scriptfactory

They should just 1) add more spawn locations (so people won't camp the spawn points) and 2) save the player location on the server rather than on the global hive. Get rid of all of the horrible timers and "fix" ghosting/server hopping.

I have this problem as well. It is caused by the server browser. Kills my connection when I hit "Refresh" too many times. I can still browse websites that are mainly text-based and optimized. All Google sites work for me, including Gmail to a certain extent. After a short amount of time everything just starts working again if I leave the server browser and go to the main screen. Edit: I read it has something to do with your default MTU settings being set to 1500. I can't change the settings on my cable modem/router and can't figure out how to modify my MTU settings in Windows 8.1. I just gave up. Waiting isn't that bad... :lol:

I really don't like the idea of players living in the woods. I don't even like the idea of building new structures... I think players should be, pretty much, forced into a multiplayer experience. The easiest way to accomplish this is to focus all action on the towns. No building in the forest. Only moving into existing buildings. Police stations. Jails. Small cabins. Digging cellars. Gardens on rooftops. Barricading doors. Finite amount of door locks per hive (to avoid exploits). Players would make these towns come alive.

I'm not worried about players barricading a whole area as much as I am worried that the defense will be too hard to break through. A whole area being blocked off is fine as long as there is a way for a single player to get around the defenses. This would keep the game interesting. I don't want something like in Rust where you need C4 to raid a metal base.

This is definitely the simplest solution to both combat logging and ghosting. Character position should be saved per server. If your character was never alive on this server it respawns at one of the random fresh spawn locations. If your character dies all of your spawn locations are reset. When locking/fortifying buildings is added this will also prevent users from ghosting into character-owned structures. 3 fixes in one.

I hope Epoch-style base building doesn't come for a long time. I would much rather see the DayZ experience focus around fortifying existing buildings and using them as their bases. No hoarding of vehicles in a base. No NPC traders. This would lead to larger groups/clans taking over apartment buildings or police stations in towns because they would be big and easy to fortify and defend. If you want to keep your vehicle it should be hidden from sight (add vehicle camouflage + lockable garages). Every player should have a chance to steal a vehicle or siphon its gas. Bicycles would be prized over cars because they could be dismantled and stored safely.

I don't really want to see radiation. As was mentioned before, radiation is a long-term problem. I could live in an irradiated area for a while without suffering any ill effects. In the long-run I would get leukemia or cancerous tumors. Guarding against radiation requires a full-suit and acquiring something like this in a zombie apocalypse would be close to impossible. I also wouldn't like a gimmicky radiation system like in Rust. It really sucks. I would like to see CS gas canisters at some point. If you didn't have a gas mask on these would make your vision blur and making breathing/fighting almost impossible. If this game mechanic was added it could be easily modded to provide a radiation experience.

I don't want big barricades (like HESCOs) to be added until their impact on the game is thoroughly thought through. People would start hacking and boarding off whole towns/areas of DayZ so new players couldn't get any loot. Instead I would like to see a simple system. Users can craft 1 unique lock after gathering various lock parts. Multiple keys could be crafted to open the same lock but every player is only allowed to create one lock per server. This is entirely unrealistic but, in my mind, it seems the only way to keep people from making a bunch of locks and shutting down whole towns. Locks should only be as strong as their condition. Once locks are "Ruined" they are useless and the door can be opened. Lockpicks could be used to degrade the quality of locks by "using" them on the locks. Pliers and screwdrivers would also work but it would take much longer to degrade quality. Basic barricading could be implemented so you could board up every door on a house and have just one entrance point. Eventually I would like the ability to crawl in windows but that, obviously, can wait until barricading is added. Traps and like spiked barricades could be added after that to keep out zombies (they would get stuck on the spikes and in the traps). But no HESCOs please until their game impact is thought out thoroughly.

How so? I think he is saying that canned food should have the possibility of making you sick when the can is not in "Pristine" condition. This would mean that you need to cook all food to make sure it is safe to eat.

