Evil Minion

Negatively. Less options, less "power levels", less asymmetry, less progression, smaller rewards and a faster state of "fully geared". Thats removal. Keeping them but making them much rarer would most likely have a positive effect. It keeps the diversity, improves progression (by de-trivializing*) but makes military gear much more of a reward. *Would require a server hopping fix as well.

Poll results are up. Shirt poll incoming soon - contributions welcome.

True because everyone can use it to gain its advantages. However its effects on gameplay are bad. Allowing people a line of sight without being seen in return makes for some pretty stupid situations. Its less immersive because (1) having some camera flying behind your back while playing virtually distances you from your character (2) your overall awareness is way higher than in real life and (3) those peeking situations result in actions no real person would attempt simply because they can't see what they shouldn't. You can't just play in an immersive way on servers with third person enabled. By allowing third person the developers rob themselves of options. Helmets obstructing vision, vision blocking obstacles, sneaking up on other players, scanning an area for enemies etc. Sure they could include this anyways but that would either buff third persoon even more compared to first or cause some critical design issues (converiting those things into third person). So I voted for "no third person in DayZ" - not because I think third person is unfair but because I am 100% sure the game would be much better without. The only advantage I can see is allowing to see your characters stance more easily - which can (and should) be implemented into first person as well. Third person holds back potential and causes interesting features to be overlooked during development.

Oh noes - he used the word. Now this topic is doomed! Shitstorm incoming! No really, I think some further elements in this area would be a pretty nice thing. However, I think the earlier stages also have a lot of potential for expansion as this should be the stage most players will be in most of the time. There should be bigger goals with actual ingame rewards (base building, vehicles etc.) - but thats nothing a frehspawn should worry about for quite some time. Those are features for long time survivors. As for statistics - why not? But they should only be visible to the player himself and should be limited to the current character. So if you really want to get those 1000000 zombie kills you better survive. Karma/humanity should be (ingame) player enforced rather than artificial - by being able to recognise specific characters and ingamne interaction.

Thats currently the problem with DayZ gameplay. In two ways: "once I reach that stage" is way too soon - you should spent much more time actually surviving and searching for good gear with a good chance of failure. And then there two many further features. As the earlier stages are so easy helping others is not really viable, As people get geared so fast socializing is hard because everyones threat level is extremely high. As death is only a small setback more people will actually go for the psychopathic maniac route. As there are few features that require a lot of effort there are few long term/cooperative goals. But its alpha so we can't really expect those dynamics yet. However, if that M4 was worth extremely high effort and could then be used to force your way inside someones base to pick one of those precious vehicle parts out of his cold hands pushing yourself one step closer to owning a Humvee while also netting you some valueable supplies - there would be much more significance to later stages and much more reason to actually survive.

Would be very different - all those weapons are produced in much higher numbers to begin with. Then they might not even that rare at all - you just wouldn't expect them. The De Lisle on the other side... That being said the weapon seems pretty nice design-wise and would probably be a good addition in terms of gameplay. It would just require some justification inside the setting. Now the game is still in development and the setting might change as well. Should be extremely rare though as its most likely part of some enthusiasts collection (maybe gun collecting was national sport in Chernarus?)

I think you should be able to put a typical game of a typical solo player into three different phases: Basic Survival - Your main focus is on staying alive in the first place. Thats the first phase of looting but also features a great deal of PvP. Here the game should play like a typical surval game where you try to make it through environmental hardships and gain supplies simply to keep going. Gearing Up - Your main focus is to improve your situation by getting better equipment. Its still a fight for survival but it slowly gets easier as you collect better and better items. However, here you will most likely come into conflict with your fellow players as good gear isn't all that common and other would like to get a hand on it as well. Other Things - This phase starts of your situation is good enough that environmental hazards and other PvE are no longer challenging enough. Now the focus of the game switches from survival to sandbox gameplay. While you still need supplies getting them is easier because you got the means for it. Getting better equipment is still possible but its not a necessity for survival.Obviously those phases can overlap but thats how the main focus of most survivors should be: PvE survival -> PvP survival -> Sandbox. Now I think by forcing a quite challenging first phase on players (by making survival and PvE much harder) and greatly increasing the second phase (by making gear much rarer) death would have a greater impact as you now have to go through those phases again. Now cooperation would probably increase you progression speed - a good thing on its own - so the game should be hard enough to challenge groups as well. In fact it would not be that bad if most solo survivors would struggle with the first phase and fail quite often and most non-solo survivors would meet there end during one of the first two phases. The third phase should be hard to reach even for organized and close-knit groups. Getting there should take a lot of effort in the first place - something you shouldn't throw away. Now we got persistence etc. - if you have a tent hidden somewhere or a base protected by friends this might allow you to skip straight to phase 3. How to avoid? First: By making those gameplay elements part of phase 3 on the first place so players are very likely to beat phase 1 and phase 2 before they even get to use them.Second: Risk - your storage can be plundered, stolen or destroyed. Even if you fortified your goods in a huge locked castle - if you die you lose everything you had which of course includes the keys as well.Third: Some other element that makes death worth avoiding. A significant timer (most likely server specific), a spawn point as bad as possible (away from any storage and your body), a loss of non-gear-related things like the healthy status etc.Forth: Nerf server hopping. Right now it allows you to skip most of the game by moving between high loot areas at extremely high speed and extremely low risk. The path from NWAF server A to NWAF server B should have a greater cost attached to it. Now simply increasing the cost would hurt other players just as well and cause frustration. So the cost should start out low but increase significantly when a player is switching servers in quick succession. The goal is not to avoid server switching alltogether but make it more attractive to play on one server for a longer period of time before switching (e.g. Monday server A, Tuesday server B, ...)

