sixfeetgiantbunnyrabbit

I'm not the first to suggest this but what if the solution in this zombie survival game would be ... zombies? Make them attracted to dead bodies accomplishing several things (in theory) : Make it harder for your friends to defend your corps especially when ammo is rare. It would be more punishing for lone wolf players but surviving on your own should be hard. They were looking for incentives for players to team up anyway. Zombies being attracted to dead bodies would greatly accompany the buzzing flys sound, attracting other players as well along the way making it even more of a challenge to defend the gear on said corpse. And if zombies get attracted by the ensuing gun shots they may draw a visible zombie line across the region, raising even more attention to the scene thus creating little dynamic hot spots on the map for players to fight out. So in most cases the most viable option would be to quickly grab whats important and then get the hell out of there (or as a lone wolf decide if it's even worth the risk to rush back to your body), depending on the quality of the gear of the killed player, putting you on the spot to make tough decisions, another goal of the game. So yeah, zombies.

Whenever I came across the Heinz Beans Cans in the supermarket I used to get a very comfy and somewhat safe feeling. Would have been great marketing on their part if they chose to support the game. If shit hits the fan grab a Heinz Beans Can.

If I were to create a game of this kind and magnitude I most certainly would implement a sleeping and resting mechanic. It would basically send the character in a sleeping state upon disconnecting, while still removing it from the game world as it is right now. Disconnecting for 6 hours (not for every 6 hours of log out time) your character would regenerate a certain amount of health ranging from 0% of health regeneration upon relogging, after at least 6 hours of off time, to 50% of regeneration (if you are minus 7000 blood you would regenerate 3500. After entering the game for no matter how long and then logging off again for at least another 6 hours you would regenerate 1750 blood and so on. Therefore you wouldn't be able to regenerate to full health solely through sleeping and the process would take significantly longer the healthier you are), all depending on the state of your resting place. In a somewhat comfortable bed you will get the full bonus and logging off in the middle of nowhere will not grant you any regeneration boost at all. (In my hypothetical game there would even be a 50% damage to your health in said situation.) Then there would be certain kind of meds, such as sleeping pills for example, as someone suggested in this thread already, to counter some of these effects, when you are forced to log off outside of a saveplace. And to add further incentive to look for the benefits of a home to return to once in a while and to maintain, you should only get the full amount of regeneration after properly barricading a shelter. If someone breaks your barricade while your logged off (or simply away on adventure) you will not suffer any repercussions but to simply have to re-barricade your shelter again to get the full amount of regeneration bonus again. Barricading a shelter should not be limited to locking the door by the way. A fully barricaded house with all its resting benefts should expand to boarding up broken windows and reinforcing the door and whatnot. So there would always be houses and shelters that require less work than others and re-barricading a broken door after someone entered your shelter while you were sleeping is much more practical than setting up camp somewhere else. Logging off in the wilds with a tent and a campfire for warmth could be quite comfortable and grant you a signifcant health boost upon relogging after at least 6 hours, but there would always be the risk of getting spotted by another survivor, for as long as the campfire is still burning. He wouldn't be able to kill your character after he found your sleeping place because your character wouldn't be in the game while you are logged off, but he would be able to loot your equipment until it vanishes with the campfire. A tent would grant the most health boost in the wilds but would be persistent throughout your entire log off time, exposing your equipment. So there is another risk/reward situation. And you wouldn't set camp automatically everytime you log off, you would be asked by the game if you want to and only after you click yes your character will automatically take shelter in whatever situation your in at the time (sleeping in bed, setting up camp, sleeping in the dirt, with vor without a campfire,...). When you are at full health you don't have the need to set up a fancy camp and risk your equipment being found while you are sleeping. You can keep "being on the move" while your logged off. These resting effects dependant on your sleeping place could have a lot more effects on your gameplay: you could get tired from sprinting more quickly, you could be forced to carry less weight to counter said stamina effects. You could have to eat/drink more to keep/get your health status, and so on. With this mechanic there would almost be an infinite number of ways to simulate a real life survival situation. One could even implementiert a mechanic for players with longer survival time to need less sleeping or getting more health bonuses upon sleeping, making a long lasting survivor more valuable than only the sum of his (quite easy to replace) loot. Shelter, be it only to protect you from weather conditions or to keep you more hidden than sleeping in an open field, is one of the most basic needs. (Almost) every living creature resorts to a shelter in one way or another. Combined with getting food (already covered in dayz) and reproducing (not fully implemented in dayz yet) it's all there is in life for almost every species, propably including human beings right after an apocalypse of some kind. So yeah, i'm all in on a sleeping and resting mechanic!

It would be fun to play a game where your sanity is some sort of ressource just like energy, health and whatnot. Just imagening having a player in your group who is the "did you hear that?"- guy or the "dude, i tell you there was an armed man in the building" - guy who sincerly beliebtes what he saw or heard because, well he saw/heard it. But maybe dayz isn't the game for this mechanic. I'd love to experience that in whatever game it is, be it dayz or some other (survival oriented) game.

