Katana67

I have no issue with groups shutting down whole towns. It shouldn't be easy. But it should be possible. Imagine walking along a quiet woodland road, you see a small village in the distance. You keep following the road until you come to an unmanned barricade with skulls on pikes and a sign saying "KEEP OUT." Well, you're a big boy and this is DayZ, so you go in anyway. You scout out the village only to find a clan doing clan things (storing loot, building vehicles, jerking off, sitting by campfires, taking screenshots, menacing other players, etc.) You wait until nightfall, sneak in through their perimeter, and do whatever you want to do (i.e. steal, kill them, release prisoners, etc.) Again, so long as items (like HESCOs) have suitable counters (like being able to be destroyed/climbed/vaulted) I see no reason why they shouldn't be implemented. Moreover, if they are suitably rare, difficult to set up, and resource-intensive, that further justifies the advantage in being able to block of certain areas.

But one is based upon real-world properties (i.e. weapon behavior), and one is based on fiction (i.e. the presence of certain weapons in fictional Chernarus). And what is your definition of "unlikely"? I mean, it's a fictional country. In a fictional universe. With fictional circumstances applied to it. Chernarus, in the fiction, has a large array of weapons which are plausible to be found in-country. If a SCAR breaks your immersion, you're limiting yourself unnecessarily.

Yeah, another thing about the "quadrant" system is that certain quadrants will inevitably be weighted with loot. Unless they make each "quadrant" the same, which would be boring and probably would cause folks to continue residing on the coast 24/7.

No, with a healthy balance of authenticity inasmuch as it concerns the variety presented in the fictional Armaverse. The behavior of weapons in a realistic/authentic manner is separate from the mere presence of certain weapons.

I agree with you about rarity, not in terms of military/civilian, but just for pragmatic gameplay reasons (rather than "immersion" reasons as many promote). Selective fire weapons should be rarer because of the advantages they offer, not because they're used by the military. But I just couldn't care less about the prejudices of folks in the military/civilian debate (which you are not exhibiting, so no worries). It's just a distraction from the more relevant discussions about how individual weapons should be approached in DayZ.

In my mind, civilian/military is irrelevant at worst and subjective at best. Civilians (at least in the United States) can own selective fire ARs. The fire group does not make it "military" nor do attachments make it "civilian". Why can't we all just focus on the weapons themselves and what they offer DayZ? And not get so caught up in the civilian/military divide, which doesn't really matter in my opinion.

Well, SCARs were used in neighboring Takistan. By the same military force (United States) as the one that occupied Chernarus. And AUGs are used by many UN member states, which was also present in Chernarus. Honestly, no weapon is any more plausible than the other. I would love to see a SCAR-H (Mk 17) included. Definitely a useful battle rifle, and could possibly be more modular (if rendered as such) than the G3 or FAL, which I'd love to see as well. A Mk 16 would be a bit redundant, but I wouldn't mind it. AUG I could live without, but would like to see some kind of bullpup.

I don't have much of an issue with ARs being in Chernarus. I'm just thinking that they could do more with less. Why have an entirely different weapon (or even different sets of attachments) for something that can just be configured via attachments? They've got an AR-15 already in the game. So perhaps they should just give it a more robust set of attachments (i.e. barrels and appropriate foreguards/rails) to make it into a variety of weapons (like a mid-length, full-length, SPR, SBR, etc.) rather than making a whole new weapon. But yeah, I would totally be in-favor of a semi-auto AR (hopefully a 20"). But I'm not sure if I'm alright with it being a separate entity. Perhaps they need to just relabel the M4A1 the "AR-15" so that it can be less bound to a semi/auto fire group. Maybe make semi/auto AR-15s rarer than semi or semi/burst ARs.

That's very interesting, I bet one could write a historical analysis of the appearance of hip-fire crosshairs! I feel like they may... may... have become a full paradigm with games like CS which sort of required it. I can't recall the last time I played CS (probably early 2000's) so I don't recall.

