cuddly_rabbit

I don't have a problem with helicopters in the game. A civilian one you found at a deserted holiday resort. A medical one left on a hospital rool. A police one sitting somewhere where their last mission went wrong due to Zed. What I would hate and absolutely do not want in DayZ is: Armed helicopters (no problem with shooting handheld guns from it, though). No survivor ever can fly a high tech piece of equipment like a military helicopter. Of course many would say... "Ah... my character... is that 1% that has learnt it... he was a heli pilot for the.... blaaaah (continue silly story)" in order to go for the thing, and turn the game into more MilSim again where some search for food, and others spray hellfires at towns. That's not compatible.

In contrast to you, I actually have a military background, infantry training and rank, know weapon handling and know limitations of infantry weapons pretty well. And no, I am not mad at the snipers in the game. They just make zero sense in the game (ok, alpha => pvp arena) and it is too ridiculously easy to hit (with every gun, though), when you just accept that these are untrained people. But hey... I might as well save my time, as I seem to be talking against a wall. Enjoy your day ;)

But you are no hunter in this game. You are not meant to be a trained specialist in shooting. That's why people should miss. A lot. A lot more than they do now. I did - mind you - not talk about randomness and dispersion. Whether that lack of hitting a target is achieved by dispersion or realistic factors that make the aiming/shooting process harder for the player... I don't really mind. It just has to be much harder if we do not want it to feel like a cineastic Hollywood shooter with spray-n-pray 40 round-burst assault rifles (ever tried that in reality? No way you hit anything!) and magical snipers of easy-hitting+4 (modifier: direct death).

Have you even read my post? And I do not think that you (assuming you have no training) will ever (!) hit anything at 400 meters. That should be the average survivor. I suggest you go and read my post again, because it is exactly the opposite of "cod/wow". It aims for a lot more realism.

It's a good roadmap that you put there. I agree that the game should feel like you describe it: harsh, unforgiving, and survival should be portrayed as a rather primitive act. I especially agree on the rareness of bullets because the amount of ammo at the moment makes DayZ atm just a really bad shooter.

@Using bodies for "decoration": Bodies do not burn easily, contrary to belief. Nor do clothes. Your TV lies when it comes to disposing remains. Without petrol or some other easily inflamable substances, a real pyre and a lot of time you'll get nowhere or at least not far. And... again: In my opinion, we should not want to make this game more of a psychopaths' / sociopaths' playground like Apocalypse Now. There is no need for "decorating" your badass base with mutilated bodies and heads on spikes, etc.

Have you ever tried to hide a body? (I hope not in reality). To roleplay a proper funeral in a live action roleplay (a character we liked had died), we once dug a proper grave. It took about an hour, with 3 people. So that cannot be what "hide body" means. If "hiding" means, that you drag it around the corner, the body and loot should not be "gone". If "hiding" means throwing a few bushes and branches onto it, it still takes 10 minutes to do. And it should be possible to find it still. Hiding a body like it is done now is: > hideously unrealistic > a perfect grieving tool ("Haha. I don't give a f about your loot, I do not need it, so I just hide it. I play for lulz and pvp!!!!111" > a cheap-ass move Consequently: Remove the feature. Hiding a body is not possible the way it is done here.

psychopaths sociopaths torture idiocy

Definitely slow zombies, in masses. I mean, we see that the few fast ones are not working at all. The melee system is bad, just... bad. It's random flailing around, and would profit from slow targets (especially when you fight in 1st person mode). Many, slow targets that are massed in towns and make looting hard, combined with shortness of food and everything, plus moving zombie hordes would create a threat to players and would force people to band together, once they managed to surround you, pin you down, etc.

In my experience, being handcuffed means also dying. Just slower. With some idiots laughing their asses off and stroking their e-peen while they make you eat rotten bananas, force feed you disinfectant and break your legs, electrocute you with a defibrilator, drain your blood until you die,.... Not going to happen again. They can talk to me, but only through walls. And I'd go down fighting every day instead of giving them their sick pleasure on their quest for stupid e-power.

