Evil Minion

Still the same for DayZ. There was also a suggestion to force it and make the amount depending on weapon an attachments which is a good idea in my opinion. A melee blocking feature for held items - any game with focus on melee combat. Just hold up an item and let it take the damage instead.

Actually I believe that most people who are complaining about server switch times are server hoppers who loot empty servers and then join populated ones for "instant action" (actually those guys miss about 95% of the game by doing so). And most of the others suck at planning. They join a server and then realize its too full/too empty/too far away/their friends are on another server/they can't play in their favorite view/its another hive/etc. . So maybe it would be better to show a "Do you really want to join this server: <server properties>?" message when pressing "play".

Bump.

In a sandbox game with a wide variety of game mechanics where you have to find and earn your gear its realism before balance. Because its allright if someone has superior gear as long as items are sufficiently rare. Indeed as those cartridges are pretty powerful. For the "full power" cartridges its potentially 8mm Mauser (can hold the most powder) > 7.62x54R (what we got in DayZ but with the wrong name) > 7.62x51. 7.62x39 is a intermediate power round and should be weaker but also feature less recoil. In fact weapon (barrel) length should also affect damage - thats why the M16 is more powerful than the M4 despite using the same rounds. Also I think if the game is realitic enough its (a) creating some kind of balance on its own (as you basically model "real life balance"), (<fill in letter b here>) easier to justify still existing imbalances, (<fill in letter c here>) more diverse and interesting by creating asymmetric situations and (d) encouraging experimentation and exploration.

Maybe they are also testing different rarities. And of course they are testing the Helicopter spawns and how they work out - how better than adding special loot to them.

Clothes and backpacks reduce the damage you take from attacks but items inside your inventory increase blood damage taken. That telekinetic bolt action. For me it looks like a server communication error - the guy gets hit and taked blood damage (as the screen goes grey for a moment) but the server does not realize it and sends the next update with full blood and health basically resetting the state. Shooting someone after getting hit and then dropping dead sounds like desync but it might be caused by blood loss as well (though it should probably show unconscious before). Anyways those issues should be fixed before really tackling weapon balance (which I would handle as somewhat realistic weapon strength balanced out by rarity and ammo shortage).

I agree with this. Maybe add a chance of hurting your hands if you punch a hard surface (includes helmets) and maybe even a very small cahnce of hurting your hands if you punch someones head. So if you punch a lot there is a good chance you will finally get unlucky. A less random version would give some kind of health bar to your fists or make them degrade just like items ("damaged" would cause pain, "badly damaged" would cause much more pain as well as damage and "ruined" means they are broken and not usable).

Added. I also agree in that western gear should be less common and maybe even limited to specific areas. There is no way you would find a pristine Flecktarn shirt in a school building. In fact even pristine civilian clothing should be limited to ordinary homes or specific shops in most cases (an exeption being working clothes).

Well... tucking a pistol in your pants is the best way to get your balls shot. And it might affect movement. If those things are represented - why not? Better than a magical gun-glue on your back.

Camo pattern poll is up - something for the military fans (will keep it up for about two or three weeks depending on participation).

The training is thought less as grinding and more as an indicator of your general playstyle that also helps differentiating survivors. As a start option everyone would pick skinny (if no bonus was attached) or trained (if a bonus was attached) while in game development would create a wider array of body shapes. For the skills you are probably right (the idea was to have something its worth surviving for even if you lose all of your gear and - depending on implementation - your hair). To avoid grinding you could keep the overall power level the same: Whenever you increase your skills in one area you will lose skills in the least used area. So you will start as generalist and depending on your playstyle you might slowly change to specialist (which is of course more interesting for groups, lone wolves would probably not specialize as much). Of course increasing skills should require a specialized playstyle - you should not lose all you skills in crafting because of a prolonged gunfight.

