PointAndClick

Do you want a grenade belt as well? Or a food pouch? My point was that you have to balance your gear when medical supplies and secondary ammo takes up the same space. Any way, I would like some consistency.

The idea that bandages and secondary ammo are in the same place is a great idea. But why is this idea of having to balance your medical needs with your secondary ammo abandoned when it comes to morphine and epi-pens? My suggestion is: have all medical equipment occupy secondary ammo slot space.

I totally agree with the underlying idea that your inventory and your gear is what makes your character. What I don't get, is that people don't see that we already have a weight system in place. An Item simply takes up more slots, like a primary weapon, a tent and firewood do. This is a weight system and doesn't require any special fancy coding. There is no need to make it more complicated. The only thing that I would make changes in is the toolbelt. As this is now something that I never have full. But that this is also 'easily' fixed with assigning more slots to certain items. Balancing issues aside. There is no need to fiddle with inventory space or assigning weight to items. The whole thing can be solved by assigning a number of slots to all items.

There is so much interesting Russian hard ware to toy around with. A russian bullpup configuration like OTs would be an interesting L85 replacement.

I want it to be so that you can't really afford to make mistakes around zombies. Make it more of a life and dead situation. Zombies should be turned into the main antagonist, instead of an inconvenience. Zombies brought on the end of the world after all. I filled in this poll with this in mind.

Tuning into frequencies to create player to player or group communication. Can't go wrong.

The biggest problem with this kind of classes system is balance. The current system solves the classes system partly by having a very limited non-stacking inventory. Your choice of inventory is what defines your role. Herds add to atmosphere and there are always ideas for a better atmosphere. I like it, but it's not really an integral part of my experience as survivor. Friendly fire and the confusion, it all adds to the game, it doesn't subtract from it. The thing it does is make groups perform better. So this is something that should be found or created in the world. Like for instance having a radio tower and radios will make the radios show up on your map.

Isn't everything that you find in this game earned because you got there in the first place?

This. It effectively removes your backpack out of sight. Complaining about boots is completely missing the point. That's just a discussion about preferences.

One way to kind-of make this work is as mentioned before: make death longer. For instance not being able to log back into the game until your body is gone. (either by hiding or removed by the server) This way your friends can still loot your body and hide it so you can get back in the game quicker. (Bigger incentive for team work.) And it is a solution to the core you described as: " It's just a stupid way of endlessly being alive without having anything to loose." A side effect that I can see come out of this is dc-ing becoming more rampant when you punish death even harder.

So how do you solve this now? What do you do ingame to combat this? Do you go anyway, or...? what's your playstyle.

That's a good point. But I don't really get that, can you explain this? Why is it more tense and has a bigger impact? edit, why would it be more tense than for instance not knowing if you'll walk into a trap.

So you rather avoid the frustration of not being able to get what you want. You don't want to be better skilled, or be smarter, or faster. You want to be equal. Is that it?

