MrAerospace

Yes, I am being confrontational - intentionally so, as I think the attitude in your posts was rather poor. You were not setting out to make any constructive point. Instead you made flippant remarks about the current state of melee weapons, and implied that the spear was not worthy of your time in the current build, given that it is less powerful than an axe. It is a fair assumption from there, that you would thus continue to deride any new weapon so long as it is less powerful than an existing one. I then attempted to point out that it does not matter how powerful a weapon is. Without a reasonable balance between strong and weak weapons, then all weapons bar the most powerful one will be useless under the current conditions. Not even a mythological weapon with all sorts of attributed powers can change that imbalance, so buffing up one weapon to bes equally powerful to another still won't alter that imbalance. The brutally logical conclusion would be to make all melee weapons hit at the same strength, and that will always be a bandaid fix. The imbalance I'm talking about is still part of the current build. Players still have zero momentum, infinite stamina, and are completely unencumbered by the loot they are carrying. Add to that a limited animation system and some nasty desync, and you're willing to say that CQC is finished with? You mean that none of these upcoming features will alter combat in any way shape or form? I've heard that comment about melee combat being completely finished with multiple times now on these forums, but I'm yet to actually see or read the original quote. Since you're using it as part of your argument, the burden of proof is with you to produce that reference, not for me to chase it.

That's what am I talking about. Your language and behaviour is both hostile and dismissive. You aren't even bothered to do the research yourself, and only care for how it works as of 0.59, where the CQC is still sub-optimal.

Then pick up a bloody fire extinguisher, and quit complaining about something so trivial as a new weapon being implemented into an old system. It seems to me that you don't care how broken CQC is, so long as there is a new weapon that's more overpowered than the last.

Really? 1) The probability of a pathogenic mold forming in an acidic solution are almost microscopic when compared to water. 2) Hygiene...I'm pretty sure we've all grasped the basic concepts by now. 3) I'm carrying an empty but reusable sealed bottle and an aluminium can that is a one time use item only. I can't carry around half a drink either, so which one do I keep?

Speaking of crawlers...I'm kinda curious why the game's going down that path at all. Shouldn't we be seeing these guys actually retreat...try to lick their wounds or something? I get the whole infected, predator thing....but at what point do we stop to think that to become the apex predator they are, they've gotta at least have enough intelligence to understand the notion of self-preservation.

It's roughly five hits per zombie - really not worth the effort during serious game-play. Of course it's useless though, it's just a melee weapon, not some holy lance that magically re-coded the entire melee system to something beyond it's current functionality. What did you expect?

I really do hope there's much more of a behavioural change in zombies (especially at night). They're alive, and in the context of the game they're the apex predator, so I wanna feel like I'm really being hunted by dangerous and intelligent creatures, rather than a horde of brain dead zombies that simply rush at you whenever they see you. (Realistically, if the infected continued that pattern of behaviour, we'd be playing Civilzation rather than DayZ.) Being attracted to light is only a very small proportion of what I'd hope to see though. I can imagine them stalking players, staying just outside the visual range of the lights, crouching, silent, waiting patiently for an opportunity; strength in numbers, a breakaway runner or the moment the light goes out. Whatever changes that can be made to the game that effectively slows down the run-loot-shoot gameplay will be cancer to KoSers. (Those that cannot stand the game actually disrupting their schadenfreude will be quick to leave)....it makes me wonder what the effect of having a few servers dedicated to a battle royale game mode would actually do to balancing out the overall population.

