nashable

I hear what you're saying that it seems paradoxical to be able to just run back and loot your own corpse. I also agree the game needs some form of item deflation as the veteran/high end players are quickly building a power gap that will never be caught by newer players entering now (until the next character reset). Unfortunately though the Meta-game of the scenario you described just makes this a pain in the ass for any player in a group. If you 'locked' items from a specific GUID then you get the unusual issue of players trading or chain banditry and being unable to loot. If you lock on death then in a group I just camp my dead groupmates body until he gets back, i then proceed to loot items off of the corpse and drop onto the ground for them to pick up. Didn't stop me meta-gaming the system and it just annoys players not in a group. If you wanted a straight up penalty for dying (which re-reading your post is what it seemed you were frustrated by, players in groups dying and having no negative impact) then perhaps the best idea would be to have some items destroyed on death. Edit: As the poster made the good point above. With all the technical issues right now in the game, any punitive death mechanic beyond what we have now would seem even more extreme.

I like this idea!

I'm coming to this thread late and wasn't able to read the entire thread. I did want to share some thoughts on what I think the potential issues are and how I feel they could be solved. The concept of Bandit and Survivor is very fluid in the reality of the game. Very rare you have players that are 100% Bandit or Survivor all of the time. For example when you spawn you have no offensive output so you're 100% survivor. When you get a handgun or lower tier weapon you may shoot at other armed Humans but you're not going out of your way to hunt Survivors, which to some make you a Bandit but most players would argue its what they need to do to survive. I feel its at this stage of the game (where most players can get to quite quickly) is where we're seeing this explosion in 'Bandits/PvP is over the top' feeling. Finally what I would consider true Bandits are the guys/girls that have advanced gear (NVGs, Sniper Rifles etc.) and go hunting for other players as they don't have much else to do. I would say you need to adjust the balance of the game in the following areas: * Make it easier in the early game for people to meet up/group (build that Teamwork element BEFORE people are armed) * Adjust the timing of when Players should enter larger cities such as Cherno and Elecktro * Add additional mechanics to Medium/Late game so that multiple people are needed to Survive. I feel if you can offer incentives to players that a (small) group is better than being solo always then you'll start to build balance around the feeling of *Factions* of Humans banding together vs the Zombies and other Human Factions. I'll explain in more detail below. *Early Game/Spawning* So once two armed people meet its over. The chances to build trust are so remote its just easier to take the other person out. What if a system was implemented to select your spawn point. While I like the vibe of spawning in a random location but with out of game maps and people respawning over and over to hit the spawn they want, I feel the meta game would be better served with a different dynamic. What I imagined is a list (not a map!) of all the available spawn points and all the players in the spawn area (or have the spawn selected but have yet to click through to spawn). Any armed player or bandit in the area show up in the list of players in red with a warning in the UI. Players are then encouraged to spawn together (spawning with extra gear perhaps?) and that trust can be built by playing the game together, watching each others backs and experiencing the game in a small group. So yes now we've moved from Solo players being killed by just as many solo players to have at least bands of 2-4 people roaming around (group play and larger more tactical firefights, yay!) Sure some people will just run off, others will betray at a later stage but at least it opens up more opportunities for 'spawn brothers' to at least form up per life. *Early to Mid game transition and Cherno/Elecktro* With either of the two large cities being close to the majority of spawn points it has produced an interesting dynamic and most experienced players will do runs on the Hospitals, if not the Supermarket and Fire stations to initially gear up. New/Green Players will get caught up in the cross fire of Part-Time Bandits and other players who are just trying to gear up quickly. As well as more advanced Full-Time Bandits who have come back south to hunt and/or quickly gather medical and food supplies. While this may be controversial I would adjust the spawn positions, I would have the progression of the game be East to West rather than South to North. This would put Cherno/Elecktro behind one or two towns (if you spawned on the South East of the coast). Yes this would need a loot re-balance and sure Berenzino could become the next Cherno but at least players would have more choice in terms of pathing they could go and may have some gear to defend themselves with by the time they hit the larger cities. *More Group activities in the Mid/End Game* So once a player has gathered good gear, maybe a tent, repaired some vehicles then the level of progression abruptly ends. While this is a game of having great stories to tell the only way to make your own content is really to keep personally challenging yourself/group. There is no better way to do this than to hunt and kill other players. Though as Gamers we all (mostly) play to win, so you've spent a lot of time building a character, so why lose all of that by hunting other heavily armed players. Which is where the full-time Bandits come into play. While this is still Alpha I wouldn't expect to see this soon but I feel the more large scale/group objectives could be added to the game. Especially objectives that could influence the world at a server (or even hive) level or be competitive across the hive. As an example of a lower tier 'end-game goal' what if Power Stations could be repaired, it would require a lot of materials to be gathered, Toolboxes, small group of players working on a few objects at the same time to bring power back online. Then power could be controlled to certain cities (or other parts of the grid could require restoration) and players would have a common goal to work towards. Factions could try owning or even destroying the newly repaired power station/grid. What about certain areas of the map becoming end game raiding zones. Perhaps one of the airfields could spawn a high volume of zombies when players enter the surrounding area. Too many for a small group to take out but perhaps a group of ~15 with awesome loots inside (also make it impossible to be saved inside that area so if anyone tries to server hop they'll be kicked out of the zone). Finally as a controversial idea what about the idea of escape. Have a goal to repair a Helicopter and fly it off the south/east end of the map (Perhaps use the Aircraft Carrier to land on?) players are scored with certain multipliers for number of fellow players rescued at the same time, gear collected/saved against their character, Time spent alive, distance traveled, number of zombie kills and a negative score for Murders as well as number of Bandits in the group. Then after rescue the player is reset, anything stored against the character (if possible vehicles/tens as well) would be despawned and be added to the final score. The player is then dropped back as a newbie along the coast. The score is then saved to a leaderboard (along with server names to help promote community, so you can have local as well as hive wide heroes!) Now on that last suggestion I bet a few of you are thinking 'This is about surviving, I can go play Left4Dead if I want to shoot zombies and escape'. I understand that but the idea of leaving the area and despawning all the collective items/gear offers item deflation. Right now the 1% (aka Full-Time Bandits) are gathering more and more gear while shooting/using said gear way less. Some people are just focused on collecting/farming gear. Without any mechanics to take items out of the game then 'haves' are relatively getting way more powerful than the 'have-nots'. To offer an incentive to leave and give up your game, while still maintaining a strategic timing element in terms of scoring, leave too early and score too low or stay too long and get killed/lose everything. Also scoring by leaving would always be optional, if you wanted to stay and help friends or keep that Helicopter then by all means this doesn't impact you in any way (other than people hunting those Choppers for themselves). Edit: I also broke this out into it's own thread in case anyone wanted to discuss in more detail and iterate on some of the ideas raised: http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=21920

