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Hey Petward. I've read your thread, and I see it differs from mine in some basic points: - I didn't want to mess around with the bandit/survivor system. I see some merits to your suggestions, but I don't think player-killing or surviving should direct affect ingame skills (pain/fear or whatever). In my opinion, it should just affect the recognition of survivors or bandits, in that: the longer you survive, the easier it'll be for you to "feel" whether a player is a survivor or a bandit. For someone fully experienced, he should be able to spot someone else's bad intentions (or rather, dark past) from afar. This would make "bandit-hunting" easier, making the late game a more fun conflict between bandits (who kill and loot anyone) and bandit-hunters (who only kill someone who's already killed a survivor before) - I personally think loot-leveling should take a step back to skill-leveling. Loot is transferable from character to character, so you can just go there after dying and pick it up, or have some friends bring it to you, and you're good to go. If that character was alive for long and developing skills, tho, you'd feel more attached to him. Makes permadeath even harsher, and makes the storytelling and emotional range of the game approach that of our favorite zombie stories, rather than just being random faceless military men duking it out in the wasteland.

Sure! The idea is to get this big lump of fresh ideas and craft it into something better. Added most of the opinions to the original post, still accepting new ideas and critique. Added some questions, myself, which other posters could help to solve.

Don't worry, I'll be keeping my initial ideas in place for the records, but I'll add everyone's considerations to the original post. It's easier to keep track of suggestions this way. Besides, I'm not stuck to any of those beliefs, I'm debating the pros and cons.

Thanks! Please add to or criticize the suggestions as you see fit. True enough. A zombie shouldn't be able to run faster than a sprinting player (only to stop, try to attack, and then fall behind. The whole routine looks a bit silly), nor should they be restricted to walking indoors. A player should be able to evade a single zombie, even in town, if he's able to do so without alerting other zombies. The way I see it, towns should have some areas with zombies, and some areas free of them. Once a zombie catches sight of you, you should be able to run into a clearer area, lose line of sight, and then they'd forget you after a while. You should be able to lock yourself into a building and flee by the back door, or wait out until reinforcements come. If a zombie pursues you in the countryside, it should run as fast as you, and attack you if you ever stopped (which would be caused by depleting stamina), but it should also be slightly easier to hide from them in the bushes or behind cliffs) A full coyote should hinder anyone who used it. Again, difference between a novice in stealth and a pro shouldn't be that big. Not only is the full coyote filled with noisy stuff, it's also big enough to make stealthy movement hard (try not to bump your big hump against a shelf while navigating a cramped supermarket). That said, yes, a skilled player should be able to sneak with smaller packs without much problem. Yea. The basic principle is that, once we've established that there will be character progression through skills, then keeping loot should be less vital, and it should be possible to stash things more securely, so if you really like a certain piece of equipment, keep it in the safebox, and no one will take it from you (unless, that is, he's a skilled safecracker with a lot of lockpicks to spare). Overall I prefer skill progression over the current loot progression. Right now a DayZ char is no more than a walking collection of loot, so people will do all kinds of unhealthy things for loot alone. Server hopping, and loot cycling, particularly, could be reduced if loot meant a little less to the player. Thanks! I might make a part 3 later.