Sadism Simulator for the immature High stakes pvp/kos idiocy Manhunt and Torture Simulator Light No roleplay for you! (BAM) I don't talk. I shoot! Pristine! Gotta be pristine! (BAM) Barbie dress me up Simulator Can U C me?! (BAM) Gear for hours, die in seconds Bambi shooting & trolling gallery Zombies, what Zombies U about? Loved these.

If you pay for it, you should have the right to police your playground. It's not that people cannot just not enter your playground if they do not like the sandbox you provide them with. Having an admin (like in the OP video) totally powerless against blatant cheating is just a joke. Why would anybody have a private server, if he cannot even kick such cheaters?

It's kind of funny because my ingame experience does not mirror the results here. Not even closely. 50 % would let me live when I have an M4? Ehm.... it sure feels as if 90%+ would shoot at me immediately. :D I do not KOS. Even though it infuriates my teammates. ;) But at least I am the bullet magnet when I appraoch the police station and go: "Hello?! Anybody at home?" and my whole TS goes "WTF! U KREZI!!!! DUUUUDE!!!" :D

Huge map + current unrealistic running speed = bearable jogging simulator Huge map + realistic walking speed = unbearable walking simulator I would not like to walk for an hour to get 5 km. However sprinting should be somehow controlled by stamina because it should be used in extreme situations. Jogging should be kept, even though it is doubtlessly not very realistic. Gameplay is more important.

Ye. Hardcore is definitely the better game. It does not favour the silly camping style of lamers who sit somewhere, 3rd person lurking over walls (or even through them), while the one that is moving and playing dynamically is at a huge disadvantage. When I watch the 3rd person camera-expoiting videos, I just leave it. I go by the thinking of: if you want to see, expose your head. If not, stay in cover, but also do not see me. The narrowness of your field of vision makes me use the spin head option, which can lead to really tense moments when you actually spot something by turning your head, but you turn on and then you spin back and try to find it again. It's almost like in reality when you brain realizes something a moment too slowly. And then it is gone. And you go: "Damn... what did I see? Is something there?" I also think that there is less mindless KOS and generally less idiots on Hardcore servers. I have had better non-violent interaction on hardcore servers and less KOS. Last but not least, my frames are better in 1st person.

Some of the advocates tell me please, what this will add for the game. How do you think your character should recover from a central-belly hit? Or a "heart hit"? And what is the difference to the "Black screen, you are dead" solution we have right now? Does it matter whether you are "bleeding to death" or simply dying? Does it matter whether your heart was hit or your lung? You are dying anyway (with the medical system we have in DayZ) I have a hard time seeing the added gameplay advantage that would come with a lot of coding, perhaps even more lag, etc.

Just try again tomorrow. I had this incredible desync, too, and it went away like it had never been there before. Edit: Also... you might hate the answer, it also stopped once when the character died. Don't ask me why, though. But I swear, after respawning, everything was alright again. :(

Very good post by pointing out what can be changed to increase the chance of getting a reaction back. There is always space for improvement.

I stay away from groups when playing solo. The chance to be killed by groups is incredibly high, as many are in a hunting fever. It's cool that you gave him a chance. And I would have taken your offer. The guy in your situation was just dumb.

Sorry to say, but this is silly. You do NOT survive any of these hits. Not without a MedEvac and an emergency hospital waiting for you. We do not have these in DayZ. So... that kind of "you hit my liver, I can drink less alcohol now!" logic is silly. A hit to the lung kills you. You do not suffer from "shortness of breath", or... you might, but it does not matter if you do not arrive in hospital fast. But in DayZ you won't. Might as well just cut that corner straight to the black screen.

