dannyboyle

That would be great. If Bohemia developed a ragdoll physics system with advanced locomotion where the character hand goes to the wound automatically, be it a gunshot or a cut, I'm not referring to the players, I'm referring to an infected person or human AI, you could perfectly do that. Both entities would benefit from this, both real players and those controlled by AI. In medical terms, what you say can be done, is real, but the bad thing is that using your hand is dangerous, as you would be at risk of contracting a bacterial infection, which could require antibiotics if you become infected. You have to keep that in mind when making a design like this ¿Are your hands clean? ¿Have you washed or disinfected them with alcohol or bleach? It would even be great to be able to get infected with blood and become infected (zombie) if your hands are dirty with infected blood, for example, if you have crawled on a floor with blood on you, you are stained, then if someone hurts you while you are stained, you have a chance of becoming infected, you can even infect someone if you hit them and they have open wounds. I think this would be going too far, but it would be great. As I specified in the Infected redesign, a manual cutting mechanic where you control your hand would be great to be able to heat a knife over a fire, hold it up, and use it to hold it to an open wound and close it, as well as sterilize it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2oSbxpmMHBE Looking down would be simple if the game only had first-person perspective, but the game also has third-person perspective, which complicates things considerably. It would be nice if you could drag your hand to the wound in the character menu, like you do with a weapon. The first-person camera could perhaps have that more direct interaction.

If anyone knocks you out they should be able to finish you off with a shot to the head if they want, you are clearly in a position of inferiority. I don't like second chances, not with infected or humans. If someone leaves you alive, it's because they want to. I don't see anything wrong with the possibility of being knocked unconscious on the ground, because it's needed for good game play and it happens in the real world, but I see it as very difficult if a player really wants to kill you, and if a player knows that this mechanic exists, they should make sure to kill you if they really know that it happens. I think any player should have the option to perform a QTE finisher to kill a player if they are close, such as by stepping on their head, shoveling them in the head, etc. Another thing is if you are far away and there are infected people and you think that the other player is dead from a gunshot because he has fallen to the ground and you cannot stay there any longer because the infected are going to come for you and the situation arises that the person falls unconscious and then fortunately survives, but if you have that person centimeters away and you have him on the ground you must be able to end his life cruelly to make sure that he will not have the option to get up, just as if you also want you can leave him tied up without clothes. The chances of surviving if there's an infected nearby who wants your flesh, or a player a few inches away who wants you killed, should be almost slim, very very slim. In short, it's fine for players to be able to knock you out, but during the moment of unconsciousness you won't be able to do anything, and they will know that you breathe, this way they can decide what to do with you, if they want to kill you, if they want to tie you up, if they just want to rob you and leave, if they made a mistake. Something I do like about PlayDead is the concept seen in MGS V of crawling among corpses and pretending to be just another corpse. You can introduce areas where there are several dead bodies, for example inside a hospital, and if players enter you can lie on the floor and pretend to be a corpse like them. Obviously you can do this anywhere, but you will attract less attention where there are more corpses since the players will not check them all. This mechanic could be tied to another breath-hold button where it would show if you were breathing, as you would try to hold your breath and become completely inert. Like in MGS V, you lie on the ground, then press triangle to enter playdead mode. Once in playdead mode, you can hold your breath with square. Playdead mode can be executed in a variety of positions. Various animations could be created to fit the infected. You should also be able to execute this animation while lying face up, prone, and even sideways. You should also be able to interact with environmental elements like a wall or sit in a chair and play dead. When you wake up from unconsciousness, you could easily wake up in playdead mode, as you mentioned, with the option to hold your breath. You decide whether to get up or not, but obviously other players will see that you're breathing in your chest physics if you can't hold your breath. You could develop skill by holding your breath. But obviously it can't be eternal, because it's impossible, you'll be seen to be alive if you can't hold your breath. Playdead mode wouldn't really be that complex, maybe you could just have a button to enter ragdoll mode and let yourself stay as you want, but of course, for that you have to have a minimally decent ragdoll. This is an example of what I mean with Garry's Mod If you end up unconscious from a gunshot or a brutal beating, you will not be able to control your breathing and it will be faster than normal. The only way to control it well is to play dead, being in good health from the start and having a decent ability to hold your breath.

I'm not a fan of micromanagement, maybe sometimes, but we're not going to deny that DayZ is an extremely complex game based on micromanagement with survival gameplay, its core is micromanagement and doing everything manually. I think micromanagement isn't the problem because that's what DayZ is all about. I also don't see anything wrong with forcing players to do things, DayZ forces you to eat and do many things in your daily life, that's the core of the game. Now, while you micromanage, you don't wait; you combine things, take advantage of the opportunity to improve others, prepare others. It's not the same as going to bed, stretching out, and waiting a few minutes; that's literally wasting time. Imagine if you have four hours to play, and of those four hours, you spend 20-35 minutes doing that. Well, that's dangerous. If in 4 hours you can make that process only take 3 minutes, I don't see it as a problem, or if you can camouflage it with other processes. I think it's possible to achieve something organic with server hopping, and if you don't hop, there are consequences, such as not recovering enough energy for the next server. And by energy, I don't mean sleep—sleep should be another indicator—I mean energy, the ability to run, lift weights, carry weight in a backpack, etc I think the best option is two servers that simulate 24 hours, 12 each. If you don't jump to the next one, you'll have to do it out of fatigue, no matter what; the character will get tired at some point. Let's say each server lasts 4 or 3 hours, well, after 3, you should be tired; a player would never make it to the full 4 hours. CORE CONCEPT: ENERGY/FATIGUE-BASED SERVER HOPPING Two servers: Server A (Day), Server B (Night) - third needed to Each simulates 12 hours of real life in-game time, 2 real hours per server, 2h DAY 2h NIGHT. TOTAL = 4 hours per day It could be SERVER A DAY 8 am to 8 pm / SERVER B NIGHT 8 pm to 8 am If real life is Awake time in game = 16 (66.67%) hours in real life Sleep time in game = 8 (33.33%) hours in real life In 4 Hours game system per day: Awake time in game =2.6668 - 3 game hours (Possible hours of real-time gameplay) Sleep time in game = 1.3332 game hours (The player would not experience that in real time, it would simply be simulated in the server change that is advanced in time, as if 8 hours had passed.) Obviously, the 12 hours would last 2 real life hours, but you could stay on the server for longer than those 12 hours/ 2 hours, and so could the other players, but at some point tiredness would force you to jump to the other server that is 8 hours ahead. Every 3 hours in game you need to go to sleep, you can last 3 hours into the server but no more, if you don't jump the server will force you to do so by making you fall unconscious, no matter where you are. You'd see sunrises and sunsets if you stretched the hours, the servers stretch out over time but will always force the player to tire out so that he sleeps and jumps to the next one. If a player stays in the same server too long (beyond the “natural” cycle), their character fatigues in ways that directly affect gameplay: speed, stamina, carry capacity, etc. at the "next day". By the third hour or earlier the player would need to go to sleep or pass out and there would be a change of server, the fourth hour would never arrive, as the player would pass out before then and end up on the other server. If the player does not sleep at the agreed time, 2.6 hours, this will affect his energy for the next day, so the best thing would be to sleep every 2.6 hours or a little bit earlier, extending it to 3 hour would mean that there would not be a complete recovery, and falling unconscious would be even worse, it could even cause health problems. Such a design is interesting because the player should be able to better manage what they do before going to sleep, if they are being chased by a horde, if they are at an event, etc. Players who recently join the server could be given a tiredness adjustment so they can jump to the next server, helping them blend in with the rest of the players. It makes no sense for a player to join a server that runs from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. at 8 a.m. and be able to last a long time alone on the server; they will be given more tiredness so they jump like the rest of the players. For 8 Hours game system per day: Awake time in game =5,3336 - 6 game hours (Possible hours of real-time gameplay) Sleep time in game = 2,6664 game hours (The player would not experience that in real time, it would simply be simulated in the server change that is advanced in time, as if 8 hours had passed.)

Sleeping in multiplayer games is a very complex task. It's a design I thought it could be done, but I don't know if it's possible in DayZ. In a single-player game you simply go to sleep and time speeds up and then you wake up, but in a game with more players on the map it's much more complex to do something like that. I mean, it would be great, but there are just things that aren't possible in games because they're games and they're meant to feel satisfying and engage players. I thought of several things, and I'm sure there are better ideas: 1/ REAL-TIME SLEEP (3–10 MINUTES AFK) Put the character to sleep and the energy recharges quickly, in 3-10 minutes, you take advantage of it in real life to go stretch your legs and have something to eat or drink, pet your dog, etc... This can be dangerous, because not everyone has a lot of time and maybe those 3-10 minutes, which will be several times, is wasted time. People have to work, study, make dinner, etc... Not everyone has a lot of time. I think this is what you want, but I'm sorry to say this is not possible, only on mod hardcore servers, time is gold, if you are young you will understand some day. This could be solved a bit but without sleeping, being in restoration points, being inside houses without enemies would improve stamina and tiredness, when you are well, maybe if you sit on a bed to change the inventory it improves faster, but I don't think it would be satisfactory to sit in a bed for a while waiting for nothing. This way the player would make inventory changes or crafting at energy restoration points, but would not sleep just waiting, in fact the game actually works a bit like that. -Micro-resting: Doing light tasks (like sitting, reading a map, crafting) slowly restores energy without needing to sleep. -Stimulants and energy items: Caffeine, drugs, or other items could delay sleep at the cost of side effects like tremors, hallucinations, or crashes. -Safe-logout sleeping: If you log out inside a locked house or a protected camp, your character “sleeps” and regains energy upon rejoining, depending on how long you were offline. 2/SYNCHRONIZED SLEEP AMONG PLAYERS The other option is to have all players agree to sleep, which happens at night, and force them to go to sleep. That would break the night; you'd miss out on nightlife. Nightlife isn't my favorite because it's usually poorly designed in games, but if it's designed well, it can be very different and entertaining. What you could do is have everyone try to sync up to sleep at some point, but that would be crazy; people wouldn't agree at the same time. There could be a sort of poll where if more than one player wants to sleep, they force alll the rest to sleep until the next day. I'm not saying we should conduct a survey, I'm saying we should see who wants to sleep and let the majority decide whether they want to sleep or not. This could be chaotic and frustrating for many players, both those who want to sleep and those who don't. 3/CONTROLLING MULTIPLE CHARACTERS You manage multiple players, I really like this one, but the DayZ concept doesn't contemplate that, but I do like it, I think Bohemia should contemplate a design like that for DayZ. You have different characters, you recruit them, you meet them throughout the open world dynamic events and you can switch. Well, there it's simple because while one rests, the other can be doing things and it makes for a great, incredible design with many more aspects. I definitely think it's something worth considering in DayZ, but as I say, that would change the design of the game and it wouldn't feel like you're just surviving. I valued this concept for Red Dead Online if it had been a survival game where characters die and you recruit new ones. Here you would have a character resting but you could immediately switch to controlling another one. I thought of many designs here, so that those characters could also be controlled by friends, like a group of survivors, but I think that would change a bit what DayZ is, although it would be interesting, you wouldn't be able to swap if you were too far away from the characters and much more. 4/SERVER-HOPPING TO SIMULATE SLEEP Switching servers, you go to sleep, and there are servers with different time zones, you just spawn on another server where time has passed. I think this is the way that best suits DayZ. I definitely think it's the best current design for the type of game that DayZ is right now. There could be three servers with an 8-hour time difference that completes the 24-hour time zone, and you could jump between those three servers, or two with 12-hour time difference. I love this design because I thought about it with the idea of the in-game days passing very slowly, almost in real time, since I hate games where day and night go by so quickly that you can't enjoy them. This way, you can choose the time of day you want to play and this lasts for a long time. You can't sleep whenever you want, but when you reach a certain level of tiredness, you can sleep. It's a bit like Kingdom Come Deliverance or RDR2 but you have to jump between servers. The difference between KCD and this is that you won't be able to go at the exact time you want; you'll be tied to the time difference of each server, but that would be a good simulation and more satisfying than anything. You could sleep anywhere, but obviously that would affect how much you get sick or how much energy you recover. I definitely think a system like that would be groundbreaking in a game like DayZ. It wouldn't be like real time, but time could pass more slowly so we could better enjoy the moments we prefer or need. Point 4 seems interesting but also presents problems. In vanilla, it can work with official servers, but if you have a 50 players community server, that would greatly divide that community due to fewer players, you would be dividing a small community into two or three servers. But in reality, a good modified server would benefit a lot from something like this because it would have a larger volume of players and would distribute them. Server overload could be avoided by prohibiting sleep, although it would be a bit artificial. Another problem is that, for example, if you want the game to evolve with online story and narrative, as I proposed with the seasonal design, it would be more difficult to manage the content events that occurs in the game, but in DayZ's current design, which has no content but only gameplay, it is simpler. I say it would be complex because there aren't any issues with players. The problem is if you have an NPC on one server, they won't be there for other players on another, which is crazy in that aspect of the design. If there's an event triggered by a woman in the middle of a forest waiting for you to jump to another server, that same woman would have to be there, in that case things would get way too complicated. 5/REAL IN-GAME SLEEP (PERSISTENT CHARACTER ON SERVER) This is a design I thought of, it's very experimental, time passes very slowly and if you put the character to sleep, he sleeps for 8 real hours in-game, real hours of the game, not of life. Meanwhile, you can play with another character on another server, while that sleeping character stays asleep for 8 hours in-game server and other players can find you and kill you. The character is controlled by AI, and can defend himself in some way. Once those 8 hours have passed in-game, the character disappears from the server until you log in again and have already slept. This concept is a little crazy. Another solution is to have players see time differently than you do, but that would limit the design of night and day, you wouldn't be able to make certain animals only come out at night and stuff like that, or that at night the detection systems are less effective due to the lack of visibility. As you can see, it's not easy to do something like this. I definitely prefer point 4, changing the server to another time. It's much more realistic; in fact, this way you can control jetlag, either that or the restore points part.

When you open the inventory you don't see anything, it's as if you had done what you said, but you could add the animation that at the same time you open the inventory the character bends down and pretends to check the backpack, then you can add some delay in reinstatement. By this I mean you wouldn't notice any change, you'd just see the other player crouching down checking his backpack, but it would be pretty much the same, which I don't see as a bad thing about, visually is more realistic. Then there are the quick-change slots, but they're supposed to be slots where you have weapons at hand, perhaps slower and more realistic animations, with more delay, but in general there you don't have to take anything out of the bag. If you're referring to leaving the backpack on the ground and then looking at the inventory, that could be done with large backpacks, it would be a good idea, but not with all of them, because a light backpack can be turned sideways, bent down, and search. As you can see, this backpack is very large and you might need to leave it on the ground and look for it. This backpack is smaller and perhaps you could do the first thing I said, simply if you open the inventory the character crouches down and opens it automatically. It would be a way to play with its playability, you can carry more material, yes, but it has its drawbacks, and the one that carries less is more agile and lighter, it would adjust more to a balanced real gameplay than if all the backpacks had the same process.

