Evil Minion

I tried the DayZ dice game and rolled a "Crazy Axe Murderer" - but I failed horribly. The first person I met was a friendly bambi passing by and I could not bring myself into attacking him. The second person I "met" was a corpse of some not-quite-bambi-anymore player. When looking around I found an overwatch sniper right next to me (probably the killer) and decided to test my axe on him. Sadly when I aimed for the head my attack hit the wall next to him instead. He turned around bleeding while I stuck him over and over - but then he shot my arm multiple times which caused me to pass out. Then he killed me. Should not bring an axe to a gun fight.

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). This topics main focus is the basic survivor setup you can choose from the start to gain a more personalized character. Its more about how create/customize your starting character could work than about modifying your survivor ingame. Part I - Stamina & Weight Part II - Temperature & Wetness Part III - Character Creation Part IV - The Dynamic Character 2 CHARACTER: 2.1 Ethnicity I am not entirely sure if different ethnicities are needed. On the positive side it might provide more realistic characters because it allows to couple multiple traits making them look more like people you would meet in real life (avoiding single eyelid black skinned characters with blonde hair). On the other side it might be too restrictive and make it impossible to create mixed ethnicity charcters as you are limited to "typical" characters. I think it might be a good idea to go the middle way: provide some rough templates but plenty of options (like a skin color slider) to make the character unique while still retaining some of the typical traits of their (wider) ethnicity. So basically provide three base types: African (allows for the darkest skin tones and coiled hair) Asian (allows for single eyelids) Caucasian (allows for the brightest hair colors) Those, while providing some typical looks, should be highly modifiable. In fact it should be possible to bring two charcaters who are based on different types very close to appearance or modify your character in a way that he/she looks very different from the typical base types. 2.2 Face Faces should work similar to the way faces work in real life: to recognise people. To make this possible the overall variety of faces should be very high - which means significantly higher than the maximum number of players on a server (right now any group of 9 or more people has at least one pair of "twins"). The best way to achieve this is to provide some kind of character generator to combine single features - this way variety comes from different combinations rather than needing a huge amount of predefined faces. A character generator would also make it possible to "recycle" features and is much easier to access (though it is possible to arrange predefined faces in a similar way). Lets look at an example to understand the possible combinations. You got six features: head (upper face, ears etc.), jaw, nose, mouth, brow and cheeks with 5 options each. This already makes for over 15000 possible combinations. Add sliders for their positioning (e.g. for the mouth) and skin tones as well as some additional options (like the already mentioned single eyelids, more mouths, eyes etc.) and nobody has to find a clone of him/herself ever again. But there should be more than that. I highly doubt that all survivors of a zombie apocalypse would be young or middle-aged adults. There should be a much greater range of possible ages starting from characters in their late teens and up to people in their sixties (lets play as badass grandpa/grandma!). Also appearance: some people look plain, some look cute, some look scary, some are pretty, some are ugly - and so should the survivors (potentially - if everyone decides to play an ugly and slightly scary badass grandpa so be it). Each of those effects should be achievable in multiple ways (if there is only one "scary option" per feature chances are that all players who like to be scary will look alike). Faces should come without accessories or makeup so every freshly spawned player would look comparatively plain. However there could be some items for painting your face in various ways - as well as an option to wash it all away - and maybe even piercings and scars. There should be some freedom how to use the items in question (e.g. painting your whole face in red using a whole lipstick). Also using dirt to "paint" your body might be interesting. 2.3 Hair, Eyes and Body cosmetics Some additional customization options that affect your appearance. You choose them when creating your suvivor and they cannot be changed mid-game - similar to your face - but - also similar to your face - could be altered ingame if you got the right items or playstyle. Hair will grow over time (and if you are a male your beard will also grow) but can be cut, shaved and even styled (with the right tools). You may dye your hair but finding colored (and usuable) contacts in a postapocalyptical world doesn't seem very realistic to me. Similar for your hairtype: getting curls or straightening your hair would require tools and effort you usually would not have. So your eye color will stay the same and your hair type will dictate which kind of hairstyles you can use. Hair Colors: - black - dark brown - auburn - chestnut - ash - red (only caucasian) - golden (only caucasion) - blonde (only caucasian) - grey (only older survivors) - white (only older survivors) Hair Types: - straight - wavy - curly - coiled (only african) Eye Colors: - light blue - dark blue - grey - green - hazel - amber - brown - dark brown Finally we got body types - because not all survivors of one sex are built in exactly the same way. This gives an option to tell apart people at medium range and adds some optical variation. Body types are meant as purely cosmetic but you might have the opportunity to gain or lose weight or even train to build up muscles (next topic will cover this). Your body type is more of a basic setup that outlines your basic appearance and where you gain or lose fat in general. Male: - Athletic (lean with long legs and somewhat defined shoulders) - Muscular (broad shoulders with shorter legs and very narrow hips - "top-heavy V-shape") - Rectanglular (less defined shoulders with medium legs, weight is distributed equally) Female: - Hourglass (balanced weight distribution, defined waist and slender legs) - Pear (wider hips and legs with a longer waistline and narrow shoulders) - Androgynous (narrow hips and less defined waist with broad shoulders) Different body shapes (the ones that do change gameplay) will come from ingame weight loss or gain. For example a "bulky bear" will be a muscular man that got some weight (rectangular would not gain broad shoulders while athletic would only get a beer belly) and a supermodel body would be a skinny hourglass figure (pear would retain the wide hips while androgynous would tend towards a boyish look instead). Still the body type is only meant to affect appearance ("bulky bear" would still play just like "beer belly guy" if they got the same weight). 2.4 Starting Character You should be able to choose most of the above for your starting character as well as your first basic set of clothes. But similar to this you should not get all options right from the beginning. I already mentioned that body paint (of any type) and possibly accessoires should not be present at the beginning. Similar for hairstyles. Both sexes should start out with a rather short cut (compare george form above) and men with a stubble (if you want cleanly shaven go find a razor!). Body type should be as selected with medium weight (neither skinny nor fat) and not particularily trained.

