YTDoc

Hey all, I've been playing this game for quite some time - took a break a year ago. I've seen the development process and... well, of course we all know that it's a decent game - but in my opinion DayZ SA has always had a ton of wasted potential. I've not kept up with all of the updates/devblogs/roadmap recently so forgive any thoughts I may list that are either ALREADY IN THE ROADMAP/have been rejected by the devs already. Apologies in advance if I sound like I'm nagging or perhaps hating on the game, please note that I love the game and the concept; and any time I say something "should" be a certain way I don't mean it in a condescending manner, I just like putting my ideas out there. As well as that, apologies for the wall of text, I'm quite passionate about things like this, so I tend to rant and ramble; I'm sure some things here have been suggested but I hope you enjoy reading nonetheless. So, here goes the list WITH DESCRIPTIONS: Boarding of windows/doors. Simply enough, using boards and a certain amount of nails to board up the windows to a house. Could be done with the same tools; planks, hammer, nails, and use the same highlighting system the current building system uses. Think Unturned boarding where you have the outline of the board that collides with the open space of the window, and can only be placed given both sides of the window are connected to the board. Of course, some windows would be too big, but think of that as balancing perhaps. REAL Stealth, and zombie takedowns. Moving slowly enough behind a zombie given your carry weight is low enough should allow you to sneak directly up to a zombie and give you a prompt to silently take it down if you've got a suitable weapon in your hand. As said before, the level of your stealth should scale to carry weight in a more meaningful way, so walking around with a light kit is more incentivized; which would also make loot collecting runs progressively more dangerous as your backpack begins rustling and jingling with more junk and items! You could even extend these same mechanics to a player encounter, holding a button for a second or two (to avoid abuse of the mechanic mid combat) and grappling them from behind; whoever can press a certain key on their keyboard/button on their controller faster over a span of a few seconds would be the winner - meaning either death for the person being grabbed, or the person who grabbed them would be pushed off and staggered leaving time for the defender to attack. Better zombie collision. I know, at a certain point melee combat becomes somewhat less useful unless you're trying not to attract attention; however melee fights with zombies can be absolutely atrocious at times with how they sprint directly through you, and through walls. At one point I had a horde of zombies chase me into a shed; I locked myself inside only to find out that the crowd had glitched a zombie onto the roof of the shed by running into him and therefore had given him the ability to attack and hit me through the building. Better zombie AI. It doesn't have to be advanced, just the strangeness and almost comical way they move around and hunt is a bit immersion breaking. Perhaps even a 7 Days to Die-esque system where some zombies may be laying on the floor/propped up against the wall in buildings only to stand when alerted. Perhaps even hordes or roaming zombies, or the sense of smell that allows them to track players that have blood on them either by skinning an animal or being hurt; or the ability to smell people with raw meat in their inventory. More meaningful base building. At the moment, vanilla base building is so bland, and soulless that all of my friends who play, and I, have just decided to not even put the effort into it anymore. This all ties back into the boarding of windows and doors; because the lack of decoration/furniture/useful items is staggering. Chairs, tables, drawers, gunracks, water collection barrels (like real ones made with tarp), proper cabins, small fences for farms, beds, sleeping bags, radios that played music or acted as medium range field transceivers, more SECURE storage such as larger crates you can lock, perhaps decorative posters or spikes to keep zombies away from the walls of your home would all make the base building much more personalized and creative. These additions would breathe life into a dead and stiff - not to mention very clunky - base building system. More fun "rewards" for hunting. Honestly, I'm putting this in as a personal thing; because I think the fact you cannot create wolf/bear headdresses (such as the wolf headgear in Rust) is a sorely missed opportunity. Hunting animals in DayZ - in my opinion - should be a bit rarer, and more intense. Deer should hear you from further away and run, wolves and bears shouldn't just sprint at you when you're on a main road in an open field every 30 minutes, and you should be able to keep spoils of the kill! The bear rug is a step in the right direction, of course, but what if the stags/bucks had antlers that were picked from a list of models when spawning, and you were able to count the points and keep the antlers, mounting them on your wall? That'd be sick! Using fox pelts to make a scarf to keep you warm in the cold, or even bear claws on a necklace as a cool cosmetic item! (On a side note, more fish would be cool too.) More survival-like mechanics. It seems to me that the main aspect of the game has and always has been to walk around and collect food, eat the food, collect gear, and eventually die. However, why not make that simple and often repetitive cycle a little more interesting? Allow zombies to slowly beat down doors so that players must be wary of attracting large hordes. Make eating canned foods leave behind refuse that other players may find; using it to track down the player carelessly leaving behind traces of their presence. Allow the use of those same empty cans and tin cans as a sound device; as with the throwing system you could toss the can to lure zombies towards the sound clearing your path! When bleeding, players, and animals should leave small blood droplet trails, (not zombies because I assume the game couldn't handle a horde all bleeding like that) maybe even larger trails if the bleed is more intense. This would make exploration more engaging and also give a certain survivalist feel to hunting wild game. Over time, if a player or group of players use a trail for long enough, maybe the grass should dissipate leaving a dirt clearing where they continue to walk? Like forest trails in real life. Just on another small issue, the fact that we can't wring out our soaked clothes into pots/bottles, or catch rain with cooking pots is strange to me. A more impactful combat system. As it stands right now, melee feels like I'm swinging a pool noodle, and gunplay feels like I'm shooting nerf darts. The death animations and impact particles/sound just have no weight to them whatsoever, so