Bribase

I was going to recommend the same thing. Whitelisted, private servers, or at least the one that I play on exclusively has close-knit bandit death squads, two man teams that sometimes integrate with others, lone wolf pacificist survivors, one man armies, groups of moderate players that will kill if threatened (but not always) and at least two resident medics that never harm other players. The server runs the gamut of different playstyles. Private servers have a way of forcing players to consider their reputation before pulling the trigger. A TS3 server is opened for us with multiple channels and it is compulsory to use it while playing on the server, even if you just keep a channel to yourself. That way people can keep abrest of the goings on, on the map without someone screaming it over the side channel. The gameplay extends much further than KOS and loot. People have protected medics and fixed up helis to give to them, rival squads have joined up to take down a common foe, previously trusted squad members have gone rogue... Join a whitelisted server. You'll never bother with public ones again.

I would like to include anything that varies the appearance of a player, giving them better identity and individuality. Being able to choose your body shape when you spawn is a bad idea, as is providing certain perks to differing body shapes.

The more I think about it I actually think that some well organised players could band together and form an economy on a server with little more than the addition of a loot item that can be carried in bulk without much gain in weight (I like cigarettes, personally). Banks and depositories are really only places where wealth is aggregated that, at base, occurs naturally, not unlike loot in DayZ. A well organised group could work hard to collect the best loot on a map and centralise it in a well guarded compound. This would work particularly well in SA where weapons and equipment are instanced and controlled instead of continually and randomly spawned. Other players are left with an offer that they really can't refuse; Play DayZ as you would normally, try to loot in highly sought after areas and get shot by the "authorities" for what is essentially poaching. Or they could submit to the authorities and legally "purchase" weapons and equipment for the currency of the authority's choice. The authority can impose a currency by garanteeing a price for loot and gear and making the aquisition by normal means of all but the lowest end gear too dangerous to attempt. This way a kind of tyrannical authority could control a server, one that is part bank, part government and part army. It would be amazing to see such an authority establish itself only to be crushed by a band of "Freedom fighters". Destroying the government forces, tearing open ammo crates and armouries to disperse to the general population, making the server wild and dangerous again. Or to be taken over buy what is essentially another rival group performing a coup d'etat and hoping to capitalise in the same way as the previous tyrants.

I've been in two minds about character development. There is good reason for it to be included; making player death more significant and giving seasoned characters something to play for beyond the thrill of the hunt. You can also see a realistic explanation of it's inclusion; Surviving for days in a hostile environment would serve to make you "battle hardened". The problem is that heavy handed perks like better health, stamina or reflexes amounts to making the game easier for players that are already good at the game. I'd love to be able to identify veteran players in a subtle way that works with the other clothing they are wearing but a perk to health e.t.c. just doesn't seem like the way to go.

How about the truck from Big Rigs: Over The Road Racing impossibly perched on a steep hill somewhere? Kind of a "Fuck you. We can plagiarize stuff as well." To Sergei?

I'm sorry but I couldn't disagree more. You're talking about behaviours that award you for grinding. What's to stop you from purposefully harming yourself to bandage or to camp somewhere and headshot zombies? Why shouldn't being a veteran of the game and the familiarity of the game mechanics be it's own reward? Secondly, perks like this are completely illogical in terms of game design. It's essentially saying "Hey! you're really good at this game. Lets make it easier for you." Thirdly. If there is anything that devs and forum members are racking their brains to figure out, it's how to make death in game meaningful again; To make death more than just an inconvenience. Adding perks that last beyond one's character's death would bring even less significance to dying. Development should work to separate different instances of your character, not connect them.

I would absolutely love to see SMK mods included. Personally, I think the hand gestures are a little redundant beyond a simple Surrender, Wave and Point. Wave should be substituted for the salute since we're civillian survivors, not soldiers. Surrender should include dropping your equipped weapon on the floor and having your hands behind your head permanently toggled. Pointing is simply what you can do with your hands if you have your weapon holstered.

Knives definitely need to be included in the game. Large carving knives are readily available IRL and would be an obvious choice to arm yourself with if a firearm isn't available. The point about knives is that while they are unlikely to instakill they are exceptionally easy to handle and difficult to defend against. A person could stab you several times in a few seconds, causing mortal wounds and without very specialised training there is little you can do to defend yourself. Knives should take between 5 and 10 quick stabs to kill another player, this will ensure that if you are agile enough you can take them out but if they return fire you're toast. Knives should be of very limited use against Zeds. We can be pretty sure that the infected don't react to pain in the same way as people and won't flinch or avoid damage. If you're close enough to stab a zombie it's close enough to chew your arm off.

Here:

I'm in agreement with the OP. Players have adapted to the behaviour of Zeds over the months and this is just another iteration. I'm pretty sure that SA is going to be even tougher but more fair (they'll run indoors but they won't clip through walls or zig-zag). This game is awesome because it's a challenge not in spite of it.

