayZ would become was a lot smaller. It only became a mistake when the devs decided they wanted to create something better, at which point they realised that they'd pretty much have to start from scratch. Most games that enter early access don't do so before development on the game has properly begun. So of course development feels slow. I think people also forget that DayZ was among the first big Early Access games. It was pioneering. In hindsight, it was a great decision and a poor decision. EA provided the funding and momentum necessary to make the standalone even better than originally planned, but it led directly to the issues we see today with people complaining about development speed. If they'd never entered EA, we would probably have gotten DayZ at the end of 2014... but it wouldn't have had all the new tech the devs are working on now. So I suppose it's a bit of a Catch 22, but ultimately I'm happy with the decisions the devs have made. Some people have complained about being blocked on Twitter and banned from forums, however. If they're just trolling and generally being assholes then fair enough, but some have claimed that they've had constructive criticism and have been banned anyway. I don't know if this is true, but I'm hoping it isn't. I guess an emerging issue is PR - but then it's clear that the devs are addressing that. More little updates in between status reports would be nice. I don't know what form those updates should take, but just something to fill in the two week gap between status reports. Also, can we expect the new HUD in .62? new audio? Or is it purely new forests and terrain textures?

I don't really want to see mods until DayZ hits 1.0, but I'm super keen on seeing new maps. I hope the devs release mapping tools soon - maybe with an early version of the beta.

Incentivising cooperation is always better than arbitrary penalties for killing - especially when the variables in play are too many to count. If someone runs at you with an axe and you shoot them in self defence, should you suffer penalties because you've killed another player? The game can't register the intent of players, and so any variables you could include to make the game recognise whether a player is behaving aggressively and is therefore okay to kill can be circumvented. As such, as I said, it's better to incentivise cooperation than to implement arbitrary punishments - not only from a programming perspective but also from a gameplay perspective. So maybe the discussion should lean more towards how we can make cooperating with other players an attractive prospect. When soft skills and stamina is introduced it's possible we'll see a reduction in KoS. People are less likely to want to engage when there's a possibility that they'll lose their high level character, and the stamina system will make it much more difficult to simply sprint back to your body and continue the fight. Alternatively, players might become even more aggressive, knowing that if the other player shoots first then they'll lose their character and won't be able to recover their gear. Hard to say either way, but I'm against punishing players for taking part in a fundamental aspect of DayZ... even though I'm often a victim of it, and my attempts to KoS almost always fail miserably. I'm bad at DayZ.

Or... slightly lower the prevalence of weapons, but make it so that the vast majority of weapons are "worn" or worse, making the weapons themselves less reliable, and weapon maintenance necessary. Finding a gun shouldn't be hard. improving a gun to pristine should.

Yup, I remember that too. Seems fair to assume that eventually internally loaded weapons will be able to spawn with ammo eventually.

I recently got back into DayZ. Don't know why, just sort of had a hankering for it - I'll probably play for a few more days and then give it a rest again. I last played a couple of months ago and I'm just as big of a babby now as I was then. I hate going to military locations. They're fucking stressful. Every now and then I'll suck it up and go for one - usually because I just happened to wander near it (or, on a couple of occasions, actually accidentally stumbled into one) so I figure I'll take the risk and go looting. What do I find? Fuck all. A green sweatshirt, a pen, a stripped-down AK-74 and a pair of badly damaged boots. Every time. Every base I visit. Nada. I went to the Zelenogorsk base last night and came across a warzone - I was smart enough not to go into the one building that had the doors shut, the other guy wasn't, and got turned into paste as a result. Got away from that altercation with the satisfaction that I had seen an empty 30rnd AK magazine on the floor - that was good. Despite that, right now my character is pretty geared. How? Those tent checkpoints the devs added in .61. I have consistently found better loot at those tents than I have at any big military base. It's pretty much exclusively clothes - but it's good clothes. I even found an assault vest and an M65 jacket. No guns, but I have a Winchester and an MP5 so I'm not even really looking for guns. Hunting stands are great too, and I found the MP5 in one of those green guard houses in some village somewhere. Had a magazine in it too. Most people do a loot run that hits as many military bases as possible in as short a time as possible. I loot all the hunting stands and random out of the way villages. So I give up on military bases. They're shit and they're not worth the risk. Give me a deer stand and a backwater hamlet any day.

