aaronlands

What kind of changes are coming to DayZ in the coming year? Fortifying houses? Fixed cars? More realistic wounds?

Admittedly, they "say" a lot less than they used to.

Yes this has to be the DayZ equivalent of "A Modest Proposal" (A satirical essay from the 1700s where the author suggests that poor people sell their young as food).

I suspect they went the way of character transferability between the two maps because it wouldn't work with how official servers are set up on DayZ. This is just a guess! Still, I'm not defending this decision as it was a lot of fun on the experimental to have a completely separate and siloed experience. I usually defend this game but I am not a fan of this choice.

Gotta go with @William Sternritter on this one, at least in terms of general strategic methods. It's a careful balance when dealing with players. If you insult players too much (and that unfortunately can mean asking them to put their hands up or as my brother does, yelling: "Strip!") it can activate a sort of kamikaze mode. I find often it is best to establish communication but keep distance and objects and buildings in between. I've definitely had encounters which started out with both having their guns drawn. I never really get angry at KoS because I understand that people will respond in such different ways that I have to account for that when approaching anyone. This is an aside but, really DayZ is the embodiment of the Hobbesian state of nature where no one has laid down their absolute rights in return for a social contract. In other words, I know that you know that you can kill me at any moment's notice to get your way. Hobbes said it best: "In such condition [state of nature], there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Vigilante Gamer, which was recommended to me by another user on this forum, has a collection of YouTube videos that while old still stand the test of time. He has a video series on approaching other dangerous players (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q51PFEBlKDw) and one where he applies Sun Tzu's Art of War to DayZ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fn9gcOOjnvA

Just to be clear, is that issue with the jerrycan on the experimental branch?

The way I look at it: You're right, the difficulty level should be maintained. Dehydration while its raining doesn't make much sense from a gameplay perspective. Its a pretty challenging issue to find a solution to in my mind. I was thinking maybe wet clothes could halt the depletion of water while still adding a temperature penalty but then I think this might be exploited. Maybe the character could 'drink' from the rain/sky while its raining and receive miniscule amounts of water. Of course they would be suffering a wetness penalty (unless wearing a raincoat) so this could be an option that at least on the surface addresses the illogicality of dying of dehydration while its raining. Also it would be interesting because you would have to look up at the sky which means you would be particularly vulnerable. Additionally, having mechanics to allow for water collection and storage in a base could be interesting. Maybe combining a rain coat with some sticks and a water container could allow you to construct a water collector. Ideally this would be linked to storms but if that is too technically complicated it should just fill up very slowly over time (but even that might be too technically demanding). It's difficult to come up with suggestions because my actual knowledge of the technical aspects of the game's code is incomplete and tiny.

I think this sounds more like an exploit than an intended feature. I don't think this sort of exploit can be be accurately construed as an example of how the game is to be played.

I can't really say much about making heavier guns incur penalties with aiming and such. I have to think about that one? Does Insurgency use that system? With the suggestion that guns should make more sounds, I like the idea of a damaged ak sounding different but I'm not entirely sold on the idea. I watched a video where a guy fired an ak until its barrel melted and caught the wooden handle on fire (https://youtu.be/EwSJiAwoMpY?t=349). It didn't seem to sound any different.

Now this suggestion might piss off some of you camels (aka water hoarders) out there but hear me out: Players should not be able to store cooking pots with water on their characters or in their backpacks. Instead, when the cooking pot is filled with water it should not be able to be placed into your inventory. This allows the cooking pot to still be used as a cooking device and storage device but precludes it from being used as a superior water container. Cooking pots in real life are not typically made with sealable lids and even if that is the case the icon and object in DayZ just appears to be a regular cooking pot. In reality, if you stored such a pot in your backpack you would have a wet bag pretty quickly. The current state of cooking pots as water containers reduces the usefulness and/or increases the redundancy of the canteen and the water bottle. Implementing the above change would bring more value to the other items mentioned. Of course, a jerry can would still be allowed to carry water and be stored in your inventory because it is a sealable container. Currently, running around with a cooking pot filled with water makes little sense and discourages frequent water runs as the pot can keep you hydrated for such a long amount of time. I think this small change, if it could be easily implement, would do much to balance the water situation in the game. Can anyone comment on the technical possibility of this change? Would this limitation (cooking pot being unstorable when filled with water) be possible with the current game configuration?

