DAS1337

Some people forget that this is a video game I think...

Realism. Zombie video game. Sure....

I've literally killed less than a handful of people in several hundred hours of gameplay. True innocents would not be affected by a system like this, assuming the mechanic would kick in after a set number of kills. Not implementing something because a few people on the fence might not benefit is not smart. But this won't happen anyways. Rocket wants to promote killing, it's clear. Personally, if I were him, I'd understand that the game itself inherently promotes killing. Since, you know, PK's can loot you. It's a built in reward. However, innocents have to do the hard work and heavy lifting. In a game that allows full loot and open PvP, you have to reward to 'sheep'. The wolves will always be wolves, and it doesn't matter how much you punish them. If you don't limit them however, the whole flock is killed and you are left with nothing but wolves. Those players don't make it the experience that you envisioned by themselves. They need sheep. It's how it is in every game. Rocket says this is a zombie survival multiplayer game... I say it's counter-strike with zombies wandering around in the background. It has lost what it originally was meant to be. Hears hoping it get's back to that as alph and beta progress. EDIT: Just to throw this out there. The first person that I experienced in the standalone tried to axe me to death. He didn't stop and ask me for beans, or soda, or perhaps some bandages...whcih I had. He just immediately ran for me, swinging away. I would have gladly given him some spare food and water. Granted, I was in Cherno, so obviously I knew I could run into someone, especially at the fire station. But still, there really was no reason for it. I didn't have a gun or a backpack. I killed them in self defense. Their body vanished. I'm not sure of the log out mechanics, perhaps they even took the pansy way out to save themselves. At this point, it is what it is. A Zombie Deathmatch game with survival mechanics.

I posted an idea similar to this a long while ago. Instead of insanity, I was asking for them to make use of all of the broken whiskey bottles laying around. Adding whiskey to the game. Giving it an alternate crafting use as a molotov and a way to suppress shakes and such. If you kill more than three people in an hour, you go into shock, kind of like a guilt system. This way, murderers have to carry around alcohol, which means they have less room to carry your stuff. Also, if they don't have any, they will remain in shock until dead or they find alcohol. There is a very vocal group of people here that Dean Hall supports. That group of people refuse to add any artificial system, no matter how cool and realistic it may be, simply because it is 'gamey'. Nevermind the fact that we are playing a zombie survuval video game. I've also suggested static lighting systems, such as generators that can power small towns, street lamps, etc. I've asked for a change in the day/night cycle, so that people actually want to play at night, even the ones who aren't already gears up, hiding in dark servers, looking for loot with their NV goggles. As well as countless other very cool and realistic ideas. But they are all met with criticism. Such as, don't force me to play my game a certain way. Or, that's not realistic enough. Or, my favorite... If you don't like it, go play L4D2. It is completely ignored that these issues are often game breakers for a lot of people. Not just the 'carebears', or whatever they decide to call you. But, the general population of players picking this game up, now off of steam. It seems like DH doesn't mind putting in things that are completely useless, like making people use space bar to raise a weapon, thinking it will somehow reduce the 'kill on sight' mindset. Excuse me while I laugh hysterically.... By no means am I trying to bash the dev team with this post. But I do believe that there are certain game mechanics which have required major tweaking since early in the mods release. And I see plenty of other really cool things that have been added over the years. But the biggest and baddest issues remain without much of an effort to resolve them.

I think DayZ should use Metro: Last Light as an example of how to use items as your hud, instead of having artificial hud art on your screen. Viewing your compass with a flashlight just gave me that idea. =P

I like this a lot. It would make it much easier to navigate. However, will we ever see any form of electricity in DayZ? I've suggested being able to repair generators and bring entire towns to life. Static lighting would be a wonderful help to players who don't want to be sitting ducks with their flashlights. It would help make night more playable. There have been thousands of great suggestions on these topics here on the forums. I just don't see them happening.