A case against random weapons/loot. Even though this has been proposed before, i'll go into more depth. This post covers enough ground to warrant it's own topic. I wanted to explore the idea of having fixed spawn locations for items, with a fixed spawn-time. To think this through and find out what the consequences of this change might bring to the game. Turns out that these a pretty severe, however, also extremely attractive. You'll find out that there is a lot of emergent game play coming out of fixed loot spawns vs random loot. Who am I to say all this? I'm a writer. Writers put different people in different scenarios and have them react. I'm pretty adept at doing this, but of course there will always be things I failed to think of. It's up to you to remain critical and skeptical. Why? Let me first answer the question of "why" shortly. I'll expand on this further in the post. Why would you want to get rid of random loot spawns? Well, first and foremost because it breaks my immersion. Figuring out where what is in the world would be part of building a relationship with the world. Secondly, randomness will always be a source for exploitation and frustration. I know that some people enjoy the gamble. For me (and I won't be alone) it's more a source of frustration, as I am not a gambler. I have no problems hopping over a few servers to see if there is better loot where I'm currently at. Lastly: strategies. Real simple, when you know where what is, you can build plans around it and execute them. You know what the reward is and you can choose your own reward.This not only includes acquiring items, but preventing others from acquiring them as well, among other strategies. Spawn mechanics. So a little more specific on the spawn mechanics I'm thinking about. Keeping it really simple and intuitive, and as expected. Common items respawn faster, rare items respawn slower. Without going into timing details to nit-pick over, It might be interesting to have really rare items spawn as slow as once a day. Furthermore logically, common items should have more spawnpoints than rare items. The loot respawns even when you stay on top of the loot spot. I have also been thinking about how it might be if this non-random system was random or partly random for every server. This will create a knowledge gap between veteran players and new players. And it renders the help of 3rd party maps partly useless. It creates secrets known to few. It creates incentive to roam around and acquire knowledge, keep notes. etc. It will connect you to a server based community and create a deeper sense of connection with the map you are playing. I'm highly positive about this idea of having per-server non random spawns. This might even go as far as letting server owners decide where what is found, although there are big problems coming out of this in terms of persistent characters and hopping server admins. That aside, you might become the only person who knows that in a little toilet behind a house in Shakhovla there is the only ghilliesuit spawn in the game, or the only anti-biotics spawn. The emerging gameplay possibilities coming out of such a scenario is like gaming gold. There still is an even more extreme system, where once loot is taken it will simply never respawn again. I thought about this and it is also an interesting brain excersise. Because in that case things like trading might start to emerge. And even though this feels like the most authentic thing, it won't work simply because there is a central database and your character is persistent. Serverhopping for loot will become the norm, servers deplete. There will also be no incentive for new players to join since you can't actually make you own weapons and gear. It might become interesting again with seperate servers with 1000 players and extremely large maps (like entire countries). So that's more a project for another time and age in computing where these extremes might become possible. Moving on to what the effects on gameplay will be. In gaming terms: the desirable loot spawns will turn areas of the map into multiplayer zones, with a 'king of the hill' kind of situation. In dayZ terms: You will be rewarded for keeping control over a certain point in the game. For example, if you are able to hold the supermarket with a fireteam for an hour, you will have enough food and drinks to continue on your journey. If you are able to avoid zombies, you might encounter another group of players with the same intentions. They might wait until you are gone, because they don't want to aggro, or they might engage, or pull one of many scenarios. You are bunkered in, have enough food to survive, ammo might become a problem. They might need food, ammo might be less of a problem for them. Negotiation and trading agreements might become profitable for both parties. If you want to equip your fireteam with AK's and stock up on ammo, you might have to hold a firestation for 3 or 4 hours or maybe even more. It will get increasingly easier as at some point you'll all have combat rifles. But you'll get hungry and thirsty. The game will force you to leave at some point, unless ofcourse you can find people to restock you. Building supply lines, etc. But in that case, you might want to go for an even better spot with even better weapons... at which point you give other people the chance to go for the ak's to fight you for your new gun spot. This creates a sense of progression in the game. It still leaves open the ability to skip certain weapons and be free in your choice of weapon. There is another aspect that becomes more important and that is getting out of a situation. Getting in and out alive might prove to be very difficult, require planning and teamwork. People will be waiting outside, as is already often the case. You are definately still safest in the woods. If you work alone, bunkering down might not be the best idea. And you're probably safest when you make it a quick operation. Unless you want to troll some players and you feel suicidal, please, go ahead and camp alone. At least you can try and figure out where what is and make a plan. This is a completely different thing than we have now, where you or your team can just say, "oh i'll just go to the other barracks, or firestation," etc. The consequences of this choice don't change currently, you might even turn out to be even luckier than the guy you just evaded. However with fixed spawns you potentially actually miss out on some great loot that you can't get anywhere else.Without removing the actual choice, it makes the consequences of leaving and going somewhere else completely different, dare i say: more authentic. Some thoughts. Partly we already have this 'king of the hill' situation in place. There are certain spots where you can find certain items. These attract the attention of players and are already creating 'zones' on the map. But there is a great source of frustration when you know where to find something but it just doesn't show up. You can't do anything about it, you can't wait, hold perimeter and dig in. I also feel that it's unfair that it is 'the world' who does this to me, instead of knowing that a player went before me and got it earlier. I think that these events and these feelings should be brought on by other players and never by the game world itself. I rather feel not being in time or outgunned, than being unlucky. One is skill or better choices , the other is completely random. That randomnes is exactly the