Also I should mention, that in a recent 1.06 experimental I believe they are considering two changes to water mechanics: 1) The water bottle will hold twice as much water (50 changed to 100); and 2) the canteen will only take up a 2x2 space (smaller) from the patch notes (https://forums.dayz.com/topic/246782-dayz-livonia-pc-open-beta/?page=1) These changes will increase the water storage capacity of players. As seen in this topic, whether this makes the cooking pot's water storage a further redundancy or a unbalanced mechanic is an area of debate . I am amused by the idea of carrying a cooking pot filled with water and two full canteens and a full water bottle inside. I am become Waterboy©.

True and I concede that it isn't directly related. But the water storage amounts of the cooking pot combined with their portability and combined with water needs creates a situation where the player can too easily remain in a status of 'fully hydrated and on the move.' These are value judgements so there is room for disagreement on this point. I think it's just a bit unbalanced and I think players should be able to collect water in storage containers and such but I don't think the cooking pot is the appropriate mechanism. I also generally play where I get saturated and move from point to point. The cooking pot is very helpful in allowing me to sprint long distances because half a cooking pot generally gets you close to the 'stuffed' stage of fullness. It allows me to effectively ignore wells for long periods of time in way which I find is unrewarding and a bit too easy.

I had thought of this as an alternative option. The only downside I can think of is that this might be a more technically demanding solution which requires the server to keep track of all the levels of water in players backpacks. Might be a bit much but I honestly know very little about the coding of the game and this is just a guess. If it were easy to implement without any performance impact then this idea is ideal. I agree except that I still want cooking pots to store water but only if it is not in storage. In other words, the cooking pot will only store water if it is in the player's hands or on the ground. I think players should still be able to collect water from a pond and boil it to make clean water and perhaps distribute the water to canteens and I still think players should be able to boil food as this is a legitimate means of cooking . As to the other comments by posters, I see your points about how arguments grounding in realism are not effective as it is a game after all. I agree that ideally there shouldn't be an overall rarity of water storage containers. Perhaps the cooking pot is acting as a placeholder in lieu of the fact that you would be able to find tons of bottles. From a gameplay perspective I still see a few issues. First, the redundancy of water bottles and canteens in comparison to cooking pots is not effective game design. Second, if you really hydrate yourself (like where you see the icon as white and full but you keep drinking) AND you have a cooking pot full of water, the player's need for water seems almost unintentionally diminished. Third, while I know appeals to realism are not always effective given the inconsistency of design decisions within the game , it makes very little sense that you can store items in a cooking pot when those items should conversely take up volume and reduce the amount of water storage. Also another thought, the speed of the plucking of chickens was used an example of another unrealistic element of the game. But surely, this doesn't really bring us any closer to analyzing these gameplay mechanics in a critical way. Of course there are going to be unrealistic decisions: it is a game! But water consumption/depletion is a very finely tuned part of the experience and is very close to the character's survival. I think where survival and core mechanics (blood, food, water, health, sickness) are concerned, upmost attention should be paid to the objects and processes which directly affect these mechanics.

I think in Steam you have to be friends before you can message strangers in a game. Although I think there are ways around this, mass texting to all players in a room is prohibitively difficult AFAIK.

This nitpicking is a bit much.

what i mean is i dont think there is a specific gas station spawn identity meaning that if you increase the spawn rate of maps perhaps it will increase their spawn rate across the entire world. I could be completely wrong as I have no idea about how this stuff actually works, just a guess.

I think maps should also have a higher chance of spawning at gas stations but I don't think that is its own spawn entity.

