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I actually think a combination of these ideas could work together but I do think not seeing any from third person is a bit overkill; only people you could over-wise have seen from 1st person on the other hand I think would work in combination with players you've seen recently.

Yes I do agree; they are mostly likely only holding on to 3rd person for fear of loosing a chunk of their audience. Plus I think all the solutions you've just quoted/contributed are viable trade off's to balance the perspectives; perhaps a limited combination of all three would strike a near perfect balance.

Thank you someone; with some sense. I'm actual quite opposed to 3rd person only games for these exact reason but even have seen the benefits that 3rd person provides. What it does: is gives you a sense of awareness that 1st person on its own can't provide and is more akin to the level of awareness you gain from other abilities in the real world. Though I clearly comes with exploitative issues and its these that I've attempted to resolve. If you have any constructive criticism or improvements you think could be made please leave them.

Its a game 3rd person is currently a part of DayZ Standalone build (As far as the last dev post revealed) Rocket hasn't said that he wants it removed Rocket has on the other hand talk about balancing issues and has discussed changing it; this is an attempt to do so. If you don't like my opinion you can say so; just don't be hot headed idiot whilst doing so. When I Quote say "awareness" I'm not talking about it in the capacity of being a justification for the player's spidy sense like abilities its simply a side affect of having a larger field of view, both from 1st and 3rd person perspectives. I argue that in games like DayZ you need an increased FOV regardless of perspective; because over-wise you lack the awareness you need to gauge a situation.

Awesome idea but once people realise they have a tactical disadvantage by using them; they'll switch back to team speak. The only way people would actually use them is if they gave a advantage for doing so (maybe team members can use them to locate your position on the map) and were able to be secured. Then you could get into some of the things rocket talked about in the early days of the mod; having people actually hack channels and frequency's to gain access.

Yes people do, do that but for good reason. Games lack a sense of awareness that people get in the "reals" and it sort of fills that gap for them; so I'm attempting to find a way of keeping it without completely ruining the level of awareness it gives you but at the same time persuading people to use 1st person more actively to retain the immersion you get from an FPS. Hopefully as this systems is layout; people won't be able to just run through an area in 3rd person and unwittingly see over walls, where little John might be hiding with his hatchet. Hence it becomes a tool you can use to actively seek out cover, players or zombie but you can't just stubble across them.

Thank you for the suggestion.

Thanks for taking the time to read, I know there's a lot of rubbish but I needed to get it out of the way; over-wise people would bring it up and i'd be forced to back track. If you have any contributions to add; maybe some improvements to the core idea, then feel free to leave them.

To be honest a control change would probably be really easy; in fact i could probably set it up now for myself. The difficult part comes in binding those two keys together; so that when a player decides to change their layout it still works. It'd actually be much harder to tell the game not to render a player only in 3rd person; than it really would be to simply change a control. Anyway your starting to win me over; perhaps if you could see players that you've seen recently from 1st person then this would be once again a useful tool but the very fact that you are still able to roam around, across fields, hills you, name it in 3rd person: takes away from the immersion. Having to make the explicit choice of changing to 3rd person when its need; breaks up the decision process, making it a tool instead of a way of playing all the time. Essentially what this does; is it flips a coin, instead of using 3rd person to identify a player or zombie, then switching to 1st person to interact. The game would keep you mostly in first person with the option to switch to 3rd person but then by virtue of the control system be pulled back into the 1st person perspective.

Oh man you'll be glad you commented here; you can turn off the head bobble by going into: options, then game options and lowering head bobble down. Now go.. experience DayZ from a whole new perspective. :D

That kinda defeats the point of even having 3rd person; at that point you've eliminated 3rd person and forced the player to use 1st person at all times, instead of making it a tool to be used on occasions. Also its quite an artificial way for doing things, one that I don't think Rocket would approve of. I could however see it working in a limited fashion; like having the game only render characters up to a set distance from 3rd person but over-wise you may as well have removed it all together.

Yes i think we completely misunderstood each other and that's the source of our problem. Glad you like the concept on how I envisioned it working; though I think it might be time to make a thread up-date and jump in to specific mechanics of your system. You can quote or draw from my concept if you like.