Play on a hardcore server. Because thats exactly why hardcore is more fun.

Nice topic! Is there a reason why there are no heavy sidearms on the list? If not I would like to suggest (as rare weapons): Colt Anaconda, IMI Desert Eagle, Ruger Redhawk, Taurus Raging Bull (.44 Magnum)

True but thats not the point. The point is to make death a setback instead of minor nuisance or even an advantage. Getting killed should never every be beneficial to you but right now its: - Bambi spawns but finds herself in a bad area (no loot, far from friends) - suicides to spawn in a better place - Bambi spots geared player - attacks with fist because of positive expected gain (she wins - she gets loot, she dies - she only has to respawn) Having to wait for 10min is not really that hard - chat with your friends, clean your desk, go to the toilet or eat something. Its not to annoy players (players also get annoyed by others respawning way too fast) but to make getting killed a bad deal.

I guess they did not fix the Fireaxes OPness yet? Because at the moment its about 3 times better than any other melee weapon.

Thats because death means nothing to fresh spawns. Without any gear to lose and without any real penalty for getting yourself killed going full bersek mode doesn't have many drawbacks. If you succeed to punch someone out you win his gear. If you don't and he kills you you will just respawn. We need a much longer death timer to solve this.

Actually not a bad idea but I would like to be able to: A. Join after selected friends Because not everyone starts at the same time so in reality if you want to play DayZ your friend "Ben Bandit" already roams Berezino on a populated server while "Larry Looter" runs around on a low populaton server searching for a pristine Mosin compensator. Your friend "Fred Friendly" is not ready to play yet and would like to join you in 30 min - or later. Here it would be a good thing to just join after a selected friend (ofc Larry Looter would find himself on a populated server with the OP idea) instead of requiring everyone to wait for everyone else. B. Filter Servers Because I do not want to end up on servers that enforce a particular playstyle (PvP, Friendly, TS required etc.) or feature special rules (high loot, 3rd person only, 24/7 whatever etc.) or do not support any language I am speaking. Ping is one thing but he are many other factors. So the idea might work if a "preferences" menu was available and you still got the option to just join after a friend (also getting to know his servers rules). I also believe servers with different loot settings should not be allowed to share a hive. If there were no public hives at all everyone would have to play like a real survivor and stick to the server (something that is pretty important once persistent storage, base builing and vehicles are implemented). The basic idea is that you get one survivor per server. If thats too much memory space groups of servers could be joined together in a semi-public hive that only allows X survivors per player before one of them gets overwritten. In case of X=1 this would be joining another servers will ask you if you want to restart and delete your old survivor whenever you are about to switch to another server from the same group. This keeps memory space manageable and prevents server hopping as well. Having X>1 might be more reasonable as it prevents being stuck with an empty (or full) server or deleting your survivor.

