KWilt

So I've recently been contemplating as to what exactly people are looking for in this game, especially as they get into the later parts where they've got every weapon in the game and tons of ammo stocked. And suddenly, something dawns on me that sort of links every little bit together. So, let's start at the bottom of the food-chain and work our way up. We start, spawned on the beach, with naught but a bandage, a bottle of painkillers, and a flashlight. Clearly, we are defenseless, and have to rely on either stealth or the fairly-complicated idea of losing LOS. At this moment, everything in the world is realistically a fear for your life. Zombies are completely overpowered (I'm talking in damage ratio comparisons, not speed and such) and you're pretty much dead-in-the-water until you find a weapon of any sort. Alright, so you may be wondering, what's the problem here? My answer is there isn't one. Early game is pretty much as balanced as it's going to get. You take anything more away from the players, and they're pretty much going to die from tripping on sand. You give them anything else, they're going to accelerate in the 'ranks' of the game too quickly. So what does this have to do with the end game, you might ask? Well, it deals primarily with one complaint that I've seen becoming fairly common recently: The zombies are too easy. This is both true and false. They are much too easy by the end game because they don't scale with the player's equipment. (And yes, I'm comparing this to an MMORPG. But it does make sense.) So when you've got that weapon that one-shot a zombie, you might feel like the zombies are simply a nuance. However, getting back on the beach, you'll find that you're actually going to have to use your mind to survive, rather than just brute force. So while the zombies might be too easy for you, they're just right for beginning players. So is there an easy solution to this? Hell, I can't find one. Crank up the difficulty, and early game is going to become Demon-Soul-tier hard, where players will be dying dozens of times from little follies in the system before they even see a tin can. Give players some form of defense at this point, and you've suddenly reintroduced rampant griefing from Macaroni-knights. Now then, let's stop focusing on the NPC variant of enemy and focus more on the PC variant. Why is PvP important to this argument? Because until there is a change that causes any due hardship to high-tier'd players, PvP is the only thing that's going to get them any enjoyment. Sure, they could do silly things like running through Cherno with a flare in-hand to lead a parade of zeds, but is that really what we want people to be doing when they get bored of killing the zeds? From this point, they turn to PvP to play the high-stakes game. So to the people that want to hinder PvP (by punishing bandits or altogether removing it) what do you expect these people to be doing once they have their high-tier gear? Waste that valuable, precious ammo on shambling corpses when they could just as easily just use a .45 round from their M1911, which is much more readily available? To be honest, as I'm typing this, I'm getting to think how PvP and non-PvP servers aren't a bad idea. I mean, it's extremely obvious that they would be rampantly exploited, so that's why I'm not going to pitch it or support it at all. But if an early player could at least get a hold of a weapon without the fear of being trolled while defenseless, I could see why non-PvP servers would be fine. Of course, people would just farm the fuck out of them, and there's no fun in that without the danger, so again, that's why I'm against them. But this is pretty much why the current state of zombies and PvP need to remain where they are. Sure, there are some tweaks that could be put in here and there, but their current states are what maintain the balance. TL;DR: Can't make zombies harder or else spawnees are fucked, can't make PvP harder or else high-tier quips are useless. Now then, with that out of the way, I have one question to pose: Since the biggest problem with keeping the balance is making sure that the end-game players don't completely fuck with the spawnees, how do we build a barrier that 'forces' (or rather, coerces) end-game players to stay up north and away from the spawn points? This would clear up a lot of the balance issues between the two forces, as enemies would pretty much be on level playing fields, with spawnees having to fight with other spawnees, while those with sniper rifles and NVGs would have a fighting chance against each other up north. My thoughts are some form of reward for being up north, so while people could still be bad-ass snipers in Cherno against newbs, they'd be missing out on a chunk of the game. The current problem is that once you head north and get your gear, there's no reason for you to not head back down south, so the north pretty much becomes obsolete by end-game. ADDENDUM 1: With the release of 1.7.2, zombies have dramatically shifted to a danger for everyone. While I can see this possibly appealing to those with high-tier'd weapons, I still think this does nothing but hurt the chances of spawnees as is. I definitely don't embrace the idea of utilizing crawl as our main form of transportation, but if rocket feels that's the direction the mod should be going, that's his choice.

M203 flares. Done.

Y'don't say?

At minimum? A fuck-ton of luck.

Alright. I'll hit one of you guys up on Wednesday when I'm back in town.

I see you guys have heard of the scary noises near Balota. But what about the and the ?

Damn. That's really weird. Anybody got a last-known on the TS? Like I said, it was up the night of the 3rd.

Doesn't really appeal to me when I do have a lot of background noise in and near my house. Trains less than 150m down the road, lots of construction recently, plus the invasive person coming into my room left and right on occasion. So, it's either I kill my mic and completely lose all outward communication with my team, or pretty much go John Rambo on the enemies who I'm stalking, because they'll hear me anyways. This is why it's a PTT system now. Because not all of us have quiet homes. And I'd rather not be handicapped by things that aren't in my control.

I dunno about sticky'd. But it'd be nice to get rocket's opinion on the idea.

When you live paycheck to paycheck, or you're still a teenager, it is quite a bit.

