mcslaughter

You'll need to specify a lot of nuances about how a mechanism like this would work, as it would get boring if once you cleared a village or town no zombies came to the area (I saw that you mentioned "herds" of zombies investigating every so often, but this would take more fine-tuning to be a good aspect to this feature). I agree that you should be able to clear a village/settlement/town/city, but once a location is "secured" there must be a trade-off for maintaining it (i.e. a shit-ton of zombies roams through the area, and it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain a location). Also, for major cities such as Chernogorsk or Elektrozavodsk, it might work better if they were segmented. For example, clearing and "taking hold" of the industrial park in Elektrozavodsk will cause no more zombies to spawn directly in that area, but this would in turn cause more zombies to spawn in the other segments of the city, requiring a group to have more and more players as they progress in taking over a city's multiple segments as zombies become exponentially more common. Not to mention this would also cause more zombies to invade secured areas as they become claimed by a group of survivors. (If this were applied, you would also have to account for how more and more zombies spawning would cause stress on the entire server, and, in turn, the entire world.) I believe that if this, combined with dynamic world events (see: Guild Wars 2's dynamic events system for more specifics on what I'm talking about.), would encourage people to cooperate (or, better yet, cause splinter factions to form as other groups vie against other groups for control of a location or territory!). This would lead to endless possibilities, especially if game-generated dynamic events spurred a lot of these events seamlessly in-game.

I was a part of the huge original "<insert video game here> Mythbusters" movement way back in Halo 3's prime (When Halo 3 Mythbusters was the big thing.) that later turned into Defend the House (if any of you know of that YouTube channel), and I always love seeing new Mythbusters series! I like the choice of music solely because it is unobtrusive, similarly to how Defend the House did it.

Mansions? Really? While I am an advocate of base-building, the amount of time and resources it would realistically take to create a house -- let alone a mansion -- is astronomical when without constructional technology and constructed by hand. If you've ever been on a mission trip or a similar charity-oriented organization where you build a house for someone, you know that it takes ten or more mostly competent people to construct a house over a week's time, constantly working from dawn to dusk. Now take that scenario and apply it to an apocalyptic backdrop and you will see that there just realistically won't be the supplies or the manpower to construct houses, especially in DayZ. Walls are a bit more feasible, but banks, clinics, etc. are all highly impractical and also go against the first step of DayZ's core concept: Scavenging. If you build a giant base where clinics spawn medical supplies it totally eliminates the need to go out and find supplies, which is one of the most important parts of DayZ.

This is nigh impossible to implement even when ignoring the fact that ArmA2's VOIP would not be able to control handle this. The game is realism-oriented, but it's not so realistic that it forces people out of their third-party VOIP programs. Even if you managed to make it so that direct chat is always engaged, you have to account for the fact that not everyone has a working microphone, or a microphone at all. Not to mention that you can disable VOIP in the ArmA2 settings, thus totally circumventing the forced in-game persistent VOIP. This wouldn't work, and meta-gaming through the use of VOIP is not bannable or exploitative of the game. This is effectively the same as forcing a thirty plus person clan to use All chat on a raid in World of WarCraft -- It won't work, and would be annoying as hell if it was ever implemented.

As people have previously said, this already existed in the form of a humanity feature and bandits being given their own skin upon killing "x" amount of people. This feature was taken away due to it "punishing" PvP-oriented players, which is against the philosophy of the gamemakers. The solution? Don't be so trusting of random people, especially if they are armed. You're feeding yourselves to the wolves if you foolishly shout "FRIENDLY?!" in Chernogorsk, and that's your fault. Your survival is no one else's responsibility but your own. edit: woops, I forgot this forum engine doesn't have automerge. Sorry!

This takes away from the realism of the game, and destroys the tension of not knowing who to and who not to trust, which is a major component of the human interaction in DayZ (which is one of the biggest factors of the entire game).

I considered the possibility of NPC humans being hostile while making my original reply, but my point still remains that human NPCs -- hostile, friendly, neutral, or otherwise -- will only lead to degrading DayZ to that of so many other RPG games. It's a snowball effect, really.