I agree with the OP. The list gives you information that you realistically should not have. Would be much more interesting not to see the list but some people like the information you got and then players are using 3rd party tools (Chernarus+ map, Skype, Teamspeak) all the time. I voted yes - for hardcore servers or as a server option.

Thats already implemented - if you aim for the head you deal much more damage and if not spotted zombies will stand still or walk around slowly so you can go for the head more easily. You need the fireaxe (op for zombie killing) for a oneshot though - but in my opinion oneshotting zombies with a knife doesn't make much sense. Right now its more about zombie awareness - sometimes they can see a hidden player behind two houses and three trees and sometimes they are unaware that someone is walking towards them with an axe raised. Cutting the hyper-awareness would make sneaking (and thus sneak attacks) much more viable.

They could - but they probably won't. However, even a wide variety of faces and a few different body shapes (made a suggestion about this - see my signature) as well as variable body height* might be enough - most identification work in real life comes from recogising faces. If thats not detailed enough you can add one of those textlines akin to "I am hungry." that says "I recognise XY." under some (pretty harsh) coonditions: (1) He/she is facing you. (2) He/she is quite close and the face is visible (no mask). (3) You met this character before without getting killed in the meantime (just because death should matter, maybe only on hardcore servers). (4) You are aiming at the face (maybe even zooming) for a few moments. Saving survivors by memorizing their faces should work in a similar way (but might take a little longer than recognizing). As the according message will give you the player name (e.g. "I memorize XYs face.") it also works as player identification. And friendly fire is pretty common in real life especially if you shoot first and ask questions later. You might also meet people that look pretty similar to a person you know. And in real life you would not spot (or even identify) people who are hiding because some floating sign is giving them away. As for masks: The whole point is to hide your face. It would be silly if you could still recognise those people with 100% accuracy. You can however exclude someone ("This masked man is not Ed because Ed is skinny but this one is fat.") - thats why different body shapes would be a nice thing.

You can find maps ingame. You can find a compass ingame and you can determine your position ingame. So yeah - its already there. Also you should not make suggestions like "please add this next patch!" but more like "I would like to see this in the final product". Because development takes time (10% to implement a feature and 90% to make it work properly) and there are other things on the list as well.

There was a suggestions about zombies "investgating" loud noises instead of instantly aggroing which is a better idea in my opinion. Then the aggro system would consist of two parts: (1) If a sound plays all (or some of the) zombies in a certain radius (depends on the sound: short radius for footsteps, long radius for gunshots) walk towards the source of noise. Maybe they have a bad memory and "forget" about the sound after a certain period of time in silence. (2) If a zombie sees a survivor (survivor enters a certain area in front of the zombie with no big obstacles between them) he will aggro as usual and attack the survivor. Losing the line of sight for a certain period of time might result in giving up the chase.

For me the answer to the first question is twofold: In general the game should be pretty hard to emphasize player interaction (both cooperation and banditry) while also providing a challenging environment (being a lone wolf should be possible but really hard). More specifically the regular gamemode should be hard but have some (minor) mercy with the players to make is accessable to casual players as well. The hardcore gamemode should be just that - hardcore, unforgiving and deadly. (I voted for very hard on average) The most difficult thing - thats even harder but here I got the right choice. You should struggle to survive your environment to the point where its very advisable to make some friends and work together. This should not make it easy though, just more manageable - but might also mean to share those sparse resources. Here comes the second part: sparse resources which might cause competition between survivors (or groups of survivors). Fighting between players should be less for entertainment (most of the time) and more for gaining or defending resources. (I voted for all of the above) Rarity - well just make it comparable to most real life environments. Civilian items should be pretty common. Military items should be pretty rare. One-time resources like food or ammo shouldn't be too common - and not every player should have a gun (let alone a fully upgraded military rifle with multiple magazines). Being fully geared and well nourished should require very hard work and also a little bit of luck. (Military weapons should be rare, but civilian weapons should be common / uncommon, and ammunition should be rare)

