snwh

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm not 100% sure about the glove idea tbh. It certainly is interesting, but I'm not sure it would make Gameplay any more fun. I'll have to think about that more before saying yay or nay. On the other side of things. I'm 90% sure the devs areplanning on adding a more robust disease system. Including common diseases. I know of stuff like, if you have a disease and you get killed, and then the guy who killed you picks up your shirt and wears it, he has a chance of getting the disease too. I'm not 100% clear on what causes them int he first place though. I would think stuff like hygiene and medicine is going to go along with that.

Cool! It's something I would go to, but I would have such horrible ping on that server, I'm not sure Battleye would even let me in. Still sounds fun. Let me hear of your results. I'm really interested, since I hope one day people will actually be able to do this with a reasonable amount of security and peace of mind. But thats just wishful thinking. PS I thought this thread was about making a designated safe zone, for trading and cowering in fear. I was all ready to go shoot it down xD

I really don't want NPC's. Not in the traditional sense. What I would like, thats sorta like NPC's, is ghost radio transmitions, coming from some abandoned base up north, perhaps one the player can't even get to. And things like, helicopter crashes starting as a flaming helicopter int he sky, desperately signalling for help before being turned into a twisted pile of scrapmetal and blood. (and god help the survivor who is standing under it)

Here's a few more things I've learned as a newer player myself. Raincoats and Gorka jackets will prevent you from getting wet in the rain, making it a lot easier to stay warm if its raining. In the newest patch, which should be coming out tomorrow, There is a very small shed with a small overhang on one side of it. In the experimental, you're almost guaranteed to find an lumber axe and a hacksaw here, if someone else hasn't looted it. If you can't find a Firefighter axe, the second best choices in my experience are the Hoe(I hear its getting nerfed tho) splitting axe, the stun baton (if powered), the cattle prod (if powered) and the sledgehammer (coming tomorrow in the new build). Learn the buildings that spawn the most loot, and what kind of loot that is. (Police station, fire station, Hospital, school, supermarket, piano house etc.) Spawn locations do change from time to time though. Like the blue portable generators spawn loot in experimental, but not in the current stable (may change tomorrow) third person mode is a good place to practice melee. Watch where your weapon actually goes where you swing it, if the weapon animation doesn't connect, you don't score a hit. That being said, weapons generally do hit where your crosshair is pointing in first person. Just get some practice in and zombies will die by the hundreds! Don't be too afraid of zombies, even if you don't have a melee weapon. Its actually not that hard to box zombies, with a little practice. If you punch them in the head (which isn't too hard) they will be knocked out for a very short amount of time. Repeat the headshots about six or seven times more, and you've kelled a zombie with your bare hands! Congrats! (Body shots don't work nearly as well.) Zombies have a tendency to respawn nearby after you've killed them. This may change, but just keep it in mind. I'm still a beginner, but I hope all that helps!

