MrAerospace

Vehicles should always be the best source of vehicle parts. If the Dev's are careful with the regional control, they could spawn hundreds of cars in a single town and yet only provide enough usable (not ruined) parts to fix one or two vehicles in total. - The more vehicles in an area, the lower the chance of success. (both for the mechanic and griefers) - The more scattered the vehicles are, the more time is required for scavenging parts. - The more complex the vehicle diagnosis system / parts retrieval & inspection/testing is, the less reliance is needed on the previous two for making it difficult.

Adrenaline doesn't (usually) give people extra speed or strength, but it can keep them moving beyond what's physically possible, ignoring both injury or fatigue. (Trust me, the 3 inch scar down my right knee reminds me of that fact every single day). There is a significant downside to too much adrenaline though, and when a person stops moving, it sends the body into shock. The way I would do it in game is to link both the shock and stamina bars. Firstly, it should only be unlocked for a split second after a shock occurs. (So long as the shock doesn't knock them out first). If the player reacts fast enough, then they unlock an 'adrenaline mode', that will allow them to get out of danger. At this point, the adrenaline mode keeps them moving and they can ignore wounds, crippling injuries, and fatigue (even though they may be bleeding out) and start to burn stamina at an increased rate, past 'zero' and into the negatives. Once the player stops moving, or hits an absolute limit, then the negative stamina returns to zero, and fills up the shock meter at the same time. That way, a player can use adrenaline in dire situations, but using too much will send them into shock, and can result in them passing out from the added shock.

I hate that characters have zero mass when it comes to player inputs, yet they still take fall damage. I mean, can't we have have some consistency here? If our characters have zero mass then they wouldn't actually fall. Get it right, let us fly. Players always adapt to a game's constraints. The fact that DayZ has no momentum (yet) allows players to bring knives to a gunfight and win. That's not an exploit, that's just operating within the bounds of the game. Desync is desync. It's a whole other issue and has nothing to do with the physics engine, however the faster running speeds and unlimited movements make it far more apparent when it does occur. It'll be a different story if/when a complex momentum system is in place. The idea of slowing a player's rotational speed while moving may be a simple idea, but it would take up roughly the same computational space as a few realistic yet much more complex calculations that actually define the relationship between linear and rotational momentum. Of course, I would absolutely love it if the devs took into account not only the player's weight, but moment of inertia and weight of the loot too. This would mean things like lowering and raising a weapon would change its moment arm with respect to the weapons weight (resulting in slower rotation) as well as taking into account the moment arm for containers (i.e a can of beans in a backpack stick out further than in your jacket pocket, making you turn slower)

You probably still will. Just don't expect it to be the zombie virus, things like cholera and other diseases though.

Sort of, it'd work as a factor (multiplier) on the overall loot numbers. Let's say the server population is max 100 players. If there is 'x' number of players, the factor would be 'x'/100. The current CLE should work fine as the population increases. As the population rises, so too does the factor, and the CLE simply begins to spawn in more loot every 5 seconds, but it would require some form of automatic cleanup/despawning mechanism too, so that loot disappears as the player count drops. It's actually a lot more complicated than I first thought.

My idea; Pick a deserted server and expect a desert. Tie the rarity of the entire CLE (including zombies, forage and animals) to the server population. If a player joins an empty server, there will be almost nothing available, they won't see zombies, they will barely find anything to loot, and the whole thing just becomes a death march.

The most effective way to reduce sniping is to reduce line of sight. - Enclose forests. There are such things called edge effects and canopy cover. They make a very effective 'wall' that makes sniping (and spotting players from the air) almost impossible. - Terrain masking. Abrupt changes in terrain cause blind spots. - Road engineering. Oh, all the fantastic variables that happen when road are engineered properly.

We already have food loss implemented, and as of the previous few updates it's plain to see the dev's have added a timer for actions...so why not have both? It would just add further to gameplay if it took more time to open a can with a knife with relatively small losses, while an axe would be almost instantaneous but could lose a large amount of food.

