Bogeyman

As you realized yourself, your post was pretty lengthy. However I did read it all, and I wouldn't mind different levels of realism on different servers, along the lines you describe.

Hey everyone! This short suggestion of mine concerns my love for the in-game music, and why I've still disabled it. Background The music is great, and it really adds to the atmosphere. However as time passed and I died to bandits a few times I decided to disable the music because I wanted every legitimate advantage possible to hear potential bandits near me. I'd love to be able to turn it back on again, but I don't want to choose between the atmospheric music and hearing well. The suggestion The option to disable the music should of course be available, but I would prefer it there was no advantage in doing so. That is basically my suggestion, but I do have some ideas for the implementation as well. Implementation Sound levels for such things as footsteps and gunshots (well, everything really) could perhaps be increased (assuming they are audible in the first place) when music is enabled. I see two possible outcomes that I would like: 1. Disabling music doesn't make it easier to discern e.g. footsteps. (ideal) 2. Disabling music is slightly disadvantageous in terms of discerning e.g. footsteps. (still preferable to how it is now, for me, but obviously others might prefer playing without the music on so this outcome doesn't really help overall) I imagine it would be pretty hard to achieve outcome #1 though. Sound levels would have to vary depending on the current noise of the music and maybe even take sound frequencies into account to get it exactly right. But hopefully it's possible to get it approximately right. Closing comments I don't know how you feel about this, if you prefer playing with music disabled or enabled, so let me know if you feel like it. Also, I do realize this isn't exactly a pressing matter or something that is absolutely necessary to make the game good. I still wanted to put my idea out there. Thanks!

Thanks for your comment! I'll try that. It seems like a good compromise. As for the rest of you: The idea was to find a way to not make it advantageous to disable the music, not make it disadvantageous to have music disabled (even though I did say I would accept that so long as it was very slight, and I did point out that even then it wouldn't really help overall as not everyone would prefer having the music on). However that is assuming there is anything at all to gain from making it tactically viable to have music enabled (i.e. just as viable as having it disabled). I guess I can't really decide what you post in this thread, but try to keep your comments relevant. Again, I'm not asking for any such punishment. You do have a point in that background music isn't exactly realistic, but it's still there for a reason. Good background music is supposed to be subtle to the point where you don't really think about the music, which means it doesn't matter if it's realistic or not as you're not consciously aware of it. The effect is supposed to be the opposite: better immersion. But I suppose you could argue whether or not the music in DayZ achieves that or not. Anyway... I will admit that my suggestion is probably too much work for what it could potentially achieve. So don't mind me Rocket et al, I just felt like putting my thoughts out there.

I have the same issue. The only thing I've read so far is that your mic has to be the "default device" or maybe it was "default communication device". I tried messing around with that but only ended up with a completely non-functioning mic, until I reverted ofc. Anyway, I don't have an answer but I thought I'd leave a comment just to let you know you're not alone. edit: oh, and currently I have my mic as the "default communication device", which for whatever reason doesn't help (though I still don't know that it's the problem either).

May I suggest an addition to the tracking of login/logout? I realized that I sometimes hop between servers just at the start, as I try to find a good server (mostly looking for a server without fps issues). Assuming that isn't abusive somehow, would it be reasonable to exclude logins/logouts that occur after not having played for several hours? It could also be dependant on whether or not certain actions were made during the brief period of play, such as shooting a gun or aggroing zombies. That is: so long as you haven't done such actions, haven't played for several hours prior to a string of quick logins/logouts, there will be no punishment. But maybe this would have found it's way into the algorithm anyway through the analysis of collected behavior data.