Barricades are key to the multiplayer component. They could implement mechanics like large barricades only being moveable by two or more players but breakable after a long time by one. The more players the quicker the barricade could be destroyed. Something like that. At the very least add locks for doors and lockpicks. :)

I was thinking about farming and how it could actually work. Only make it available on rooftops. Nothing on the ground. This is the infected apocalypse. No greenhouses, etc. This would, of course, require barricading to also have been implemented. Add mounted weapons and transport helicopters (no weapons; just to drop into enemy gardens) and this game is going to be so awesome.

My ideal endgame (that is possible in the short term) would involve basic persistent storage, customizable "faction" armbands, random spawn locations over the entire map, spawn control via buildable/destroyable device and only basic barricading (i.e. a wooden slats on a door or spiked barricades that kept out zombies). Nothing too advanced so that a single player with the right equipment (pliers, hammer, screwdriver) couldn't break in and take the loot.

I don't think anyone in this thread wants the human threat to be removed. No one hates KoSers... but I feel many would appreciate an in-game experience that didn't revolve around KoSing and griefing like in Mod.

Players would still have to remain attentive. You couldn't just immediately trust whoever you were with. But your trust could be verified by simply looking at the other player. After a while actual trust would form. This is only one component. The other would be team-based objectives. Helicopter crash sites with smoke that could be seen for kilometers. Have super-powerful military zombies guarding the crash site and you have a PvE challenge (so it wouldn't just be easy-mode looting.) Other players would provide the PvP aspect as they would also be trying to get the loot. This is just one idea. Adding multiple team-based objectives would transform the game. It would still be a sandbox environment but there would be many new dimensions of gameplay. This is DayZ. Sabotage should be a part of the game. I would much rather travel with a guy, fight off a horde of zombies and other players, get some sweet loot and then get stabbed in the back than the experience we have now... ...in other words, running through the forest and then you see a black screen saying "You are dead." Or running through the woods seeing another dude and choosing not to engage because he will probably shoot you. Or simply seeing another person and shooting them because they would probably do the same thing to you. The game doesn't need any more timers. In fact, something should be done to get rid of the timers we have right now. They suck.

This is a good point and I have taken it into consideration. Like everything else it seems that no one will be forced to use the survival aspects of the game. I mean, you shoot a bear, eat its meat, and then? Go murder some people in Elektro. The KoS mentality has to be attacked directly via game mechanics. I don't believe this will reduce griefing and KoS. In fact, it may lead to MORE of this behavior creating even more of a "deathmatch" environment. If I have a base up and running with vehicles and custom spawn points in my base. why would I care if my character dies? If you don't force players to utilize the survival aspects or give players an incentive NOT to KoS, the mentality will not change, in my opinion. I feel modding support will save the survival game by giving us all the ability to create the game we want to play.

This is my opinion as well. The cause of KoS is lack of ability to trust others. I should have been more specific. A certain amount of players enjoy KoS so as long as it is possible it will be in the game. I am more concerned with the players that feel they are forced to KoS, which sucks, to be quite honest. I don't think it is necessary to add all of these features. NPCs will comes with mods anyway. Same with safe zones, skill systems and factions. This game will devolve into a shitty deathmatch experience unless something is done. Add a minimal party system that is configurable per host is better than adding PvE servers, NPCs, etc. It is a simple change that would affect the game in a large way. How does it take away from improvisation?There shouldn't be a GUI anyway with a list of the players in your party. The necessary change would be the crosshair. Change it from a dot to an 'x'. Players could still backstab others. They could just leave the party. It could add a wealth of new gameplay possibilities (taking hostages, using other humans as shields, etc.) I stopped playing vanilla Mod due to griefing and hackers. If nothing is done the same situation will exist in SA. I feel that Rocket should either explicitly state that this is intended behavior or come up with game mechanics to counter this. I don't know about you but I would love to have a strong community play vanilla after modding support and private hives are added. Edit: Adding a basic party system is not difficult. Instead of the community saying "this is not DayZ" at least add the option for server admins to activate.

Before removing crosshairs they need to fix item "detection" when viewing your inventory because that shit does not work.

Thank you for this.