Yeah, the risk/reward isn't really there for me. I'd rather just have a hunting backpack and an SKS than some fancy military pack and an AK-101, especially if attaining the latter means entails a high risk of having my face blown off. There's been WIP images of generators and such for the basebuilding, as I recall. Lights will almost certainly be a factor. I doubt pre-existing bases will have working lights, but maybe we'll be able to fire up a generator and light the bases up or something. As for the images of other bases... eh. Not quite the same thing, and the angles make it very difficult to see the extent of the valley. On the second image the structures are on small mounds presumably overlooking the trees, and in the others there's a lot of open space surrounding the base. At Myshinko the trees go almost right up to the edge of the base, and the valley is so narrow as to offer an easy firing line right down into the base on both sides. It's not a good location. I could buy that it was hastily set up, or was designed to be effective against hordes of infected rather than soldiers, but I'd want to see more evidence of that - maybe lots of barbed wire, ditches, things that would slow down somebody who was sprinting towards you as fast as possible. Hell, the castle builders of Chernarus were smart enough to build on hills to defeat hordes of angry peasants, I'm sure modern commanders could figure out a similar deal.

Yeah Kamensk is okay. I started a new character last night, so I might make my way up to Tisy and see what's what.

Excellent idea. It'd be nice if characters' physical appearances reflected their food intake. That is to say, emaciated players look thin and gaunt, well-fed players look healthy and over-fed players look fat. Failing that, different animation sets for different weights would be really cool, or really any way to immediately determine how well fed a player is. I expect a gaunt figure would be more likely to kill me if he thinks I might have a can of beans on me. I'm worried the food system won't be particularly in-depth. I've not really heard about it - same with the medical system. Hopefully how (or if) the core mechanics like hunger and medicine will expand will be covered in an upcoming status report. Same with stamina. I think a lot of people have reservations about the soft skills. I'll adopt a 'wait and see' attitude.

I've not been to Tisy yet. I'm too scared. I got close, though... accidentally. I'm a big babby. I say 'military locations', I really mean the medium ones - or every one bar Tisy, NWAF, Myshinko and (usually) Stary tents (I avoid Stary unless I'm not well geared.) I used to love Zelenogorsk because I rarely saw people there - it was like nobody knew about it. Seems to draw the crowds these days, though. The loot distribution is definitely pretty weird, though. I'll go an hour without seeing a single gun, then I'll stumble into a house that has a dozen guns strewn about it. I sometimes find houses filled with balaclavas and nothing else. It obviously needs tweaking, but it's getting better. I might give Tisy a go, if only to say I've been. I'll be keen to see if I really do find good loot, because it's slim picking everywhere else. Having said that I see plenty of videos where people find incredible gear at all military locations, so I think I'm just unlucky. I've not been to NWAF in several patches, even though I've only ever died there once. Hell, I've gotten more kills at NWAF than deaths. I just never really found anything, and wide open spaces wig me out. Even the tent city has minimal cover. I've never visited Myshinko tents for the same reason. What kind of insane commander would put a camp in the middle of a valley flanked on all sides by forest? That is the literal opposite of where any fortification of any kind should ever be. DayZ stresses me out because I assume somebody is watching me at all times, and whoever is watching me is infinitely better equipped than I am. Odds are that if somebody is watching me all they have is a chambered Makarov. Hell, I'm more likely to be the watcher in any scenario. I love being a creeper and watching people through binoculars or a rifle scope. I don't necessarily have any intention to kill them (though if an easy shot presents itself I'll take it for shits and giggles) but I like watching people and seeing what they do. I don't really pursue PvP unless I have a distinct advantage (like it's obvious that they have no idea I'm there.) I run away from gunfire, though I'll often try and position myself so I have the greatest advantage should they happen to pass my way. I'm a big coward, basically. I fight dirty if I can, or I run away from the fights that I'm not forced into. I don't combat log, though, I just remain very, very patient and wait for them to check on my (presumed) corpse - at which point I have the drop on them. Fight dirty. Every time.

I'd like to see a mix. There could be some crash sites that spawn like they currently do - except these crash sites are a little older (a few days, weeks, years, whatever you like) so they don't produce any smoke. I'd like to see more crashes in the woods, in cities, so on. They shouldn't all be in open fields. You also have recent crashes which can be witnessed and heard. These should be much more rare, but spawn much better loot. They should be sort of like server events, with players in the vicinity seeing or hearing the crash and then going to investigate. The loot that active crashes produce shouldn't respawn.

Does this mean we might start seeing more frequent updates, and updates that have a measurable effect on gameplay? Obviously .60 added the new renderer which improved playability massively, and .61 added wolves among other things, but it's been a while since we got a really juicy gameplay feature like, I don't know, in-depth diseases and a stamina system. So now that this milestone has been reached and you're not dancing between two completely different versions of DayZ, might we see more frequent updates that add more substantial elements to the game? I mean, I guess as we get closer to beta more gameplay features becomes inevitable, but I'm guessing that this optimises development somewhat?

