Redshift

There is a lot of fun to be had in this game. I love the sandbox approach, the feeling of desperation and fear. I enjoy the fact that I have to be on the lookout for not only zombies but other players, and that going into towns is a nerve wracking experience (I sneak, I dont run through town like a mexican jumping bean while trying to lose the horde in buildings. Thats a playstyle choice and I find it more enjoyable). There are things that could be done to improve the game though (duh its still in the building/testing phase). And I think that an overhaul of zombie behavior is something that would add immeasurably to the game experience. What I am referring to is that the zombies in DayZ don't act in a manner that is very interesting, nor consistent with most other references to zombie behavior in other forms of media. Zombies just idle around towns and buildings. Sure they wander a little bit, but for the most part they just trace celtic knot circles around their starting area. What this leads to is that you know as long as you are not near buildings you are completely safe from zombies, they become a non-factor. You are free to stand up and sprint around making as much noise as you feel like. And this just isnt authentic or interesting. What I think should happen is that zombie should have a starting spawn point (it can even be the same spawn points they have now), but are not fixed to that location. Do they hear or see something off to their left? Then they should meander that direction. So now that zombie is walking off to the east, another zombie out on its own see the first and its "interest" is not focused on anything else so it follows him. After a while you have a group of 5-10 zombies clumped together walking through the woods. All of the sudden you can't be so certain you are safe since you are outside of a town. Or you have a player who runs through town to loot it, and then runs out (or even a helicopter flys over a city and the zombies look up and follow it). He attracts the attention of a group of zombies who follow him. Eventually he loses them. The zombies would stop running but stay grouped together, attracting more to the horde as they go. Maybe you end up with a group of 50 zombies all together. A boar or rabbit darts out of the forest and away from the horde, which causes some of them to break off and follow it. Now you have two smaller hordes going in different directions. This can lead to smaller areas like barns and deer stands, or even the small towns from time to time being empty with no zombies around them. This is a good thing because it is how it would happen in real life, it is more authentic. But overall it ramps up the danger and difficulty of the game because you truly aren't safe anywhere anymore. A herd could be walking up on you at any moment. The key to this would be using legitimate stimuli to prompt zombie behavior. NOT just randomly spawning herds in the middle of nowhere. And also it would require locking the borders of the map (which should be done anyway), otherwise the herds will eventually wander into the emptiness and become a non-factor. Once a zombie reaches the edge of the map it could either be programed to turn and go in a random direction, or despawn and then respawn somewhere else at a valid spawn location. Also key areas like large cities should have a "draw" or "attraction" making it less likely for zombies to leave without a strong stimulus to do so, so that these areas are never empty.

Performance issues are, of course, a legitimate complaint about my proposal. I am not a programmer so I am unaware if there is or is not a way to do this "in the background" without significantly impacting performance server-wide. Maybe there is no way, in which case my idea is impractical. But perhaps there is, which is why I proposed it. Maybe Rocket will read it and think on it and come up with something. If not then no harm done :) With the addition of breaking Line of Sight causing zombies to drop off of you I do not believe this could be accomplished. At least not in the large cities. Plus even if you could significantly lower the zombie population of a town in this way you have run all over the city in plain sight of everyone else around, making yourself a target while gathering agro. And once you come back to loot the city everyone else has already gotten the chance to loot everything before you (since they just had to wait for you to leave before looting, while you have to run until you lose all the zombie agro and come back).

So... your point is that cheating makes the game too easy? Wow who would have thought of that? Sadly there will always be cheaters in games, some people can't stand not having some type of unfair advantage. Game designers should try to make it difficult, should try to fix the exploits when they find them, and should update anti-hacking software as often as possible. But in the end you have to just shrug it off and learn to live with the fact that someone out there is cheating and there is nothing that can be done to put a stop to it.