Actually not - those longer heavier barrels don't increase accuracy but rather allow for longer and more sustained firing as well as increased bullet energy (in game terms: damage). If anything machine guns stay accurate longer but they are not more accurate than similar rifle. If fired in standing or crouched position they might even be less accurate because of their higher mass. It seems like the Marines are actually phasing out their LMGs and replace them with automatic rifles instead because of their lower weight and higher accuracy.

Actually not - because "proper" shooters are very limited in their options (like being reduced to those "real skills") and most of the time feature competitive balance. This means asymmetric "boss-fight-ish" situations simply won't happen that much. Otherwise people would cry because they are at a disadvantage and need more than "real skills" to come out on top. DayZ allows for this and thats why fighting players can result in some kind of boss fight. If you are tired of camping scrubs simply switch to first person - no more peeking over walls, no more rapid perspective changes in close quarters, no more people knowing your location before coming out of cover.

Not every player is either a freshspawn or a cheater. I am positive you will find survivors quite different in stength and challenge level. Depending on your own skill/gear level they might go from easy to almost "impossible". Now if they don't cheat (the majority of the players don't cheat) they still got the same limitations as yourself. Now those players might be far away so you have to get close without getting killed, or they might hide inside a building, sneak around in a town or simply sit inside some vehicle that gives them both protection and speed - here you got your "hard to kill" bosses. AI's don't cheat... what? No - AI's cheat most of the time but players are so much used to it they get to tolerate and expect it. Thats what makes fighting them so annyoing - most games try to make up for missing brains by giving them ridiculous advantages. Wallhacks, tons of health, more speed, less resource costs... the list goes on. For a PvE challenge there could be animals - though most of them would probably flee from gunshots. However getting close to a brown bear or wounded wild boar might be very dangerous. Though most of the challenge caused by animals might be their elusiveness with yourself as the hunter (which is also a kind of "hard to kill").

^Thats basically why they decided to add it.

Higher level gear maybe? Vehicles? You can't replace the level of difficulty of a human with extra smarts and creativity. A dumb AI controlled damage soak boss on the other side is just annoying as... To many games tend to go this route and its bad. Fights should not be prolonged health depletion contests but real fights - quick, dirty and brutal.

Zombies should be common enemies. Other players are the bosses.

Every weapon needs to be rare for the base game. There will be plenty of mods making guns and ammo more common. Vanilla should provide a good mixture of exploration, survival, gunfights, melee, socializing, PvE, PvP, competition and cooperation. Because no mod owuld ever be able to do this simply because modders don't have the time and the tools to cause such complex dynamics. In terms of game balance and authenticity the M1 Garand should probably be more rare than other civilian firearms. In terms of setting its most likely a collectors or enthusiasts weapon than a common hunting/sporting firearm. In terms of strength - its a semi-automatic rifle firing a round that is (slightly) stronger than everything we already have in game. Of course this limits clip size and ammo count while causing quite some recoil - but those again might be reasons while the M1 Grand whould be less common inside the setting. However I think you should have a higher chance of finding an M1 Garand than any military firearm - save the ones also used in law enforcement like submachine guns or shotguns. In fact the "police" tier (or what I called "Flush Tier" here) is probably the right spot for this weapon.

A great opportunity to get some materials for crafting arows.

