Bribase

I'm all for matches having a fixed number of uses. Anything that forces hardcore survivalists back to the zombie infested areas. As for weapon degradation, I have seen so many games where they are either mildly annoying (fallout 3) or game breakingly unrealistic (System shock 2). S.T.A.L.K.E.R's Complete mod did a good job of it with single use repair kits scattered sparsely around the gameworld and technicians that will fix something up for you for a price. For the sake of both realism and added depth, I think Day Z should have weapons with a fixed condition (a simple good, fair, poor) that can be improved with highly sought after repair kits (you could diversify the kits if needed for each weapon class). IRL, guns do break down but the rate they do in video games is implausable. Good condition- The weapon will never jam and scoped or sighted weapons are well callibrated. Fair condition- Pistols and fully automatic weapons may jam infrequently but reloading will fix this. Scoped weapons will veer off target slightly in a subtle but predictable way (this would be interesting, making players need to familiarise themselves with the weapon they are using, knowing it's flaws). Poor condition- Pistols and fully automatic weapons may jam and not be fired again without a repair kit (the repair kit also upgrades it's condition). The same goes for scoped weapons but they also fire in a subtle but erratic way that is unpredictable. I like the idea of getting familiar with a fair conditioned rifle, knowing where the sighting is biased and correcting for it, knowing that the weapon would be useless in the hands of someone that loots it from my body until they learn how it works. I also like the idea of a high tier weapon being highly sought after right up to the point where it jams permanently. Leaving a player with the difficult choice of having it take up space in your backpack as a useless item until you find a maintenance kit or ditching it alltogether. A less than respectable player trying to exchange a jammed or poor condition weapon for a fair conditioned one.

I play around three times a week on UK and EU servers in the evening, prime time and I've never seen a hacker, hacked weapon or been killed by a hack. I don't think it's as big of a problem as the OP is suggesting. It's a problem, a problem that arises from this being an alpha mod and a popular one at that. I'm sure that the next priority for the mod team is to curtail hacking as best they can along with obvious exploits like d/c and hopping.

I'm not planning on being an arsehole about it. It's not appropriate for this game. If factions arise on a server, they need to do it organically.

Why not just find yourself a private hive server?

Morphine and epinephrine spawn at military loot drops now, not sure about blood packs though. None the less, any random encounters like this get my vote.

Anything in the development of this game that takes a game-breaking piece of kit but gives it specific drawbacks instead of all advantages is +1 for me.

I know buggery bollocks all about coding something like this but I have a sneaking suspicion that terrain, pre-generated per server is doable but with some very clever procedural programming. You generate the terrain based on a simple rules like "More hills in the north, less hills further south" ,"Roads leading from cities are main roads, roads from town to town are B roads, they follow valleys and don't pass over hills of a certain angle" , "Higher altitudes are forrested, flat areas are sparse fields". Towns can be generated in a similar way to zoning laws, with simple rules like "Build a town where two main roads intersect" "no two similar buildings next to each other" "one church and one market per town, military bases are optional". Generative rules like this can create plenty of diversity between maps while keeping terrain familiar and never game breaking. Minecraft style generative landscapes are not only impossible for Day Z, they are impractical. But per server generated maps are not beyond the realm of possiblity. It's a great deal of work but the payoff would be incredible. One server could become very collaborative and peaceful because their main city generated further North than others; people go there to socialise and barter because they are well equipped by the time they arrive. Another server could be bandit heavy because all of their urban centres are built into natural valleys with sniper positions from every angle. Another town could be a perfect stronghold because it is flat in every direction, bandits don't dare try to take it over. People would have a chance to find features of a map and give them an identity of their own. Whether this is feasable for a team like Day Z's? I don't know.

Of course food in this game will always be unrealistic. But saving yourself from the big sleep by eating an entire cow on the spot? Why don't we delay the health regeneration effect of eating? Making food get you on the road to recovery but not battle ready in an instant. If you lose enough blood to start losing your hearing and eyesight, eating will get your blood level up to a certain point but only over a matter of minutes (5-10 mins should do it). Eating lots of steak at once could either increase the upper limit of your regeneration (up to 12k of course) or have no effect. I favour the latter, needing to help yourself to another steak once the first has finished "Digesting". I like the idea of people getting injured during a raid, eating something to avoid death but not being able to sprint out of there in full health. Blood loss dulls their senses, they have to either take their chances and hobble out of the local area to recover in a safe place, risk further incident by recovering there and then for 5-10mins or relying on a patient friend to lead them out without further harm. It has lots of other interesting effects: "one man army" style PvP players can catch a less than mortal wound in big city but will be next to useless at sniping until they recover, leaving them open to attack with their vision blurred and their hearing dulled. Large groups with no blood packs can have a strong player become their weakest link if he suffers a bad wound, leading to interesting "Leave him, he'll only slow us down" style scenarios. Of course, regeneration from bloodpacks will be instantaneous an thus always preferable to food.