A cinematic outro would add that extra narrative to the game, but I would expect no-one would accept it unless said "death sequence" also rendered out all other players to prevent extra tactical info being conveyed to friends. One way it could be done is by immediately kicking the playefrom the server once they die, while duping their body so they could see watch the outro fade into the main menu screen. (Of course this comment will infuriate players who want a quick respawn on the same server)

Bartle's theory is not used to assess features as being good or bad. Did you watch the video...the whole point was to preemptively determine how different game features affected the four different play styles. Secondly, what do you mean by making survival harder? Less loot? That means even less stuff for players to interact with...that's actually going to send players faster into PvP mode. More zombies? It's PvE, that's only going to attract more achievers, which will increase the killer population even more. However, if you place zombies inside buildings where loot is likely to be, all of a sudden you've just turned two PvE elements into a P&E (player interacting with environment) mechanic. I.E. now players have to deal with a zombie in a way that won't attract attention, so that they can then gather the loot. Or, the most counter intuitive step may be finding a way to remove the vicinity bar, so that now all players will need to concentrate on finding objects in their actual location rather than running into a building and using a quick shortcut that completely detaches the player from the environment.

Oops, failed to bring that up. No, I agree that it shouldn't work in the sense of smearing blood and guts on yourself and then all of a sudden you're invisible to zombies. In any case, that should attract both zombies and wild animals faster. Certainly would be interesting the other way around...get too close with blood on you and all of a sudden the zombies are searching for you, even though you're being as stealthy as possible. (Plus, blood and guts...diseases are a thing in game). What I meant was just imitating movement and behavioural patterns, something that wouldn't really work up close, but from long and mid distances, you could pass yourself off as one of them. The longer you actually work on it, the better the character model actually copies the minute details.

Northerners have it easy anyways! Imagine us in the southern hemisphere who've never even seen half of those stars, and for who the sun is supposed to be in the North. If a few players can't handle a slight aberration of orientation from NESW, then get a friggin' compass and man up.

This post has been hijacked. While the conversation is riveting, let's at least address the topic of original post. 1) Sabotaging your own gear to cause it to despawn faster might be a reasonable tactic. Booby trapping your stuff would be even better. Anything that might serve to disincentivize PvP even in the slightest little bit is welcome in my books. 2) Mimicking zombies. A rather interesting idea that nonetheless has come up countless times before. Would be nice to have a way for players to copy zombie animations, and be able to do so in a convincing enough way to fool players and other zombies. A good incentive for achievers would be a soft skill system that actually allows better mimicry. (where the skill level is measured by time in proximity of zombies without being detected. It's gotta have a reasonable fail rate too, btw...gotta make it a risky endeavour.

I would wager that it's not explorers that reduce the killer population but exploring itself. What I mean by that is any game mechanic that gets in the way of killing. Take for example the central loot economy. It's been months since it was implemented to make truly random loot spawns. As of 0.58 loot is pretty abundant, and it requires only slightly more effort to find a gun than before. Yet, we still hear the "Y NO LOOT :(" alarm call of the neurologically impaired bandit. Still worse, the killers who aren't destined for Darwin awards adopted an exploit to bypass the main mechanic of the game; Loot farming, in all it's server hopping, loot cycling, join=kick server glory.

You are getting the barricaded homes/rooms around the wrong way. There should be an abundance of them, booby traps and all, but with absolutely no change in the CLE. The last thing players need when barricading a house is for everyone to be conditioned into thinking that a barricaded home is analogous to a piñata full of candy. The exact opposite is true too. If players are conditioned into thinking every room and house is accessible, then the one that's barricaded is going to stick out like a sore thumb.

It's already in, (cannibalism that is) but it totally negates the risk vs reward that came with shooting a guy for his loot only to find you've ruined it anyway.

That is the intrinsic system of the CLE though, if untouched loot doesn't despawn, then good loot will always be found in remote locations, until someone raids it. The system encourages people to walk the less traveled path. This does however start to get annoying...there needs to be some sort of clean up mechanism to prevent too much loot from accumulating.

Every time I see the Chernarus map, the geologist in me just can't stand seeing that dreadful coastline. Every single bit of it screams floodplain, rather than coast.

