TheBrassThief

Talking to teenagers makes my brain hurt. Being cynical is cool at that age. I get it. I went there too. The world was a dark dark place and everyone sucked and all was terrible and i wished everyone would die because there is so much evil and I HATE MY DAD IM GETTING ANOTHER TATTOO IM GONNA LISTEN TO DROWNING POOL! Or something. Anyway i got over that and then decided to dedicate my life to helping people as a doctor. I imagine in a real zombie apocalypse the biggest killer would be regular run of the mill infection. Malnourished people are more susceptible to infection and have less of a chance of fighting it off. Especially since basic hygiene is out of the window even the smallest scratch could end you without anti biotics. The game as it is now really doesnt put as much emphasis on how important they are. This is the apocalypse. Lakes and rivers hold stagnant or dirty water which is the ONLY way to stay clean and clean your wounds as well as drink. Youre hungry. Probably full of lice and parasites from the river water you keep drinking. Cold. Expending a LOT of energy over the day moving from place to place and you probably sleep less. The chances of you getting ill and dying from a cut increase massively. I imagine my medical skill would be invaluable in treating a group and keeping them all nourished. Bullet wounds dont just close by themselves. Basic surgery is a must to remove them as well as shrapnel. Do you see how, without INTENSE training in ALL areas you need friends. I have 5 hours flight time in a light aircraft, rifle experience and some medical training but I dont know shit about survival skills. Unless youre bear grills with a medical degree and a rifle you gather a LOT of friends to cover the bases you cant. People NEED to pack up. Its in our nature to form social groups. Maybe they might be small. But total isolation just isnt how we are built to live. In real life the skill sets YOU need to survive are too large to be covered by 1 or 2 people. Youre gonna need 5 to 10 at least. Even if its just to cover ground in finding food which will be WAY scarcer than in DayZ. Being a Nomad doesnt really come natural to us either in our culture. Chances are you want to hunker down. I imagine KOS will be less prevelant. I imagine it would be hunkered down groups of people who are very isolationist or very eager to expand with new people. Society didnt happen by accident. People who formed societies had an advantage over those who didnt and usually ended up taking all their land and integrating them into their society.

At the moment the game is fairly straight forward. There is an optimal way to survive. And thats to turtle. Turtle hard. Get ALL the tools, gather as much food as you can, a heavy pistol and a large sniper and turtle to victory. Become sedentary. Which is the total opposite of what a real zombie apocalypse would be like without a permanent base. In real life you could only carry enough water and food for a few days or even a single day (water is heavy) and even then the total weight of that plus your weapon (large sniper rifle if we are talking DayZ) would make you zombie chow when you tried to run (hobble) away. In real life you have to make this decision on every hunting/hiking/walking trip by balancing two factors. What do i need? How encumbered can i afford to be? In a game where sprinting for your life is important i imagine this choice would make the game far more interesting. The DMR would no longer be an instant pick up because it would slow you down massively. Taking 5 cans of food and 4 canteens along with every tool wouldnt be a very valid play style and would carry huge risk. Players would have to travel light and fight hard to survive every hour. It would encourage more scavenging more frequently and more pressure when you need to do so. You walk in fast and walk out slow with supplies. Makes for a tense escape. Real decisions would need to be made on what you can and cant afford to take. Maybe going around with just a pistol would be more efficient to allow for more food? Maybe dropping all your stuff for a fast escape would be a new tactic (which people would totally do in real life). Maybe you dont really need that toolbox? Or that heavier bag? DayZ doesnt have an endgame so it cant have a linear progression in items. There has to be compromise with an upside to every weapon. Having any one weapon better than all others is boring because players hunt for them and get them and then have nothing to do but deathmatch. More focus is needed on making basic survival harder. On making taking the DMR as colossal risk IF you can even find one. Encumbrance is the best way to limit gear hoarding.

If it already does that ramp it up. Hugely. In my view a survivor with: A pistol, two bandages, some ammo, 2 cans of beans and a canteen should JUST be as fast as a zombie. Only on the basis that the zombies have slightly impaired motor function. Everyone else should get progressively slower than that. Someone with a sniper rifle a pistol and any amount of food shouldn't be able to sprint anywhere. Jog at best.