Look at all these people flexing their ability to identify satire and sarcasm. This thread in itself is an experiment.

When you're given certain skills you might as well use them to the best of your abilities... It just so happens that this man's skills are all focused on making sure you drive out of this parking lot with the best car and the lowest interest rate this side of Chernarus!

I find that DayZ is very unique in the sense that it is an MMORPG that is completely devoid of NPCs other than the infected. Adding in NPCs (even randomly appearing ones) will only diminish the unique feeling that DayZ has. If "friendly" human NPCs were to be introduced, that would only act as a gateway to this game's assimilation: Once we start seeing random groups of non-player controlled survivors bumbling about, we'll soon see quest-givers and other NPCs that are so common in every other MMORPG that will effectively degrade what makes DayZ so different. Just to clarify, I'm not against quests or "missions, but I believe that they should be handed out by unseen hands (or some other means, i.e. player-to-player-instated quests or -- better yet -- dynamic world events) rather than Bob the Survivor outside Chernogorsk.

The more you play the more adept you become at judging when you will detect a zombie, as well as how to escape them when without a weapon. In time you will adapt and overcome. The zombies are fine as they are now (more or less, that is) and you will be able to escape them with more experience and a little more use of your head to assess a situation before you get into it. (In other words, take it slow and observe your surroundings!) This is not your average zombie game: You will get into situations where you will be fucked over (seemingly, at least) and you will either have to suck it up and keep running or respawn.

I like it more than the old forum, as the old forum engine was sort of busted and outdated in a lot of respects. (Images weren't displaying, poor format, etc.) To the people who don't like that there are now by default more posts per page, that's always something you can alter in your forum settings -- just like in the old forum engine. I hated that there was only 10 posts displayed per page because that made a thread which in reality only had like fifty posts five pages long, which was a pain to flip back and forth through to read user interactions during a discussion. EDIT: Not to mention that posting to a thread is so much more smooth now. None of that "Submitting post... Transferring to post now..." nonsense that's been around since 2001. It's all much more fluid and professional rather than a college web design student's summer portfolio. EDIT2: Oh, and the fact that there's now actually a divider between a user's post and their signature is a huge help now that people's random "zinger" signatures ("I'M TEH BEAN BANDITO L0L!") aren't as easily mistaken for more of the person's actual post in a thread.

But he already owns Arma2, as he said in the OP. He probably purchased it a while back or something, rather than having recently purchased it like 95% of the DayZ fanbase.

If you already own ArmA2, you can simply purchase Operation Arrowhead and install the mod and everything should work!

Actually, how about this: If you have received damage within the past thirty seconds, disconnecting requires a ten second timer. From there, the more damage that you have received (by fractional increments?), your timer is increased by five seconds per increment. For instance, if you are at 10,000 blood and someone shoots you, taking you to 2,000 blood, it will take you thirty seconds to log out. (Five seconds per 2,000 blood loss.) This wouldn't automatically apply if you were below 12,000 blood: Your timer would only be increased for damage received within the past thirty seconds. Using this method, people who have sustained more damage in a firefight before attempting to abort will find that it will take them even longer to logout, allowing the deserving victor of a gunfight to have more time to finish them off. This way people who are in the wilderness or simply need to logout in a hurry can safely logout wherever they are with the normal five second timer and not have to risk getting picked off standing around waiting for a thirty second timer, and people who actually exploit the game by disconnecting will still be caught and punished. Reasonable?

Thirty seconds as a minimum is a little extreme, but a logout timer should be enforced. I believe a five second timer is reasonable. In the event that you do disconnect (Which happens a lot more to people than the OP makes it out to be, especially given all the network issues this game has at times.) that's still enough time to be safe from random zombie aggro, but not long enough if you have entered combat with a hostile survivor. I'm sure something like this has already been said in the several pages of this thread, but I figure it's worth repeating if it has or stating it if it hasn't. EDIT: Other games that enforce a logout timer generally only have a timer that lasts ten seconds. I've only seen one game that takes thirty seconds to log out, and honestly waiting those thirty seconds is incredibly tedious. A logout timer should be implemented (At least tested.), but it shouldn't be thirty seconds. I draw the line at fifteen seconds, and even that is pushing the envelope. Five or ten seconds is the optimal time for the timer.

