scriptfactory

It's interesting to see people are still complaining about the exact same things 6 months later.

On private shards roleplay names are enforced. This would not be an issue. Talking to them (and giving away your position). Check pulse. <-- what the fuck? Remembering their clothing or previous position (only works partially).There are not plenty of ways to recognize friendlies in DayZ. There are three. That is not plenty. Problems If you lose track of your friends, in other words "split up and go scavenging", there is no non-intrusive way of identifying them again. There is no way of identifying friendlies through multiple sessions. Personal identification I propose a new option. Please note, I hate status messages with a passion. They suck balls but this seems to only way that the DayZ devs want to show in-game information currently. So I propose an advanced "check pulse" feature. The F1 key. Make "friends" via a "handshake" or "high five" action while your cursor is over another nearby player. Status message: "You and <friend> are now friends." Pressing the wave action (F1) while pointing at a "friend" within 150m. Status message: "You wave at <friend>." If you wave at someone that isn't your friend no status message should be shown to avoid message spam. Both the handshake and wave actions should be spammable for those times you encounter a new group in-game. I integrated another game with the Steam API and I believe Steam friends can only be added via the Steam Overlay. This is something that should probably be supported to improve the social atmosphere of the game. Steam friends should, naturally, also count as in-game friends and support any friend recognition features (e.g. SteamFriends()->HasFriend()).Non-friendly identification On private shards, there are people that break the rules. The only way, currently, to identify these rule-breakers is via the "Check pulse" action. If you are handcuffed or otherwise restrained it should still be possible to identify these non-friendlies. I propose that waving (F1) at another player within 10-50 meters automatically identifies that player. Status message: "You stare an <player-name>." Group identification For group identification they should really just bring back the Arma 3 hex markers unless they have a better plan. In Arma the hex markers are already fairly non-obtrusive and allow team coordination closer to how we are able to coordinate in real-life. Markers should fade in and out base on line-of-sight. This option should be configurable as both a server- and client-side option for people that feel it intrudes on their immersive experience.

There is a middle ground. Not everything has to be ultra hardcore.

The game is currently very inconsistent with its realism standards. It would be nice if all design decisions were either in support of realism or gameplay. I read another thread that where a member of the dev team said there would be little use for game modes in DayZ. Well here is the first use. Realistic and regular game modes.

I suspect that a lot of players are like you, Nex, in that they simply want to be able to play in their desired playstyle. Renting a server is quite expensive. The availability of more optional UI elements means that there is a chance the majority of server admins will turn on all available server options in a bid to increase their server populations (e.g. 3PP mode). Since the DayZ devs have already started to make a separation between private hives and the public hive with the addition of Hardcore mode. I wonder if they would be willing to add more options for specifically for private shards. This would have the added benefit of pushing more people to private servers effectively fixing server hopping and ghosting but reducing the amount of available servers per character. When I participate in PvP I generally play as a lone wolf and shoot anyone that I see. Target acquisition is of little importance to me. The problems I have with lack of group and player identification are specific to "no KoS"-based private communities. The prosopagnosia issue I mentioned in a previous post is a good example of why I would like to see some form of player/friendly identification. If I meet a player I would like to be able to recognize him apart from his clothing. In addition, faction identification would allow factions wars to exist on RP servers apart from their standard (boring) no KoS rules. Player/friendly identification: The other day I met two really nice guys @ NWA on a private shard. I was going to murder them, as they seemed a bit shady, but didn't. They were actually really cool. We chilled for about 15-20 minutes and I left to go loot the jail up the hill, north of the tents. Upon return I saw two individuals running through the tents. They looked almost exactly like the two guys I met earlier, which is normal since almost everyone runs around in forest ninja gear. I tracked them for a minute or two before realizing that one of them had a different mountain backpack with a different color. In a realistic scenario I would have noticed things like their height/weight/hair color/mannerisms/gait/etc. Player identification: There is a clan of cannibals on the same private shard. I have killed one of them several times. He is a super douche and always attempts to rob people. I would KoS his ass every chance I could get (or avoid him altogether) if I could recognize him. There is no way to recognize him in between play sessions as he simply changes his clothes to find innocent victims. Player/faction identification: There are traders on a different private shard. It is always the same guys. They are faction-neutral, lone wolves. If I actually meet and trade with someone I should be able to recognize them again in the future. Since traders are often murdered this isn't that great of an example since there is usually a "new life rule" on many RP servers. Still, for those RP servers that allow a continuous narrative (through deaths) a way to identify yourself as a trader or have people recognize you as a legitimate trader and not a bandit would be amazing. Faction identification: There are multiple factions on each RP private shard I play on. They each orient themselves towards some common theme; banditry, cannibalism, heroes, medical, trade, generic survival, etc. If there was some way of displaying what faction you were a part of it would allow circumvention of the "no KoS" rule to a certain extent. Heroes would always be allowed to kill bandits and cannibal factions (after target acquisition). Bandits and cannibals could attack known heroes. People would start leaving traders alone or risk being banned. Again, I don't really care what form player and faction identification comes in, I would just like something beyond clothing and voice recognition. I would also like to add that I kinda' got sidetracked and these two topics are the least of my worries in regards to the DayZ user interface. Improved health/status indicators would improve my DayZ experience the most, I guess. I just want to see some general UI love. :)

You hurt my heart! You aren't sorry at all... oh, man... I feel horrible. ;) Nah, I just love DayZ and video games in general. Thanks for commenting on the thread, though!

