Avant-Garde

Goddamn finally some news about melee! That's great news tbh. I'm really curious about what I just read here, I didn't really understood how the charged attack will work. Is it like, if I just click, I'll do a lower damage attack, and if I click and hold it will do a charged attack? You know what would be great with this system you guys are doing, of real time animations that can be canceled? Did you guys ever played Exanima? Is a melee isometric game with revolutionary and amazing real time mechanics, kinda like dayz/chivalry. In this game, if you hold LMB you will do a horizontal slash left-to-right then right-to-left. Double clicking lmb and holding it will make a overhead attack. If you release the button mid attack, its a feint. You use feints to cancel your attack and parry instead, so you don't get rekt against smaller and faster weapons if you have, say, a huge and slow Halberd. Parry is made simply by not attacking, you gotta position yourself at the right range and aim at the general direction the attack is coming to execute a parry. You don't have to time the parry (making the lag problem WAY less of a problem), but you have to position yourself correctly aim and footwork wise. I know that DayZ at the moment has passive parrying (if you hit a attack on your opponent's weapon, the weapon will take damage not the person), so isn't it possible to you guys to add a control scheme similar to Exanima, where you hold LMB for attack, and if you release it you feint the attack to parry, and the parry is made mostly automatic IF you position yourself at the right range AND aim to the right direction the attack is coming. All that is needed for the parry is a set of 3 different animations (one for horizontal attacks coming from the left, other for attacks coming from the right, and a last one to defend yourself from overheads) that will play automatically depending on what attack your opponent use. So for example, your opponent does a overhead, your avatar would lift his both arms kinda above his head to interrupt the incoming attack, and you would only have to step in or out (depending on the range of your opponent's weapon) + help connect the parry animation with the incoming attack by simply looking a bit up. All the parrying is made by the weapon model itself, so its quite realistic as well and give shields a really nice use. This can also be good to add multi directional attacks, hold lmb to horizontal slash right-to-left then left-to-right, and double click + hold to make a overhead animation. All of which can be feinted (release the attack button) in order to parry (not timing based so lag isn't that much of a problem). Bonus points if you guys manage to add a "sidestep" animation so if you, for example, double tap S you avatar will do a little dodge like movement backwards. This would add a skill based mechanic that brings variety to the table and open MANY possibilities either in PvE (zombie hunters, one man goes with a shield parrying zombies covering a guy with a pitchfork, poking the head of them zeds, this opens the possibility to clear cities with melee weapons AND is a incentive to player band together) or PvP (would give players with fresh spawn gear more chances of surviving, IF he has sick melee skills, against other crazy ass fresh spawns instead of the luck/lag based melee combat of spam and pray). What a wall of text tbh, but its for a good cause devs pls, improve melee mechanics in this game, it would be good for everyone. You guys would have one more differential compared to other survival games out there, players would also benefit from a more coherent melee mechanic, and your game would be at leas 50% more realistic then it is right now (I mean, just look at any melee fight at the moment, its ridiculous). Here are some useful links http://store.steampowered.com/app/362490/ http://www.baremettle.com/

Well I'm gonna try again, why not right? Hicks mate, any news on melee mechanics? Can we expect more then the very basics that are at the moment in game? Can we expect at least better melee animations?

Hicks mate, can you tell us if there are plans to expand melee mechanics in game, and if yes, what kind of thing should we expect?