Well, whether or not the game is finished or not doesn't really detract (for me anyway) from the significance of an "end game." What bothers me about the term, is that it assumes there's a fixed point at which one will have "won." I want activities, not actions, I want DayZ's so-called end game to be a constant effort rather than a "get X and be able to do Y" kind of situation. Even if I have a crazy kitted out M4, camo clothing, and decent gear, I should always have to manage significant hunger, maintain my gear, deal with the weather, zombies, etc. so that I'm always looking for more.

The way I see it, we're at the same (if not a little behind) state as the mod. Where we have very few consequences or alternatives to PvP. Persistent storage will be a good first step, and should bring us up to snuff to the mod in several areas. One, as we're discussing here, it should give the players some sort of goal that's not directly concerned with PvP. Now, it could be indirectly concerned, meaning one could stash PvP gear. But, it's still another step. Second, is encouraging people to disperse across the map. Right now, even if one is consciously looking for PvP, the coast is pretty much the only place to go. Couple that with threatening zombies and a balanced approach to loot, and I think there'll be much more to occupy oneself with other than mere deathmatching. Likewise, once we've got to deal with the environment more (i.e. rain, cold, etc.) there'll be more consequence to PvP. Never mind that alternative activities may be presented in the form of cooking, hunting, and foraging. In the long-term, as you both mention, things like vehicles and construction will offer players some sort of activity to accomplish other than killing folks. That and once things like persistent farms, offensive animals, and full on weather is implemented, at the very least we'll be concerned with other things. But, lest we forget, all of these actions/activities are only as distracting as they are worthwhile. I'm a little wary of cooking being a potential distraction, given that we can scarf down canned goods from any ol' supermarket. Which will be respawning once the loot system is addressed. So, I think there needs to be some tangible upsides to all of the above mechanics. In tandem with a heavy re-balancing of loot distribution.

There's not much else to do other than PvP, unfortunately. This'll, hopefully, change once more systems are added.

I never understood all the controversy over the removal of hip-fire aids, in any game. It doesn't help that much. Maybe it's just me, who plays "hardcore" gametypes in every shooter I play, but I never felt in-need of artificial crosshairs. I usually just ADS. Or, when hip-fire is demanded, it ain't rocket science to figure out where your rounds are gonna' land when your muzzle is in some guy's chest (which is the only circumstance in which hip-fire should ever be prudent). A situation has never arisen where I've said to myself, "Damn, I could've won that if only I'd've had hip-fire crosshairs!" It's sort of one of those legacy items/paradigms that serves no use in modern FPS games. Yet people still slavishly think it's necessary. Similar to teamkilling (on games which actually have teams, not referring to DayZ, chill). One of those things that serves no purpose and doesn't add anything to the experience.

Played it since April 2012. Zombies have never been a threat in the vanilla experience. Ever (save for one of the early patches 1.5.8 or 1.2.8 IIRC, which was more the result of bugs than anything). Not saying zombies shouldn't be a threat. I loved DayZ+ where zombies kicked your ass. Clearing areas, as outlined by Dean will be temporary, with zombies spawning on the periphery of towns (not right in front of you, the second you kill a zombie) and gradually moving in. As you your second point, yes, that threat should be manifested in PRE-EXISTING zombie numbers. Not nebulous spawning zombies. The experience becomes formulaic when you enter an area and KNOW how it's going to play out every time (i.e. infinite zombies will spawn and rush you). Stealth also needs to be implemented before any of this can happen in my opinion. Stealth is a pre-requisite to making zombies a threat. So they need to revamp the aggro before the numbers go up.

Not sure I'd go so far as to say server hopping minimizes. As one can very easily maintain a stash on a low-population server and then transfer all those goodies to a high-population/high-significance server. But yeah, giving people more stuff to do makes all the sense in the world to me.