Hello everyone, this is my 2nd suggestion for DayZ. The previous one was the one with subduing and restraining, mostly in order to give a more humane way of dealing with potentially hostile players instead of always going for the kill. Preface So there have been plenty of ideas of expanding the in-game voice communication, the ones I have seen being portable radios and a way to force constant voice communication so that you can't plot murder right in front of another player without them being able to hear you. Portable radios is obviously an awesome idea, and constant voice communication is a decent idea. Let me comment on that before I go ahead with my own ideas. In-game voice communication being enabled constantly can be circumvented fairly easily, like for me example it doesn't work to begin with even though my mic works with skype, teamspeak, ventrilo etc. Beyond that there are more elaborate ways to circumvent it. However I'd say this doesn't necessarily need to be a problem, even if it isn't optimal. I suspect what would happen is players would be very suspicious of others who do not talk at all, and probably shoot them if they get the chance. It would sort of be like real life, if a guy won't talk to you, but just hangs around, you're not exactly gonna trust him. So anyone circumventing the in-game voice communication still won't be able to plot murder right in someone's face, beyond inexperienced players of course. As for whether or not having voice communication enabled constantly is a good idea or not, I'll say that I'm sure a lot of players won't like it. It's not just good or bad, it would simply have an effect and players would have to deal with it. Now on to my ideas. Whisper, Talk, Shout This is a common concept in chats of most MMOs, and I think it would work just as well for voice communication. In fact, I think it would be of great use. How would it work? I suggest you can toggle them, only one can be toggled at a time of course and perhaps there is always one toggled (similar to what I talked about in the preface). Instead of the functions regulating the volume of the sounds, it's probably easier to just extend the range of the sound or regulate the fall-off over distances. This way Whisper won't be too quiet, and Shout won't be too loud up close. They would also have different zombie alerting ranges. I saw another suggestion (when searching to see if my suggestion had already been made) that was sort of similar to this, but instead of having different functions for the in-game voice communication it would detect how loudly you talk and the sound would go farther if you screamed. I think that would be terribly hard to get right. Megaphone In addition to shouting, you could find a megaphone that sends your voice even farther. To make it clear that it's a megaphone maybe the sound should be somewhat distorted (if it can be done without it sounding garbage). What's the point? Well it's rather simple. Sometimes you want to talk, but not alert other players nearby, and sometimes you see someone in the distance and you want to be able to shout that you're friendly. And after that maybe kill him, if you're in cherno. And the megaphone... man, I would love to have a crew surrounding e.g. the fire station outside of Elektro and use the megaphone, saying "You're surrounded, come out with your hands up". Let me know what you think and if you have any similar ideas.

Not that anyone cares, but sorry for taking so long. I was on vacation. It's great to see you start off by talking out of your ass, because by no means were you clear with your initial post. Anyway, at least now I can see your points. Yeah constant in-game com might be an issue (as far as server load goes), but it's a technical issue that could solved by technical means. If rocket would give up anytime someone said "no that won't work", DayZ wouldn't exist, and I think the same would apply for this. Don't be so defeatist about it. I guess you're right when it comes to people not having enough bandwidth. But then again, streaming audio doesn't take a lot of bandwidth... maybe I'm just too high up in my ivory com-tower, idk. As for loud music, I really don't see the problem. Anyone doing that would killed. And like you say, there's already nothing to stop this happening already. People who want to be annoying can still be, but they generally aren't because it doesn't benefit them. Also, the world is huge, and there aren't that many players on a server. Oh well, I still think my idea or something along those lines would work well. And to clarify again: forced constant in-game communication wasn't my idea, I just mentioned it. My idea is primarily about whisper/speak/shout, and it'd be great if more of you would comment on that rather than the prior. Thanks!