combat has no feeling of brutality to it. I'd liken combat in this game more to Roblox: Phantom Forces than to something like The Forest or even Fallout. Maybe you have other opinions, but my own is that, although it WORKS, the feel of combat is very unenjoyable. Overall, just as I feel about the food/water system to an extent - combat feels like more of a chore than an event. More UNIQUE locations. From what I've seen on both of the official maps, there are not many places that seem to garner actual proper interest. Sure, on Livonia the medical tents at Radunin are cool the first time you see them; but they rarely are anything but a place to find medical loot, just an advanced form of the already useful medical building in the cities. Even the castles are relatively lifeless and empty. Why not have more hidden, smaller places? Somewhere with more lore and story behind them. Maybe a far off building where there's gurneys lining the halls and corpses in them; surrounded by ambulances and it has messages scrawled on the walls in blood? Or an unmarked military area on the top of a mountain with a ladder down into an underground bunker, full of zombies in hazmat/NBC uniforms (seriously it would be cool to see a full NBC zombie with a gas mask). Or even CAVES? There's not a single REAL cave in either map, and that's a damn shame. Not only would all of these serve to be cool places to visit, they'd possibly serve as prime spots for basing and loot collection - drawing people to more remote parts of the map! These were only a few examples, but I'm sure you could find more. Either way, maybe it's too technologically advanced for what the game is capable of, but the fact that all the buildings whether houses/industrial/military seem to mostly be empty except a piece of furniture or two with no uniqueness separating any of them apart makes the world feel bland and unappealing. Vehicles. I know it's been said a thousand times, but the fact that there hasn't been a single air or water vehicle officially implemented into the game after 7 or 8 years is crazy to me. We have airfields, helipads, rivers, lakes, and oceans. There should therefore be, vehicles to accommodate travel through and from those areas; thus giving more ACTUAL reasons to GO TO THOSE AREAS. Hell, motorcycles and bikes would also be a welcome addition. Animations. I know that for both technical, and data storage reasons that this may be a far fetched idea; however, there should be more proper animations for actions in game. When you're sprinting and suddenly stop, there should be force still moving; and your character should have to pivot themselves to stop it; leaving you vulnerable if you decide you need to stop suddenly on a dime. Here's where we get into the reason I said I understand it's far fetched - bodies should ragdoll. In order to decrease the load on the game/system/server, perhaps make them have no physics with EACH OTHER. However, when shot/hit with a weapon both survivors and zombies should ragdoll and have a reasonable force applied to that ragdoll in the direction they were attacked based upon what they were hit with. If it was a knife? Perhaps they just tumble, but an axe? They should fall back. A shotgun or high caliber rifle? They should drop and be forced to fall back a bit harder. A grenade or landmine? They should be thrown around! It would make everything feel so much more real, and in my opinion - more intense as well. More durability mechanics. Some of the shirts, jackets, and pants I own have been with me for years; and are still in good condition - and I work a day job. The fact that shooting a 30 round mag out of an M4A1, can scratch it up and damage it instantly, or being punched twice by a zombie 3 times can completely cover my camo jacket in tears and rips is a bit much. Just as I said with food/water, the durability system often feels like just another chore to keep the player busy and make the game a little more difficult. What most players want though isn't just a DIFFICULT game, but a fun and engaging one - and I can perfectly say having everything on my body badly damaged after a scuffle with a few zombies and having to spend 2 minutes standing still sewing it all back together isn't fun. Neither is having to stockpile hatchets, shovels, saws, and hammers to build 8 pieces of fence that will lead to an empty room with boxes on the floor. It just... isn't a fun mechanic with the way it's implemented. More unique, and cool clothing/weapons. This is coming more from the roleplay side of me, but I do think the amount of actual USEFUL clothing could be increased a bit. I do think there are already quite a few clothing choices - and I don't scoff at what we have; it's pretty good! At the same time however, most of the clothes in the game that you find are simply not useful or optimal for mid to high tier kits. If you don't have a tactical vest, and field jacket, with combat pants you're just putting yourself at a disadvantage. The larger backpacks look quite ugly in my opinion, and therefore I propose that some more uniforms - both military and not - should be added into the game to spice things up a little. As well as that, possibly some more cosmetics, similar to how we used to have the Payday masks - those were super cool! Just some things to give your character some personality, and the unique flare you have as a person! Finally, weapon attachments. I'm not saying the game needs anything on Escape from Tarkov's level of modification, however a few more technologically advanced sight/scopes would be super cool. Perhaps even some foregrips to add to weapons you've fitted with a rail that way you actually have a reason to use them - as their stats just aren't as good as other handguards. Maybe some EOTECH sights, some more scopes, collimators, or even something like a thermal scope would be great fun - although I'm sure a thermal would need much more balancing. Also, there could be some more variety in suppressors besides pistol/normal/standard, as in real life there would be suppressors for different calibers. A suppressor made for one caliber would not work as well for another given it was a small enough step up in size; however there are also the opportunity for multi-caliber suppressors to be added as well. These suppressors could vary in both caliber, as well as durability, effectiveness in lowering volume, and even muzzle flash concealment. I'm no game dev, but these are just the things I've been thinking about a lot the more that I play the game again and realize that it isn't all that it could be. I have no idea if any of this is able to be implemented, OR if it is planned to be; but I thought I'd share because I've got some free time. Thanks for reading, and I'd love to hear you guys' ideas as well. I met my best friends on this game, we've known each other for around 4 years because of this game. Thank you devs for giving me the opportunity to meet them. ~ Doctor Joe