Ok, that example didn't really help my cause, let me try again. Huh? When did asking for more item attributes, and a better distribution for ALL of these attributes become advocacy for less variety? You're shadow-boxing with this point, because that's exactly the opposite of my argument. Good grief, it's not about them either. So you're basically saying that if you are dying and had absolutely no other choice, then you'd wear the jeans. Or that if your gear is so badly ruined that pristine jeans are finally a better choice, then you might consider the option. Those are not very compelling arguments for deliberately choosing to wear jeans. When all things are equal and you have the choice between the pristine jeans you're wearing and pristine cargo pants, those jeans are coming off faster than a porno. If you want something with higher capacity = cargo pants beat jeans If you want something with better water resistance = cargo pants beat jeans if you want something with better insulation = cargo pants beat jeans If you want something with more quickslots = cargo pants beat jeans Hence my point about being a catalyst for conflict. People might not choose to fight over cargo pants, but as long as all the attributes for cargo pants are higher than jeans, then the temptation to take them will never go away, and consequently nor will the apprehension from the owner ever disappear. Balance those stats out, where water resistance and insulation are in the jeans favour, then you might start to see that temptation/paranoia dissipate a little.

There are a good number of desirable attributes for clothing, I'll give you that. But what's the point in having all that variety if certain items increase in all aspects at once? There's nothing wrong with providing players with motivation to switch from jeans to cargo pants, but there is something wrong if there's no motivation for the inverse. Let's say you and I bump into each other, I'm wearing a nice new set of pristine cargo pants, and you have a pair of jeans. That's it, we've got no food or weapons, nothing. So, what possible reason, what compelling argument can you conjure up to convince me to trade my cargo pants for your jeans? I can promise you, right now there's nothing you can say or do that will work, bar the use of violence. Now, if items were balanced and switching between them was about trading off, rather than constantly trading up, there'd be a few more options to that situation. Option 1) I want cargo pants, you want cargo pants; Violence ensues - I never said this situation would stop altogether. Option 2) I want cargo pants, you want jeans; We wave to each other and go our separate ways Option 3) I want jeans, you want cargo pants; We strip off, and sheepishly exchange clothes while I make things awkward by mentioning how pretty your thighs are. Option 4) We both reject the notion of trousers and frolic around the countryside in our underwear. Alright, I suppose that last one is a bit crazy...it's still an option without balanced gear ;). And for the record, when someone is making an argument to reduce conflict, it's usually not the griefer that's doing all the explaining.

If you really like some of the mods that are bound to come out, would you consider integrating some of them into the 'vanilla' experience?

Could the CLE's regional control be used to limit items to much smaller areas? - For example, if a player decided to fix up a vehicle, then rather than hope for random loot drops, they'd be able to concentrate on scavenging an area within say 1km radius of whatever town they were in.

From what I can gather (data as of 0.49) the following is a list of properties for clothing: (Please feel free to correct/update me if I'm wrong) absorbency ballistic protection biological protection bleed protection durability heat isolation cargo size cargo capacity shock protection Currently, players start with nothing and wander through Chernarus mostly progressing through higher capacity, higher protection and camouflaged gear. That basically leads to everybody desiring mil-spec stuff. It's boring, and with everybody gunning for the same sorts of items all the time, it's simply an extra flashpoint for PvP behaviour, and lets face it, we really don't need extra incentives for a*holes. The question this raises is: what other attributes could be added so that gear progression isn't so linear? What other useful properties could there be to even out the choice of loot? (Keep in mind, stamina & encumbrance will make for interesting additions to inventory management, but these mechanics will most likely impact cargo itself, not the clothing/gear in which it's being carried in.)

