bauertschi

Ninja_Meh: Posted Today, 09:40 AM >all this crying about bamies having it hard and so on, ther point of the game is you sneak about, head north, >get geared up and the game becomes "easier" in the sense you get eventually armed as a reward for >barely making it out of the coast alive, if bamies means bambis (I think it does) then the answer is simply balancing. I simply don't think it is the sign of a good game to provide an environment that is hard at the beginning resulting in plenty of bambideaths and then all of a sudden get easier. And why should the point of the game be anything like going north??? Ok, there are concentrated spawn points, fine. The first bigger cities (i.e. electro) will therefore result in plenty of killing of the still "weak", fine. I also decided to go to electro the first three spawns I had. Learned not to do that any more. Still not seeing why that should have anything to do with going north. YES, currently you can go there relatively fast (meaning you usually don't die from starvation or thirst) and get some loot quickly. A lot of pvp guys meet there and die, fine. All fun. There is military loot, the people absolutely new to the game aren't there but dying in electro...fine. I just don't see how it should be a goal of the game to "easier" gear up some place and therefore trying to "barely making it out of the coast alive". I like the sea. Theres yummi fish, the salt water is perfekt for skin care, maybe even helps against some pests like flea, what the h*** do I know... . And who wants to be inland for weeks just to make a point? Have you ever considered how bad you guys actually smell after a few days??? I simply take my daily swim in the ocean and unless there are shark-zeds, I'm fine. Ultimately there is nothing wrong with the coast. If there is currently, it's by design. And I don't know if that is really so great. The north. PAH! Do you want to become king of winterfell or what? >at which point the only real threat becomes the pve aspect of the game and other players who didnt do stupid >things like try to gear up in elektro or cherno. So then the only real threat is pve AND pvp??? Per definition, yes sir. Correct. Nothing else left after all. >the respawn mechanic IS PLACEHOLDER, and i think it is in PLAC E to help people get used to the fact that soon, when the new >zombie system (which is being worked on from scratch to address all the issues of clipping and so on) is in place, zombies are >gonna fuck u hard if you decide to use your gun as opposed to axing or fighting them with other melee/bare fists. I don't think most people complain that zeds are generally to hard. They are just not "right" for lack of a better word. I personally want them to get harder, deal more (health) damage, but not by hitting me with their hands from 5 meters away or ruining my raincoat with every second hit, it took hours after all to get that thing. Yes its a placeholder and I think a lot will change there especially as melee is changed. But this is actually a thread with the main purpose to discuss the zed differences that came with the last patch. >the reason so many people bought arma 2 for this mod was because it was so much harder and a lot more fun and original than >your usual multiplayer shooter games, plus a lot of people love the survival horror aspe ct of it. I don't think you can say that it is actually harder than your usual shooter. I dare you to present me your uncheated BF3 account with a 10 Kill vs Death ratio. Let's see if that is easier than DayZ. It's more complex, offers more posibilities and people behave differently because they actually have something to lose, when they die. A nice slow learning curve? Great, I love it. Harder? Simply wrong. The fact that it takes some time to have your first positive results does not mean it is harder. Just that we DayZ players are stubborn. Or maybe we have masochistic tendencies... . >PLAYERS ARE DEFINITELY NOT intended to be the most dangerous part of the game What exactly is that statement based on? Did Dean say that? Never seen a source to it. You can make an environmentally extremely hard game, it will frustrate the h*** out of new players, but you will ultimately find out, just how to work with the environment and AI and then what...all of a sudden, it's boring as hell. When the game is done, the only remaining evolving variable is other players. I doubt it is even possible in games like these to provide anything more dangerous than other players, when you learned the workings of the ingame world. Of course random meteors could fall on your head. But that's not really the point. I also remember that one pesky Super Mario level that is just soooo hard, but in DayZ I don't have to jump right over some hole in the ground, I can walk around the hole. Or turn around. I don't know if we will ever be at that point, but we certainly don't have the possibilities to create a virtual environment that even has the simple things that kick your butt in real live. Just imagine sneaking up to a zombie and stumbling over a root? Or are there millions of branches lying around