I am for realism. However, I have to ask: What does it add except more details of death? In real life, you can hope to be helicopter-rushed to a hospital and saved. But in DayZ? It makes no difference whether you are incapacitated or dead. A shot to the belly? Dead. A shot to the chest? Dead Pretty much every hit that is not a graze means death in the conditions of the DayZ world. I am not sure whether the sincere and unavoidable act of dying needs to be prolonged. The depiction of the will to stay alive is realistic, but in a world in which there is no chance... I don't know whether it adds a lot. Honestly, I prefer my character to be dead and silent after a good hit. I would not want him screaming his head off and dying over the next 2-5 minutes. Have you ever heard the screams of badly hurt people? Fuck my life, I do not want a realistic depiction of that in a game after having experienced it in RL.

After having played the SA for quite a while, I couldn't stop realizing how paradox this game is. Disclaimer: Of course I know it is an Alpha, and I know that many of the issues I will point at are already on the "to fix" list. However, thinking about it made it very obvious how weird this game works and what is most fascinating (for me at least) is that it is actually fun. Anyway, here it comes: It is the only multiplayer game I know, in which many people avoid any contact with other players and even when coming into contact, spend a lot of effort on not actually making (visual, physical, communication) contact. An avoided contact is a successful interaction for many. It's the only multiplayer game I know, in which relevant numbers of people prefer empty servers to populated ones. The less players, the better. I do not know a single game that has that. DayZ spreads few players on such a big map that meeting each other outside of the few hot zones is next to impossible. And: more empty space/villages are being added. Even with 100 players there would not be a chance to fill that map, and I doubt 100 players will happen once zombies work. DayZ has incredible (however unused) potential for intense roleplay (invented characters in the world talking to each other instead of players playing a game), but it is the game where I have yet to meet a roleplayer. It has a great system of direct ingame communication (doesn't need configuration, works just like that), yet conversation almost never takes place. Most words I hear are spoken to corpses, not to living characters. The general consens seems to be "if it is not on my Teamspeak channel, it is an enemy => kill it". And killing is best done silently. The alternative is: avoid it, and that's also silent. It is a Zombie game in which Zombies do not have any noteworthy impact, nor pose a real danger, nor add horror or atmosphere. I know, it's known. Still, funny somehow. It is a Zombie apocalypse in which the outward threat does not make the survivors band together to survive. The "unifying threat" is missing, so there is no necessity for players to behave social, as they are not rewarded for the additional risk they take when interacting with other players. The value of an ingame life would be high after a virus wiped out most of the people. Think about the island dilemma with rebuilding population when you have limited females. In DayZ a life has the same value as in ever simple pvp shooter: none. Kill at leisure, npnp, you respawn anyway. This game does hardly feature "survivors". I would describe those as normal people dropped into extraordinarily bad situations. It mainly features psychopaths and sociopaths. There have to be other, yet undiscovered viruses. Likely breeding from boredom + lulziness + immaturity. The game has even more viruses than the Z-virus. They are player created variations: > the long range psychopath virus: he has to kill everything that moves before it gets into interaction range. It doesn't help his survival, he reduces the healthy population, wastes resources, attracts zombies and dies pitifully after a split-second of terror to someone rustling behind him. > the torture/abuse psychopath virus: it seems to spread once handcuffs are found and extends to slowly killing people by poison "for fun". It totally increases your own survivability and is generally a reasonable way to act in a post-apocalyptic situation. It however is "funny" <irony> > the sociopath's "fear" virus: "I only trust my Teamspeak mates! The rest is KOS". or: "Sorry, I trust no one". Shooting everything is much safer than talking. No wonder that the few survivors that are really out there have a hard time when the Z-virus is only one of 4 and the most harmless at that. No wonder these viruses spread fast, as every contact teaches the player that taking the risk of interacting for real is punished severely by the permadeath feature. Frustration is the key to infection with the player-created viruses. It is a game that should not be deathmatch by its setting, but also does not reward teamplay/cooperation for real. The only real teamplay that is "rewarded" by ingame mechanism is "save my body, I will be back in 15 min!" corpse overwatch. It's also the worst oorp meta aspect present and the only sort of teamplay that does not deserve to be encouraged. DayZ has an amazingly bad pvp system compared to many shooters, which is no problem because it is not even trying to be a perfect shooter per se. However its main focus at the moment is deathmatching each other, especially in "endgame", or aimless, indiscriminate killing of everything you see "because you can". At the moment it is a game in which none of the typical zombie-genre effects work (bad odds, forced teamplay of incompatible characters, we [=survivors] vs. them [=zombies] feeling, horror, etc), but in which all danger comes from players, many of them bored lolwuts that add nothing to the immersion and the feeling of the world. So, again: I know many of the issues are being addressed already. And I know it is an Alpha. This is also not a rant, as I am neither angry nor disappointed. I am going ingame now and will have a great time. But it really struck me as kind of a really weird, screwed up dysfunctional game that actually works in a really surprisingly strange way and is good fun. :) Anyway, see you ingame. Andy