I saw the roadmap that Dean put together right before Rezzed. It is, to be quite honest, simply a slideshow and not an actual, well-planned, development roadmap like I am used to seeing. It gives tentative dates but there are no firm gameplay concepts, rather a lose set of features he likes. DayZ itself is a game that is heavily influenced by the community. If the community says "we would like this" Rocket will say "that sounds cool, let's try it." Ordinarily a game has a game designer that states "this is what I want my game to do and this is how I will accomplish it." That latter case is a clear vision. The former case is not. Rocket himself stated that he currently wants to focus on the survival aspects but has not taken into consideration that simply adding more features to the game will not make them used. In one game that I work on the Chinese developers have added massive amounts of features but they are ignored in favor of the core gameplay aspects, questing and raiding. Until Rocket says "this game is a survival game and I want to add game mechanics that FORCE users to focus on it" the PvP/KoS component will remain dominant. Edit: I will reiterate, I love many of the concepts that DayZ provides. I am not saying the game sucks or anything like that. :)

Many KoSers do not find the survival component to be fun. They enjoy KoSing and griefing. People enjoy KoS. They want to participate in the deathmatch. They don't care if their character dies. Once persistent loot is added they will have even less of an impetus, regardless of the loss of character advancement. If we take Nether as an example we can see that adding skills did absolutely nothing to reduce the KoS mentality in that game. Just another MMO? What survival MMO exists that is like DayZ? If you point me in the direction of a game that is exactly like DayZ except with a party system I will immediately stop playing this game. Here is a hint, though; none exist. I would say that a party system is the #1 way to reduce KoS. It is also opposed by people that love KoS since it will lead to bands of randoms forming groups and fighting back against the KoSers. Once team-based objectives are added (e.g. random helicopter crash sites) more and more players will want to form teams and factions to get the good loot. Random killings would still be possible and griefers would still exist but now randoms (without Teamspeak) would have the ability to fight back. It would also lead to interesting standoffs if they added a "hostage taking" mechanic as they could use other players as human shields.

Never.

I don't even like that idea. They were just ideas for an emotion-based system. Item persistence will already be possible. This will, in my opinion, lead to an increase in KoS as character life will be de-valued even further. More stuff to do in-game will not reduce KoS. There will still be a significant portion of the community that are dedicated to griefing. This will also not decrease KoS. In fact, it may increase it due to the increased sense of disappointment and sadness at losing character progress. Permadeath is both a blessing and a curse in this regard. Better PvE challenges may slightly decrease KoS but it will never lead to an extensive decrease in the griefing mentality of players or the inability for players to trust each other.In my opinion there are only two ways of reducing KoS to manageable levels: Add challenges that require a group to surmount (e.g. premium loot requires a team). Add the ability to trust other players (e.g. a party system.) Totally "unrealistic" but totally necessary to dissuade the "friendly, friendly, shoot" behavior.Adding both of these would be optimal. KoS would decrease but not disappear. Gameplay would become team oriented. Groups of randoms could team up to take on groups of clans. Instead of immediately shooting on sight people would determine if a random was possibly an asset or a hindrance.

We were provided with a basic development roadmap and, apart from the survival components (hunting, cooking, farming) being added, all signs point to the focus remaining on PvP. PvE will remain a distraction from the primary PvP component until modding support is added, in my opinion.

What leads you to believe this isn't already the case?

This will never work. KoS mentality will never done unless active game mechanics are created to increase teamplay or penalize KoS. Otherwise SA will end up just like Mod and the community will fragment leaving the vanilla servers empty. And that is OK with me. If Rocket can't create a true survival environment I have faith that the community can take over and fix his fundamentally flawed vision for DayZ. The vanilla PvP servers will die after modding support is introduced. PvP-only players will leave for "1000+ vehicle" servers and people sick of the KoS mentality will play on private "PvE-only" servers or whitelisted RP servers. It is a bit sad that we were promised a grand survival experience and provided with the slowest deathmatch experience ever but I do have faith in the community. After 1.7 million purchases I am sure that the current state of affairs is not what the majority wanted.