OW22

Chemlights should be used to keep track of groups. Blue chemlights have the least range of light, and are used in night situations mostly. All you do is give your group chemlights, they turn them on, and you know who's who. Also, if DayZ goes standalone or even in the eventual development of the game, there might be a sort of character customization. DayZ is pretty roleplay demanding, so creating a character that fits you would be advantageous, considering other players could assess you based on appearance initially, and it makes players feel tied to their character. About the disconnecting, waiting a minute or two is completely ridiculous. Say I was in a town, and a zombie was coming up to me and attacked me while waiting to disconnect? That's not fair. I shouldn't have to secure my location and then go into the forest or something just so I can quit the game. What if I need to leave quickly? Now you're going to say "No you can still fight while you are waiting to log off." That's really unstable and dangerous to the server and game. Waiting maybe 5-15 seconds not-moving might be better. If you are in any other place that will give you detected in 15 seconds, that's your fault. Also, once you are hit, the timer for the log off should go to zero and you are back in the game, and can move (as a safety feature in case you are attacked by a stray zombie). As well, if you see a player or zombie coming, you should be able to press any button or move the mouse to return into the game. All in all, I do think players disconnecting than facing death is a problem, because it ruins immersion, is unsportsmenlike, and all together is just unfair and can be fixed without too much trouble.

Love this post, and the community. Most people that play this game actually ask for something to be harder, in contrast to the minecraft community that makes the game incredibly easy with all the requests to soften things up. It seems to me there need to be some steps before anyone could consider this. First off, people need a way of identifying friendly players. I have suggested player callouts in my suggestion thread. You press a bound button on a keyboard to have your character in-game say something like "I'm friendly!" or "Are you a friend?". Once people can identify threats, you need a way that people can obtain more ammo in a different way than item respawns. Servers tend to get a lot of unique players. If those players go in, then there are new players, and all of them get some ammo, the ammo count runs out quickly. We would need a solution to get ammo in another way but the spawns that presumably give to much ammo out. If DayZ had classes, a "crafter" class may be an order to obtain bullets (but then you'd need a crafting table, smelter, and anvil and all that guff that would be impossible, not to mention bullets are made by many people at once or an assembly line, correct?). If not, bullets may have to be found on respawning zombies, or some different ingenious idea. Now we solved 2 problems: people murdering for no reason or being too scared to find out what the player will do, and running out of ammo on the entire server once it's all used. If DayZ becomes standalone, like Rocket said in the presentation at Razzed, putting working melee weapons in would be a good way to cut down on bullet usage, especially on zombies. I'm not going to pass this as THE solution, and say problem solved. Obviously not. There are things I know I don't see as a problem, but with ideas like these if rocket and his team comes up with some, I'm sure he could put this feature in. Even though I'm usually running away from zombies that detect me now anyway, it'd sure be nice to have more of a reason to.

Nice idea. Don't listen to the people who will say, "But if the fireplace was still hot it would burn you!"

You're lucky you can play this game. All I can do is watch videos, since my video card is dead and the capacitors blew. It'll take all summer to get a new computer, and then I'm just going to wait to see if Day Zed transfers to ArmA 3. This game is the game I've explained to my friends before I knew it existed. The elements, the gameplay, the situations, everything. You don't know how frustrating it is to see the game you've waited for and can't play it because.... and I quote.... "shit happens". Enjoy it.

When you kill a few zombies, regardless of inflicted injury, your character starts huffing and hyperventilating for a bit. If this could be hear within a certain range for both players and zombies, it gives you something to think about when you do this, that you may be discovered. This happens I think (the erratic character breathing) because it's intense, and you could've just died. Same with players, only you killed another survivor like yourself. So the more intense it gets upon the resolution, the more freaked out your player will be. He doesn't have to be fumbling around and going crazy, but sure as hell he's freaked out. That's all it needs to be, breathing a bit scared. You have to carry on no matter what.

Fact: In Day Zed, you are a civilian. Fact: Some people are good at cooking, some people aren't. Relevance? Sure, you are a civilian in Day Zed, but some people are better or more potent in some areas than others. Say you had civilian classes? You could be a doctor, and administer bloodpacks to yourself and others. Engineers could repair vehicles. Hunters are better at wielding long guns, and policemen are better with one-handed guns. Lumberjacks (or some equivalent) are better with melee weapons. Runners have better agility, and can vault, run, and move a bit faster than others. Pilots can pilot helicopters. These are examples of could-be classes. There is no Marine, Medic, Soldier, Special Ops, or ect, but a bit more realistic skillsets. These classes have special skills and can affect how you play. No characters are at a disadvantage to what abilities they can do, but some are better than others or can do things some can't. Take the runner. He can run faster than some for a time, but does not have the skills of the doctor or hunter. This affects how he will play. Most likely, he will play the game defensively, and evade trouble, or work as the get-go-guy, the one who goes in, gets supplies, and then gets out, fast. He's not any worse at weilding guns, driving, making fires or anything else, although he cannot repair vehicles or helicopters or drive them. The other classes would also affect gameplay styles, but wouldn't make them impossible. Teams wouldn't HAVE to form to survive, but are much better off if they exist. The skills players value would come out, and make things interesting. Let's face it; not everyone can repair vehicles, give blood transfusions, pilot helicopters, and the like. And this feature wouldn't be a burden. It's fun! You get a specialty skill and use it to your advantage to survive. There might be a lot of doctors, but that only gives them a different specialty skill, and some others are better suited to take them out. Even if ALL these classes don't sound good, why not atleast cover the basics? Doctor that can use bloodpacks, engineer that can repair vehicles, and a pilot that can only repair helicopters and pilot them. This of course isn't great, and I like my first idea of classes better, but neither are set-in-stone, and it's just a suggestion. The point is to show you how classes could work out in the game, and how you could benefit from them.

