ezdaroth

I don't support this, even if I hate the exploitation. Night isn't supposed to be black, there's never total darkness outside, or in any space where even a little light can get in. Because majority of the people don't have calibrated IPS-panels, but instead crappy TN-stuff that isn't capable of showing the difference between "black" and "black+20", you'd have to take out a ton of dark shades, which would make the game look almost cartoony, or extremely "stylished". I vote for summer nights that aren't as dark. A slight blue tint and just a little bit of darkness is enough to give you the idea it's night. Edit: Did a quick tweak of Chernarus screenshot to illustrate my point better: http://imgur.com/gKCdP It wouldn't be nearly as good as the nights now, but I'd still rather play like that than max gamma to not be in a huge disadvantage at night, or take a ton of dark shades completely out of the game.

I refuse to believe any of you is actually so stupid you'd think this is not an exploit. I'm absolutely certain the brightness and gamma settings are there so you can optimize the brightness and gamma for your monitor and gaming environment. That's what the settings are intended for, but unfortunate side-effect is that they can be exploited to gain unfair advantage in the multiplayer game. It can't really be fixed without ruining game graphics and majority will have to use it for fair gameplay, but that sucks and it's still an exploit just like server hopping, disconnecting to avoid deaths and so on. Anyone can do it, but it doesn't mean it's intentional and doesn't have a negative impact on the game.

There's increasing amount of threads suggesting artificial disadvantages for bandits, these include anything from increased spawn times to decreased accuracy and disappearing player loot. My suggestion is to ignore it all and focus on the things that make DayZ a very unique experience - Realism, immersion, survival, player interaction and the lack of rules and restrictions. This will be a rather lengthy post and I'm not supplying a TL;DR, but I'd appreciate if you took the time to read it before replying. DayZ is not a mod for everyone DayZ gained a lot of popularity very rapidly. Many popular gaming sites such as Rock Paper Shotgun and PC Gamer noted it, which resulted in a surge of players. Many of these people bought ARMA 2 and Operation Arrowhead just to play this mod, that is only going through early alpha testing. There's now over 90 000 unique players, which is fantastic. It's inevitable there will also be many players who have wrong expectations and don't have the mentality to enjoy a mod like this. Games tend to be fair, forgiving and packed with action. DayZ is the exact opposite. It's unfair, unforgiving and most of the time nothing happens. Players get frustrated when they realize the mod isn't what they wanted. Sneaking around a dark forest for an hour and losing days of progression to a bullet from out of nowhere isn't something most people consider fun. Unsatisfied player is a vocal player Because the players think they paid for the mod, they want to change the things they don't like rather than just quit playing it. It's only natural, nobody wants to waste money. They become very vocal about it, which results in a ton of suggestion threads. Bandits are easily considered the most unfair part of the mod. Zombies are predictable and you can only blame yourself for alerting them, but bandits may be anywhere, they might lie to you and you can never be absolutely safe from them. This is why many suggest various artificial disadvantages for bandits, to reduce their numbers and make the mod more fair and predictable. Bandit skin was a terrible idea, perfect example of what not to do The bandit skin was an artificial disadvantage to anyone who killed other players. While it successfully reduced murders a little bit, it also took a lot of depth away from player interaction. Seeing a player in DayZ causes a huge adrenaline rush, at least for me. I can't predict what the player will do when he sees me. I have to make a quick decision to hide, shoot or carefully approach him. Each decision has natural advantages and disadvantages with a different outcome. If I approach the player as friendly, he might just kill me, but I can potentially get the most valuable resource in a game, a friend who has my back and is more useful than any piece of gear in the game. If I shoot him, I might alert zombies and/or his friends who would hunt me down, I might also miss and give him a chance to kill me. However, I could potentially get a bunch of nice gear which increases my chances of survival. If I hide, I don't take a risk of imminent death, but I might die later, because I didn't have the friend or the the gear with me. All these advantages and disadvantages are natural, they are based on real-life and make sense. You need to do some risk evaluation and thinking. They are about equally good decisions and you are free to do any of them, but most importantly you can make the right decision without reading some wiki article. If you throw a bandit skin system in the mix, it has a huge impact on this moment. The game essentially tells you "Hey, that guy has murdered someone. You didn't see it or hear about it, but you magically know it. Better not trust him and oh, killing him adds value to your humanity which is beneficial." It breaks the immersion and simplifies the moment. It also places new players in a disadvantage, because they might have no clue about the skin/humanity system. I believe the natural advantages and disadvantages are enough to balance the game. Balance can be tweaked, but it should be done very carefully, should be based on realism and should make sense. Making artificial disadvantages for a certain playstyle hurts the game in general, even if it might be a quick fix to a certain issue. Please note I'm not trying to say new players don't have the right to suggest changes, I'm a new player who got into the mod via RPS article, but I just wanted to share my concern of the wave of new players suggesting something that would ruin core elements of the mod. Share your thoughts.

