ElGandarko

This guy knows.

Sorry for the mostly all caps title, but I find this too annoying. Every time I come to these forums for a gander, I am treated to a stickied post that is just a bunch of merged threads that used to be practically every thread in the general category. It's either that, or I am greeted by the hundreds of threads that are all ranting and raving about the same thing. Now I know it can be hard to ensure your post is 100% unique, I am sure many people will have said this before themselves. But you know what I did guys? I hit the "Search" button up there, and I made sure no post was already making my point. What I am saying here, is that EVERYONE, absolutely EVERYONE, needs to press that button BEFORE they press the "Post Thread" button down there. Sometimes it's not even that hard. Sometimes, if you just look at the first two pages of the general discussion forum, you'll see what you were looking for. Once you have found a thread relating to what you wanted to talk about, feel free to talk as much as you like INSIDE that thread. If you don't find a thread however, then, and only then, can you post your thread. One wouldn't think they'd have to explain the concept of a forum to people n a forum, but it seems people just don't understand. I apologise for the rant, but I hope this opens some peoples eyes.

So currently, death is pretty punishing. You lose all your gear and you're thrown back to the ol' bean coast. But now you've got your Makarov in hand, I usually find there is nothing to fear. When I have nothing but my Makarov and a couple tins of beans, I have no qualms with charging into cherno/elektro. If I get shot, what do I lose? Typically, I gain something. By the time I die, I'll have usually used a Makarov clip, maybe eaten some beans; so when I return, I am restocked with these items. Furthermore, sometimes death isn't that punishing. If a player dies, they have the chance to return to their corpse to get all (or most of) their old loot! As long as nobody else has found it before them, they can lay claim to everything there. Now, I do enjoy this little feature, though it is rather immersion breaking. And when you have a squad, you can pretty much guarantee you will be able to make it to your stuff, as they can just set up a defensive perimeter around your corpse. What I suggest is a countdown before the player can respawn, maybe 10, 15 or 30 minutes, depending on how brutal Rocket is feeling. Now I know a lot of people won't like the sounds of this, as it not only does it lead to less playtime, but it'll be much harder to get your old equipment should you die. But the benefits it brings, such as preventing "Makarov modes" from laughing in the face of death and also bringing that extra bit of punishment to death, should far outweigh the times players have to walk away from their keyboard for a bit as they wait for the player to respawn. Before you reply to this, let me just remind you this game is designed to be brutal. It is designed to evoke emotion from the player, and it is designed to be unforgiving. Having to wait for awhile after you die isn't that bad, unless you spend your time on the bean coast and you get shot every half an hour. Edit: I realise this change would make bandits even more aggravating and would also annoy a lot of people. But that is the general point of the game. It isn't supposed to hold your hand while you have fun frolicking around a zombie apocalypse. It is supposed to slap you in the face and tell you to live on your own, survive as you can. This means staying out of the way of bandits, if you're crying because bandits kill you then that is precisely what the game wanted you to do. It wants you to feel pain and suffering, not just joy and excitement. Or at least, that is what I have taken from the things Rocket has said and the way the game plays already. There is a plus side to this though, with players knowing that death is that much more punishing, they may be less likely to wildly shoot other players. I'm not saying it will definitely prevent some of the playing killing, but those of us with more of a conscience than others will probably think twice before sending someone to the respawn screen.

Any reasoning behind that? If you're going to post a reply to a suggestion, please at least include some constructive criticism. It's nice to know you don't approve of the idea, but it would be even better to know why you don't. Not just for my sake, but for the developers sake too. The developers read these suggestion forums to get a feel of what the community wants and what the community needs. As I said above, telling them you don't approve of an idea is helpful, but letting them know your reasoning actually gives them something they can do something with, rather than just a tally they can keep track of.

