Serrath

Two deaths in thirteen are murders. That seems like a pretty good figure to me. A lot of folks are saying bandits are out of control, but them's clearly not the facts. (If you disagree, please do so elsewhere, I would like for this to be a place to contribute ideas, not debate gameplay. That can be done in the appropriate forum.) I'd like to open the discussion for ideas to improve the quality of PvP rather than trying to curb it. We want to create tense PvP situations where players are invested in their kills and in their life. Social tension, paranoia, desperation, you get the gist. You've all seen The Walking Dead. It's got zombies all over, but it's the social tension that really makes the show what it is. Same deal with Day Z. It's the player-player interactions fueled by this zombie apocalypse that make the best moments in the game. It's THESE kind of moments I want to see more of. If 1/13 deaths is something as exciting as this, PvP's doing pretty damn well. It's the sniped-out-of-nowhere mechanic that doesn't really add much tension after a certain point. (Once you know to avoid places you can easily be sniped, that mechanic's reached its saturation point.) THESE moments: http://imgur.com/a/6SEcl You get the gist. This is good PvP. This is what we love. So how do we make this happen more? My thoughts: 1) More Cooperative Goals (i.e. Blood transfusions, vehicles, etc.) 2) Create a need for partnership from the get-go. (Transfusions, outnumbered by zombies, etc.) I'd really like it if everyone in the community could give a quick idea or two here to improve the PvP experience. I'm not talking about nerfing weapons or punishing bandits, you get what we're after. Think subtle mechanics!

I'd love to see loud weapons like the Lee Enfield draw in large numbers of zombies from all directions if fired repeatedly from one area. (Maybe spawn them out of visual range and have them slowly creep in as if they've been around all along.) Something like that would really give the world a great feel. Start a thread for it!

No zombie is safe from Chicago Ted

It's a must for surviving the apocalypse, be great with new players or more dynamic features on the map. "Meds ->" or "^ Guns ^" type spray graffiti. Hopefully ROCKET's created the kinda environment where people won't be spraying penises all over.

Pretty self-explanatory; flashlight should be something you can beat people down with. A nice low-damage weapon with insignificant knockback compared to larger weapons like the crowbar and fire axe (they call it a hatchet, but we know what it is).

You're absolutely right, and I agree with you. Let me explain myself better: Snipers DO add tension, and it's important up to a point. Once a certain % of your deaths are due to snipers, that tension stops building. You need enough sniper-related deaths that you're paranoid about that, but then stop; more sniper deaths doesn't add more tension once that particular flavor of paranoia's set in. I'm not suggesting any weapon nerfs; I want snipers to continue sniping just as they were.

If everyone picks Cherno/Elektro, you're hopping into a PvP madhouse. Give equal items to all spawns. Players will naturally be encouraged to learn outlying towns' loot areas to avoid the PvP frenzy of major cities.

Pretty self-explanatory: Add disease risk to drinking canteen water filled from ponds/lakes. Make the water bottle say it's filled with dirty water. Allow players to boil the water in canteens using a campfire. Boiling turns dirty water into clean water. Dirty water - infection risk from drinking Clean water - no risk from drinking Obviously canteens filled at pumps wouldn't be at risk.

Really, without betrayal, there's no tension. The co-op dynamic is great, but part of what makes it so interesting in Day Z is the tension between players, the paranoia that creeps up. "Is he going to shoot me in the back for my beans/ammo?" However, casual betrayal, along the lines of, "I wonder if he's got an extra clip for my pistol. I'll wager one bullet into the back of his skull that he does..." is uninteresting. People should be betraying one another because they're desperate, not out of idle curiosity. I don't want to punish bandits, I don't want a method for establishing trust. I want more reasons to cooperate and more reasons to betray people. I want to add to the tension, and make your heart pound every step your buddy takes. He's a godsend, and you're a godsend to him, but the temptation to plunder...

I'm assuming the probability is weighted by a multiplier based on your visibility. So it'd be an exponential dropoff as you get further away, but the probability is multiplied by whatever your visibility is. So if you're standing, at any given distance you have 5x the probability of being spotted as you do prone at that same distance. Watch your visibility and audibility meter as you move; they should increase. (If you move very slowly, this may not be true.) The exponential model, we can assume, is for being seen under the exact same conditions, with distance as the independent variable.

There's bacteria in all water, you always run this risk. I'm not talking cancer here, I'm talking bacteria. Take a trip overseas, especially places like South America and India, the natural bacteria can make you sick. Same thing applies where you live, it'll just happen much less. Plus you've got whatever zombie outbreak, and now we've got tons of festering infected trolling around; that's gotta count for something. There's a reason soldiers pack water purification tablets.

In your pre-release testing, does the new spotting feel organic? Also, how's the CPU load compare to previous detection?

Bingo, DemonGroover. Evasion isn't a race, it's a chase.

It should be destructible via melee weapons, but it's certainly an important tool.

Yeah, I was doing pretty well in life last week, but then I got old, and now I'm not doing so hot. Okay, me being a serious dick aside, there's actually already a mechanism for this; disease.

Exactly what Hendrix said. You're a bigger target. There's a reason you don't start with everything someone might need anymore.

There are far more elegant solutions than vaporizing all the loot within half a klick. Also not a fan of the server messages. What do they do about this in games like WoW when a whole clan spawns in somewhere in a PvP zone? Do they just let them wreck whatever player they spawned in on top of?

SystemiK: In this thread, players have been using "spawn" to designate the player's character being manifested in the mission, not necessarily a new character. I don't like the terminology either, but try to read their posts with that in mind.

There's a system in place already where the player remains in his current position for a short period of time after disconnecting. I think what you've outlined is a much prettier alternative, and I'm completely on board with it. tl;dr: Worse version exists. Yes, good idea.

If fists would get you infected, getting hit by a zombie would surely get you infected. I think it's safe to assume you're immune to zombification. (But you can get a cold!)

I'm pretty sure removed obstacles respawning with server restart is a bug; add to the existing report or file your own in the appropriate forum if you've noticed this.

Fog's coming, it's going to be an environmental effect like rain. I'm not sure if it'll hit all of Chernarus at once or not, but you'll see it in 1.7.2 on Monday. Give it a go and if you have any thoughts on it, make a whole thread for it after you've played the patch a little, 'cause I'm sure lots of players will have input to that end. I'm all about zombie hordes, and I think that's something we might see ROCKET playing with shortly after 1.7.2 when the optimizations we've heard about hit. As far as the grass goes, I'd actually be interested in seeing taller grass in some areas, so that crouch-walking players are in a sort of corn-maze situation, where as you tread, you knock the grass down. It'd make things pretty interesting.