TheSushi

... Hueys? Humvees? M4s? Remington 870 shotguns with Surefire handguards? American joint services bandages? M67 fragmentation grenades? Anyway, I know you meant adding new weapons, but I don't think an AR-15 would really do anything worse than what is already there. It's very easy to add, too - add a duplicate of the M16 or M4 with only semi-auto.

Just a question for you: If you were out and training newbies and ran into some player(s) with some pretty high-end guns, how would you have treated the situation?

It would be neat to find random cargo dumps too, at any rate. Imagine finding a crate that had zombies locked in it for some military experiment when you're expecting ammo xD

To be fair, when so many people just look for a sniper rifle and PK, I'm not sure that's a bad thing - making sniping more involved.

Funny thing is, the bullet drop in Arma II is very accurate to the real weapons. But yeah, windage is a big factor, as is having a well-prepared position. However, I wouldn't take the advantage of using a bipod or a gun rest too far - or you would create a worse gap in performance between a sniper and the guys trying to shoot back. I personally think the large issue is weapon damage, and I'm posting a thread about that in a sec.

Well, that's an ironic example because (TWD spoiler)

I think one possibility is if you kill a lot of dudes and get bad humanity every single game, you get a bandit skin and a negative karma when you start another game. This isn't permanent, but you'd have to make your average humanity game-to-game normal, or work hard to build that humanity back up when you enter a new server. So it's not a long-staying mark of you being a evil person, but an inclination to be on the less humane side if you are that sort of player.

Yeah, like I said. If you look at Battlelog and BF3, for example - the built in chat is obstrusive and nobody uses it. But text chat would require alt-tabbing at least, right? And it's not feasible to TS with a crowded server. So, I think its worth a try at least on the text-based radio angle.

The thing is, there's no real reason to add a garroting wire or a spinal stab thing except to humiliate people. You can just shoot them in the back of the head for a custom kill. I think people are more asking for a way to use the hunting knife (which is vaguely limited on functionality) or kill zombies / soldiers they snuck up on a bit easier.

I think that's a fantastic idea, GeneticFreak. Zip ties will eventually break. The reason we use them for law enforcement today is for use in scenarios where there's tons of people, so you need to carry lightweight cuffs, and you can generally have them restrained in quick order. Perhaps your could cuff a player if you got behind them, or if they laid down on the ground and removed their weapons. This would allow a lot more ambiguity with the morality system. So, you have some randomized timer, anywhere from 5 to 20 minutes for example - more than enough to GTFO after you've taken some stuff, not too much of a liability to the enprisoned player in a lot of scenarios. A random chance of dying if you quit wouldn't be a bad idea, leaving your lootable corpse behind for someone else to find for a short period of time. Contary to blindfolding, allowing the player to see while bound is a lot more drama, IMO.

Many text or broswer based games allow users to add messages to walls or scenery with spray paint cans. I think that would be a cool idea, plus maybe having dry-erase boards or scraps of paper to leave notes. Putting messages in the environment seems like a very basic thing to add that would really enhance the sense of immersion.

Given that using a hatchet takes up the primary weapon space, a secondary melee weapon of some sort would just be nice when you're trying to kill a lone zombie. Just make it do negligible damage and have a fast attack, killing with 1 or 2 hits to a zombie if you strike the head. You could also make the animation have a brief wind-up for a more powerful strike if you got the drop on a human player or zombie.

On removing canteens, I think the inability to carry water with you aside from canned beverages is a bit unrealistic and unfair. There should be other ways to balance it. Here's an idea - what about finding water filters that have to be replaced to drink out of ponds (which are absolutely filthy) and such. Additionally, make it so canteens can be filled during rain if you stand around for long enough while it pours. That, and generally speaking in an environment like this there should just be more water in general. In undeveloped / rural areas, water storage tanks and wells should be a lot more common. Meat spoiling is not a bad idea. There should be some time constraint for you to cook the meat by, so it's not some leisurely job to take down an animal and get some food off of it. A random chance of not getting meat (simply popping the bladder of the animal you gut can spoil the entire thing) is also realistic and fair - it adds some risk to tracking and shooting animals. Making the matches more finite is definitely a good idea. Make the matches have anywhere from a few to a dozen uses - you use more than a match to light most fires, sometimes an entire box if its wet out. There's also the idea of depopulating an area by over-hunting, but I think that might be a bit flawed - I mean, you have no real way to know what areas are being wiped out by other players.

A dynamic a few games I have played before is having to build or upgrade to radios. The Last Stand: Deadzone (which I helped beta test) recently added a feature where you must upgrade to a battery array and build radio parts to access the global chat. Building or finding civilian band radios in day Z to access the global chat would be an interesting prospect. Portable ratios could be used to extend communication between you and other players who have the same frequency, both text and voip. You could even have a radio net of people in the area, which commonly happens when disasters happen. Of course, this is all highly idealistic thinking. Players generally just sideline any limitations the game creates. Skype, teamspeak, IRC chats. So... it has to be reasonably easy to apply and work with, or players will jsut avoid it.

Personally, I'd rather have it so players could undertake their own missions to establish power in areas. As in, they find large generators, like the sort used for construction or disaster response and can fuel them up with jerry cans to light up cities at night. Same concept for placing an oil or battery-operated lantern around an area to make it safer.