Warning: This post is a bit of a wall of text, and not particularly well organized. There is a TL;DR included at the bottom The Walkie Talkie in DayZ is a really interesting and unique item. However, to me, it seems overshadowed by the prevelence of programs such as Skype, Teamspeak and Steamchat. I have nothing against these programs (How else would you be expected to meet up with your friends?), and even if I did, they're not going away. So with that in mind, I've been trying to think up some ways to make the Walkie Talkie a bit more unique and useful. Give people a reason to use one over, or in conjunction with VoIP programs. The main advantage the radio has right now, is in talking to people you are not in teamspeak with. It's main disadvantage is they are only useful if other people carry them. Getting people to carry radios: My first suggestion has to do with the latter problem. It solves it using heli crash sites. If these sites randomly spawn around the map, and change up location periodically. It stands to reason that someone is flying over with a helicopter(and crashing). If you could tune your radio to 121.5 (international air distress) or 243.0 (military air distress), you could pick up their mayday, before they crash.This information could give you a rough idea of where the crash site will be. Thus making a radio essential for anyone wanting to hunt Heli's. Of course, this idea kind of sticks its nose where it doesn't belong. Making Heli's easier to find can have far reaching consequences, that would have to be thought about in detail. Off the top of my head, Rare loot becoming easier to acquire, Less point in tracking down heli's the traditional way(if you like that sort of thing) and more players congregating in areas around crash sites. This is all affected by how easy it is to track a heli based on its mayday, does it give you a city name? a town name? GPS co-ords? just a quadrant of the map or a landmark? The concentration of people can also be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look at it, though I'm inclined to think it would make things more interesting. Radio usability: However the side effect I'm going for would be everyone carrying radios, so by default people are more likely to use them. However, for that to actually happen, radios have to be more user friendly. As they are now, you have to be pretty lucky to catch someone speaking on them. So I think the first and most simple step is to add a monitor, search or seek function, found on most radios today. Quickly rotate through channels, looking for sound that's not static. Making it significantly easier to find someone to talk with. Hand in hand with seek functionality, is making radios more user friendly in general. It would be nice if radios had their own interface, allowing you to play with things like making preset frequencies you can toggle, frequencies to skip while seeking, volume, heck maybe even squelch. It would be something you control with your mouse. perhaps a menu you bring up that looks like a radio? You could have hotkeys for some functions if you like, but it wouldn't be that necessary. Cars would also have built in radios. Another issue with the current radios are their short range. They're called walkie talkies and not radios for a reason I suppose. I would personally change this. I think the most likely (and most interesting) radio to be used in a dayZ situation is a VHF(very high frequency) radio. This is the radio type used by boats and planes for communication. I believe it is also used by FM radio and ham radio operators. This type of radio (according to wikipedia) generally transmits a bit farther than line of sight. Meaning that if a player got up on top of a hill, he would be able to receive and transmit radio waves in a much larger radius around himself. I think this mechanic is rather interesting, it could also cause things like radio dead zones in valleys and such. Radio attachments and advanced ideas: Another thing worthwhile to consider would be attachments. Different types of antennas, such as Rubber Ducky antennas (look it up), whip antennas and telescopic, could have different ranges as well as different profiles (an extended telescopic antenna would be very tall, and probably easy to spot). Different battery types might provide different transmission powers and battery lives, headsets could make it so that nearby people can't hear the radio, (a throat mic could perhaps let you talk into the radio without being heard on local). If you wanted to put even more effort in, there could even be different models of radio, with different customization levels. Finally, another (unlikely to be implemented) thought, for much later in development, is having more powerful radios, requiring setup and such. Being able to put up a Yagi or monopole antenna to transmit to (or receive from) a large area. Perhaps you could even use a generator to power up one of the larger radio antennas around Chernarus and broadcast using that. Some possible uses for something like this would be Clan radio stations, warning people off their turf, players putting out bandit advisory or similar warnings, advertising trade or larger events, sending an SOS (or setting a trap) or even just putting on a radio talk show for the luls. I think if someone was sending out bandit advisories, that would be a very useful frequency to keep your eye on, no matter what your playstyle. Imagine walking into a city and seeing a note pinned on a sign "Electro Bandit Watch: 108.7" I think radios could be an outstanding feature of this game. I haven't quite collected all my thoughts on the matter yet, and I would also like to get more input from you, the forum goers. So I'll be updating this post int he near future. Its pretty obvious that I don't understand the workings of irl radios too well. So if anyone with experience with that would like to make some points or observations, that would be very welcome. I would also very much like to hear feedback from veteran players about Maydays from crashing Heli's. Do you think it would make things too easy? More interesting? Less interesting? As well as that, it would be nice to hear more ideas about how to get radios in the hands of other players in general. And of course your opinions on the other ideas I had. TL;DR Suggestions and ideas: Radios are able to pick up Heli distress signals before they crash, containing clues to where they may be.Radios get a 'seek' function, and their own interface, allowing you to change some settings with the mouse.Radio's ranges are based off of VHF radios, being able to pick up transmissions in line of sight and somewhat farther.Radios can have attachments, such as telescopic antenna and throat Microphones (allowing you to speak without nearby people hearing you)different models of radios, not all models can take all attachmentsLarger, more powerful radios that have to be set up, allowing you to broadcast or receive from a larger area.Ability to use large abandoned radio towers, using a generator and some ingenuity. (this is iffy) Thanks for reading this. Please give me some good input! as a disclaimer, I am not a terribly experienced player, and I know very little about IRL radios.

I guess we'll have to wait till the new engine to see if they do an animation for Heli's crashing. I know I saw a thread with it as a suggestion around here somewhere. I think it would be pretty cool if they spawned in the sky, and then went crashing down into the ground. But ultimately, the main reason I suggested the Mayday for Heli's is so that more players pick up radios lol. Since you can't have a radio convo if no one else has a radio.

Yeah, there are definitely some underground structures in the game right now. But I am 100% for things like basements. That radio tower looking thing is pretty cool too. But with Barricading, a basement would make a great base. I think they can make them. The question is, will basements be added to normal houses or not? adding them to more than a few houses will probably be a lot of work. I suspect they would need to modify the terrain around every house they wanted to add a basement to.