thing that makes me hop around servers until I get what I came for. Under my hypothetical system I would rather dig in on the server i'm on, as I know that it's 'safe'. Other servers might have people on guard and I might die. I rather wait on location at the server i'm on. The gamblers and impatient among us might still want to go try a different server however. I am aware that my solution is a bit of a nerd solution. As not everybody will be able to dig in for an hour. And this might be extremely uncomfortable for some players. These people actually will benefit from being social more under the system I propose. I predict that pretty quickly it will be the best players who walk around with the best guns. Instead of lucky people randomly dispersed with hardly any skill level attached to it. I'm also very aware that it opens up the possibility of finding a house with a food and drink spawn, staying there infinitely. To the players who want to do that, I say: Have fun. Bring sandbags and guard the doors. "But, bandits will camp all the cool gear spots!" Jup. They will. Good luck with that. If you want my advice: be careful around cool gear spots (Just as you are now). "But people can fill up their entire inventory with ak ammo by camping!" Yes, they can. Unless you stop them. It's only limited by the amount of inventory slots and time available. "But they'll fill up tents with beans!" Yes, most certainly will there be players who do this. In my world they call those people smart. But tents can be destroyed and players killed. They probably aren't camping at the safest spot on the map to begin with. What's so bad about the current system? The current randomized system is a cause for frustration, the bad kind of frustration. It is frustration of the 'falling of a ladder because of glitches' category. Instead of the 'I failed to go prone' frustration. One is brought on by the world/game the other is your own damn fault. One makes you say: "This game is wank" The other makes you say: "I should avoid that in the future." In case of the current loot system this frustration is a bit more subtle. But as you'll notice while playing, you'll gravitate towards places with the highest value. Why? Because you are almost sure that there is something of value there. You want to be as close to sure as possible. You plan to get there, you put a lot of work in getting there, travel miles, avoid zombies, survive gunfights and than the game says "nope". And not because you were to slow, not because you are a newbie bad at the game, or because a player got there before you, but because of you running towards a slot machine. I don't see players with big guns as skillful players that I need to watch out for, I see them as lucky bitches. I don't feel proud when I wear a ghillie suit, I feel lucky. As of right now, there is no skill connected to the gear you see someone wear. Another consequence of the current system is that it's not desirable to help a new player get a certain item, since you can't know where you'll find something. There might be a gun and he might kill you. The best loot-pile in the game is still a player. But If you can lead him to some food and drink and bandages first, than say, "there is a weapon in there, good luck and bye." Oportunities open up. You know where stuff is as veteran versus a newbie. Knowledge could keep you alive and get you back on your feet pretty fast. Knowledge about the game world starts conversations. Creates intrigues. Spies. Makes people want to kill you / keep you alive. Secrets create groups of people knowing that secret, guarding it. There is just so much social interaction surrounding knowledge and secrets versus randomness. There is nothing of this in the game now, except maybe knowing where a helicopter crash site is. If non-random is so fucking awesome, why are we not having this in the game yet? Very, simply put: I think it's because of the hive. You have a persistent character that loses everything when you die. This character is stored centrally, so that you can take it with you accross servers. But it means that the loot you take should not have an effect on the seperate server. The thing that is able to do this effectively is randomisation of loot spawns. I imagine that getting certain gear was just supposed to be difficult, the original philosophy was all about survival and surviving in an apocalypse. And it works, let's not forget that. I believe that it never was meant to be about the gear. And maybe Rocket thought that randomisation didn't put limits on the original philosophy of being a survivor in an apocalypse. Whatever he thought, I'm just saying that it does put limits on what can be experienced as survivor. And it might even be that because there is a persistent character in place, you are actually missing out on some interesting and intruiging experiences. I don't see anything wrong with building a character on a server of my choosing. A character that I can't take with me to other servers. This classic mmorpg model works, it has been tested, people stick to their character because they have put work into it. It opens up the idea of deathban servers. So that when you lose your character, you actually really lose all your work and in the case of per server loot, alot of your knowledge. Non random loot could give you a connection to your character on a server, instead of the connection to a server being a vehicle that you found (I love my bicycle). It also makes creating server communities so much easier. I would definately think about this more classic mmorpg server approach for a stand alone game. I do actually have high hopes for the recently proposed anti-spawn zone mechanics. Because this will make it much easier to implement a non-random loot spawn system together with the hive. Keeping the current structure intact. So that cool things that emerged (like http://nl.reddit.com...ditRescueForce/ ) can remain to exist. There is another thing preventing this from being in the game and that is that you have to 'build' a map. Figuring out where certain gear should go is not the easiest of tasks, I reckon it will take quite a bit of time in a big map like this. On the other hand, it gives a developer much more control over what situations players encounter and as such be able to balance the game better. Thanks for reading, I hope that I gave you some new ideas on how the game might improve on its current system by changing the spawn system into a non-random event. Have a nice day and feel free to think about it. I would love to see this game get richer with experiences that other games fail to deliver. End note, I'm having an extremely good time playing DayZ. And I just want to mention that it is the most awesome gaming experience I have had. Even topping the things I experienced in 1992 making my own maps in wolfenstein with too many Hitlers to survive. So, please don't think that I'm not throughly enjoying this nice little mod. I want to explore the experience of being a survivor, random loot is putting a lid on this experience. Tl;dr: If you just scrolled down just to see if there was a tl;dr: Read the whole thing before you post your garbling, or leave. People that only care about opinions that can be fitted in tweets, please throw yourself in a fire, thank you. Get of this thread, close the door behind you, delete your account.

Come to the dark side. Release your anger on the coastline players. For they are weak. The Gods despise weakness.