Hey guys, so here is a nice story for you all: Me and me friend had setup a base in a very nice place where no one will ever find it, then we decided to look for helicrashes and stash some good shit you see. So, we would go to Lopatino and look for helicrashes on that region. While we are there in Lopatino, we decided to plant some food to carry on the holy quest for the helicrashes, and since we found 2 barrels on Lopatino, we decide to stash the food there as well because why not? Might be useful for someone you know. While we were planting, with the barrels close to us, bullets starts flying everywhere. The red circle here on the map is where we were, and the black one is where I thought the fire was coming from: We fall back to the city, I hide in a house and see by the window one of the fuckers trying to flank us, trying to enter the city by south. I open fire, he fires back, I don't know if I hit him and he misses all his shots. My friend was at the city center at this point, lying on the floor in fetal position crying for mama. After this firefight I go south after the man but lost him, idk where the fuck did he went tbh. At this point I go back to the city, clearing house by house until I meet with my friend. After what, 5 mins I met him, we decide to go check the plants and to our surprise, those guys stole our barrels!!1 I was truly amazed by the operation they did to steal our barrels tbh. Notice that the server was almost empty, the player list was like me, my friend, one random guy and 4 clanfags. After our barrel was stole, every clan guy left the server. My friend said "M8 there is no way they have hidden the barrel far away from here, everything was too damn fast tbh". We start looking around the city. After like 10 minutes searching my friend says with quite happiness "HOLY FUCK DUDE I JUST FOUND LIKE 8 BARRELS FULL OF SHIT OMG" The base was exactly here: This place is a little shack, my friend was inside it with like 8 barrels man. When he sees the player list, one clan guy got back, tension rises up. 2 minutes latter a guy get in the shack with my friend inside, he fires but miss, the guy runs away and so does my friend, at this moment I was getting close to the shack. I meet my friend and he says "m8 i'm gonna be a target, you kill him when you see where the fires comes from. My friend runs like there is no tomorrow, taking fire, and the clan guy starts to chase him lol. I had to unload a SKS mag to kill the cunt, I'm such a bad shot tbh. After the guy died, the whole clan got back into the server, and a big firefight starts in those forests. We both got killed. Next thing we see is the whole clan server hooping in and out of this server. When we got back to that site, there was no more base to be found except for one empty barrel. So that looks like a problem to me. If you ever manage to break in someone's base or find it, there is a great chance that they will take the most valuable shit and fall back to another server. It was all very fun tbh, but that sounded kinda unfair. I mean, they had a truck and a lot of people, is it fair to simply server hoop your base like that? Its so hard to find bases like this. But you know what is funny, I added the clan guys on steam and said we had a base on that server too, we challenged them to find it and to leave their base on that server but in other spot. The clan guy said that this place where they had a base is just a REALLY common place to make bases. So there you go, search this shack for a big chance to find big loot.

I'm not even buthurt nor mad, mate pls. I don't think everyone who plays on a public hive think these """""""tactics"""""" (I'd rather call exploits tbh) are a fun or even valid gameplay element, because this gameplay element consist of a anti-game mechanic, as its is totally anti-fun and not fair. Leaves you shitfaced looking at portal sorcery people are able to do to gain unfair advantage. I understand there are private hives for those who doesn't want bullshit in their game. But this kinda means that there are people who want bullshit anti-game mechanics, or exploits? I want to play a fair game no matter public hive nor not tbh. If they give us the choice to play a game with bullshit exploits or without, what the hell are they doing? Why is this even a choice? Doesn't games need to have few as possible broken gameplay mechanics? "PLAY ON PRIVATE HIVE" is no answer as I'm talking about public hives and a broken mechanic they allow, as well as how healthy this is to the game. I mean, isn't this a design problem?

I had the craziest and the most intense firefights in empty servers hahahahaha, sometimes in really unexpected places. Its like, I go to the airfield and not a single soul to be found, then I'm running through Stary Yar and stumble upon someone! These moments are so scary lol, I have to control myself to not freeze in place thinking "OHSHIT OHSHIT OH SHIT" I learned my lesson, I must be expecting people at all times, everywhere and at every corner there is a potential camper. Also sprint = death here lol, so no sprinterino for me unless to run away from bullets

I am always very paranoid in DayZ tbh, I think there are players everywhere even in empty servers