that make unexpected sounds when you step on them? People will learn how to master the enviromental things. >they are however the most unpredictable aspect and this is what makes the game. in my opinion. if people think this game >should not be about zombie survival and that it should be less realistic, please do give me your steam account and i will pass it >on to someone who SHOULD be playing dayz with me instead of you winding up on the shit end of my axe like a cry baby. There is a recrutement section here, maybe you'll find someone there. Basically it's a game where everyone can do whatever you want with given resources (beans, m4...) in a given environment (zeds, health system, starvation). I doubt people will actually get into it and behave just like you think they should behave in the "real world" when there are zombies running around... . If your behaviour in such an environment would actually be scraping of the remains of those "weaker" than you that managed to wind up on the shit end of your axe, then I do not want to be your friend. No, sir ;) Don't get me wrong, it's not my intention to annoy you, but your post simply rubbed me wrong on so many things. Who knows, maybe I have it all wrong, but I just can't imagine the environment being the main problem concerning one's survival for long. I got my first death though zeds ingame. Then I starved once. Then I learned not to go directly into electro in a dead sprint. Then... ... ... ... . My mouse was really troublesome and almost completely took me out of the game concerning pvp. That changed now with the latest update. As I was always well fed and watered and had military loot, just no real way of using it against others because of my mouse, the game started to be boring. And nerve wraking. There is simply no sense in running around and dying in all pvp situations simply because the user input is wonky. Took pretty much exactly 50h, and I did really run around a lot, once geared up on an empty server to test out all the different guns that were in the game... No matter how harsh the environment will be, people will master it and get bored. Of course it is possible to make it so extreme, that everyone simply will die. Some in 10minutes, some will last 5 hours if they are lucky. At that point no new players will buy the game at all though, so that is not likely to happen. Note to self: Don't write so extremely long posts.

As this is discussion is going away from zed changes as such and more in the direction of what people think this game should be like, I'll also throw in my 2 cents: Zeds need to become a real threat, ok, I accept that. But you will never be able to and most importantly should not aim to make them more dangerous than other players. That may work in some single player title where your computer is dedicated to providing a bot experience just for you with no need to care for how others in your proximity get synced data. And if you want a shooter where you can team up with others agains zombies there is always Left 4 Dead 2 ;) For me DayZ is different for several reason. The fact that you start with nothing results in several problems here: 1. Whatever the final implementation of zeds will be, it must be possible to survive with nothing. 2. You try to gear up your char for some time. There are several "pros" out there that do that supprisingly fast and then go into pvp to measure themselves against others, but I would say that for most players it takes sometimes hours until you have your preffered weapons and other things. Then there is the whole health system which means you can give yourself a real advantage with getting really energized and hydrated with more trouble like cholera comming in the future. 3. This directly results in the fact that you really don't want to die when you are somewhat equipped. The downside is that some bambies will try to knock geared up player out, after all they have nothing to loose and all to gain. The fact that you and the other players on the map so badly don't want to die is what makes DayZ (and probably several other games that are now developed) so nerve wracking. We (a team of 3) once ran into a barn when three others came in. We were standing about 10 ingame meters apart with everyone yelling ingame that the others should lower their weapons. After about 5 seconds someone lost his nerve resulting in my group being cut down. I didn't shoot a single bullet. After the whole thing the other group started cussing at us "motherf***s" proclaiming that nobody needed to die there. They all survived but were so mad at us nevertheless because one of us supposedly startet the shooting. Only human interaction can get you that thrill. Zeds will never be able to get your blood pumping just like that. The fact that this is not Battlefield 4 where you spawn 10 seconds later with all your gear gives you a reason to try everything to stay alive. It also makes you feel somewhat sorry for people you kill if you have any empathy at all. There is a reason that many pvp meetups at the coast end without bloodshed while the same cannot be said when you run around at