emuthreat

For something you are going to lose every time you die, it should be significant enough to add value to avoiding death. This does not. Valuing the character more over time is what I take to be the intended outcome of soft skills. This does not accomplish that at all. Not only is this meaningless, it meaninglessly permanently punishes a player by locking out at one end of the scale or the other, albeit at an extreme of repetition unlikely to bee seen from normal and indifferent playstyles. Here goes my rant: I disliked this concept when it was first announced, and I still feel the same. Not only does it grossly oversimplify the skills learned by practicing different actions, but forces a false dichotomy of broad specialization, rather than specific skill improvements. The saving grace in this is that it is so slight as to be meaningless. But if it is meaningless, then why bother at all? Is it that the 'bar-based' HUD system could only accommodate one skill bar without being obtrusive? Is the problem limiting soft skills having to do with the HUD in general? I strongly dislike the HUD being visible on normal screen. I would prefer it to be in inventory only unless values change fast or has become near-critical? As it stands, I hate the implementation of soft skills in this manner. It is either meaningless, or punishes a player for doing too much of one thing; of which, neither is more authentic, nor adds valuable as a 'gamey' skill system in the supposed "anti-game." And here is my suggestion to make it more meaningful: Why not add a proper skill advancement system, but keep it entirely behind the scenes? No need to see the progress, and no need to focus on grinding. Just keep the values hidden except for observable results, and make the benefits increase along a f(x)=√x function with an arbitrarily balanced scale to determine the practical maximums. This would make a steep climb to get to the middle ground, and cause decreased gains after the average maximum to the point of irrelevance. The tangent slope of the function could be used as a rough percentage scale of completion, with a slope of 1/100 generally understood to be the maximum practical point of mastery. Each action within the relevant categories could generate an "X" value of experience, and the "Y" value would be the proficiency. A player would have to apply or 100 bandages, salines, blood bags, morphines, epi-pens, splints, antibiotics, charcoal tabs, or vitamins to effectively maximise their medical competency. But general class competency would only generate a 50% efficacy at a new task under that class. Each specific task could have a 50 repetition cap for maximum efficacy. So if someone grinds bandaging themself a hundred times, they would have 100% general medical competency but only see a 50% efficacy rate applying splint on the first try. After applying 25 splints, they would see a 75% result--either in time taken to perform the action, or quality of the outcome. This would lead to situation where a player might say "sorry dude, you're probably only going to get half of this saline bag because I've never done this before. I have a friend in polana who has been alive for like three weeks, and I can give you two can of peaches to help hold you over until we get there. Do you think we can make it there safely, or do you just want me to try my best and see how much of this saline we can get into you?" These are the types of interaction that I want to see the game facilitate or even force. Mechanical, structural, medical, agricultural, naturalist and culinary skills come to mind foremost considering what DayZ already has to offer. These six categories could be the baseline for soft skills, whereby each available action in the game could be tagged with different modifiers of what skill type affects the outcome of each action, and which actions add to the experience value of each skill type. Gun cleaning and modification would add to mechanical skills; though a gunsmith and mechanic might both have their mechanical skills fully developed each may only be half capable of switching roles efficiently until the specific tasks were completed by each player enough times to master them. This would add a level of gameplay decision making that would add to immersion in ways we can't predict. Players might have their driver of the V3S cargo shot, who also happens to be the most experienced medic. The next most experienced medic is also the most experienced mechanic. Does he start to work on the truck that crashed when the driver was shot, so they can try to escape more quickly, or should he try to revive the two unconscious players so they can cover the repair of the truck? Do they delegate the best shot, but the next highest medical skilled player to revive the other two unconscious players? The concept of soft skills can add so much to the game. This implementation adds nothing. It only creates an unnecessary complication of gameplay wherein a player must actively watch a meter to avoid marginal loss of competency at half of all actions in the game. To this implementation of soft skills, I say Fuck No!

