svefngenglar

Okay let's see if I can remember this correctly. Playing on a server, found a vehicle, driving up to NW. Server died. Logged in and was presented with fresh spawn. Picked male, geared up, looted, few hours played. Logged off with a CZ at a barn. Logged back in, respawned me at the spot the car was when the server died. Played for a few hours and logged off. Logged back in and got shot. Fresh spawn. Played for a few hours. Logged off and back in, respawned at the barn. That life stuck.

I know.

Haha, awesome story. Beans, sir.

Thanks for the great response. I like the concept of loot effecting behavior. I'm not sure how you could implement it with the current server setup. Players joining and leaving etc. One thing you touched on that stuck out to me was identification and communication. These two concepts are extremely relevant. Now, identification again stretches into "unrealistic" territory. Would you have people dressing in certain ways in an apocalypse in reality? Probably not. But in a real apocalypse people probably wouldn't shoot on sight. This again highlights the issues inherent in adapting reality into games. So in the context of a game, it may be useful to have an identification system so that players can spot friendlies or bandits. (Hence why Rocket reintroduced skins.). More importantly though, communication. What would almost everyone carry in a real apocalypse? I have one in my car right now. CB radio. Radios are already in the engine. Now imagine I was injured and could ask if there was anyone within a 20km radius if they could supply first aid or food or water. This is a mechanic I would LOVE to see introduced and one that could theoretically provide more incentive for grouping. I know most people right now are going to bring up side chat. I think restricting it to a 20km radius along with being realistic, is more likely to create an atmosphere of, the people I am speaking to are in my vicinity. And I think entirely ditching text based communication is a necessity for authenticity as well. While I can't cite any actual studies, I believe that vocal communication holds a lot more weight than text based. I ran over the post you linked and it's not quite what I picture. It's a little bit too RPG and I think the implementation should be based around the idea of increasing group play. Some of the ideas in that post are simply improved skills that really don't serve to increase the value of players lives in a group setting. Some do, but again, not written in that context. Thanks again for the great reply though. Cheers.

I'm not saying pick a class. I'm saying much like the real world, people would have varying levels of skill. I'm not suggesting mmo style points with leveling. That would certainly detract from the experience. But some system of people having varying levels of skills to encourage cooperation and to mimic a real world scenario. As I said, it seems silly to me that everyone is a doctor, gun expert, athlete and sniper and the only variance is gear. If you for example imagine a fat guy who can't run but who can repair weapons exceptionally well or is a doctor. It adds a beautiful dynamic to the game. His life holds value to you and he also requires protection. You simply will not get these group interactions without the variance in attributes. EDIT: It would be REALLY interesting if they were assigned randomly too. :o