some airfield with your m4 out. So how should zeds be ballanced ingame? Hell I don't know... . Ideally they are way more than a nuisance to well equipped players while not making it impossible to enter towns for bambies. Should there be groups that roam around? Definitely. Should they swarm you like in Left 4 Dead 2? Probably not. The final implementation of zeds has the potential to make this game absolutely awesome, of course other things are needed for that too. But it could also easily break the game. Possible problems could be: - too hard for bambies - as zeds probably will never (and should never) climb ladders, more players could decide that the ideal gameplay is hiding up some roof and wait for other players to come. Sniping is already pretty strong in DayZ. It could easily get overpowered by applying additional incentives to play that way. That would result in many more not so happy people that got sniped and will push the KOS rates up even more. I don't think it is possible to force human players to cooperate and play only PvE. And the game would get really boring if it was possible. The environment as a whole could easily become the most dangerous thing ingame...plenty of diseases, random slipping when running on wet surfaces combined with too little food and the newly added heart attacks when you get injured (or do you only get them when being shot?)...maybe poisinous snakes? They don't even have to be actually "made" ingame, could just be a random event when running through woods or gras. Now thats an idea. Depending on your health you could even survive a bite if you're lucky enough ;). To sum things up, this game could become the next best thing since sliced bread or it could become a real desaster. And the implementation of zeds will have a high effect on that. As far as I'm concerned the main interaction, chance and threat must be other players that think and feel like humans. Stealth should be really important, but if you want to measure your sneakiness against some AI, maybe you should play some Thief. Swarming hordes of zeds should exist, but if that is really your thing, maybe Left 4 Dead is the right choice? I think you can even play as a zombie there...read that somewhere I think. Several comments I read here actually scare me a little bit. It's natural that everyone has a different idea about how the game should develop. But I think some propositions would destroy it. And I don't want that. No matter how people think reality would look like in a "real" zombie apocalypse, some aspects of such "realism" might just make the game boring or unbalanced or plain stupid. i mean really. When you see how zombies are not really eating all that much in most scenarios compared to how long they live, they most probably are cold blooded. Doesn't mean i want to move to Canada just so they frozen lumps standing around and I can dispose of them with a hammer as they will break into thousands of little pieces when hit. Nothing against Canada... EDIT: Please don't implement random poisinous snake bites when running through woods or gras. I was just joking! NOOO, PLEASE!! DON'T!!!

The next time I'll make a screenshot so I know the exact message. Otherwise it's probably not very useful for the devs.

To be frank that seems to be the preferred gameplay for quite a few people. The waiting in some building until some idiot comes that is. Said idiot now killing the zeds outside is just a bonus. So that kind of playing style might even become more popular...

Ok, an update from me then. In post 1055 I wrote that I can now aim (had mouse problems before) and had not killed anyone yet. Now some sad survivor is gone because of me after we ran into each other on the NWA. But before I do my naked celebration dance around a campfire - wait, ne campfires yet, I am actually quite supprised that I pulled that off. We both came around the corner to enter a hangar, just from different sides, both had an SKS out. Both get panicky, turn back to go back to the hangar sides. Problem for me: Windows warning sound is played, I'm abruptly transported back to my Desktop with a warning window saying that there is a problem with too much RAM consumption of DayZ and that I should save any working data and close the application. YEAH SURE!!! BEST IDEA EVER!!! So I went back into DayZ, the whole thing took probably 5 seconds. Sprinted behind the hangar, carefully already aiming around the corner and TADA - my first kill. After that shootout I decided to skip the other buildings, just quickly look if the guy had something I need (I needed SKS ammo). The guy only had very few bullets, so now instead of 11 I have 8. Great. But he had wood for creating a splint. And I always got the message that my leg is in pain, but had not found morphine anywhere - the message does tell me that my leg is broken, right? And here the lagging started. It felt like 5 minutes, was probably more like 2, when I was openly standing behind the hangar, trying to get the ammo and the sticks. It took forever to a - through away 2 cans of food b - get the ammo c - get the sticks. So I had no lagging problems