Yes thats another thing indeed. Its more of a free for all in a huge map with limited progress because big bases with walls are going to be useless for example. Thinking now, if one clan make a big base with walls and shit on server Y, I find their base on server Y, go to server X in a place where I know I would be inside their base, then hoop back to server Y and steal all their shit, while the hard work they had to build a base was basically useless and they would do better by hiding multiple barrels in different places instead of using the base mechanics. I could go into their base and fuck everything up, steal generators, I could even teleport their base to another server man. Look how broken it is, makes a lot of mechanics useless and simply not even worth using them. Why the fuck would I build walls and shit? I mean, devs add mechanics ignoring the fact people teleport all around chernarus, walls are useful if people can't teleport past them tbh, otherwise is just a waste of time and useless gameplay mechanic

Its a good point. They are preserving vanilla experience with this then, but this vanilla experience is quite unfair due server hoop mechanism. Why would someone play on public hives when you have private hives that are 100% better? One could argue that private hive servers could crash and you would lose your avatar, so public hives are nice because if one server crashes, you can go to another and continue from there. But if there were no public hives at all, and every server is on a private hive, there will be reliable official servers that don't crash or has some safety backup system and shit; plus they wouldn't have "100000 cars and heli's!!! Mega lootz easy zombies!". This way its assured to have a nice vanilla experience with no bullshit reality bending sorcery.

Public hive seems like a bad idea in general tbh. I simply fail to see whats good about it and why they chose this method instead of doing like the mod. Looks like bad design for me.

True tbh. That's the conclusion me and my friend had. But think about it, doesn't this mechanism makes the game biased towards who is defending a base in relation to those who are infiltrating? I mean, in public shards there is a good chance the gameplay gets really unfair. Isn't that a problem? Public shards are full of bullshit gameplay elements, like ghosting and full massive base retreat operations. They had a truck, the fair thing would be they getting the most valuable shit on the truck, while we would still have some garbage left to loot when we got back from death. It would be fair since we lost the firefight imo. It would give a really important use to trucks. I don't even understand why we have public shards. What benefits does this system brings at all? I feel like public shards rewards a pansie stile of gameplay.

I remember reading something like, he was a guy who took risks and did new stuff, DayZ doesn't need someone like this at this point because its all already established and shit. I do agree that this game should have a huge development time, I don't really care how long it takes to be ready, I want to see a masterpiece in the "survival" game genre (that tbh at the moment is filled with crap, its a pretty shitty genre full of scammers and half-assed clones), Half-Life levels of masterpiece.

Hey, since we already got flanged maces and swords, can't we have something as awesome as a Halberd?? I mean, look at this: Isn't it beautiful? Don't you want to open some skulls with it? Poke someone's neck? Imagine, you see someone passing with a horse nearby you, you prepare an ambush and use the hook end of the Halberd to strike his chest and pull the guy out of the horse in a very friendly way! Wouldn't it be amazing guys? Hellebarde prease!!1!1