I agree that the wilderness is too safe and uninteresting. See my suggestion on fixing this in this thread: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=21555

Honestly I think this is a weird function of the loot tables. I know there have been plenty of times I walk into a barn and every loot pile has a hatchet in it, or I walk into a church and there are 6 maps laying about. Heck there have been times I was at an airfield and every single hanger and the tower had an AK 47 and ammo. Sometimes the game seems to duplicate loot spawns in an area. As for authenticity, yes you should find MANY more watches than compasses. And GPS units should still be very rare. Think about it, GPS units may be somewhat common in America but the game takes place in Russia right? Plus the majority of GPS units floating around the world are designed for and installed in cars. A real "help me Im lost in the wild" type of GPS is pretty rare all things considered.

Yea I really hate to be one of those people but pics or it didn't happen. I know that if I ran across this I would be hitting the printscreen key like mad.

There are a lot of debates on the forums about every aspect of the game, and this is good. However, many of these debates degenerate into shouting/insulting matches which is bad. One thing that I have learned from nearly a decade working in a courthouse is that a high percentage of disputes stem from the misunderstandings of very basic terms between the parties involved. Most often this is something as simple as two people using different definitions of the same word, or having a different viewpoint of the same information but not understanding that their viewpoint differs from the other persons. I think that this is where the DayZ community could use a lot of improvement. And the only way to really work toward that is to have an understanding of the very basic focus of the game. For instance. Should the focus of the game be pitting the players against Zombies, the environment, or other players. On the surface this is an easy question to answer "It's a zombie game, its all about the zombies". But its not so cut and dry in reality. I love the zombie apocalypse (I doubt that I am alone in this in this community). Movies, books, short stories, graphic novels, roleplaying games, board games, and video games. If it is about zombies then I will likely give it a try. This is because I love "storytelling" and the Zombie Apocalypse provides an amazing setting for some truly interesting stories. But the best of those stories are not really about zombies at all. Sure zombies are there and are a constant threat that people have to live with, but the best stories are about how people react to this and each other in this situation. The zombies are more of a background element. I would love it if the focus of the game would shift into that direction. Less about "OMG zombies are no threat we need to make them more dangerous, and make them spawn more often and in greater numbers", and more about "How do I interact with these people while still keeping in mind that whatever I do could cause the zombies in the area to react to me also. How do my interactions with other people affect me as a person (player)?".

The fact that this is a "feature" has been established, and is correct. You can argue for or against it and be perfectly legitimate either way imo. It gives you peripheral vision, which is a very important aspect of real life combat, so that is good. But you get the dots when you have no reason to be able to see the zed. I.e. the first time I was on a server with this feature I only noticed it because there were two dots near the ceiling of a barn I was about to go into (new character with no weapon at all), I figured out what it meant and avoided that barn completely. So in that sense this feature is unrealistic. However you also need to be aware that this feature is not without its negative consequences. Namely, it highlights EVERYTHING. Zeds, players, dead zeds, and animals. Nothing is as nerve racking as sneaking through an area near some zeds only to notices one of those little dots getting larger and moving all over the damn place. You think you have one of the ninja zombies chasing you only to find out it was a little rabbit. So good feature, bad feature, inconsequential. All of those are valid opinions. If you like it then great, everyone on that server has the same advantages. If you don't like it that's great, just migrate to a server that doesn't use it.

Sorry but those numbers aren't worth paying attention to imo. This is because so many people kill themselves repeatedly over and over again until they get the spawn location they want. You see it all the time, and this will throw those percentages way off. But even so I dont see how it really matters. Personally I prefer to play cooperatively, so I am not a bandit and only kill someone if they are shooting at me or are threatening in some other fashion (i.e. following me with a gun pointed at me but not yet firing). However, this does not mean that pvp should be curbed. It is a very important part of the game. I do, however, feel that cooperative play should be encouraged also. Even if this is only enabling a grouping function. Now you can decide to group up, and use group chat with your team. Doesnt stop pvp, doesnt stop the people in that team from turning on you, but it does let you have a sense of cooperative play if you want to.