I've become more and more fascinated with the development of this mod. I watch every interview with Dean I can find as I'm studying games design currently and find he talks a lot about what we learn in terms of design concepts. Here's a little history about my playing. I consider myself a hardcore gamer. My history is mostly RTS and FPS. Starcraft kicked off this habit of competition and I've been hooked ever since. War3 and Frozen Throne came out and I climbed to the top 200 on US West as a solo player. My band started to become more active and I no longer had the time to compete and switched to DotA and counterstrike which gave me short bursts of competitive play. From there I spent a couple years playing League of Legends but had average rankings in that. This history seems a bit left of field but let me explain. The reason I play as a bandit is because not only do I not need anyone else to survive, most players in fact hold me back and cause issues. Even the guys I regularly play with will often frustrate me by doing stupid things and cause issues I'd never cause on my own. I often live a lot longer playing alone, even in the north. Part of this is the fact we don't play too often and don't take it seriously a lot of the time but part of it is also groups tend to complicate things. Even watching teams like Sacriel, you'll often catch members doing things wrong and causing issues. MOST of the friendly encounters are new players on the coast. 99% I would say. You very rarely find players with gear, willing to risk it. So the times that I have played as a friendly I found nothing enjoyable come out of it. Mostly just players holding me back or backstabbing me at some point. In a recent interview Dean discussed balancing out play styles with some new mechanics or tweaking existing ones. This is a concept we have discussed at university and one that I like. Instead of restricting bandit behaviour, you open up playing styles on the opposite side to make it more worthwhile. We discuss DayZ a lot at school and I wanted to pass a few ideas onwards and see what people think. Due to the nature of games, realism in some ways is impossible. The main concept that illustrates this in DayZ is ethics. Everyone knows this is a game, therefore trying to imply a sense of value to a life in a game is an incredibly difficult task. It's really just pixels and the majority of players won't think twice about putting a bullet in someones head. If everyone was to commit to role playing in DayZ, then this could be achieved, but that is not a likely scenario. The issue for me is that I can easily survive alone and so not only do random players not have value to me, they often have an implied negative value to me. This is where the concept of authenticity Rocket discusses comes into play. It is necessary with some concepts to implement unrealistic mechanics in order to achieve certain goals. While you lose "realism", you can curb player behavior. I think this is where the skill sets come into play. Doctors, mechanics etc. Someone who can save your life becomes very valuable in a scenario such as this and so their avatars life has value to you and possibly others. I also think it's more authentic that not everyone is a doctor/mechanic/sniper from the second they spawn on the beach. If I were to list my skills relative to a DayZ enviroment and rank them they'd look like this. - Guns skills - 7/10. I grew up on a farm and have fired pistols, shotguns and scoped rifles. - Medical skills - 4/10. Basic first aid, reasonable knowledge of what to do in most average situations. Something like a gunshot wound though? Haha. - Mechanic skills - 2/10. I can change oil and water and rollstart a car. Fill it with gas. Change tyres. - Running speed/fitness - 7/10. Smoker but in reasonable health. I can sprint pretty quickly as I'm quite tall. You could go on but you see what I'm getting at. There are some skills in the game such as sniping which are learned in game, and I'd like to see some implementation of that but it's unlikely for example that you could become an excellent doctor or mechanic in a real world situation. So in my opinion this mechanic improves authenticity and increases the odds that players will work together due to each skill having value in game. Imagine the quick little Asian guy in the walking dead who is small and sprints around scouting. Or the redneck with the crossbow who can track. These dynamics are what makes the show interesting but also what makes the group dynamics interesting. If the environment was much more difficult to survive in, again, players lives would hold more value. It would also introduce interesting elements like "pulling a Shane". If areas with high loot were extremely difficult to invade solo, other players would then have more value to even the best of players, and thus it's more likely you will want to team up for loot and less likely to just put a round in them at first glance. When I imagine the perfect zombie survival game, I picture zombie films with large numbers of FAST zombies that are brutally harsh. You get bitten, you're pretty much screwed. Now I'm not familiar with the technical limitations of the ARMA engine so I'm not sure exactly how possible it is to increase the number and harshness of zombies. The world should be so intolerably difficult that players almost have to band together. Is that not what it's like in the films? This is again a question of authenticity, not realism. Harsh environment will breed teamwork. The other issue that is often discussed is the value of loot. Even with the massive influx of hacked gear, loot is incredibly valuable. We've discussed what would happen if you made loot more available and what would happen if you made it less available and as to whether or not that would make people more or less likely to place value on lives. Either scenario really makes it difficult. If there was an excess of it, one of the core mechanics of the game would becoming meaningless and most likely result in players killing out of boredom again. If it were to be even rarer, those with that gear would probably be shot on sight, but the majority of players with average gear might not be so trigger happy. Same thing with food, if it was too rare, people would kill for it, if it wasn't rare enough, the challenge would be gone. All I can say about loot is good luck! :P. For now you seem to have struck a pretty nice balance so most of us have faith that you'll nail it in the standalone too. That's all that's coming to my mind right now, hope it was somewhat of an interesting read. Not so much suggestion but more of an analysis of what we're discussing at university. Cheers

Come at me.

Be careful what you wish for.

Love the writing style! I too have adopted kill on sight simply for the fun. Sniping is my pleasure. Ranging, stalking and patiently waiting for the perfect shot. But I also enjoy some close encounters too.

Hmm, you didn't kill anyone with a cat dictator pun name for those G36c SD's did you? Me and my friend were sporting them recently after finding a hacker crate. (Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn't have taken them but I love stargate and couldn't resist >.<)

The hacking is so out of control now. In the last two weeks I've found hacker crates on two servers, been victim of a server wipe and a few other suspect encounters. I have a friend who excels at finding intel on camp sites though so it's mostly just annoying dying to hackers. The gear loss isn't a big deal for us though.