I don't claim this idea as my own since surely somebody else before me came up with this but I think the game itself can take care of this problem: let the infected be attracted by dead bodies. Shortly (5-10 minutes?) after a player dies a handful of zombies will gather around the corpse for lunch. Which makes sense since it is the easiest accessible source of food around (hence the upcoming zombie mechanic where they simply get bored of chasing you around forever and give up sooner vor later). If you're in a group your mates can try to defend the body against the incoming zombies which could attract even more of them depending on your weapons of choice, which would fit in very well when ammo is becoming more scarce in the future, so your group would have to make important and difficult decisions, whether it's worth it to spend ammo and/or risking further injuries to other groupmembers. Or they take whatever seems most important and get the fuck outta there. And if you're alone you can't just simply run straight back to your body because you wouldn't be able to fend off the infected munching on your previous character. Depending on how strong future iterations of the infected will be of course. So yeah, proper zombies could be the answer to this problem at least to some extend - as they are to a lot of yet unsolved problems in the game. Who would have thought that about a zombie apocalypse game/simulater...

Very casual gamer in general here happens to play by these exact rules too. And never loot your own body.

civilians yes, Chernarussians not necessarily.

Reading a map is more than just reading road signs. It´s by design that you feel lost in the world of Chernarus. Rocket mentioned it a while back in the days of the mod as a key element to the survival concept of dayz and that he wanted to even get rid of the little info you got after spawning in game telling you the name of the nearest city/town. And booom, the standalone doesn´t feature any indicators of your location whatsoever. It´s not a mistake the devs made or something they forgot to implement, they did it on purpose. They even named reading a map off of certain landmarks to find your location as a reference on how skills in game should work. (yes, the current map centering on your location has to go and it propably will). It´s you who should do the surviving not your avatar after you ordered it by pressing a button. That´s where the devs come from and that´s obviously (and in my case hopefully!) where the game is trying to head.

Quality music is not defined by the amount of sales either, so here is hoping...

Right now the game is obviously meant to be played with the ingame map, hence the existence of the lootable ingame map, so it's you who steps out of the game using an online map, which is fine by me by the way, it's your decision and it takes nothing away from my playstyle. So it's you who has to take action looking online for a map, not for me to NOT look at a map. Having to find the ingame map is apparently part of the concept and I'm sticking to it because I get the most out of my gaming experience. Glitching through floors and walls is also useful because it gives you an advantage but I decide not to do it. Teamspeak is obviously a very useful tool but I decide not to use it. Turning up brightness is also useful at nights but I decide not to do it *. Just because it makes things easier is no argument to implement it. This is not like purchasing a hoover because it makes your life easier and more convenient. I'd of course definetly be for purchasing a hoover because I don't want my life to be about dusting the floor. But I don't use external gadgets (an online map for example) in dayz because I want my dayz experience to be about exactly that struggle, finding my way around adversity of any kind. It's certainly not something the devs haven't thought of yet, the lack of a permanent map is by design. And for the record I'm not argueing here. You asked for players that don't use anything other than the ingame map and here I am, a real life example. We are few but we exist... * (three things not intended by the game I WOULD have a problem with because they certainly do take away from the gaming experience.)

I used an online map for a few sessions way back in the mod but never used one since Lingor Island came out. Being lost adds a lot to the survival experience. And playing only a few hours every other week, and painfully sucking at these games, makes everything still feel unknown and fresh. A prolonged dayz rookie experience, so to speak. Having a map on spawn would take that away from me.

What about if you fortify your base let's say with a lock and it would normally take 10 minutes for an intruder to take that lock down by force, the duration or effort for this process, and therefore the noise and vulnerability to be spotted by zombies and other players, doubles when you logged out inside of your own base, at least simulating your efforts to defend your base while being offline. Same goes for barricaded doors with wooden planks etc. and maybe even the damage caused by traps. However this effect, and the strenght of your lock/planks etc., degrades over time even if your offline, forcing you to maintain your fortification once in a while. With this concept your base would never really be unraidable (which it shouldn't be) but definitely harder to invade when your willing to protect it, which would make your barricaded stash even more of a home because you would be more likely to stick around it to log off (going to sleep/rest?) inside. And if you don't, cause you're going on an adventurous mission to some military airbase or to find that elusive vehicle part, and don´t make it back to your place the same day, you do it on your own risk, forcing you to make one more of these "tough decisions" rocket more than once said this game should be/is about, and making you plan your trips in advance. Doubling fortification values is definitely not a realistic approach but maybe in the end an authentic one? edited for some horrendous german/english autocorrect suggestions...

none. I don't intend to spontanously start to KoS. I play this game because of the random player interactions and there is little to none interaction when you KoS. Holding someone at gunpoint is a different subject though...

One player, back in the mod on Lingor Island. I felt like i had to protect my Jeep. Turned out he was no thief and not even a threat whatsoever because he was unarmed, but a mere survivor being too curious for his own good. I felt bad. I even moaned his loss screaming "why him!" at the dayz gods... But i propably made up for my mistake by being killed approximately 5 to 6 times by more aware and especially more skilled players than me.

Good to know that at least amazon will still be live and kicking after the zombie apocalypse. actually: best thread yet! wanted to start a library after storage of items would eventually be implemented successfully. Don't know what else these tents could be used for. Will report as soon as i find/want something interesting (on a random hardcore server btw.)