Claytonaj

Bigger maps will come in future, areas of which will be (I imagine) far more difficult to explore either due to lack of food and water, or because players (of which there will be many more) and zombies pose a much greater threat there. Perhaps there will be a military installation and surrounding region with better weapons/vehicles, but vastly more zeds. This will effectively introduce what you're seeking, without the artificiality of a level 1 / level 2 system that would simply serve to break immersion in the game. If the game is getting boring for you, go do something with all your good gear! This doesn't have to be outright PvP, you could equally go and find some new survivors and help get them on their feet; perhaps they'll join you for a while. This will involve great risk, but it sounds like that's exactly what you want with your 'level 2': more challenge, more risk, more excitement. Make it for yourself.

I mentioned this in another thread ( http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=27048&pid=240205#pid240205 ) which was about bodyweight rather than starvation per se. I thought it deserved its own thread, since I can't find any further reference to it in the forums and it seems pretty fundamental in a survival situation. When you're starving, and you've lost a huge amount of body weight you can't simply eat a can of pasta and miraculously feel better. You need to gradually reintroduce food into your system to avoid regurgitation. I suggest two things: 1. That food be much more scarce, and generally found in household waste, partially eaten and often rotting. So if you find a tin of beans it's likely only to contain something like an eighth of its original contents. This will already be going bad, so you have to eat it soon after finding it, or risk poisoning. You might, on rare occasion, find a whole, sealed can of something; this should be a very valuable item. 2. Now that food is scarce, starvation becomes far more likely. Referring back to the above thread about bodyweight, you will gradually become gaunt and obviously malnourished. In order to recover you must only eat a little at a time. If you eat too quickly you vomit (no HUD icons needed) and feel no benefit. This obviously requires that the game allows you to eat less than the whole of an item of food, something like: "eat 1/4 tin of beans", "eat 1/2 tin of beans".

Don't arrive to the forum and post every idea you ever had in one thread with the heading "Some ideas". Choose the best one, spend 5 minutes searching the forum for the other 3 people who made the same suggestion a month ago, then comment on their thread instead of starting a new one. Repeat with your second best suggestion, and so on.

I don't know about the perception of hunger as it relates to bodyweight. Whether that's even correlated. Might be worth looking into. My suspicion is that it varies so much between people that it's really not related, just an assumption that fat people must feel hungrier because they're fat. I know plenty of skinny people who are always hungry! Let 'perceived hunger' (indicated by the HUD icon) be unrelated to weight, but increase with physical activity. It's probably about right in the game as things stand. Although it is often the case that as long as you're occupied doing something you forget about hunger, and only when you stop you 'realise' how hungry you are, or is that just me? If I'm unoccupied for long periods I'll tend to feel like eating regularly -- in other words I feel hungrier -- whereas I can work all day without a thought to eating. Could this effect be replicated in the game? TBH it might just be too subjective to be able to reflect every player's relationship with food.

I wasn't suggesting it should; I might've made it clearer. You'd get 'hungry' whatever your weight (the icon would flash) but if you're fat you can go hungry longer before succumbing to starvation. Also, starvation is an interesting problem, since seriously emaciated people can't simply eat a tin of beans to renourish, not without regurgitating it.. I don't suppose there are currently enough foods to allow someone to be weaned back onto solid food.

No to the tiers, but perhaps to allowing different body shapes to develop according to energy intake and expenditure. In the vast majority of cases an individual's weight reflects the balance between the amount they eat and the amount they exercise. So, if you eat lots and sit in a bush for 3 weeks sniping you'll become fat, whereas if you run around eating only when hungry you'll be lean. The repurcussions might be that if you're fat you move more slowly (zeds can catch you even when you're sprinting) but you can go hungry for longer. If you're lean you can move quickly but you will starve more rapidly, should you go without food, due to lack of fat reserves. Not sure about other medical symptoms associated with weight, it quickly gets more complex beyond this.. People should spawn somewhere in the middle of this continuum, and their behaviour determines the way their body adapts.

This presumes that all men shave, then stop in the event of a zombie apocalypse. I am already bearded (that's a full beard, no goatee nonsense! :D ). Also, why should women not grow facial hair? They would and should (in the game) in many cases (more than you imagine, I think!).

That depends whether people are cultured, intelligent, sensiti.. oh I see your point. We'd need a new stat, alongside headshots, "cocks drawn" and then some sort of sanction if your count gets too high. Like the bandit skin perhaps you should be forced to wander the streets in a giant, luminous pink prophylactic that squeaks whenever you move.