Why? I already have a reason to clear the zombies - the supplies in the town which help me and my friends survive. I don't want NPC telling me to clear it and rewarding me with an extra can of beans for it. Your ultimate goal is surviving as long as possible and you create the other goals for yourself, which you can change at any point you want.

I'm hoping they end up with a solution where you can loot a journal from a corpse, it's saved as a text file and then the dead player spawns with empty journal again. If everybody just have a public journal on a website it wouldn't be even nearly as special as finding a journal in-game and reading the story of the dead guy.

Starting skins could vary, but I don't see a good way to add other character-based modifiers. If stats would vary, players would kill themselves until they get the stats they want. If you prevented that, they would be annoyed and blame their deaths on bad perks.

It plays both ways, it's easier to approach other survivors as a friendly, because you don't fear for your real life. If you did, you might not take the risk. As Rocket himself stated, it's an anti-game. It's not supposed to be fair and balanced. It's a huge, realistic and brutal sandbox without rules and the only goal is to survive. The game doesn't tell players what to do, they are free to decide their own survival playstyle. As soon as you start placing artificial restrictions or punishments for certain playstyle, you take away from the absolute freedom. Players wouldn't decide to play friendly because they believe it's the best way to survive, but because they don't want some random negative effect that's a punishment for killing a player. Balance can be tweaked, but it needs to be done very carefully and the tweaks should be based on realism. You can't just check "Damn, there's too many bandits. Lets do humanity-based accuracy modifier." You need to think why there's so many bandits and then maby tweak the world and mechanics so surviving alone becomes more difficult and friends become more important.

Making the HUD smaller and putting it in a corner would be a good start. I want to get the information, but don't shove it to my face so much it hurts the immersion. I'm playing on a 108 PPI monitor and believe 20px icons would be big enough, most users probably have 23" 1080p monitors, which is around 95 PPI (which is around 13% bigger pixels).

It baffles me why people constantly come up with suggestions to destroy the very core elements of this mod. There should never be any artificial advantages or disadvantages based on your playstyle, nor should there be any decisions that force you to a certain playstyle. All playstyles have their natural, realistic advantages and disadvantages and that's enough. Playing as a friendly survivor increases you chances of survival from zombies and bandits and makes it easier to loot places like cities. Friends who have your back are worth more than any piece of gear in the game. The natural disadvantage in this is the fact it's difficult to form a group in environment where people are cautious to trust anyone and it also makes you vulnerable to a friendly backstabbing you when things get complicated. Playing as a (lone) bandit removes the risk of getting backstabbed and you don't have to go through the trouble of forming a group. You might also be lucky and get to steal a very good survival gear from another player. The natural disadvantage is that with every shot you risk your life, not only because you might miss, but because you will alert his friends and/or nearby zombies. Playing alone also makes looting tows and cities much more dangerous, since even zombies are a great threat. This is how it should be, the bandit skin alone was a huge mistake, since it created artificial disadvantage for one playstyle and removed some tension from player interaction. I'm glad it will be removed, even if I'm usually friendly and the skin made the game easier for me.

Rocket confirmed the global chat will be removed once the direct works properly, so it's going to be just fine.

Hitting the bag could destroy an item at random, adding a bit of depth if you want to get most out of your murder, but other than that I don't support this. Feels like artificial way to hinder bandits, which should never be done. At least I get the vibe that you are suggesting a dice roll on the murder if the weapon of the victim and other supplies gets removed, so it's less beneficial for the bandit. All roles have their natural advantages and disadvantages and that's enough. The bandit killing the players takes a risk of alerting zombies and/or the player's friends. He also doesn't get an ally, which would likely be way more valuable than the supplies alone and save his ass on the long run.