Accuracy would still mostly depend on the weapon and the player. You've probably noticed, however, that the character's hands shake when aiming, especially when zoomed in. Someone who never fired a gun would suffer from unsteady hands, from the weapon's knockback, and the general operation of the gun. Again, the idea is to have slight, not game-breaking differences, between a novice and an experienced player. Go into the woods, shoot a few cans, and you should be good to go. Weapon skills should be one of the fastest-climbing ones, especially given that practicing it spends ammo and makes noise. The problem I find is that right now every survivor can shoot, run, sneak, cook, perform surgery and repair vehicles like the best in each field. Never a failure, never a delay. Sure you could have everyone start piss-poor on all of these and then go up from there, but if we're including a "character background" feature in the game, then each character should be good in at least a couple of these things. On stealth, again: people should start sneaking at night or on calmer places, and only later move on to crowded cities and daytime raids. Resistance: having it higher is just a bonus so that experienced characters can focus on other areas of the game, mainly banditry or bandit-hunting, after having passed the basic survival phase (think of it as "the walking dead": early on, they're scavenging Atlanta for food and guns, later, they're managing communities instead). As it stands now, a new player can barely walk 5 km without dying of thirst. Either the counter has to be higher or there should be other ways to drink/eat without depending on canteens and wood/knife/matches. Eh. Maybe you should just stop caring about these suggestions, then? If people are suggesting it, it's because they want it. If they're ever implemented, you could stick to playing the current version. If they're not, we'll play it all the same. Furthermore, I don't see how adding mechanics would make Day Z any less "unique". It'd still be a survival simulator, only it'd be even deeper. Besides, if you'd read my suggestion you'd see there's nothing about "leveling up" here. It's just making the players work so they can achieve the level of knowledge they start with, in the current version, thus encouraging group play and creating more attachment to the characters. Right now, a character in Day Z is nothing more than a walking pile of loot; if he dies and you manage to recover all the stuff from he's body, you're basically playing the same guy. You'd be surprised to know how many experienced trekkers have died of exposure in the woods. Or how many limbs have been lost to an improvised "leg-fixing" surgery. Do you think any useless lump could bring a person who's been shot near to death back to full health? Because anyone in the game can do that right now, as simple as bloodbag-right click. Again, I'm aiming at survival narratives we have grown used to seeing. People dying of simple infections, groups needing the skills of a medic (hell, a veterinarian will do) in order to save a companion's life. I don't disagree with this point. It'd be harsher on new characters. I still think having character progression would make the game more interesting, and survival even more rewarding. Lololololol

Thanks for reading! I've just read your thread myself, and will post there shortly. Regarding the balance between new and experienced characters, I'd say the idea is exactly that: to reward surviving longer with better skills. The idea is that a new character should avoid hostile players and train up invading towns and killing zombies, especially at night, when he's less exposed to both zombie and pvp dangers alike. Think of it as being "green" and then graduating to be either a bandit or a bandit-hunter once your skills are up. If you want to go pvp'ing outright, you could pick primary weapon, sidearm, and melee as your skills, and you'd be close to on par with the veterans. Again, veterans could still die just as easily, since they're just as vulnerable to being shot, but new players without weapon skills would have a harder time hitting them. It would take a few tries, but once you got a character going, you'd be more and more involved with him, and the character would be more than a position and a backpack full of gear; he'd have filled a role, and then grown into the ideal survivor. The resistance skill is mostly based on a pet peeve of mine about how much these guys need to eat and drink in a single day. They're worse than newborn babies! A fresh survivor should be able to adapt and hold out longer (all the while even the base hunger/thirst levels should be toned down. maybe at 30% it would be the same as now, and then improve gradually to last at least double what it currently does) Yea, about the loadout, it could be easily ignored. Just custom-choose the skills and have everyone start with the bandage and flashlight. It's just a brainstorm, and I want to see if it could work, as it adds to the game's color, it could better appeal to each player's tastes in gameplay Yea, I just imagine myself in that position. I'd suffer a lot to gut and cook an animal for the first time. Also, medicine would not just involve applying a shot, I see the morphine injection as an abstraction for fixing a broken bone, and the blood transfusion as a full-on surgery (extracting bullets, sewing up gaping wounds, etc).

[ Actually, I think "strength" could be encapsulated into "endurance". As I replied above, being skilled in stealth would not just involve standing in the correct spot, but also avoiding unwanted noises when moving, and maybe being able to sneak with a fuller, heavier backpack equipped.

There, added some colors :) Regarding stealth, the idea is that development of all skills should be relatively slow, ie. it should take several stealthy town raids for a completely inexperienced infiltrator to become as good as the best. People are normally clumsy, make unwanted noises, topple over stuff when in buildings, or break random branches when in the woods. Avoiding these pitfalls could be obtained by sneaking for a few hours, ingame. This is to encourage groups to say "go, you're the sneaky one. get in that base, and if anything happens, I'll be covering you from outside." or "this area is too dense with zombies. only the burglar can get through". A new player who didn't opt for stealth as a primary skill could go into towns at night, when it's much harder for the zombies to spot you, and train for a maybe a week. A stealth expert might be able to get into the same town by day. What I'm thinking is it should take a couple weeks of regular play, for a character to reach top level on every skill. You could concentrate on sneaking for the first few days, which is really what anyone would do, unless he's out for player blood. Game-wise, the difference between "zero" stealth and "full" stealth might be a 20-30% decrease in zombie visual and aural detection radius. Nothing too drastic. Also, the burglar would be forfeiting the all-important medicine skill, so even with a +30 bonus to bandages, he might die to the very first scrape, if he's unlucky when applying a bandage. That's the beauty of the skill system: you will be very good in one thing, and will use that skill in order to get better in others and become a fully fit survivor. I'm not too sure on the loadout thing myself, either. It's just an idea to add to the roleplaying, making us feel like a character in a zombie movie rather than "military guy #8471". I also question myself about the beach. Maybe a mistery to be discovered? I toyed with the idea of starting different kits at different places, but I believe it could make the game less interesting (ie. every PvP'er picking up a soldier to start at Balota or airfield) Also, thanks for the link. Nice ideas there, too.

