SalamanderAnder (DayZ)

I made a little graphic to demonstrate why making players invincible and boundary camping is not a huge issue. This can also provide ample open space to spawn in vehicles without obstruction. Also notice how server boundaries extend across each other so that moving around in the spawn area is limited. The dotted portions also would not function as teleport points (merely as physical barriers), so it wouldn't be possible to travel from server to server only through the spawn "box," if you will. Perhaps players who are outside boundaries would not be allowed to fire their weapons, so they can't just wait out of bounds and fire on people approaching the boundary, or other players who are joining the server. It would function as a both waiting area and a cushion from players in bounds, so they would have time to move around and actually move into the map where it's safe to do so. As for the whole MMORPG thing... I just don't see the distinction. DayZ will always remain at it's core a hardcore shooter and survival simulator, but it's also always been a multiplayer role playing game. To me, adding map portals like this, pumping in more and more content, giving players new things to do and generally creating an incentive to continue playing the game, is necessary and inevitable. I mean, I know the team already has a lot to do. However, once they do that, it won't be enough. I think if this game wants to be the definitive zombie apocalypse simulator, this kind of stuff has to happen. As Vindicator said; even a 2x2 grid of maps would add to the gameplay exponentially. A grid like the one I showed would probably take about four years to develop the map content alone. Wolfhound, thank you for your opinion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_mines_in_Cambodia Actually land mines are a huge problem in Cambodia as factions have laid thousands of them to establish control over areas of trees which produce Safrole oil, the major component in MDMA. Many of them are also left over from the Cambodian civil war of the 1970's. That means people still die today from land mines that were placed over 40 years ago. You're right in that they probably wouldn't be common on main roads, but what I think he's actually suggesting is landmines as a usable object, meaning players could set them on the road in wait for vehicles.

DayZ IS an MMORPG. MMORPG - Massively multiplayer onlinge role playing game. Is DayZ multiplayer? Yes. Is DayZ an RPG? YES. The only thing missing is the "massive" part, which is what this game is seriously lacking right now. We're splitting hairs when people go "DayZ isn an MMORPG." Do we want it to be the definitive zombie apocalypse simulator? Then it has to become epic in scale and scope. People need more to do. This is why people find themselves "bored with DayZ."

I don't think maps should work like a part of your "level" or anything. I'd prefer the free ability to move from map to map at any time, based on geographical movement. Locking people out of areas could be absolutely devastating to gameplay. Eventually, all the Chernarus servers would be completely empty, because all the players would be stuck in other maps. Not to mention, you would be forcing a division in the community. What if someone goes to the next area and then the next day his friend wants to meet up in Chernarus? You've now removed that option for them, which more than likely means they just won't play the game. Non-freedom = bad news bears. Returning to old areas is not a bad thing. Moving items across areas, again, is not a bad thing. If we want trade to become important, then the logistics of moving high value supplies from other map areas will seriously add to the equation. It should be a player's choice to move from area to area, not the game's choice. The major issue with an "end-game" as we call it, is just that. Everyone's idea of an "end-game" is totally subjective... One person wants to accomplish A, and another person wants to accomplish X. Therefore ramming people through map after map as a form of end-game is actually taking away a lot of personal freedom when it comes to your own goals and ideas about how the game should "end."

Well I was also hoping for people to pitch other ideas, like agriculture or goals that might also be separate but enhanced by a cell based map experience. I did consider the possibility of escaping through map portals, however, you can look at player lists when you browse severs so I assume it would be pretty simple to find the person you are looking for across the boundary, unless you don't know their username... However, I think independent hosting, and allowing players to choose their destination server, is the most efficient way of realizing this kind of goal. Trying to put architecture in place to somehow put every cell on the same server just seems impossible. Also, you could simply prevent players who are in combat from crossing the portal. We already have a combat timer. It would apply to this just like it applies to leaving the game. Brief invincibility when joining another server would be a good idea. As for air vehicles and such, this I am unsure of. I don't really know the limitations of the engine. They'd have to find a way to log out with the vehicle as part of their character, so the game would have to say "Is this person in a vehicle? Are other players in the vehicle? What kind of gear is in the vehicle?" and it would have to save that information, then log out the entire vehicle and it's contents from one server, log them into another server, probably on the ground somewhere. Perhaps the devs could place multiple "spawns" on a map for possible human, land vehicle, boat, and air vehicle placements. There could be many of these across the boundary of a map (or on the coast in the case of island cells) which would make it hard to predict exactly where people would be coming into the game. Again, if two choppers where in combat, they would not be able to leave the server at all. So let's say you approach the boundary line with a helicopter. Upon reaching it, the helicopter should go into auto hover, to allow the pilot to select a new server to join. Maybe with planes the devs could make something similar to the landing autopilot which would just maintain altitude and speed for a while so that the pilot could browse servers while the plane continues to fly off map, until finally he selects the server, and all of the content that player is attached to would just disappear into thin air. On the next server, the player (or players) would spawn in the plane, on the ground. Since these entry points (at least for vehicles) would be pre- placed, the devs could make sure that incoming planes, helos, or cars, wouldn't simply spawn inside a tree or in a place that would make takeoff impossible. Or who knows, maybe they can find a way to spawn things in mid-flight. That would be ideal, but of course the game does have limitations.

