Mutonizer

Very interesting and touchy subject that I often debate with friends and family, often ending in grim contemplation of the basics of human nature when society doesn't reign it in, by force of law. Personally I never found any pleasure in killing others players in video games, which is probably why I never play FPS games and very rarely any online game, but enjoy the journey of single player games. I know perfectly why however: I have no spirit of competition in me whatsoever and therefore have no need to prove myself, or try to win, dominate, etc. I have an ultra strong individualistic instinct however which means I don't take orders, ever. My wonder usually in Dayz is this: why is it more fun to kill people, than to help them. Sure it's a game so people play carelessly (compared to when your life is REALLY on the life I mean), but by that standard, anything should be possible so why one dominates the other? It's really a wonder to me, and in all these threads and in game, it's a constant study of why people "tick" the way they do. With the very few exceptions of really troubled minds where the only goal is to inflict pain, usually the answer is simple, as I noted above: pure sport, competition, desire to win and of course, for that, man is the best game. That's the best I could come up with so far. I'm not sure however if this is true ONLY because it's a game, or not. Another thing I realized however is that, should, for any reason, mankind revert now to a more basic tribal state of being, it would be almost impossible for us as a species to survive and the reason for this is: firearms. Back in the days, "survival of the fittest" meant that only the most adaptive of men survived, through the gene pool, into the future generations. The most adaptive often meant the cleverest, but mostly the strongest physically. To have the basics of a society, you need laws and structure and that was maintained by fear of the strongest, the leader. Once that leader was determined, then the others could follow, and therefore perpetuate the species in relative peace. With firearms, everyone, anyone, even a 7 year old child, can kill the strongest among us in a second, without any risk to himself and therefore no fear, which was the limitation otherwise. With sticks, you can get hurt very easily and that usually means you won't even try and therefore you will submit to the leader, and the tribe will have a structure. That means "survival of the fittest" in a world with firearms, is now survival of most cowardly, the one who will shoot first, from safety. These will NEVER lead anyone into the peace needed for a tribe to perpetuate, because everyone can do exactly what he did and therefore you can never have a stable societal structure, and we would pretty much go extinct. A Dayz with only melee weapons and a combat system ala mount & blade would be a VERY, VERY different matter for example. Just throwing that out there :)

For info: http://dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2942&pid=26684#pid26684

They are actually VERY realistic, bare pure graphical limitations. Out in the woods, at night, without any light, I can assure you that darkness is indeed very dark and sometimes you can't even see your hands 10cm from your face.

I'm not a good FPS player, but I do spend insane amount of time checking my surroundings, carefully approaching doors/buildings, closing doors and doing a quick check-through of the loot piles before doing anything. As I said before, I rarely get sniped personally. Again, the suggestion was not a "whine" because I got killed by it, but I found that these were not lore relevant, too easy to find and that this lowered the tension in game, since there's no tension whatsoever when being shot from a mile away (yes I exaggerate). But as said before, this issue was mostly solved by the awesome bugged spawn of 1.5.7 and now all these big guns are, from what I could see so far, only used in VERY specific situations because it's a sure way to attract all the zombies in a 500m radius, so if you do use it, you better not miss or just wound the guy, which I'm find with.

There are two kinds of people killing others. 1) The FPS player. This guy, there's nothing you can do about him. His ONLY goal is to log in for a bit, and kill people for no reason whatsoever, not even their stuff or anything. The rest of the mod doesn't even remotely interest him, zombies are a pain and for stupid "pve carebears", etc. You get the idea. You CANNOT fight these guys and you certainly cannot win. They have no emotional attachment to whatever they're doing, don't give a shit about the mod's concept and if even if you kill them, they'll just respawn, go camp new weapons and server switch while looking at a map on the internet, and start again. Also, since nothing matters, they'll happily disconnect to avoid death, or use any abuse they can. I repeat, these dudes play this mod like any normal FPS, and Chernarus is just a bigger counter-strike map. Good thing is that they're not too many of them overall. 2) The average players. These guys play either solo or in pre-made groups and actually play the mod, embracing it's content. They'll enjoy zombies, town raids, repairing vehicles, and pretend to try and survive..in a way, they'll sort of "roleplay" the situation. Sometimes they'll meet other people and then they'll make a decision on how to deal with the situation. Not just killing others because it's fun, but they'll actually think about it for a second, why it's needed, or why it's not. Most can be quite friendly, but most are also very careful when meeting other people, even if they don't want to kill people, because they have a certain emotional attachment to their characters and pride themselves not on how many people they killed, but how long they've been alive for. This is I think the majority of the players out there and the more the mod will develop, the more there will be of these guys. Personally, I think the bandit skin should go, period. It's artificial, it feels artificial and worst, it makes some people crave it, like a scoreboard almost. Humanity is ok, but it should NEVER be displayed to the player (any score will PUSH players into competition for it) and it should impact your character in different ways, such as nervous shakes and other "gameplay" mechanism so that you don't WANT to lose it. Nothing too serious so that you feel really penalized when it happens by accident but something so that at least you don't WANT to lose it, or not too much. Map tracking and scores and whatnot, I'm completely opposed to that, feels also totally artificial.