Hello everyone, this is my first post on these forums. I'm a simple game design student, and I couldn't sleep last night as I was thinking about DayZ. I have plenty of ideas, but I'll stick to one of them for now. Suggestion in short: An option to subdue other players, and once subdued they can be handcuffed or otherwise restrained depending on what you have available (such as rope, or duct tape). Once secured, they can be fully looted, dragged and stuffed in a passenger seat for transport. In-game usage specifics: To avoid exploitation and overly annoying usage, certain criteria need to be fulfilled to be able to subdue another player. Such criteria could be that the target: - Has passed out - Has broken legs - Blood < 2k (number pulled out of my ass) - Has used a type of /surrender function (is there something like this already?) Origin of the idea: I had been thinking about banditry, and the psychology that drives players towards killing other players. Some are born bandits, but I suspect most have simply adapted to a cruel and unforgiving world in which there are few options besides shooting to kill. I don't think banditry needs to be punished. It should have consequences of some sort though, and I think rocket already has some good ideas for that, but they would be sort of pointless if almost everyone acts like a bandit out of necessity. So I was thinking about the underlying Humanity system, and how players who don't want to be bandits can find a way to deal with other players in a more humane way. Letting someone live is often too huge of a risk. Caveats: Obviously, subduing would often-times be very impractical. Let's say you spot a sniper overlooking Stary Sobor. Trying to subdue and cuff him isn't much of an option. Even if you were able to safely incapacitate him with a body-shot or two without killing him, going to his body and cuffing him puts you at risk. Who knows how many of his friends are waiting for you? Still, I think my idea could lead to amazing moments in the game, and with some supplementary changes I do feel it could distinguish ruthless bandits from staunch survivors. Supplementary suggestions: 1. Cuffing a target would (as I see it) have to incur a temporary drop in humanity (reset upon un-cuffing) or preferably the drop in humanity would come if at any time the target would die before being un-cuffed (even if he simply "bites his tongue", aka uses respawn). I foresee a possible exploit though (or maybe a feature?), namely a team of players could cuff other players, then un-cuff them somewhere to have them executed by the team's executioner, and so they don't need to get their hands (and humanity) dirty. If necessary this could be averted by something along the lines of: if the cuffed player is killed within 5 minutes after being un-cuffed you still get the drop in humanity. 2. Lethality might need some rebalancing to make it somewhat practical to subdue instead of murder. Obviously being shot is lethal, and it needs to remain authentic. So is there a way to increase survivability in a way that doesn't affect gameplay too much besides giving more opportunities to subdue/cuff an opponent? I imagine it would involve something along the lines of death not being reached at 0 blood, but at maybe -1k or -2k blood. Instead you'll be incapacitated at 0 blood, and slowly bleeding to death unless you are given some kind of aid. At any time during this you can just click "respawn", and it will count as a murder for whoever pushed you below 0 blood. This will give a small chance for you to show your true self. The threat is gone, and the stranger is incapacitated. Will you just leave him to die a slow death (or be rescued by his friends)? Will you secure his weapon, save his life and let him go? Or will you use the opportunity to live out even more sadistic tendencies...? Imagine the terror in that situation, clinging to the hope that you might be kept alive and set free with most of your gear, or they might execute you in a shed, or feed you to the infected. 3. This is more of a side-note, but I'll add it anyway. In addition to the handcuffing, perhaps you should be able to blind-fold as well. This might take more away than add to the experience, but perhaps if you leave a strip of vision to the top and bottom of the screen the player would still be engaged in trying to see something, and/or opacity could be used to give some limited sight through the blind-fold. It should still block enough that you'll have a very hard time knowing what direction you're going if transported in a car. Random reasoning about my idea: Just a few hours ago I saw the Q&A with rocket at Rezzed, and he mentioned an instance of a player being threatened and taken as a hostage, and even used to enter buildings to see if they were secure. That seems like a very organic way to do sort of what my idea is about, and with that perspective my suggestion might seem a bit contrived in comparison. If it's already possible to do as-is (sort of), why implement specific mechanics for it? Also, kidnappings and such might become common to the point where they're simply not anything special anymore. These are reasonable concerns, but whether it's because I'm biased or something else, I still think my idea could work well. The game pace is slow enough that it won't happen very often, there will still be a lot of people who prefer to just kill you and be done with it, and the game should still be lethal enough to make subduing a challenge. Anyway, hopefully my train of thought isn't too far off from rocket's core design of the game. Comments are welcome!

I have no idea what you're referring to. I'm gonna go ahead and guess you're talking about constant in-game voice com. Also, you don't explain what you mean. Do you mean that players will play music to be annoying? Just mute them, or find and kill them I guess. Do you mean that people need to be able to play with music on? Maybe invest in a headset. Or is that too much? Either way, I'm not quite sure what your point is or what your arguments are. I recommend you be more clear in the future if you want to be able to get your point across. Just to clarify: Constant direct communication was not my idea, and I wouldn't mind it either. But I sure as hell hope you'd be able to whisper/talk/shout. I don't want to give away my position to anyone within 100m as it would be now. Indeed, it would be awesome! Though I assume you mean 250m.

At any time when handcuffed you have the option to "respawn" (bite your tongue). So long as the kidnappers keep it interesting and/or give reason to hope you can stay for the ride, if you wish. I don't see the problem with it. As I already said: if you surrender or have been subdued and subsequently restrained then you have lost control of your fate, with the exception of using "respawn". How you deal with it is up to you. The worst that can happen is that most people just "respawn" immediately, which isn't any worse than what happens now: murder first, questions loot later. At best murder could be avoided and targets neutralized without being killed and then let free without their weapons (but hopefully still some useful gear).