Definitely. I would never go for it. All I'm saying is that nobody could stop it if it did happen.

Okay let's say a global item economy is implemented (meaning there could be .50 cal snipers in the game, but across all the servers there might be a grand total of say, 100 or so. There would never be more than that.) So if a player found a .50 caliber sniper rifle, instead of using it, they might go to another player and say "Hey, I'll give you this gun, in DayZ, for 100 bucks." Real money, for an in-game item. People do this in W.o.W all the time, they call it gold-farming.

I KNOW that. I know what an "item economy" is. I was referring to another post where they said the item economy would result in players selling in game weapons for cash, to other players. What's wrong with that? There's no store, or points, or anything involved there. That's just one person giving another person money for a weapon in a game. It doesn't "ruin the gameplay." It's nothing like WarZ. WarZ was players giving money to developers for items. There's nothing wrong with player/player trade, even if it does involve real world money. Nobody could stop someone from coming on the forums and saying "I found a .50 cal sniper rifle will sell for $100." They'll have to mediate the trade somehow amongst themselves, but again, we have had cash bounties for players on the forum before. I don't see anything wrong with that. If you people honestly think I'm talking about servers or developers handing out goods for cash, then you clearly don't know me. That is entirely off limits. I'm purely talking about player to player exchange.

False dilemma. We need zombies to be intense and difficult, and also allow PvP combat. The difficulty of the zombies will encourage people to group together. The PvP will allow the freedom for groups to combat potential enemies, and for our favorite mechanic, betrayal. This is all essential to the experience. It's not one or the other. The key is combining both in such a way as to optimize all forms of player interaction.

http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/141731-dayz-standalone-community-radio-station-applications-now-open/ You're welcome.

Global item economy sounds good. I really don't think the sale of in game items for real money is a bad thing. Why do people say that's a bad thing? We've had real money bounties before...

And just imagine boating off the coast toward the North and finding Namalsk, or boating west and finding Tavania, or going south and finding, dare I say it... Altis? Maybe south from Altis would be Stratis, and west of Altis would be Lingor. East could be Sahrani. You could build a huge network of islands with the existing maps already... Altis would have to be an original spawn area.

Open borders. Basically, you split the edge of a cell into maybe four different zones, and when you join the next cell, you are placed in that same quarter or whatever of the next map. I don't see why there would have to be one specific location for it to happen, it would just be a long boundary line and once you reach it, the game would automatically prompt you and ask if you want to travel to the next cell. Clicking yes would open up the browser, no obviously would leave you in the cell you are currently in. Vehicles should have the ability to move across borders (and therefore across servers) as well. Not really... People would naturally want to go out into the frontier to avoid high traffic areas and explore more of the world. Since you can't respawn in those cells, people will probably tend to form groups to accomplish this task. Also the frontier cells could have higher value loot, more zombies, ect. If you build it, people will come. I would do it, so that I could establish a base of some kind and maybe run supplies back to the coast and even help other people travel deeper into the frontier. What we should see is actually a nice little spread of players, with the highest concentrations in the spawn cells, and then dispersing further and further out. I think the constant sort of movement towards the frontier regions would actually give a lot of players a really satisfying life cycle. I'm not sure about the spawning mechanics yet. If the dev team did something like this, it would undoubtedly need tweaking and changes to certain things after the fact, as it's clearly hard to predict what people will do. Spawning only at original locations would indeed be extremely challenging... but I think that players should always have free choice over their original spawn cell whenever they die. So say you die on the way from Chernarus to Lithuania, you might be like, fuck this, I want to spawn in Amsterdam this time (or of course you could choose the closest one if you want to try to retrieve your gear) . That should be a choice players have. It will keep the game feeling nice and fresh.