Well, it could give you "the shakes", blurry vision, lower stamina or something to reflect the fact that's it's an extreme measure, on top of course of a big humanity loss. But I mean, it's a choice between dying of starvation and that...well.

Nice article, lots of very relevant things there regarding the limitation of the gaming industry in what they can and can't do. Totally agree with the kickstarter/donation thing. As of now, you have the total freedom of your vision for this, without feeling indebted to anyone. Maybe in a long while, it'll become relevant, but for now, Rocket, do your stuff man and don't burn out. It's awesomely, painfully fun :)

That's what we do, and yet little punks also use gamma settings there, despite the server being hardcore/veteran :) Can't be fixed in any way though and since there's no need to argue with walls, might as well accept it, sigh and move on.

1) Prolonged hours of running/play could require you to gob some caffeine pills and other stimulants to keep going, or your aim could suffer, hunger levels increase, etc. We already have food/water though, adding tons more similar layers on top of it might not be good. 2) That's...pushing a bit. I think a more simple "sleeping bag/tarp" item could act as a "logout" thing. I don't think it's too fun to have something happen to you when you're not playing :) You could have a system where a proper "safe logout" with such items (tents would do just fine) would give you a cumulative, slight "rested boost" once you come back on (such as less food/water consumed, slight blood regeneration, etc), and a "trash logout", where nothing much happens and you consume food/water as you do now. And something like if you fire a shot or take a shot, and log-out within 1 minute, you character stays in game for a bit. Might alleviate the "abort/disco" macros some people seem to have as soon as anyone gets the drop on them :) 3) Hypothermia maybe, but once you get the proper items you're set, while if you just started and it's raining or something, you're doomed. Plus, the game being real time, spending 4h waiting out the rain in a barn isn't really...fun, gameplay wise. The rest is just..pushing it and not worth the effort required to make it work. Farming, etc. Totally :) 4) Zombie migration would be really great. Just have a couple hordes randomly arrive from the north and wander randomly from one town, to another random town, etc. Overall however, if I want bushwhacking, I do that plenty enough and while I find it great in reality, I don't think many people (me included) would play a game to sit near a campfire for hours or sit under rain covers for some more hours.

Errr, can't you just do that in ARMA2 or any MP FPS out there, without any mod? :) Good luck though, your server, your rules!

I agree with the more varied or/and randomized spawn numbers, spawn timers, and other factors so that we don't ALWAYS know there's gonna be tons of them. Also agree with deer stands. They are a great idea, but some people just download a map and zip through them around the clock for easy gear so it'd be nice to tweak them somehow and since I don't think their locations can be randomized directly, then it's down to gear and enemies. Fully agree for piercing power/stopping power though not sure if it's doable. Making zombies "go through" at the same time as their "I'm deader now" animation, might help. For the rest however: http://www.dayzmod.com/forum/showthread.php?tid=2225 Spawns are majorly bugged so I'll save for after it's fixed to really formulate an opinion and comments on that. However, until then: "ZOMBIES EVERWHERE!!! ITS FRIKKIN AWESOME!!!"

The problem I've had with them is that yes, all my bolts "stick" on the bodies, but if they fall over the wrong way, then the bolt will be below the body, and since they can't be moved, you can't recover them. Having them be directly in the inventory on a "hit" would solve the issue. Then only the screwed up iron sight for it would be a problem :)

Direct com is, I believe, THE immersion factor for such a game so any grouping feature would just reduces this immersion. If someone's bleeding, have them scream at you about it, I do, loudly! Of course, you need that system to work fine but as Shimmler posted, it's most likely gonna be fixed. Using external voice-chat or across world grouping systems and the like is fine if it's just limited to meet up (side channel is there for that), but otherwise, why would you willingly use tools to reduce the immersion in a genre that is all about horror, paranoia and said immersion :) Skin variation and the like would however be great to be able to differentiate between friends at a sight, but I think Rocket posted about it as something that's being/will be worked on somewhat. ps: when someone's bleeding, you can usually spot the red geiser coming out of him :)

There is difference, to me, between having the option to kill players if need be, and just dayz being yet another team death match mod. One bores me (like every single FPS out there) and the other one provides insane social tension, paranoia, etc. With 1.5.6, the mod itself was very easy so people just ended up killing everyone on sight because nothing else was challenging. Since 1.5.7, tons more people actually talk to each other (well, to me at least) and apart from that one bandit stalking me, I haven't been shot randomly by strangers I met so far, though I've been shot for my bloody map! :) Really depends on what path you want to follow and they are VERY different: - Human hunting simulation with some whatever zombies and survival thingies thrown in because..you know...why not. OR - Zombie apocalypse survival simulation, with all the social interaction that it involves. Yea, but it's a shit ton of fun bug, gotta admit :)

+1 on this totally. Was checking threads before posting the exact same suggestion. 1) On top of the "sound variation defines pacing", a little RNG should be added, to propagate tension and unknown. There should also be a chance that the infected doesn't react at all depending on the sound level. 2) As you said, sight should be the only real "aggro" on a player. 3) Adding some recurring checks on an infected aggro might be nice: - Do I see some meat? If yes, chase! If no, investigate last position then wander off. - Did I lose my meat? If yes, investigate and roam/patrol around about, then back to wandering. If no, chase! - Is any meat I can see easy to get? (on the ground) If yes, beeline for it, ignore everything else. If no, chase current meat! And just adding it there: Blood should make for fresh targets for the infected, using some kind of "smell" system. - Do I smell any blood? If yes, beeline for it, ignore everything else! These changes in behavior would allow for survivors to try and trick zombies, which is usually a huge part of scavenging in a zombie apocalypse genre.

