TheSushi

While I admit I think burst fire guns by and far are generally crap, I suppose it is only realistic given the US issues more M4s than M4A1s. It would be a nice way to force people to use semi-automatic fire. Well, the muzzle brake is a factor that's not really integral to the weapon. You could stick an AK-74 style brake onto an AR, or a Birdcage style brake onto an AK. That aside, I'm inclined to think the M4 is more controllable. The bolt-carrier group is in-line with the stock and centered in the gun body, while the AK family has the bolt on the right side of the rifle and the reciever is slightly offset from the stock, which angles downward, generating more muzzle climb. Not that either gun honestly recoils that much, though.

I dunno, maybe if we see armored cars and up-armored civilian vehicles it could be a good idea.

Interesting suggestion. I think that you should also maybe hold down a button to start bandaging / eating drinking (rather than spamming clicks rapidly) and it cancels if you let go early. Like bandaging in The Last of Us, Left 4 Dead and so forth.

Headshots versus other sorts of killing has been an ever-present debate in zombie games in general, but... either way it goes I won't support it till the zombies are somewhat stable and headshots are feasible for the normal person.

I do see that it's been said that the survivors are immune and can't really be infected, but from a purely gameplay perspective, having to kill your own zombie to recover your gear would add quite a bit of challenge and a punishment, that your gear could just run off and be taken by someone else, or that you might destroy it recovering it. It sounds more immersive and understandable than an aribtrary timer, too.

This might be an unpopular opinion, but I think accurately-rendered optics and guns would suffice, like in the base game ARMA itself. Like, in real life it's more a matter of research, knowledge and skill than owning a given laser rangefinder. Ideally I'd want someone to learn how to use mil-dots to calculate distance before simply plonking away with rounds, given they kill in one hit usually to begin with... Same with the lower-magnification sights. The ACOG and PU scopes already are designed to automatically provide elevation at a given range - you use the width of the chevron or the bars, compare it to the width of the the person and elevate accordingly. The difficult part would be allowing scope adjustment in a realistic manner - like, how would you display the number of scope clicks? As for ghillie, I really have no idea. On one hand, it's unreasonable to say someone couldn't make it, as early ghillie suits were made mostly from cut-up burlap bags and whatnot. But with the engagement distances and the amount of damage incurred from gunfire, I can't imagine it'd really help anything.

Hard to say I guess. I can't imagine they worked too hard balancing the nightime in a game built to have night vision goggles anyway.

Well, is a 12 hour or 8 hour cycle really unreasonable? When I played the mod it was pretty dark for me, comparable with SA as it is currently. Did that change at some point? One thing that did help quite a bit was red-tinted flashlights. So is it more of a flashlight issue for you? I think like, maybe having burning debris or gas lanterns randomly spawned, lit glowsticks, flares or the crash sites we saw in the mod would help by generating some ambient lighting to make a flashlight less obvious. After all, red-tinted flashlights are used because they more resemble naturally found lighting.

Before I get barraged with complaints about ammo being a beat to death topic, "ammo, ammunition, magazine, clips" are all very generic terms that come up on many topics in the search. I didn't want to spend an hour on search just to find if someone had made an ammo system thread recently. But if there is another thread with similar ideas, feel free to correct me. Essentially, the ammo system is a pain in the butt due to how Arma II is designed. I know modifying it is a coding nightmare, so this is probably just as much an idea for standalone as the mod. Basically, reduce the number of magazines you find, add bullet types and incorporate the element of reloading magazines. Nothing tedius - just clicking on your mags in the inventory to load them when they run low. Include a mag with the gun and you're set. This would just help the ridiculous scenario of finding a Beretta M9, then not having ammo for it because you can't take the bullets out of a Glock 17 mag. Or having 8 Makarov mags in the space of a Bizon mag. Just unload the bullets, toss the mag and run them through your own gun. This would be rather nice for shotguns too, where the glitchy ammo combination system makes picking up more ammo with a full-ish inventory a pain. Another helpful change would be how normal vs subsonic ammo in your guns is handled. It's very aggravating that you can't use M9 ammo in an M9 SD for example. A really severe example of this is the MP5SD - the gun is designed to reduce the velocity of its bullets even if you use normal ammo, so there is absolutely no need to use reduced-velocity ammo for it. But in general, no gun absolutely requires subsonic ammo just because it has a suppressor. It will still fire, it'll just be louder. It'd be great if you could allow a suppressed gun to fire ammo and have it not silence the noise as well - if its a life-and-death situation and you have to use what ammo you have, you're not going to care. Thanks for reading.