I like the aspects of survival and charcter customization and in my opinion it would be great if those could be combined to allow for more choices. Some might be "just for show" while others might have some special use or general utility. Instead of only having "joke", "low tier" and "high tier" items there should be a variety of options that can prove useful under certain circumstances while also having some drawbacks attached to them. On the other side there should also be room for purely cosmetic aspects. I decided to make multiple topics instead of a single long one but will use former thoughts in later ones (thats why the topic name has a number in it). Parts of the current mechanics are already ingame and here are some ideas how to put them to better use (maybe its already planned to do this). Its somewhat related to customization as it gives some basic mechanics that could prove useful. Part I - Complete (formerly Stamina & Weight) Part II - Temperature & Wetness Part III - Character Creation Part IV - The Dynamic Character 1 MECHANICS: 1.3 Temperature: Instead of just freezing when getting too cold high temperature should also have some negative effects on the character (I would probably not get as far as including sunstroke). If you get hot you will consume water much faster and at maximum temperature you will have to drink a lot of water to keep going. You will also start to sweat which might help with getting cooler but also makes you wet (and thus more vulnerable to sickness and sudden weather change). Temperature is gained from heat sources like: yourself (especially when moving), other players (and maybe companion animals if implemented), fire, cooking devices, interiors during the day and maybe even hot midday sun. Temperature is lost when wet, outdoors during a night, bad weather, lying on bare ground and so on. You clothings protection both lowers temperature loss and increases temperature gain - as long as its dry enough. With the right clothes you should be able to stay in the cold for quite some time before suffering negative effects but the same clothes might turn out too warm under different circumstances. Stuffing your jacket in your backpack might be the right thing to do if walking around in the open during a sunny day or sitting right next to a big fire for an extended period of time. Very High (Sweating): - strongly increased dehydration - slowly getting wet from sweat High (Hot): - increased dehydration Optimal (Warm): - no ill effects Low (Cold): - higher chance of getting sick Very Low (Freezing): - high chance of getting sick - loss of health and stamina 1.4 Wetness: This is related to temperature. In particular getting wet will greatly reduce your resistance against temperature loss and getting dry usually requires you to increase your temperature (though you should become dry on your own but only very slowly). Staying wet for a longer period of time should also increase the risk of getting sick or might worsen an already aquired sickness. Of course the wetter you are the longer you need to become dry. Some clothes might protect you from getting wet. However, they won't prevent you from getting wet via sweating. Other will soak up water and make it more difficult to dry up. In order to get dry you need to be next to a heat source. Clothes get dry faster if not worn (lying on the ground next to a heat source) and shorter clothes get dry much faster than longer clothes (in most cases becoming dry and exposure protection should be inverse). Also wet clothes are usually heavier than dry clothes and the water might also hurt their condition or the condition of items stored within. Use water-proof bags/containers to protect things from getting wet. Especially if you want to go for a swim - in which case you might consider taking off your down jacket. Dry: - no ill effects Damp: - slightly increased infection risk* - slightly faster temperature loss Wet: - increased infection risk* - faster temperature loss - slight weight increase** Soaked: - increased infection risk* - fast temperature loss - weight increase** *only if also cold or wet for a longer period of time **depending on the clothes you are wearing

More like fruits, stones, flares and grenades.

It increases player densitiy around "good" spawns and creates corpses in other areas that can be looted for rags or batteries. In any case it directly affects the availability of loot and thus other players - potentially to a very high capacity. But the bigger issue is the "potential suicide by proxy" - freshspawns going super aggressive and either succeeding getting gear froim the guy they punched down (major gain) or getting killed in the process (barely any loss). So my suggestion: Increase the respawn timer after death to a point where its hurts to die - 10 minutes minimum maybe even more. It should always be better to survive and walk to the "better areas".

True. And thats one of the major gameplay issues right now. Possible solutions are limiting server changing or making loot persistent across servers and both concepts are somewhat flawed. Private hives would work but they would limit your character to a single server meaning you can't do much if its full/empty/offline/etc. Spawning at the coast (or somewhere else) comes with its own set of issues, exploits etc. I would rather like the "safe zone" concept that moves you out of certain areas. Those areas could include high value loot spawns or even small areas around other players but you would stay in the region (e.g. logging out in the Berezono police station makes you respawn inside an empty house or just outside Berezino).