Honestly, I don't! Haha. I have been too lazy to buy/use Xpadder, that I just use the fixed default controls for ARMA/DayZ and have a keyboard and mouse sitting next to me on my bed for the other controls that I haven't mapped to my controller. Check out the video on the first page, it has a pretty good breakdown of the guy's Xpadder setup.

Persistent storage is one of the main drivers in getting people off the effing coast. So yes, it is inbound. People tend to focus on the "bad" aspects of persistent storage rather than the good. The bad aspects, like players returning after death to stashes, can be mitigated easily. But even then, sort of underscores the flaws in the hive/server/private/public system we've got now.

If it were my own fault, I would have to be aware of the zombies existing in the world and fire anyway. Hence the lack of depth and insanely formulaic experience manifested in the current zombie spawn placeholder. Right, but they're not "tracking people down" they have instant access to your exact location. It's not like in GTA where police get into an area, search it, find you, and chase you. It's spawn... they've found you. I'm all for firearms getting you aggro'd. But the way it's implemented in the placeholder is moronic and formulaic at best.

I've played for two years with a controller, haven't had any problems. I even have six or seven unused buttons on my 360 controller. If I could map the freelook, lean, and inventory keys (which I can with Xpadder) then I'd be 100%. Plus, the "more buttons" argument is also rendered moot by the fact that one can program "functions" to certain buttons, effectively doubling or tripling the amount of actions able to be performed with a controller. And just FYI, I use KBM and controller at the same time. Get on my level brah. Not to mention that this thread isn't here to demonstrate which one is "better". Willing to bet that most love KBM. I just prefer a controller when I'm playing a shooter.

Yeah, I mean the zombies aren't overpowered by any means. With that said, the placeholder spawn mechanic is IDIOTIC at best. I'm happy it's a placeholder. I think people are defending it blindly saying "Zombies are now a threat! I love it!" Yet, there's more than one approach to make zombies a threat. This is certainly not the end, and I foresee the system changing heavily from here on. I want more pre-existing zombies, not insta-aggro, insta-respawn zombies that might as well be the client-side spawns from the mod. I get the purpose of the spawn mechanic, but it can't be endless. If we're to be clearing towns, as Rocket has said we'll be able to, zombie spawns will have to be delayed and further out from the player. The only zombies that should be rushing you if you fire a weapon are the hordes that are already spawned, not spawning zombies. You can't make a threat assessment if you know an infinite train of guided-missile zombies are going to track you to your exact location 100% of the time.

Sweet. I found it much more annoying than even the jiggly ARMA crosshair/HUD. Plus, it's more misleading than helpful.

Agreed. I also suspect that they'll drastically increase zombie counts along the coast so that scampering around the cities unarmed would be near suicide. Still not sure what possessed them to beef up Balota so much. Sort of silly having military spawns so close to the coast.

Nah, starting out unarmed makes getting a weapon all the sweeter. I never really had an issue with spawning with a Makarov in the vanilla mod, but it wasn't really that essential. I did have a HUGE issue with paying/"donating" for kits or starting with a full loadout. I hope that never touches DayZ ever again. But things have changed, and will continue to change when they actually can get around to balancing the game later on. So that one won't be wholly defenseless when one spawns unarmed with zombies about (meaning one can actually be stealth to avoid them, not a zombie-basher with fists of steel).

Will we ever get to a point where server restarts are infrequent? To me, this is something that needs to happen if folks are to remain on a particular server or hive. I understand that now, people mainly restart servers to regenerate loot, so when the loot respawning gets implemented, I foresee some big changes with regard to server restarts. However, even in the mod, they were done constantly. Moreover, general server stability would have to improve. I don't really want to be bothered with DayZ's (ARMA's) cumbersome and blinding server browser any more than I have to. Likewise, it breaks immersion for me having to constantly wait for restarts, but that's not a big issue in the long-term.

Yep, the quadrant loot respawn is inbound as per Rocket's statements at Rezzed. Like I said in the OP, the mod had respawning loot and still required frequent server restarts.