I hear you, and I'm doing mostly the same thing. Just pushing out ideas. I only program a little, so I'm not terribly sure what kind of a load either of these ideas would cause. If I remember correctly though... I think I read the server checks an entire quadrant of the map at a time to see how much loot there is, and if its low, it spawns some in. I think. SO I wonder if its only counting despawned(looted) items or if its counting all items. If it was the former, it wouldn't be much more load to check its time created versus current server time. But I guess we shouldn't be doing the devs job for them xD

Hmm, that's kind of an interesting point to think about. I think irl, a Heli signal would probably reach most of Chernarus, mostly because its so high up, But this all depends on how good the receiving radio is, how much altitude the heli has lost, etc. My problem is, I've never really gone helicopter hunting, so I don't know what its like currently. I personally think that if the rough location was broadcasted, that would cause the areas population to spike, which could cause a lot of interesting player interaction. Though, most people would probably be hostile to everyone else, since they know everyone is after the heli. In my head, they would still have to do a fair amount of searching for the heli, they would only know the general area, like an area a fourth or eighth of the map in size. That way nearby cities would get a lot of people in them too rather suddenly. But maybe thats not the right way to go about things. I'm sure theres a good argument for keeping people a bit more spread out, and having heli sites as a calm, but hard to find place to loot nice gear.

Most people seem to want to reduce UI though it seems, which is probably why they don't have those icons in there. I suspect the status reports every thirty seconds are just placeholders until they come up with something that works well. I kind of like this idea, but if they did those animations in game, it would have to be when your char is standing still, which means you wouldn't be told you're hungry or thirsty right when you're hungry or thirsty. You have the same problem in the inventory screen. The having to check your shoes every thirty seconds thing going on in experimental actually taught me something. Having to open your inventory every thirty seconds to check your status is very immersion breaking. It probably wouldn't be very different with this system. Perhaps if an audio went with it? But that could be just as annoying as the current 'I'm cold' messages, if your character goes "Buuur!" every minute, yah know? I really don't know whats a good idea to fix it to be honest, I'll give it a bit of thought.

Well, Dogs and Horses are pretty much the two most likely animals to make it in if the devs decided to add in tamable animals. And they did decide to add them. Dogs are already confirmed. That being said... Hawks! omg, that's a brilliant idea! I'm not 100% sure I like the spotting mechanic, (and I really don't like the backpack mechanic) but w/e, Hawks! I hadn't thought about that at all, never crossed my mind. That has got to be the coolest animal companion you could have in DayZ, I really hope they add them. The picture with the hawk is pretty inspiring too. Nice work. Did you draw them yourself?

I think that's what a lot of people are saying. Personally I don't feel the need for a massive array of military grade weapons (more than we have now though). But whats the point of them if they aren't hard to find. Something that'll give you an edge, rather than something that if you don't have it is shooting yourself in the foot. Just because people want variety in guns doesn't mean they want them laying all over the place. Its completely doable to carry ammo for a gun you like more than your current, so if you're lucky enough to find your favorite gun later, you can swap the two out. For the record, I'm on the fence about more military weapons. I like more variety, but I think they should be harder to get your hands on. Weirdly enough, at the same time, I think that civilian firearms shouldn't be that hard to come by.

hmmm, I think the whole persistence thing was partially to make loot carry over. If you found a Mosin, in a house somewhere, but you already have a gun you like. Then you die two resets later. You can go back to that house and find that mosin. But I agree something needs to be done about the loot that's getting left behind. I would say something like, individual timers for loot. The longer an item is left there, the more likely it is to despawn. But to keep persistence working in the way I described, the more rare an item is, the less likely it is to despawn. Guns, by default would probably be counted as rare. It also means that things like gas masks and skull Balaclavas wouldn't despawn on you either. Which is pretty important. If rare items like those are constantly despawning, then your chance of finding one goes down dramatically. However chemlights, books, hard hats, these would all have relatively short despawn timers.

Heh, this reminds me of the days when I played Urban Terror, man that was a long time ago. The SPAS was the worst weapon in the entire game, you literally could not do worse lol. But man was it a fun game. Idk, I really don't know how useful an addition a SPAS is. Then again, I don't know its irl firing characteristics. Is our new pump action shotgun basically the same thing?Because if so, the niche the spas would have filled, is already filled by a civilian weapon. Also, I would rather the devs time be spent elsewhere, than making an infinite amount of weapons.For one, you would never be able to find the one you want, for two, there would be so many different ammo types you couldn't find the ammo you want. And if you say they could just make some rarer, then whats the point in making them in the first place? I don't want to come off as abrasive, but I really don't like that idea. I would much rather them focus on adding different gameplay elements.

A beacon is an interesting idea. I wonder if real helicopters have something like that? I'm not too knowledgeable on it. I actually really love the idea of some radio signals still being transmitted from dead military bases and the like, it'd be pretty darn atmospheric. at least the first couple times you listened to it, then it might get old. Then again, you might have to speak russian to actually get the broadcasts lol.