No one has said that 100% realism is necessary in a game, that would be a mistake and impossible in many ways, but not in others. For example, when we talk about impact physics in realistic games, I don't think anyone will deny that we all want realistic physics with vehicles when we hit a human body or a wall, breaking it, or we want to see realistic explosions, realistic dismemberment, realistic graphics, realistic falls, realistic water, realistic animals, etc... But nobody wants to have to pee often. In fact, the funny thing is that DayZ is very realistic in those tedious aspects of life. It takes it very seriously even though it's adapted to a game: eating, cooking, dressing, having to stay warm, drinking, etc. The only thing missing is sleeping, something that's difficult to implement and that I once I tried to think of a design. In a single-player game it's easier because you just go to sleep and can speed up the time and wake up with your energy recharged, but in a multiplayer game you can't do that because there are more people playing; you can't speed up their time. The only solution I found is for everyone to go to sleep at that time, for everyone to agree to sleep, but that would be very difficult. Another way would be to force players to sleep for 5 or 10 minutes every few hours when they see they can take a break. It's always good to take a break, go get some water, eat something, stretch your legs, but of course, you would force them to do that, it's a difficult thing. Another way could be to control different characters, switch between them, and when one falls asleep you can choose another who isn't asleep. In fact, the design wouldn't be bad like that, but it would be different from being a single character. As you can see, in this case, realism is difficult, and even looking for a semi-realistic adaptation that might work is also hard. In the end, these games in their world do have to be realistic because a large part of their grace is in the simulation, in making that world feel real, the problem is what affects the player, a player does not want to play DayZ in a faction of a settlement as a guard of a wall and spend a large part of the hours of the game watching that same point and waiting, that's what NPCs are for, you want adventure, moving over the map, manage things, survive, discover, experiment, have fun, you do not want to do the work of an NPC. I say this because there are people who believe that these games should not have NPCs, I mean humans, and I think it is necessary because NPCs, in addition to enriching the world of these games, can be part of the automation of aspects that players do not want to do as we progress in the game, for example, automating crops, or automating livestock, automating surveillance, etc. Now, back to the topic, in other aspects, adapted realism is always welcome, for example, the physics I mentioned: animals that move and attack in a very realistic way, rain that floods areas, fire that spreads, realistic birds moving and resting in posts or street wires, drowning if you spend too much time in the water and run out of stamina—it's an interesting kind of realism that works in this game. Your clothes get wet if you fall into the water, a shot to the head kills you if you're not wearing a helmet, a shot to the heart kills you, all of that is realistic and acceptable in DayZ, I don't think it's crazy to look for realistic touches in a game like this, but obviously a game is never going to be reality and things have to be adapted to make the experience fun and satisfying. In fact, I haven't said anything that is far from satisfying, stealth in a game is satisfying, being able to regulate the speed to regulate stealth is not something that makes the game feel bad, or for example, improving the jumping mechanics and making it satisfactory doesn't seem bad to me either, in fact I think that in a game one of the most important things is character movement, making it feel organic and natural and not robotic and square, and currently DayZ has pretty bad controls, especially jumping. Just like adding stamina to the grip when climbing places and things like that, if you're tired the character refuses to climb and that conditions you, but obviously there are things like the ones I mentioned before that are difficult to implement, like going to the bathroom or sleeping, I'm not saying it's impossible, I said that it is complex to make it satisfactory, while other realistic things are easier to implement while being faithful to reality, or trying it. For example, in a multiplayer game, permanent death can be handled much more satisfactorily than in a linear narrative story-based game. Even in multiplayer, losing characters is actually quite satisfying. However, in single-player, it's more complex because you generally have a story with a narrative line, and if you eliminate the main characters it doesn't make as much sense. It can be done, but at very key moments in the story and with one character, you can't do it constantly.

No, it's not just that, you ask for real movement and a keyboard doesn't give real movement because generally nobody uses keys with pressure, everyone uses keys without pressure. A controller's joystick enables organic movements that a keyboard can't or makes much more complicated, and you'll never achieve the same surgical synchronization. A simple example: with a joy stick you can adjust the speed at which you move, directly influencing stealth. On a keyboard, you have to create a specific button to enter stealth mode. The character's turns with a keyboard are more abrupt and lack real sensitivity because there are four buttons, and there's no sensitivity. This often results in stealth only adapting when crouching, and not when walking slowly upright, when stealth should be functional when walking slowly upright as it doesn't make any noise with your steps. The reason for the keyboard adaptation is because mechanics like this one, which involve synchronizing the camera's right joystick with the movement joystick, the left one, are not used, or have been abandoned, because they would have to be adapted to the DPAD keys in tank mode and that would take up buttons and would not be as realistic, as in the old Tomb Raider. Even the joystick could be programmed to create a jumping mechanic based on the character's acceleration, joystick thrust, and even the distance at which you take a run and then press the jump button. However, on a keyboard, this isn't possible because the w key isn't sensitive when taking a run. The re-routing is fine if you want to play PvP, in a COD-like game, which is what you're complaining about, but in a game like DAYZ, you lose realistic mechanics and realistic movements in exchange for better mouse aim, something I don't think is as important in a game like DAYZ, since DAYZ shouldn't focus on being a PvP game; aiming should feel difficult, not like an arcade shooter. And believe me, I've played games like Red Dead Online, and by the end, I'd play without autoaim, without a reticle, and without a HUD, with a controller, and I'd kill a lot of players. After playing for a long time, I'd get so bored that I sought out that more realistic and imprecise experience, and it was much more satisfying than seeing the reticle. In fact, I think the reticle is also a bummer. I think it's nicer for the player to have to imagine the dot in the middle of the screen and develop the skill to aim, but this is my personal preference, and it's something easy to enable and disable on a server. It's up to each individual.

No, it's not just that, you ask for real movement and a keyboard doesn't give real movement because generally nobody uses keys with pressure, everyone uses keys without pressure. A controller's joystick enables organic movements that a keyboard can't or makes much more complicated, and you'll never achieve the same surgical synchronization. A simple example: with a joy stick you can adjust the speed at which you move, directly influencing stealth. On a keyboard, you have to create a specific button to enter stealth mode. The character's turns with a keyboard are more abrupt and lack real sensitivity because there are four buttons, and there's no sensitivity. This often results in stealth only adapting when crouching, and not when walking slowly upright, when stealth should be functional when walking slowly upright as it doesn't make any noise with your steps. The reason for the keyboard adaptation is because mechanics like this one, which involve synchronizing the camera's right joystick with the movement joystick, the left one, are not used, or have been abandoned, because they would have to be adapted to the DPAD keys in tank mode and that would take up buttons and would not be as realistic, as in the old Tomb Raider. Even the joystick could be programmed to create a jumping mechanic based on the character's acceleration, joystick thrust, and even the distance at which you take a run and then press the jump button. However, on a keyboard, this isn't possible because the w key isn't sensitive when taking a run. The re-routing is fine if you want to play PvP, in a COD-like game, which is what you're complaining about, but in a game like DAYZ, you lose realistic mechanics and realistic movements in exchange for better mouse aim, something I don't think is as important in a game like DAYZ, since DAYZ shouldn't focus on being a PvP game; aiming should feel difficult, not like an arcade shooter. And believe me, I've played games like Red Dead Online, and by the end, I'd play without autoaim, without a reticle, and without a HUD, with a controller, and I'd kill a lot of players. After playing for a long time, I'd get so bored that I sought out that more realistic and imprecise experience, and it was much more satisfying than seeing the reticle. In fact, I think the reticle is also a bummer. I think it's nicer for the player to have to imagine the dot in the middle of the screen and develop the skill to aim, but this is my personal preference, and it's something easy to enable and disable on a server. It's up to each individual.

If Bohemia introduced skills it could be balanced, and characters with skills would gain more value, may make PvP not as important as players might need each other. The skill could allow you to create a makeshift bow, for example, but have a poor hand or break it on the first or second shot. The issue of introducing skills is something I've thought about a lot and would have to be done very well. I thought I'd start a thread about it ¿Can everyone create a bow? ¿Or can everyone create it equally? I think that if there were skills, it wouldn't matter if you were the best DayZ player; if the game tells you that you don't have that skill, you'll have to adapt to the game with that lack. Perhaps a scaling system could be created where as you create and use that skill, it increases without you realizing it. And even if you stop doing a certain thing, you lose that skill over time; it deteriorates, but without number level indicators or any of that crap typical of RPG games. Also, for example, a weapon like an axe looks ugly if it breaks, because it's solid object and was made but someone who is a profesional, I'm not saying it can't break, but you know what I mean. I hate what happens in Zelda BOTW, where objects break senselessly, but a handmade bow could be perfectly fine if it breaks easy if you use it too much; you could unstring it or break the wood. I think that the hand made bow is an object that can be balanced very easily by making use of breakage because since it's something handmade, it's normal for it to break. In the skill system, I think everyone should have the opportunity to make a bow, but if you have very little skill, perhaps when trying to do so, it would break while you were doing it, and perhaps you wouldn't succeed until the sixth or eighth attempt, and that would also drain a lot of your energy due to stress, to that I would add that you would lose materials, getting materials could also be exhausting, such as cutting wood, polishing it, etc. It should be said that in the skill system the player would always know what he is good at, he would know it, since it would be assigned to his profile, through a contextual description, guiding text, no levels with numbers or level bars. Arrows could also be a problem to craft, for example, if you have low skill you could even hurt yourself crafting them, , you could cut yourself and it would be worse. Without a skill system, it can still be balanced; it simply breaks after the first or third use. You can use the randomization system I posted in another thread, and on top of that, you'd lose materials, energy, etc. It can be easily balanced. It wouldn't be like creating the bow and shooting to everything,

"Roll the Dice" introduces hidden probability-driven systems into the game engine, making the world simulation feel more organic, less scripted, and increasing emergent unpredictability. It emulates the dice-roll mechanics of tabletop RPGs, but without visible UI or stats, keeping the simulation immersive and grounded. -Core Mechanism: Hidden Probability Engine -Each object, action, and environmental factor has probabilities attached. -These probabilities can be modified by contextual variables: weather, terrain, time, proximity, behavior, etc. -The dice roll (probability calculation) occurs silently in the engine and decides outcomes. -These events don't break realism—they're believable, rare or common depending on situation, and organically affect gameplay. ROLL THE DICE SYSTEM INTRODUCTION Roll the dice is a probability-based system. This system aims to improve the organicity of the situations within the open world DayZ videogame by adding randomness to the elements of the game, giving a perception of more realism and imperfection in the world simulation. The system basically works with a mathematical probability algorithm and several detection systems determined for each situation, like the thunder system of RDR2 but expanded to many more areas and enhanced. The system affects objects, NPCs, weather and other elements that you want to incorporate. Is like rolling a dice to calculate consequences, each surface, object, character, or perseverance over time can have a probability that may end in an outcome. It is about adding unpredictability, not knowing what can happen, based on a dice probability system that the player does not see, all that probability happens in the game engine, as if it were a classic role-playing game where you roll dice to see if something happens or not. This system can be taken as far as the engine allows, and obviously the players are not going to see dices like in Disco Elysium, the dice is not visible, the probabilities are not visible to the players, nor are there any dice. RESUME: The game engine introduces a system of variables that makes world situations more likely to occur or not, something natural that happens in life, but not in many games that are mathematical and fixed, everything is square and not organic, this introduces organicity. Several examples to make it easier to understand: SURFACES: surfaces could be conditioned with probabilities such as falling or breaking, these probabilities could increase other data elements, with rain or how many times a player has stepped on an area. -Each surface in the game could have a probability based on the real probability of slipping and falling to the ground. Cement, mud, dirt, ice, each surface will have different probabilities of slipping and these probabilities can be affected by other elements like acceleration, how much we run, if there are holes or stones on the ground, we are close to them. The random NPC fall, together with the physics engine and collision detection could also cause the NPC to take a hit and get hurt. Whether or not harm is done could also be assessed by the probability system, taking into account the type of surface and the body area. In this RDR2 gif you can see an enemy NPC running towards us and slipping, this isn't in the vanilla game, this is a game modification that makes that happen. It must be said that the probability of slipping on concrete is very low, and we may hardly see it. This could affect the infected, to generate more realistic situations, although it could also be implemented in the player. It would be very funny to see how an enemy goes for you to hit you, it's a mud surface and the algorithm determines that the fall is triggered. These falls of two-legged characters could be simply triggered if the physics engine was good at handling raggdolls, this generates a much more real dynamic feeling. -A cracked wooden floor in a house could break if players pass over that spot multiple times, this value will be random and once delivered it will be fixed, it could also break if several players are in the same spot in that place due to the weight, although this would not require any probability. -Ice in a season when it's no longer cold could break if we step on it. OBJECTS: the probability system can also affect objects, -Weapons can explode when used based on wear + usage. -A pine cone can fall on us from a pine tree if we walk through a forest where there are many pine trees, the probability could be triggered if a player or NPC enters a detection area, wind increases the probability. -A tree in poor condition can fall. Different asset trees in poor condition would be crafted and these would have the possibility of falling without the players knowing.The probability could be triggered if a player or NPC enters a detection area. -If you are carrying a physical map or radio, falling into the water could mean that the map may break, or part of it, or the phone may stop working, depending on the time spent in the water and the depth. -Wooden ladders could break when climbing and fall due to poor condition, or a metal ladder on a high antenna could also come loose in part. NO PLAYABLE CHARACTERS: npcs could have a wide variety of probabilities, from having a heart attack, spraining an ankle, tripping, endless possibilities. HUMAN NPCs: DIALOGUE NPCs: This can also affect dialogue. If you have NPCs with interactive dialogue, what you say could sometimes be determined by probability. For example, an NPC might forgive you for losing an item you were supposed to return, or he might simply attack you for losing it, which would create a sense of real unpredictability. INFECTED NPCs: -Infected become distracted randomly and attack other infected briefly (AI confusion). -If you have been infected by scratches from being hit by an infected person it would also be a probability. -They can die and collapse, have a heart attack, a blood clot, organ malfunction, not having eaten, or having an infection. ANIMAL NPCs: The same thing with NPCs would happen to animals, they could have more realistic randomness systems where they have unpredictable behaviors. -A dead bird could fall from the sky onto someone's head/car. -An animal may appear dead or die when you see it due to natural causes. -A bear might attack you or run away. -Bee swarm near a hive (can be triggered by player proximity or a change in weather). CLIMATE: the climate would also be influenced by this probability system -Weather such as a storm could cause an object to become detached, a sign could come off and could hurt someone. -The wind could make you drop your cap and have to fetch it. -Rain could flood an area, or not. -Lightning in a storm could strike a player, especially on high mountains or under trees, It could also fall if you are on a metal antenna. VEHICLES: vehicles can also have variables like these. -Randomly catching fire. -Engine stalling. -Steering breaking -Flat tire. -The car horn might stop working, or the radio. Door gets jammed and takes longer to open, we can exit through the passenger seat. I'm not saying DayZ has to have all of these things, but I think some of them could be implemented and over the years the system could be improved and made better. The system would not be constantly calculating probabilities because that would cost a lot of resources, probabilities could be activated by entering the interactive elements area or by the random activation of the probability system, always with random timings based on data from the objects. Additionally, a probability system creates a better impression of AI in animated elements since they have unpredictability, and unpredictability is the key to making a player feel that a game seems real, without abusing it. It would make players feel that random things can happen to them or their environment, unplanned by surprise as happens in life. Not everything would depend on your control with the controller, there would be things that you could not control and that would happen sporadically. I could go on because the creativity with a probability system is infinite and would give a lot of organicity to the games, I know that games use probability for some elements, but not in this way, and if they do it is in very specific elements.

Yeah, I know that is the dayz forum. I think Bohemia can incorporate some of this randomess elements, it's really not something complex to incorporate, some are simple spawns or values, for example: -A bird falling from the sky is a spawn of an object falling from a certain height using gravity physics, in this case a bird with health value to 0. -A helicopter that stops working is simply an engine that is shut down with no way to restart, engine value to 0. -An infected dying from collapse is simply setting its health value to 0 as if you had shot it enough to kill it + ragdoll physics. -A tree falling unexpectedly is simply activating its falling physics. -A bear that decides not to attack you is simply AI acting with passive mode, just like a deer or a goat escaping from you. -An infected attacking another infected is just AI targeting someone else. None of these systems require rewriting core mechanics — mostly they leverage what's already possible via scripting in DayZ or similar sandbox environments. Perhaps the most complex aspect is knowing how to manage this randomness so that it doesn't occur constantly and appear artificial. For example, a random event could be triggered every hour or two on the server by selecting a random player. When the time comes, it picks a player, then checks where the player is and what interactive elements are around them. It randomly selects one and executes it—sometimes the player won’t even realize something happened. Thunder would perhaps require using an effect and giving coordinates on the map to that effect during the storms, if the coordinates match the player, he dies, it doesn't seem like a complicated system to me, to be honest. As you can see, it's nothing sophisticated, low development cost and high gameplay impact. Anyone who makes mods with scripts can create something like this with many elements.

I'm opening this thread so we can share our opinions on DayZ's nature and vegetation systems, what you like and what you don't like, I don't mean animals, this can refer to trees and plants, snow, ice, water, skybox and different biomes, cultivation and sowing. I've always loved DayZ's vegetation systems, the way the grass or branches move, how well-defined the leaves are, how the tree trunks shake in the wind, I think it's one of the best I've seen. One thing that terrifies me about the future of DayZ is that the vegetation won't get as much love as it has in old DayZ. I like the vegetation in ARMA Reforger, but I don't get the same feeling as I did with DayZ. DayZ Sakhal snow storm In my opinion, I think the vegetation design in DayZ is almost perfect, it could be better, everything could be improved, but it feels very good, I think it's a great attraction of the game on a visual level which greatly improves immersion. The snow fall effect of Sakhal is also very good, and the snow on the ground also feels uneven, rough, textured, it doesn't feel flat, maybe a system where the snow accumulates as it snows and then melts would be great. Something I don't like is the flat ground textures, I know it's something of an engine limitation, but I've seen areas of the game that are better cared for than many others.One thing I love about Unreal Engine 5 is that it has allowed devs to completely eliminate flat ground textures, something I think is a current problem in many proprietary engine-based video games, and Enfusion is one of them. In most games if you look between the grass you will see that the ground is obviously flat, there is no depth. In this image you can see the texture is flat and even too square, lacking variety or organicity, when in reality there should be more detail like rocks and the plants covering the entire area, since it is land, it is better to leave it alone with the texture. Cobblestones could also have been placed to separate the road from the dirt area. The effect of flat textures isn't as annoying when there's a lot of grass because the grass covers it up, the design of the fields is excellent, the main problem is in restricted areas, riverbanks, roadsides, weeds in the middle of asphalt or cement. The leaves on the forest floor in ChernarusPlus help a lot to improve that ugly feeling of flat textures in the grassless clearings. I loved the detail of this stream from ChernarusPlus, It seems silly but whoever did it put a lot of dedication into it It is very well created, it has its flat textures but combines bushes, the stream bed, volumetric rocks of different sizes, trees, herbs of different heights and varieties, varied flat ground textures. This stream really surprised me with its level of detail. This is the love and detail that should be in the game, if a smaller map is necessary, so be it. I'd like to post YouTube videos, but the forum won't let me embed them. I'm getting an error message, whether I'm using a mobile or fiber optic network.