There already is moonlight, and silhouettes are not hard to see against the sky. What I would propose, rather, is more ways to create light. Chemlights and flares are all fine and good, but flares produce too much light and chemlights not quite enough. Their are torches, though these typically require that you drop your handgun, or you swap out a weapon for one with a flashlight. Both of these are terrible, as the G17 is a fairly awful piece of gun, and the Remington isn't something you want to run around shining a flashlight from. As for the torch itself, unless you have a group of people, it is completely useless. The handgun is usually the players zombie killing weapon, unless they have a winchester/crossbow. In this case, the only good gun to carry with a flashlight is a winchester, as the ammo for it is abundant and it is an effective zombie slayer. Whereas the crossbow... It has its merits, but the lack of bolts and the massive amount of inventory they take make it a massively impractical weapon. Being able to take bolts from corpses helps, but not enough. I can't think of many solutions to these problems, personally I think night time is fine. It is only painful when it is absolutely pitch black, in which case it can be impossible to navigate. One solution, however, would be the introduction of a crafting system. I've heard this idea tossed around a few times, and while I'm not sure of how plausible it is with ArmA, it would make for an amazing feature. With a crafting system, the player could potentially find tape and a flashlight, and could then tape their flashlight onto their weapon of choice. As it stands, that is my only idea so far, pertaining to light sources anyway. Unless more weapons were to be introduced with flashlights, or if flashlights could possibly be made into a tool rather than a weapon (Doubtful), the only other options are to simply add a few extra light sources the player can use. Oh, and a final note, I have also heard people tossing about the idea of fixing power stations to light up towns for awhile. This idea sounds awesome, and could create quite an interesting dynamic between players. I have little more to say about it, but just thought I would bring it up. All in all, I enjoy night time as it is. I would be happy to see more sources of light introduced, though it is not a very high priority in my mind.

Would it be possible to make the players starting gear, their beans; water; painkillers etc., non lootable? This would help to prevent people preying on new survivors just for their beans, and also prevent people from getting twice the starter gear should they happen to spawn where someone else has respawned to get a different location. Disregard this, it seems I forgot just how rampant the guys with Makarovs can be. They are some of the most dangerous players and, if anything, they need to be "nerfed" to some degree.

A lot of the suggestions in this thread really don't take into consideration the massive amounts of strain they will put on the servers; just think how badly they run now, do you want to make it worse? Zombies currently only spawn if there is a player nearby, so zombies migrating from town to town just won't work. It could be made possible that they'd spawn out in the wilderness too, but to practically manage this would be a massive headache. Whereas I do believe the zombies run a bit too fast, I wouldn't suggest slowing them down massively. Perhaps, rather, adding in some slower zombies mixed in with the sprinters? Having more variation in the zombies is always good. Furthermore, I second the idea that zombies won't charge towards a sound, but will rather attempt to follow it to see what is going on, before they make their move. Perhaps if a zombie is over X distance it is more likely to just walk over and see what is going on? As for increasing the zombie count, I think that would make it near impossible to sneak through towns in some instances. It can get pretty tricky sometimes already, what with zombies all walking right towards the path you chose and so on. I'm not saying it is hard to sneak by them, it is actually a bit too easy, but I don't think adding more zombies is the solution.

I somewhat agree with Gobbins here. There should be a penalty for disconnecting, though maybe not every time. If a player were able to do a "soft" disconnect, say, stay still for 5-10 seconds, then they can log off. Though, if they just drop out, their player is left on the server for X amount of time. This X amount of time could depend on whether the player has been shot recently, or has alerted any zombies recently; so as to make it fairer on a player who happens to suffer a disconnect. Again, not a perfect system, but every system will have its flaws.

The weather really is an issue, it may mostly be synced, but lightning flashes don't seem to be at all. Over the past few days I've been playing with a friend in a few storms, each time we saw a lightning flash we would call it out, and never would it sync up. I don't know about you guys, but I sure would like to know if I have just been lit up like a christmas tree for all to see. I'm not saying it should be scrapped, but it certainly needs to be improved.