They will probably add movable barricades and traps. You could place traps on every floor of an apartment building all the way to the top. Then build your safehouse on the top floor. IMO they should make it like in The Castle Doctrine and make traps circumvent-able if you are super careful and observant.

Disease and sickness should be tied directly to player actions. Random diseases upon logging in would just frustrate and confuse the vast majority of players... The devs should, perhaps, allow private shards to increase the rate of infection and disease.

Ego-shooters are some of THE most immersive games. Video game immersion is often thought of as a combination of in-game spatial presence and the ability to induce that feeling of "flow". This has been the case since competitive shooters have existed. It is quite easy to lose yourself in them. THAT is immersion.

Private shards definitely fix server hopping and (if shard admins are active) ghosting. How to fix server hopping on the public hive: Increase server loyalty. Get rid of 1PP vs 3PP characters. Add public hive sharding. Allow public server admins to choose from a set of fixed public shards. Set a maximum amount of servers per public shard (e.g. 10). --- Alternate fix: Add defensible safehouse building. Breaking into a safehouse should either require rare resources (e.g. explosives), a lot of time (amateur lockpicker) or a lot of skill (experienced lockpicker) so players actually have a chance of maintaining a safehouse. Players will naturally stay closer to their homes and be less willing to hop since it will leave their safehouses undefended.

I think this would be a completely unnecessary game mechanic. The goal of the game design team should be to add more motivation for players to stay on a server, not find ways to keep them out...

Thanks for your response, Nex. In my opinion, immersion is not expressly the availability or lack of graphical UI elements, rather my ability to immerse myself in the game world. I see a lot of sentiment expressing a distinct disdain for group and player identification through graphical UI elements. The fact of the matter is, this does not have to be implemented but it would immensely help with player interaction. The lack of any form of player identification is, to me, an extreme breech in reality and one that really prevents the possibility of creating in-game communities without resorting to meta-gaming (giving away my position via Skype, TeamSpeak, etc.) There is absolutely no possibility for faction wars. There is no way to remember un-friendly players as they simply have to change their clothes. There is a whole layer of gameplay that is restricted simply because of the lack of information. Example: Due to the current cheating situation I only play on private shards. I know my community and have actually created social relationships with people in my private community. The problem is, if I am looking at a group of my friends and they change headgear I won't be able to know which friend is which on sight. If I meet a new friend and we spend an entire gaming session together I could log out and not recognize him upon meeting him in a subsequent play session. So I will present the following questions to you: As a configurable server option for private shards would this really harm your gameplay experience? Could you not simply choose another server? If you, as a more hardcore player, were able to turn off these identification tools for yourself (e.g. you could not see the nameplates of others and/or they could not see yours) would your sense of immersion be ruined? You could even play on servers with these features enabled without affecting your personal feeling of immersion. Do you feel it would ruin your gameplay to know others had the advantage of recognizing their friends and enemies but you do not? Is it not possible for allowances to be made for people that simply want to recognize their friends in-game until more in-depth character customization options are added? I am asking these questions genuinely as I am not sure why a middle-ground can't be reached. Some form of player and group identification would make RP servers so much more fun.

I don't want the mod UI to return. I want something like this. It doesn't have to be anything that I wrote but it should be effective at communicating to me what my avatar is experiencing in-game.

This is my point. New features are being added without a thought as to how this information should be communicated to the user. To me user interface doesn't mean health bars and ammo count. User interface means the way and methods that me and my game communicate with each other. It should be as simple and intuitive as possible, in my opinion. If the devs significantly increased FPS, improved the game's user interface and decreased the horrible desync that is plaguing the game currently I think there would be fewer complaints than you realize. DayZ is the only FPS that makes me feel motion sick. And I am sure I am not alone.