the whole time UNTIL I encountered another player. Well, I guess, that's not the best time for that... . After I finally had the stuff I ran as fast as I could back into the treeline. There I decided to create a splint and see if that would fix my leg. Splint created, had it in my hand, right at that moment a zed start feeding on me. Well, before I loose the splint, lets just use it - that was the idea. After all, there was not enough room for it in my backpack. Yeah right. The option was there, I selected to do it, but did anything happen? No. After quite a while with the zombie taking small bites out of me all the time, I decided to switch to my axe. Also not working. I was able to run around and evade the zed some, but running around like an idiot right next to the airfield ultimately did not seem very smart. At one point my char finally switched to the axe and I killed the zed, but that of course resulted in my splint going missing. Never found that again. So after all is said and done, my leg is still in pain and I have less ammo than before. My lost health with the zed is probably irrelevant, but I forgot to check if any of my things got ruined. And it took 2 bandages to stop the bleeding. So obviouly there are still sync issues, even if you are not rubberbanded back. Questions: 1. Does leg in pain mean that its broken (fix with splint or morphine) and should I not be reduced to crawling like an infant in that case? Had that twice before... . 2. Does it sometimes take more than one rag to stop bleeding or was that some glitchy thing? 3. I had that windows memory message a few times before, but not in the last weeks. I have 8GB Ram and I think that should be enough. Do others have that problem? Now I feel conflicted. Happy with the fights result, not so happy with the lost splint because my char refused to apply it and then refused to switch to the axe resulting in me running circles next to the airfield with a zed making a ruckus.

After some more playing and completely going through everything in Svetlojarsk, I want to write my thoughts about the zeds. I considered zeds something that should generally be handled in melee, shooting them does and should attract more. At the beginning I had a Machete. Slowly getting up to them from behind I was able to onehit two zeds with it. The problem is that that doesn't seem to be reproducible behavior as with most that just seemed to p*** them off resulting in the well known hack-fest of twenty-hitting them until the are finally done. Combining that with the now seemingly higher chance of them destroying gear and their sharpened finger nails that result in bleeding convinced me to use a fireaxe again, even if I might be easier spotted. Ii find it strange how fast they are. I mean really, they look like five generations of flies have already used them for their maggots, so I think one should be able to easily outrun them, but that's not something I would go to war over. I have two main problems with zombies at this point concerning how they are developing. 1. Zeds == melee for me and the melee weapons at least in my opinion are highly unbalanced. There is the fireaxe, onehit. Then there is a normal axe, can't really say anything about how it is now as I haven't had one in a long time. Then there is nothing. And at the very bottom are your fists. Where are all the nice little melee weapons not listed? Not quite sure, but I would say they are probably as useful as fists. Ignoring the onehits with the machete described above I really don't think you can take care of zombies faster with all the goody weapons than with your fists. Onehitting them from behind using stealth should be possible with practically everything more dangerous than manicure scissors. And regular melee with anything of some weight should also put them down faster as should something like driving screwdrivers through their head. 2. Melee is time critical. 2a: Zeds don't adjust to user actions fast enough. It seems to me as if they get a path to your place and an attack action when they finally get there. So you simply move somewhere else and they will continue running where you have been and even sometimes try to attack not caring about the fact that you are long gone. This also results in my (not only mine) tactic of sprinting towards them and hitting them while they are happy to continue running where you were before. Every one knows what I'm talking about, so no need to continue AND I don't know how relevant point 2b is here so I'll just continue there. 