Yes to zed dismemberment! trails of blood would be great. Any trail, really... Maybe some way to track players and animals in the wild (tho I fail to see how it could be implemented without becoming a cheesy "glowy trail" kind of thing.

I agree. Add foraging to the game, but also add the small possibility for hostile animals (aggressive boars, bears, wolves). This would make going from town to town through the woods both more interesting, and more dangerous.

mmm. I killed a guy, myself, this morning. He was server-hopping (saw him once in a barn, he DC'ed when caught sight of me, and reconnected less than a minute later, so I got suspicious and shot him) and he had a [PK] clan tag. I didn't get a "murder" added to my count (it's still zero), so I'm guessing he was a bandit, and my gut feeling was correct?

Yea... I'd rather have blood restoration be slower, rather than faster. If you have a full stomach, it should slowly regenerate automatically. None of this magic barbeque we have right now; if you're down to 6k blood, you have serious wounds that have to close up and heal, and your body has to rest a while to replenish all that lost blood. Blood packs shouldn't even restore you up to 12k, imo. Maybe only up to 9k, and from them on you have to heal naturally.

You're entitled to your opinion, I'm entitled to mine. Why should I stop? That notwithstanding, a game that includes a true day/night cycle, hunger, thirst, several player stances, dozens of different equipment and whatnot, is hardly simple. The idea of character skills is there simply to add another progress path other than loot, and to cut back the superpowers of the original character (or rather, stop every single survivor from spawning as a super genius and super athlete), and the classes are just guidelines for a starter character, which could be entirely customized anyway.

Hey Petward! I've included suggestions on this same issue on one of my own brainstorming threads. Have a look and ssay what you think! http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/32851-brainstorming-new-features-part-1-character-evolution/

Nothing new, but I wanted to add my own opinions/experience, as a semi-newbie (been playing for about a week. haven't engaged in PvP save for being scared at distant gunshots, being run over by a jerk on a truck, and running the hell away from hostile snipers trying to cap my unarmed ass): 1- The Zombies are definitely harder to hide from, which might be ok, but there definitely seem to be some bugs in which either a ) a zed spotted you from too far even though you were hidden or b ) a Zed spawned within aggro range, in an area that was previously clear. 2- The spawning thing is key: they are spawning too close to the player and respawning too quickly in already-cleared areas! makes it almost impossible to make a town raid plan, and forces you to often end your town runs by simply running away. It's just not fun. 3- People say it's easier now to break off from a pursuing zombie; I've had zombies following me for miles and miles of countryside, even tho I was going up hills and weaving through trees. The only surefire way to lose them seems to be to run through a building, which feels pretty cheap and a bit retarded, imo. 4- There are instant-kill bugs going on. I play with a friend, and he died by himself, for no reason whatsoever, twice. Not shot by a player, not hit by a zombie, just walking around a forest, 12k blood, and "YOU ARE DEAD" screen comes up. I died similarly, but on spawn. I connected to a server and the first thing I saw was the YOU ARE DEAD screen. Not shot by a player, since I moved back there to find my corpse with all equipment and my nearby tent untouched. So, basically, I'd like to see some improvements in the spawning and pursuit mechanics for zombies, and of course some bugfixes for the insta-deaths and weird aggros, which are the only things that are really bothering me right now. Sure, some improvements to the food/healing systems, and later additions to the base-building could be good, but those would be secondary to fixing the fun-killing things I mentioned. I also think players should be able to easily find and pick up some very common items (chair leg, lead pipe, whatever) in order to have a basic weapon, weaker than the crowbar, but better than being pathetically unable to do anything to a zombie at spawn.