WHAT, you use your mouse in your left hand? Goddamn weirdo gtfo man lmao I'm SURE that its a sin, everything has limits you know?? Now seriously, I'm left handed but I couldn't imagine myself using the mouse on the left hand lol, even because my mouse has those thumb buttons made for goddamn right handed people like this one here: About the melee combat part, its a interesting subject tbh, because it all depends on how the game will handle "parrying". For example, in Chivalry: Medieval Warfare it works like this: Press your parry button and a invisible wall that goes from your head to your ankles, and with your shoulder width will show up in front of you, and if the damage tracer connects there, it registers as a parry. Literally a "parry rectangle". The game also has right-to-left/left-to-right horizontal swing and top right to bottom left/top left from bottom right overhead swings. In order to bypass the parry box you have to use Footwork to position your attack in a way you bypass the parry box, and that can be done by either variation of overhead and horizontal swing (slash). Since the parry rectangle appears literally in front of you, you have to aim your parry as well if your opponent use the directional attack system + footwork. The thing is, having left handed in Chivalry would make almost no practical difference if you take footwork out of the equation, you see. 2 people not moving, facing each other, the attacks variation present no bigger difficulty in order to parry. What creates the difficulty here is how good your opponent's footwork is. I guess that if we ever come to see parrying in DayZ, we will have something like this "parry box", thus making no difference the direction of the attack UNLESS you associate it with good footwork. I mean, the simple fact that you are swinging left-to-right instead of right-to-left should not give any advantage at all. The advantage comes knowing how to trick your opponent and make him miss the direction in witch he will have to "aim" the parry, you see, thats done by footwork. For example, you start a normal overhead, top right to left bottom attack and at the same time you walk to your right as well, your opponent will aim his parry to his left, so when you see he aiming left you change your walking directions mid swing and land your hit right at his dumbass head that will not be covered anymore because he moved his parry box left, thinking the attack would come that way. Imagine sort of a Z motion in this example, thats how you bypass a parry box. Maybe lefties would have a advantage against someone who has "recipes" in their heads you know, people who instead of reacting to what they are seeing, they expect a pattern to reproduce. But this is a sign of lack of skill tbh, of course you can expect patterns, but don't rely on it or you will get rekt! If you want more info on parry box thing, this is an interesting read: http://forums.tornbanner.com/showthread.php/16502-Parry-Window-Bubble-and-Shields-PICS Scroll down to the "parry system" part. So basically, it depends on how the parry system will work. It could or couldn't be a advantage to play as left handed. If the "parry box" had the size of your weapon, then it could possibly be a advantage. But again, it wouldn't be unfair if we had these 2 overhead and slashes variations, since right handed people could do left-to-right swings as well.

Screams of pain/fear are a must in my opinion, imagine receiving a surprise axe in your shoulder, you would scream like fuck and probably start crying thinking you are for sure going to die. We need Silent Hill levels of disturbing sound, those kind of sounds that would make even the guy with the axe uncomfortable you know.

About comboing, I think it could be fun if well implemented, look at this video here for example, the first 20 secs of it: This kind of chained attacks could be very useful with blunt damage weapons, but axes and general cutting weapons that get stuck would not have the privilege of comboing if you manage to land a hit, because it would probably stuck in ones shoulder/head/whatever, or at least they could have bigger combo times when a hit is landed, I don't know. I would love to play zombie hunter stile tbh, but not at the moment. I think we need better mechanics to make it not only viable, but fun and deep, opening possibilities for teamplay (less KoS/more reasons to band together) and such.

You know why I want water cisterns and why I think its a glorious idea?? Because if we can poison them, it will add a lot of fun in fucking other people's bases and it would be glorious. I would pour zed juice all over people's cisterns tbh. Adds a lot of sabotage possibilities, you fake being friendly and once inside the fortress, POISON THEIR CISTERN HAHAHAHAHHAH

Lol we are just scratching the surface about melee mechanics here mate, the bare bones to make something that actually resemble a authentic melee fighting experience instead of a spam fest. Wanna taste REALLY complex melee combat? Look at this game, still in development (pré alpher at the moment): But I agree about the Arma based games, how could they handle such things I really don't know lol, but it would be a GREAT addition to this game, especially when you think about situations with multiple survivors together fighting zeds using melee stuff. You can create a real "teamplay" where one uses a shield, other uses a spear to go with the shield guy and give cover to a crazy ass berseker, etc. Imagine how awesome it would be to make a improvised shield with a barrel lid!

Well this sure makes things easier man! Better then go and edit those INI files!