I think the biggest problem is that the game controls two points of view, first and third person, and it is difficult to program and balance for both. I think that's a much bigger problem than having the game on consoles, since the PC version also has controller compatibility, so there's no point in using that argument, On the other hand, a controller is the same as a mouse and keyboard, even better in some ways, except for aiming, which is more clumsy, but I like it better this way, it's like you have to be more experienced. I suppose what you're asking for is for the character to move like in The Last of Us 2 or RDR2. I wouldn't mind that, to be honest, but to achieve that, the entire animation system would have to be changed, and I doubt they'll do that in this version of the engine, but who knows. I also prefer more human-like and heavy-duty movements. But without a doubt, if I were to design the game I would definitely prefer it to be more realistic, more organic. Anyway, I think the animation design is because it's old and was done as best as it could be at the time, and Bohemia still has a lot to improve, you just have to see how weird it looks to jump fences or jump for that matter, if I want to jump from one ice platform to another it feels very fake and is almost impossible, there is no leg cushioning, it's obvious that DayZ is not like that from what you say, it's like that because it's a half-abandoned game and Bohemia is not Rockstar or Naughty Dog at the moment, they don't have the best animators or the best programmers.

🔲INTRODUCTION For this redesign I was inspired by the universe of 28 Days and Weeks Later, which is what Dean Hall was unconsciously inspired by and is what has made DayZ a success, just like The Last of Us, since Neil Druckmann was also inspired by that concept, although he opted for a design with a variety of monsters as it is usually done in most games. DayZ should not be like that, it should not base its design on monsters, just runners. I think 28 days later should be the canon to be inspired by, we should forget about George Romero and Zombies, or games with a wide variety of monsters. Yes, Romero was a pioneer, but his idolization during the last 20 years has made the infected genre not evolve and misunderstood, Romero has been a stick in the wheels for the past two decades. THE REDESIGN OF THE INFECTED "The intention behind this redesign is to sketch out a concept that makes the infected more believable — so that players feel they truly have to fear for their lives and check every nook and cranny before turning a street corner, before entering a house, before stepping into an open field, before going into a building. Each infected feels unique and different." 🔲1¿WHAT ARE THEY? First of all, designers or developers, let's not call them zombies, calling them zombies could lead to the concept of treating them as such, like George Romero's monsters. DayZ succeeded because Dean, without realizing it, was inspired by 28 Days and Weeks Later without fully understanding that universe, and we have to keep this in mind: they shouldn't be treated like dead people who have come back to life, they should be treated like living beings, real human infected with a rabies-like virus that has no cure, a virus has invaded his central nervous system, turning them into primitive and violent beings that act as vectors of the virus, its only function is to spread the virus and multiply. They must not evolve from that primitive state, they only hit and bite, they must never grasp objects or perform intelligent human acts, we must never humanize them, only some primary functions should be maintained. In the game they could be referred to as Zeds, Zombies, Monsters, Runners or Infected by NPCs if there was a narrative with non infected NPC characters arround the DayZ world, because there is a popular culture since 80s and some NPC characters would narratively associate them with Romero’s monsters, but the game lore always has to make it clear that they are not dead, they are infected humans with the same vulnerabilities of a normal human, they have not come back from the dead and can die at any time like any other human being 🔲2.PHYSICAL APPEARANCE They should always look human, they should never look like big monsters or with strange elements, they have to look like humans, like us, dehumanized humans, humans who behave like rabid animals with a blank and empty stare. They should not show pale skins as it happens in DayZ, in the current state of the game, who look like they have flour on their face, that is an association that is made with the zombie and should be eliminated, since the dead zombie does look pale because it's something dead, and can be seen in classic zombie movies, remember, they are not dead beings. The body and face degradation depends on their living conditions, whether they have eaten and drunk well, how long they have been infected, whether they have suffered injuries or health problems, and whether they have slept or not. As time goes by, it is more common for them to suffer scratches, wounds, malnutrition, dark circles, bruises, deterioration of teeth and gums, infections and rotten tissues, lack of tissues in some areas, etc... In fact they should be difficult to differentiate between normal humans and infected humans, to the point that we can always doubt, at least at a certain distance. They should not wear hats, as these would fall off when they have impulsive movements, putting hats on them is ridiculous. Some may have visible wounds, but not all, some may have bruises on the face due to attack by others, fights with wild animals or falls, not all of them have to have blood on their clothes or be in bad condition.They cannot present very serious wounds such as dismemberment or the lack of a large part of an area of the body because they would be dead, although it would be good if there could be a case of someone with a serious wound but who ends up dying if we chase him. We can cause those wounds, but they don't live long with those kinds of wounds. His gaze must be cold and empty, soulless, without humanity. A degradation system could be created that affects all models equally. 2.1 GENDER / AGE / MORFOLOGY The danger of the infected should be based on their size, weight and agility as normal humans. Because monsters should not be introduced, the gender and age of the infected should be taken into account, the introduction of children and teenagers of different gender and sizes should be necessary. I know that children have always been a taboo subject in video games, Bohemia has to make an effort to introduce them and be brave, in Days Gone it was done. Introducing children only enhances the simulation and gives more variety and depth to the game. A hazard system can be designed based on these factors, where each factor may increase the skill stats, one or two factors may increase stamina, one factor may decrease it, another factor may increase QTE grapples, this can also be tied to the damage system.The fat infected, corpulent people, in melee will have more chance of knocking us to the ground into struggle Quick time event (QTE), where pressing the button will be much more complex to get rid of the infected, its strength must be felt in the QTE.. The small ones attack from the torso down and are difficult to see. The size of the infected affects the probability of death: 2.1.1▶️INFECTED MORPHOLOGY TYPES Morphology also has to be taken into account, because humans have different types of morphology, and this must have a key function in the game, the difficulty of facing the infected will be in it, for example, children will be very agile but running will not be able to catch us because we have longer legs, they do not. Body types and physiological traits will affect infected behavior, speed, strength, and resistance. ⏩STRONG/GOOD BODY SHAPE: Infected stronger body types are more likely to trigger quick time events, and their struggles are harder to escape. It’s often better to avoid them, trap them, or lure them into enclosed spaces. They run a lot and have a lot of stamina, they will hardly stumble, they are infected with good muscle mass and in good condition. Strong doesn't mean superhuman, it means fit humans who were energetic and had an active life, mainly men with good muscles. ⏩NORMAL BODY SHAPE: are infected people who led an active life, but not one that was intensive in terms of exercise. They run less and tire faster than those in good shape, they are dangerous but in fights (QTE) there will not be such a hard fight. ⏩BAD BODYSHAPE: they are not very corpulent people, they are people who did not usually exercise and have little muscle mass. They run less and they get tired sooner than normal body shape ones, they are easier to control in a QTE fight. ⏩CORPULENT/FAT BODY SHAPE: infected with bulkier body types are more likely to trigger quick time events if they catch us, and their struggles are harder to escape. They run but slower and get tired sooner. Corpulent infected can be lethal, they have more mass and can throw us to the ground, it is better not to have close contact with them. Some are difficult to kick and should not be approached; it is better to avoid them or use a more distanced approach. Running slowly doesn't mean walking like a slow zombie, they just run and get tired faster. 2.1.2▶️INFECTED MORPHOLOGY PER HEIGHT TYPES Height is usually more closely linked to age, their danger system should be related to height, although I will specify this later, the longer their legs are, the faster they can run. 2.1.3▶️INFECTED MORPHOLOGY PER AGE TYPES We’ll encounter infected that are children (ages 8–13), teenagers, young adults, adults, and possibly elderly individuals. A system could also be created where the length of the legs could determine their speed. ⏩CHILDREN (8-13) Bohemia should make a conscious effort to include child infected, avoiding industry dogmas. Their inclusion adds a powerful emotional and thematic weight due to the stigma attached. There must be infected children: I know it is a controversial topic in games but you have to break that barrier, Days Gone did it, infected children exist in the world and play an important role, they are dangerous because they go to the legs and it is more difficult to see them coming, also, being smaller it is more difficult to target them.They are monsters, they have become, they are no longer children, and they are dangerous. Adding children would help break the barrier and give the game a unique identity. -Attack from the waist down — targeting legs, hands, feet. -Due to their small size, they’re hard to see coming, requiring low melee targeting, difficult to shoot due size. -High stamina but slow speed due short legs. -Rarely able to open doors or break windows. -Silent, their low weight makes their steps not so loud. -They drown more easily in the water because they are not tall enough to touch the ground. -They are able to fit through small fence holes and other places that other larger ones cannot. You can design environments on the map that they can interact with, such as narrow walls, holes in walls, basement windows, etc. -Weak to melee. ⏩TEENAGERS (14-17) Bohemia should make a conscious effort to also include teenager infected, avoiding industry dogmas. Their inclusion adds a powerful emotional and thematic weight due to the stigma attached. -Typically attack from torso upwards, targeting arms and shoulders. -High stamina, speed moderate due short legs but faster than kids, some run more than others. -Capable of opening doors. -They can break house windows -They still fit over some holes. -Weak to melee. ⏩EARLY ADULTS (18-29) -High stamina and high speed due long legs, high endurance. -Capable of opening doors. -They can break house windows -They can break house windows ⏩MIDDLE ADULTS (30-40) -High stamina and high speed due long legs. -Capable of opening doors. -They can break house windows ⏩LATE ALDULTS (41-56) -Moderate stamina and high speed due long legs, high endurance. -Capable of opening doors. -They can break house windows ⏩ELDERS (57-83) -Very low speed and very low stamina, only near spaces. -Very weak to melee. -Very easy to colapse and die. -Strange to see, most of them died because weakness. 2.1.4▶️GENDER TYPES Speaking of adults, the only difference here is that, percentage-wise, in the statistical system, women will always be less likely than men to have better stats under the same conditions. For example, a woman in good physical condition can run more time than a man in poor condition, but it's very difficult for a woman to run more time than a man in good condition. In children, there would be no differences between genders; the statistics would be similar. There could be some randomness, but in general, they would be very similar. 🔲3.BEHAVIOR AND BIOLOGY -They always try to run, none of them will be as slow as a zombie, some will tire more than others, but they will all run desperately if they can. The only thing that could stop them from running is leg damage, a shot in a joint in their leg that would make them limp, they would still try to run but they would fall. -Infected respond to sound and movement, they pursue anything that moves: humans, vehicles, animals, or even other infected (until the scent registers). -They don’t reproduce; they don’t have children because they don’t know what it means. I wanted to add something related to sexuality, but I think it’s unnecessary. ▶️THEY REPEL EACH OTHER DUE TO ODOR They do not attack each other, as infected individuals emit a distinctive chemical odor through their sweat glands and specialized dermal pores. This odor acts as a biological identifier—essentially a repellent marker—allowing them to recognize others of their kind. While they may initially react to movement or noise, their olfactory system quickly distinguishes the scent, causing them to disengage. The odor is believed to be a metabolic byproduct of the virus, possibly synthesized through alterations in the endocrine or lymphatic systems. These systems, known to be disrupted by the infection, may play a key role in modulating this unique biochemical signature—though the exact mechanism remains poorly understood. Humans cannot replicate the odor. The repellent scent is secreted in real-time during specific physiological responses, functioning similarly to pheromones in animals. It is a volatile compound emitted through sweat and skin pores, triggered by internal cues only present in the infected. Attempts to mask human presence or “blend in” using infected fluids have proven ineffective and extremely hazardous. The viral agent remains highly active in bodily fluids, and any contact with open wounds, mucous membranes, or the eyes can lead to immediate transmission. This has made direct handling of infected materials extremely dangerous and has rendered any mimicry strategies virtually impossible. ▶️THEY ARE STILL BIOLOGICALLY HUMAN, WITH BASIC VITAL FUNCTIONS Despite their extreme behavioral changes and altered physiology, the infected remain biologically human. -All fundamental vital functions are still active—meaning they can bleed out, suffer organ failure, or die from dehydration and starvation. They can be killed through conventional means, particularly by targeting the brain or heart, losing an arm would cause them to bleed out in a short time. -They urinate and defecate on themselves. If you see urine or feces indoors, you’d better be cautious. Since the infected urinate and defecate on themselves, entering areas with waste will trigger a strong stench, which the character will react to verbally (e.g., “Ugh!”). However, the smell doesn’t guarantee what’s inside — there could be infected, a dead body, or maybe nothing at all, perhaps the infected managed to escape.The presence of odor is purely atmospheric and part of the lore, not a gameplay mechanic with fixed outcomes. The smell can be used in dark, enclosed environments to add more terror and warn the player that they may have trapped something very large, a horde. -The infected suffer, if we shoot them in a leg they will agonize in pain and scream in pain and may writhe on the ground, they still have nerves. -They do not grab objects — their behavior is animalistic, acting on pure instinct and base survival drives. -Infected move their heads side to side and then lock onto a target — there’s a reaction time before they attack. -They also sense cold and heat because they have nerves and sensitivity like us. In winter they might be shivering, so they may instinctively prefer warm places when it's very cold, such as the interiors of houses, industrial warehouses, garages, bunkers. This could fit with the seasonal system I proposed where they could be in more different places during the time of year. 3.1 THEY SLEEP The infected must sleep, these still retain basic physiological functions because they are real humans, one of which is sleep. They will generally sleep inside open houses or in places where there is not much light when they are sleepy. So players entering a house will have to be careful if there is an infected and if it is dead, as it may be sleeping. They sleep, they do not have schedules, but they stretch and sleep, they may look dead, sometimes they huddle in closed places. You have to be very careful because they can get up from the ground very quickly, look for shadows or indoors when they are sleepy. They can lie on walls, stretch out on the floor, accumulate indoors forming hordes, you have to be very careful, waking them up in a group is not a good idea. An infected person sleeping on the floor of a house. The infected retain basic physiological functions like any human — among them, sleep. It's not unusual to see them resting in the shade during morning or afternoon hours, or piled up inside buildings taking a break. They may look dead, but no — they're just sleeping. Stealth should be used to check if they're alive or dead. You could throw an object from a distance to wake them up, or sneak up and stab them in the head to kill them and avoid surprises. We should open the doors slowly, we can even knock on the door before entering. Infected sleeping inside a house, the glass door could be broken by them and they could pass through it. They usually sleep at night, though they don't follow a fixed schedule — they can fall asleep or wake up at any time, sometimes they accumulate during the day in dark, unlit indoor places like houses, dark tunnels, etc... It's not about putting all of them to sleep — it's about using terror creatively. Filling a building with them and forcing players to cross it in fear, making a place seem calm when it's actually infested — with many of them hiding inside. In another area, they don’t need to be asleep — it’s just another tool to vary the design and keep things unpredictable. An infected woman sleeping inside a sewer drain, they could be anywhere. The player must enter the house, watch for an infected and kill it with stealth, you can also stick knives in the head of a corpse to see if it was alive. -The sound of rain wakes them. In general, they're drawn to white noise, as they associate it with hydration. It's common to see them step outside, staring at the rain in awe, mouths open. -The noise of cars and other vehicles wakes them up — playing music makes it even worse, causing them to chase the vehicle. -Doors should be opened cautiously. It’s also common to see them resting on the floor, on stairways, and between building levels. If we go up slowly, we won’t wake them. We need to pay attention to the surfaces we step on and how we step on them — wood creaks just like broken glass on the floor, for example. We must stay aware of where and how we walk. A horde of infected sleeping inside a cell. One has woken up. It's a matter of seconds before the rest wake up. Some may already be dead. An instakill option should be available when they’re lying down and we strike their head with a crowbar, sledgehammer, or other blunt object — even a stomp. If the infected is lying on the ground, we can stomp on their head. As we approach, a stomp animation prompt appears — pressing the square button makes us stomp repeatedly. If we release and press again, a quick-time microscript is triggered where each press results in another stomp to the head. This could be a mini-game requiring timed inputs for successive stomps. Infected individuals can be found resting in the shade leaning against the outside of a house, or accumulating inside a house because the sun bothers them. They can sleep alone or in groups. Not all of them are resting, they do not have schedules, they just do it when they feel the need for it. Their strength to chase you, their stamina, will vary depending on whether they are very tired. The concept is inspired by the sequence in 28 Days Later when the protagonist enters a church and sees several infected sleeping. A similar system can also be seen in Days Gone, where the Freakers (infected) sleep in caves during the day. 3.2 THEY EAT NON INFECTED HUMANS AND ANIMALS They also eat, they are scavengers, they can eat animals or humans that have not been infected. If you kill a human before they get infected they are no longer infected, that's why humans also serve as bait. Without blood pumping the infection cannot reach the central nervous system, nor does the virus multiply generating that strong odor that repels them from other infected people. Infected feed by biting flesh from humans or animals, many humans die from the bites before becoming infected, especially if they are bitten in arteries or areas essential for living. An infected person eating human flesh from an uninfected human. You can see them distracted eating carcasses of humans and other animals arround the map. Infected eating dead deer. If they see an animal they will try to chase it, but if they see you they will go after you. 3.3 THEY DRINK WATER The infected drink water, when it rains they gawk at the sky with their mouths half open. At that moment we can take the opportunity to infiltrate a house or something, they are more distracted, but not all of them. An infected woman drinking rainwater with her mouth open and looking at the sky during a storm. During this moment, they’re distracted, but even a minor noise will instantly redirect their attention. They do it by instinct, they feel pleasure when they feel the water entering their mouths, that's why they stare at the sky while it rains. At that moment they are a little distracted and stealth works better, but they will be satiated at any moment and will stop looking at the sky. Once hydrated, they will lose interest in the rain. A group of infected people staring at the sky with their mouths open, trying to hydrate themselves with rainwater. In principle they don't drink in rivers or from other places. They also hydrate by eating meat, with blood. This is one of the most difficult decisions, because drinking is very necessary, more than food, but drinking from puddles or rivers would kill many of them. The idea of them sucking on a puddle or on the bank of a river doesn't seem bad to me, but it doesn't seem very realistic to me either, although I like it. It's something I would consider implementing. Perhaps many of them get sick because of it, because they drink from those places. Perhaps we could add to the lore that the virus kills most of the external pathogens ¿Don't broad-spectrum antibiotics do this? ¿Why couldn't a virus do this to survive? It may have mutated and become stronger by developing resistance and killing external agents such as viruses, bacteria, and parasites, perhaps not all of them, but many of them, enough for the infected to adapt to the new world. If this were added, the infected would crouch on the ground with their knees resting on the ground, their hands also flat on the ground, and would try to suck the water with their tongues. They don't fill their hands with water and drink from their hands, no, they drink directly with their mouths, they bend down and bring their head close to the river, lake or puddle, etc... Just as an animation and system where they crouch down to make it look like they're eating corpses, they can do the same at points where there is water. While they're drinking water, they're distracted, so we can go behind them and kick them with our leg or kill them with a stealth kill. 3.4 THERE IS NO ZOONOSIS Animals don't become infected if they are bitten by an infected human; the virus hasn't mutated to do so, but some predators like wolves or bears that devour the carcasses of infected individuals could infect us if they bite us, their teeth carry infected blood. They generally don't eat infected food because it smells too strong and unpleasant, but some do so out of necessity. For example, we might go somewhere and see an event of a wolf eating a corpse on the ground, its bite would be lethal, we would become infected if it bites us with 100% probability, that would make each situation different. At that moment we would know that this wolf is not the same as a wolf somewhere else that is not eating a human infected body, better not to bother him and leave him eating, other wolf would perhaps only give us some simple wounds that we could heal with bandages. A wolf devouring infected, its teeth are loaded with infected blood, its bite is lethal to a healthy human. If the game had seasons, I made a thread about the design of seasons in DayZ, perhaps in a season there could be some case of Zoonosis with a specific species and that could be part of the season, but in principle it would not be something common in the game, I think this is a card that should be played very well in the narrative. 