I believe I understand what you are saying but if they want to make this game truly realistic then an extreme amount of work needs to be done on the user interface. I did re-read the last status report and saw something about group identification. I am extremely interested to see what the game design team comes up with but I am not holding my breath for something awesome. I would like it if they came up with ideas and posted them in the new dev forums for our feedback. It isn't necessary, of course... just a "nice to have". I quickly came up with a few simple (easily implementable) and complex ideas. Pardon any typos. Spatial awareness (complex): 3PP-mode shouldn't even be necessary in a shooter anymore. We have been peeking in games that are much more competitive for over a decade now. We should be able to press a button to hide behind a rock/tree or beside a wall. We should be able to press another button to actually peek around corners or over the top of obstacles.Spatial awareness (simple): 3PP-mode is the easiest way to implement spatial awareness which is why I believe it is still in the game.Player identification (complex): In a game like DayZ recognizing other players is very important. It should be possible to discern friendlies from non-friendlies. I should be able to recognize a friend that is standing 1 meter in front of me. More customization options aren't enough. There needs to be some clear method of identification. It is the year 2015. I should, at the very least, be able to model my face, customize my body and change my gait.Player identification (simple): Add shake hands with players to see their names and become friends. Wave (F1) at nearby players to see message "You wave at <friend's name> and <other nearby friend's name>."Group identification (complex): Clothing should be customizable. I should be able to put large patches on backpacks or clothing. I should be able to tie bandannas to different parts of my avatar and my weapons.Group identification (simple): Hex markers for your faction.Player and group identification (simple, alternate): Crappy name tags after waving.Weapon firing mode (complex): Actually change the weapon firing mode using the real selector on weapons. Add a button to look directly at the firing selector.Weapon firing mode (simple): Show the firing mode as a status message when switching.Magazine capacity check (complex): Hold reload button to activate animation that pulls out mag and looks at the side of it. Add semi-realistic status indicator to all mags.Mag. cap. check (simple): Hold reload button to add text message that shows how many bullets are left in your mag.Compass (simple): Equip compass like in Arma 3. Hold K to look at compass. Done. This shouldn't even be talked about. Opening and closing the compass is useless. Why was developer time wasted implementing this?Health (complex): Speed should be directly relative to health status. Also, as you lose health, you should slow down. You should also start gasping for air. Screen should fade as more health is lost.Blood (complex): Blood splatter proportional to amount of blood loss. This should show on clothing (so your teammates can see how fucked up you are) as well as in an overlay (so you can tell for yourself). Screen should fade as more blood is lost.Dehydration (complex): Increased heartrate. Simulate dizziness through post-processing effects. Aural indicators should be coughing or smacking your lips.Injury (complex): Show it. If you have a broken leg you should be able to look down and see the bone sticking out of your leg. You shouldn't be able to walk.Disease/sickness (complex): You should puke and sweat should run down your screen in an overlay.Hypothermia (complex): Frost proportional to your freezing status should appear on the top of your screen overlay. Appropriate shivering aural indicators should also be added.Hyperthermia (complex): Vomiting, sweating overlay and dizziness. Sweating overlay should also be used as with sickness.Health, blood, dehydration, disease, hypothermia, hyperthermia (simple): Icons that appear when holding a specific button. Pink indicates healthy. Sickly green indicates unhealthy. Blue indicates hypothermia. Glowing red indicates hyperthermia. Pulse to indicate rate of status increase or decline. This is what I meant by user interface. I don't want or need perfect systems now. I would just like something so I'm not just guessing about in-game information. Animations and awesome post-processing effects and overlays can be added later, in my opinion. Or we can just stick with healing, energized, hydrated, stuffed, healthy, cold, moist. I don't want to appear entitled or whatever. I would just like to see some UI love.

I never asked for floating nameplates. I asked for player recognition elements, in whichever form the devs decided to implement them. My post is about lack of focus on the in-game user interface rather than lack of a HUD of floating name tags. Read my original post. People were just making strawman arguments instead of addressing my points.

They are just two dudes. It's only about 100 pages. Read their work before you criticize them.

DayZ spams us with onscreen messages. Also, in Battlefield it has a specific purpose, showing player progression to help improve attachment to the game. Tetris and Chess both have a user interface. So does DayZ. While a user interface can include a HUD, all UIs don't have a HUD. All of these points are addressed in the thesis. It is quite good.

No one read my TLDR...

This is actually addressed in the thesis. Different players experience immersion in different ways. I'm not saying more HUD elements need to be added. I'm saying that the user interface needs some attention, in my opinion. The user interface includes visual, aural and haptic feedback.

They should really add this. Several people have made this suggestion, myself included: http://forums.dayzgame.com/index.php?/topic/206853-add-weapon-slings-and-get-rid-of-weapon-slots/

Turning off friendly fire for squad/faction battles is much more likely. Team deathmatch instead of deathmatch... Edit: ...as a mod. I don't think the devs will put anything like this in the game.

DayZ 2 should be like Project Zomboid MMO. All of the money would be BIS'. All of it.

This would make 3PP even more popular.

I got sick from using a sewing kit to cure my bleeding status.