Ah, thanks for the correction.

Forum stickies said to make threads specific, so I split my ideas up. This is going to involve both the zombies to an extent but its mostly about the guns, insofar as damage, ammo they take and range. I used spoiler tags to reduce wall-o-text. Damage vs Players & Zombies TL;DR: Guns need to take at least a couple accurate rounds to kill people, even with 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm. One shot-kills with an AK or an outdated lever-action rifle because you hit somewhere in the chest isn't realistic. Range and Damage Drop-Off TL;DR: Assault rifles and the Winchester shouldn't do half as much damage at the ends of their ranges. Past 300 meters or so, they suffer hugely in accuracy and power. This should be reflected, so a suppressed M4 CCO isn't suddenly the best gun EVAR for everything. Also keeps a good niche for sniper weapons even with the changes I suggested before. Armor TL;DR: Ceramic body armor is a reasonable and realistic addition to the game. It stops working after a few bullets and is easy enough to find, plus self-balances in concept. Taking Damage A bullet even to armor can KO you instantly. They also break bones more than you would expect and generally do bad things that don't make insta-killing strictly necessary. Even if you hit someone in the stomach where the blood vessels aren't as rich as the lungs, you're probably going to break their pelvis, the biggest weight-bearing bone in the lower body and drop them like a sack of potatoes. Thanks for reading.

Well, its partially realism, partially balance.

Choking is generally very touchy. You can temporary close off the trachea to knock them out, but some people's airways / arteries are delicate and do not re-open easily. Its very easy to accidentally kill a person like that, which is why its uncommon in real life. I'd just go the splinter cell method - whack them in the back of the head with whatever you have handy to knock them out. Or the flexcuff idea from some of the other threads.

Sure. I realized it was a forum mod rather than the game creator himself though: http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/112986-walking-dead-concept/#entry1067124

I appreciate the giant, well-researched response, but it doesn't actually contradict the idea I was suggesting. If anything, it supports it. All cases you provided are examples of how grievously injured persons who were not killed cleanly with a single shot. They either lived or took some significant time to die. Exactly what I wanted to prove :) They were unable to fight. Yeah, that's the point. In Day Z, you just die. You're rarely incapacitated when shot. I think this is a flawed approach, and that shots should impair and put you out of action as described instead of instantly killing you. So thank you for the compelling evidence. Steel used for ballistic inserts tends to be a very specific blend not easily made with small tools. It's specifically formulated and treated to stop bullets. Plus, it shraps the heck out of you when you get hit. Though, historically the Russians did use stuff like SN-42 armor which was just stamped steel that could stop 9mm SMG projectiles at urban combat ranges. Throughout history, we've made numerous attempts at improvised bullet-resistant materials. Cotton vests were used at the turn of the centrury to stop some handgun rounds even, and before that there's examples of silken vests.

Admittedly, after the novelty wears off the loudspeakers on a helicopter are almost certainly going to become a method of micspam.

Yeah, BF3 has no wind. It just has lead against moving targets. Wind is rather complex, as you need to know the exact speed in MPH / KPH at the gun, between, and at the target to make the changes to your scope. You generally have handheld windspeed calculator, or a chart of wind speeds in the local area, plus shooting when the wind has a momentary pause. Just knowing the wind is blowing doesn't help all that much at long range. If the Day Z devs wanted to be super realistic, they could add a range card and simplify the process, but who knows how that would go?

Well, like I said in the post, the MP5SD6 was designed to use normal ammo, unlike other silenced guns. It has a very large suppressor with many expansion chambers. Like, that's literally the only reason it exists, and why people use it instead of sticking a suppressor to a normal MP5. We found 3 MP5 mags for an MP5SD6... and had the strange situation of not being able to fire normal ammo out of a gun that never need special ammo. It was insane. Introducing a new ammo type of the game is just one thing, but maybe just fixing what guns can use other ammo or can't would be the best thing short-term. Allowing the M9 to use more than just M9 ammo so its similar to the Glock, the MP5 issue mentioned above, the pain in the butt shotgun shell system.

