petward

Oh no, I love the honest feedback. Maybe it's because I'm a masochist...? Anyway, onto your points. The skills I listed above were merely posted to help visualize what the system may look like. That's to say that they shouldn't be looked at as literal skills... more like placeholders. Things like the Hunting skill line that rely on kills and such was proposed due to me not knowing the power of the ArmA 2/3 engine and trying to be realistic. At first I had thought about making it so that Hunting would increase the damage you did to zombies, but I felt that would not be as cohesive as sight and sound. You say it doesn't correlate, but I beg to differ. When your hunting in real life you notice things about your prey. How it moves, how it eats, how it fornicates, where it goes to drink, where it sleeps, and more importantly how you can out smart it. In DayZ the only way to "out smart" the A.I is to sneak past it. See where I'm going? Yes, you can stack those two up to get -40% sight or sound depending on if your a survivor or bandit ;P. The way I envision the reduction happening is very straightforward. When you are crouched/prone (Stealth mode activated!) whatever variable your sight/sound is at gets reduced by 40%. Simple. However, these bonuses do not apply when you are standing as you are obviously not trying to be stealthy. I agree that they may be more "gamey" than what we have now, but I believe that they fit fairly well into the DayZ world. This is assuming that the developers use the exact skills that I proposed. That is not my tru point here. As I said above the main thing I'm after is to show how the system itself works. I don't know about other things :S. This is really the only thing I actually have an idea for at the moment. However, I have been brainstorming on the topic of Meta-game as that is probably my biggest irk with the mod at the moment... Maybe not irk, but what I would like to see implemented the most. Unfortunatley that is a very broad topic filled with ridiculous amounts of conjecture. Writing an article on that would be not only difficult, but redundant as well. I'm almost 100% sure there are at least 3 threads already like it. Thank you for your critical feedback! Having someone that is playing the devil's advocate is the best way to find solutions to problems :).

Skill Lines: So decided to update the thread with a few skill lines and the mechanics. First I will go over the general system itself. Keep in mind this is using System #1 from the original post. There are a total of 9 skill lines. Each skill line caps off at 20 points and the global cap for the skill points is 120. So that means even when you hit the cap you will be missing 1/3 of the points needed to max out everything. I was going to be stricter by making you miss out on 1/2, but I felt I might as well start high until more feedback in generated. Now onto the skill lines themselves. Hunting: Player gains 1 point per 10(maybe 15) zombie kill/animal kill (assuming that animals will eventually run from you). This line will decease the amount of sound and sight you generate by 1% for each point. Therefore when maxed you will have -20% sound/sight generation. Probably the easiest to level up considering the nature of zombies and animals. Could be considered most OP. Predation: Player gains 1 point per 5(maybe a more manageable 3) survivor kill. This line will decrease chance of getting Pain(fear) and your sound generation by 1% for each point. Maxed grants you -20% sound/fear generation. Animal Training: Player gains 1 point per 5 zombie/player kill from Dog. This line will increase the sight of the Dog and the amount of damage it will inflict. Sight will be the regular 1% while damage will only be .5% per point. Maxed your dog will have +20% sight and +10% damage. Until it dies. Then it is reset.(Maybe...) Mechanic: Player gains 1 point per every car part (possibly whole car) repaired. this line will be not give any percentage bonuses. Instead it will give incremental bonuses every 5 points. At 5 players will not need a wheel to fix wheels. At 10 players will not need fuel tank parts to fix fuel tank. At 15 players will not need engine to fix engine. At 20 players will not need rotor to fix helicopter rotor. Possibly most under powered. Endurance: Player gains 1 point per every 10min(possibly make 20 or 30) ran. This line will increase the players speed by .5% and decrease the player's thirst/hunger rate by 1% as well. Maxed will have +10% speed and -20% thirst/hunger rate. Adaptation: Player gains 1 point per each hour spent in-game. This line will decrease temperature rate by 1% and pain/fear by 1%(maybe .5%). Maxed will have -20% temperature and -20%(maybe -10%) pain/fear. Medicine: Player gains 1 point per every medical item used on survivor/self. At level 10 this changes to the player gaining 1 point per every medical item used on only other survivors. This line will give players 1% chance to not use up medical item on usage. (maybe too unrealistic...) Maxed will have 20% chance of not using up medical items on usage. Cooking: Player gains 1 point per every 3 cooked meat they create. This line will increase the blood gained by cooked meat by 1% each point. Maxed will give you +20% blood which translates to 960 blood per every cooked meat. ...and finally Companionship: Player gains 1 point per every 10(maybe 30) mins spent not killing other survivors. This line will decrease chance of pain/fear by 1% and the amount of sight generated by 1%. Maxed will give you -20% pain/fear and -20% sound generation. It's pretty rough, but for the most part I believe it is balanced. As always feedback is immensely welcomed. Hope this gives a better idea of how the system works.