Just as a suggestion, you may want to cap the formula to a bottom end (stop solo players) and also offer a little bonus for those on nearly full servers (90%+) (spawn chance) = (current players in server) / [(current players in server)*(1/(current spawn chance))] * [[(current servers population)-1] / [(max server size) / 1.1]] So if 1 person is playing on their own the loot chance = 0 and once a server goes over 90% then it will actually increase the loot chances beyond the base amount (to balance the lower drop rates at other times). I'd imagine longer term you may want to build something around bonuses based on the Server Max that way loot spawns are balanced against the higher risk and more people looting.

Been Playing DayZ for a couple of weeks and enjoying the alpha immensely. I've played Arma2/OA for over a 1000+ hours over the past couple of years and wanted to make a suggestion on how 'health' could be slightly modified to make it easier for players starting out but still keep the danger of combat (with humans or zombies) intact. Okay so what if we had a secondary resource to accompany blood to manage players health? The Issue Due to the very few ways you can regain blood, the high DPS of Zombies and technical issues of the Arma engine it can feel very punitive every time you get into a small 1v1 battle with a Zombie. You are generally always going to lose some amount of blood when fighting. The Idea I propose Adding an extra fast regenerating resource of 'Stamina' that would be drained by certain activities, Running, Getting Hit by a Zombie etc. would allow for short bursts of combat/fleeing without the feeling of attrition that comes with losing blood. How would it work? Stamina would drain as the player was punched by a Zombie or Sprints, it would only regen when standing still/walking and not in the panic mode when near an active zombie (I.e. no longer being chased) If Stamina is drained and the player is not in panic mode they have to stop a few seconds to get their breath back and can resume sprinting. Stamina drains slowly while sprinting so players can still cover larger spaces further north without feeling hamstrung. For balance reasons if they are still in Panic mode due to being chased by a Zombie (or shot at?) then they can continue to Sprint and their Stamina would stay at the lowest possible number (1?) If a player is hit by a Zombie, they drain Stamina massively, maybe only 2-4 hits and if a Player's stamina is depleted in this way they fall unconscious. Once a player is unconscious the zombies start to eat the player. This drains blood immediately, has a chance to break bones, causes bleeding etc. The max value of Stamina could also be affected by the levels of blood, hunger, thirst, infection etc. For PvP the model remains unchanged, you get shot, you bleed as you do now. How is this better than what we have now? In my opinion (and its just an opinion), this does nerf solo Zombies in the early game and actually makes packs of zombies (4+) tougher. With the performance changes in 1.7.2 it could mean more Zombies in the future and this change could balance that out. From a Player's perspective it makes the early game without a weapon more forgiving, you can still take 1-2 shots from a zombie without permanent damage to your character. The later PvP game remains unchanged and is still deadly. It also makes it more worthwhile taking out a single or pair of zombies with melee weapons as the awkward hit detection would be mitigated by the Stamina buffer, making melee more valuable as a option in the later game and allowing for more stealth play. Finally if it was possible to have the Hatchet/Crowbar be in either the Rifle OR the Pistol slot that would increase the value of melee/stealth in the later game also.

One other thought I had as well. This would incentivise travelling in groups when taking on packs of zombies and add an element of risk for all the lone wolves that are tooled up in the later game.

You've spawned outside the map area which is this untextured hill area. While you could run east to get back on the map it may be hours before you reach it. I'd recommend respawning

Esc > options > game options > head bob (slide it to the left to turn it off)

Actually my Character is stuck in the debug wilderness right now. I use to write missions for Arma2 and a teleport flag pole in the trouble spots would be awesome. I doubt Rocket is accepting code submissions but if he was too busy (and open to the idea) I could easily write something for him and send it over.