Bribase

Headlamps as an upgrade to your torch have been discussed frequently. Along with the introduction of a battery life mechanic I don't see much need to change what goes on at night beyond limiting the gamma value exploit.

I'm all for the inclusion of game mechanics and loot that has no specific use but can be employed in interesting ways. DayZ players are nothing if not resourceful and will always come up with a novel use for things like this. Force feeding bambi's zombie meat? Game of campfire ammo russian roulette anyone?

Even small amounts of pain and discomfort hampers your ability to concentrate. This translates well as a subtle blurring of your vision at long range. It all adds to a sense that your character is a human being, not a camera suspended a few feet from the floor of the gameworld. He can't just take a bullet to the knee, neck some meds and keep adventuring.

I think the OP is overcomplicating things here but there are certainly some good ideas here. I think that the inclusion of screams of pain when shot or punched by a zombie is an excellent idea for a number of reasons: It's an excellent way to provide feedback to the person attacking. Not just for them to tell if their shots were on target or that their target is injured but still alive. But it also elicits emotion in the one doing the shooting. This can range from a deepened sense of guilt for attacking in the first place (we've all had that feeling) to a feeling of glee that you've won the encounter. It's a great way to convey that you've been injured without the HUD telling you so. DayZ seems to be moving in the direction of adding visual cues about your character than more stuff to look out for on the HUD. With a little nuance to the sound recording and hit detection a player could even be able to tell where they were hit and what kind of damage you have sustained e.g: the sound of being winded for a shot in the chest to differeing cires of pain if shot in the extremities. It provides a deeper level of gameplay. Players that recieve a less than fatal wound but a painful one let out an uncontrolable cry that attracts more zombies and gives up one's position to players that weren't aware of your prescence. People could even cause a wound from a distance and let the zombies "finish the job" without a major effect on their humanity. I'm all for the introduction of side effects to painkillers as well. This could range from a subtle but significant blurring to a player's vision (which could prove lethal in some areas) through to slower weapon handling, not being able to reload, look down the sight and bring their weapon to bear quite as quickly as they could with a clear head. Being in pain should not be as simple as having painkillers or needing to find them. There should be lasting side effects that don't necessarily stop your ability to fight but should make you think twice about necking them and continuing.

These look excellent. There is a lot to figure out though if the combat is based on this. You can't really stab with an axe and what happens when you have no weapon for instance.

Pass is Mac doesn't like them much.

I'm not exactly sure what it would be used for but it seems like a fun item. Beans.

But for the time being there would be bags of the stuff in supermarkets. It's just not the time in the immediate aftermarth of a zombie apocalypse to wait for sea water to distill.

That's sort of the point that Kesh was getting at.

I'm not sure about that. If I put myself in the position of a survivor in Chernarus I can see myself doing some of the movements to use cover more efficiently like back-to-wall, blindfire and urban prone (that and peeing my pants while quietly weeping). I don't think that the combat roll or leaping over walls fit the game well though because of your backpack. The point is that SMK gives you a better range of movements that are more like the way you would use your body in real life. They are fiddly and hard to master and use without being awkward but are of great benefit when you do use them. This fits perfectly with the idea of becoming a better player by becoming accustomed to the mechanics of the game. You can use the range of movements in vanilla DayZ and never use the SMK movements but you can take the time out to learn the movements and become a much better player. Another cool thing about applying SMK is to be able to tell a rookie player from a veteran by the way that he moves. A guy that moves fluidly from building to building with back to wall and peaking is a dangerous guy compared to the guy that simply runs along a wall and uses q and e to lean.

I'm playing on a server with a modded food mechanic at the moment. Eating has a cooldown and meat gives you a variable amount of blood. It's made things much tougher when going it alone. The problem is that DayZ needs to have benefits to relying on other players but not so much that playing as a lone wolf becomes too difficult to do.

I think about a 1 minute sequence from jumping in to taking off is the kind of thing to aim for. 1 minute in the wrong place can mean your life and the life of your squad if you're in the wrong place. Not powering down to avoid it brings it's own problems, helis are loud and allow players to find you in moments. What happens in TOH if you get the sequence wrong? Are there any dangers to fumbling the startup sequence?

This has been spoken about before. Use search. Rocket mentioned "instanced" underground bunkers. On entering the bunker you are actually teleported to a different part of the map where the underground bunker actually is and teleported back to the actual map on leaving. Personally, I frigging loved the underground sections in STALKER but the combat mechanics in Dayz are too unwieldy for close quarters. That and I think that Chernarus' cities are too small for a proper subway/sewer system. Chernarus is meant to have a mine though so that could be used. The combat would need to be better optimised for CQC though. I honestly think that base building should really be based on the surface though. If I were looking to hide I would build a makshift wooden shack in the woods long before I decided to take the time and find the equipment to build an underground bunker.

And both things will be awesome. The ability to leave messages for strangers and friends opens the door to loads of different kinds of metagames. Everything from taunts and obscenties, complex treasure hunts to a simple "I'm watching you. Leave you weapon and walk away slowly."

Yep. Water stills were very important back in the day but not for producing clean water but to make quantities of salt where salt mines were not available. Salt was super important for preserving meat. The bottom line, though, is that no one would really bother when there are cans of clean, pure soda everywhere. If DayZ was set way after society had broken down and supplies of canned food and drink was used up, winters were tough and there was no way of farming/hunting during tough winters then these kinds of mechanics would be useful but not really in the time that DayZ is set. You're being shot at and clawed by zombies, now is not the time to build a water still, theres a shop with soda to loot down the road.