I think right now the zombies animations and "alert levels" are way to binary. When still the zombie shambles around limping, his arms sag, his legs drag and he looks like he can barely hold himself up. Looking at him like this i expect him to have the coordination and awareness of a heavily drunk person. The second i make a noise near him though its fucking go time. He stops the fake limp, once useless saggy arms come up and his boxers muscles bulge and hes flying at me, using his telepathic third eye to tell where i am. This seems unrealistic. And its a litte immersion breaking to watch such a random and contradictory transition. Instead i propose this: Zombies have 3 different alert levels rather than 2: 1. Passive 2. Aware of your general location and shambling a little faster toward it - ALWAYS caused by sound. 3. Actually SEEN you and chasing you - ONLY caused by sight. Zombies shouldnt fly into a state of rage over a SOUND. THEY make more noise than me. The fence sound effect makes more noise than me. Make them investigate my noise without them flipping out kenyan style. Now i hate the carebear thing. So lets keep this game hard. Add more zombies. Way more. With a legitimate way to distract and evade them adding a whole tonne of new zombies shouldnt be an issue. Also change zombie spawning. As WELL as this, EXCEPT in major towns and cities (cherno for example), when you come close to a loot location a block lump sum of zombies spawn and thats it. No more spawn until you leave. But no loot respawn either. This way zombies wont spawn on you and killing them is worthwhile because each kill makes your time there looting that much easier until you leave. It also makes leading zombies more predictable since none can spawn-ambush you and you can more tactically moniter movements. It also means establishing a choke point and gunning them down is a viable tactic. What do you think so far? Discuss.

Everyone down my road has at least 1 bike. Assuming countries are fairly poor and families own 1 bike or 2 bikes for larger families off the top of my head, this means in a population of 800 there are at least 300 bikes. WHERE DID ALL THE BIKES GO! What if the zombies were ACTUALLY BIKES?!

Waste of time with the flag dude. Get a flag tattoo and save yourself the space and weight! Youd be better off packing a tarp to provide you with a little more shelter. You arnt going to do so well if you get caught outside without one.

I for one love it. Hatchets really set a tone inside the homestead... But seriously someone fix that crazy shit.

Flawless. I love it. If i was killed by these bandits id be more inclined to laugh than to cry. Awesome work. This is what banditry is about.

The OPs battlebus isnt fit to smell the real BattleBusses exhaust fumes. Poorshow chaps. Your battle bus makes lone unarmed survivors hide in a building. The REAL battlebus causes full vehicles of armed people to piss themselves in fear. Damn. If only this was in DayZ.

Awesome idea. Definately want. +1. I have an addition to make though. How about if you "talk" to someone else, you both "swap" contacts and get eachothers tags for people you havnt tagged already. Imagine it like literally swapping stories. "I met this guy down in cherno and he took a pot shot at me, id stay well away from him, he looked like this...". This encourages survivors to pool information and encourages survivors to interact without neccessarily grouping up, thus keeping the lone wolf style viable. Survivors can link up to get usefull information and then part ways. How about if youre within 5 m of someone you can click on their tag to rename them and select compare tags. It then lists all your known tags against theirs, showing where names overlap and where they dont, and you can copy a few down. You might find "helpfull stranger" for them was "known bandit" for you. You can then rename accordingly. You get to know more people and it encourages a community of survivors and bandits. Bandits can know other friendly bandit groups and know not to attack them.

Im afraid youve fallen into the realism trap. Many people do. Its a bit of a paradox of gaming. Games are meant to be fun. Real life isnt that fun. Lets be honest if you had a 100% realism eating with the fork by clicking and right clicking on the pasta and you had to take a dump every 12 hours it would be boring as fuck. You know why? Because in a real zombie apocalypse it would be utter shit. Youd hate it. Id hate it. You dont roleplay as "the savier of mankind" in other games to watch him eat pasta and use the bathroom. You play it to do the interesting things. The game with 100% realism would be boring. Because real life is boring. If real life was the goal why would we play the game at all? Real life is JUST outside? I could have spent 25 quid on paintball rather than Arma, or purchased a membership down at the shooting range. The game needs to offer an experience more accessable and fun than real life can offer to be worthy of my time at all. I play DayZ to get the survival experience WITHOUT spending 7 hours at night being cold, and WITHOUT having to eat pasta one mouthfull at a time and such. It cuts the boring corners to get to the FUN of surviving.