An item per slot system is even less flexible and even less believeable. Bigger items taking up more space is pretty much a must for this kind of game. Having one slot per item would basically aggravate every single problem - a pen just taking as much space as an assault rifle? No thanks. "Item tetris" as you call it is great for gamplay as it creates more depth and requires players to be more thoughtful abut the stuff they carry around. What I would like to see is the complete opposite: A refinement of the current system. Possible ways: a pocket systemsmaller base slotsbetter stacking systemitem rotationitems with different shapes than rectanglesadding weight (possibly with increased space)What I don't like is reducing it to an automated capacity system where you simply put items inside a container until it is full. This might work with weight (should not limit you to still put in stuff damaging/destroying the container in the process) - but for volume. The tetris system is pretty nice and every simplification here would simply remove depth from a game that should have tons of depth. You don't have to play tetris - but if you do you should be rewarded with some additional capacity. Answer to the topic question: Yes it is, so much!

Game developers always make the mistake of being far too optimistic. Instead of having a realistic internal deadline and a "just to be sure" official one they go with an unrealistic official one - it does not matter if they say "if everything goes perfect" - because people will simply ignore this kind of statement. Same with features - developer say "will add XY soon". What he means: "If everything goes perfectly fine we will include a prototype of XY in 2 months". What the community interprets: "XY will be released in final state with the next update which will be next week.".

Magical chests: Thats stupid and hurts the game by promoting hoarding. Items stored inside would only ever be accessible by the owner which basically removes them from the game for everyone else. All storage should be accessible by everyone in the same way - be it keys (finite number of different ones), damage (should require special equipment) or lockpicking (should also require special eqipment). Exclusion zones: Without base-building would be senseless as everyone could just ghost in - either by chance or intentionally. So every base/barricaded area should prevent logging in inside - unless you logged out there in the first place. "There" means this specific base on this specific server and only if the exclusion zone was already active. Everyone else might still log in but will be moved to a spawn outside of the zone. Either directly, with some distance or at a respawn point (without losing any gear of course). So once a base enters "closed state" (e.g. surrounded by barricades with all gaps below a certain width) it will project an exclusion zone that only allows people to log in inside if they logged out inside. "People" would be everyone - it does not matter who set up those barricades. If two teams have a firefight inside a base and they all log out for some reason they all might log back in inside. Lets say the exclusion zone disappears (e.g. one barricade gets destroyed) and gets reestablished (e.g. a new barricade in built) it will count as a new zone. Also smaller zones inside bigger zones should have priority/persist (e.g. you build a house and log out inside then someone builds his own base around your house - you can still log in inside your house just as before). Barricades: Similar to chests barricades should not be permanent or magic - they should be just barricades. They might block movement and create an exclusion zone between them under certain conditions (thats the main purpose). Now there might be different types but in general barricades should require a lot of time and effort to build and they might also require special tools (vehicles for transportation and work, a welder, nails etc.). So building a barricade should be a long term goal - there should not be bases every ten meters. All barricades should be able to be destroyed (which might take quite a lot iof effort though) and/or bypassed. However this should be fairly hard to do depending on architecture. If the entrace to your base is just a gap everyone can just walk in. If its a gate it can be opened by the same means as a chest. If there are only barricades you might need rare things like big vehicles or explosives to break through (keep in mind that you can ghost out of a completely enclosed area - but you cannot ghost back in). No privileges for builders - a barricade is a barricade and blocks you as well. There should not a something like a "quick destruction button" - unless the architect includes some explosives which in turn can be triggered by anyone. Ownership in general: Nothing that helps the game. Players should be able to build bases, use, conceal, lock storage but they should not have artificial privileges. You can access your chest because you got the keys - if someone takes them from you its now his chest. You can build a barricade but t will stop you just as much as it would stop everyone else. You can even create an exclusion zone - but it has the same effect on you as it has on everyone else. If your squad has a locked base an manages to get wiped - the base will stay locked to them as well. No items/areas/tools etc. should have an assigned owner. Offline compensation: As most players would be offline more often than true base owners would be away in real life the measures to break into bases or destroy parts of them should be a little weaker. So a wooden wall should be more durable and not break after a few strikes with an axe. Heavier barricades should not be able to be destroyed by most players - however building those should take a lot of time as well. You should not log out in some random place and after logging in the next day you realize someone built a base around you. Neither should you finally finish your base only to log back in the next day finding nothing but ruins. Both might be possible but very unlikely: The first would require a great and organizedgroup of people all working together for hours, restless, without any setbacks while getting the right mterials in sufficient numbers. The second would require someone to stumble across you base and just happen to have an abundancy of extremely rare and valuable items and deciding to spent quite some time and resources to destroy everything. TL:DR: By abandoning the ownership and permanency concepts and adding effort base building could be a valuable and viable long term or cooperative goal. Bases should be hard to build, hard to crack but still interact with every player in the same way. It does not matter who holds the key - it does matter to hold the key - unless you got explosives. Explosives solve everything.