They are legit. Just very rare as well.

Rocket mentioned a journal idea, tracking the movements and kills of a player in the PC Gamer interview they conducted while in game.

The propaganda and wanted posters might be useful but what about a simple "share info" mechanic that comes up on the scroll wheel when you're in direct chat range. You can give someone a brief description of someone you met on your travels but only one at a time, you can't share your life's story all at once, it takes a lot of clicking and scrolling to do that. That way, losing your memory on permadeath doesn't mean losing everything but it does mean seeking out friendlies who are willing to take the time out to fill you in on the situation in Chernarus. Information isn't persistent but it is distributed. Some enterprising players could play reconnaissance and information broking. Trading info on camps for lootz!

What about tying the lock time to the number of murders you commit? I have no idea what sort of units should be involved, anything from 10mins per kill to hours. It means that bandits may have taken the quick and brutal route to game progression but the stakes are high if they finally meet their end.

Are you serious? You are a father?

There, they're and their also. Clearly an example of a child that was left behind.

I found two in the last two days. One was picked clean and the other I grabbed a DMR from.

Thanks Disgraced! I Would still like a quickdrop and wave button though.

I live in London so not only do I have no access to a firearm, the military would likely point their guns into the city rather than out. Trying to contain the higher density populations of infected. That said, if I made it to the south coast I have a friend of the family that owns what was a military supply bunker, built into a hillside with secure steel doors. I also have a friend that has a very decent yaught, so I would go on an extended holiday!

I just love it, you guys turn up late to two world wars and assume that everyone you allied with hadn't been fighting at all prior to your arrival.

I think you can only lower your primary at the moment, it takes a split second to raise it ready to be fired again and is hard to notice. I don't used it at all. I point my weapon away and turn my head to face unknown players at the moment.

I think you're missing the point of the OP. The salute works most of the time but you have to stand to attention to perform the action, it takes moments to be ready to fire again, often on the person you just saluted to and it looks really dorky. We're survivors, not soldiers. I think that Day Z, although far from a priority at the moment, should have both a wave action, a drop button and a holster weapon toggle. Wave is used to get attention from a distance, to signify your willingness to break cover and talk. To flag down passing vehicles and to signify your need for assistance. Holster is just that, it should take around a second to pull your primary from your pack or your secondary from your holster and cock it, ready to fire. Enough time for uneasy players to deal with them before they have a chance to fire. The drop weapon button is used to signify that you yield to other more hostile players in hold up situations. Drop can also be used in novel ways like dropping smoke grenades on the run to conceal where you are running to and dropping flares to mark your route for other players. It would be interesting to see what happens if you begin tracking stats of Murdered after greeting, murdered while holstered and murdered while unarmed to discern self defense and PvP from cold hearted banditry.

Molotovs- Flaming hordes of Zeds? Doorways blocked from exit by a wall of flames? Hot and bothered bandits? Yes Please! Chainsaws- An unwieldy, noisy, bulky weapon that is no more effective than a hatchet but needs to be refuelled? Hell Fucking No!

There are a couple of possibilities for the suprising results in my mind. Maybe the inflated zombie kills are, as I'm sure has been mentioned somewhere, due to the massive influx of players that don't understand the stealth mechanics, are in the process of figuring out the Zed behaviour and get killed often because of stupid mistakes. I strongly believe that there are just as many PvP players out there but seasoned pacifists and neutrals are getting wiser and better at avoiding them. It's anecdotal, but I know my playstyle has changed dramatically over the last week. I scope out towns before I make a trip to the market, I've learned to use the terrain itself to limit LOS, I walk beside roads instead of along them. I'm sure the noobs have even wised up to hugging walls while in Cherno. There are as many PvPers but the likelihood of finding people who are new to the game to pick on is becoming less. This should be evidenced by a general increase in the average lifespan, corrected by not including respawns of course.

There a loads of games where customized player models are there but they are really pretty frivolous. Day-Z is the only game i can think of right now that is desperately in need of one. I just hope there are enough permutations to account for the number of players.

But that's something I've never really understood. Some of the suggestions for getting rid of PvP are getting dangerously close to awarding people for killing bandits. Thus emulating the bandits themselves. You kill a bandit and you get a heartbeat sound, right?

With grammar of this standard, I would think twice about criticizing the education system of New York, or any city for that matter. Including the one currently employed in the schools of post-apocalyptic Chernogorsk.