I don't understand the obsession with the Fal. I have only come across one so far at a heli site and it had no ammo so admittedly I haven't used one yet. But from looking at the weapon comparison charts I just dont see why people love them so much. FN FAL - Rare -assault rifle- FAL Mag 20, Damage High, body shots 1, range 400m, No Zeroing, Moderate Rate of fire, High recoil, High noise. It seems like the AKM (a far more common weapon) is actually better. AKM, Common, assault rifle, AKM mag 30, damage High, body shots 1, range 400m, zeroing yes, High rate of fire, recoil High, noise High. The AKM has higher capacity magazines, more common ammo, higher ROF, same range recoil and noise. So is there something missing from those charts that makes a difference in these weapons?

This list is way too expansive. Matches, knife, compass. These are all things you should be striving to find. They are very important and starting with them is not a good idea imo. However, I am not a huge fan of starting with nothing either. I think a good list of starting equipment would be: Makarov + 1 clip, 1 can of beans, 1 soda, 1 bandage, 1 morphine, 1 painkiller. And that is it (notice the lack of backpack as this adds a reason for the Czech Vest Pouch to even exist in the game). Alternatively remove the pistol and replace with a melee weapon (crowbar, or baseball bat). You are already a survivor (you can tell because you are alive and everyone else is a zombie), so it can be assumed that you we a little better prepared than everyone else. This list would give you the basics, just enough to survive until you find your first loot spawn, but still leaves off the most important items that will require exploration and risk.

Unless I am misinformed something like this already happens. I believe that if you log out the loot near you vanishes (or so I have read on a post about a week or so back). I have always assumed this was to stop people from sprinting with a train of zombies, get into a building, disconnect and wait a minute, then log back in and loot. Plus in the scenario you are proposing the person who was trying to loot the DMR is screwed anyway because he is looking at his new shiny weapon and the server hopper is looking at the back of his head through his ironsights. This is because for the loot to vanish (via my suggestion) you would have to log in relatively close to the loot spawn.

Honestly the easiest way to stop server hoppers is to make it so that when you spawn all loot in your immediate area is wiped. Say about the area of a control tower and extending both above and below you. This would at least force the people to log out away from the loot area, and then make their way in to pick up the loot, then walk back out of the area before jumping servers again. It takes more time, and is more dangerous, so you will probably see less hopping as a result.

completed

There is a point where "realism" becomes too burdensome and detracts from the "game". Boiling water is one of those times. Realism (though honestly the better word to use here is "authenticity" not "realism") is only good as long as it makes the game better (note I did not say more fun, but "better"), and is bad when it makes the game tedious. It would just make it too hard to make use of the water mechanic at that point, and you are better off ignoring ponds and wells all together and just drinking soda. Because you would need 4 different items to do it, 3 of which are not guaranteed to be found easily or quickly, or even within the amount of time it will take you to die from thirst. 1: empty canteen, 2: hatchet to cut wood (or find a woodpile spawn), 3: matches, 4: water source. It's like cooking meat, it takes a while to get all of those items in order to make use of the cooking mechanic (knife, hatchet, matches, wood, animal). Sure if I happen across everything I need to cook meat then I might use it (or I might not since the fire could give my position away), but largely I ignore it and just eat sardines. I know that now I will get bombarded with "but it's more realistic". Well you are forgetting that you can go much longer in reality without food/water than you can in the game. You can live for a long time without food. Up to 8 weeks is what I have found (more or less depending on your physical condition). And under ideal conditions you can go about 5 days without water (obviously this game is not ideal conditions since you are exhausting yourself constantly, but at least it isn't the desert heat. You could likely go 2 or possibly 3 days without water under these conditions if forced to).