My example was just that. I ddin't put any thought into how that would calculate out into a 24 hour period. It could have been any set of numbers. Feel free to do the calculations for me. It's easy to say that it would destroy the game, but much harder to actually give any amount of reason into your thought process. Currently, the only people playing night time in most cases are people who are geared up, or have access to night vision goggles. Most people do not have this advantage. I just wanted to point out your reference to realism, considering this is a PvP zombie survival video game. You know, not real life. Go do the research. Go see how many near empty servers there are and how many of them are night time. People in general, do not want to play night time servers unless they are already geared. In a game that strips you of everything at death, that's the situation that will remain. Unless something is changed, night time will not be played very often by most of the player base. Reducing the overall length of each cycle would be a start. I'm still not sure people wouldn't purposely leave servers due to night time even if it were a 3 hour cycle. Which is why I suggested a significantly reduced night time, compared to day. Really, you're saying that geared up folks are hiding in night servers to stock up. Why should they get that opportunity? Just make it day time 80% of the time and then I believe that most people won't run at the sight of a night time server.

Realism.. that's funny guys. We're using realism as an excuse for not fixing one of the biggest problems with DayZ, and it's a ZOMBIE VIDEO GAME. I was brainstorming the other day and came up with another idea. A survivor rewards system. It's a reward system based on your activity within the world, and how long you've been playing. So here's a quick example. The idea is, the more you help people and the more you play, the better starting equipment you will have. They stack. 1 hr playtime - bandages 5 hrs PT - water bottle 10 hrs PT - can of beans 20 hrs PT - flashlight 50 hrs PT - compass 100 hrs PT - binoculars 150 hrs PT - map (integrates with compass) 200 hrs PT - knife 250 hrs PT - pistol with one clip This would promote people to come back, and would make dying a little less shocking. You wouldn't be given an advantage, because the items are low level and you aren't receiving any actual boost to skills and such. Here's where the karma thing comes into play. For every player kill, you lose 2 hours of your playtime as a consequence. So if you run around and kill everyone you see, there is a chance that you'll never get those small rewards. It's not a system that will really change the game itself, and it won't eliminate player killing. But, it might make some people think twice. The biggest problem is that PVP in itself is reason enough to kill people. When you add full loot, it sends it over the edge. Inherently, this game is REWARDING player killing by having full loot. In return, it is doing NOTHING to reward innocent players who try and help each other. Sure, group up you say. Except the game inherently is designed to spawn you in random locations. No group functionality. No friends lists. No way to communicate via chat, or so I'm told in standalone. At least that's what I heard in a gameplay video from Dean Hall himself. Ultimately, Dean, you can beat your head against the wall with this realism stuff, but it should only go so far. At some people, you need to accept that it is a video game, and if all of us wanted this much realism, we'd be playing what we call 'Real Life', and not DayZ.

I've been playing DayZ for a while, off and on. Not the standalone mind you, the mod. The day/night cycle has always been a problem that the developers seem unwilling to mess with. I can't understand the mindset behind not attempting to rectify this issue. Here's what I am talking about. My personal experience in DayZ goes like this. - Finds server, it ends up being night time - Leaves server - Finds server, it ends up being night time - Leaves server - Finds server, it ends up being night time - Leaves server - Finds server, it ends up being day time - Stays on server to play Now I thought, maybe this is just me. Well no, most people that I talk to dislike night time servers. And then I thought that maybe it was just me and the people that I talk to. Then I start watching Youtube videos of people finding night time servers, then leaving them immediately because, guess what, it's night time. This is a serious problem for the developers and they just can't recognize it. Now I'm not like one of those, who think black and white. I am someone who will give an alternative. I am not interested in removing night time. However, I believe it should have the chance to do what it is meant to do. Which is instill fear in the player. To make them nervous about what is around them. What it shouldn't do is make players not want to play. I don't know what the technical limitations are, but I know that what is currently in the game is unacceptable to the players, and should be equally unacceptable to the developers as well. As it is a problem that turns people away from the game. Just look at the server capacity as proof. How many empty servers, or nearly empty servers do you see? Go in them and count how many are night, compared to day. The vast majority of your derelict servers are night time. That's a fact jack. Then you have people like me who can't actually play servers where I get the highest ping from. Why is that? My playtime falls between 1am and 5am eastern time. I work second shift, and don't often get a chance to get up early enough to get any significant amount of gaming in. Thus, it is ALWAYS night time, unless a server has reversed their cycles or I pick a server where I'll get much higher latency from. The day night cycle needs to change. It would be as easy as making the day cycle last four hours and making the night cycle last 30 minutes. You wouldn't eliminate either cycle, and people would be more willing to wait out night time on servers because it wouldn't be an overwhelming drain on them physically or mentally. Currently, most people aren't even experiencing it because they are refusing to even try. That is a failure on the developers part, plain and simple. Not accepting that fact is an absolute travesty, especially because it's been this way as long as I can remember. Again, I'm not sure of the technical limitations, but you could make it so that night time isn't nearly as dark, however, making the indoors and forests darker. This would make it easier to navigate the open terrain, which is what is killing server capacity. I can't stress this enough, go look at server capacity in night servers. Why would a developer want empty servers? Why? Dean, can you honestly answer that question without coming up with a BS response? I know I couldn't. Not even if I tried. I couldn't possibly accept my own answer. Please attempt a solution guys. I understand there is a long list of fixes in front of you, but please recognize that it is an issue. Change ultimately ends with you.