I can tell just from reading the opening to your reply; you hardly even paid any attention to my post, the guy that gave me his beans on the other hand, clearly did. You don't need to be pissed; i like the idea but it needs to be refined and you haven't yet got into the specific's of the mechanics. If it is going to work as a feature; it needs a solid platform. First of all Rocket wouldn't even entertain the idea of basing combat of off probability or skill "points"; if it stands a chance of being taken on board it would need to be as player based skill and as organic as possible. So in other words very much player based; "quick time events" are just one possibility, not the best but still better than probability based events. Example of how I could see this working:

Yes if you learn to use it; its fine but in reality you don't get tied to walls when you stand next to them. And I don't mean to criticise but if in Gears of War you could move a away from a wall without having to press an additional button; wouldn't this then make things even more streamlined, smooth and realistic/authentic.

Hold back your immature hostilities; I'm not attacking you or your concept, I'm offering an opinion to refine it with. I think the way your idea is currently described would cause massive balancing issues. Basing a one hit kill (which is essentially what an instant knock out would amount too); in a game where a characters life is more meaningful than any other existing game. Is an absolute game breaking flaw, in any game let alone one with permanent death; were it would be intolerable for any player. Also to add in a variable that it might happen based on a random chance; would be mind bendingly frustrating for any player no matter which side of the engagement they fall on because whoever looses, will most likely end up being dead as a direct result. What i'm saying is: I like the idea of some sort of advanced hand to hand combat or non lethal attacks for player without weapons but what I'm trying to get across is I'd much rather the system be based on actual player actions being successful as apposed to them trying their luck and seeing what happens. Equally if the player being attacked is aware of it; they should be able to avoid it if possible, by their own actions. When suggesting a sort of "mini game" (I wasn't suggesting a prompt or an automatic get of jail free card; I mean to provide the player with tools to do so, if they are able to) or wrestling game style combat system to provide that player functionality; I mean to assume that all parties would not necessarily have equal opportunity to do so (in other words don't prompt a player to attack or defend themselves; just give them the ability too and the rest of the time leave them in the dark) Words of wisdom: skill based "anything" will never be apart of DayZ; it goes against everything Rocket is attempting to create in Standalone, all of these mechanics in his opinion (not mine) should be player based and organic.

I don't like the idea of leaving it to chance on whether or not you disarm, knock out or restrain a player; this is where mini games should have really came into their own. I think using a button timing or tapping system like you get in wrestling games would be perfect for grappling with another player; it'd be really lame if another player just ran up and knocked you out with no chance to defend yourself.

Really No, in no way should you get more health but i think you hit on a good note; players should get something for playing the game longer and being successful, only I would do it a bit more organically. Perhaps the older your character gets the more acclimatised they become. For instance: Maybe your beard and hair grows; decreasing the affects of the cold If you mange your diet, sleep (logged in=waking hours/logged out=hours slept) and excise; then this affects your immune system/recovery time, eye-sight/physical fatigue and endurance Maintaining personal hygiene: trimming hair/beard, cleaning/washing; lowers infection rates Maintaining/using weapons and equipment; increases functionality, speed and precision The more you invade the zombies the more silently you can move around them

I really like the idea of cover in a game and by extension blind firing too; the only problem is that there tends to be a trend towards one type of cover system and it comes with some inherent problems. The two systems are as follows: the well known Gears of War style sticky cover (which limits usability and increases the clunk factor) and the lesser used system present in early Call of Duty games, the new Far Cry and of course Arma. The latter of these systems is fragmented and comes in two variants; the Arma/CoD "press to lean" method and the newer Far Cry system "active lean" method as I'll nick name them. The reason I bring both these systems up is because I believe in order to get this systems right; the industry needs to reach a consensus on the mechanics of both methods. As of now the second system is kinda a mismatch of ideas; to reach a consensus you first need to set the ground rule. Perhaps DayZ can be the game to set them and it starts with ideas laid out here by the forumer's. Here's my suggestions of some ground rules: Controls and animations:

I really want to see some organic zombie progression; as oppose to having different zombie types. To give an idea of what to expect; the slower the zombies are, the older they are an more decomposed they are.

More aiming dead zone options would be great a minimum threshold would be useful too.

yes I've watched it: I picked up on them too, hence the reason why I'm making some of the suggestions that I have made.