Well, you see, OP, it wasn't the hit that broke your leg. The zombie pushed you, and you tripped and sprained your ankle... really badly.

Good luck not getting caught in the blast.

Why would I talk to you from 80m away, when I can just as easily send my message from 100m away, in the form of a 5.56×45mm package?

Yes. I do understand that. And, as I made pretty clear, it would probably be the stupidest accusation of cheating that could be conceived in this game. Let's just assume this goes in game. If rocket's going to be so asinine and come out, saying that your TeamSpeak and default mic have to be the same. How could he really enforce that? As it stands, though, I highly doubt this would be put into the game. I'm just voicing my opinion why I think it's a stupid idea. Your options are either have a mic on and let everybody in an 80m radius here very little sound in your room and/or house, or have no mic at all and we've solved nothing.

No, it's not actually your opinion. This is your suggestion, and if it were to be implemented, I'd be called out for cheating in, probably, the most asinine way I could conceive.

Here we go again! Also, for input as to how stupid their viewers can be, I actually had an argument with a guy in the comments of one of the videos, because he said it's impossible to change the controls of the game. Gotta fucking love Yognaughts.

I demand diresharks. And an Ogre-slaying Knife. With a +9 against ogres. If you mean infected animals, then say infected animals. Not 'werewolves'.

Yeah, because locking on Direct Chat is completely the same as D/Cing. Like I said, though. I know how to circumvent it, and I gladly will. Rocket has no problem with metagaming. If you do, then take it up with him. Don't like it? Don't play the game.

Loot changes won't ever incentivize staying north. Loot is a grab-and-go that you only need to stop for every once in a while. That's why this current system doesn't work. Hell, even if ammunition and weapons were rarer, it still wouldn't work. It'd only further cause an imbalance between those with high tier and lower tier weapons. Continuing on... That's why I've proposed base-building. It gives a group a reason to hang around an area, as they will invest themselves in building this home to use. The one problem we have, though, is how to incentivize building a base in Vybor, rather than Cherno. Eventually, everyone (theoretically) will have all the top tier weapons. Hell, they might all have two of each. But what do we do at that point, other than shoot other survivors? That's another reason to focus more on this base-building and group dynamic growth. As a group grows in numbers, their survivability tends to spike dramatically. When you've got an armada of 15 guys walking around with a variety of mid-to-high tier weapons, you don't want to fuck with them, and you're more likely to cooperate with them civilly. Granted, there's no guarantee that they won't shoot you on sight, but there are draws for that. Why would a group want to shoot you when they could employ our services, trade with you for your possible goods that you're willing to scav? As we start to set up this hierarchy system, whether physically in game through ranking, or through simple metagaming aspects, cooperation will grow. We'll stop shooting on sight, and we'll start looking for the worth in the player, rather than their items. Granted, you'll still get the groups of assholes who want to roam the lands, killing all in their wake for giggles, but that's where these communities come as a safe-haven. Granted, you'll never be entirely safe, but who is really going to start shooting up a community with multiple guards sitting, just waiting for you to make a stupid move. (In essence, I think where Minecraft excels in it's building in late game, DayZ will excel in it's communication and cooperation in late game. No reason to shoot someone, because your gun is already better than theirs. And if they're stupid enough to shoot at you when you're traveling with a group of armed guards to take your gun, they deserve to be back in the brine.) Loot also spawns in percentage chances in RPGs, and those are definitely tier'd. Don't see what point you're trying to make. And yes, you did refer to the power of a weapon in your comparison of a learning curve to a tier. Clearly, you seem to think that because this game has a learning curve, some weapons aren't better than others (thus, making them tier'd). And if you don't, then why did you bring the subject of a learning curve at all? I'm not looking for personal experiences. I'm looking at facts and numbers. It is fact that some weapons are superior to others. If that isn't tiering, the I don't know what is. Was wondering when that was gonna pop up. The next time you die, close ARMA II, remove it from your computer, and never speak of DayZ again. Because in an anti-game, there are no do-overs, and there are no respawns.

Welcome to alpha! Please be prepared to lose your items at any time to a variety of silly glitches and deaths. Thank you, and have a nice day!

Again, I'm glad to know that I'm cheating because you feel it's alright to be invasive to my privacy. If I don't want anything to be heard, even after this is implemented, I will do what I can to make sure it's not heard. If that's cheating for you, because I value my privacy, then you can kindly fuck off.

There actually is no file, unfortunately. Appears to have been deleted. Unfortunate. Would've like to see how badly you could butcher it. (I kid. I can't roll my R's either. Damn Americanization.)

Bravo. Glad to know you love penalizing self-defense. Come back when you have something worth-while to add to the game.

I'm glad to know that I'm cheating simply because I don't want anybody whose in my proximity to hear every conversation I'm having with anybody else.

But weapons are tier'd. You can't apply a learning curve to weapon strength. The gun either does x amount of damage, or y amount of damage. Player experience does not effect that at all. So, your point's pretty moot. I really don't understand why it's so hard for people to wrap their heads around it. The M1911 is a superior gun to the Makarov in every way. Thus, it is a higher-tier weapon. The AS50 is superior to the CZ550 in every way. Again, a higher-tier weapon. There is no if, and, or but about it.