I think that if you make a poll for your thread you ought to provide some properly thought out choices beyond Adult or mature. Adult is of variable ages in different countries and according to internet pornography "mature" is 40 and up. Why not just give us ages to choose from as our lowest?

A road tunnel that leads to an area that cannot be accessed by other means, scattered with wrecked cars and trucks.

Not too difficult I think. Where a massively time consuming job for the admins/devs seems too much, crowdsource! Why not apply avatars of the player's faces in the lobby screen with a flag function next to it. Anything that is exploitative or offensive can be removed or made into one of the default faces at the click of a button. The only problem I see here is the room it makes for trolling other players. In that case why not change to a default face model (for the one doing the flagging) for the first few flags and an outright rejection for multiple flags from multiple players?

Excellent vid. It's odd but I'm quite excited about the things they chose to edit out of the video. It's clear that one of the areas of focus for the dev team has been a full overhaul of the inventory screen. It's reasonable to say that the inventory is ready to be shown off, so why not show it? Because they have come up with such an elegant solution for inventory management that they want to keep it under wraps until later in development. Just in case it's nabbed by a certain IP thieving big rig truck enthusiast.

So it seems like we're mostly agreed. SA and a well paced development time to bring DayZ to life was the way to go. It's pretty clear that Rocket hasn't missed the boat but the question I would like to put to everyone is, is Rocket in danger OF missing the boat? Do you think there is an upper limit of development time when DayZ gets released and loses sales because people have moved on?

Being able to actively Jam a gun would be a useful trolling or deception feature. Find a camp and jam every weapon there? Exchange a jammed weapon for a lower powered but working weapon? Give someone a jammed rifle and let the zeds have their way with them? It would be interesting if missfires like this had the potential to injure the user but I doubt that's realistic.

That would have been the strategy if Rocket was planning on making a lot of sales quickly but in the long run I think it would have been disasterous. First of all people would be paying money for what is essentially a stripped down version of Arma 2. But much more importantly, all of Rocket's plans for new features, ones that are going to completely change the way the game is played, would be struggling with the drag factor of the game engine's limitations. He has a vision for DayZ, no doubt. Releasing this with the engine as is would mean enormous compromises, ones I'm happy to know that Rocket is unwilling to make. Building the SA engine from scratch was exactly the right thing to do IMO.

I can see no reason whatsoever why the military would deploy choppers with rocket pods to deal with the zombie outbreak, nor any reason to have them in game. The searchlight idea is excellent though.

I hope it's okay to open up a thread to speculate on this. Plus I hope it's okay to mention the other mods out there. I was reading the entries in the PC Gamer site today and came across an article about a new spin-off mod of DayZ called DayZ origins. To my surprise it was met with accusations of being another attempt to cash in and piggyback off of DayZ's success in the comment section. As far as I understand, Rocket has been perfectly happy with mods of DayZ being developed. It could be argued that they have been a source of new ideas for future updates and even the SA. But I wonder what might happen when the SA is released? Will those mods that have made a genuine departure from DayZ but have continually been developed alongside vanilla Dayz be abandoned? Will some players prefer the free Mod of Dayz to the robust, professionally developed but pay to play version? It's going to be a serious issue if potential sales are lost because some people feel more alllegiance to the mod of the mod than the finished article. Do you envisage Rocket taking steps, legal or otherwise to prohibit future development of mods like Zombies.nu, DayZ-Origins and DayZ 2017. Perhaps he may even strike a deal by prohibiting future modception but encouraging mods of the standalone? I can see why the PCgamer crowd feel this way about spinoffs and rival developers at his stage in development. Certain developers (not worth mentioning here) have already done their best to rip-off DayZ's ideas and lots of people feel quite protective of it as part of the commmunity that feel in a small way part of the development process and community as a whole. Stealing ideas from DayZ is one thing but what about people continuing to use chunks of code for free that is now a marketable product?

An excellent idea but hard to implement effectively, remember that life (and death) in DayZ is cheap. If you get shot in the belly and are facing the prospect of death in a number of minutes. Why not ask a friend to put you out of your misery and respawn? The fact remains that no matter what the mechanics of death, injury, first aid and recovery are. We need a reason to fight to stay alive.

An excellent suggestion. It does more than just add realism and induce panic. You're driving through cherno with your buddy, a well placed DMR round kills the driver instantly, he slumps onto the steering wheel and activates the horn, every zombie in the city is drawn to the vehicle and escape is impossible without jumping out and ditching the body. It makes escape tougher for the people in the vehicle but harder as well for the attackers to loot.

You're confusing mods and spinoffs with ripoffs.

Then I'm not sure how your post is relevant. What DayZ spinoffs are charging for anything?

The SA is going to add a buttload of complexity from weapon condition, the new infection system to actually searching for hidden loot plus dozens of other tricks I'm sure Rocket and the devs have up their sleeves for the foundation release and the future. DayZ is overwhelming and challenging as a vanilla mod, it's certainly worth picking up on the basics before they ramp up the complexity any more.