I didn't call it a solution; farming loot would just be more difficult, you either take what you find go somewhere else or hop server and if you don't like what you find first time round, change again. Plus hopping server to server takes significantly longer than being able to farm on one server and there's a limited amount on a hive; which means you eventually have to either do things the proper way or wait for all the sever to restart or hop on a server on the off chance it spawns loot where you log in. And regardless of my opinion; the ability to farm is gone anyway, because the server controls loot spawn now; so if you clear loot in one spawn its hardly likely to respawn right where you farmed it. Also as the loot spawn as individual items now and isn't bound to a static position its just as likely to respawn else where.

Read more carefully; fresh loot would always be spawned on restart regardless and other items have to be consumed; allowing them to respawn. All this does is make loot more valuable and slows players ability to meta game the system. Plenty of loot would still be available; you'd just need to actually look for it; as opposed to go high value loot spawn, find DMR, go cherno kill fresh spawns. Increasing the difficulty just means; a heavier focus on survival (as that is what the games about) and gives a real reason to approach or kill other players.

Got to say i think what they've done by smoothing out the animations is exactly the right approach but I feel some other animations should have more significance. Most all things should still be able to be canceled on the fly but perhaps rather than taking longer to complete they should require more preparation. For instance if you don't have a knife; it should take a few short whacks of a tin on the ground to open it as opposed to using your knife to save time and food. Also food should last longer meaning you can't just consume a tin in one go instead taking quick bites at any chance you get. Or if you use bandages quickly; their effect on stopping blood loss should be limited and use more resources, to complete the task quickly.

I'm, not about to pull any punches; so I'm going to open by saying I intent to put forward an idea(s) which is intentionally restrictive to the player: concerning maps and navigation. This suggestion may have been; spawned though some personal bias I have with the game or it could even be the product of a hint left by Rocket in his latest blog post video. Now if I were a betting man; I'd be willing to stake my reputation on the direction Rocket is looking to take maps in and if I know our man I'd bet against him making things easy; for example meeting up with teammates, finding high value loot. First of all on the less restrictive side: I'd like to see some of the current Arma II map feature moved over to DayZ standalone in a more authentic eventuality. For example keep map tags but have them restricted to your own map and only enable you to share them at set location; such as tourist sign post locations. Allow for map markers to judge distance but have them be reliant on the player having identified their location to up-date their estimated location to that point. Also mapping events like: finding cars, players but only when the player positively witnesses an interaction or interacts with an object like a car or tent, is it mapped. Second an additional feature: Rocket has spoke several time about; how he has an expansive amount of data on players, including heat maps and kill/death maps, which I'd like to put to some use. I mostly agree with his decision to keep this information pirate but I also think; he should allow players the tools to map this information on their personal maps/hand books and share this information via set in game locations; showing a small unique snap-shot of the overall picture. This feature would be vastly important; it would organically establish which areas are considered safe and which are a complete free for all, without forcing some sort of no fire zone: as with lesser games. Thirdly; make using and finding a map much more hardcore. This is the part I'd be willing to bet rocket has planned or at-least something similar. I'm betting/hoping all the complete overviews of Chernarus plus map will remain internal and the only way to gain a somewhat complete picture,would be by pooling together different resources and memorising details. So that said, I in-vision maps as extremely rare items; utilising many components to create a semi complete one: Military aerial surveillance maps, showing details like terrain heights and military objectives Civilian, road, town, tourist and train-line maps Naval charts Industrial access blueprints, for tunnels, underground rail/power-cables and sewage pipes Star maps, solar and lunar cycle charts To clarify, when I say extremely rare I mean: you may only ever find a torn out AA guide page of a high way section and a fairly useless height map of a mountain in the far north. Everything else would have to be filled in "automatically mind" as you discover new ground and the accuracy to which, should be jugged simply by how high you were when it was added. Also the ability to tag locations on a blank map; would be a way for seasoned players to get off to a heads start, by guessing the locations of known areas. You could also add to this information by visiting signs and tourist map sign posts of the area and collecting the precise location and additional info from other players. Plus asking a stranger for map information is another way to encourage positive social interaction; as well as killing anyone straying into certain map limits to cut off the flow information available surrounding a potential camp sight. In this scenes Maps become something of an end game item; whilst simultaneously, prolonging the scenes of discovery and helping keep other end game items hidden safe (And this is where my personal bias come in) "hoard" the one or two cars and tents you've worked so hard to have acquired.