3.5 THEY CAN'T SWIM They can't cross a deep river and if they fall into the deep water they will probably drown, they are not good swimmers, they wave their hands but swallow water and drown, rivers are a good spot to mislead them. -They can chase you in shallow areas, but if they fall into the deep water they will drown. -They can fall into the water if they are pushed, for example with a kick with the foot. It would be interesting to design a system where the current of water, for example a river, could drag them to the banks and then flee, if they don't drown first. Here you can see how an infected person is drowning because she can't touch the ground with her feet and the current is so strong. The drowning system could be determined by the time they can hold out without reaching depth, and this could be related to their physical condition, age, morphology, and health. It would also be interesting to design rivers or lakes with irregular depths, with holes, where they could fall in and lose contact with their feet. In this image concept you can see how the depth can change at any point in the river. Water should also influence the acceleration of the infected and any element with AI, including players. If they run in shallow water, the force of the water will prevent them from running as fast; it will slow them down, and reducing their stamina. It would be interesting to create a system where the river current can drag you if it has a certain force and covers you up to a certain level, at least your legs, even if your feet touch the ground. 3.6 REACTION TIME Before attacking you, the infected have a reaction time. When they hear a sound, they turn their heads and stare in silence before attacking. Their gaze is cold and empty, soulless. They simply turn their heads and stare before starting to run, the attack time could vary depending on each one (randomness system). -If they see a lot of movement, they don't have that kind of slow reaction time. When they see very fast movements they don't stop to process it; they simply run, chasing whatever's moving. They can chase other infected people who are running or any other object—a car, an animal, etc. -If they're eating some kind of carcass and are hungry, they might not get distracted or look away, but if they detect you, they'll look at you, quickly turning their heads. They'll stare at you frozen, they might look at the carcass and then back at you, and then lunge at you, or they might keep eating, it's unpredictable (random system). If you stay too long or get close, they will go for you. An infected stares at a player while they are eating a dead animal, deciding whether or not it is worth attacking or continuing to eat. I think the game's animation team should do a great job of turning their heads and bodies and looking at the players, terrifying them, like spasms, as if they were shaking, as if they were scared but they are not scared, they just turn quickly from the spasm, they stare at you and then they start running towards you. 3.7 THEY FEEL PAIN AND DIE LIKE US They have a nervous system like us, they are more insensitive and aware of it, but they have nerves and if those nerves are affected they will also suffer pain like us. If they suffer dismemberment they will die, they are infected humans, they are not undead, they will end up bleeding to death sooner or later. Death after dismemberment could be assigned by a random value from the randomness system, death could occur in less than a minute. They also do feel pain. If we shoot them in the kneecap they will fall to the ground and put their hands to the area agonizing in pain, they will scream like any other person would. An infected person puts his hand to his neck and agonizes in pain before dying from being shot in that area. Shots to the head and heart should be instant kills, shots to major organs as well. In other areas they will not feel as much pain at first, they can withstand damage better. A fat infected person with a lot of body fat might be more resistant to pain and bullets in certain areas of the body, but a shot to the head or heart would be certain death. When they prowl around, they may scratch their wounds or touch them with their hands. Hitting them with forceful and solid melee objects in places like their heads could cause trauma, a stroke; these are very delicate areas; they are not superhuman. One blow to the head and they might start shaking and then die a few seconds later from a brain stroke. A hit to the torso could also cause organ damage. If the infected person doesn't have much fat or muscle mass, they would put their hands to the area and die within seconds. They can feel temperature. If they’re cold, they will seek enclosed spaces to shelter themselves. If it’s too hot, they’ll move to shaded areas or indoors as well. 3.7.1 DAMAGE STATES Infected individuals can have various states of damage depending on what type of damage they have received or developed. ⏩Limping Infected ("limpers"): Infected people who limp are infected people who have suffered damage to the joints of their legs, mainly in one of them, they can stumble much more easily than others as they try to run. Leg damage can range from the foot to the knees and even the hips. If they fall to the ground because they stumble, they can crawl, and even get up again. Those infected with broken or dangling arms will be unable to get up from the ground or will have a harder time getting up if they fall. ⏩Malnourished Infected ("Starvers"): malnourished infected are those who have not eaten or drink in a long time, they crawl on the ground and are very thin, they cannot catch anyone because they have no energy, they are really about to die. ⏩Diseased Infected ("Rotters"): like humans, they can develop viral and bacterial infections due to poor hygiene and wounds. Those infected with a disease sweat profusely and tremble a lot, they may tremble while standing or lying on the ground, touch painful wounds, and can still attack, but they tire more quickly when running and can easily fall or even collapse and die while running. ⏩Blinded Infected: Some infected individuals may become blind due to multiple factors. These infected individuals will only be able to follow noises and may stumble more easily. There are very few of these, and it is very rare to see them. A frontal blow to their face with a blunt object could leave them blind, or make them blind and dizzy for a while. The blood in their eyes could also make it difficult for them to see well or caus glaucoma = blindness. ⏩Crawler infected ("crawlers"): due to their poor condition they crawl, perhaps they have suffered damage to both legs or both arms, perhaps their health is very deteriorated due to lack of food and due to an illness, bleeding, trauma, etc... If it is damage to the legs they could crawl faster than those who are dying from some type of illness or bleeding. An infected crawling towards a player. I think Bohemia should develop a better system for damage control on bodies, taking into account the main joints, as these would directly influence their mobility capabilities after taking damage. Joints should also be able to be damaged by objects; for example, hitting an infected person on the leg with a shovel could destroy their kneecap, or hitting an arm with a shovel could bend it. An infected woman cannot stand up because her arm is twisted and her leg is twisted. A state of damage should also be added where they tremble and agonize on the ground, either because something hurts or because of an illness. Some infected people may have severe injuries but will not live long. Well, going to a house and hearing a noise from someone, and not being attacked, they're just dying on the floor. An infected person in agony on the ground due to an infection. 3.7.2 ADDITIONAL PROTECTIONS Infected individuals generally don't wear protective gear, but some may wear it: -Some police officers may wear Kevlar bulletproof suits, so torso shots are more difficult, as are stabbings. -Some riot police may be wearing vests and helmets, so shooting and hitting the head with sturdy objects are more difficult. (Not all of these infected are wearing helmets; some have dropped them.) -Some military personnel also wear body armor that is difficult for bullets to penetrate. -Some civilians may also wear a vest. It's not common to see these types of infected individuals; they exist, but they're not common. -Infected players who transform might also wear protective suits or helmets. 3.8 THEY SOUND LIKE HUMANS The sound design of their voices has to be adapted to reality; they don't have to sound like monsters with very deep ogre voices or demon voices; they have to sound like wild animals but with the anatomical characteristics of a human, like rabid humans. Sometimes it's as if they sound like they're gasping for air. 🔲4.RUNNING STAMINA AND SPEED Yes, all the infected run, they are runners. Here we need to differentiate two things: ⏩STAMINA: this is how long an infected can maintain chasing us. The infected have their own individual run stamina, different from each other's, and not being able to chase us without tiring, that would improve things a lot. The infected running stamina level should be similar to the player's running stamina, they have an advantage if there are more of them, because one might get tired, but suddenly another might appear from other side and that one might not be tired but you might be. On the other hand, if a horde chases you at the same time it might be that all of them start to get tired at the same time as you and therefore you would perhaps have the possibility of fleeing, it would all depend on at what moment the infected that are appearing have started to run. A simple design change like that could greatly improve things and bring much more realism, players could escape from them more easily if they manage where they go, if one is chasing you and you see more in another area you don't go there because you know that when you get there you will be tired and they won't, and there will always be the doubt of whether at a certain moment you will find one who is not tired and you are due to bad luck. ⏩SPEED: the speed is how much an infected person runs, the speed at which an infected chases you — how many kilometers per hour. Their speed could deteriorate depending on their stamina level and other factors. These statistics would be conditioned by morphology, age, and gender, and would also have certain random variables that could give unexpected results, with the idea that not all players feel what each infected person is like, that they could all be unpredictable. Weather conditions could also influence these factors, including the time of day. For example, a hot area in the middle of the afternoon would cause more exhaustion than early in the morning, when it’s still cool. This would force Bohemia to work on a good run acceleration and deceleration system that all of its games could benefit from, and this would also influence players and other types of NPCs like animals or humans. I think running animations would greatly improve the feeling of players experiencing the game more satisfying if they were fleshed out in more depth. I think it is a base of the game because the main enemies' function is to run and chase us and that is what they will see the most, feeling it organic, realistic, varied and different would be very beneficial. The objects that the infected carry also affect these variables, for example, a backpack with many objects, although it usually has little effect since they cannot carry much either. The infected could also have a conditional variable related to sleep or fatigue. 🔲5.HORDE SYSTEM Hordes are large gatherings of infected, seen in open fields, urban areas, or inside buildings; these hordes can move across the map, the hordes can move with sounds, be it a car radio blaring, a gunshot, etc.. They also gather by vision, if they see things moving, a player, an animal, another infected, they will simply follow by inertia, one will follow another. -Many hordes are generated by the game engine, they can appear (spawn) anywhere on the map without the player knowing their exact location. -Hordes form in response to sound stimuli: gunfire, vehicles, music, alarms, etc. or by seeing elements move. -Players themselves can create and manipulate hordes by using noise — honking car horns, playing music, or revving engines or moves. -Every sound emits a radius of attraction, drawing infected from the surrounding area. -If a horde catches you, 4 infected or more within a perimeter of half a meter around your body, it should be instakill, like in Days Gone. The goal of DayZ should always be to avoid close contact with the infected, and if there is a confrontation, it should be one-on-one or two-on-two. Large groups of infected should be dealt with with the help of other players, preferably with ranged firearms, or by using environmental elements, locking them in buildings, moving them and removing them from areas making noise (a car with loud music), etc. -Hordes of infected can cause birds in the area to move elsewhere, which could alert players that something is happening nearby. -The infected have stamina when running and will tire as they chase you, so they won't be able to follow you over long distances unless you stop and wait for them to regain their stamina. This is also a way to prevent large hordes from forming for long periods of time and to make the infected scatter. This prevents you from creating large groups or taking them very far with a car. If you want to survive a horde and you are accompanied you can always shoot your partner in the leg, they will go to infect him. 🔲6.PHYSICS Decent ragdoll physics -Realistic vehicle impact and crushing physics need to be improved, realistic runovers. -Realistic falling from heights, realistic gravity. -Random stumbling based on terrain type. -Dragging bodies, either by hand or with rope. -The current of the rivers can drag them while they drown, and can take them to the shore, realistic float. -GORE: realistic dismemberments, a real damage system that affects the infected and can be used for the rest of the entities. -Realistic fire, their bodies catch fire and burn. -Infected individuals can break fragile windows in homes and enter through them, or even grab us if we are standing near them while they are being broken. -Infected can break vehicle windows and grab us (QTE). -The infected are very clumsy on uneven ground. If they chase us and we jump off a high place, they'll most likely not jump, but simply fall in ragdoll mode. This can be applied to high walls or uneven dirt terrain, then they would get up and continue chasing us. PHYSICAL OBJECTS AND THROWING OBJECTS I think it would be interesting to try to achieve a series of physical objects throughout the map that the player could grab from the environment—objects of all kinds—and that they could throw or even use to hit people. A bit like the concept of Dead Rising but smaller and less exaggerated. Obviously, those objects should be scattered throughout the environment. Objects like bricks, stones, a radio, a stone figure, a candlestick, a flower pot. 🔲7.COMBAT DESIGN Fights against infected should be more realistic and satisfying, but more dangerous. Realistic means that a well-delivered hit kills, you don't have to hit 10 times to kill. 🔲7.1 RANGED / DISTANCE COMBAT ⏩FIRE WEAPONS ⏩THROWING WEAPONS I think it would be interesting to try to achieve a series of physical objects throughout the map that the player could grab from the environment—normal objects of all kinds—and that they could throw or even use to hit people. A bit like the concept of Dead Rising but smaller and less exaggerated. Obviously, those objects should be scattered throughout the environment. Objects like bricks, stones, a radio, a stone figure, a video console, a PC screen, a candlestick, a flower pot, iron, a corpse, It would be interesting if there was a drop button between melee and throwing, where if you are at a certain height you can drop the object and gravity can kill whoever is below. Throwing objects from a certain height can cause more damage if they are heavy. Grabbing a flower pot or or a brick and dropping it from a certain height on top of an infected's head, and throw it from a balcony below. These items should affect the ragdoll physics, throwing a brick at an infected person's head should cause them to stagger or even fall to the ground and have spasms. Grab objets: You can grab objects in the scenarios if you are close to them, in third person it would simply be being close to the object and press the X button to grab, in first person it would be focusing the center of the camera on the object. Throw objects: you simply aim with a button, on a controller it could be the trigger, while with another button, the other trigger on the controller, you can throw the object a certain distance. The more you press the trigger that throws the further you can throw the object when you press the throw button. For example, you aim with the left trigger, once you have the target you press the right trigger, you see how the character's arm tenses, when you think you have tensed enough you release the trigger and at that speed the object will be thrown. Hit with objects/melee: this is to hit with objects, the right trigger could be used simply, this way you can use the objects to hit, or another button, the square. Release/drop: to drop the object you could simply press a button, like the X(xbox) and then release, and the object would fall to the ground. In first person mode it would be more accurate to see where the object will fall. MANUAL RELEASE / DROP: Here it would be interesting to create a game system where if for example you press the X button (drop button) and move the right joy stick (camera stick) you can move and extend your arms dynamically (if you grab the object with two hands because it is large, like a computer screen), or your arm/ hand, if the object fits in one hand (brick). With this system, you could extend objects in space. For example, if there's a balcony, you could stretch your arms so the object fits over the railing and let it fall. This mechanic ( manual arm moving system) could be used for other types of interactive actions, for example, with weapons, we could better control the cutting area, we could cut a tree or a piece of wood more realistically. It would be like entering a more manual and surgical mode, for example, to amputate the arm with an axe of a companion who has been bitten, you would extend the axe and hit a hit button at just that point. 🔲7.2 MELEE COMBAT For MELEE combat I think the best references are Dead Island 2 and TLOU2 (third person and QTEs), melee combat should blend: ⏩DYNAMIC REAL-TIME COMBAT Combat controlled directly by the player. In melee combat, I would give relevance to the kick with the leg and the push with a weapon to repel enemies. I really love the leg kick system in Dead Island 2, I find it crucial for DayZ 2, Obviously, this has to be related to a system of staggering the infected person, where they lose the ability to react for a few seconds. A button would also be necessary to dodge enemies, backward, sideways, forward, the button would react to the direction we select. ⏩STRUGGLING QTE (Quick time events) Sequences, mainly of struggle, enabling quick time events for cinematic kills or counters. A QTE sequence could involve an infected grabbing the player, triggering a button-mashing or quick input sequence (struggle). Failing it results in being bitten, scratched, or struck. -If a quick time event (e.g., an infected lunges at the player’s leg) is executed correctly, it can result in a finisher animation, such as the infected getting their head stomped or another form of execution. -If two infected engage the player simultaneously and are within range, it can trigger a death or infection sequence, or tackle the player to the ground, initiating another struggle QTE script. -A teammate can intervene, interrupting the QTE by shooting or hitting the infected during the sequence. QTEs animations can be tied to interactive elements such as windows, walls, vehicles, objects: -House windows could trigger a QTE if an infected person is nearby and detects us, and they could break the window and grab us. For example, if an infected person hears us talking to a teammate through the microphone's sound field detection, they could come to the window. -If we are on top of a car, a QTE could be triggered where an infected person grabs us by the leg and throws us to the ground, the roof of a car would no longer be safe. -If we are in a stopped car, an infected person could break the window and grab us. Some finishers could be anchored to elements of the environment, for example, if we are near a wall a finisher could anchor itself to a wall with an animation where the infected ends up with their head crushed against it.The finisher can also do the same thing but on the ground. Children and teenagers tend to target the player’s legs, hips, or hands, if not dealt with quickly, the player will likely get bitten on the leg. 