After reading up on the last two pages, I could not help but chuckle a little. Funny where the innocent observations I posted evolved. :)

Wow, if you got rid of your omnipresent verbal hostility, it would be so much more pleasant to talk to you. You know what the main difference is? My playstyle does not harm yours: for you, it makes no difference who you shoot at: Koser, PvPer, Hero/Bandit, Survivalist, Simulationist,... every playstyle can be named here. Mindless PvP style however does influence all/most other styles negatively when (!go on reading!) it is done by too many. That sadly is the case at the moment. 8 out of 10 interactions end in silent killing (my own numbers from my own experience). On veteran servers, it's between 6-7 out of 10. I'll give an example: I was roleplaying a doctor who woke up after an infection that his friends thought to be the Z-virus. They left him behind. He survives (it was not Z-virus) and tries to find them again, and tries to help others, finish the UN mission he was with, etc. I have questionairs to ask survivors, I would offer help and medical examination, etc etc... a lot of "fluff" and mainly of course verbal interaction. I was offering quite a bit and got a lot of good reactions, fun roleplay, and quality interaction on that char. I haven't played the char any more after he was shot dead without a word in a completely irrelevant, random situation by a random player. It felt disappointing and even though I had decided before that meaningless death by PvP/Kos could be ignored, my motivation to play the char again still took a hit. That's the difference. I do not harm your gaming experience. You harm mine, however. Now, it is the internet, so you of course do not care. Young men + internet + competitive environment.... *shrugs* I know. But at least I explained it in detail and if you actually read it, it was worth writing it. ;) Enjoy the game, and yes: your advice actually works. I am looking for quality somewhere else than the hot zones or the spawn zones. It works.

@ "Instinct and Human Behaviour Discussion": Hm. For sure I personally wish that players' actions in this game would be closer to what real people living/dying in the the DayZ world would be like. But: That won't happen. It is still a computer game. And there are many many people who want it to stay - what I would describe as - "shallow" and judge as "unrewarding". Just my own opinion, though. Discussing morality, social responsibility in a post-apocalyptic world, realism of self-preservation, realistic survival chance distribution for aggressive behaviour, etc with players who play the game as a high stakes PvP and whose motivation can range from boredom to grieving, from the wish to become really good to whatever it might be... It will not work. Even if you got all the scientific data right, it would not work because a game (luckily) is far from reality. I don't als think that our instincts is what guides our ingame actions. Therefore the distance between game reality and my own core of values and believes is too far apart. Too many layers of abstraction separate my gaming actions from what I would really do in a given situation. And that's good. You would not want to watch most things that your character does "just like that" in reality. Many actions I encounter in DayZ would destroy a real human being for life if you had to witness them in reality. On the game, however, you can decide consciously how you want to play this game whenever you decide to log on. I am a social player, I like playing with other and the most rewarding interaction is a talking one for me. That doesn't mean I wouldn't sometimes log on and play differently and shoot much faster. If I was a dev, I would move the game towards the crowd that is not playing it as a FPS with high punishment when killed. I think it falls short of its undeniable potential if played that simply. Increasing the survival factor, discouraging PvP via portraying that these are untrained survivors and not trained supersoldiers could help.