Not the point. Griefing/KoSing/PvPing - "Killers or Clubs" whatever you want to call it, are toxic elements in an MMO. Without balances and checks, they cause a spiraling feed-back loop that only serves to drive everyone else away except the players that revel in it. (With the exception of the explorers, these guys are just getting tired of the map.) That is what the video is saying. That is what I observe happening in DayZ and it seems to be repeating in these very forums too. I'm not against the play style, it's what made DayZ interesting in the first place. I just want it balanced out, reduce the PCP and there will be less people overdosing on it .

I think that the video makes a perfectly reasonable assessment of DayZ. It's very concerning to me that killers have basically always been catered to, to the point where its been too long that the game has lost too much of the other types of players. Bartle's Taxonomy has been mentioned before in here, but it is a completely new concept to me, so thanks for bringing it to my attention. I can instantly see the merit of this theory, and it's already changing the way I understand gaming. It's informing me so much better on how to assess not only features in game, but people's motivations and reactions to these game features, including my own...which leads to an interesting paradox; if I take pleasure in making the lives of killer types so uncomfortable that they rage-quit, does that make me part of a meta-branch of the killer type?

It's not a bad idea. Typing isn't always an option, most players that attempt it get shot before they even get a chance to respond. This might just provide some reprieve to that problem. (then again...considering how friendly people currently are, probably not)

DayZ needs realism, but if the pursuit of ultra-realism sacrifices playability, then it will inevitably make for an overall lackluster experience. It's all about a smooth, non-intrusive user interface. I'm happy dying over and over and over again to zombies, other players or starvation, but if I die because the game doesn't interpret my inputs, won't let me pick up a can of beans, or I starve to death without ever knowing I'm hungry, then it'll quickly become tedious. The anti-game will be anti-fun. Character stats are seriously important. The idea of no HUD is amiable, but we can't lose those notifiers, even if they state the obvious. It's one thing to replace the text indicators with animations or post-processing, but that's all they should be aiming to achieve. Finding a place for the notifiers that is separate from the inventory is something important to do, and a toggleable HUD or character screen is probably the right way to achieve it. The inventory will always be an abstract concept. It is the part of the game that requires the greatest suspension of disbelief, even to a level above zombies, so it is extremely important to have a smooth transition between the game and the inventory. Stiello's design is still the best attempt at doing this so far, but it needs some work. Ideally for me, if the tech could support it I would love to find a can of beans, press tab, be able to still see the beans in the same location on my screen, and then click and drag the item directly from it's location into my inventory. It would mean the death of the vicinity bar but it would need a lot of concept work, planning and a ton of programming to get there. (Not to mention how it would handle multiple containers.)

Ooooh, loving the timed animation/action system (what do you call that feature?). So many questions! 1) Do you have plans to vary the counter/timer? On the test it looked like a linear counter, but say for example, could you slow the timer (and subsequent animation) to indicate the character is close to 'stuffed'? Or perhaps even having the counter spike in time with the animation when you put food in your mouth? 2) I'd be guessing this will be kept close to the chest, but how will this system affect foraging? I enjoy the random nature of it, but I wonder whether that's even feasible with a timer? What about having some sort of diminishing returns for foraging too to discourage 'farming'? 3) It seemed in that test that the character immediately consumed ~200g of rice before the timer started. It hits me that people would immediately find that to be an exploit, unless it was just being used as a part of the testing, 4) (Not associated with the animation/action) No love for the vehicle's front quarter panels? Or are we saving up for that?

I suspect this issue has probably already made it onto the Dev's list. I'd be guessing that by release, these 'enjoyable' PP effects will actually become 'critical', meaning gameplay would be far more difficult without them. As opposed to the other more superfluous PP effects which could be toggled for performance sake, these critical ones wouldn't be optional.

How about clothing being a hindrance to stealth and movement? Large bulky stuff, especially rain gear could make stealth a lot more difficult when trying to keep the noise down, and when crouching and crawling, any vest is going to make it much more difficult to move. Thus, the tracksuit is given value as the ultimate stealth suit.

Don't forget a canteen slot. Gotta have a better reason to lug those canteens around, other than personal preference over a PET bottle. Would be nice to attach one to your hip.