Sister Ray

Perhaps the devs could try pushing 1st person forward from time to time to combat it's dwindling popularity. Just something to urge ppl to at least to give it a try. I remember feeling like a second class citizen when there were 70 and 100 player server tests on experimental, but all of 'em 3rd person. I understood why, though; 3rd person is more popular and they wanted to fill up the servers to test their stability. Experimental isn't supposed to be fair, the only reason of experimental branch is to test stuff in the most effective way. This just got me to thinking that what if all the experimental servers were to be 1st person only, for the duration of certain experimental branch testing, for example .59? I think many of the 3rd person enthusiasists would still suck it up and play on 1st person servers to test a long-awaited, new patch and the servers would fill up just fine. I think. If the popularity wasn't where it was supposed to be, the devs could just open the 3rd person servers (if it wasn't too much of a hassle). This way some of the 3rd person players who haven't really got used to 1st person might just get used to it and even like it. And if not, they could always wait for the patch to hit stable and play the game how they want to play it (It's something that, I, as a 1st person player, have done during an exp branch that didn't have any 1st person servers). A bit artficial, yes, but I seriously think the 1st person servers might need some artificial help...

I have noticed the emptyness in 1st person too... It's even harder for me to find at least half-full servers, because I mostly play on mornings. I get up as my gf is leaving for school. Then, being unemployed, I either fiddle my thumbs the whole day or run around on almost empty Eu servers :D It would be very easy for me to gear up, too easy, but I enjoy "mid-tier" stuff the most so... What should I do? Camp hunting is kinda fun, but also gets quite boring on an empty server... Recently I have started to play on servers that are overseas, on a different timezone, such as dayzunderground. It's at least partially full at 8am UTC+2, but after an hour or so it also starts emptying up rapidly... Thankfully some of the servers are at least somewhat full on evenings, maybe 1 or 2 of 'em. That's not much to choose from, though... I'm jealous of the 3rd person players and the variety in servers they get to choose from. I enjoy having several different characters on different private hives. Once in a while I get an urge to start anew. The ideal situation would be that I could just start playing on a new server, with a new character. Not possible. I have to suicide one of my 2-4 "finished" characters. This leads to me committing suicide at least once a week with one of my chars :D Usually going out in a blaze of glory isn't even possible because of low player numbers. It's easier to suicide than to run around for several hours, trying to find someone to kill me. Once in a while I try to start playing on 3rd person servers, but that leads nowhere as I get bored and unimmersed the moment I spawn in. I wish I could play on 3rd person, but it seems I'm not desperate enough for it yet... But, all in all, I guess this drought of players is just temporary. It seems to me that a lot of players are currently taking a break, waiting for the infected to return, renderer, etc. This obviously affects 1st person more, because we were already a minority... Let's hope for better days!

Yeah, I miss the damage system from the early days. It all seemed to start going downhill when the items in your inventory started taking damage and protecting you from it... Most of the guns in the game lack some serious oomph right now. The one who hits first, with any weapon, should have the upper hand in a firefight, not the one with the bigger gun. I'm ok with not every caliber being a one-hit-kill, but there should be some serious repercussions to getting hit. As many others have said, a bandage doesn't heal a gunshot wound. I'm glad that the damage system is getting revised in .59 and the wounded animations are getting closer to implementation with the new player controller. Let's hope the medical system, in it's entirety, gets some much needed love. You shouldn't be able to just brush off gunshot wounds...

As far as I know, Arma III has handled gamma exploit pretty well without limiting the gamma slider. Haven't played Arma III myself, but I've never heard any complaits about Arma III nights. Here's Smasht's explanation of the system that Arma III uses to combat gamma exploiting.