I hope this doesn't sound sarcastic because it is a legitimate question but how could a story not be text? :P I can't fraps because my computer is 5 years old and barely runs the game, sadly. Otherwise I'd have a least a couple of hours of action highlights on youtube :(. EDIT: Added a TLDR for you. You're welcome <3.

TL DR: Heard AS50 fire from elektro hills. Friend spots 2 players. I flank around the back of the hill and inch closer. Dispatch first guy with an enfield round to the back of the head, second guy fails to shoot me with AK and I drop him with a shot to center mass. Loot : MK129/CCO SD/AS50/L85AWS/NV/Range/Full tools Hey guys, been playing for about 3 months now and haven't posted anything yet. A couple of nights ago I had my two best kills so far in the game. I used to play as a neutral survivor, murdered occasionally if someone had nice gear but mostly played neutral. That got frustrating as I ended up being betrayed and killed a lot for letting people live so I switched to kill on sight. I know a lot of people frown upon it but it is what it is. Anyway, my story begins with my friend and I being sniped ourselves. 10 person server and in the middle of nowhere west of Stalinsky island, we were quickly dispatched and I lost a full kit. AS50/CCO SD/range/nv/camo. I had been alive for about a week so I was pretty excited to hit cherno/elektro for some action and regearing and wasn't disappointed. My friend spawned in ele and myself in cherno. I quickly looted a basic kit with the usual food/water/med and an Enfield. The enfield is my weapon of choice as a new spawn because of it's power in PvP. If you're a careful, patient shooter this gun can not be beaten. I make my way to elektro to meet my friend and nothing of note really happens. I arrive at the hills to the north and scan over the city. There are zombies around but no players. My friend is atop the hospital and careful scouting around. I decide to meet him in the city and hit the firestations up to hopefully grab an AR. After waiting and scanning I decide it's safe to proceed, but 20 seconds after leaving cover I hear the familiar metalic snap of an AS50 coming straight from the sniper hill and a player is killed. I immediately head back to cover and inform my friend that I'm going to flank around the back of the sniper hill. He begins to careful observe it and spots two players. One in survivor gear and the other in soldiers clothes. I reach the back of the hill and begin to make my way around about half way up when my friend informs me they're moving up the hill and he can no longer see them. I begin to make my way to the top and the adrenalin kicks in. I now have two well geared players in my area on the move and with no idea where they are. I move from tree to tree, scanning carefully. I reach the top and have still not seen either of them. From the top I begin to head down the face of the hill towards their last known location. Feeling extremely tense as I inch closer and closer, scanning feverishly, I finally spot the guy in civ clothing. He is crouched peering over the city with rangefinders. While I don't have eyes on his friend I quickly decide this opportunity is too perfect and line up his head with my enfield. I pull the trigger and he instantly dies with a perfect shot to the back of the head. I immediately duck behind a large tree and again resume scanning like a madman. The adrenalin rush is in full swing at this point. I still cannot see his friend, who is 99% likely to be guarding the corpse from cover. Having nothing to lose and wanting to replace all my lost gear, I hatch a plan to move full speed to the corpse and crouch then instantly run again, hoping his friend is an impatient shot and reveals his location to me. He turned out to be even more impatient. Not closer than 20 meters to his body I hear full auto AK fire to my left and begin to serpentine towards it. I finally spot the barrel smoke as his clip hits empty. Not a single shot landed. (Not surprising given the lack of skill employed by this guy.). Seeing a chance to gain some advantage, I go prone and aim a shot at his chest. As I hit the deck he begins to throw what I can only assume is a grenade. My enfield breaks his throw with a shot directly into his center of mass. He falls down promptly and I stand up and begin to run sideways, fearing he got his grenade off. No explosion follows and I walk up to his unconcious body, placing a final enfield round directly into his head. Looting the body I get an entire full kit again. AS50/85 AWS thermal/range/nv/full toolbelt and an extra set of soldiers clothing. My mate finally arrives on the scene and loots the other guy who was reasonably geared as well. I can't stop shaking from the adrenalin rush for a solid 5 minutes afterwards. I hope this was somewhat enjoyable. It was my most impressive kills to date, stalking patiently and quick thinking in combat too. Extra story : On the way out of elektro my mate again gets shot out of my vision. I sit behind a tree scanning and spot a player running towards me with an AS50 TWS. I place an AS50 round squarely in his chest and my mate runs back to loot his body which was fully kitted.

Wow.

Which is why helicopters are more trouble than they're worth >.<