Evil Minion

No need for (human) NPCs - we got players for this. I would not want humans to behave differently from humans if not zombiefied. And I surely don't want "questgiver NPCs" because thats not the game we are talking of - and it would add some unnecessary static aspects to gameplay. But NPCs in general should be there: zombies and animals. Also any AI that would be good enough to simulate human behavior in a satisfying way would eat so much performance that you could just increase the number of player slots. Plus the only reason to replace players with NPCs is pushing the cultural aspect gameplay in a certain fixed direction.

You know thats not an intended feature but rather an exploit? You also know that you will miss big parts of the gameplay while doing so as you basically skip over the "to-do list" straight to the "what now?" state? Some of my buddies do server hop (though in a less sophisticated way) and their gamplay can only be decribed as "boring and onedimensional" (jump to empty server - loot up - jump to full server - pvp till you die - get frustrated - jump to empty server...). You will miss out if you server-hop and you will probably frustrate others just by being an overly geared and bored prick.

Thats why it should be a little bit more complex than "spawn far from where you died". The chance of spawning at a certain point should decrease with: proximity of your corpse(s) - might be weighted by items carried upon death and remember the location for some timeproximity of players/player density - might be weighted by items carriedproximity of any kind of stash - might be weighted by the number of items stashedhigher area yield (some base value - higher for spawns closer to cities or military bases)Also there should be some penalty for death that is more than simply waiting for a few seconds (though not too much - significantly less than you would get for server hopping as death cannot be avoided).

Thats actually a nice showcase of both the Blaze and the AKM with their respective advantages over the SKS. Not saying the SKS is bad but both times you managed to meet them on your terms. Also Sack Bandits... those guys were creepy.

I can see the reasoning but on the other side I don't think thats a problem at all. First those items should be very rare so even if everyone would KoS each person thats uses them there would not be much of a change. Then this would actually add to their impracticability further cementing them as "endgame items" that would either require great care and/or a community built around them. The only real issue I can see here is hoarding - a player who found the holy grail hides it in order to keep it or prevent other from getting it. Hiding items on public servers inside stashes/bases etc. is not a problem - it might cause a "dragons lair" situation where others would try to get your stuff while you try to prevent them from doing so. On private servers you should only be able hoard items from those servers not affecting the public ones. This leaves hoarding items on your character - having gear on your survivor but simply not playing with her would deny items to other players. And if you stop playing the items would be lost forever. A possible solution is a despawn timer (only for limited items) than decreases when you are offline and increases when you are playing. If it reaches zero the item is removed from your character and may spawn again. But what about the casuals who only play once a month? Well if you are one its simply not the right equipment for you - but you can still give it to a friend or stash it on some server hoping it will still be there next month.

Vest poll up ~ 3 weeks.

Are you really posting this little useless pseudo-sentence as a whole new topic when there are tons of clothing suggestion topics in far more detail around? Yeah I know its your first post but thats no excuse for not even thinking about looking at the existing topics or using your brain to deduce that somebody else might have brought this up before. Anyways welcome to the forums - feel free to look around. ;)

Some ideas: An overall harsher environment would delay "end game" resulting in more players struggling for survival and less players thinking "what now?" It also would increase the chances of dropping back out of "endgame" because of gear loss and lack of supplies.A better player/character identification system would improve the social aspects by expanding on elements like fame and trust which helps the forming of groups and small communities ingame which allows for more altruism and cooperation.The current reward system could be expanded by adding extremely rare and specialized items (like military specialist weapons) which adds a much longer chain of "survive and search long enough tp get your reward" and "beat it to get it" rewards to keep people searching.Cooperative or long-term goals would emphasize cooperation and also add rewards for working together over a longer period of time giving people something to work towards.(Semi-)lasting impact on the environment like base building/destruction or painting walls would make for practical uses (see cooperative goals) as well as artistic expressions.In the end key points for "end game" are: Delaying "end game" by expanding on "early game" (basic survival) and "mid game" (getting better equipment and meeting friends) as well as keeping them relevant by setbacks, Add more options and rewards as well as "something to do" beyond just surviving and gearing up (especially of the cooperative and long-term variety). Add specialized equipment that needs quite some logistics (impractical for "early game" or "mid game" but useful for "end game").