So, Chris Torchia posted some upcoming mushroom models on trello. Looks like we'll be able to go mushroom hunting soon. This immediately brought me some ideas I'd like to suggest here, so here it goes: 1. THE EFFECTS. There should be three or four possible outcomes to eating a wild mushroom: 1. The mushroom is edible, your hunger level goes down. 2. The mushroom is mildly poisonous. You will gain the "sick" -status, the severity of the sickness is dependent on how many mushrooms you ate. 3. The mushroom is deadly poisonous. No kidney or liver transplants in the apocalypse. You will, with 100% certainity, die in x time. Usually it takes some time for your vital organs to fail. During this time you will get according status messages, starting from vague feeling of discomfort and ending to "I'm dying". Time to go YOLO. (4.) The mushroom is psychedelic/hallucinogenic/intoxicating. I put this in brackets, because I doubt the devs can be arsed to implement something like this, but you never know. And it's impossible to get something like this right in a game or in any media for that matter. It will probably feel gamish and lame. I (and no doubt, you too) might have some ok:ish ideas on how to go about this, but I'll hold on to them for now. 2.THE PREPARATION There are mushrooms out there that are both poisonous and edible. it's the method of preparation that determines if you'll just enjoy the savory taste of a wild mushroom, or get sick. Turning poisonous mushroom to edible one is usually done by boiling the mushroom and discarding the water. This is possible if the toxic (and other unwanted) substances of the mushroom are water-solutable. Amanita muscaria (one of the already modeled varieties) is a good example for this. Amanita muscaria is edible, mildly poisonous, hallucinogenic and intoxicating (as in dissociative/deliriant/depressant). When eaten raw, you'll probably get feverish, lethargic, nauseous and develop some psychoactive symptoms. When boiled (remember to discard the water), on the other hand, it's safe to eat. Tastes a bit like chicken actually. This is actually a quite common practice in rural Russia and Eastern Europe, or so I have heard (I'm a finn myself). Westerners tend to be more mycophilic. What I am suggesting is that it should be possible to boil some mushrooms (such as A. Muscaria) to make it safe to eat. This would mean that a survivor who knows something about mushrooms would stay away from A. Muscaria, but a survivor who knows a little more than something about mushrooms would boil the mushroom and satisfy their hunger. Of course, there also would always be that one guy, with an orange hardhat, pink raincoat and no pants on, who would just eat the mushroom raw and get sick. 3. THE IDENTIFICATION I suggest that the mushrooms should have really minimal descriptions, as in "white mushroom", "brown mushroom" and you'd have to identify them by looking at the model. Have the description state only the characteristics of the mushroom that arent clear by looking at it. This way, you could have, for example, two kinds of "white mushroom", one of them poisonous, one of them edible. You could only tell them apart by studying their models closely. You could have an edible Agaricus titled "white mushroom" and deadly Amanita Virosa (Destroying Angel) also titled as "white mushroom". If you can't tell them apart by looking at them, you die. I'm looking at you, guy with an orange hardhat, pink raincoat and no pants on. I think these mechanics would add some hardcore survival elements to a game based around hardcore survival. Let me know what you think.

As seen in this Wobo's hunting scope guide, it's currently possible to make accurate 800m shots with the Sporter and the Trumpet. The Sporter is perhaps my favourite weapon, even more so now, in .57, when I can finally attach a scope into it. Still, it feels really cheap being able to make those accurate 800m shots with it, which should realistically be close to impossible, because of the lost accuracy on long range and the trajectory of the bullet. If I understand right, when zeroed to 800m the zeroing mechanics send the bullet in the air like a mortar would. I think the best way to counter this (until/if we get better zeroing mechanics in the future) would be just to make .22 weapons with scope only be able to be zeroed to 200-300m. I know it's still possible to make longer distance shots by aiming above the target, but as far as I know, the bullet trajectory of .22 is currently fairly realistically simulated, meaning a fast drop of the bullet. This would mean that in order to hit a target beyond 300-400m, you should be aiming at the sun or something like that. Correct me if I'm wrong. This seems like a quick fix, but come to think of it, I'm not entirely sure if it's really that simple. Is there a possibility to alter the properties of hunting scope used with a certain weapon, or would changing the range you can zero the scope to affect it's function with all the weapons, as in making all the weapons only zeroable to 300m with the hunting scope? Also, perhaps the devs have already figured this out and ready to implement the changes in the next exp update. We'll see...

Yeah, I'm hoping that the decrease in energy over range would also be simulated some way in the future. No idea how hard it would be to implement, though...