Hmmm, I'd prefer something a bit more elegant than a no-spawn radius. But I really can't think of a better idea myself. Until/if they let you build your own custom base, this really only applies to indoor bases. Locking/barring the doors, closing up the windows. It doesn't matter much for a tent in the middle of nowhere. So the question is, can the engine tell what is inside a house and whats not? And if it can't, can it easily be programmed to do so? It would be nice if the server could automatically tell if a house was completely locked up, and make people spawn outside accordingly. You could also use the pre-existing beds to log out with. (or if you want to lock yourself in a factory or something, make your own or use a sleeping bag). Speaking of factories, I wonder if you could turn just one room into a base, by locking it up. Hmmmm. Well, that's my two cents.

I don't play DayZ to kill zombies or to kill other players. If I wanted to do that I could play any number of titles that do it a lot better. I play DayZ to survive, with or despite other players. Survive nature, survive zombies, survive other people. So the question here is, does a shoe degradation mechanic enhance the game? If it just stops at, 'shoes wear down over time, you take a bit of damage from wearing ruined shoes' then no, it doesn't really add much. You could say that it adds preparation for going a long distance. If you were moving from the far east tot he far west of the map, you might have to stock up on some shoes or duct tape. And it could also add a bit more scarcity to shoes, causing more conflict between a person lacking shoes and one having shoes. But in reality this isn't that much impact to the game. However this change from shoes being static objects, that you just have for the sake of having, opens up the doors to new possibilities involving your choice in footwear. Its the first step to things like a shoes performance changing according to the terrain. A noticeable difference between wearing combat boots and sneakers. Sneakers hold up well on hard surfaces like pavement. They're light and won't tire you out, they don't make a lot of noise, they allow you quite a bit of dexterity with your ankle, they breath well too. Whereas combat boots are a bit loud and clunky. But they perform a lot better in the woods, with superior grip, waterproofing, ankle support, not to mention massive durability. There are a lot of different shoes in DayZ, and this is the first step towards them all having unique traits, beyond being able to stick a knife in one or having one not be able to get damp. And to weigh in my two cents on the realism issue. Almost every pair of shoes I've had has not lasted more than a few months before showing significant signs of wear and tear. I have to replace most pairs after six months, whether I like it or not. Holes where the sole attaches to the top is the most common cause for me, after that its the sole and tread wearing so thin that the shoe isn't really useful anymore. Threads rots or glue wears out. And that's when you get the massive holes. I don't know about other climates, but where I live (which is temperate) I'm almost certain to get wet socks if I have a hole in my shoe. Mainly during spring fall and winter. The rain (or melting snow) causes mud and puddles, which inevitably gets into my shoes, at some point or another. Shoes degrading is definitely realistic, now we just need interesting consequences for them degrading.

My thoughts are that if there were only a handful of cars, like ten, I would either never get a chance to get in a car. They would all be squirreled away by more active players and groups. Or I would get killed if I tried to drive it on a medium pop server. Probably even a low pop server. I think some form of transportation should definitely be easier to come by. Plus the whole idea of 'just x amount of cars' is a little bit odd, in that if there were ten vehicle types, there would only be one of each. Not that I know if there's going to be ten types or not. I would think it more logical that vehicle's are ranked according to their usefulness. Large transports, Humvee's, fast trucks, things like those would be at the top, meaning they would be very rare. Whereas bicycles, mopeds, gas-guzzlers, fragile or badly damaged sedans, slow cars and the like would be at the bottom making them more common and accessible. I don't think its such a bad thing if you could play for an hour and have a bicycle you can use, that doesn't detract any from finding a jeep and fixing it up and driving off. I would also mention that it would be interesting if all the vehicles had varying states of decay. Higher tiered ones more likely to be damaged (less hitpoints, need to be repaired) as well as more likely to have missing or damaged parts. Making them more of a chore to get into working order (that's not even to mention finding all the required tools and sticking them in a toolbox). That would in a sense make them "Rarer" because it takes more work to actually get them going, making them all the more of a joy to ride when you finally do. I got a few other ideas worth mentioning for vehicles, like gas tank leaks (which are probably already planned) and different levels of storage, but this probably isn't the thread for that.

It's definately an interesting idea. I think this sort of thing needs to be thought about long and hard before any changes are made to the current system though. I have no problems with playing inventory tetris, and I kinda like the idea of rotating items. Something else to think about is item weight. a pair of damaged cargo pants might start ripping if you load up the pockets with cans of beans and then take off at a jog. Though, that thought probably goes in another thread.

Love it, an interesting way to earn a tactical advantage