Not exploiting. Its absolutely legit to hold a item in your hands if you don't have space to store it in your inventory. And its absolutely fine that you have to drop it before doing something else. The issue here is the desync/dissapearing items. So I hope you won't lose items you are carrying when logging out - seems silly to me. I would be okay with it if they were to stay where you dropped them but with the current server reset cycles thats not possible. Of course carrying a big item like a rifle in your arms should affect your movement in a negative way.

Indeed a very good idea that might help dealing with server hopping on the long run. The only two issues I can see so far: First - looting empty servers and then joining populated ones still works as a low risk/ high reward method of gearing up which does gimp the early game and mght concentrate loot on a few selected servers. Second - people who found high value gear and stopped playing will effectively remove the gear from the game as you can't take it away from them (if they die in a bush its not a problem because the gear is still there and some lucky traveler might find it). I have no real idea how to deal with the first issue (in my opinion the existing suggestions are flawed in one way or the other) but the second could be dealt with by putting items into rarity categories. The rarer an item the faster you will lose it when not playing. When logged out your "inactivity" will slowly rise and if it exceeds an items rarity value (the smaller the rarer) the items is "stolen" from you and will respawn somewhere. When playing you slowly decrease your "inactivity" (faster on more populated servers) but you won't get back lost items. Also you should not know if there is high level gear and where. There should be some general locations with a higher yield but actually finding something should not be guaranteed.

I believe they removed the suicide option because of people abusing it to get a "better spawn". Which was the first thing I thought of when I read "large grassy field of hills". But I think you might have run off the map. The idea above might help you. Basically running south-east should bring you back to Chernarus eventually.

My personal experience and several youtube experiments show a fairly equal ratio between friendly and unfriendly behavior. It also depends on your location and the gear of both players. In general players in full military gear are more likely to KoS and become victim of KoS - so if you are one of the guys who loots empty servers and switches to populated ones when "ready" you will probably not experience much else. No playstyle "pollutes" the community (we need villains as well). The only problem here is loot being overabundant (thanks to empty server looting etc.) so people do not have to play seriously to progress. Becoming highly geared should require a lot of effort but right now it doesn't.

Why? It doesn't make much sense to me. Sounds more like an attempt to enforce a particular playstyle by purely artificial means which is the exact opposite of what the game needs.

Not biased you say? Then why are there two options for keeping zombies at equal strength, two for nerfing them and not a single one for buffing them? Please add: strengthen zeds and keep respawning as it isstrengthen zeds and change respawning distance and timeThen you got an unbiased vote. ;) Or just provide an "other" option. The other questions are fine. As for zombie strength: I don't care how many hits they need with a certain weapon as long as you need the same amount of hits to kill an equally geared survivor. But right now zombies die much easier which means they are too weak and could need some durability.

As far as I know the setting has American troops in Chernarus so there is no problem with modern American military weapons as long as they are reasonable rare (e.g. only found on helicopter crash sites) and in service during this period (so the classic M16 or M14 are unlikely but a M4 or a M14 based DMR are not). However the cartridges might pose a problem because the current "7.62x51mm" is in fact the 7.62x54mmR with the wrong name(its used in the Mosin and probably the SVD and features a prominent rim). Now most battle rifles fire 7.62x51mm so they would need to add another rare cartridge or make them fire 7.62x54mmR instead (which could conflict with both game balance and full auto fire).

Poll is down and the results are now included.

Right now zombies are much less durable than survivors and thats something that needs change. If they are simply infected (most likely given the otherwise realistic setting) they should function just like the players - bleeding, becoming unconscious and taking damage according to their gear (which means military zombies would be as hard to bring down as highly geared players). However, if they are meant to be undead (less likely given the setting) they should be more durable and less immune or resistant to status effects. Nothing supports those paper zombies but the gameplay argument of "I don't want zombies to be reasonable strong or challenging" - and I think thats not how the game should work (poll is still biased towards annoying powerless zombies - please change).

This statement says a lot about your mindset - along with defending server hopping. Everyone is allowed to play his way? So cheating is okay I guess?