Thaif

Sure, consumables that affect the player characters "stats" positively than just treating injuries. Those would make survival interesting.

That is true, it is odd that you can't put a rifle on a shoulder sling and pull out an axe. If we could do that then there would still be less reason to have a crowbar than an axe. It's entirely possible we will get the ability to shoulder a primary and keep a melee weapon in your hand and then switch between them. Question is why wouldn't you be able to do that with your secondary also? Seamlessly switch between a pistol and a crowbar. Seems even easier with a small and light firearm than a long and bulky rifle.

Other weapons also have a high leg breaking potential when they don't kill with one shot. You don't need to bust a knee cap with the hatchet or with a lee-einfield. With a crowbar and most pistols (after the recent Arma 1.62 patch) you need to aim for the head or the legs to make the most of it. The hatchet probably also has a high leg breaking chance because of the 4500 damage it does. Except it instantly kills infected...time to move on to the human tests. Edit: Agreed. Hatchets are too common. Then again we are talking about a rural post-soviet setting so they should be somewhat common. Crowbars should be more common than hatchets though. It is a metal pole after all. As for the ease of getting firewood...it should not be that hard to find wood. You see tons of chopped wood outside houses in every town but somehow you can't find a single axe or just take the ready chopped wood. Would not compute.

The system feels clunky and dumb because Arma wasn't made for DayZ. So that's what we get for an open alpha. We will likely get UI improvements down the line. Should the animations still play when tapping a key to switch a weapon that would be fine. That's a playability and functionality issue/feature. If we get a melee slot then what do we do to make the crowbar an option instead of a long pole shaped empty tin can? Make it a tool to break open locked containers? Why wouldn't a freaking axe be better for that? Better yet; shoot the lock. Thanks again for the comments. This little proposal got way more attention than I though it would.

If we could cycle the weapons with F then what's stopping us from doing that to the hatchet, or for that matter to every weapon? Part of the authenticity of the DayZ experience is that the character actually perform actions such as holstering a pistol to switch a rifle to their hands from a shoulder sling. It is a military simulator game engine after all. Reducing that to just a button tap takes away from the experience and reduces immersion and choice. In fast paced and stylized games like TF2 that's almost reguired to keep the game flowing, in this it re-enforces the experience. That may have been the most overly elaborate answer to a single comment ever. At least I have that to my name if nothing else.

True. But it's much more satisfying to drop an infected with one swing and know you pulled it off. When with the hatchet you just run at them and swing. And when you're surrounded it actually feels like a fight to the death against overwhelming odds and if you win...It's like you're the One Free Man.

This mods zombies are based on the L4D infected. This is not a classic Romero movie so that's also out of the window. As for special infected...I'm on the fence. I would be fun as a thing but I feel it would stretch the plausibility of the setting.

Not sure anyone knows the answer to that.

Rocket has said that the system is vey much portable. According to him it takes about 1 hour to port to a map. http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/739-dayz-update-154/page__st__80#entry9184

Remember to aim for the head. Kills instantly. When the game actually registers the hit and the animations stop glitching. I remember having 20 kills just 5 minutes off the spawn with the crowbar and 14 headshots. That's Elektro for ya.

Hatchet is a ridiculously powerful weapon(4500 blood damage per hit) and now that pistols require accuracy they should be further marginalized. Sounds fair. Then again there is another option for melee that needs a bit of help.

More toys are to be expected in the future, but perhaps we should first keep our current weapons on relatively equal ground... This is an open alpha so many things could change or be added. Pitchforks or other such farming tools would be interesting to have as weapons. Imagine a tight phalanx of pitchforks clearing streets in Cherno or Elektro, whipping out pistols against bandits. That would be a sight.

It used to need reloading but it was fixed not so long ago(in patch 1.7.2). I haven't noticed any speed diffence between the two except killing speed. They seem to swing equally fast. I'm under the impression that the Arma engine is quite flexible so we might get melee swing arc if rocket gets some development help. Otherwise it might take too much of his development time. COVER ME I NEED TO RELOAD

Seeing as the hatchet is very powerful, quiet and is also a tool item it would be too powerful if it was in the secondary slot. Hence the other melee weapon, that being the crowbar, should be a secondary weapon.

TF2 melee does not have an arc, swinging and turning to hit people is how the "bullet" for the melee works. It's not synched to the animation, meaning you can begin a swing, turn around, and hit with the invisible "bullet" that the melee weapon "shoots". This means there is a slight delay to when the hit will land. L4D2 melee does have an arc however. Clearly the coding for that melee is done differently than in TF2. I wouldn't mind having a similar melee swing mechanic as in L4D2. But all of that is a bit off-topic. Thanks to everyone for the generous bean donations and for the comments, both for and against.