I bet you have at least 4 girlfriends And at least twice as many mistresses.

I once read on the FAQ that you can work for the development team by using the contact portion of the DayZ website. It would appear, given the bolded text in the quote above, that they are specifically in need of 3D modelers and I think it would be easier for you to get a direct reply and line of communication opened if you used their contact form, which you can find here. Great work with the models, I hope they're used!

The game is not that hard... It is not "impossibly difficult." The game simply doesn't hold your hand like every other game in today's industry does. It's actually quite frustrating, seeing how developers have resorted to informing gamers on how every single thing in a game works before presenting it to them. There's no thought required from the gamers: They just read what's on the screen and then do it in mimic like some kind of chimp. I'm not an advocate for exclusive retro gaming nor am I a hardcore retro gamer (Though I love retro games, of course.), but back then there was no "Press A to pick your nose." The game didn't tell you shit, and you had to figure it out for yourself. DayZ isn't pants-shittingly difficult. It just requires a bit of thought and a pinch of patience. I knew literally nothing about Arma2 or DayZ before playing it other than that Arma is a military simulator and DayZ has zombies and bandits. I started playing just after 1.7.1.5 was released (Roughly a week and a half ago?) and I have never had an issue with not having a weapon on spawn or with zombie detection. I'm not the kind of person to call someone a carebear or a CoD kiddie on the grounds that it poorly represents this community. However, the game is not as hard as people make it out to be and I believe that everyone who says so is only complaining because they died a few times and have become inanely frustrated with the game for no reason other than they aren't "super 1337" the minute they picked up the game. Adapt and overcome, I say. Adapt and overcome.

This is a really intriguing way of looking at the mechanic, and I'm glad you brought this insight to this forum. I'll link this for further reading whenever I see a thread complaining about this part of the game again.

