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b.heijltjes@gmail.com

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Posts posted by b.heijltjes@gmail.com

  1. Posted

    Thanks for the tips ;) I'm not actually a completely terrible shot; but I do seem to get hit a lot without seeing who's shooting at me in ARMA II :D

    Anyway it doesn't matter; I'll get better. I've been trying to practice in the editor but I always get distracted by being able to place and fly helicopters... I'm actually starting to be a decent pilot! Lol

    Edit: Oh, I do have one question about that actually.. Does anyone know if it's possible to hover still with a heli while shooting at a somewhat downward angle? I'm given to understand that real attack helicopters can do this, but in ARMA it mostly gets me to accellerate towards my target.

  4. Posted

    tell me' date=' would you walk in a circle for a few hours around a town patrolling it? in real life? probably because its necessary, but in a game I doubt it would be much fun.

    [/quote']

    So don't take a town; take a single building. And you'd be busy fighting zombies while you're at it.

    If you read my suggestion I never meant for it to sound like towns, or other areas, should be complete safe havens for many hours at a time (unless you manage to defend them for that long, but you'll be busy defending them).

  5. Posted

    i only read the first few pages but didn't read 4 - 11' date=' but while i like the idea, I think there would be a problem. now, there's only 50 ppl on a server right? 15 - 20 of them have to liberate a town... and hold it. there's the potential problem, a town would need guards, people paroling to keep the peace, and 15 - 20 people would have to stay in the town at all times to keep the town liberated right? while i think its cool to role play as a guard and such, I think it would get very boring. If someone walk into the town with 15-20 ppl there and shoots someone yea hes gonna die, but what if hes doing it to just be a dick and doesn't care because he re spawns anyways? I do like the idea dont get me wrong, I just dont see it working, maybe if once a town is liberated 3 - 5 NPC guards could appear that you have to arm yourself? I dunno.

    [/quote']

    What? Arm some guards and no more zombie problem?

    We don't know if it won't work without NPCs. Heck, we haven't even established what would make capturing towns interesting. Having a place where the game's main emotion (suspenseful anxiety) ceases to exist sure as hell wouldn't be my design objective.

    I'm against towns that will be held for very long times. I think holing up and trying to weather the zombies should be an interesting and viable strategy though.. For a short while...

    You say that you don't think it will work; that players won't 'play that way'.

    Fair enough, that's possible; but if there's one thing I've learned about players it's that you can never really predict what they will and will not do until you've prototyped and tested on real players.

  6. Posted

    Games don't last forever, nor do they have to.

    Stop playing for a while. Move on to something new and master that. And possibly come back in a year or so to see what the devs have been up to.

    And people who say that developers should stick to one game/mod only and never do anything else (and call Notch lazy, WTF??), get out of your high tree. I hate your opinion with a passion.

  7. Posted

    I agree, creating a 'faction' system and always being able to 'officially' recognize what 'faction' players belong to would be terrible; the only way I can see that becoming interesting if there was enough distinctive-looking clothing available. Them groups could identify their members by having them wear a certain scarf or something (aka skin). Don't see anything like that happening for some time though.

    What I think is most important for all these ideas is that they should be made available through emergent gameplay, not scripted. There's a system and people play with it and eachother and through that interaction something interesting happens. I feel that that is very much the core of DayZ. (in that way it is similar to Eve)

    It would be madness to first create a system for recognizing player factions only then to create a system to subvert the first system and stay unrecognizable.

  8. Posted

    TL;DR: Simple mechanic that sends lots of zombies your way if you stay holed up in one place.

    -------

    While I see some good ideas here I also think they might have unintended consequences... I'm haven't got DayZ yet (I fully intend to buy it when I get back from holiday, or when it's on sale on Steam, whichever comes first), so take my opinion for what it is - an opinion; it's based only on watching a lot of videos and reading about it.

    The 'liberation' mechanic as described here seems to me to be a little too scripted to fit with the style of this game. Adding 'capture bars' and stuff like that would really only make that worse. Besides that I don't see much of an incentive to take towns if there are no spawns there.

    I think it might be simpler if there were just some modifications to how zombie spawning work (bear in mind that I don't know how it exactly works now). I'll try to explain this from a game design perspective, from which the gameplay and social ramifications should become obvious.

    Suppose zombies can't spawn within line of sight and, for example, 30m from players. However, any zombie that IS NOT spawned because of those parameters, is instead spawned somewhere out of sight and at least 30m away from the player. It's simply moved. That zombie will then start shambling towards its original spawnpoint.

    Optionally and additionally, if a spawn point can't spawn zombies at its usual location for a length of time, it will start churning out more zombies. And with a bit of luck not entirely predictably. You might not see a zombie for an hour, and then there might be twenty of them bearing down on you.

    In a gameplay example:

    You and your friends decide for whatever reason(for possible reason, see my next post) that you want to conquer a small town, or a shack in the woods or whatever and hole up there.

    Through great skill and courage you kill all the zombies there, get in a comfortable position and take up positions.

    Zombies start coming. First just a few, then more and finally there's a whole horde of zombies trying to get into your area (think of Dawn of the Dead, only with regard to rendering limits). Slightly stupid zombies that can't get in everywhere, but are plentiful enough to cause you concern for your ammo supply in case you ever want to go out, would also be a lot of fun in my opinion.

    You won't be able to hold out forever, but that's part of the fun. Additionally, you might be a target for bandits. Again, all part of the fun (again, this happens in Dawn of the Dead).

    --------

    My next post: why you would want to hole up in the first place!

    TL;DR: There's places you'll want to defend. Then people or zombies will kill you to take those places away from you.

    -----------------

    My last post was about intelligently spawning zombies to make capturing and defending hot spots interesting. But I didn't address *why* you would want to hold a hot spot (or what a hot spot is). This idea probably isn't very original, but here it is anyway:

    Supplies are limited in this game, and they should be! It's a very important part of what makes the game fun.

    Suppose however, that like in zombie films, there are some locations that you'd like to stay around, because they have a lot of supplies (which you could never all carry). There shouldn't be too many of these (maybe just one on a server at any given time would be enough), and they shouldn't always be in the same place, so you'll have to go looking for them. Possibly they'll also have more zombies around them than usual.

    We're talking storerooms, supermarkets, armories perhaps. Places that could logically have a lot of items in them. Not infinite, but enough so you'll be able to stay put for a while if you find them.

    Exactly how many supplies they would contain should be a matter of testing to find the sweet spot. You don't want to be able to fit out an entire army, but it should be enough to keep a few players happy for a reasonable length of playtime.

    Ideally (in my view), players who find such a place should want to have maybe 3 other players around to keep it safe, but jealous enough of the supplies to want to keep more people than that out.

    Perhaps it would also be worth it to experiment with these points dispensing supplies at a certain rate (doesn't have my preference for reasons of breaking with DayZ's realism focus).

    Coupled with the mechanic in my previous post this should set players up to 'conquer' a supermarket or other place and try their damndest to defend it (or choose to just take as much loot as you can and run for it). Over time more zombies will come. Over time, players will also come and the news will spread.

    There will be violence.

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