I stopped reading after the 2nd page, but for everyone saying ammo needs to be more rare I say it'll probably be fine once you can't refill mags through relogging. We'll see once the cheats and bugs are weeded out.

Um, you have changed the values of noise levels for weapons, e.g. the silenced weapons. Now it says an M9 SD makes a noise equal to a "kitchen appliance" (according to the freehearing.com link you posted), i.e. 75 dB. Looking at some videos of an M9 SD I'd say 75 dB might be reasonable, but I really don't know. Sound captured with a digital device doesn't necessarily sound much like the real thing. When I first read your post it said 49 dB for the M9 SD, which would be about 1/8192 as loud as an AS50 at 180 dB, or 0.00012 times as loud as an AS50, which if it can be correlated to how far the sound can travel before becoming inaudible (which is I highly doubt, as it doesn't take into account the lower threshold for human hearing, but maybe that has less of an impact than I assume) would mean that if the sound of an AS50 is audible over 455.4 meters then a M9 SD would be audible over 0.05 meters, or rounded up 0.1 meters. Again, these numbers aren't correct either as not all variables are taken into account, such as frequencies. And it's not about being able to hear, it's about being able to attract attention which requires a significantly louder noise. So where did you get the old numbers, and where did you get the new numbers for the silenced weapons?

Good point Nuxes. I don't have a clear answer (beyond: it's not so simple). Like I said, the lower threshold of human hearing will make simple ratios of dB to be pointless. Obviously, a sound at 180 decibels won't be audible at a distance ten trillion times farther than a sound at 50 decibels. So you can't compare raw power. But let's say you couldn't hear a sound below 20 dB (I don't know the exact numbers, and besides, the numbers vary depending on the frequency). A sound at 50 dB will reach sub-20 dB without going nearly as far as a sound at 180 dB. Again: screw the numbers, I'm just saying it's not so simple. You need some proper equations to figure this stuff out.

Valiant effort, but you need to consider the fact that decibel is a logarithmic unit. Simply put (from wikipedia): "A change in power ratio by a factor of 10 is a 10 dB change. A change in power ratio by a factor of two is approximately a 3 dB change." So an M9 SD is not ~27% as loud as an AS50. It is... um... oh screw it, let's just say it's INSANELY more quiet than an AS50. edit: oh, it's actually rather simple. Let's say a M9 SD is 50 dB, an AS50 is 180 dB. 180 - 50 = 130. So that means a AS50 is 10^13 times as loud as an M9 SD. To spell it out for you, it's: 10 000 000 000 000 times as loud. or ten trillion times as loud, or if you prefer ten million million times as loud. Also, there are other things to consider, such as the lower threshold for being able to hear sounds.

Great texture work man! Not trying to bash you or anything, I mean as you said it's all WIP, but I assume you'll optimize the models a bit. Especially stuff like the handle on the machete seems to have way more polys than necessary. It's fairly small and it doesn't need a lot of polys. Anyway, I'm sure you know this just as well as I do. I'm just slightly anal (read up on some Freud before making jokes about it kiddies :P (not referring to you Anderson)) when it comes to poly-counts.