I think another major point that DayZ should have is not restricting the player of not being able to do what they want to do. I don't think streamlining people is the best way to do it, even though it does make sense.

Only if I can wear this. In all seriousness it feels out of place to me in a realistic zombie apocalypse game. However it would feel right at home in Dead Rising :). The armor itself would most likely be loud and heavy making you a huge fucking target for a certain infected sentient being.

The funny thing is this is how people are brought together in real life, for the most part. Realism, bitch.

Wow... Think of all the ways to troll people...

Ha, don't worry, I'm privy to some rambling myself :). Exactly what I was thinking of in terms of how to show your progress. It's like your inside my head O_o. I always liked the usage of the journal in Uncharted. Funny little ramblings from the character while you solve you puzzles (Wow, that was random...). While this may give too much life into your character the concept itself is more believable than a magical screen of numbers. This was one of the things I knew would come up, but was feeling tired/lazy so didn't fully implement it into the suggestion. I do love my immersion/realism, but this is still a game. A game with options/menus/HUD that need to be implemented somehow. However, do you even really need to have a notifications/way to check? (I'm actually really asking here, not trying to make a point...) The game is as much about realism/immersion as it is about discovery and exploration. For example when you repair a vehicle for the 10th time you may notice that you can simply repair the engine on it's own without having to retrieve a new one. Or that subtle increase in the speed of your character from walking across the map and back. Or the ease of stealthing into a town after having done it almost 25 times. I once watched a video interview with TotalBiscut and Rocket and he explained that he liked the idea of having no HUD whatsoever and simply having noises and sounds that would tell you when you were hungry/thirsty. I know that is kind off topic, but it is that subtly that I believe breeds immersion. ANYWAY! thank you for your feedback :).

I think the point of my post is a bit blurry. The point is not to appease the people whining about there being too many Bandits. The point is to simply make it so that there is both an incentive to focus on murdering people and an incentive to group up and be friendly. Both sides have incentives. If you spend all your time maxing out the Murder skill line then you can't spend all your time maxing out the Repair line, Medicine line, or group line. That's the point of capping how many points you can accumulate. It's impossible to max out all skill lines.

To be honest I'd prefer if you didn't respect them. I'm asking for some harsh treatment here :). Thanks for being reasonable though. What you're explaining to me involving the Murder tree is the situation that would arise if the skill was overpowered. That's not really what this thread is about, though it is a valid concern, just not what I'm focusing on at the moment. I'm simply trying to get down a system that fits DayZ while, using conjecture, is balanced. However, even if more people went with Murder and became Bandits cause it sounded cooler, isn't that what DayZ is about? Choosing how you want to play. Psychopath or saint? While the numbers may become unbalanced the trees themselves will all be balanced... in a perfect world. As for your first point that is rectified by my previous post.

I was originally trying to stay realistic about the power and what the ArmA engine can and can't do. I think things like having the amount of loot you find being a factor in gaining skill points for whatever would be too convoluted as much as I would love for something like that. I completely know what you are talking about. Adding any type of leveling system, pseudo or not, almost instantly ruins the atmosphere... unless done correctly. I may have forgot to add this, but a way to diminish this is the fact that all of your points wipe once you die. So you have full Murder and can sneak past any zombie easily? Well that's too bad that the noob with a makarov just snuck up on you and killed you. That's the beauty of the DayZ system. Nothing is permanent... for the most part. It also helps that my idea of "skills/bonuses" don't actually affect how hard a player is to kill.

The 1 skill point per day would most definitely make the beginning just as hardcore as it has always been. It also does get rid of the "you do this so you get better at it" attitude I have a virtual boner for. I'm assuming this would mean you would be spending the skill points on talents rather than... System # 1? Sorry I don't really know what to call it. I do like how it emphasizes the need to survive as long as possible. However I do not like it myself as it would not really get rid of the bandit/survivor debacle like a "you do this so you get better at it" system. The real intent of this is to make it so that everyone is essentially on an "even" playing field regarding the bonuses they acquire through the skill system. I hope I'm not rambling too much :S. Thank you for the input! Brainstorming like this is the only way for this mod to get better and better.