Evil Minion

Don't do that. It doesn't cure any type of sickness and makes you lose valuable water and energy.Chemical poisoning used to be curable by staying energized/hydrated (especially having frequent access to fresh water) and staying out of harms way as you health and blood dropped dangerously low. But now it appears to require someone to look after you as you will go unconscious.

I wanted a game that offers a diverse experience with a mix of PvE/survival and PvP gameplay that is also unforgiving and feels quite authentic. DayZ has potential to become this maybe more so than any other one. I also like to explore and experiment so the game being early access is not that much of a hindrance. Though I actually disliked server hopping even before I started playing and waited until they finally increased the server switch time to 10 minutes before buying it. Well... they made a step backwards soon after. As long as server hopping persists in this easy, low risk but rewarding form all of the potential is wasted.

In general you want to be in prime condition for long range shots: not fatigued (move around slower or take a rest)not a cannibal (brain disease makes your character twitch)not cold (warm up on a fire to get rid of shaking)not low on health and blood (grey and blurry does not make for good aim)Then you want to make sure to use the optimal stance: prone if it does not obstruct your visionotherwise crouchAnd finally there is a "hold-breath" function that also reduces sway. By default it is mapped on your right mouse key so when you zoom your character will instantly hold breath making a quick shot more precise. However, you can remap the key to get more freedom when you want to get the bonus - though this might somewhat decrease your accuracy in emergency situations if you forget to press the button.

I was playing Day 0.56 for the last days and did not find any big loot pileup only a few minor ones that were actually not all that unrealistic (piles of clothes). So it seems loot distribution got better though it's not perfect. I think that's exactly the opposite of want you want in DayZ. With more loot spawning where more loot is picked there is no reason to move everywhere. Cue everyone sitting at the coast enjoying free resident loot spawns. On the other side loot spawning somewhat random while avoiding large pileups would create a much more dynamic gameplay where players actually have a reason to move away from the spawn areas. Now that suggestion does make sense on a server level as here we want the opposite: players staying where they are instead of hopping around. So high population servers should spawn more loot than low population servers.

Looks like you ran into two server crashes. Maybe it's not even a DayZ issue but rather a server one. You played on .55 right? Having trouble picking up items? You mean you can see them in vicinity but double click/take does not do anything? An issue that plagued DayZ for quite a while. I picture it as your server-side character hitbox lagging behind probably getting stuck on something (zombies will attack this and not you if it happens as well). Try walking back and "fetching" your hitbox. Having trouble opening doors? There is a recent bug where server-side and client-side doors do not match. If you try to open a door that is already open on the server you will close it (does play a sound - at least sometimes). Trying to open it again will actually make it happen and returns you back to sync.

I found books useful in early .55 as they were the most widely available means to make a fire.

As an alpha DayZ SA is far from finished and lots of mechanics and feature are still missing. However as testers it might be a good thing to give feedback on the current situation. Now I could have started a topic "list of unviable items" but this might be a lot of work (depending on how much detail is involved) and eventually pretty boring. So instead I will ask the community members to play a little "game" where everyone can pick one loot item (or a group of very similar ones) and explain why this item has very low viability and is rarely picked up for practical reasons. As the game is progressing this might change so please add the (latest) patch version. Finally: Color versions do not count and we do not speak of highly geared players here. It's about items that are either "not really worth picking" picking up regardless of game progress or are only viable under very specific circumstances. Lets start: (.56) Tracksuit pants: A pretty common item that offers two inventory slots. Unfortunately all players start with jeans that offer more protection and four inventory slots. So switching to Tracksuit pants sets you below "starting strenth". There are two situations were you might consider switching: your pants are ruined or you lost them entirely. While the former offers some more protection the loss of inventory space arguably outweights the positives. For the latter it's definitely an upgrade - but you can find more effective items (namely jeans and canvas pants) just as easy. This makes tracksuit pants extremely niche ("I lost my pants and gut really unlucky when looting") and thus not viable at all.