Maybe just offer different statures, faces and maybe even walking animations then? People say: "Survivors all have the same height, stature and only a small number of different faces - so identification is difficult." which is true. But then they are like: "I want to identify surviors - so we need friendlists and floating icons because there is no other way!" Errm... no! Go back to the first statement! Read it! Again! Instead of adding artifical features to replace/simulate natural features why not just implement those natural features instead? Its also more realistic because you have to look for the same things as in real life, don't have a 100% success rate (thats what some people really want here - something that makes KoS much easier) and makes the game look more diverse and thus more immersive.

Those small snaploaders should probably be stackable because we are talking about very small items. You can have 20-30 bullets in one square and those snaploader are four times the size of bullets at maximum. So being able to stack them up to 8-10 in one slot might even considered realistic. In general speedloaders should work like real speedloaders instead of magazines: When loading the weapon the bullets are placed inside the weapon while the loader will be emptied and returns to the inventory. The biggest problem might be the differentiation between empty, loaded and partially loaded snaploaders. Not really that much of a problem if there was to be some kind of queue system. Loaded snaploaders are placed first and will be picked for reloading if available, partially loaded snaploaders are second and when loading bullets they will be filled first. Finally emty snaploaders will be placed last and will receive bullets if there are no more partially filled ones left.

It is. In real life you tell people apart by their face and also by their style (clothing, hair, tatoos etc.). Ingame it should be the same. So instead of stupid magic indicators floating around breaking any kind of immersion we should get different faces - lots of them. For "teams" I think tatoos were mentioned - which is a nice idea because you basically commit to them and can't switch between them like you can with clothes.

Seems like Betsy needs a serious health buff. Or the fireaxe needs a serious damage nerf.

The stable branch does not have this kind of issue so either its a bug, something is wrong with your settings or they darkened overcast weather in the experimental build for some reason. I suspect you were given the wrong ingame time and it actually was dusk or dawn.

I personally think most World War 2 guns are a little too old. Thats why I would rather like to see their sucessors as Cold War weaponry fits the setting much better - especially weapons that are still in use today. M1 Garand - No, add the M14 instead. Its quite similar and fits better into the game. M1 Carbine - Could work as its a mass produced and popular weapon similar to the Mosin (as a civilian weapon). Thompson, PPSH-14 - I would rather like to see more modern submachine guns like the Uzi, MP5 etc.

Is this sway relevant for aiming or just some kind of idle animation? There was a pretty nice suggestion about aiming in general and those attachements specifically (link in my signature). Attachements (especially buttstocks and bipods) might also affect sway as could stamina, pain etc. leaving dispersion only for weapon and ammo condition as well as some base dispersion (depending on the weapon -> lower for longer or more advanced weapons). It would be pretty silly if every weapon had 100% accuracy in pristine condition. Sway should also affect recoil to make it impossible to spray with full accuracy.

What about linking the respective topics in the OP. Otherwise the in-depth suggestions might drown in a flood of repeating wish list topics that don't contribute nearly as much.

You got those pitch black nights everywhere with no civilisation around (cities create some kind of ambient light that makes the night less dark around them) and weak moonlight (the African savanna provides a pretty good example). As its after the zombie apocalypse there are no cities to create light. Arguably you should have more moonlight just to see a little better and maybe a wider cone on your flashlight or head torch.

Your stomach limits the amount of food and water you can consume at once. You can store much more in your system but you have to wait for your belly to "process" its contents first - thats what "stuffed" means. Vomiting is no solution as you also lose energy and water.

Maybe the animals got KoSed because they wandered too close to Berezino?