🔲8.INTERACTIVE ENVIRONMENT ELEMENTS -There is a car on a hill and there are infected below, be able to take the handbrake off and have the car fall down the hill and kill several, let the player have a lot of interaction with the environment and let it be varied, such as gasoline or electrified water. Players can push vehicles without gas or batteries by releasing the handbrake and making them fall down slopes so that they run over several infected. -Getting several infected into a pool, going out the other side and grabbing an electrified wire and throwing it into the pool. ⏩DOOR INTERACTION -Infected can open doors with handles/knobs if they haven't been locked with a key or latch. -Door opening is determined by a probability algorithm. -If the player stops moving behind the door, the infected may stop trying. -Knob-type doors have a much lower probability of being opened than lever-type handles. -The chance of the infected opening a door is influenced by several factors, including player movement and vocal activity. -If the player remains completely still and silent, the infected will eventually leave, drawn away by ambient noises elsewhere. Do not allow the infected to open all the doors. For example, doors with cloth that have a 1% chance of being opened, doors with handlebars that have a 68% chance. Infected do not know how to open doors, if they open them it is by mistake with their primal urges. It is necessary for players to calculate the timings when closing doors and to take them into account. Develop animation scripts to be able to interact with the doors in different ways, for example, if you come running to a door you can open it suddenly by pressing a button but if you keep it pressed the character does the open animation, goes through the door and closes it. Set up a perimeter around each door that detects if an infected is stepping on it so that when you do the close animation, if an infected is stepping on that perimeter there will be a struggle at the door to close it, while if it is outside you will close the door. The more infected there are in the perimeter, the more difficult it will be to close the door with a Quick time event of pressing a button as fast as possible.Give the option with a specific timing to be able to abandon the struggle and run away before they push you totheground The doors of buildings and houses aren't open; most are closed and locked. Not all are equally easy to open. Some can be opened with a foot kick, but others can't. Others require a lockpick (mini-game), the original keys, or a medical X-ray. Still others can't be opened directly; they can only be opened from the inside, jumping from one balcony to another, or with an explosive, If we use an explosive on the door, it will fall backward. It would also be interesting to be able to break some walls, non-load-bearing walls, to access certain rooms, with an explosive or a sledgehammer. For example, if there is a horde on the other side of the door and we have blocked it, we can break a wall and exit through another door, or search for resources until they leave. Doors can be locked with objects, for example, a cupboard next to the door can be pushed in, or if they have a lock, we can lock it. 🔲9.STEALTH SYSTEM -Car oil filters can be repurposed as makeshift silencers for firearms. Their effectiveness degrades with use — roughly three shots before they become ineffective. It must be one of the most important resources if you find firearms. -Music attracts infected -Infected people can hear players if they speak into their microphone and do not adjust their near field. -The player can make noises or whistle using a microphone, with manual decibel control. -Floor surfaces have sound-producing elements that can alert the infected by perimeter detection, such as creaking wood and broken glass. -Forcing doors, opening windows, or forcing car doors or trunks would also have a detection perimeter that could alert nearby infected individuals. -Lying on the high grass would reduce the detection of infected people. -Players can hide in bushy areas so that the infected don't know where we are. -Players can hide under the cars, but the infected could also reach down and grab us by the leg and bite us or pull us out. -Players can hide in closets in houses. -Infected can lose sight of us if they lose sight of us, and they might get confused and not know where we are. If there are groups and one doesn't lose sight of us, the other could follow, but if a single infected person loses sight of us, he would become confused. -Players can lean against the back and front of vehicles if there are no teammates in the seat next to them. This would improve stealth by making the infected pass by if the car is stopped and we're inside, or a player could hide in any car. For example, if we're inside a car, we can stretch out and wait for the horde to leave. -Players can lean sideways in the back and front of vehicles if there are no teammates in the seat next to them. This would improve stealth by making the infected pass by if the car is stopped and we're inside, or a player could hide in any open car. For example, if we're inside a car, we can stretch out and wait for the horde to leave. If we're waiting on the street for a friend to come down from a building, we might lean back to avoid an infected person scaring us by breaking the car window and grabbing us. The hearing status of the infected could be determined by their age and some randomness that determines a deterioration of the sense, so the detection systems could be conditioned by this. Suppose the sound we produce generates a fixed circle that simulates the extent of the sound over the environment. The infected person would have their detection circle, but it would be larger or smaller depending on their hearing status. DISTRACTION MECHANICS -Players can use environmental tools to distract infected — for example: -Throwing flares or other objects -Sound plays a major role: every sound generates an audible radius, which can attract infected to specific locations 🔲10.RANDOMNESS SYSTEM -Each NPC infected is assigned randomized variables upon spawning (running stamina). -The infected can trip and fall through a probability-based algorithm. Chance should play a role in the simulation. 🔲11.GAMEPLAY FEATURES ⏩QTE / QUICK TIME EVENT STRUGGLE SEQUENCES -The infected can smash the side window of a car and grab you in a quick-time event struggle sequence. They can do the same with house windows, which is why it's better to seek higher floors that place us outside their hearing range. -Infected can also be found sleeping inside cars — these are recently infected individuals who turned while inside the vehicle. -They can also be found in trunks, providing jump-scare moments. These were people locked inside before they turned. Opening a trunk with an infected inside can trigger a quick-time event involving a grab/struggle microscript. They may also be found already dead, with a chance of loot, or tied up — they were restrained before turning. The tied ones can be carried and used as weapons, or chained to a post. -Dead or injured animals found in the world might be infected — eating their raw meat could cause infection. -Whenever possible, infected corpses should be incinerated to prevent contamination of wells or rivers. Water can also be disinfected by boiling. It's a good system to eliminate risk. -Bodies can be loaded/unloaded, similar to Red Dead Redemption 2, and can be stacked into trucks for later incineration. ⏩ACTION–REACTION Infected will respond to the stimulus that alerted them — whether it’s a noise, a sound, a decoy, or the player themselves. They have a reaction time before attacking, just like human enemies. Facial animations should be refined — how they stare with hollow eyes, how they tilt their heads before charging. We need varied reaction animations to give the world a sense of realism and unpredictability. Currently, they all react the same way. -Infected can crawl under surfaces to chase the player, navigating through tight spaces on the ground. -They don’t jump over high walls, but if enough infected gather at a point (e.g., a metal fence), they can bring it down through sheer force. Some may be crushed or injured by the horde itself.-Infected may leap from balconies or windows to reach a target. They might die from the fall — or land on a player, potentially killing the player while surviving the impact. 🔲12.INFECTION SYSTEM There is the issue of infection which I think is important to address, how long does it take for a human to get infected. The infection of an infected person to a non-infected character, whether it be us or an NPC, should have an evolution process and an important playable implementation to take into great consideration, details of its design are given in this section. The virus spreads toward the central nervous system at varying speeds, depending on the wound type and location. -A bite = you’re screwed. It starts a countdown — you will turn, no matter what. -If you only received a scratch or bumps you may not be infected or you may be, scratches carry a lower probability of infection via blood or fluids, but it’s not impossible, the player never knows if he has been infected until severe symptoms begin. -The spread of the infection depends on the area of the bite, a bite near to the neck results in almost near-instant transformation because it's near from brain. -The number of bites, the more bites a player has received the earlier it will become, many bites or blows can kill you too, before you turn. (randomness system) -Amputation of a limb is a real option for survival, teammates can amputate limbs (legs, arms, hands, feet) to prevent the virus from reaching the CNS, There is a time limit to do it and it must be fast. -Certain medications can slow viral spread, buying time — but transformation is still inevitable. Antifibrinolytics clot the blood and can delay the process for a while. Symptoms of infection are: Tremors, dizziness, and vomiting. Eventually, you'll end up vomiting blood because the virus has an anticoagulant effect that causes bleeding, and you'll turn in seconds. If you are in front of another player at the time of vomiting, you could infect them if you vomit in their eyes. -Players can control and play as infected if they want, they can become and control them. If a player becomes infected, they unlock a gameplay mechanic: they can bite other players and infect them. -The virus only transmits human-to-human. Although infected may attack animals, the virus has not mutated to infect other species. Should the infected kill? Yes, and infect players and turn them into infected. Even give the opportunity for players to control infected or let the AI control them, just for fun, as an infected player controlled by a real human can be much more unpredictable. Maybe a player knows he's going to turn and attacks the group of people around him out of revenge. ¿ARE THE PLAYERS IMMUNE OR ARE THERE IMMUNE ONES? Players are not immune to the virus and can become infected and transform, as I mentioned before. It's true that if there were seasons, narrative depth, there could be some case of immunity to play with the narrative—an NPC who is immune and we have to take to a base without them dying—but in principle, there wouldn't be any immunes. Immunity is a very clever narrative card that must be played very well, just like zoonosis, it should not be something that permanently affects the world. 🔲13.PLAYER CHARACTER EDITOR = INFECTED CHARACTER GENERATOR Many developers create complex character creation editors, such as the one in Dragon's Dogma 2, where normal players can customize and create their custom characters, they can create their own characters in a very deep and detailed way. If Bohemia were working on a good character editor, they could also use it to randomly generate random infected, there might be some created with more love, but it would be interesting if most of them were generated by this good random character generator system, this way, the infected would never feel repetitive because they would always vary in different ways. In addition, a degradation system should be added, where each infected can also have a unique degradation that can be adapted to that random generation. For example, a facial wound can be adapted to any age of the infected during its generation due an procedural system adaptation of the wound to the character, or a leg wound. It is necessary to take into account the damage states, age, morphology, and gender of the infected when generating them and creating their statistics. The gaming community could create and publish these infected characters in the workshop, and Bohemia could use their profiles/values—the ones they like best and best fit the game—to create a good dataset of well-made infected humans for the vanilla mode. In this way, over time, most infected would be generated through a data set of good pre-made presets created by the community and not randomly, since random generation could also generate strange characters with very extravagant aspects that would not fit very closely with reality. Because the character creator has to give freedom, this tool always has to be limited to offering realistic infected and not aberrations, height and other aspects will have limitations adapted to this, obviously in some scenarios some users could make authentic aberrations, but there always have to be some limits. It's interesting that some infected humans show some deformity, whether from trauma or birth, a curved eye, severe starvation, a crooked jaw, or something like that, but what we don't want is to go around the world and find infected people who look like monsters, like Shrek or infected people who are very deformed like a stick insect, extremely bizarre creations need to be avoided by Bohemia Interactive in order to have a good adaptation of the game's vision in its vanilla mode. Community-generated infected could only be used for publishing in the workshop and for use on modified servers, modified servers could use bizarre infected ones created by the community, Bohemia is the one that would choose the ones that best fit in the official vanilla mode. That generation and dataset could also be used to create non infected human characters, both for human NPCs and for players. For example, I'm not a big fan of manual character customization because I prefer to play, in my case I prefer a random generator with good presets, although I understand that some people really like creating. The character editor for vanilla mode would have to be more restricted from the workshop editor to prevent players from using characters with extreme aberrations. Only Bohemia would offer a wide dataset of different and varied characters that have extreme customizations. 🔲14.THINGS TO AVOID Here I explain the things to avoid when designing infected humans so that the IP is not distorted in the long run: -All infected walking like monkeys, this is something that has been around for a long time in Dayz but it is horrible. The infected shouldn’t crouch like monkeys on all fours — that needs to be changed, relating them to monkeys is not good design. I understand that this has been around since ARMA 2, I think, but the concept has to mature; sometimes you have to let go to be reborn. This has happened with many games, Red Dead Revolver concept has nothing to do with Red Dead Redemption. -Humanized infected, infected that grab and throw objects, speak, and perform acts of intelligence with a certain logic; this must be avoided. -Infected mutants or those with unique powers, the screamer, the fat one that explodes, the one that walks on walls, the one that throws acid, the one that walks on all fours like a spider and is faster, those should be avoided. It is necessary to focus more on designing hostile animals and good AI for hostile NPCs, as well as good AI for infected runners, hordes and good design, good interaction with the environment and with us instead of adding rare monsters, adding monsters can end up distorting the game and diverting resources to more important things It is not something I am closed to in the future, some very specific and very well designed surprises, but not now. -Ridiculous weapons, like those in Dying Light 2 or Dead Rising and Dead Island 2, melee weapons with electricity or that shoot fire and weird things, I'm not talking about a flamethrower. The game should feel real, with real objects like normal farm axes and normal mundane items, like right now. The game just needs to improve the gore and melee to feel satisfying. Everything related to zombies: -Emaciated infected people who are still alive, missing half a head, an arm, a torso, a leg—remember, they're normal humans and can't live long in that state. The gore is necessary, and it can take them a minute to die under certain circumstances. -Infected emerging from under a grave in the ground. -The eyes glow, especially at night. It's something some zombie games have and it's horrible; it's pure fantasy and feels fake. -Infected with pale skin, reminiscent of the cliché of trying to look half-zombie, and looking like they've eaten a bag of flour, that's something to avoid. 🔲15.MISC -Players can leave a warning on doors using chalk or spray paint to notify others. -Rappelling from buildings could be an interesting mechanic for trapping infected. One player lures them inside, rappels down, and another closes the building doors. It could also be used to escape from or infiltrate buildings, especially apartments whose doors are barricaded from the inside (with furniture or other means) — perfect for scavenging or exploration. -Towing vehicles, with the possibility of getting stuck in mud. 🔲16.SOME MOVIES AND SERIES TO GET INSPIRATION I have always differentiated two genres, the infected genre and the zombie genre, the only difference is that the infected are not beings that return from the dead, they are infected living beings, obviously a zombie can also be an infected like in Resident Evil, but it is more of a fantasy element without realistic sci-fi arguments to back it up. 🔲28 X LATER Danny Boyle TRILOGY | 2002 - 202x | INFECTED There's not much to say, this IP changed a lot of things, DayZ and TLOU come from here whether we like it or not, and probably the 2004 Dawn of the Dead remake would not have existed without the first film. 28 days later (2002)| Excelente | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0289043/ 28 weeks later (2007)| Excelente | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0463854/ I love this sequence and it would be awesome to be able to do this with helicopter blades someday using the physics engine. 🔲RAMMBOCK / SIEGE OF THE DEAD (2010) | INFECTED | https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film581747.html This movie has a lot of DayZ vibes, even though it only takes place in one neighborhood. The concept I like most is that in order to move around the building, you have to break through walls, wait for the infected to relax and leave the landing, etc. I've always dreamed of a slower-paced design like this, where if there are a lot of infected people and you're in the city, you have to resort to those things: descend from one balcony to another, checking if the next one between floors is safer. 🔲APOCALIPSIS Z (2024) | INFECTED https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film485650.html It's a novel adapted into a series, it's good, I'd say they seem infected in the series, it's a good reference. 🔲DEAD SET (2008) | INFECTED | https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film413740.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7bUbpt5Xb0 It's an old series that's very good, although it mostly takes place on a television set, in a kind of Big Brother setting. 🔲THE NIGHT EATS THE WORLD / LA NUIT A DÉVORÉ LE MONDE | ZOMBIES https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film283836.html This film is very good, the concept of a city enclosed in a building and breaking the ground to move from one floor to another also fascinates me, or how it tries to move from one building to another. I say this because it would be interesting to consider the design of DayZ, which is different from starting a game in a rural area or far from the city, as it is from starting in a building in the middle of a city with a lot of infected people. It would be interesting to make it feel very different to cross each street and all that. I would really only take 28 Days and Weeks Later and RAMMBOCK as reference. AVOINDING SOME FILMS AND SERIES I would add more like the Black Summer series, although it actually has many plot holes, Les affamés, It's a very good movie but I don't think it adds much to DayZ, It's a bit like The Crazies 2010, I also think this one is great but they are infected who don't act rabidly. Devil’s Playground is good but infected sometimes act like if they were superstrong. Obviously I'm going to avoid any kind of slow zombie movie, I'm avoiding korean films like Train To Busan or Alive. I like Bird Box, it has nice ideas but infected play another role. The Girl with All the Gifts is nice but infected has another role too, World War Z has a concept that has nothing to do with DayZ (There is a coop video game that captures the essence of the film quite well). REC 1 and 2 are nice as setting. La Horde is a very good film too. 🔲THE WALKING DEAD SERIES | MUMMIES The Walking Dead are slow and ugly zombies, they look like mummies, but it has good stories and characters, although the last seasons I saw bordered on fantasy, I ended up leaving it, and that's even though I used to read the comics, I think that the last thing I saw from this IP was the first season of Fear The Walking Dead. You can get interesting things from these series for narrative, acting characters and stories, but not as a universe to design the infected. 🔲DAWN OF THE DEAD REMAKE 2004 | ZOMBIES https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film473237.html Here they look infected, but they're actually zombies; they die and then turn. Romero commissioned the film after seeing the success of 28 Days Later, using such a small budget. They copied the formula with runners. It's a very good film, but you have to ignore the part about the dead coming back to life. You can take their actions and movements as a reference; the settings are also interesting. What I like most is the prologue in the urbanization. 🔲TO THE LAKE (2019) | INFECTED | https://www.filmaffinity.com/us/film457177.html It has two seasons, it's a very good series but they are not aggressive infected, they don't bite, is just like a flu virus, but the setting to pose and develop stories, take inspiration is very good. What I don't like so much are the chapters with cults since they are a bit cliché. Later perhaps I will open a thread dedicated to the genre and its evolution, but here I want to focus more on the redesign of the infected in the game. 🔲17.SOME VIDEO GAMES TO GET INSPIRATION 🔲DAYZ | INFECTED | Obviously, it's worth mentioning that DayZ's survival foundations must be respected. Dean's military survival approach is also a big part of its success, and it must remain that way. 🔲THE LAST OF US GAMES | INFECTED | From here, what I emphasize most is the gameplay, the melee, the gunplay, the AI, the diving and swimming, the ability to climb onto surfaces, climb up and down ropes. I think it's difficult to achieve something like that, but it should be the goal. The design of the runners, the infected inspired by 28 Days Later, is also a great reference. I don't like the type of design of a world eaten away by vegetation and very degraded for DayZ, but I think it's also interesting to see the placement of vegetation in more paved areas and things like that, plants growing up walls. 🔲DEAD ISLAND 2 | ZOMBIES | What I emphasize most here is the melee, QTE and gore, their interaction with the environment is interesting, how they keep hitting a window without being able to cross it. Or how they crawl on the ground if we hurt their leg, or if it was already hurt. I would mention Zombie U and many other games, but I think it's not a good idea to give too much importance to zombie games because many things have been done wrong and it can distort the concept of DayZ. The Dead Rising concept of being able to grab any object to defend yourself is interesting, but DayZ already has that a bit, so maybe it should be enhanced a bit more and the throwing of objects improved as well. WORK IN PROGRESS