That's indeed an issue but can be solved by simply allowing server owners to set a time multiplier and an offset within certain limits. With this forcing nighttime only means that every server is required to provide just as much nighttime as it provides daytime but not when. This way nighttime has an impact on gameplay and light sources stop being next to useless without forcing players to play at night all the time.Alternatively there could be a globally fixed ingame time on the public hive but with a time multiplier that causes ingame days to "cycle" through real life days. So if you always play at the same time you will catch every ingame time of day and switching to a different server (including those far away) will not change this. The former might be more suited for a "normal" mode the latter might work well on a "hardcore" mode.

Played on 0.56 yesterday - it was far from ready.

"Bone condition" is a name coined by Aggathor as he noticed similarities to the system responsible for fractures. And being an (obviously) unfinished part of the damage model he assumed that it might be meant for things like "spinal fracture". Another user here on the forums (sorry I forgot your name) considered it some kind of "legacy hitpoints" instead. As they said it was regenerating now my assuption is that there are indeed plans to do something with it.

This. Loot is spawning but in a very unbalanced way. Sooner or later you will stumble across one of those "lootsplosions". Once I made it from Elekro all the way to Vybor before I found enough food. And no, you do not need to grind-gather your way to full energy and water - fighting off hunger is enough if you avoid getting hit a lot.

In fact considering it's an Early Access Alpha we should probably tell them to keep whining and reporting issues but stop the unconstructive crying. And in case of design choices taking a break would probably not work either.

There is no thing as "the final goal" as the game continually moves from survival to sandbox as you survive (increasing the number of potential goals) and back to survival if you die. If anything there is a "next goal". During my life as survivor I usually pas through the following stages: Early game - you try to survive against all odds. This part is currently worked on but it's far from finished. Especially stable builds tend to make it relatively easy. Might and should be a luck based mission especially when you are on your own. The goals are pretty basic: find food, water, clothes and tools to stay alive. Mid game - you gear up until you reach a well-geared state (that depends on you). Worked on since the beginning and might not be finished for quite a while. You greatest threats are now other players competing for loot. Your goal might shift more towards traveling to and looting of specific areas and of course surviving to keep the price. End game - you do whatever you want. By this phase you are well-equipped and looting servers mainly to maintain that state. Here the game becomes a sandbox game where you are able pursue your own goals. Far from finished as many cooperative (currently you can do everything on your own without many problems), creative (basebuilding and similar things are not in yet) and social (the game currently lacks the identification features required) goals are simply missing. You can, however, pursue a variety of goals like hoarding weapons, killing players, helping players, stalking players, trying to form a group/cult, securing a town etc.Now you cannot strictly differentiate between those but the longer you survive the more you tend to shift from early game to end game - at least for the majority of playstyles.

Lifelike animals would be a big thing and having individuals would spice it up as it makes wildlife a little less predictable. Now I think pooping (maybe as it could be part of the hunting/tracking process) and breeding might be overkill and would be totally fine with somewhat random spawns. Though those might be influenced by animal population (similar to loot economy): lack of animals in a particular niche (e.g. medium sized grazers) might increase their spawn priorityunbalanced sex ratios might increase the spawn ratios of the unrepresented sexwithin niches spawn priority would depend on animal type and increase with population size (to simulate breeding)animals might tend to spawn in areas where their own species exists in greater numbers (again to simulate breeding)predators should spawn according to prey available (number and type)in case of having IVs the IVs of newly spawned animals might be generated to be close to the ones still alive (with some randomization)This way wildlife is dynamic and might develop differently on different servers depending on the original state and human interaction.

The size of territories in wolves veries a lot. Key is not the space available but rather the amount of prey and the size of the pack in question. In this case I would simply ignore the (now basically uninhabited) cities. With enough prey animals Chernarus might be able to support as much as 4 packs of wolves tough I would reduce/vary this amount in favor of other predators like bears or feral dogs. It is true that a tiger would need a much greater territory but you might konsider South Zagoria as merely a part of this. Maybe it's best to relate predator numbers to prey available: A server might spawn either a pack of wolves or a bear or some feral dogs for a certain number of deer/hogs/cows etc. So a server where players rarely hunt might support several wolf packs while another might only allow for a single bear. In any case I would avoid predator overpopulation and -aggression.