Yep I know its conjecture, its just a opinion you see, since they are not talking about it and I'm kinda pessimist with stuff, thats my conclusion lol. But as I told ya, I really REALLY hope I'm wrong. Thing is, human reaction time is about .2 - .3 Chivalry: Medieval Warfare is a melee game that has a mechanic identical to DayZ (tracer based hit detection), the minimum windup is .375 and boy that is fast. FUCKING fast tbh See it for yourself, its goddamn hard to have a reaction time on .1 and .2: http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime We need to have "slow" (.375, but imo .4 is ideal) and "flinchable" windups otherwise the game becomes spam fest, because its easier and more effective to simply attack then try to dodge/parry anything, you are supposing that your opponent will be predictable and will attack when you think he will, but my friend melee is a complex thing you see, there are many ways to trick your opponent and make him miss the parry/block/dodge timing. Also, tracer based hit detection allow for "accelerated" attacks, for instance, get an axe that at the moment it has a overhead swing animation, if you look down and swing it, it will land faster on whatever you are aiming, if you look up and aim with the end of the animation, it will land "slower" on whatever you are aiming. Horizontal swings, they come right-to-left at the moment if I remember right, so turn your mouse to the left and it will connect faster, turn your mouse to the right and it will land slower. If we have fast as fuck windups (.1 - .2) no one will parry/block shit because it will look instant, and delayed attacks will fuck everyone + I don't think its really realistic, our survivors are normal people and not trained fighters, so lots of "overswings" shall be expected I think. Accelerated and delayed attacks are already a reality in this game lmao, they just need to add a few mechanics and balance. The in between attacks thing you say, thats something that could differentiate weapons a little further. For example, if we have comboing, a fireaxe could have a slower combo time then a wood cutting axe, that would have slower combo times then that little one handed axe and so on. Sledgehammer could have huge combo times but hit like a truck. This makes you think if you want to combo and keep the initiative risking being hit in between your attacks, or just give one attack and be safe to parry/dodge. Imagine someone with a sledgehammer against a guy with a knife, if the sledgehammer stars comboing like a prick, you dodge and hit him between his attacks that is when he is fully vulnerable. Thast another reason to at least some weapons have slow windup, otherwise we can have a sledgehammer "machinegunning" everyone, witch is not fun, balanced neither realistic.

Welp, the ones in the video are actually not really different from "form a line and attack" mentality. You know what was really different? DayZ mod's zed. They would NEVER walk in a straight line, they were unpredictable as fuck, that was really fun and a goddamn challenge to hit them with firearms lol. Infected AI as far as I know is about them recognizing stealth and not being stupid as fuck as the zeds in those firsts builds where they would see you behind walls and from miles away. Horde mechanics, what does that really mean? Will they act different when in a horde? Thats really interesting tbh I am aware of the new animation system, but that is one thing, melee complexity is another that might need the new animation system but it is another thing. Its not that they add new animation system and BOOMM melee is complex now. Have you tried to ask devs about melee combat? They are pretty evasive tbh, I really doubt we will see much more complexity then what we have now. I mean, look at the practical consequences of a better fleshed out melee: you will parry/dodge based on the animation you are seeing. A swing animation from a axe for example, that is one of the slowest melee weapons, has probably .1 or.2 seconds of windup witch is FAST AS FUCK to react to. Imagine a mad axeman in Elektro swing that shit at you, supposing that the ping is fucking perfect and there is absolutely NO lag at all, you barely have time to react. Now here comes the trick, have you ever seen a bohemia game that doesn't lag? How the fuck could we have a complex melee system with all this lag? And even if they fixed the lag, they must increase the windup of every single weapon in the game + increase the release time as well (when the swing animation deals damage), and polish every swing animation in the game because thats the information you will have to know when to parry/dodge. With zeds is the exact same problem, but at least their windup is bigger and you can react to, with no problems. Melee is a BIG thing, base building levels of big. But we hear absolutely nothing about it, witch makes me doubt that it will ever be much more fleshed out then its now. I HOPE I'M WRONG, really, but I don't think I am because I think that we would be hearing and testing things about it, but there is absolutely NOTHING about melee, most of the info that we have is because I asked the devs, and the answer is quite evasive. And really, people doesn't seems to care as well, so yeah, I'm really doubting about it tbh. Also yeah, I do think the zeds will resemble what we have seen by now. How much different you think they will be?