Ive had this game for exactly two weeks today. Over that time my average life span has increased from about 20 mins to near enough 4 hours. My current character has at least 5 or 6 going for him. Ive learned a few valuable things. 1. The pacing in this game changes a lot: When i first started and had to crawl everywhere to get loot i found myself very bored with how slow paced the game is. This is temporary. Until you find a weapon and learn zombie radius's just crouch walk/run everywhere and keep an eye on when you aggro. After a while you can mentally peg where you can and cant walk. When you get this down you can basically start moving faster in zombie infested areas as you can properly identify "safe" zones. With a weapon or hatchet you will soon find the pace picks up a little bit. The first 20 mins are the hardest to break through. Once you manage that a long life usually follows. 2. NEVER stand: Always be crouched or crawling. Standing is much louder and more visible than the other options and has a crazy large aggro range. 3. Deer stands and super markets might as well be gods gifts: Deer stands spawn at most 3-4 zombies. If youre unlucky. And usually yield a weapon. I had an AK in another life from the first deerstand i hit up. After you have a weapon head RIGHT toward a super market. Try and pick a town far from other player infested places like airfields or cities and head for the market. Its usually relatively zombie free and will give you about 3 hours worth of supplies and often a bag to go with them. As an added note ive found pistols VERY often in residential loot spawns. Houses are easy to enter even in LARGE zombie populations by crawling around from the back and crouch walking in. You then exit the same way. 4. Pay attention to zombie movement paths AND sound: There are two phases of "movement" in zombies: Outdoor zombies move in a random direction for quite a while then randomly turn around and head somewhere back toward their starting location. If the street looks too clogged to cross look at where everyone is going. You can often find a gap that will open soon that you can dash accross. Dont panic about the zombie noise, use alt to look around and keep an eye on them. Sometimes it sounds like a zombie is breathing down your neck when he is actually a fair few meters away. Indoor zombies spawn inside and dont move at all. This can be problematic. Before you enter a building move around it and turn your "head" to pinpoint any nearby sounds. Its usually very obvious when a zombie is in that building. If you NEED to get inside you have a few options, ive ranked them in order of efficiency: 1. You can aggro them with a can or by making noise OUTSIDE the building, then crawl/crouch away behind cover. This brings the zombies outside and gets them into the outdoor phase. They will soon move away from the building and its yours for the taking. 2. You can use a hatchet to dispach them, ive found hatchet range to be variable at best, sometimes i hit from far away and sometimes i need to get right up close. Be carefull. 3. You can go in with your gun. Zombies cannot run indoors. They are too polite. If you have the ammo and the positioning to take a slow moving horde take the shot with your pistol. Always aim for the head on stationary zombies. Use the zombie sounds to work out how many zombies are nearby. Ive found as a general rule if you cant hear them AT ALL they usually cant hear you. Zombies are LOUD. 5. Understand and use the aggro mechanics: Its tempting when youve aggroed a zombie to run like hell and take the entire town behind you. Not only is this worse than one zombie for obvious reasons but getting outside player help with a large horde is basically impossible. If you aggro one zombie (and youre unlucky enough to get a runner) stay crouch walking and get the hell out of there, ive found that zombies pause before attacking meaning you can stay JUST infront of them and make it out ok if youre carefull and dogde their movements. Zombies dont aggro other zombies, only you do. Use this. Lure him far from the others and kill him if you can. If you can, head for a hill or building. Steeply up or down can be a great way to lose them. Ive seriously found that running down a steep hill can even KILL the zombies. They flew out into the air behind me and landed 10 feet below killing them all instantly. 6. Make sure you scrounge every bit of usefull loot you can: I ALWAYS keep one tin can handy for clearing buildings by throwing it (throw it by right clicking in inventory). ALWAYS loot zombies. They carry food, drinks and even ammo. If you just destroyed an entire horde or watched some zombies fall to their deaths go take a look at what they have. Ive survived on zombie food/water before. If you see a dead player thats TOTALLY unlooted near a zombie area they probably died from zombies. Feel more secure taking everything of value. If they are missing things, like they have ammo for a missing weapon or have a large backpack and no weapon at all something isnt right. No food or water is also a clear sign of banditry. A bandit probably did this. Be cautious and maybe ignore the corpse completely if its lying far away from zombies in an open area. Snipers are lethal to new players. Trees are your friends. 7. Dont let the isolation get to you: If you see another player dont run over and try to hug them. I know its weird and exciting to see someone else after hours of solo play but dont let that feeling fool you. Its built into you to seek others and want company but in DayZ grouping up with strangers isnt efficient or wise. If you see someone and they DONT see you watch them carefully. If you feel bandity empty an entire clip into their head if you can. Make sure they die before the player can disconnect as many people use this as an escape mechanism. And make totally sure they are alone. If you want to initiate contact always make sure you have the upper hand. Talk to someone you can see and cant see you to try and guage intent. DONT listen to what they say, focus on what they DO when they know they are being watched. If they make a run for it let them go. If they actively go to search for you creep away. If they buy for time expect more than one of them. The safest option is ALWAYS to stay quiet and hidden. Always have the drop on others. Stick to trees and bushes in crouch walk to achieve this. 8. Until the next patch your character has BRITTLE BONE SYNDROME!: NEVER EVER EVER drop any height as tall or taller than you. In fact dont drop at all. A broken bone is basically insta death to new players. Morphine is rare and ive only ever found 2 sticks. If you see it take it immediately. NEVER risk your bones with jumps or falls. And thats it. You learn a lot just by trial and error in your first few days. Focus on what you did when you survived a long time. Try and learn from mistakes. I hope this guide helps someone.