I know, but you did say that now that the rag glitch is out of the game it is not as easy to suicide spawn cycle to meet friends easier. You obviously are in favor of having a way to spawn closer to a friend, so you can play the game sooner. This is implying that the process of spawning in, orienting yourself, and gearing up on the way to your destination is not playing the game. I fundamentally disagree with that notion. Part of the DayZ experience is exactly that. It is a distasteful experience that some people try to avoid by killing themselves as quickly as possible if they don't like the starting location. I do it sometimes too if it is an emergency. Survival is always a consideration. Even if you get a Berezino spawn and run to meet your friend running towards you from Sverograd, there is always the chance that you will get eaten by wolves along the way, thus wasting more of your time before you can actually start playing the game. Survival is hard sometimes, and it rewards you for living longer to avoid having to respawn as often. Maybe what you want is some kind of parachute spawn system that has gonnen popular, and that would probably be pretty cool in Dayz to be honest. But maybe it belongs in a battle royale mode, rather than the base game.

I think this topic has derailed quite a bit. Here, let me get it back on track. OP is upset that the RAG GLITCH is no longer in the game. Basically, some people have become accustomed to abusing a bug in an unfinished version of the game to get a more desirable spawn. The complaint is literally that sometimes it takes a long while before one can find an easy way to die; in a survival game; for the purpose of meeting up with another player--of which the location is already known due to the use of TS/Discord or text messaging services. As has always been the case, the only way to get a new spawn is to die. And without an abusable broken quirk of the old player controller, this can no longer be reliably done within 5 seconds of spawning. This topic is a non issue. Sorry.

I would have to disagree with this. The reason that the AK74 was made, is that the 7.63x39 round had poor enough ballistics that 400+ meter engagements with 5.56mm were statistically unfavorable by a significant margin. In response to this, they opted for an intermediate calibre, high velocity platform that could compete with the NATO rounds in common usage. Compared to an M16, the AK47 made groupings 27% less tight at only 100 meters. At 300 meters, the grouping is on par with the width of a torso. Beyond 400 meters, when combined with skill of the operator and environmental conditions, it was arguably a waste of ammo and concealment to even attempt to take a shot, regardless of what the opposing forces were using; and if the enemy forces were armed with a more accurate system, it would be extremely foolish to start an engagement at these distances. Here's a handy little bit of article that illustrates this concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_AK-47_and_M16#Range_and_accuracy At 200 meters the M16 and AK47 are on par at 100% and 99% of a single-shot hit-probability on Crouching Man (E-Silhouette) Target. At 300m, the M16 is still at 100%, while the AK falls to 94%; at 400m the score is 96% to 82%; and at 500m it's 87% to 67%. Realistically, the prospect of engaging someone at 400 meters with an AK47 for a first strike attempt is far less attractive than with an M16, and at 500+ meters it could best be characterized as "why bother." Interestingly enough, according to the table from wikipedia, the AK has a lethal range 656 meters greater than the M16, due to the much greater weight bullet. Good luck hitting the target, though. This might remind you of how it felt using an AKM in DayZ in many cases. Personally, I hardly ever carried the gun, and never voluntarily engaged anyone at ranges of less than 200m with an intention of actually hitting anything. Some people feel differently, and I know a few who can hit players pretty consistently at ranges of 400 or 500 meters, but not always on the first shot; in these cases they are operating it as more of a SAW than an AR, or sometimes as a battle rifle with a large magazine. Now let us get down to the bones of what this inherent accuracy by design means for each weapon and its unique character and feel in DayZ. Would you regard the FNX as being slightly superior in accuracy to the 1911, irrespective of magazine capacity or iron sights; and the 1911 greatly superior to the Derringer? Imagine if they introduced a couple more variants of the Magnum, with a 3-inch and 8-inch barrel in addition to the standard 6-inch barrel. Would one expect these to perform identically, and if so, why? With the new inventory matrix, I could clearly see the benefit to carrying a snub nose to save weight and only take up a 2x2 grid, in comparison to the likely 2x3 grid of the base model; on the other side of the spectrum, some players might choose the 8-inch barreled model with a 2x4 inventory footprint as a semi-primary weapon, or even add a pistol scope and make it take up 3x4 slots. Without a dispersion value, all of these minor changes in the character of different weapons would be rendered pointless to the player, and ultimately we would lose a significant amount of variety and realism, for which the playerbase likely chooses to play this game in the first place. @DannyDog I get what you are saying, that when you combine sway with bullet drop and automatic fire, the dispersion is the least significant variable in play. And this could very well be the case. But for some of the examples I listed above, it doesn't really make sense. I'll give one more example to try to prove the point -- Sawn-off rifles. Assuming that sawing off a rifle would not interfere with the ability to mount a scope, we should expect the shorter one to be inherently less accurate. Currently they remove the front sights and magically veto our ability to attach any optics, but if this were to change, what is to keep everyone from chopping off 10 inches of their Winchester so it will fit inside a vest, yet maintain the same accuracy due to lack of a dispersion value?