Where is the "I want it to spawn at every corner" option? Biased poll is biased. The M1 Grand could work fine as another high tier civilian weapon. More common than military weapons but less common than other civilian weapons. I a more concerned about the .30-06 cartridge as it would be another full power round and with the planned split between 7.62x54mmR and 7.62x51mm NATO there might be too many strains of full power rifles that don't compete for the same ammo. Might be good might be bad depending on implementation. I can see (geographical) separation working: .30-06 as hunting round more often found in central Chernarus while 7.62x54mmR is more common in hotspots like cities or military bases and 7.62x51mm NATO could be mostly crash site/UAZ loot.

Which is nice but does not affect campers that much. If you are expecting someone to sit inside of that house you won't rush in and by the time you finaly get there those 30 seconds are gone. Now you can combine both ideas by increasing this logout timer if the person in question was being shot at. Only preventing to log out would just cause combat loggers to pull the plug or close the game instead.

Changing your mind from KoS to friendly mid firefight.

If they plan to add both the SVD and 5.45x39mm it would be a shame not to add a RPK-74 variant. With the appropiate rarity - about as or even slightly more common than a DMR - I can see this work. Should also come with natural downsides like heavy weight and clunkiness, As all specialist weapons they should be more effective inside an organized squad while most solo players should be better off with an assault or hunting rifle.

Thats what I should have asked you. :P But no more of this - it desn't help to throw "you just want to turn this into ArmA" or "you are just afraid of high level rewards" at each others faces. Back to business: 1. Loot rarity I opened a topic where I tried this - not saying its perfect and its still pretty loose because only the end results are described there. The issue here is that the game has many dynamic events that influence rarity. If an item is not capped it might spawn again and again no matter how small the chance,decreasing its rarity over time. But items might also get lost (destruction, despawning, server/character existence failure) which in turn dynamically increases rarity. So in fact most of those items are subject to inflation and loss. The end goal is "snapshot rarity" within some kind of steady state - so at any given time ~X% of all players would only have items below a certain tier. 2. "Endgame" Now the word is actually misleading. In an open world sandbox game without a real end (but death) things can't and shouldn't be limited to players who survived Y hours and accumulated at total value of Z advantages (items, allies etc.). Now even in this kind of game there are certain phases more dictated by the dynamcis. At first you struggle for basic gear and survival with no means to actually fight greater threats (early game), then as you slowly aquire bette gear, maybe cooperate with others you are able to face threats though your greatest focus is still on getting the means necessary for survival (mid game). However, at some point you got enough tools that basic survival is secondary - getting food is now a "side quest" so to speak. Thats "endgame" - not because its the end goal or close to the end of your gameplay (in fact given the genre its actually way beyond the usual end) but because there is no more shift in your personal gamplay dynamics. Look at the current state for one specific type of player: "Early game" is getting food, water, some better clothes, a backpack and some basic weapons/tools. "Midgame" is about getting geared - here you fight because you want better items and someone is standing between you and your goal. "Endgame" is PvP - you fight for fun getting supplies while doing so but they are not the main focus - that would be the hunting and killing. "Early game" - you are an antelope, tyring to survive against all odds. "Midgame" - you are a lion who wants to make a living - you mainly fight to live another day. "Endgame" - you are a big-game hunter who has everything he needs and kills for sports.

Lack of a better word. And maybe a little enjoyment of causing a shitstorm simply by using it. Seeing people go full berserk over some simple word without even thinking about semantics is kinda funny.

Given someone would actually manage to get something like this - which should be close to (maybe even completely) impossible thus "Holy Grail" - the effort required would be immense and probably require longtime cooperation of a high number of players with nobody ever sabotaging their work. Then the vehicle would require tons of fuel to run, actually ammo to shoot, and a crew to operate it (a single guys would either be able to aim it, drive it, load it or actually manage to see his targets but not all of this at once). It would be pretty loud and easy to spot. And tanks don't grow food or water inside them. So in order to get supplies you either need other guys to do the work (who can be shot) or get out (so you can be shot). Finally the vehicle being extremely rare might cause hunters to come after it - either to destroy it as part of the ultimate hunt (you may only get a single chance to hunt this prey) or to claim it for themselves. Thats why I think thats the absolute maximum of what is possible in DayZ and it should be extremely limited. Maybe its even one step too much - I am not sure (thats why I wrote optional). Its interesting that nobody here actually cares about rarity and its implications but rather likes to attack examples - what a shame. But maybe I am wrong and owning the rarest and most powerful vehicle ingame doesn't paint a big target on you because most DayZ players are actually cowardly snipers who just want to kill helpless freshspawns. Anyways the "Gunship" in the exampes is not a "Gunboat" but rather a heavily armed helicopter or plane. Something like the Mi-24.