Going through these in sequence: I'm all for it. I think that a very short sprint (say 30 seconds) that can get you out of trouble i.e. you can outrun a zombie's sprint but you need to get to cover quickly because it reduces to a jog that lets zombies slowly catch up with you, albeit quite slowly. Rocket has spoken about damaging items when the player is killed/wounded. As Helicopter Hunter said, bullet holes don't make items fall out. Personally I think that damage to rucksacks would be an annoying mechanic, not a fun, or interesting one and is best avoided. Ovens need gas. That said, a rural place like Chernarus probably doesn't have centralised gas and has canisters delivered to individual homes. Not a bad idea if campfires pose the risk of attracting zombies and giving up your location to bandits. What's a logotype in this context? Moving on. Rocket has already spoken about motion capturing a puking mechanic. You'll get your wish in SA. Rocket already spoke about this. Coming in SA I think. The flashlight you get on spawn seems like a pretty crappy one, it's no police standard maglite. Gold would be fucking useless, not to mention too heavy to carry in a post apocalypse. If there is a currency it needs to be something people actually might need and to be light enough to carry with you at all times.

And that's what I'm looking for in my DayZ experience! Do you think there will be an immunity/resistence mechanic? You catch one strain of disease and it's unlikely you will catch the same one again, having developed the antibodies that can fight off that particular disease more easily? That seems like the kind of organic game mechanic we are looking for to make death more significant. Unlike an RPG scheme where it hinders your skill as a player by arbitrarily making your weapon less powerful, easy to aim or makes you run more slowly or able to carry less stuff early in the game it simply affects your overall survivablity out in the wilderness. You don't need to worry about catching the sniffles, just the bullets flying at you and the zombies clawing at your goolies once you become an established character.

Strictly speaking, it still is a form of bartering but the goods are never actually exchanged in full. That's why banknotes have "I promise to pay the bearer" written on them. In the UK the Bank of England holds the goods and all banknotes are hypothetically redeemable there for actual stuff. There is a really cool episode of a BBC show called Survivors (1975) about a viral apocalypse. In the episode a character tries to establish a currency payable in the form of fuel when redeemed. The point is that currency works because it is redeemable for things people actually need and that redemption of currency is garanteed by the government. In any post apocalypse (or even a localised disaster) no goods are secured, everything can be looted, stolen or killed for and no currency is secured. You can make an arbitrary government like a WarZ style cash shop but that would ruin what DayZ is meant to be. That said, I think that if loot is added that has no discernable use but can be carried in unlimited amounts (I like the idea of cigarettes, prison currency) and the ability to properly secure an area and store goods some servers will try their very best to centralize goods and equipment. To build some kind of market town. It will be interesting to see what happens when some servers never take to currency and stay wild while others thrive because there is a form of civilisation.

This creates another problem for players that like to play lone wolf; You can't loot yourself (spacetime paradox, world ends) but your buddies can get it for you. The plan for DayZ, I think, has always been to make working in a squad preferable but not to make lone wolfing impossible. A mechanic like this would be a real problem.

There is plenty of talk from Rocket about bullet damage in certain areas making your equipment unusable:

Excellent ideas! Perhaps the whole idea of looting corpses should be a risky business if they aren't freshly killed? Perhaps the sound of flies shouldn't signify a dead body but a decomposing one that should be avoided. Make the risk of contracting a disease high and the player doing the looting cough loudly and retch, unable to control his weapon and bowels until he leaves the area and gets some fresh air? I'm also not against a lockout timer but this produces massive gameplay problems from the outset. What if you spawn in a city and some malevolent thug is picking off bambis from a hillside? It's clear that a lockout timer would be incredibly unfair. If a timer has to be applied make it one that increases in sync with the time you have been playing that character up to one hour. Bambi who didn't make it out of Cherno on your first run? Just a 2 minute timer to catch your breath. Seasoned veteran that has been alive for days? A full hour before you can join your buddies. This means that prolonged firefights aren't about dying only to gear up again and join the fight in the same place as before or your squad coming down to pick you up. But it won't ruin a night of gaming on your favourite server either. I stil have some issues with arbitrary rules like a lockout, though. The bottom line is that the philsophy that your xp bar is the equipment in your backpack breaks down when highly mobile squads can get you up and running in minutes. We need to come up with something that a character genuinely loses on death that they spent their time building up but we need to do it without compromising a player's actual skill at the game like an RPG would.

I'd be happy to see some variations of camo that only somewhat obscure you. The ghillie is OP and far too common for the time being and could do with a movement handicap. The top of my list would be urban camo.

Yep. Need to bump this again.

Have you played Dishonored yet?(You should, it's excellent). The swordplay isn't QTE based at all though, perhaps I didn't explain properly. The combat is based on a simple attack/block system where blocking an attack at the right time in their swing leaves the enemy off balance and open to attack for a moment. This leaves for a simple but dynamic combat system that balances well. The guy with a knife has a disadvantage blocking the guy swinging his axe at you but if his attack is broken it gives you endless amounts of time to stab him. There is no engagement mechanic or true QTEs.

The Germans have been looting all day without anyone to oppose them.