The instant DC is pretty simple and obvious to fix, at least in theory. If the player loses connection to server, keep the character in there for 30-60 seconds and refresh the timer every time the player takes damage. If the player tells the server he wants to log out, there's a 15 second timer during which the player can't do anything and it's cancelled if the player takes damage. If it's successful, disconnect the player without leaving the character on the server for 30-60 seconds. Hurts the players who get accidental disconnects, but it's the only reasonable fix with little room for exploitation. Sure, 15 seconds is enough to log out if you see 5 bandits approaching from the horizon, but at least it would fix the most blatant cheating. The server hopping for loot is way more difficult to fix and it's the issue we really need good suggestions for. You could restrict the number of servers the player can connect to within a certain time frame, but it would only limit the exploitation a little and would cause problems for honest players. I often hop around 6 servers to see if I can find a -12h EU server, because I don't want to play in the darkness the whole week. Servers tend to crash a lot and people swap servers so their friends can join etc. I don't think having server-specific character location is a good idea, it would force high-geared players to either spam join the one full server where they played in, or join a different server and be shot down instantly by the bandits who wait for them at the coast. Making loot disappear around the player when he joins wouldn't work, since hoppers would just move a bit further from the deer stand to log out. Would have to be so large radius it becomes annoying for everybody. I really have no idea how to fix it without causing other issues. If you come up with one, say it out loud. I'm sure Rocket doesn't have a perfect solution for this either. It's currently the #1 exploitation method in the game and needs to be fixed.

Totally supporting this, would add extra layer of depth to the game. Might lead to some kids writing offensive messages, but it would still be worth it. I'm usually against everything unrealistic, but I vote the diary shouldn't take up an inventory slot. It wouldn't ruin any of the immersion and it would only encourage people to create immersion and empathy for others by documenting their story. The first implementation could be just a chat command / key binding to bring up your journal, which would be a simple text input with a save button. When you die, if your journal wasn't empty, the server creates "'s journal" item to the corpse and clears your journal data. Carrying 50 looted journals in your backpack would be just silly, so when looting a journal it could simply be saved as a text file to your HDD as O'Malley suggested and then have the item removed. Ideally where would also be a way to list and open the files in some in-game overlay. Not a high priority, since there's more important changes to be made, but when it's time for new features, this should certainly be included.

If trapping would be added, I'd want the inspection of the body to tell the type of trap (smoke/flare/grenade) and there should be a chance of triggering the trap if you attempt to disarm it. I don't like luck factors in games, but if you could always successfully disarm the trap, people would just get the habit of doing additional click before looting. If there was a risk you'd trigger the trap, you'd have to do risk evaluation. If it's rigged with a frag grenade, you probably don't want to loot it unless you are starving and it's you last chance. If it's rigged with a flare you might take the risk to see what's inside. 25% chance would be high enough to make people consider it, which would add something to the game. Stuff like this isn't a high priority, but good suggestion anyway.

There should never be any artificial advantages or disadvantages based on your playstyle, nor should there be any decisions that force you to a certain playstyle. It should be authentic experience, get as close to "real-life" scenario as possible. You are in the middle of nowhere, there's zombies, there's other people, you must survive by any means necessary. Zombies create a context for the game and are a nice element, but they are predictable and you could easily survive a lifetime in Day Z against zombies. Player interaction is what makes the game unique, interesting and unpredictable. Seeing a player is an intense key moment in the game. You don't know anything about the player and he doesn't know anything about you. If you shoot him, you take the risk of alerting zombies or other players who might kill you, but you might also get supplies and weapons that help you survive. If you approach him, you take the risk of him shooting you right there, or backstabbing you in the long run, but might also get a friend who is more valuable than any weapon and will help you survive. If you simply hide from the player, you don't get a friend and you don't get supplies, which might be the reason you die in the long run, but might also save you from death right now. This is natural risk evaluation, there's no artificial gameplay elements effecting your decision. As soon as you put in bandit skins to mark players who have killed other players, you take the risk evaluation away or simplify it by a huge factor. "The game tells me that player killed someone, I won't trust him." If you make the humanity effect drop rates even a little, you still screw up the natural risk evaluation. You introduce the droprate factor, which has an impact on the decision. Someone might not take the risk of shooting someone just because he doesn't want a loot disadvantage. Mechanics like this aren't the way to fix anything in this game. If you try to avoid the game from degrading to a DM at the beach by introducing safe-zones, player skins, loot factors and other artificial mechanics, you take the beauty and immersion out of the game. You need to look into why it happens and how it can be fixed in a way that makes sense, doesn't restrict players and doesn't break the immersion. It's hard, but essential.