Ideas so far: - Noise reduction. Gear with less cargo space allows for much quieter movement. Great for sneaking around town without alerting zombies. The opposite is implied too, items with much more cargo space actually makes more noise. - Restricted movement (Independent of encumbrance system) The bulkier your gear becomes, the harder it is to move around. It reduces mouse sensitivity, adds minute mouse acceleration inputs and causes slower overall movement, especially in crouched and prone positions.

I've never really seen eye to eye with Bororm before, but I entirely agree with what he and Entspeak have to say when it comes to gearing up. There's already plenty of incentive to collect high capacity gear as it is. Adding further incentives for this gear (unlocking quickslots), will only serve to make gearing up seem even more linear. Gearing up is a great motivator/incentive in DayZ, but if gear only has a few different desirable attributes, then the majority of players will be following the same narrow pattern of progression. The consequence of this is that it will almost always be a catalyst for aggressive player interactions.

Oh, well that's definitely a different story to what I was thinking/talking about. Even in 3pp a short death/unconsciousness animation would be awesome. If it is fast enough, then there's no threat of tactical information being transmitted either.

Could we have options for icons OR text (similar to the current inventory screen notifiers) for the HUD?

Gotta agree with FlimFlamm about the whole running out argument. These tools are literally everywhere and have a much longer shelf life than petrol. I would even argue they'd be in almost zero demand too, so the argument for not having them because 'they are a finite resource' is a pretty weak argument. That being said, we've gotta have some reasonable uses for it to be even a viable asset to add to the game, of which there's plenty of good ideas being made by FlimmFlam, The two additional ideas I would have to insist on though is 1) Additional Vehicle Armour 2) Strap the tanks to your back (combine a backpack with a dolly) and set off ready to face the zombie hordes with a portable oxy torch.

DayZ's current loot system provides clear advantages for owning certain items and gear above all others. It reduced 'gearing up' to a very simple linear progression. Because there is almost no alternative ways for players to value gear, pretty much every item in game will serve as a catalyst for player conflict. Every single interaction that occurs will have one person owning a more valuable piece of gear than the other, so it doesn't matter whether military grade items are involved or not, that desire to 'gear up' paired with a singular value system will always be a powder-keg ready to go off. The solution to diffusing the situation is entirely within the Dev's control, but the overall philosophy should be to add as much balance and variety to item choices as possible. The more attributes they can provide items with, the less linear player looting behaviour becomes, and the less conflict it creates. Examples of different attributes could include clothing with less item slots being stealthier (where tracksuits and sneakers becoming the ultimate ninja gear). Or have smaller and lower mass melee weapons strike faster, be more accurate than axes and sledgehammers, and allow players to manoeuver faster in melee combat. There are things in progress that will affect how players gear up in other ways too: Less ammunition will help with balancing weapons, but only as long as lower powered ammuntion is more abundant, and loot farming is stopped. Stamina, encumbrance and momentum will also change how much stuff players move around with, but that doesn't necessarily translate to players preferencing non-military gear, just not carrying as much stuff in them.

This is an interesting concept. The game does have limitations when it comes to being able to identify other players, so I'm all for something that might help, but it's gotta be very simple to operate; good, bad, neutral, or unknown (green, red, white, unmarked)

You're not paying attention to what I said. I only refer to these features as they appear in the current build, not what the Dev team have or have not completed in their internal builds.

Oops, well that just proves my point further. Even the US uses the name hornet for a whole bunch of different species! Oh boy, the Reduviidae are some of the nastiest creatures I've ever known. My brother copped a fairly serious bite from one of these buggers, and lost a fair chunk of his calf muscle to the acid. That was almost a decade ago, and he's still got a rather impressive hollow spot in his leg!