The truth is, the thing about communist hackers and the attack on the United States and the FBI sounds like trolling, If you don't want cheaters you can play on console or create a private server and play in a community with people you know. Another solution could be to create a closed operating system for PCs with encryption keys backed by the TPM module and create a motherboard with firmware protections, in addition to that limiting the use of peripherals on that system, if I were a large company like Microsoft I would have tried it knowing that multiplayer on PC is a mess and that many people would install it just to avoid that problem and enjoy playing, a dual-boot system, This way the PC could perhaps even have crossplay with console players. In addition to that, the system could consume much fewer resources even for playing single-player games, but its real function would be to play multiplayer games, I don't see any other way, virtualize, I don't know, it would have been tried already.

The main problem with modded maps is that most use the same assets, textures and vegetation from the official DayZ maps, giving the impression that they don't feel different. It's true that some map makers create good geography, and some introduce some custom assets, They even design puzzles and interesting things, but they're very limited, In the end, everyone ends up using cloned assets. DayZ would change a lot if it didn't require complex conversions, for example, buying assets on Quixel and importing them into Enfusion, so people could create varied maps that wouldn't look anything alike. It's crazy to force such crazy conversions, even big studios use Quixel assets and textures. https://www.wired.com/story/quixel-scanning-red-dead-redemption-2/ With Arma Reforger tools things can change quite a bit. Developers always have an advantage over modders, they are more numerous and have complete control of the engine. If they want to add new features to the engine for each new map, they can do so, and if they want to produce new assets, they have it easier, although this could change with the new tools if conversions become simpler. If anyone could post this video, embed it, the forum won't let me, it shows some custom Arma Reforger maps and it's amazing. https://youtu.be/ZbGVIbePuEs

I think you have to have faith in Bohemia. The problem with radios is that probably no one used them because the game engine doesn't force the player to use them to discover things and guide players, and for a novice player, using them is very complex. The system I'm proposing serves as the heart of the map and forces players to use radios if they want to discover the game's content and lore, and not just enter a map and survive wandering around killing. Think that with the previous system, there had to be awareness of a player with a radio and a player who can broadcast and who knows how to power the radio station. In fact, the system I propose doesn't really emphasize having players talk to each other via radio, but rather using the radios to stay informed about what's happening in the world. If you force and facilitate players listening to the radio, they're more likely to hear other players broadcasting and be able to communicate with them, and they'll delve deeper into that system and communication mechanics, but right now it doesn't make much sense and is complex. That this design I'm proposing turns the radio into the core of the game; those who listen to the radio know more than those who don't.

I think Bohemia should add radio stations with no real humans, NPCs radio broadcasters and music culture in DayZ, music by artists, I don't mean ambient music, I mean a radio where songs are played. They don't have to be famous artists, they can be emerging indie artists interested in promoting themselves in the game, they can be part of the game's radio stations. NPCs survivor broadcasters are simply survivors who have radios and broadcast from somewhere, they talk and some play music, they tell us about their experiences and how they are surviving, their stories inside that world, if they have lost family members, if they have been attacked, if they have been injured, if they have seen resources, if they have not eaten for days, if they have had to kill someone. Obviously they would be people with a good voice and good interpretation, no matter the language, whether it is original Czech or English, the important thing is that there is a written translation into other languages. Broadcasters could play an important role in a system programmed for radio where they could give information on where to find supplies, which areas not to go to, where there are any interesting events, they could even make reference to players, where they have seen someone, some might be in a physical location on the map hidden away and we might have some real interaction with them. These NPCs could have some programmed areas where if we go inside these they could describe us through the radio, say the things we are carrying, where we are “I saw someone with an axe, I think he was not carrying firearms”. TRIGGERED DYNAMIC MAP CHANGES AND EVENTS The dynamic event system could be related to these broadcasters who could alter the world by what they say, some examples: -‘I've walled up a certain building, there were a lot of infected, I lost my backpack there’: And if you go there that building is really walled up and with infected inside, The game engine generated that event, injected it, and then informed us about it via radio. -"Don't go that way, I've seen a very large horde." The game engine has spawned a horde in that area, there is a large horde in that area and we are informed by radio. -‘Follow the graffitis, they will lead you to me’. Which could be a trap or a real NPC locked in a house asking us for something, like the one who exchanges music discs for antibiotics and other medicines. A broadcaster makes real graffiti across the map in the form of puzzles, and if you understand and follow them you can find his lair. -Whoever enters that area, I'm going to blow their head off. An NPC who warns that he doesn't want anyone and that anyone in that area is not welcome is possibly standing at a strategic point with a rifle. In reality, the event would first be generated by being injected into the map by the game engine and then reported by radio. Other types of content could be more related to collecting and exchanging goods and materials to survive, for example, Bohemia could create a system where there are music discs around the map and you have to find a broadcaster who asks you for them and if you give them to him he gives you medicine in exchange for them, because he knows how to make them, Once he receives the discs, he can play them through the radio, If the players manage to deliver a certain number of all the discs, there will be a curious ending to their story that wouldn't happen if they weren't delivered. These are just a few examples of the scope such a system would have in the game, I could write thousands but that is not the function of the thread. Other survivors would only tell stories about how they survive.they wouldn't really have a real location in the game, maybe they could generate dynamic events with what they do but we would never see them, they would just be narrative and events, some of them we might find dead. For example, someone who was broadcasting on the radio stops and ends up in a forest with a letter written about his death and how he loves his family. Some players might broadcast and appear to be NPCs from that world, but they could be setting us up with fake distress messages. Some NPCs could also be traps, asking for our help but only wanting to kill us or take our possessions. If we don't listen to the radio, we won't really be aware of what's happening in each place and we'll be going in a bit of a blind alley. RADIO DEVICES AND RADIO FREQUENCY RANGE To find out about these people you would obviously have to use car radios or a handheld radio with batteries.Most radio devices would be portable and battery-powered; not all devices would be able to broadcast, radios would only be used to listen to these characters or other players that have walkie talkies or radio stations, and of course, We'll be able to use car radios to listen, and other vehicles such as boats may have radios to listen and broadcast. Factors that could affect its use -Battery: Limited and necessary for operation. -Weather: Storms or interference could distort or cut off transmissions. Storms could affect communications, making them difficult to hear and distorting the radio signal. -Water damage: Getting them wet while they are working would cause a short circuit, although we could repair them. In fact, the same NPC to whom we give the discs could have the function of repairing electronic devices in exchange for discs or another NPC could do the same but in exchange for animals to eat. If we use them while it's raining and take them outside it could be a matter of time before they break, or if we jump into a lake with them working, then we'll have to wait a while until the electronics dry or dry them with a fire. -Range: Range varies depending on the quality of the equipment or the geography (valley, mountain).Each NPC broadcaster will have a larger transmission frequency radius than others depending on the type of transmission they use, the size of the antenna, some transmitters will only be heard in certain areas of the map but will not be heard in others, This forces players to use radios to find out what's going on in the world, and therefore they may even make more use of communicating with or listening to other players. Finding and using radios should be made less frustrating, the batteries should last quite a while, I'm not saying it should be easy or given to you at the start, I'm saying it should balance very well since it could be the heart of the map. BROADCASTED MUSIC The music can be related to the location of the map and the time period, for example, on a map of the Czech Republic there would be Czech music and local artists from the country could be highlighted, It's a way to discover unique music that we would otherwise never know about.I found this amazing music playlist about Czech artists: https://youtu.be/uFaA4OTdAfo?list=PLcFiTGX0bj6_d3FzcWvYJHC_TvqEnBkYP There really wouldn't be many survivors broadcasting music on the radio, at most one or two. OTHER FEATURES Music can also be put into cars with cassettes that we find, and these can be used to create or move hordes of infected, enter a town and move the infected out of it so our friends can loot it more safely. The noise of the car with music would also help to prevent gunfire from attracting them, as they would be more aware of the sound of the car. This would also include a randomness system that I explained on twitter, where the car could fail at any moment, breaking the strategy between players. https://youtu.be/6tLPijQs0Ic PLAYERS BROADCASTING This is a feature that was in the game, I am not referring to this with this thread, but in fact I see it as good that it exists and is enhanced, that players have to use radios and frequencies to communicate with each other and stay informed, players must also be able to use the radio devices to communicate with each other on specific frequencies. We'll be able to go to a local radio station and, with a power supply, broadcast to a large area of the map. Only walkie talkies and radio stations would allow us to communicate with other players, some with greater range to detect frequencies and others with less. It would be easier to find radios to listen to than devices to broadcast. MODDED SERVERS On mod servers you could even use a LLM ChatGPT-type AI generator so the character could say dynamic things alternately or adapt to the circumstances of the players in the game, through voice synthesis and a dynamic context that would be expanded. For example, if you pass by a boradcaster area, he might say he has seen you and describe how you are dressed, if you are wounded or armed. Actually what I have explained is the basis, but it can be made much more complex with very elaborate systems that would give an interesting and unique touch to the game as the fact of listening to people that you can't see or touch but maybe they are watching you is curious. RESUME The idea is to expand the lore, give an identity to that universe and that identity can play with the players, PvE, roleplay with them. and at the same time introduce music into DayZ, music culture, not just ambient music, promote artists to attract more people to the game, introduce radios with curious characters who can interact with us by helping us to find events and happenings linked to them. The radio broadcast system could be a unique system for this type of game dedicated to guiding players and expanding the game's lore, Furthermore, such a system can be seamlessly tied to other systems as the game evolves. The radio becomes more than a tool—it becomes the heartbeat of the game world. Players feel like they're part of an ongoing story, where they can tune in, discover, or ignore world events. I think if something like this is done well it could lead to very good evolution of the game, a more real world with an interesting background. RECOMMENDED THREAD This could be related to a seasonal design of the game where characters could vary seasonally, broadcasters could die or change, thus avoiding cumulative content.