While a like the idea to use books how they are supposed to be used (as knowledge source) I would not want them to have magical effects like "look inside once and instantly get crafting skills" or "move more silently after reading the book". You do not read a book once and konw everthing inside. Instead they should work as reference books in two ways: The stuff actually written inside the books might be applied by players ingame. So some books might work as small partial ingame manuals. Having the book with you might improve certain actions and allow for more complicated crafting.The second part might slowly become part of your character as you use those specific actions. So after doing something multiple times (somewhat randomized) with the help of a book you won't need it anymore (no notification). This would avoid two effects I would consider negative: You "read" the book once then throw it away instantly knowing everything written inside it.Your give the book to everyone in your group getting other books in return creating masters of all instead of specialists.

Again this one... No it's not*. Cutting all connections between servers comes with a lot of new issues. Though it's true that 5 minute timers won't do anything. As you mentioned the issue is less people jumping between servers for loot but rather jumping between servers for loot being way more effective than ingame travel between loot spawns. How to solve it? What about increasing the cost for server switching to a point where this is no longe true. Also allow people to avoid this cost by scrapping their old character and starting a new one (to avoid players "getting stuck" on a particular server) and maybe on specific occasions (server restart, kicked, server full etc.). *For example allowing players to join only one server per day would remove the benefits of hopping while still keeping the main benefits of interconnected servers.

The reason? Because it's massively overpowered at the moment. It's pretty easy to survive on your own and less risky than joining forces with strangers who might betray you. In comparison the benefits of cooperation are few: You are more likely to survive disease or greater injuries (which doesn't happen very often).You got more power in PvP encounters (unless your "friends" are the ones betraying you).You can be more efficient with your inventory by sharing tools (though lone wolves have no problem carrying everything they need).You can speed up some tasks if time is an issue (in most cases it is not).You have some company while traveling.Is it worth the risk of trusting a complete stranger? Many people seem to think it isn't. I think being a lone wolf should be way more difficult to the point where it might be a luck based mission to only rely on yourself.

I think the "inventory tetris" is a good thing as it adds depth and rewards people for using their brains and organizing their inventory. However, it should work as a preemptive element instead of forcing you into inventory management every time you want to do something. With the right tools and preparations you should not need to play drag&drop in the inventory screen all the time. That's why my older suggestions were about having a reload key but with limited access to your inventory (e.g. only jacket/vest/pants). Though using the hotbar instead strikes me as a more elegant solution and removes the need for a reload button or constant clunky inventory management.

Of all the topics about this you linked to an ancient one in the mod forums?

Bump. Update coming soon-ish when I find the time.

That's how I play it most of the time. Might also be the reason why I did not get hurt very hard by the early .55 loot economy (in fact I liked it). However, a nomad playstyle tends to have less player interaction (as the majority of players seem to be coastal residents or server hoppers*) and currently PvE is somewhat lacking (though it is getting better). If you want to survive and explore it's probably the better approach but if you want action it is not. *Players coming to the coast after getting geared (via regular or server hopping) basically import more loot there supporting a greater number of residents.

Where are all the "omg it's military and it's western" haters? Personally I think it should be ingame because we did have NATO troops in Chernarus (which does justify it as some kind of crash site loot) and it would be a nice increase in variety. Of course as with all military loot it should be pretty rare - most people should not be able to run around in military outfits. On a side note I already have DPM on my list (see below) alongside several other patterns.

No - zombies are part of the game and especially of survival/PvP. You are not supposed to run around like Rambo or waste bullets on helpless freshspawn. Also there should not be designated PvP areas in the first place (especially not inside the spawn area). However, it would be nice if you were able to clear an area of zombies (high effort might be involved) for some time. Maybe even (pseudo)permanently by using barricades etc. Note how this would conflict with the "PvP area" part unless you have a group of people setting up and running some kind of "arena".

I do not think there should be a dedicated reload button. Simply because reloading should not be considered a "special action" that requires a key on its own. However, reloading could work via the quick access bar: Use one of the slots for bullets or a magazine. Pressing the button while holding the right gun would trigger a reload action. Note that you should only access this specific item: if the pile of bullets is depleted you need to add a new one to the bar, magazines might get replaced by the one you took out of your gun at most, a stripper clip would be emptied and still occupy the slot. No magic access to all of your magazines. No "special" reloading. More control over the type of magazine you want. And a nice reward for thoughtful inventory management without forcing people to open their inventory and using drag&drop all the time.