Level up, you say? Here's my point of view. You are in a zombie apocalypse. Or maybe post-zombie apocalypse. You don't have much ammo or maybe a gun at all, and you've barely had any experience with it regardless. You are a civilian. When zombies run up to you, they should look terrifying. They should make you want to turn and run. In fact, you often want question yourself if you aren't killing your fellow man. Seeing these things are horrific, with their rotting bodies and their blood curdling growls. You live in fear, shooting humans out of fear that they may not be your friend, and hiding in corners at the slightest sound, afraid the undead have found you. Supplies are low, your hungry, thirsty, sleep deprived, and scared. If anything, your insanity should level up. Don't you hear your character huffing and hyperventilating when he kills some zombies? He is SCARED, not hurt. Sure, you'd get better in real life, but very slowly, not to mention your condition is really bad already. I'm not trying to be all "a-duh it's completely unrealistic a-duh" and I'm not trying to insult you. It's just that a lot of people are all about killing things and forget about the consequences. It takes a toll. So if you want to go "realistic" that way, you have to go both ways, and that just won't be fun.

No backpack? Sure, that's fine. Not EVERYONE would have a backpack in this situation. As for spawning items, what would everyone have? A flashlight. How about 1 food and 1 soda? People would definitely have atleast 1 bandage. But with no weapon, I cannot stress that they should start you with some empty tin cans and ect so you can throw them to distract zombies! With no weapons you need to lure them away so you can pass and find some. Stealth sometimes is just not enough. Also, as for realism, at how far the zombie infection has spread in Day Z, your character would of eaten food by now, and you might've kept the trash. And when you have nothing in real life, you'd pick useless crap up first. Eventually they might start you off with absolutely nothing but the empty items with low hunger and thirst. That would be a challenge. Shortened version: Spawning with no backpack is OK. We should have a few spawn items, including some items that act as a distraction to help in the journey to find items.

The problem is that doors you can enter can be open or closed, so they count as entities because they can change within the game environment. Your character is also an entity within the environment, so some conflicts can occur. This should iron out eventually, but keep in mind the mod is alpha, the mod is huge (in two ways, since the map is 255sq km, and there is a lot of features). As for the tree, well, that's alpha and seems to be a rare occurance. Same thing with the fence. Dunno if fences and trees count as entities, or if they were placed as items in the game, but ArmA 2 already has a buggy engine. The fact there's an unstable mod installed as well is enough to experience odd things. First one to take a screen pick of flaming dogs falling from the sky in-game will win $100000 (in ski-ball tickets)!!!

The zombies in Day Zed have had a lot of talk going around referring to their movement. Watching videos, the zombies movement to me looks DEMONIC, as opposed to everyone's "glitchy" complaints. As for their running, it puts pressure on you and they are hard to hit when they are running. There's no point if you can hit 'em between the eyes from 30 yards away. You don't want to have to engage them, so them running at you is reason enough not to. They do zig-zag, but if and when the zombies can move diagonally, it will be fixed right quick. Most of the going through doors and glitches like that with the zombies are in the process of being rectified. The mod is in ALPHA. There will be a lot of bugs and glitches, but once the mod goes beta and finally release, everything should be fixed and how it is intended.

I would absolutely love to see in Day Zed: the ability to use certain keys on the keyboard to activate a player callout. This would make the player in-game say something that can be heard by zombies and players alike that are in range. This would be used to say something like, "Follow me!" or "Get down!", and especially, "I'm a friendly!". You can already yell out in the game with a microphone, but some people are lacking, and what if you need to say something quickly? Another thing I'd just like to see is hostile animals, or zombies in the wilderness. Players in Day Zed could survive a night outside with no towns around pretty easily, since the zombies tend to stay near civilization. Putting hostile animals in which some roam daily and some nightly gives players a reason to stay closer to towns, or go hunting for animals. This also gives players the need for shelter, although any animals should be as easy to kill as any zombie. In turn, more players flocking to towns when danger rears it's head means more encounters, more action (or tension), and more fun. Not really an idea I support 100%, but hey, if it turns out to be good, then that's awesome. In Day Zed, you can place down barb wire and make fences, make fires and the like, so why not have the ability to barricade doors with the appropriate tools? And of course, that's also where the crowbar comes in. Edit 1: I haven't heard anything about adding female zombies to the game. There's already female player skins, why not add some female zombie skins? Adds some diversity, and, as the game emphasizes on, realism. Edit 2*: Traps such as bear traps (actually now included in game) or snares (as far as I know snares are not), for players and animals alike. Edit 3: Since global chat is going to be out, what if there were walkie-talkies and radios for communication between players? They would take batteries, of course. Obviously, you can use TeamSpeak, but for players you don't know or if you just want more immersion, this might be a little bit more fun. Hey, these are suggestions, so I'd love to hear your opinions. Just don't get nasty.

Thanks a bunch! Did some editing since you've posted, too!