DAYZ SEASON BASED MODEL INTRODUCTION Seasonal model refers to a online game service model where the elements of the map change over time, they evolve, like Fortnite or Destiny 2 games. Yeah, I know these are games that DayZ players probably hate, I don't like them either, but I do recognize that the seasonal model in open world multiplayer games could be a very good idea for better content management. With this model the game has a narrative line where different things happen each season, that interferes with the players' survival, forcing them to make different decisions or follow different paths with each new season, having to adapt to this changing world. First of all I want to say that this does not refer only to a system where the maps change with real time seasons (winter-spring-summer-autumn) according to the time of the year with elements like snow, flowering leaves, or trees without leaves and leaves on the ground, that would be great indeed and can be part of this game model, it would be interesting to aim for that, even if it means fewer official maps or smaller but better worked maps, this refers more to the fact that the game evolves over time, as if the years passed in the game just as they do in life. Leaving aside the mod servers, I'm talking about the Vanilla experience, DayZ should be updated in a big way every six or three months, would be six-monthly or quarterly season model, depending on what the studio can cope with, that's why it's called a seasonal model, not by seasons (winter, spring, summer, autumn). The important thing about seasons is to show that the world changes dynamically, that new things happen, not just between players, things happen without the players having full control. The season based model would include new events and new stories, I mean NPC stories, yes, PvE needs to be improved, a open world online game that is only PvP or that barely tends to PvE tints can't evolve in a big way, If you want only PvP just create a primitive and simple arena server with no events and kill each other, it's the easy way. DayZ 2 concept main menu with seasons. TECHNICAL BENEFITS The seasonal model would also allow for the content produced in the game to be scaled, as if it becomes cumulative the game would crash. A game divided into seasons allows for much better control over the content injected into the maps, devs will have better control over the game content in each season, avoiding saturating the map with elements and having total freedom to remove and add new ones or to add back old ones that we previously removed. For example, in Red Dead Online Rockstar Games started to inject cumulative content massively, dynamic events on the map, and the game eventually ended up collapsing, the game was without animals for more than 6 months or more until they managed to fix it, the problem was because as being a P2P game players generated that content on the map and as they added new roles (bounty hunter, moonshiner, naturalist, trader, collector) and you acquired them each role had new events that were generated over the map adding new events related to them, this made the game collapse, mainly the generation of animals for hunting, that's why new players, the ones who had no role or only one role, kept generating animals around them and it was curious, while players with many roles didn't see them. Because of this problem I think they actually abandoned the game, if any of you played this game maybe you'll understand some of what I'm saying, they simply fixed the animal problem but they had to stop producing content because it was too complex to keep creating more cumulative roles and events. That's why I think a seasonal model is much better than acumulative, because the content is limited to only the seasons, or part of it. Obviously, there would be elements that would be more permanent than others, like animal spwans, for example, and even within seasons you can control basic elements and introduce others to balance the hardware resources if you want to introduce new things. ¿WHY A SEASONAL MODEL HELPS? -Content Isolation: Limits how much is active at once, reducing the chance of conflicts or system overload. -Balance Opportunities: Developers can rebalance systems between seasons based on data. -Thematic Focus: Each season can have a clear identity (e.g., winter survival, faction wars, etc.) which helps engagement and simplifies design/testing. -Improved Performance: Less legacy content running in parallel → fewer processing demands. PROBLEMS WITH A CUMULATIVE MODEL (LIKE RDO): -Exponential Complexity: Every new feature has to interact cleanly with all previous ones. -Systemic Conflicts: Like the animal spawns vs. new events -Inflexibility: Once content is live and tied to progression, removing or altering it becomes controversial and risky. The good thing is that DayZ moves on private servers, but increasing all that content without splitting it up would make the game run very poorly as the content increases across the map, conflicts can arise as more things are added and accumulate. A seasonal, modular system with scoped content is more sustainable, especially for live-service games aiming for long-term evolution. CREATIVE BENEFITS Creative benefits are undoubtedly also very large, you can develop evolutionary narrative, which changes over time; this is undoubtedly linked to the technical section where things can be added and removed from the map in each season depending on the narrative you want to present. When I talk about narrative I don't mean singleplayer games with cinematics, I mean like a action role-playing narrative game like Skyrim where everything develops in real time on the map, everything is playable and interactive, there are no cinematics, you can meet an NPC on the map and he will talk to you but if you want you can shoot him, or walk away and ignore him, it's up to the player. The player is responsible for the content they avoid with the choices they make, for example, if a player kills an NPC he could be missing out on an interesting narrative line in the game that would help them better understand that game world, or he could even lose important items or other elements, even their decisions could interfere with future seasons or future quests. I recommend this thread about radio station design with NPCs, as it's a clear example of core seasonal narrative, where players could tune into the radio with different characters each season and have them change over time. MAP CHANGES DURING THE SEASONS We are talking about changes within the same map, currently that is done using different maps, each map has its different settings, but here we are talking about a single map changing over time. -Loot placement may change seasonally, for example, during the first seasons it would be easier to find loot, there would be cars in better condition, etc... but also more infected, While in later seasons there would be more trade and farming in settlements, there would be almost no loot since almost all the food would already be expired. -Obviously as I said, dynamic narrative could be introduced with even characters, and generate concrete events in every season to give the game a unique lore, a story, a meaning. For example, if we do not give food to a certain NPC who is locked inside a house, he could appear dead from starvation or suicide in the next season. -The map changes would also include the appearance of survivor settlements on the map in case of wanting to add a season with factions. -Buildings that have suffered damage could appear destroyed. -Some routes could be unusable after a certain season, for example, a bridge destroyed. -The spawning grounds of creatures could be vary per season, for example, in one area the wolf population may have multiplied significantly. -After a few seasons, two years, gasoline would no longer be useful, and we would have to use biodiesel made by us or by NPCs, horses might be a better mode of transport than in the early seasons. DIFFERENT TIMES OF THE YEAR WITH DIFFERENT CLIMATES We talked about this before, it would be great to have Winter - Spring - Summer - Autumn with visual changes on the map, each season could have a specific time of year. Each time of year in each season could change things like where the NPCs, animals, infected are, and obviously, non-living elements on the map could also change. WINTER -The infected during the winter would hide in closed places such as buildings, garages, warehouses, houses, etc... -In winter animals like bears wouldn't appear as often, we could find them sleeping in caves because they would be hibernating, which gives rise to adding other things in places where they are no longer. -The map would look snowier, It would also be colder and we would have to keep an eye on our clothes, or not bathe if we don't want to suffer hypothermia and even lose a limb. SUMMER -Forest fires could break out and trap us, they can be initiated by lightning in thunderstorms, random events, or players. -The ice in spring and summer would be melted, so without ice sheets we might not be able to cross a river or lake on foot. -Extreme heat waves reduce stamina/endurance more quickly, the player needs to hydrate more often, shade and interiors help with energy recovery, some items (food, medicine) spoil more quickly, risk of heatstroke or dehydration. -Severe droughts, drying up or polluting water sources, increasing the value of clean water as a resource or currency, and the need for filters, purification tablets, or solar collectors. In a summer season narrative design, a rumor tells of an old school with a tank on its roof that still holds water. The player must reach it before another faction. -More useful solar panels allow you to recharge devices like car batteries (There are no 100% electric cars, I mean the battery to start the car). During the rainy seasons buckets can be used on the roofs of buildings to collect fresh water. Here, it would be important for Bohemia to be able to deliver content every three months, content that corresponds to each season. The autumn and spring seasons could be with less content, in the end all the content that was generated, part of it, could be reused, the spawns of each season, specific events created in x season could be used in another if they do not have a lore focused on that one. DYNAMIC EVENTS Bohemia should focus its efforts on generating content based on open world dynamic events basically, situations in which to put players. Dynamic events could have human presence not controlled by players, NPCs, animals, infected (horde event), atmospheric elements (storms), or situations such as planes gas-bombing certain areas to kill the infected. For example, in the first season of the game there might be contaminated zone events, where the military is still bombing areas, but in later seasons where all hope has been lost, because civilization has fallen, those events would be replaced by other different ones, If you want to live that experience again you'll have to go back to season one. This is understandable because DayZ currently has few dynamic events, but let's imagine that they want to generate and introduce sophisticated events, even with NPCs, or narratives, this content cannot be cumulative because it is very difficult to control. Bohemia should make an effort to introduce non-playable human characters into dynamic events—humans escaping a horde, a girl searching for her father who's on another side of the map, and things like that—and give players the freedom to intervene in those PvE events. Some bad soldiers patrolling roads and highways armed. Here we could differentiate between: -Non organic dynamic events (limited/finite): Limited ones are those that last once, once consumed they cannot be repeated again, they are lost, for example, if we find the girl who is looking for her father and we or and infected kill her she will no longer be able to find her father, the same if another player or infected kills the father, so we will not be able to see the outcome of her story. If the players manage to unite them, it will lead to a final narrative, we will help them evacuate to a certain area. Even if we rescue them we might still see them in future seasons, or see something related to them. -Organic dynamic events. These events are like an Ouroboros; they repeat constantly over and over again throughout the season. They may have a limited number of generations, but they can repeat more than once, even reaching several. This type of event would include gas bombings generating contaminated areas, which can be repeated randomly at certain points on the map at any time. For example, bad soldiers patrolling roads could also appear randomly several times.To do this with NPCs, a system of dynamic events triggered by a circular perimeter of layered activation must be developed where the player must enter the perimeter for the event to be activated by passing through the different layers. For example, there could be a survivor up on a rock and an infected below trying to kill him, we could see him from a distance, but until we get close enough to the perimeter where the layered event is activated, he won't see us or tell us anything, and if we don't save him by killing the infected in time, once the perimeter is activated, this survivor could slip and fall, but if we look at him from a distance, he would simply stay there waiting for some player to activate the event. The perimeter system event could have activation layers where each layer the player steps on, the player does not see the layers, it activates sequences, for example, if there are 3 layers the first could be the NPC shouting "Hey, you, help, please", if you go back and leave that layer the NPC sits down again and becomes silent, if you re-enter that layer he gets up and asks you for help again. If you cross the next layer you activate a dialogue where he tells you something to help him but also activate the possibility of him slipping and falling is also activated, perhaps a time trial to trigger the mocapped animation sequence, so there it is only a matter of time before he falls, a third layer would activate another dialogue or animation. This is a concept for an organic dynamic event where a bear scavenges for meat, human bodies, in a wrecked vehicle, because it's hungry. This bear could carry infected blood in its teeth or even claw. This event is organic because it could be repeated in multiple ways in different areas of the game. In the case of vehicles, we could see that at first they are not there and when they appear they remain static on the map, then bears or wolves may appear looking for corpses. A wide variety of scavenging events can be created, for example, a garage with an open door and inside there are two wolves eating a body, outside the garage some blood is seen. , The garage event can be repeated multiple times in different garages located throughout the map, the same as with crashed vehicles. As you can see, these are reusable events that can be injected into many areas of the map and can be injected again, that's why I call them organic. The server awards limited dynamic events per season per player. For example, if a player has been allocated two dynamic events, the second player is much more likely to find the third one, which would be generated due to his proximity to the event spawn zone. If that player has not entered the game for some time, the new dynamic event will be awarded to the player who has viewed the fewest dynamic events. Many players will lose dynamic events because they will be awarded to other players, giving replayability to the season. Players can help each other or not by the events they encounter, for example, an event could be a man who gives you clues about where a certain object or person is located in x place during that season, the player on the server is free to then share that information with other players or keep it to himself and say nothing. CROSS-EVENT/QUESTS Players can encounter quests activated by other players and intervene in them. For example, a quest to find a certain person — if another player finds them first, they can choose to kill or protect them. Imagine a girl looking for her father, both the girl and the father are on the same map, if the players find one of the two they can end their life, or they, the NPC's can die along the way, the NPCs will always be willing to go with you and will tell you that they are looking for each other. If you see an event in the distance, two players can influence the same event. I recommend watching this glitch video about Red Dead Online https://youtu.be/z4oOHtIzPCM To put it in perspective, the mission is a bounty hunter mission launched by another player from a sign next to the sheriff's station. The mission is generated in the world, and the event is placed in certain parts of the map. Generally, you have to go to that point and capture the outlaw, dead or alive. Alive gives you more money, and you have to deliver it to the sheriff. The outlaw can escape if you get distracted by shooting other NPCs. Surprisingly, I discovered a glitch: if you wait in areas near where these events are generated by other players, the NPCs from those events don't attack you. It's as if they were on your side or you were on their side. You can walk around the event and see the outlaw. Whereas if you're the one who triggered the event, from the sheriff station sign, when the NPCs discover you it's a shootout. The magic of this bug is that you can fight other players while defending NPCs and the NPCs defend you, in fact the other player might not even know that you are a real player, in that case I was with a friend when I captured that video. These types of situations increase PvE, since the player is fighting against NPCs who are also supported by other real players, something that Rockstar never officially implemented, in fact I think almost nobody knows about this bug. I made more examples of this bug: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2WdJH5b2E0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9vRdoLbGJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1hcWuy-17o Since it's a bug, sometimes NPCs end up attacking you, I think it's when you shoot them or the other player's mission ends, which is normal because the game wasn't designed for that. Example in DayZ: two different real players have developed a different role where one has to kill a certain NPC person because some NPC has told him to: that NPC person killed their brother, and if you kill him and take their head, he will give you more clues about something. Other player is the opposite: he has to help that NPC person escape the map because is in danger, If the player on that person's side finds this person before, what he has to do is protect the NPC and escort it to a certain point for their evacuation from the map, a bunker, a helicopter, etc. The NPC will follow you across the map and can die. If you are the opposite, your objective will be that if by chance you meet on the map, you have to confront the player protecting the NPC and that NPCs to cut off the NPC head and take it to the other NPC, the one who claims it and has promised you something in return. If the killer player arrives before and kills the NPC, then that content ends for the other player, but if the other player protects the NPC, the content continues for the both players until the NPC is safely at the indicated point. The players don't have to meet at any point, there are no indicators of anything, it's a coincidence that they are found, in fact there may be several players who think they have to cut off that NPC's head and only two who have to save him, and even a player who doesn't know anything about this may kill that NPC, so if that happens that content ends for one of both players. It's easy to understand. The objective is to evacuate an NPC from an area, point A to point B. He can give you a position with coordinates of where he is. You have to locate it. The other role player can arrive before and kill the NPC. Another player can even get there first, without knowing what the NPC's role is, and kill it. Even if the player who has to kill that NPC arrives and sees the corpse of the NPC, he can take its head and he won't lose that metaprogress because they would have achieved that objective: that NPC dies. As you can see there are multiple variables in the quest, and it is a very simple quest, it is only an NPC at a specific point on the map and that moves with you from one point to another while you have to prevent it from dying, you also have to take into account that the infected and the animal predators are also dangerous, they can kill the NPCs too, and that person might also need to stop and rest, eat, etc... That NPC is generated at the moment in which one activates that mission, the one to kill or the one to escort and it will be a coincidence that two players find the same path. The only difference is that those who have to kill him don't know exactly where the NPC is and there will probably be more of them, they only have a general approximation of the area because whoever gave them the information doesn't know where the NPC is as is logical, while the one who has to escort him has fewer players and they do receive coordinates to find the NPC on the map. What happens with NPCs could also happen with real players, it could also be that an NPC tasks you with killing a real player, giving you a description of the player, hair, tattoos, scars, etc. For example, let's think that there is a very simple system that has activated that. Imagine two NPCs and one player only kills one of them, the other runs away and saves his life, if the game marks that one as survived that will activate a side faction quest where other player can be task to kill that real player having a physical description of him, that NPC has been able to escape and tell that to other NPC, obviously the NPC will not travel around the map in real time to the safe zone, it will be enough to escape from the player's viewing radius at certain point.This system could simply be tied to if we attack NPCs and they run away, that could have future consequences with other NPCs. This explains a bit how Bohemia could use cross events based on, for example, having factions, there could be events where some of these are from our factions and we can participate in them, If we enter that area nothing happens to us, but if another player approaches, it does. MANAGING MULTIPLE MAPS WITH THE SEASONAL MODEL About more maps, let's suppose that Bohemia has 4 official maps to control with content, almost like right now, the seasons could move through maps with narrative taking the players through different flavors, for example, the first 3 years (real life time) of the game could take place on the same map, but in the 4th year a new map could be added and narratively move the players to that map, dedicating the work of the following next 3 years years mainly to that new map and its seasons and abandoning the previous one, but always leaving it replayable, in any new season the game could make us return to a previous maps if the developers consider it. The problem I see here is that I would like to have multi-map, to be able to jump from one server to another and change maps, being able to return to old maps, the problem is that creating seasonal content for several maps consumes a lot of time for developers and is very difficult to manage, the solution could be to leave the old map active with limited content, as currently occurs with the game, with some events that are repeated and elements that are repeated (infected, animals, etc..), but without new content. What could be done with this is that some elements of the new map make us interact with the old ones, for example, going to look for a specific species of plant on the old map, or going to a certain house on the old map and finding a certain object. LENGTH OF THE SEASONS AND THEIR STRUCTURE This also seems complex to me to manage, how long a season lasts and how its content is distributed in the game since its release, especially if there is a complex narrative with NPCs and not just dynamic changes to the map over time, like what I said about the bears and the caves. About this I thought that the game season could have a real duration per server of about 30 hours. From the moment the server is online, 40 hours pass, sometimes more, sometimes less, and in those 40 hours, specific situations and events will be generated that players must encounter. That's why I say that this type of design allows a lot of room for replayability, because you might start playing again and find things that you won't have found on the first playthrough. If a server is stopped, for whatever reason, the seasonal hours are also stopped, and will only continue until the server is restored. The essence of DayZ would not be lost, you would start a season and you would have to survive, with the only difference being that in each season there would be different events and different settings and things that would force you to adapt to the new circumstances of the moment, and If you squeezed out that 40 hours season few times, you can replay again the previous seasons until Bohemia releases a brand new season with new original content. On modified servers the timescale could be adjusted and the server could be stopped and better adjusted to the actual lifespans of the players. REPLAYABLE SEASONS Seasons should be replayable, or at least able to be started from scratch, since the goal is for the content to be replayable, for example, in Destiny 2 I believe there is no option to replay previous seasons, so the content worked on by the developers is lost, thats bad for the new players, maybe you advanced to a new season but missed details or things that you didn't discover in the previous one, things that another player did, that allows for replayability. META PROGRESSION SYSTEM Here I think players in hardcore mode should be able to keep their progress and items, but obviously they could be stripped of them during season changes.For example, maybe in the fifth season you found a letter, maybe this letter will be useful to you in the sixth seson, so that element would move to the sixth. In a season where you change to other maps and move around by helicopter thanks to some soldiers who evacuate you, perhaps they would make you hand over everything you have before flying with them. I repeat that it would be nice if there were several difficulty levels, for example a permadeath one where if you die you lose all your progress and have to start from the first season again, another hardcore where you would only have to start the season again, and another where if you die you would just spawn again in another part of the map. Some examples of meta progression -Each player has a persistent "Codex" of discovered events, lore entries, and dynamic world states from previous seasons that can affect the future. -Legacy Skills: Maybe minimal skill carry-over—e.g., “Your character remembers how to repair car engines faster after Season 3,” nothing OP, just flavor and slight utility. We could have lost an arm and still have that problem in the following season. -Objects / Relics: Cosmetic-only badges or gear skins tied to season completion or challenges. For example, a military outfit might endear you to an NPC, while if you're not wearing it, they might treat you differently. Meta progression in a season-based model can feel almost like losing your life, with a high value, which can lead players to make extreme decisions to survive without overreacting. You survive because you don't want to lose all your progress. You don't just lose items, you lose the progress of many hours of play. You lose specific items to solve lore issues or things you want to discover that you didn't discover the first time you played that season, so I think that allows players to act in a way that is more realistic to how they would in real life, there is a great fear of losing, especially if you play with permadeath. DIFFICULTY MODES This is a simple overview of how difficulty would be structured, difficulty would be based directly on how long a player can survive without dying. -EASY SURVIVOR MODE: If you die in a certain season you won't lose progress, you'll just spawn somewhere else on the map. Maybe some items or something will be taken from you to penalize you, but nothing serious. -HARDCORE SURVIVOR MODE: if you die you have to start over the season again from the scratch. You would lose everything, not just items, all your character progress would be reset to zero. You will start with all the meta you ended the previous session with. -PERMADEATH SURVIVOL MODE: you will lose all your progress, not just the season you died in, you will lose all your progress from all seasons, you will have to start over again from the first season. Permadeath mode and even hardcore mode have more value with seasons, let me put you in the situation, maybe you were with someone you met recently, a real human, you're in permadeath, a horde is chasing you and you have low stamina, you shoot him in the kneecap so you don't lose all your meta progress, since surviving becomes much more necessary knowing that you're going to lose all your meta progress from previous seasons, we're talking about each season lasting 20 hours or 40 hours, and you leave him limping, the horde goes after him and you run away, REPLAYABILITY: Permadeath players will always be able to return to a previous season as long as they don't die. The difficulty of the environment (infected, animals, weather, human NPCs) will be the same for everyone, or in principle it has to be that way. This also prevents developers from having to balance so many things, and on the other hand, the game experience must be that way. MULTIPLE CHARACTER-DIFFERENT SEASONS Players should be able to control different characters in different season lines, at least storing their metadata even if they don't play the season. For example, one character in permadeath and another in the hardcore line, each with their own unique metadata and progression. This is because if you have a character in permadeath, you might want to play the new season that's come out without having to make all the progress again, so having a hardcore line saves you from having to start all the seasons from scratch if you die. Maybe you're doing a permadeath challenge and you're on season 3, but the new season 6 released by Bohemia comes out tomorrow, then the hardcore line can help you play season 6 when it comes out and put the permadeath challenge on hold to enjoy the new season. MODDED SEASONS Seasons should be able to be modified by modders, adding additional content and enriching the foundation created by Bohemia, allowing them to make changes and improvements, vary their length, and better adapt them to each community servers. There would also be modified servers that would not have seasonal elements, for example, someone who just wants an unchanged map, like DayZ currently is, that would exist and it would not be difficult to create, in fact I think it is the easiest thing to do, you just have to deactivate things and place spawns and loot. SEASONAL PAYMENT MODEL Yes guys, Bohemia is a company and it has to financially survive, it is not a sister of charity. The model shouldn't change much. Every three-four years, if a new map for the new seasons is released, the new fee would be charged, you pay for a new map and three years of new content and support. A marketplace (workshop) with paid assets could be introduced where modders can create and sell them if they want, I think it's fair that people who create assets, maps, or scripts can make money from it if they want, because their work should be compensated, and Bohemia would keep a portion of the money, especially on consoles. Bohemia could also make collaborations with actors and companies and introduce paying character skins that fit the game, nothing ridiculous, we are talking about a serious setting, it could for example be a famous character skin like Cillian Murphy or George Romero, things that do not affect the core of the game, these skins could be rented, lost upon death or after a certain period of time. Introducing an in-game currency, be able to exchange real money for that currency, is not a good idea, it's very tempting, but it would destroy the core of the game and progress, I think there are better ways of monetization like the ones I mentioned before that wouldn't affect progress or break the setting. This game model demands a solid foundation. It can't be like the old DayZ, which has been more like an Early Access game with many shortcomings. There must be a solid foundation of systems and elements that allow for the easy production and manipulation of seasonal content, there must be a clear roadmap and a paved path for such a design, the game can't be like an Early Access where everything is still being created from scratch, there has to be a previous foundation already built, the basics, to build something like this, For example, the infected systems should already work perfectly from the release, the vehicles, the dynamic event systems, etc. ------------------------------------------------- If I can, I'll continue expanding the thread. I've missed a lot of things and this is just a rough outline of how I think DayZ 2 should evolve as online game, I also think such a design would be avant-garde and pioneering in terms of revolutionising the design of seasonal online gaming, and it would also make content management much more efficient, much more orderly.