I'm going to copy @Tarkules' approach Map: I enjoyed how different the map felt from Chernarus. It certainly did not feel like a reskin. I also appreciate that changes were made to the map form the previous available versions of the map (less water fountains). In a way it is just a totally different experience because the spawn is so chaotic and vicious because there are less resources in the immediate vicinity. So you have to make your way south but not too far south. I think this map will really be cool on longer plays because you can setup in the southern forrest and keep returning to the middle or north towns to resupply. It makes for a fun kind of hermit playstyle should you want to play that way. Obviously, the thunderstorms are great. Had some great moments with friendly strangers where we holed up in an ruined house waiting for the rain to subside while our health returned after a zombie encounter. These moments are really important to cultivate in a game like this because it allows for organic bonding between players, which is truly something DayZ excels at when it happens. And I agree that there are too many items in the ruined houses. I really appreciate how you have improved the loot spawning because items are spawning in more areas which keeps me on my toes. Also I like how there is more bleedover from certain areas (like you will find medical stuff in surrounding buildings). I like that there are some items spawns are road blocks and other areas where you would expect to find something. Issues: I've found most if not all of the bugs I've encountered posted on the feedback tracker. Performance still seems to be the kicker. While the infected are spawning in a different way they seem more pervasive without feeling forced. However, there seems to be serious lag issues as the player count goes up. The sound of wet feet is very strange in my opinion. It always scares the crap out of me because to my ears it sounds like someone throwing a punch. Overall: Very interested to see how much this DLC will cost as that will be one of the determinative factors. There is a relationship between what I will pay and what I expect other people will want to play. The higher the price goes the more I will expect other people to not want to purchase the DLC. Therefore, I will expect that a lower player base will lead to non-adoption of the map and push the value of the dlc further down for myself. It's really hard to value things like this or predict how people will respond. The maps needs to have some more technical stability but ultimately I think it is a great experience and I am truly curious to see how players would hole up and dig into this map. The forrest is a truly terrifying area because you never know what or who is watching. At the same time, it allows you to get the initiative on other unsuspecting players if you play smart.

Okay, I'll bite. I still don't know which precise gun bug you are referring to. Did you mention it earlier in the thread?

Yeah I agree, @drgullen. There are occasional unexplained glitches with the guns that are usually resolved by putting the gun away and taking it out again. Perhaps the most damaging glitch has to do with the 'hold R to reload feature.' For internal magazine guns this system works flawlessly. For external magazine weapons, it appears to be broken when I use it as intended. Say I have an IJ-70 with three full clips but I don't want the clips taking up space in the hot bar. When my inserted clip runs out of ammo I can hold R to switch to one of the full clips. I find however, that the clips that are taken out become glitched and can no longer be accessed by clicking or dragging, rendering them useless. This can be fatal in a combat situation. The workaround is to keep reloading without using the R mechanic. In this case, I just have to adapt to an area of the game that needs work and has likely been acknowledged as a bug. I suppose for me finding workarounds tends to outweigh the deleterious effects of certain glitches or bugs. I do understand that for others such is not the case and that their threshold for glitches is next to zero. In that case, DayZ is probably not going to be a very enjoyable experience because there are still issues with the game in terms of glitches and such that still require work. There are few, if any, games without glitches or defects. The question is of course: what is your limit or threshold? In some cases bugs or glitches become part of the meta of games (e.g. smashbros wavedashing, bunnyhopping in half-life, etc.). In DayZ, because the stakes are often so high (that is, when you die if you are geared you lose everything including your location and have to start from scratch) the effect of glitches are magnified where a glitch that was permissible in another game (where a total loss situation could be rectified through loading a save or some other similar mechanic) becomes impermissible in DayZ. Therefore, the devs are held to higher standard by the community because those experiences where you die by a glitch are, for lack of a better word, traumatic!

I don't like the idea of having npc humans in the game in any way. That includes airdrops. I like that DayZ cultivates a sense that you are the only ones on the island.

I ain't an expert, but I believe online video games primarily use upload as opposed to download. You can do a speedtest through google to see how fast your connection is. but in terms of volume I think video games would be relatively minimal.

what's sprint for you guys? maybe that works. Sorry this is the second time i've posted this tip in the console board. By accident I swear

The real secret to driving on inclines is to hold shift. No joke! It acts as though you are giving full throttle. I had the chance to test this out in the Livonia update although I presume this has been in the game for quite some time.

To be fair, when you referred to him as an elitist you were singling him out and beginning a back a forth.