It seems like a pretty cool thing to add, being able to administer saline or blood bags to oneself. As I read your duct tape idea, a couple ideas came to mind, one of them quite silly. I realized that armbands would be an easy way to implement this, perhaps adding duct tape afterwards to prevent it from falling out if you have to sprint with it a bit. Balancing this self-administered IV mechanic could add all sorts of fun things; like the adrenaline from having been shot recently, or another bullet whizzing by, would unsteady your hands. If you bandage up and pop an epi-pen to buy yourself some buffer shock damage in case you get hit again, there would be a 1 minute cooldown in which trying to administer the IV kit would fail because your hands are unsteady. In this way, it would further reinforce another player needing to administer the IV, given that they have not just been shot at and now have unsteady hands too. Okay, now for the silly idea for how to improvise a mobile IV stand for the injured survivor on the go. Combine Saline Bag IV with cowboy hat, Use Saline Bag IV, put on cowboy hat. And with that, I think I just won the internet for today. Just for good measure, I decided to finally take my most rudimentary first steps of using GIMP to make you this wonderful abomination:

You're preaching to the choir here, but that is quite a large interval of time between those sources. Regardless, the inherent precision should differ between platforms of the same caliber. A quick browsing of the relevant discussion boards came back with a figures of about 1 MOA reported for the T/C Contender (Longhorn analog), and 0.5 to 0.75 MOA for the Model 70 in .308.; unsurprisingly, people reported the .270 models to have a precision of as low as .25 MOA. Personally I'd be tickled pink if the Longhorn shot like a laser gun, but it would be pretty cheesy from a realism standpoint. Why not do away parabolic trajectories while they're at it, eh? Surely raycast trajectories would free up some resources... I wonder just how many of us players with more stick-with-it-tude have bought a second or even third copy of the game in the last year or two. I've bought four copies altogether myself, between my twin characters and a couple gifts. Ahhh, nothing beats logging back in with a different steam account in the same location, and getting a second trip back to the coast within 5 minutes. But seriously, they've already mentioned that cross platform hive compatibility was technically possible, but not feasible, because PC and XBOX One would have obvious imbalances that could not be reconciled. So in light of this, why not give PC players what we want? It just seems janky to remove at this point.

Well damn, now I regret speculating on the reason for considering the removal of dispersion. Maybe when assigning tasks to the people working on the gun mechanics, they got to dispersion and just decided to skip it and see if anyone notices. It brings an interesting question though. How long into stress tests or experimental branch would it have taken one of us to notice that there was no dispersion? Maybe Peter should have just not mentioned it, and we'd be all the happier for it. That is, until some hapless killjoy decides to test a grouping and ruins the game for us all...

I think the suggestion of 30 seconds to self-administer a saline sounds great; cut it to ten for giving saline to another; and double those values if it's a blood bag. Saline and blood don't regen health, but rather blood value needed to regen health. I'm not sure how it works now, but waiting for health to regen until shock value was somewhere arbitrarily balanced close to zero makes sense; that way, hunkering down and giving oneself saline would only solve half the problem. Player would still need to shoot an epi-pen, and they could add cooldowns on each to prevent spamming self-healing tactics over maybe a half-hours time.