Actually you are wrong. I very rarely play on a server with nametags because there are very few of them. And very few servers list "nametags on" in the description. I go into the first available non-nighttime server with decent ping and less than 30 players that I come across. If it has 3rd person, xhairs, or nametags at that point doesnt effect if I stay on the server or not.

I really dislike serves with names turned off (which is the majority of them). I am almost always friendly (which gets me killed very often). I like cooperative gameplay. Now Bandits/pking are and should be part of the game. Its part of the setting, and would not feel authentic if pvp were curbed. However, being able to see a players name is important and lends to authenticity. In real life of course you can't just look at someone and know there name (unless they have a nametag on). But you CAN look at them and differentiate them from another person. And this is something you cannot do in DayZ, everyone looks the same. And the only way to differentiate is to have nametags. And being told who killed you, is important also. I may not hold a grudge against them, but I will want to avoid them in the future. Instead now they just say "Hey Im friendly" then shoot you again.

No. DayZ is a game. And the point of a game is to find enjoyment in it. It is difficult to enjoy a game if you can't even find out how the games mechanics work. Plus your analogy is flawed. You dont walk into a classroom or certification exam cold. "Hi its the first day of class. Sit down and get ready to take your final exam over everything that you were supposed to learn but we havent given you any opportunity to learn yet". That doesnt happen.

It is a step in the right direction balance wise. I didnt seem to agro any Zeds while prone crawling like was happening in .4 but I still pull agro through walls from crouch walking inside buildings with relative ease. Rocket said .4 was bugged and unintentionally hard and that it would likely take several updates to get the tweaking just right. I think .5 shows this perfectly. It is a step toward balance but not all the way there yet, that will come in time so I'm not worried about it.

Oh I dont think it should tell you who killed the person, that seems unreasonable. I mean you dont have a CSI team in your inventory to use magic machines that don't exist to tell you who killed the person ;D. I don't even care if it tells me the name of the person who was killed. That really doesnt matter much. But something like this would be great: "This body has suffered multiple gunshot wounds caused by a standard rifle round. The body is warm and must have been alive not that long ago." or "This body has suffered multiple lacerations and massive bloodlose. The body is cold and appears to have expired some time ago" There is ambiguity in both instances. Though more-so in the second one. Lacerations could be caused by an axe wound, or zombie for instance.

Heres an idea. If you want the game to lock people out for X amount of time (be it 10 minutes, or an hour +) and you think this will make the game more "realistic" or immersive, then great. Every time YOU die log out of the game and start a stopwatch. Once your 8 hours, or hour, or whatever goes by then you can log back on. This way you have your enjoyment of not playing the game, while I can still have my enjoyment of actually playing the game. Everyone comes out a winner and no one has the other persons viewpoint forced on them. Problem solved.

I never liked starving and dehydrating while offline. It didnt make much sense to me. You don't continue to bleed when you log off. If you log off while running you dont continue to run while you are offline. If you log off in the woods you dont get sick because rain fell in the area while you were offline. So why get hungry and thirsty while offline? The point of being offline is that you are OFFLINE, your character is no longer part of the world. It only makes sense that this applies to all aspects. Either nothing changes for you while you are offline. OR everything continues to affect you while you are offline and your character stays in the world and can be killed by any random passerbyer. And I dont think anyone wants that..... well ok there are a few people on these forums who seem hell bent for making this as brutal and unfun as possible who will probably say that they wish for exactly that

This suggestion reminds me of something I read back when I was in the Star Wars Galaxies beta. Some people said that space travel should be in "real time" or close to it. They wanted traveling between planets to take hours to accomplish while you sat there staring at the hyperspace screen and unable to do anything. I will never understand that type of mentality of wanting to take all of the fun out of a game and simply punish people to no good effect. And I think that if, god forbid, you ever got your wish that you would hate it every bit as much as everyone else already knows they would. I play games to have fun. And I would never pay for a game that says "If you die you will not be able to play for x number of hours". There is no possible fun in that.