I suppose I'll respond to the additions too. I should be working, but I'm very irresponsible. As far as I'm aware, the notifications will be replaced with a HUD using icons. Being able to customise those icons - being able to set how often they appear, their opacity, things like that - would be excellent. Large bags would be fine provided there are appropriate drawbacks (you mentioned a movement speed debuff.) I'd also say that larger bags should be louder when you move. Assuming the new stamina system will punish players for carrying too much, arbitrary debuffs might not even be necessary - if you carry too much you'll suffer for it anyway. Passenger trains is a great idea. They could contain residential loot and be connected to each other. They should be a good source of backpacks and clothing. Scope glare has been brought up before, and it was decided that it was unrealistic (the glare exists, but it's barely noticeable in real life) but I don't care. It'd be a cool feature, provided it's not too exaggerated. Love the safety stance idea. Oh, blood splatter. I am assuming that's an incoming feature. I want blood to spray on walls, and maybe even for blood to pool. I'd like to see bullet holes too. Gore, like dismemberment, I'm not too fussed about.

It'll never happen. I personally prefer 1pp and play it when I get the opportunity, though 3pp is fine. 3pp/1pp splits the community - I wish the devs had put their foot down from the very beginning; 3pp seems antithetical to a hardcore survival experience. If 3pp couldn't be exploited, I wouldn't have a problem with it.

I particularly like the hold breath idea. I thought a while ago it'd be nice to be able to hold your breath for a few seconds, just to hear your surroundings. It's irritating when you're jogging along, breathing like a 300 pound man with asthma, and you think you hear a gunshot way in the distance. I want to be able to hold my breath, listen for a few seconds, and then move on. I'd say the length of time you can hold your breath should depend on your overall stamina, as well as your current tiredness. I wouldn't expect someone who's just run a marathon to be able to hold their breath for very long, same as I'd expect that someone who's being lying in a bush for 5 minutes would probably be able to hold their breath for a good while. Holding breath should also steady your aim. The other ideas are good too. A proper trading screen would be great, especially when swapping items with friends. I'll respond to Part 1 here as well. I don't really have many major quarrels with it, though some of them seem a little superfluous, but that's fine. I think a lot of people take issue with the back slots for a rifle and a melee weapon anyway, but certainly if that system is here to stay I'd like to see the bow be stored in the melee weapon slot. It'd definitely get more use that way. As for post-apocalyptic clothing, however... eh. they're cool, for sure, but hugely impractical. It's kind of a trope that when shit hits the fan, the first thing people do is put on the nearest gas mask and fashion armour out of kitchenware. I would like to see long coats, and I would like to see hoods - though the devs have said they're impossible to implement for whatever reason. Scarves would also be nice. Improvised gasmasks, though? Weird goggles? Rags? Not too keen on that. A general reduction in the availability of military-grade clothing and a reduction in item quality (to the point that pristine items are very rare and valuable) I can definitely get behind.

Personally, if there's going to be precise actions and rough actions, I would rather be able to improve in both of those skill groups, rather than having to choose between the two. Improving your bandaging while simultaneously reducing your ability to, say, gather wood makes no sense. I get why they've done it, but it seems like a weird way of going about it. Maybe I misinterpreted it. Perhaps rough and precise actions could be affiliated with specific skills. So say bandaging is a precise action - it should raise your precise action proficiency, but also your medical skill proficiency - so it raises all precise action skills slightly, but raises your medical skill just a little bit more. That way (provided we can improve both action types, rather than one or the other) precise and rough actions (which fundamentally make sense) stay in the game, but we also get to have characters that are more refined, without the weird rough/precise balance idea they've proposed. I'll keep an open mind. It could be good. I'm certain that if we make it clear that we don't like this system after playing with it, the devs will make some adjustments.

Yup. Take a break. I've got 300 hours in, and a lot of that is sitting in menus trying to join a server or it being alt-tabbed while I wait for a mate to load up the game. How you've managed to get 5000 hours into a single game is beyond me, but 5000 hours is enough to burn anybody out, even with a complete and fleshed-out game, which DayZ certainly is not. Come back at .63 or something - or even beta. I'm unlikely to play again until .62, but then that's what I always do. Wait for a patch, play a few hours, knock it on the head until the next one.

Oh ja. I remember ze SS. Heil Hit- ah, wait. I mean I remember that screen shot! Is what I meant! Obviously! Though I didn't play the Standalone very much way back then, so I never really got to play with the decked out Mosin - as such I don't really miss it. Hopefully bayonets will be useable soon.

We know the new animation system will affect player characters by making movement more fluid (among other things) but will this new system also affect the movement or behaviour of the AI in any way?

Bear in mind that travelling on foot will eventually be a lot slower - no more sprinting across the map. There'll be plenty of unused forested areas. I'm actually hoping that travelling on foot via a road will be faster than travelling through a forest or open field to simulate the difficult terrain of the countryside. Not much faster, mind, but it should be noticeable, especially on longer journeys.