I'm an amateur writer who enjoys taking inspiration from the games I play. DayZ is no exception, and I have written a short story in honor of the game and the hatchet. (I call it an ax, though, as Gary Paulsen beat me to the title of "Hatchet.") I hope you enjoy. Ax You never really expect yourself to grow up to be an ax murderer. Then again, no one ever really expected an apocalypse that toppled humanity, either, and look where that’s gotten us. But really, I never saw someone take an aptitude test and get “ax murderer” as their suggested career plan. No one ever walked out of American Psycho and decided they needed to get themselves a chainsaw and go to town on some pretty blondes. Nobody ever woke up one morning and resolved that the only feasible thing they could do with their life was to chop people up into tiny giblets. And yet here I am, not even thirty years old (I think) and hacking away at vagabonds and passerby at this bridge like I’m getting paid to do it. I can’t say that it’s what I imagined myself doing after graduating from BYU with a degree in socioeconomics – whatever the hell that means – but if I said I didn’t enjoy it I’d be lying. There’s just something really satisfying about slicing away all that flesh and bone. I was always squeamish as a boy, never relishing the thought of blood and gore and all that. I guess people’s tastes change once they grow up. Don’t confuse me for a cannibal though: Those people are nuts, and I am happy to inform you that I don’t discriminate when slashing throats with ol’ Bonnie. Now I could sit here and try to defend myself, making some claim about being the judge, jury, and executioner for the poor people that pass through here, but I’ll save you that righteous Hollywood antihero bullshit. I’m not a good guy. I know that Nietzsche said that good and evil are subjective and all as an excuse to justify all the obscene things that occur in our world, but I don’t think anyone could really call me a good guy after seeing the heap of bodies that has accumulated under this bridge. If it wasn’t for the ocean breeze everyone would smell the death a mile away. There is a story behind all of this, I can assure you. It’s fairly grisly, but I feel we’re all pretty desensitized after seeing our loved ones torn apart and our world fall to pieces so I suppose the contents that follows won’t be too shocking in light of these dark times. If you’re reading this, I’m almost certainly dead. The only other two possibilities are that I’m out hunting or you’re in a place you’re soon going to regret being in. For your sake I sincerely hope it is the former. It’s no secret that a few years ago the world went to shit. It was all very confusing for us at the time: Sporadic reports of plague, sensationalist headlines heralding the end, people not showing up for work anymore. No one was entirely sure what was going on, but everyone was sure that everything was going to be okay. You are one of the not-so-lucky ones who know that everything turned out to be far from okay. Once the dead stopped dying and started waking up, that’s when I knew that we were royally fucked. That was an obvious sign from whoever’s in charge that they’re no longer very pleased with us and have opted to use a much more effective alternative to flooding. People didn’t know what to do. Friends and family were dead one minute, and the next they were gnawing and biting at anything they could get their disgusting teeth on. Everyone panicked, and most people were killed in that initial shock. It was a nightmare. Those left woke up to find themselves in an unimaginably worse nightmare: A world where evolution finally gave humanity the shaft and overturned control to decaying flesh. Me? I was out getting drunk. I figured there was nothing left for me, and being that I wasn’t a stock broker and thus didn’t have the genes to jump from a tall building, I waded my way past the wretched screaming and the thick haze of smoke to Reggie’s bar. Despite all of the death and looting that surrounded me in that doomed city, everyone at the bar was in high spirits. Everyone was merry and we drank like there was no tomorrow. They were either resigned to death like me or they weren’t entirely aware that the world was ending yet. Literally, that is. The next thing I remember was waking up in the cellar with the door locked and the lights out. It didn’t take me long to realize that I wasn’t alone down there, but I was the only one who was feeling the hangover. The others were dead, but I was sure they wouldn’t be for long. I groped around in the dark for what seemed like an infinite amount of time in some sort of customized Hell, praying to whoever was listening that I would live to see the sun again. Then I found Bonnie: Red and slender, like some beautiful girl from my wildest dreams. I can’t say with certainty what happened next, but I don’t think if anyone else had been alive in there at that point they would have been much longer after that. I stumbled out onto the street, the sun blinding me with its optimistic shine like everything was the way it had been yesterday. I would have almost believed it, too, but the streets were devoid of life. Ruin was the only thing that was left. In the movies everything is only decrepit and lifeless years after everyone’s dead and Will Smith is the only one driving a sports car through the streets of Manhattan. It only took a day. I wandered around in awe, not fully capable of grasping what was unfolding before me between the shock of Armageddon and my hangover. No one was left except the crows. They spoke in tongues, asking each other where the good food was to be had. They stared with derision, guffawing at the absurdity of my existence. “What’s he doing, walking around? Doesn’t he know he’s supposed to be dead like the others?” I almost felt obligated to them, like I had to offer a good enough excuse as to why I was still standing, like I had to explain why I wasn’t their midmorning meal. Then I saw him. Or rather, he saw me. He cried out to me, begging for help for something or another. It could have been about his dying wife, or it could have been about baked beans. I don’t really know. I walked over to where he was lying in the dust, Bonnie in hand, and just stared at him. He opened his mouth as he looked up at me with his pleading eyes, asking again for me to be a Good Samaritan and help him with his woes. I helped him. He didn’t ask again. Neither did the crows. I gave them their answer and their midmorning meal. I don’t remember everyone I’ve killed. I’ve murdered innocents and I’ve executed demons. I’ve massacred families and I’ve gutted loners. I’ve killed men and I’ve slain women. I’ve slaughtered children and I’ve dispatched the elderly. I am not a good guy. If you are not fortunate enough that I am dead and out hunting, you are going to soon find out for yourself that I am not a good guy. Do not call me any such thing when you set this down and turn around. If anything, please, call me Clyde.

Reposting, as I'm still curious as to what anyone with interest has to say.

Getting upset (read: forever transformed) because you died once is pretty funny (read: sad).

This is a funny prerequisite given that this entire OP is without any proper capitalization, grammar, or sentence structure. Not very "professional" or "mature," in my opinion.