Yeah, I've also been waiting for a more realistic way to zero our scopes. I was also pretty sure that we'll get one some day, but your Scubaman3d quote makes me a bit scared, actually. Why does it have to be only viable in the context of an infantry sim when we're talking about mostly civilian scopes? As you said, there are easier scopes to play with if you can't be bothered to learn how to zero your hunting scope properly. Ironsights are simple and straightforward too. This is excactly the kind of a mechanic that would bring some skill into the table without forcing any grindy, lame, mmorpgish skill systems into the game (I agree 100% with agouti on this one). Why not add some helpful ingame books, such as a manual for the hunting scope? This way, the only thing standing between succesfull sniping and you would just be your willingness to learn. I really hope the devs give some second thoughts to this. Thankfully Dayz will have mod support in 1.0 so that even if the devs decide to stick to the old zeroing system, we can still have our way :) My op suggestion is simplified, because I'm fairly sure that rehashing the zeroing mechanics isn't that much of a priority in this stage of developement when the current mechanics are working at least ok:ish (not gamebreaking). Just changing the max range of zeroing seems like a simple placeholder system to implement. Because I feel that we really need something to nerf the sporter range at this point. Sporter is so op right now. That would be ok, if it was realistically op, but it's not. Lack of range (along with low stopping power) is basically the only drawback that the Sporter should realistically have. Mark my words people, if .57 hits stable with .22 weapons still zeroable to 800m, we'll all be drenched in silent, fast semi-auto fire from 800m away, and die oh so many times without any idea where it came from. If the people catch onto the op:ness of the Sporter, that is. An afterthought: Perhaps the best way to save ourselves from 800m Sporter sniping is standing under a roof, so that the bullet hits the roof above us when it drops from the sky :D

Well, you should re-read my suggestion. I was saying that currently you can make unrealistic 800m shots with .22, and that you shouldn't be able to make those. I also suggested a way how to make those longe-range shots impossible. Currenly you can zero sporter w. hunting scope up to 800m. This sends the bullet in the air in a realistically impossible angle so that it hits its target at 800m. To counter this I suggested the scope should only be able to be zeroed up to 200-300m with the sporter.

Yeah, that's what I though. Thanks for the reply, man!

Yeah, I guess limping and other wounded animations will help in conveying the impact of getting shot at, which is currently very lacking in. The situations where I shoot a guy in the chest, with him just running away, bandaging and returning to fight have pissed me off since the mod. I'd still like some kind of incapacitating-via-administering-enough-pain -mechanic into the game in addition with the wounded animations. Perhaps the incapacitation should be delayed to simulate the effects of adrenalin. I'm not a firearms expert, so I don't really know how severe the incapacitation of that and that caliber should be (To be clear, I'm not suggesting adding some kind of incapacitation value to every caliber ingame, just have the incapacitation level be determined by amount of damage taken). Come to think of it, getting wounded, as in having to limp, is an incapacitation level in the system I'm talking about. Sorry, this is getting a bit mixed up :D Also, imho, just raising the shock damage values of all weapons so that it's easier to get knocked out, would be a nice placeholder until we get a more complex damage system. I just hate how weak some of the weapons feel.

A very good idea! It's something I've been thinking about too. Many of the weapons in Dayz feel unrealistically underpowered atm. It should be a big deal getting shot with any firearm or getting hit with a heavy/sharp object. The best and most realistic way to balance weapons would imho be to make them all more dangerous. Still, I'd add some stages to incapacitation so that there is a somewhat bigger variance to results of getting shot with weapons of different calibers. For example, get hit with a single or two .22 bullets -> you fall down because of the shock and pain, but you can still get up and try to limp to safety. Get shot with a higher caliber bullet -> you fall down, but can still crawl for several meters before passing out. Get shot with a even larger caliber -> you're 100& incapacitated and can't do much more than writhe in agony and bleed out, if you're left without medical assistance. I'd also like that you could shoot while lying on your side, with a shaky aim, if you're not too inacapacitated. You should perhaps be able to bandage yourself, administer morphine, etc. in the lower stages of incapacitation, but be completely helpless in the higher stages. This way, the difference between calibers would lie in the after-affects of getting shot, as in can you still be saved? And some calibers would be more reliable in their incapacitating/death-dealing properties than others. This way, you'd be more concerned with getting shot and wouldn't go like: "oh, he's got just a makarov, I'll just charge at him" and just patch yourself up afterwards. I also have a medical suggestion that I've been meaning to post as its own suggestion, but it fits here perfectly, so here goes: There should be some changes made to the effects of morphine and painkillers. Also, the "pain" status from the mod should be brought back to standalone (I'm sure it'll make its way back eventually). First of all, morphine should be only useful for pain management, not miraculously fixing limbs. Healing a limb should need a splint and some time. First use for morphine and painkillers should be pain management, as in combating the effects of pain. The effects of pain could be shaky aim (as in the mod) and/or something else, you tell me. Secondly, morphine and painkillers should be able to be used to combat the effects of incapacitation. Using morphine or painkillers should lower the level of your incapacitation and perhaps make you a bit more resistant to it. This way, a wounded person lying on the ground, unable to do anything else than cry in pain and bleed out could be brought back to it's feet, for a short time. It wouldn't heal the injuries, instead it would only make you able to bear them for a little while longer, and stay somewhat functional. How functional you would be after a shot of morphine would depend on your injuries. Even if you weren't that much in pain anymore, you still couldn't use that wounded leg. Morphine and painkillers should differ from eachother in the duration of the effects, strength of the effects and how much time it would need for you to feel the effects. The effects of morphine should be instantly felt, with painkillers it should take some time for them to effect you. Painkillers would be less useful in the heat of the moment, but perhaps you would take them before the battle, predicting that it would be very possible to get hurt during the fight? Taken pre-emptively, they should make you more resistant to the effects of damage (as in damage causing less pain). You would still get injured/hurt by hits, but you wouldn't go down that easy because of pain. It's a bit gamish, yes, but it's the best I can come up with. Also, with prolonged use of morphines and painkillers, addiction should be a very real danger. In a hopeless situation like the apocalypse you would be very prone to addiction, more so than in normal life.