I think they're not really supporting the old DayZ because they're just focusing a lot of their work on DayZ 2, on bringing everything over to the new engine, while also working on ARMA 4, they have a team making new maps for the old DayZ, some systems will be used in DayZ 2 for sure, but you know making maps for the old DayZ isn't that complicated, is a way to appease people until DayZ 2 arrives. You have many mods and you can perfectly improve the game experience without Bohemia, but Bohemia now knowing that should be focused on offering a future ecosystem for the new engine and the game, in fact it is curious that they keep adding maps and implementing modules from the new engine to the hybrid, In fact, these implementations are nothing more than a teaser for DayZ 2, the vehicles, the skybox, etc... ¿What would be the point of giving you all the DayZ 2 improvements before DayZ 2 comes out? It would be commercial madness, the normal thing is that when the game is released it will feel completely revamped, a breath of completely fresh air, feeling a great evolution all at once. ¿Do you think they're not working on DayZ 2? Is that what devs have been told? No developer is going to tell you what they are doing unless there are leaks, In fact there have been leaks of the game, you know perfectly well that the videogame industry is very secretive with these things because then the magic of the games is broken, all the workers sign NDA so all the devs are going to sell you that DayZ 2 is not planned to exist, even when they may have been working on the game for years. The grace of a game is even as it happened with Oblivion Remastered, that without anyone expecting it a game comes out suddenly without warning, that's the real magic of videogame industry, It's like receiving unexpected Christmas presents. They're not going to improve the old DayZ, at most they'll give us small tweaks until the complete engine change, that could be when they decide, It's their decision to show engine improvements on the old DayZ, and if I were to move the company I wouldn't show much to maintain a good impression on the day the new product is introduced. Consoles are like computers, they share the same architecture. The PC also has controller support. In fact, I prefer the controller a thousand times over to the keyboard, since the controller allows you to, for example, adjust the speed at which the character moves, this is good, for example, for stamina, stealth, and other elements such as platforming. The DayZ experience can be perfectly ported to consoles, the fact that the game doesn't have big improvements isn't because it's on consoles, it's because of what I said before, believe me, most of the time when a developer is making a statement to you, they are confirming the opposite. "We cannot port the old DayZ completely to the new engine, it is too difficult, it would break everything." = "We really can, we're just working on a new product to launch." Believe me, when you've seen games like Zelda BOTW emulated on PC and with co-op multiplayer and developers from major companies saying that it's not possible, that people don't know how games are made. you think anything is possible. 😄 My message is that you just tell them what they should improve for DayZ, feedback is always good and welcome by companies, it helps to improve their products, they will then make the decisions they consider, but don't expect that to happen now on the old game, because if they are creating an improved DayZ they have to sell it as if it was something completely renewed, a brand new product, and if they give you all those improvements now they won't have anything new to sell you.

First, let's not call them zombies. Dean was inspired by 28 Days Later. Calling them zombies could lead to the concept of treating them as such, like George Romero's monsters. DayZ succeeded because Dean, without realizing it, was inspired by 28 Days Later without fully understanding that universe. And we have to keep this in mind: they shouldn't be treated like dead people who have come back to life. they should be treated like living beings, real human infected with a rabies-like virus that has no cure. Should the infected kill? Yes, and infect players and turn them into infected. Even give the opportunity for players to control infected or let the AI control them, just for fun, as an infected player controlled by a real human can be much more unpredictable. Maybe a player knows he's going to turn and attacks the group of people around him out of revenge. I wrote a redesign for the infected and have yet to post it on the forum, where the redesign is explained very well so they make sense in the world. That redesign should be considered for DayZ 2, with the old engine I think it doesn't make sense since many things would have to be improved, In the current state of the game, I don't know if I would change them, the game currently has very few elements related to them, so the balance is very limited. Maybe if something as simple as the infected having their own run stamina, different from each other's, and not being able to chase us without tiring, that would improve things a lot. This game has many elements that could be improved. But keep in mind that if two infected with that infinite stamina chase you and you're a new player, you're screwed, you can't escape from them. It can't be that you get tired and they don't, the level of tiredness should be similar, and they have an advantage if there are more of them, because one might get tired, but suddenly another might appear from the other side and that one isn't tired and you are, on the other hand if a horde chases you at the same time it might be that all of them start to get tired at the same time as you and therefore you would perhaps have the possibility of fleeing, it would all depend on at what moment the infected that are appearing have started to run. A simple design change like that could greatly improve things and bring much more realism, players could escape from them more easily if they manage where they go, if one is chasing you and you see more in another area you don't go there because you know that when you get there you will be tired and they won't, and there will always be the doubt of whether at a certain moment you will find one who is not tired and you are due to bad luck. In fact, for me, if a horde catches you, 4 infected or more within a perimeter of half a meter around your body, it should be instakill, like in Days Gone. The goal of DayZ should always be to avoid close contact with the infected, and if there is a confrontation, it should be one-on-one or two-on-two. Large groups of infected should be dealt with with the help of other players, preferably with ranged firearms, or by using environmental elements, locking them in buildings, moving them and removing them from areas making noise (a car with loud music), etc.

I think a lot of those things you mention are related to gameplay. -Bleeding corpses (similar to arma2 dayz) / Body autopsy, like "gunshot wound to the head" / Bullet/melee decals on objects but also on clothing This is very important, Bohemia in DayZ 2 must be quite hard working at this, wounds help us to know if someone has been bitten or scratched, therefore if they are going to become infected. This can result in them biting us and infecting us, smearing a bladed weapon with their blood and attacking us, infected wounds could have different states. Here I'm talking about players, but in infected, the gore on their body would give us an idea of whether or not we have finished with them, or if they have little left, for example, if we blow off an infected's arm we know that it won't last long until it bleeds out, but it will last longer, but if we blow off its head, central nervous system, or hit its heart, it will die and it will be safe. If we walk around the world and see an infected person on the ground with a head wound, we'll know he is dead, whereas if we don't see a wound, he could simply be sleeping/resting. -Visibly wet clothing ARMA Reforger has that. A good humidification system would simply tell us if our clothes have gotten wet and if we should dry them. The level of humidity in the clothes could indicate whether we have health problems or not. If we only got wet up to our knees, there wouldn't be as much risk of pneumonia, or of developing fungus. The added benefit of this is that you don't need as many elements in the HUD because moisture is visible on the clothing and its condition. Another important mechanic would be that the character, if we have the weapon drawn, if we enter water, he would lift it so that it does not get wet and deteriorate, he would only do this if we took it out and had it in our hands. Clothes may also become wet with wounds, indicating that you have been bitten, shot, and other things. -Birds (client) Birds are a great gameplay element for hunting, as the colleague said. They could also alert us to hordes, for example, if many flock out of a forest It could mean that there is a lot of human presence, or seeing birds moving could indicate that someone has crossed their path, someone shot far away and they moved away. Crows and vultures flying in the distance could tell us if there are corpses, whether from other real players, human NPCs, or dead infected people. Pigeon breeding could be used to send messages without using radio frequency and over long distances. Pigeons are very good at locating their breeding grounds and are capable of traveling long distances to them. You just have to take them far from their breeding grounds. That's the drawback: they don't travel to random places, they just return to their nest. They could die along the way, and the message could land anywhere with them, anywhere on the map, if they have a death probability algorithm. Bohemia could also use a system where they could become visible, rendering, as they pass near players, so the players could take them down. If there were strong settlements, players could send trucks with cages and other materials, and use them for that purpose. For example, sending 30 to another location, you can send 30 messages. Or if the game had a multi-map, but was interconnected, players could communicate between maps using pigeons. Arma reforger features birds -Ragdolls It's important for gameplay. I'd add mechanics like kicking and pushing, among other things, such as pushing someone from a certain height. But in combat, the ragdoll is very important because staggering gives you time. If you land a hit while someone's staggering, your teammate can land another, or if you're quick, you can go to another part of the body. A shot to the leg can cause the infected person to lose balance while running and fall to the ground and have to get up, so you can take advantage of this to shoot another person if there are two of them. -HUD opacity slider/ adjuster  I've always been a bit of a HUD hater; I think a HUD can always be completely replaced with visual and audio elements. Lack of health can be indicated by wounds and agonizing sounds, visual vision effects, erratic motion movement, bleeding, etc. Illness can be indicated by coughing, scratching, shivering, motion sickness effects, vomiting, etc, DayZ has also elements of these. The HUD could be hidden by simply pressing a button like a D-pad, but for me, it would be better if it disappeared. In real life, we don't have indicators like that; we have sight, hearing, and sensation. What would be good is a system to check our body, our wounds, a more detailed healing system. You could see if you have a dislocated bone and stop to think about how it could have happened to you, maybe while escaping from some infected people you jumped too high. If it were up to me, there would be no HUD in DayZ. No one would know when they're going to die. They'd only have references to it, and they'd never be entirely clear. You could still be dying, but you'd just have a fever. So if you're not vomiting or anything else, you might think you don't have a bacterial infection. And if you don't have any wounds, it means you couldn't have been infected. A system where you could analyze your body parts would be interesting, like MGS3 but more interactive, you could see if you have a very red eye and stuff like that, the player could owe things like "my ear hurts a lot", so you could have an ear infection if you've bathed in a dirty lake. Whether you like it or not, immersion is related to gameplay. Physics is immersive but also playable. Graphics are also playable. If you can afford to see small visual details, you can improve the game's playability by adding tiny details that you couldn't before because you could only magnify the general ones.

Yes, it would be interesting to be able to mark points with a pen or marker on the map, or with pushpins. For example, the pen and marker would be permanent, so the map would be ruined, but not the pins, and stickers could also be used. It would be interesting to be able to take notes as well, in a notebook or on the map itself with a writing system, and to be able to leave these notebooks and maps around the world. The management of a notebook with the map next to the pins would not ruin the map, or use a pencil and then an eraser, although what is written with pencil could be erased over time due to the texture of the paper and friction, as it would not be porous paper, generally the maps are couché paper, while the ones we use in notebooks are offset paper, it would be interesting to take that into consideration. The degradation of the pencil on the couché paper could be preceded by an algorithm related to the number of times we write or open the map, if we write and open the map 6-9 times or more the pencil could be erased. I don't know if this happens in the game, but for example, bathing with the map or taking it out in the rain would cause it to break. The issue of being able to store coordinates would be interesting, but not with all GPSs, it would be nice if there were different models and some had more value than others, with better functionalities, that would give greater versatility.

I don't really know what release window they will have, DayZ will move sooner or later to the new engine but we don't know when it will be, considering that ARMA 4 will be in 2027 DayZ could go to 2029-2030, it could be earlier too. Bohemia currently doesn't seem to be in a hurry to release DayZ 2, although I don't doubt, I suppose that in the release of DayZ 2 they will present it with a totally new map, maybe they will remaster the previous ones too. If you want to see what DayZ 2 might look like Enjoy

¿What do you mean by new colours? Visually DayZ looks good. The colours are achieved with different settings, you know, new locations with different vegetation and different buildings, etc... I've always been fascinated by the lighting and the vegetation systems, how the branches move in the wind, or the tall grass, it's incredible. What I don't like are the cloned and repeated interiors and that the vegetation on the asphalt is badly placed and breaks the aesthetics a bit, I think Bohemia would have to improve their edition of the map in terms of placing vegetation on the concrete, for example, place it in cracks, or place it on the edges, but it bothers me a lot of times to see bushes in the middle of the asphalt because it looks a bit artificial, also many times they place bushes and they don't have grass with different levels, or more detailed textures to colour the cracks a bit, I think it's an aspect that they have to take care of a bit more. The grass in fields or areas where there is a lot of it is excellent.