Bullet dispersion is such a basic concept for firearms simulation that it seems lacking to leave it out, especially after already being a part of the experience for so long. Sadly, I'm thinking the removal of dispersion, if being considered, would be as a sort of handicap geared towards players using a dual stick control scheme. In other words, DayZ might be considering the removal of certain features to deal with problems of balancing and accessibility in console versions. If this is the case, I hope they reconsider.

@Guy Smiley Yeah. It's a nice addition, but you get to fully laden stamina penalty at maybe 60% of the weight you can pack into a set of completely full max inventory gear. It seems like a lot of the weight spectrum is left unused at the moment, giving less overall variety to the stamina system.

Awww, c'mon dude. I'm all for in-depth mechanics that add reasonable and predictable results. But I gotta question your motivations in declaring the first iteration of the stamina system to be the final form, and that any feedback is just whining about not getting everything easily. Maybe we need to take some measurements and see how real-world analog tests work out. All I'm saying, is that it feels off in the current form, and might need some tweaking. It just feels a bit extreme right now. Maybe we should be quantifying the problem?

A well-balanced one would be nice. Might be nice to have some reasoned discussion instead of suggestive hyperbole, too.

It's a step in the right direction for sure, but I'd just like to see the weight penalties taken back a notch or two, and have a slow conditioning over time to increase max stamina. Considering that the sprint feels more like a loping run than a sprint, an unladen player should be able to sprint a fair distance longer than currently possible in one cycle. It's all just issues of balancing, at this point. It just doesn't sit well that the difference between having a fair amount of stuff, and being stuffed to the gills with ammo and magazines is next to nil. I noticed almost no difference between having a Taloon backpack with a fair amount of food and water, an extra knife, and some chicken breasts, and having a mountain backpack chock full of AK mags. Admittedly, I tend to lean more towards higher mobility because I tend to play as a walking loot pinata. But the seeming lack of scaling of this new system makes it seem a bit arbitrary and overbearing. U.S. Marines are known to carry between 70 to 100 lbs of gear on combat patrols, which is ridiculous and causes chronic injuries, but they do it, albeit without much sprinting involved. You might be thinking "but that is after lots of physical training" right about now, and I totally agree. I'd like to see the stamina system reward the longevity of the player by increasing the total stamina available over time, as well as adding to the amount of stamina a fully laden player has available. This way, a fresh spawn will not be able to sprint to Tisy while picking up everything they see along the way, but a player who has survived a few trips around Chernarus will have about as much stamina while laden, as a fresh character would have. Not only would this serve as an incentive to keep yourself alive for the long term, but also give more seasoned characters a higher chance of general survivability. No longer could a fresh spawn chase down and punch out a geared player with relative ease, but that geared player would only have double the stamina of the freshie if he drops his pack and empties his pockets to flee. Furthermore, endgame characters would have an ad-hoc class specialization decision. Would you still take it slow and jog through the woods carrying loot to drop points, or do you run lean as a scout and cover more ground to ensure the safety ahead for your friends carrying the load? Is it better to carry that car battery, spark plug and gas can across the map with you, or drop your bag in a central location and only carry your food to look for vehicles? When it is all said and done, the success of the stamina system will rest in a delicate balance between the availability of food in the loot economy and the will of the player to endure an extremely slow-paced play session. Those wanting to cover ground quickly will be constantly frustrated that two cans of beans, a knife and a water bottle reduces their stamina by half, and those who like to collect things will simply get tired of walking everywhere. The stamina system is likely a make-or-break issue for a large percentage of the playerbase. And I assume my preferred compromise of setting the base stamina depletion and about half of the current level, 33% nerfing of weight penalties, and add a lifespan potential to double total stamina cap and reduce consumption by 15-25% will still not be enough for the quick action players, while hardcore players will think it's too generous. As it sits, the difference is huge. It went from 30 minutes to NWAF from almost any spawn, and turned into 2 or 3 hours from most spawns, depending heavily on luck. There is plenty of room to make stamina have an impact, without turning off all but the most dedicated players.