Read the whole post please. They could add 1 billion zeds, if I have a automatic weapon I can just line them up and open fire, run, reload, open fire, run, reload, open fire. Have you ever played Serious Sam? This suggestion ends up with a shallow Serious Sam kind of game inside DayZ, and if we are going this route, there needs to be one billion enemies on the screen (witch could create serious balance issues for fresh respawns) AND enemy variety, otherwise its shallow and easy. Killing zeds would be fun if this game had a bit more focus on melee combat instead of PEWPEPEPW.

Sounds quite boring tbh. For this playstile to be fun in my opinion, zombies need to be a real challenge and most important, present variety. I do believe they are going to be hard to deal with in the future, but they will fail in variety. You see, fighting zombies is a boring and repetitive thing if there are no other kind of zombies, like one that would have some sort of ranged attack, one that runs like fuck but its weak, other that is a "tanker" but kinda slow, other that is a fine balance in speed/resistance but is smart as fuck and so on. DayZ community is WAY to conservative to ever see some variety in zombies, so I do believe that this playstile will be very limited, more to zombie enthusiastic people, because it tends to be a repetitive thing for those who are not. Also, very low skill ceiling because you are dealing with predictable and non variable AI, once you master its weakness there will be zero challenge. In fact, if you have a automatic weapon with enough ammo, zombies like this game has (only melee, run in a straight line towards you no matter what) are really not a challenge at all. Hermit stile of gameplay suffers from the same thing, gets boring because its repetitive and the skill ceiling is way to low. Read wikipedia and GG, pr0 survival with mad sk1lls, game will last only for those who are enthusiastic about survival things. PVP is so prevalent because fighting other people is never the same thing, humans are unpredictable, and its the only thing one have to really master in this game, how to become a good killer, how to move tactically, how to use proper stealth and camouflage, how to trick people into traps etc. Its the only thing in this game that has a minimum of skill ceiling and presents itself as a real challenge, even for veterans. I like to play a mix of hermit/survivor and PVP, I find zeds in this game rather boring and seriously, its a pain in the ass to fight them. Its REALLY not fun, I don't know how they plan to be at release but circle strafing and spamming LMB with a melee weapon, while the zed spam attacks at you as well is rather stupid and shallow. If the game had more fleshed out melee mechanics it could be more interesting, like multidirectional attacks, comboing (you do a right to left horizontal attack and chain it in a left to right backswing, or chain a horizontal attack into a stab, or overhead, each of these variations having different advantages in different situations, with different weapons), defensive maneuvers like dodging and parrying etc, this by itself creates multiple fighting styles that players develop different from each other, thus create variety in zed combat AND create a skill ceiling in this sector, something to master you see. Different from "HUEE spam and pray while you get hit as well". For instance, with a better melee system there would be for example more defensive players and others would take the berserker route. Players that would rather have an axe (short range massive damage dealing, high risk-high-reward) and others would rather use a "spear" class of weapon (massive range, not so much damage output but you are safe to poke things in the head). Add "shields" to all this and you see where this can go. One guy with a shield covering the other with a spear, for example. Would add so much needed depth in the game as a whole and especially fighting zeds. Its really not fun to shoot dumbass targets that walk in straight line, or spam LMB while you get spammed as well. At the moment I see absolute zero reasons to play full zombie hunter, unless you are really enthusiastic about it. But you see, a better melee mechanic could add variety and skill to the combat without adding stupid ass zombies that throw shit at you lol, its a win-win situation, zed enthusiasts get happy because zeds stay realistic (lmao you understand what I mean right) and I get happy because fighting zeds will no longer be a pain in the ass dumb as fuck spam fest, and as a bonus I will finally be able to rekt people and zeds with my big melee skills! Ain't that great? Soft skills for melee is bad tbh, let TRUE MECHANICAL SKILL shine in this area pls, no abstract and unrealistic "stat" update as I cut heads off.

Something along these lines maybe: Its supposed to be sort of a scary game right, maybe this is way to "horror" to fit, I don't know, maybe a song that conveys better a "loneliness" feeling like this:

Very well made man, I do like the comics style and the musics as well, it makes all very cool to watch. Good work man!