Good suggestion! I've always wondered why people keep drooling on about these huge barricaded bases with helipads, barracks, garages, jacuzzis, dog houses, neatly mowed lawns and all that jazz... I get it, it's cool, but no matter how well you've barricaded and locked it up, it's still bound to get broken into, quite possibly when you and your guildmates aren't even online to defend it. It's far better if your base can't be found, or even seen.

Does disabling persistence mean still using the old placeholder loot system, with persistence disabled, or a gutted version of the CLE? Something like having the loot spawn as in experimental, but respawning on server restarts? Anyway, I quess there are big wheels turning when stuff breaks and takes time to finish. No worries. I wish more people realized that they should take some breaks from time to time when they start to feel burned out. I know it's hard though :D

I can get onboard with your suggestion, but I think the best way to implement something like this would just be to make player corpses stick around longer (decaying over time of course). This way we, ourselves, could be the added atmosphere, post-mortem. Of course there is always the problem of players just returning to their own corpses and taking back everything they lost that didn't get looted by someone (as some people do, even now with corpses disappering fairly fast). So, in that way your suggestion might be better. Some popular places such as the prison island might become a bit overcrowded by stiffs, too :D

I suggest that you take a break and check on the progress later, if you're still interested. It's easy to burn yourself out if you play and follow dayz too much during early access, I'm no stranger to that myself either.

When I said that foraging should be at least partly entry-level survival, I was only meaning that it should be something you can get at right as you spawn, as in something you can use to sustain yourself even if you have hard time finding any useful loot. Of course it should also be a viable survival strategy in late-game. I know the environment dayz takes place in is abudant with forageable plants, etc. I just find it better for gameplay if it wasn't too easy to sustain yourself, as in it would need some skill and time-investment to be able to survive, which is, I think, exactly what you were saying :) I think the best way to simulate this would be to add as many forageable plants as possible. Some of them useful, some of them harmful, some of them completely useless and have the ingame descriptions be minimal (as in my op suggestion). Trapping and hunting shouldn't be too easy either. This way, it's all there, you'd just have to know how to use it. Of course this learning process can be negated by metagaming, as in just browsing dayz wiki or something with pictures and uses of every plant ingame, but still it's something. I also agree with you in that it's way too easy to keep yourself hydrated with every well ingame being 100% safe to drink from without preparation/purifying it. I've only had to purify my water a handful of times when I was in an area without wells nearby.

Hmm, it's a tough pickle, because obviously we shouldn't make survival too easy. It's a good thing that some of us starve to death (Ingame, I mean :D). Walking up to a plant and promting "pick up" doesn't really portrait the real life struggle, where you should really know what you're doing (as in having the survival knowledge needed) well enough. This is why it's a good idea to add plant-families that have poisonous varieties in them. Still foraging should, at least partly, be entry-level survival, as in something that you do when you don't have a gun to hunt with yet, etc. I'm a layman in survival so I'm not that well versed in edible plants you could forage for. Also, I'm from Finland, which differs somewhat from the area that Chernarus depicts. Wood pigeons and hedgehogs and frogs, etc. you mentioned are good ideas imho, and I think it doesn't matter too much if it seems strange to most of us. I'm also wondering if some domesticated wild animals, such as domesticated pigeons and ducks, as in city-pigeons and -ducks would make sense. I've heard that some of my local, broke junkies have succesfully hunted some city-ducks (the ones that people feed in the parks) with lead pipes (rough, I know =D). Dunno if they'd still be as trusting to humans as before with the infected coming after them, though...