Surely anyone willing to fight a zombie apocalypse with nothing but a spoon has balls of steel. Id also recommend you try and win people over by convincing them rather than insulting them. When is the last time you listened to anyone who insulted you? I WANT the thermal scope but youre just gonna make everyone want it gone if they think people like YOU are championing the cause. Thermal scopes need power. Make batteries a resource. More Realism and Thermal scopes become an investment. Its a win win and you get to keep your weapon. That said a high tech piece of machinery like that surviving a chopper crash are slim to none but the drop rate kinda accounts for this. Id say the thermal sight is fine. Survivors need to learn evasion. I never shoot on sight and im a self admitted carebear. If you DIDNT have awesome weapons it would make evading and following you MUCH easier and thus less fun. Its rare as hell as it is and ive rarely needed to evade a thermal scope. Also a lot of people want less powerfull weapons because nothing is scary down the barrel of a 50 cal. Amnesia the dark descent is creepy and atmospheric because you cant fight the monsters. Silent hill is scary and tense because your weapons are weak, ammo is rare and your enemies are strong. People who want the PVE to be more exciting (because lets be honest its not) would do well to ask for less totally uber powerfull weapons. I dont agree with the above but its a fair point.

"If you want a survival time larger than 1 min shoot on sight" PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF that actually made me laugh. Ive got about 6 hours down and ive never had to shoot someone. Ive just never needed to. Ive seen 7 people and ive evaded, talked down or scared off all of them. Its quite easy to avoid players. Oh sure ive been killed by them. But ive never seen them when they do so. So a shoot on sight method wouldnt have saved me then. I find staying low and cautious can save you both ammo and lives. Just dont aggro a player. Ive only been killed when making stupid mistakes. Like outrageously stupid. Ive been to the airfield to get military loot so dont say i dont take risks either. Thats where i scared off a player by describing his movements down a scope. Surviving without shooting is fairly straight forward. Its more tense, im challenged and it fits my personality. Its all good.

To be honest the gun being available at the downed helicopter doesnt make a lot of sense. A multi tonne piece of metal slams into the ground and is now a charred twited wreck. And this finely machined thermal scope with electronics (that need power) just flies out perfectly undamaged? The guns most likely to survive such an event are the M4 and the rough and ready AK. Electronics would be smashed to bits. Or at least damaged. Introduce batteries for the NVG and the thermal scopes. Let players turn them off and on. That might make thermal scopes a riskier investment.