I really don't think we should be associating 'dynamic events' with vehicles. It is just weird to see vehicles spawn or move to different places when they've been abandoned for months and there's no one around to move them. I would consider so many other things as dynamic events before attempting to bring cars into it; Type 1 Barricades: Locked rooms/buildings/world containers - Looks and works identically to player made barricades. - This measure provides an opportunity to disguise bases/stashes. - Common enough that they are encountered in every town, but not so common that it impedes normal player behaviour. - This measure will desensitize players to barricades. - Requires a lot of effort to break into. (Carrying around heavy tools such as bolt-cutters) - This measure will dis-incentivize players from choosing to break barricades. - NOT associated with any change in loot. - This measure removes the constant positive re-enforcement gained from breaking into barricades. Type 2 Barricades: Lockers/crates/boxes/shipping containers - IS associated with high end loot. (Encourages players to seek them out) - Requires effort to break into (Effort = reward) - High traffic areas (Encourages PvP & attracts zombies) As for vehicles, I have a different approach in mind. Using the CLE and (much more localised) regional control, the game could easily control the amount of (functional) vehicle numbers at any one time, stop the Random Number God from getting in the way of players fixing up vehicles, and reduce the amount of PvP interference. - Smaller regions for vehicle based CLE - Give players a chance to concentrate their efforts in a region around the vehicle they choose to fix. No larger than 1km2. - Replace most of the static models with dynamic models (in various states of decay) - This relates to reducing the PvP problem as with the "Type 1 barricades" above. - Make all the vehicle parts spawn in their exact location within vehicles - This is critical. It rewards players for dedicated scavenging, rather than random looting. - Remove all non-vehicle related loot from vehicles - If there's no incentive to check cars for loot, then randoms won't be likely to stumble upon someone's project. - Spawn 80% of vehicle parts ruined - This isn't exactly a fixed number, but having a majority of ruined parts will enforce the feeling of 'scavenging' for that elusive working part. - Spawn 80% of vehicles ruined - Again, this is all about getting that 'scavenging' atmosphere right - Spawn only enough worn or pristine parts to restore one or two full vehicles (of each type) in any region. This will do two things. 1) It will make the task of repairing a car that much harder 2) It will cause conflict over vehicle parts. Garages - Tools and 'spare' parts still spawn in garages - Hey, it makes sense (I expect at least a few tools will still spawn with vehicles) - More garages (especially around houses) - Give players options to actually hide and lock up their toys in different ways. - Vehicles spawning inside garages - Again, as long as the game creates 'noise' and reduces the probability of something being player related, then it will lower the PvP.

Hornet? Are you sure? With a name like emuthreat, I'd be worried that you were stung by a true hornet (Vespa spp.) in Australia, because they don't exist here. The word hornet is a catch all. The European Wasp (Vespula germanica) is often mistakenly called a hornet, and there's even a large native potter wasp called a hornet (Abispa ephippium). They all have fairly potent stings, though the toxins are so different that the Australian native's toxin is probably closer to that of a bull-ant. You're right about wasps vs bees as well, completely different toxin again. Just don't go testing out our natives. Again, because of the whole evolution thing, they are totally independent from their European cousins, and the toxins are nothing alike. And, contrary to popular belief, most of them can sting, hard, and multiple times without killing themselves. (Funny thing about solitary bees...self sacrifice is a stupid idea.) In terms of in-game implementation, it would be easier to model hive boxes rather than wild nests though. Could be fun if the player had little chance of actually getting honey. Most of the hives could be abandoned (leaving just some wax) or invaded by euro's (happy birthday, sucker).

Can we please start thinking of zombies in animalistic terms rather than as the living dead or as humans? Think of them as a pack of lions or wolves. Physiologically, males of the species are (mostly) larger and more powerful than females, so it stands to reason that would be reflected in game. Survival is much more focused on long term endurance over peak performance. This would mean that peak physical fitness would come much later in life. It would no longer be in the 20's, but late 30's to early 40's. There's also one key difference between a fat human and a fat predator. Humans get fat by overeating and living sedentary lifestyles. Predators get fat by being successful hunters and having plenty of stuff to eat. As for crawlers, have you ever seen disabled animals? They don't live for very long outside of human intervention. Survival of the fittest is a bitch.