They outclass everything else, IF your entire goal while playing is to hunt players and that's quite limited. Otherwise, not many people uses them or really cares about them that much. When you have people focusing on hunting down humans using these, while everyone else focusing on playing the game in it's whole, not using these that much, you have a split in interest. And since, from what I could find on this, the point of the mod is not a simple team death match on a 255km² map but something much more intricate and complicated, that's my concern, hence suggestion.

Which are always used a semi close range, almost never at 500m distance unless they are only shooting zombies, and even then, it lasts 20 seconds because it's boring. What happens is that despite these movies happening usually in a country with INSANE guns everywhere, people end up with shotguns and guns, and there's the social tension I mentioned: close range encounters. And of course, following that logic, it's very realistic that the first thing we should be focusing on as soon as the "zombie apocalypse" hits, is killing every single other humans out there. Because, you know (redneck voice):"survival of the fittest!". Why not just go with that "realistic" thing that you like and say that these rifles are very rare in this part of the world. Problem solved for you and it's realist. Zombie apocalypse in France or Spain for example, guns would be very rare. This mod...is in no way, any representation of what would happen if shit hit the fan, zombie or not. Not even close. It's a game, with a design purpose, period. The only "reality" you can put in game is pure physics and imagery, you can do whatever else you want with the rest to make it fit what you're trying to achieve. And yes, that means if laser guns and beam weapons would help, I'd be all for it (they don't though). Yea, and you live where? Oh sorry, but in most "civilized" countries, everyone doesn't own 20 guns, rocket launchers, mines, grenades and whatnot. In western Europe for example, firearms are usually very rare and strictly controlled and the average civilians would be in real trouble to find one, let alone use one properly at a 700m range on a moving target. But anyway, made my point, no need to discuss with walls for hours: Make weapons with long range scoped very rare in order to improve the mod atmosphere. :) Thanks for the chat. --------- Sorry but that's only if you live in a country full of crazy people :) In a modern society, people don't have guns, or very rarely. ^ it's a little jab but in good fun, really!! Dont get mad!!

I liked the idea at first, then thought about it...and realized that actually, my own morale comes into action a lot and that's enough for me usually. I mean...when I'm on a vet server, starving, 3 rounds left, gnawed on, 3k blood, no painkillers, it's night and raining and I arn't got no maps...I don't feel to cheered up and I promise you, a squirrel breaking a branch makes my heart stop. And by all that I mean that the game provides enough immersion as is to create your own morale depending on how fucked up you are and because of this immersion, I wouldn't really like my "character" being forced to react in a way I wouldn't and start screaming like a little girl because of stress while sneaking in the middle of 20 zombies....

Please, let's not argue: DayZ is, as it's core, a "zombie apocalypse survival". Heck, it's written on the website, it's in the name, it's everywhere. With all respect to Rocket, I don't think his goal was to re-invent a genre, but rather adapt it, with his own little tweaks, as many did before him, and more will do after him and that's why we all rushed down here, because it's familiar. It's also built, obviously, on every single pre-existing fiction related to that genre, in a way or another. Then it's adapted according to the author desires. Also, pure, 100% survival cannot be the sole goal in such game because if that were so, we'd all be holed up in forests, never moving. The "fun" is to create risks, and try to survive them, or die. And again, that why these scopes are, to me, not fitting. And maybe Rocket indeed just wants to make a BF3 mod for ARMA2, with some zombies, as I mentioned, where it's just a massive TDM like it was for some time before today's patch. That's why I'm just suggesting here, and not posting on the general forum with something like: "WAAAAAAAAA NERF SNIP3R RILFESSS!!" then ragequit or something. It's not a complaint, it's a suggestion to try and improve the game, according to what I understands it wants to be. You do realize this is Alpha. Do you know how much a game can change during Alpha? Why do you think I put this in the suggestion box!?

Nights are perfect, I agree. First time ever in a game that I get the same feeling I have when I'm camping in the woods! I really don't understand changing your gamma for this :) When the moon's up nice and proper, you can see quite nicely (except in some dense forests of course), but put a cloud in there and it's all gone. That said: you got chemlights, flashlights and flares. Chemlights and flares are very common loots so just throw them around, carry them, or whatever. Flashlights...O..M...G. These things are a deathtrap if you so much as cross an infected with the ray and yet it's so intense with it when it's pitch black! With the new patch, exploring a village at night is just...insane. TONS of fun (aka death!)