I think you should respawn as far as possible from your body and any storage as possible and by extension as far as possible from your friends as well - otherwise death would lose its meaning. You are just much less reckless and uncaring if dying results in 20-30 minutes (or more) struggle to get back to your buddies. Right now cooperative behavior is somewhat discouraged by design - or better: cooperation is not encouraged by design. This will probably change with development though (recent changes indicate a trend in this direction). Still at the moment you can live on your own without too much hazzle - after "early game" the environment is not that challenging anymore and most of the benefits of teaming up are related to defending against other players. Then there is almost 100% anonymity even on the character side - names can be changed at any time and we only got ~15 different characters meaning idientification is extremely inaccurate (25% chance to recognise a player on a 40 full slot server where nobody joins or leaves). Now in order for cooperation, altruism and most social systems to work you would need a fairly accurate identification system. It doesn't need to be 100% but the higher the better. A wide array of different characters with fixed (but not necessarily unique) name per characters would do the job here. Finally to emphasize cooperation there should be cooperative rewards that would require cooperation to achieve. Right now all high level rewards are of the "survive long enough while still visiting dangerous places" variety - which can perfectly be done alone (server hopping doesn't help either). Sure cooperation does help here - but the benefit does not outweight the risk.

I am not where I spawned. Thats boring.

I don't like the idea of fast gun swapping - it somewhat negates the drawbacks of carrying more than one longarm with you. But what should work is putting another gun on your back while you are holding one - basically "stealing the slot" because this action is extremely clunky right now: Situation: One gun in your hands and another on the ground Put gun from your hands on your back Put gun from the ground into your hands Put gun from your back on the ground Put gun from your hands on your back Put gun from the ground into your handsWith this system you would not mess with your inventory while putting things in your hands or on the ground making the above action much simpler: Situation: One gun in your hands (reserved storage) and another on the ground Cancel storage reservation Pick up gun on the ground (will be put on your back)Currently the best way to change weapons is to drop the one on your back, put away the one in your hands and pick up the one on the ground as you will avoid clunky inventory management.

So getting hired by bambis gives you +10 to bandit killing. :lol:

One server once told me. "I feel like I am being watched" As this was right after an update I didn't know what to think of it.

Identification is a good thing if done the right way - no floating names or something like that but your face, body and even your name in some situations. An ID card is one of those. I actually really like this at it doesn't force you to give away your name but allows for some verification. The only issue with identification is bias - you should not be able to identify someone as bandit, hero, friend or foe by artificial means. You may still identify someone as hero because you recognise him ingame though but no ID card, no skin, aura, name or whatever should scream "hero" if you don't know the person. In fact natural identification is completely vital for cooperation and social interactions. If everyone is 100% anonymous the whole time you won't be able to form partnerships, communities etc. Clothing and badges do not count as you can (and should) change them over time. Identification should allow to recognise someone you met before most of the time.

Those artificially enforced gameplay elements (2, 3, 4 and 5 in spades) would be extremely unhealthy for the game by virtue of enforcing an arbitrary ruleset that does not originate from the players and thus restricts gameplay in a completely unauthentic and static way. Nothing we want to have in this fashion. Player-created similar elements on the other side are what should be emphasized and any artificial system would completely screw over those attempts. Sure - bring on more zombies. Not sure if ten times would be the right thing or less would be more appropiate but once the main issues (hitbox/navigation glitches, hyper awareness etc.) are fixed there should be more zombies to worry about. Instead of a biased morality system that would definitely fail at morality and cause people to go full "rules lawyer" instead there should be an unbiased identification system that allows players to recognise certain players or characters. A wide array of faces, more body shapes, tatoos and a fixed name for each character would allow for forming communities with their very own morality enforced by natural means. If you want an area save you should secure it. One possibility is to assign sentries and security staff to keep the area free of troublemakers. Another is barricading - here it shouldn't matter who build things but rather whether your are inside or outside (to avoid breaking in via ghosting). The key here: True cooperation is required and the zones are not static but rather dynamic areas that are created and destroyed within the game. You won't get any authentic human AI and even if you could it would only reduce the options ingame as NPCs would enforce a certain playstyle and probably operate differently from real players. So instead of having 20 NPCs all running a costly AI it is indeed better to increase server capacity by 20 and have more "real humans" that can participate in creating (or destroying) a community. Linked to the things above - trading should be player-driven. items should have a certain value because other players would like to have them or because a certain community ingame agreed on using them as trading goods. There should not be an enforced value on items other than their practical use. The exact mechanics may be up to debate but simply putting things on the ground would work as well - given items don't randomly disappear or pop up far from your location when you drop them. I would also like to see a "giving" feature. Thats an AI thing - but I would really like to see such a thing for animals. Deer forming herds, groups of wild boar and packs of wolves that are more than just single animals put together. Zombies might get something like this as well but I could also live with dumb hordes charging you while basically ignoring each other.In short: The game should provide a framework and provide the right tools while leaving all of the purely cultural aspects to the player.