This is what happens when you continue to release new versions right before the weekend. People get in, either can't play or have serious issues pop up.. and you piss a ton of people off. Yeah yeah Alpha blah blah. I've seen a lot of working versions come and go. I don't get why that with every patch (even if it seems small), there is some game shattering bug that comes along with it. Anyways, I can't even log into a server. Everything seems slow. I just sit at the loading screen forever. I've tried three of the most recent beta patches too. Why don't you (rocket)release the beta patch you tested on along with the new version? Instead, you know, of letting us blindly guess and tinker with which one actually works well.

I've gotten to the point where I will save the tent three or four times in a row to make sure I did it. Tents still dump all of my gear all the time. It's gotten to the point where I pack them up to find a better spot and disconnect, go to another server, and they delete themselves from my inventory. Item tracking and tents are completely screwed up. It's one of the biggest problems in the game right now. A few days ago, I logged in and my backpack got deleted, along with my primary and secondary weapons (Looted off a downed Heli btw). Do you know how frustrating it us to not have any inventory space? Backpacks are so ungodly rare to begin with, it's ridiculous.

You don't understand why it's not right to have a HACKED weapon? SMH

Yes, unfortunately that is how every server is. That is also how every server will remain until Rocket realizes that his game is nothing more than a really big death match arena. I do my best to avoid people and play the survivor play style, but every now and then I have to either defend myself or make a decision to kill someone that I'd rather not kill in order to continue my play session and keep my gear. It's just how it is.

Hopefully in the standalone version, they will make the inventory system a lot less ridiculous. It already takes a new player quite a while to understand what they are doing and where they are putting things. Equipping items should just give you an error if you don't have enough space and your ammo should remain, instead of the game assuming that you don't need it any more. And then if you don't have space in your inventory, the item vanishes. Primary, Secondary, Melee Slots (Scroll mouse wheel to change, or use hot keys) Ammo Slots (Ammo) Equipment Slots (Knife, Compass, Map, etc) Clothing Slots (Outfit, Head, Boots) Backpack Slot (Backpacks, Vests, Pouches, etc) And why not add a paper doll in there for good measure. Just to make sure you look the way you want to. You don't need stats and all that jazz, but it's something that wouldn't really hurt the game and it would help bring new players into DayZ with something familiar that they have seen before. All should be clearly recognizable in the GUI, they should tell you how many slots they take up, and you should be able to drag and drop them into the slots you want them instead of hoping that you are putting them into your backpack or main inventory and not on the ground. I'm sure even some of the sandbox elitists will say that making the inventory easier isn't realistic. There's a line that you cross, and right now, that line is miles in the other direction. The inventory blows in just about every aspect. Either way, I don't think it can be fixed in this mod. It needs a standalone, a new engine, or specialized to fit the needs of a game like DayZ.

I still have a friend that can't even play this game. Not through six launcher, and not through manual install. He has tried freshly installing all of the files and patches several times. Opening each game up separately and using the beta patch launcher file as well. I had some similar troubles, but mine works and his doesn't, with the exact same setup and install process. Any word on whether or not the game will actually be playable for him after this patch?