If you have tons of food, you won't be sprinting much at all, in my experience. I'd like to see a bit more balancing on this system. Currently it starts to become painstakingly tedious to travel as soon as you have a backpack or vest. Plate carrier basically means no more sprinting anymore at all. With some of the recent changes removing authenticity in the spirit of playability and fun, I wouldn't mind if they made the stamina system significantly less punishing.

The added difficulty from "authentic" simulation would add prestige to success and likely draw skilled players from various other combat platforms to test their skills in DayZ. With modding, everyone will get what they want anyways. Why not provide the most comprehensive platform possible? @-Gews- I agree with everything you are saying, but will and implementation is the issue. I padded my suggestions with a certain amount of gamey realism in the spirit of going with the flow. @sneakydude Experimental is not out yet. Stress tests occasionally, and offline mode are the current .63 experience.

@wipecity I don't mean to be crass, but could it possibly be a failure to adapt that ruined your 'organic PVP' on that server? Having taken part in a series of experiments in redirecting player flow and location of hotspots, I find it hard to believe that you couldn't just stake-out areas of interest around, and main corridors to and from, the trader base. It only takes three or four days on an active private server for the prevailing daily meta to adjust to changes in locations of interest. If it is the case that you simply couldn't adapt to an ongoing siege scenario, and left the server for that reason, then with whom is your beef? Points of interest only add to the character and complexity of each server, and learning to work with or around those can define your success as a group on a server. For sure, the fact of knowing the main hub of player activities should increase your chances of finding interactions. Hell, you could have even set up your own trader base to compete with UN and offer haven to bandits. I hate to say you are playing the wrong game, or playing the game wrong, but you gotta respect the flow of each server. You wouldn't go on GVE and complain that the Tisy and NW airfield were dead, would you?

FWIW, I think maybe dispersion is only necessary on automatic fire to maintain an authentic feel. Most unmodified guns have negligible dispersion (reads precision for those with a science background) at the effective range of each weapon if one isn't trying to punch a hole in the center of a coin. As @-Gews- was hinting at, accuracy is dependent on the skill of the operator, and precision is the result of the quality and consistency of the system. Here is a handy little graphic to illustrate the difference:

Some impressions: Holy crap! Cows drop twenty steaks apiece. I shot two (both surprising one-hit kills with IZH rifle) and spent the better part of a half hour cooking and eating to avoid wasting any, and I still hauled a dozen raw steaks up to Tisy by the time it was all said and done. Badly damaged hunting knife yielded consistently between 82% and 86% cuts of meat from a few different chickens. Zombies will kill you with one hit if their first charging attack lands. I learned very quickly to get on top of someplace safe and clear the area, rather than risk being surprised. Eating chicken and steak takes 5 to 7 seconds each, while beans, tacbac, and tuna take around 20 seconds to fully consume. Stones are somewhat hard to come by, and knives will ruin after less than 10 uses in most cases. Items removed from a stick or gun appear larger until placed in inventory matrix, at which point they resume their normal size. NWAF is awesomely designed and now feels more like an actual location, rather than a bunch of empty space between a couple points of interest. I HATE the new stamina system in its current iteration. Spent a good 60% of my session not being able to sprint at all. Things that I found lots of: Makarovs and magazines and .380 ammo, .45 ACP boxes and UMP magazines, 7.62x39 boxes, 7.62x54R boxes, AKM+mags, MP5+mags, FNX, combat knives, UK assault vest, beans, tactical bacon, tuna, hiking jackets, sweaters, tracksuit, pilotka caps, hiking boots, splitting axe, ushanka, cowboy hats, leather sewing kits, taloon and mountain backpacks, ALICE packs(Tisy), ttsko clothing, sledgehammers, water bottles, portable transciever Things I found one or two of: UMP, SVD, SSH68 helmet, burlap sacks, black hi-cap, child briefcase, gorka clothing, kitchen knife, CR75 magazine, skorpion, plate carrier, SMERSH bag, canteen, tortilla backpack, coyote backpack, alkaline battery Things I found none of: Any guns or ammo of the shotgun, magnum, .22, .308 or 5.56 families; mosin, pickaxe, baseball bat, ice axe, shovel, hoe, seeds, cooking pot, gas stove, frying pan, spray paint, military boots, books, binocs/scopes, compass, any face coverings. I played two lives in one long session. First life was from Olsha to Kamensk base where I got 1-hit by the first zombie I saw after missing on shot with the makarov in 3pp ads crosshair mode. I ran to Chernaya Polana, SW Novo, Nagornoe, and Kamensk base. I had a difficult time finding enough food and water to survive, as well as understanding the cryptic icons having to do with statuses. I never know when I'm full, or even how close to hydrated I get after sipping from a well 12 times in a row. I drank sodas to avoid eating apples, canned food, or chicken breasts with my bloody hands, until I discovered you can wash your hands out of a water bottle. Second life took me through Pusta, Mog, Stary Sobor (where I killed two cows and faced the consequences) and into the updated NWAF at the gate where the log pub used to be. I soon had an AKM, UMP and SVD, and my sprinting days were over, even after discarding one of my rifles. It took me a long time to check the entire arifield. By the time I made it to Tisy, I was dying of boredom, but didn't want to see any wolves because I knew I could never carry them, and didn't want to sit through the tedious process of cooking them, so I logged off. Complaints: While new and interesting, the stamina system is easily two or three times as severe as anything close to resembling fun for me. Either it needs nerfing on weight limits, or the available stamina should grow along with player in the way that cardio training would increase real life capability; as in a fully laden player would start to regain the ability to sprint after some time spent with the weight they are carrying, and the stamina should slowly increase to maybe half of what an unladen player has. Cooking on a stick is tedious, as one sits there doing nothing but holding LMB for extended periods of time. However, partially cooked items will resume and keep previous progress. It took me a few tries to get it right aiming at fireplace while sitting down to cook. Ambient noise is bugged and becomes crackly when inside buildings. Stacked items are difficult to interact with correctly on ground, in terms of selecting one out of the stack of a few different items manually. Inventory management is clunky and requires more steps than seems necessary to perform a simple task. Items on ground interfere with ladder descent access. Overall, I'd have to say that so much is new and different, and the missing elements make it hard to decide how well the new systems will work when it all comes together.

Makes a big difference if you play solo or as a group. And even larger groups with public bases also do the barrels and stashes thing too...

I would invite anyone to point to one past instance in which a game was released to the public, before deciding to put it on a completely different engine. I'm not counting Star Citizen, because that is contemporary to Dayz development. Yes, it was a mistake. Yes hindsight is 20/20. And yes, everyone knows these things already. In the spirit of trying to be productive with my complaints, why can't we stick a banana in a holster yet?

Well, there is a locked test server up now. But I guess that doesn't mean much by itself. I got all excited when stable servers were all timing out after a minute. I mean, it is the first time in months that they brokes something, so I guess that's something, right? The way the community has been for the past couple years, I wouldn't be surprised if they released experimental servers without giving any notice.

Dust off your headsets. All servers are currently down.

I'm not too sure about that. When I started playing DayZ it was because I got tired of the single player experience on SOD back in early 2015. Some of the early talk was that they were going to make SOD 2 an open world multiplayer game, which they quickly walked back for unknown reasons. Last I heard, each server will only support 4 players. I don't know if this is due to limitations of their tech, or if they realized what a griefer-infested shitstorm that game type would become if they allowed even 10 random people to share the same map. State of Decay, while being a great experience for what it is, will certainly never come close to taking the place DayZ.

How much are EA and Activision paying you?

As an interesting note, private servers will be able to opt-in to .63 during experimental. Whether or not this will be a good idea in the first few weeks of the patch remains to be seen.