No you were not but I guess thats the issue: Now I do not think DayZ mod was meant to be a MilSim with a few survival elements but as an Arma 2 mod those MilSim elements were already there and ready to use creating this impression - so the setting is actually closer to a zombie outbreak in a warzone than a zombie apocalypse with a few random survivors. Now DayZ SA seems to go for the latter with military gear being rare and pretty high level rewards - a good thing in my opinion as it allows for a much deeper experience with a lot more possible gameplay elements and playstyles. PvP is still intended but its not the one central aspect and PvP with military equipment is arguably "end game" - something many players won't see for a very long time.

Honestly I have no experiences in stable but in experimental it seems like persistent servers keep items in place after restarts. So if you just looted through a town and the server restarts you will find the same loot as before after rejoining and maybe even stuff you dropped (at least I found way more "leftovers" in experimental). Still manipulated items seem to despawn after a certain period of time - not sure if putting them inside a tents stops this from happening. According to others backpacks do not prevent items inside from despawning though.

The argument comes from the misconception that more variety would also result in a higher quantity of military equipment. Now in terms of quantity there is already too much military gear so its understandable of people don't want to add more. Also in most games any specific piece of equipment is relatively easy to get and trivial to keep so eventually lots of people will use it. Now DayZ is in the position of avoiding this my virtue of including the logistics, practicability and maintenance aspects as well as a diverse gamplay that doesn't have to focus on using the best weapon to kill other players. Now thats actually authentic because authorities usually judge weapons by their appearance and are more likely to ban those that look more menacing. Same reason: most people are no experts and tend to judge the book by its cover because they lack deeper understanding - after all a politicians job is about politics and not about gun knowledge.

Lets just take a look at this phrase: Especially the last two words.

Just that you should know - because you have enough senses to spot a predator* and enough brains to realize that there could be predators around. So if you get shot like a clay pidgeon you did something wrong or your killer did something right - in either way its "versus" just of the "predator&prey" variety. On kill the predator wins otherwise they prey is victorious. Luck also plays a role but thats true in symmetrical PvP as well. *Only on first person servers - if you are playing on third person and run into someone peeking you are out of luck.

Actually its not the same but KoS is a subset of PvP. PvP does not always imply killing or even shooting at other players. Holding someone at gunpoint robbing them is PvP as well. The versus is involved where everyone knows that there are psychos out there that want to kill you for their own amusement. You are just like a gazelle that wants to avoid the lion having it for lunch. Thats one of the challenges you have to master if you want to survive. So instead of crying about "evil people" you should act accordingly.

I oppose any kind of morality system as it will definitely fail to make people "do the right thing" but instead cause people to "follow the law and abuse the hell out of it". I think a better way is not to include an artificial system but rather introduce rewards for cooperation (so called "end game features"), ingame features for character/player identification and more reasons to trade favors.

You still need the extra space for the extra characters. If they are saved in a separate database you need to pay for it - and if they are saved on the official database it needs it grow bigger with each private shard - and you need to pay for it. Either way private hives demand much more memory space as potentially every player could have a character on every shard as well as the public servers. Persistence should be the same regardless of server type. Same with other parameters (thats why "shard").

You guys do realize that every private shard needs a separate database for characters while public servers share a single one? This means running private shards requires more hardware which of course is more expensive.

Thats what I meant with "it would delay the patch for half a year or more" - because without the drawbacks implemented the weapon would be way too strong and way to easy to use. I believe thats the case in DayZ mod - would explain why so many people simply go for "no!". Now it does not need to be that complicated - but you should have to consider many factors while some of the smaller ones could be factored into dispersion (even though it would technically make the gun 2/3 MOA instead of 1/2 MOA - thats still pretty damn accurate). Weather should definitely play a role here as should the firing angle, maybe even altitude. And of course the weapons weight and size - an AMR is heavy and cumbersome. Definitely something that should be represented in carrying (no magical backslot), fatigue (forget running fast and far) and handling (sway, recoil and awkward reloading). Another thing that could help a lot is simply an animation for zeroing.