IKR? Anyway, I agree. The health system as is, would not suffice. I'm hoping for surgery attempts based on tools you can find, your actual attention to disinfectant, and maybe some kind of behind the scenes acquired skill level. So by the time you're say, south of Berlin, you've found a scalpel and a suture kit and antibiotic wipes and latex gloves. You've removed bullets before. You can build a splint. Also I agree with your idea, there should be some level of exhaustion, as well as sprinting, the whole deal. Player condition should definitely play into it to. You're overall diet and calorie intake vs. calorie burn should be a serious concern, as well as the cold, especially at night time (which would have to be unavoidable at some point, IMO). When you're talking about travelling thousands of miles, you have to keep up a steady diet. Lying down for hours on end to camp out a city and "snipe noobs" would be a serious waste of time, because if it starts raining, if it's too cold, you're actually very likely to die of hypothermia or to catch pneumonia. Not to mention the threat of zombies should be high, so all of these things would mean that while KoS would never stop (of course), deliberate man hunting and the like would become much more challenging, as it would be taking away time from the major source of concern; your own personal survival. One game I think can provide a small example is Don't Starve. The game is simply set up in such a way that keeping your character from starving is actually one of the most time consuming aspects of the game. Not that I'm suggesting we should be starving to death every five minutes, but what I mean metaphorically is that we should simply be more occupied and engaged with the environment. Naturally difficult obstacles I think will promote a lot more of that group mentality and purpose we are all kind of itching for. Just look at WoW. People form groups to go fight monsters, and get loot. They also fight each other. DayZ could do exactly the same thing, but without the rules between the two. The difficulty of the environment would mean we would see groups of players getting together with the specific goal of "making it to Berlin." It would just be... awesome. Literally awesome. That's why I'm thinking it could work similar to a board game... In that death would revert you to the previous cell you came from. You might be a little rusty when you spawn. Maybe your level of physical conditioning has lowered a bit. You have to start running again to get your legs back. This would help promote fringe servers since respawns would necessarily be limited to original spawn points. Maybe it would only work one time, so that if you die once, revert to a previous cell, and then die again inside that cell, you have to choose from an "original spawn" server.

I disagree. DayZ is in Pre-alpha and right now they are only tackling basic gameplay issues (like netcode and zombies) and adding more content. These are ideas for the more distant future of the game (say two, three years from now), when the more basic issues have been addressed and the team's priority is going to be managing the longevity of the game. I do believe I saw Rocket say on an interview that they would like to work with cells or map portals, whatever you wanna call it. So it's not a far fetched idea. Actually the biggest problem I foresee, as the stalker pointed out, would be getting server groups to cooperate in an efficient way... I'm trying to think of some creative solutions, like allowing each server to have their own NESW configurations for map portals, for example. Undoubtedly, the number of "home" servers would outnumber the "fringe servers." I say home because I don't want to postulate that Chernarus must be the original spawn point. Perhaps players could spawn there, or a place like Celle, and move between fringe servers to other home servers. So if green servers are home spawn servers, and yellow and orange are the fringe servers, then there would be more green servers than yellow, and probably more yellow than orange, ect. Obviously. When the player reaches a map boundary, the game would automatically give us a server selection screen which would allow players to simply choose which host they want to play that offers the geographical area they are travelling to. Actually I think this is a more elegant solution, as it leaves less up to the maintenance of portals and such by admins...

Actually I don't see why this kind of thing should be impossible. It would make escaping zombies a lot more interesting. They could add animation trees to allow zeds to pull you down as you attempt to get over, too.

I want a parkour bonus that will allow me to climb medium height walls. Lol.

Love these shoes.

Well I hate to break it to you, but this is a survival game, dude. If there was no challenge, it wouldn't be a game...

Yes, but it should have a chance of passing on any infections the victim had to the cannibal. That is actually the major danger of cannibalism, aside from prion disease.

I have a similar story about how my ex-girlfriend made me a smoker.

For real this time. But I think what KoS is really getting at is that orienting more of our play time actually surviving and maintaining our character's physical condition will literally take time and energy away that would normally be spent killing other players. Not that PvP is necessarily a bad thing. I agree.

I don't think that, otherwise I wouldn't have informed you. However, the documentation Red Tail is demanding is just impossible for me to find.

I think people tend to over-estimate the abilities of mo-cap. Mo-cap animations are simply raw point data which require a human hand to interpret and tweak until they work in game... Not to mention all the programming that goes with making these kinds of exceptions. I'm not saying it's impossible, or that it's a bad idea. It just seems like something that could be very complicated and harder to implement than we might imagine. Also, any logical DayZ player would simply get close the the coast and commit suicide to get their hand back.

I see implementation problems with one-handed animations.