So, what sort of mechanic in-game do you support in the end, then? If you've ever competed in a sport or simply had the bejesus scared out of and incurred minor injures in the process, you generally don't notice until afterward. I have a video on hand where a guy is shot twice and doesn't even fall down. If the URL isn't working, check out 14:35.This isn't my opinion, this a named medical professional giving a seminar. You can watch the entire video if you like (I'd warn it's got gore at parts for obvious reasons) and its highly informative on firefights and the nature of gunshot wounds. There's a lot of other incidents off hand, like for example, a man named Robert Butler was serving as a cop some time ago. He did a routine traffic stop and was shot in the ribs with a .22 LR. He didn't realize he was shot even though the bullet ricocheted off his ribs and punctured both lungs. He thought it was a firecracker until the guy that shot him ran off with a gun, and he started to taste blood in his mouth. He was still fully combat capable enough to carefully take aim and take four or five shots at the guy, the last one blasting out the bad guy's knee from over a hundred yards away. I'm just saying, if the mechanic needs justification for being able to take more rounds than there are now, in-game explanations are in place. Soft body armor and the probable existence of ceramic body armor. Arma II is very good with the effect of being shot at. The sound is immense and highly unnerving, plus guns are frightening hard to trace back. But dying instantly because of an intermediate rifle round to the general area of your trunk doesn't make sense nor offers much tension. In many situations in Day Z, all of that tension, heightened senses and shock can go right out the window. You're alive, then you die. Thanks for the feedback, but I'd ask you to read the post again. Basically, if you get hit in your vitals, dying instantly is a reasonable expectation. But being shot in the general area of your trunk and dying without a fight is not realistic. What I said was I believe that if they miss your vitals, 3 or 4 shots is reasonable for a reliable kill. I don't mean you can eat three bullets to the heart and trololol out of the ambush site because that's fun and all. And a single shot should still screw up your day. I stated that you should be punished for being shot with broken bones, crippling pain, severe bleeding and so forth - especially when you're shot in the chest. That is probably what I would call combat ineffective, a phrase I did not even use in the original post, FYI. So, a single shot should have the potential to make you "combat ineffective" from bleeding, pain, shock, etc. That number for 3 or 4 rounds is just how many hits I assume would be reasonable for a for-sure death if you miss the vitals, not to disable you (which takes less) but completely kill you.

That's a lot of replies, so gimme a bit to respond to them all.

I still prefer the idea I presented; have them suck up batteries at an incredible rate so that players who use them are forced to scavenge more.

Again, sorry if this is a common topic. I searched "battery" and "batteries" and nothing remotely related to adding them in-game came up. In short, I'd like it if batteries were added as a resource and implemented in a reasonable manner. Make them a toolbelt asset like matches that are finite and need replacement. I don't think this would overly affect flashlights, which would reasonably only need new batteries after very long runtimes. But where it would make a huge difference is NVGs and powered sights. NVGs are inherently battery-hungry. That's why the US and other countries don't give them special, proprietary high-capacity batteries, but common, less efficient AA type batteries. They run through them quick, so they are meant to be replaced regularly. I think this would solve the issue some players have with items like NVGs seeming like permanent upgrades. Since they don't break like they do in real life, death is the only way to get rid of them. In reality, NVGs have to be maintained and supplied with batteries. Making the energy finite would change NVGs from a player upgrade and essential camping implement to a special-use tool that has to be used when it makes sense, just like real life. IRL, NVGs tend to have a run time of about a day. IMO, 3 hours would be a reasonable time for a single set of batteries ingame. A flashlight in comparison could be like 10? Red dot sights are probably not an issue - the US Aimpoints have runtimes that last for several years unattended. Optics like the ACOG don't even use batteries. This also tied into an idea I had regarding generating power - you could use fuel to activate generators in cities that would turn on lights and such, as well as charge batteries. It would be a good reward for organized players and a way to make the existing gas supply more scarce.

Garrotes kill people by crushing their airways and large arteries that supply blood to the brain >__>

It's really not the fault of the mod devs or the Arma devs. Arma II is designed around a far slower and more methodical manner of play, hence the slower and more precise weapon controls. The zombies have speeds that were never meant for the game to manage, so the weapons handling will need to be tweaked accordingly in standalone.

Well, generally speaking, they give this impression you're supposed to remove anything that sticks in you. If you get shot and the bullet isn't actively posing a threat to your life, its often left in and you just bandage the resulting wound. So, wrapping the crap out of the wound in bandages is more realistic, if boring. Still, holding your hands over a gushing wound or using a knife to cut open a garment and apply a pressure dressing would add to the immersion.