2b: Rubber-banding is mostly gone. Only happened once to me. The problem is that it sucked me back into a house where two zeds where hitting me. They hit me even though I was running and they were nowhere in sight. I guess while I was running on my client I wasn't doing so on the server... . But that's just a symptom of the real problem as far as I am concerned: The real problem: ---------------------- When I started to play, everyone had the same problem and everyone knew it: Where are the beans I just dropped??? They magically appearrd about 30 seconds later, sometimes faster, sometimes slower, sometimes not at all. That is fixed now. But why did that problem exist? Fighting with zeds, other players, it's always somehow funny, a zed might be standing before you, his back turned to you, hitting away from you and you get damage and start bleeding. Watch some fight club nonsense on youtube and you see people running around each other like headless chickens trying to hit each other. I would hazard a guess that the major problem is still synchronization. My first ever FPS was Unreal Tournament. The real one ;). I can not recall ever being shot by someone while his/her back was turned to me. Yes, they were able to turn reallllly fast, it was unrealistic extreme-twitch shooting, but people were facing the correct direction when they put a bullet into your ear channel. They are not facing the correct direction in DayZ, simple and easy. It might even be changed with players, have not really encountered a lot of them since the update, but it is not with zeds. Maybe my interpretations are wrong, but if they are not and synchronization is a problem then there is simply no way to get the zeds to behave smart in any (what I would call) acceptable way unless they are dispatched to the clients. And I seriously don't know how that should work when you are not the only player in the area. If synchronization is the problem then I think zed behavior will change dramatically when that issue is solved and it's probably not useful to discuss their AI now when the possibilities change later on. All in all I think they have really improved, but I encountered thwo problems that should not have to do anything with synchronisation: - The invisible zombie whip they use when you are several meters away, they do their attack thingy and hit you from reaaaallly far away. I want an invisible whip too...thinking about it maybe I have one and just don't know it? - The extremely brittle zombie-ankles. Sometimes when they chase me down a - let's call it hill, but not really that steep - they all of a sudden overtake me lying flat on their backs. I can only guess that they tried to jump, missed, landed a little bit down the "hill" (I mean really, it was not that steep at all), broke their ankles, a little pice of bone broke loose and somehow shot directly into their frontal lobe resulting in their imidiate death. Then through threir kinetic energy the continued on and overtook me. They actually kept sliding for quite some time, so they are probably quite greasy. I get queasy just thinking of it... . At the end let me stress that I don't want it seem like there is no good development going on, I saw a lot of improvements since I bought the game, thank you for your work!

Hi, I'm new here. After playing DayZ for more than 50 hours, i stopped. That was about 3 weeks ago. The problem was that I could not really go into PvP without getting cerebral bleeding. I was one of the guys that had MAJOR trouble with horizontal mouse movements. And yes, there are those that will say "you are doing it wrong" here, if you are one of them, please ignore my existance in this forum as well as the existance of my posts. Turning sideways was sometimes just way slower than at other times and the maximum turing speed was highly limited. The only thing I could have done was trying my luck at sniping from far, far away, but having to react in a timely fashion was problematic. So I stopped after exploration and hiding from everyone got boring. I don't think it's in the changelog, but Dean wrote on twitter that some mouse acceleration stuff was changed and what can I say. I can now do a 360 in under 5 seconds. I can also move the mouse and the result on screen is what I actually expected. So YIPIIIEEE!!! Others with the same / similar problem(s) should try and see if it's better, Dean also wrote that they "have decided to redo mouse control from scratch as a high priority", so it will change again. To the polarizing topic of zeds. Hm. I was just trying to off 5 of them with my machete. I always try to aim for the head, I got one onehit, but the others took so long I think pure classic Tyson style might be the better option. Zeds are generally not very responsive. If you sprint towards them and hit them, they will go where you were for another few seconds and then slowly reorientate. So that's a way to kill them without getting hit. The main problem I have with zeds is the fact that one of them sees you and 5 others come from all over the world to join in the fun. I don't fear them, I fear the other players that will shoot me while I am trying to off the zeds :). I don't consider them a threat unless you are a bambi that is not energized and hydrated. And getting energized and hydrated is currently a question of when the server last restarted, so I guess we will see. I'm mainly just happy that I can turn and aim now in the case of hostile player encounters, but everyone I met ever since was yelling at me to not shoot or just taking off in a dead sprint...almost like they somehow know, my mouse is working now :). I guess I'm the only one who hasn't tried to kill someone ingame after more than 60 hours.