Thanks for the additional feedback guys (and gals?)! I don't see why the discussion should end prematurely out of fear of a controversy. Let the discussion run it's due course, and if at any time it ends up being unmanageable then let's close the thread then. That's fine. However, here is my perspective on the matter: For one, there's no way to rape someone in DayZ. That's not what I want added, even if "rape" might be what comes to mind for you when you think of handcuffs. Secondly, this is a game in which you may be: - Blown your brains out - Betrayed and shot in the back for a can of beans - Be left to bleed to death - Be eaten alive by zombies (aka infected) - Die of starvation or dehydration, a slow and gruesome death - Break your legs and crawl for hours upon hours towards a hospital, your last hope, only to find you are doomed and nothing is there to help you. - See and hear all your friends get shot down around you, knowing you're next I fail to see how any of these would be fine, but rape is not. Even if you might argue that rape is more malevolent or terrifying than all these, I'm still not suggesting rape be added to the game. Why would handcuffs or other methods of restraining someone be condemned simply because you associate it with rape? That is my perspective, and I have no additional interest in discussing rape when that is not what my suggestion is about. Yeah, without additional changes players disconnecting would be a problem. I think it's entirely possible to solve those issues however, both in a general sense for all situations of the game and for situations specific to being tied down. I'll briefly summarize my current ideas: - [general] Log out timer (no instant disconnect) - [specific] When tied down, body will remain on server regardless of online status (logging out equals to passing out from a role-playing perspective) - [specific] When logging in to a new server after being tied down and disconnecting, you simply die (you have to log into the server in which your body resides, or automatically "respawn") NOTE: if you are tied down, you are no longer in control of your fate. Trying to circumvent the intended game mechanics won't work. That should cover pretty much everything. edit: Just for the record, if I was ever tied down and dragged into a car, I would stay for the experience. Of course I would also hope they would let me go, but if it would turn out to be more like a snuff movie, them hacking my legs with a hatchet, and transfusing me to be able to keep going... wow, that would be intense, terrifying, and awesome to have such emotions in a game.

Thanks! ^^ I did try to search for "subdue", "handcuff" and such but I didn't come up with anything. I guess previous suggestions must use some other word. Well sure, disconnecting would be a problem, but it's already a problem and needs to be dealt with. I'm sure there's a way to deal with it in a general sense, and that could fix the issue for subduing as well. As has already been suggested there could be a timer started when you wish to log out, and you won't disconnect until that timer has expired. And let's say the timer isn't long enough to help in a sniper situation, where you shoot someone over a long distance and it takes too long for you to get there (safely) before he could log out. Well already as it is, if you log out when you're passed out or bleeding you'll be passed out for a rather long time once you log in again. That's not enough, so let's say if you log out when you're bleeding or passed out you won't be allowed to log in for another... say 5 minutes (again, pulled out of my ass) and during that time your body will remain in the world. If during that time your character is subdued and restrained, what I said in my previous post would come into play, namely your body would stay in the world indefinitely (or perhaps it could be 1 hour, and the cuffs or knots or duct tape would have to be maintained to reset that timer) even if you're not logged in. This would be a bit complicated though, because let's say you log out at a time when you're bleeding and then you're cuffed but you don't know it. Then the next day you log into another server, not knowing you're cuffed in another server, which would lead to your character dying (as I explained earlier as well). But maybe you just shouldn't log out when bleeding/passed out. If you do, you might die and it might not be in your control. The system isn't perfect, but I'm pretty sure it could be worked out.

Wow the suggestion forum is active! My post got literally buried. :lol: Anyway, thanks for the feedback! Concerning being able to escape your bonds: maybe after a certain amount of time you could free yourself, but that time would be able to reset by maintaining the knots. I don't see it as a problem if you're not able to free yourself, I mean you could just as well be dead and it would not be in your power to stop it. This is no different. At any point you can throw in the towel and click the "respawn" button, but then you would lose everything. Rocket said (in the Rezzed Q&A) that he thought of gameplay firstly in the form of what kind of feelings he wanted his players to experience in the game. One of those feelings were frustration. Being randomly sniped in a field isn't any less frustrating than being kept in custody by some strangers, it's only different. Also, I was thinking about the option for people to disconnect if they are subdued. I think it would be fairly reasonable to, if subdued and cuffed (or otherwise restrained) then upon logging out your body would still remain in the world. From a role-playing standpoint it would simply be the character having passed out. edit: Though there could be an issue with this. If your body remains on the server you were playing on, what if you try to join another server...? Does it simply not let you? If it does, then your kidnappers lose control of you. Maybe if you switch servers you'll simply die. That seems like a reasonable solution, albeit a harsh one. LTL weapons and ammo is a good idea, so long as it doesn't affect the loot tables in such a way that it gets even harder to get a lethal weapon. Another thing I was thinking about was the implementation of dying at e.g. -2k blood instead of 0 blood. If it seems too unintuitive then the game could instead be rebalanced to where reaching 2k blood is the same as the current 0 blood, only now at 2k blood or lower your character will pass out entirely and slowly die unless you're given aid, and 0 blood is instant death just as it is now.