Damn, this is somewhat hard to admit, but I now realize that you (And Pilgrim) have been right all along about edible mushrooms being unviable for survival food. I didn't quite grasp the idea that it takes more energy to digest a mushroom than what you get from it, and that other nutrients won't help in this situation. You explained it well and I thank you for it. Perhaps I was blinded by the fact that mushrooms are healthy in so many other ways that I couldn't understand how they couldn't at least give you several more hours of being alive before starving. It seems that the devs are still adding edible and poisonous mushrooms ingame and I doubt they will make all of them (even the edibles) harmful or insignificant for you. I think I'm ok with them giving the edible ones some function as in filling your stomach a bit even though it isn't realistic. I quess it would be better if they tried to look for a realistic solution such as your suggestion about them being viable as a side dish or ingredient in for example a soup. We'll see. And, as I said earlier, I think we'll get the mushrooms before some other (perhaps more useful) forageables (Is that a word? I'm not a native english speaker) because mushrooms are somewhat iconic to foraging culture. I'm sure we'll get more stuff to forage later on.

Every survivor in Chernarus doesn't have 2 military and 1 civilian survival guides in front of them (or is a professional survivalist). If they are hungry and they spot a familiar mushroom they know is edible, they sure as hell are going to eat it. And it's going to help them continue for at least a little while longer. Look, guys. Perhaps we should just agree to disagree on the nutritional value of mushrooms. It's not like this whole debate has any relevance to my original suggestion other than that I said that some of the mushrooms should be edible (and I quess we can all agree on that they'll have at least some nutritional value). The devs have already modeled some mushroom varieties which will be implemented some day. We can leave it up to them to determine their nutritional value. This wasn't the point of my suggestion. It was more about different effects of the varieties, their preparation and identification as in suggestion about how they will be implemented, not whether they should be implemented at all and what their nutritional value should be.

Could you please post a direct reply instead of editing the post I was responding to, thanks. Because now it seems that I didn't answer your question. It just wasn't there when I replied to your original post =D And to answer you question, I'd probably give a single edible mushroom roughly the same amount of nutrition as an apple.

pilgrim, I'm not trying to argue that wild mushrooms are the best or only source of nutrients. Just that they have their place in foragable foods in dayz and aren't useless as food. I know you wouldn't get far with only mushrooms in your diet, but still, you'd get further than eating nothing at all. And there might be a sitution in dayz where you only have choice between eating mushrooms and eating nothing at all. I'd probably eat mushrooms in a survival situation if I happened to come across varities I can 100% identify. I wouldn't spend too much time or energy trying to find them, though...

Whyherro123 and pilgrim, you are right in that mushrooms contain very little energy, as in calories, but I think it's a bit of an oversimplification to say they have zero nutritional value. Wild mushrooms are rich in fiber, vitamins, minerals and micronutrients. All of these essential for your wellbeing. Dayz, being a game, has a simplified nutritional system. It only accounts for your stomach capacity and energy. In this system, I think it's completely fine to have wild mushrooms fill you up somewhat more than they realistically would, so that they aren't completely useless, which they are not in real life. Also, there might be a time when all you can find for food is mushrooms :) I don't want to derail this conversation into the realm of nutritional science, though :D

Oh, and also, a mushroom hunter's handbook of some kind should also be added in the game.

The point of my post is that when implementing mushroom hunting into the game, it should be done right. Picking wild mushrooms without any knowledge in the subject will mess you up IRL and imho the game should reflect that. I think it would add some deepness into the game to force people to use their real world knowledge (or learn something) if they're about to eat wild mushrooms, without the game holding their hand and telling them what the mushrooms they're about to eat are (and how to use them). I left out some of the more advanced techniques to identification (such as taking spore prints, as BioHaze pointed out) because that would, imho, be taking the process too far. Anyway, I'm fairly certain that the devs have already put a lot of thought into this and they're not going to make it too easy.