The idea of spray paint ties in to other ways of making a semi-permanent mark in the game world, like having pen and paper, or a journal. I found this thread from a little while back which suggested all of these things (and dictaphone, camcorder). http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=9070&highlight=pen+and+paper It's such a great idea, potentially giving a huge amount more depth to the game. You come across a body, you inspect it and discover they were killed by zeds. On the wall beside them is scrawled "HELP ME!". In their pocket you find a battered journal recounting the last moments of their life as they bled to death.. (Of course, if you are dying as you write, your last words should automatically be "Arrrrrgh..." Holy Grail style) Equally, it would begin to permit more quest-like activity, within reason. In a house on the coast you find a note in an empty whiskey bottle. It says, "Come to the power plant at 19:00 alone and unarmed, I have a job for you." Sure there's no reason to trust whoever wrote it, but damn it's intriguing and if you just spawned you're already unarmed, so what have you to lose? You might have much to gain. You arrive slightly before time, and scout the area from the trees. You can't see anyone, so you approach slowly. On the wall outside you see an arrow spray painted, pointing left. You follow the arrow, then another, and finally one points inside... Entering the building the silence is eerie. Someone has left a loaded rifle, a can of pasta and a canteen, along with another note and a strange symbol painted on the wall. The note reads, "Follow the road inland to Mogilevka. Trust no one. I am watching. If you don't do this, you will die." Muhahahaha.. People want objectives, let them create their own!

Searched the forum, expecting to find this suggestion already, but seems not.. [EDIT: mistake! see -- http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=23972&highlight=status+effect I knew it was too good to be true.. sigh..] Take too much morphine and you become dependent on it. You then have two choices, take more to feed the habit and stave off withdrawal symptoms (e.g. involuntary leg movements, muscle cramping, blurred vision, elevated body temperature etc.); or go cold turkey and wait for withdrawal symptoms to pass. In reality this can take several days, I don't know what would be reasonable in the game.

How about introducing a bit of variety. More NVGs all round, but perhaps some bulkier, less effective device from the 1970s being more common than the more up-to-date models.

Hatchets are everywhere! I've started to refrain from picking up primaries for some time at first, just to keep the hatchet in my weapon slot for taking out the zeds safely and quietly while I gather essentials.

I had a similar idea, instead of marking out bandits mark out 'murder virgins' (so to speak -- I count myself in this category). I also had the thought that it could appear after an (albeit arbitrary) amount of time played and/or distance travelled, so you can differentiate between someone who has recently spawned and not had chance to murder and someone who has taken the decision not to kill after some time and journeying. It does differ from saying "friendly" in chat since it can be seen from distance, and without having to announce your presence. So you could use it as a signal to approach with a little more confidence. I'm ambivalent about the idea, since in the same way as the old bandit skin, it can't distinguish between murder and self-defence. I also fear it would be turn you into a target, like Failbait says.

I searched specifically for "morphine addiction", and your thread didn't show. Sorry about that, I'll put a link to your thread in my initial post.

I should probably rephrase part of that initial post. There could be a chance (a pretty high one) that morphine addiction will occur through repeated consumption. I was just thinking, theoretically you could inflict addiction on other players if you keeping giving it to them...

I'm glad this doesn't seem on the cards. It wouldn't serve immersion at all. The game should continue to develop such that if you're good at something in real life (a good current example being navigation), that skill should be advantageous in the game, as it would be if you were thrown in to a survival situation for real tomorrow. You should improve these skills as you play, but it really doesn't require an artificial skills levelling system; you'll register the improvement through becoming better at surviving in the game.

No one is compelling you to read this thread if you think it's nonsense, and especially as it makes you so irate. Someone has kindly made a suggestion, others are commenting. Perhaps I haven't read the patch notes, but I haven't read a lot of things. I have, however, read the Little Book of Calm. I recommend it.

Precisely. Dramatically reduce ammo and it becomes far more valuable. It's scarcity makes it desirable, but means you can't afford to waste it shooting people on the off-chance that they have more than you do (and will still have after the fight). After all you can't see how much ammo someone is carrying (I think some posters in this thread are neglecting that fact.) If ammo is scarce, shooting on sight will see you run out very quickly unless you are very lucky (and you have to ask yourself....). Ergo, you won't shoot on sight.

This is a really elegant way to dissuade some people from wanton murder and from blatant camping, since they wouldn't be able to stay in one place for long before the zombs were on top of them.. It's also not offensive in terms of violating 'realism' since the zombies are conspicuously fanciful anyway; giving them this extra ability is not a great stretch of imagination.

I posted this exact idea 2 minutes ago in the other thread! haha

Perhaps the zombies in a given area could gravitate towards (or be more sensitive to) people who have committed multiple murders, as a sort of cosmic justice... This could also act as a more subtle indicator of who's been a naughty boy. It would also make camping more dangerous. Since the zombies are DayZ's only obvious lapse in the 'realism' stakes, this should not offend those who desire authenticity too much. [EDIT: see this thread: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=24875 because as I typed this suggestion eXcecution3r had had the exact same idea!]