Glythe

I would like to see a lot more co-operation between survivors, and a lot less paranoia driven KoS activity. I would. Not because I dislike bandits. I love bandits. I love that at any moment, anywhere I am, I could find myself at the wrong end of their weapon. It's what makes the game exciting. No AI, no matter how advanced, could EVER replicate that level of suspense. Stop and think a minute about what you are saying. You want players to need each other (instead of needing what's in their pack). How do you do that? If cities were a deathtrap then it might be a really interesting game. Imagine if you shot an automatic weapon and 50 zombies in Cherno came to find you. I would love that. That doesn't happen here. Zombies are a joke in this game. They may be themed after the newer modern 28 days later style zombie but they are about as effective as zombies from 1950's movies. Better weapons (anything in the class 2 or 3 tier) make the situation even worse as you have huge clips, optics and all kinds of benefits. Why do people kill each other? Because they are bored with the game? Because they don't want to respawn on the beach? Because they can. Why do people not kill each other when they run into another player? Other than the idea that they don't want to get killed it's hard to say. The game is stacked against people wanting to keep other players alive. I really wish you lived nearby as I'd love for you to try an operation flashpoint mission I made for the xbox. It takes 4 hours minimum to complete. You have a 6 soldier team and have to kill about 120 enemy soldiers, 3 tanks and a Helicopter with a search light. Most of the squads are setup so that if you do not kill them stealthily another nearby group of soldiers will respond. And then another... and then maybe a tank. Bear in mind you only get about 1/3 of the controls for Arma on this xbox game but you can do some amazing things. You really don't need to make the AI smart with the scripts that are available for arma. You have the ability to say If this happens then go here do this, then that, and then this. Most people when you get right down to it are dumb or unimaginative to say the least. I've pretty much seen everything imaginable in terms of PVP behavior. You can make the AI in arma do some incredible things... the tools are already there. Why not make better use of them? See here's the problem.... there's only so much you can do in this game before you've done it all. You get the gear... you eventually die and when you do it is fun to a degree to get back what you lost. You can murder people you can let them go or maybe you play a doctor for a while. So last time I heard (which was a while ago) there were 700,000 people who tried this game. Where are they? Either most people playing don't have lots of time they can play or people are getting bored quickly. Even on weekends you never see many people online. I love how people like to think this game has SO many ways to play. But the latest patch has apparently nerfed view ranges. So sniping is pretty much out now? Apparently that was not an approved method of play.

I can only imagine that you are even more annoying in game (I suspect you like to troll the beach). You missed the point there chief. I was trying to get some meaningful discussion going about the game but most of what I get is dribble which comes down to how much they like the current pvp simulator.

People aren't predictable? yea right. Don't you honestly feel 90% of players you encounter will either shoot first no questions asked or instantly quit out? Oh look... people who play DayZ ARE predictable. If the point of your game is to have that uncertainty if you can trust other people then I say DayZ is a failure. You can trust them to almost instantly shoot you with almost guaranteed certainty. Movies don't generally re-invent the wheel when they tell a story. They change the props, the actors, sometiems the dialogue and they usually have a moral theme. Where's the irony if the zombies chasing the heroes aren't the real threat? No offense but if the world were populated with 5 Billion zombies and 100,000 people the Zombies are the bigger threat. Without starting a talk about genetics and things like the founder effect you can at the very least say it is likely that homo sapiens would become extinct. That again doesn't make for a good movie because 99% of audiences HATE a movie where the bad guys "win". Looking back at all the movies I have ever seen I have trouble naming 10 such movies.

You need to live a little if you think this is a good game. It encourages extremely greedy play. This is in part why you see people running private servers (even though that is against the rules) so they can hoard everything. I killed every player I ran into on my last character who bothered to stick around. That's hardly the mindset of a carebare. I even killed the two who wanted to come with my group. One just needed a little blood. I helped him out by sending him back to the beach and my friend helped himself to a shiny new pistol. What this game boils down to right now is an incredibly small niche. Zombie fans will come and try it... and quickly get bored. Zombies are too trivial too quickly. And they can't find any vehicles to fix much less the parts because people always hoard them. And then the game becomes kill every player you see that isn't on skype/teamspeak/vent/mumble with you. Or you can "create your own gameplay". As for the latter option you can do that with just about any game with depth and that is a pathetic reply. As for the former..... meh I'd just rather play regular Arma.

No. The infected are the catalyst, not the threat. I would agree with making them a bit more difficult overall, as it takes 4-5 minutes tops to get a hatchet and then they are of no consequence short of astronomical bad luck, or poor choices. Wait a minute so what you're saying is you want the scene of a zombie survivor game where the zombies are no threat and the threat comes from other people? That sounds boring. In fact it IS boring as you point out in 5 minutes of work zombies become trivial. I wonder why so many people turn to killing other survivors. "Obviously we need aso need a larger variety of zombies. I'm just going to list a few suggestions" Nope You started your rebuttal by mentioning how quickly zombies become trivial. Explain to me again how that is a good thing? Shouldn't we at least have harder to kill zombies guarding the better loot? Military zombies hardly fill that role. We already have screaming, shrieking infected. It's called all of them. Should it draw more? I think so. And the problem lies in that the screaming does NOT draw more zombies. There should be a "social" zombie activator similar to the lieutenant of Arma. Guess what it's already in the game! All you would have to do is turn it on. In no way should any playstyle be punished. It could be argued that with the rampant KoS trend, that survivors are being punished as things stand now. that however, is not the topic at hand. As I said before punishment (suffering, pain, or loss that serves as retribution) and consequences (something that happens as a result of a particular action or set of conditions) are different. Say your maximum health were reduced for killing a player.... THAT is a punishment. You now have a limitation you cannot avoid under any circumstances. A consequence means you made a choice and you must live with that choice (such as being attacked by soldiers) but it can be avoided. I believe I set the tone of the discussion and I believe as you do right now that survivors ARE being punished right now. 3) Don't have all the best loot in the same place. On this, I agree. But it isn't all in the same place. Heli wrecks and deerstands yeild equal and better loot, and are scattered pretty much everywhere. Deerstands do not give everything that comes from the Barracks. Heli wrecks encourage exploration but people still tend to stagnate towards the NW corner. On that note shouldn't there be a few alive soldiers at the airfield? Perhaps there are, but people KoS them as well, for their lewts. Point made, IF there were, they wouldn't live long. Right, but they would likely take a few players out with them. Have you seen a group of AI soldiers fight in Arma? 4) Arma as a walking simulator is extremely boring If you spend all your time in the woods, I can agree. But that's your choice, not a design flaw. Oh right it's MY choice that everyone hoards vehicles? Care to rephrase that? 5) Loading takes way too long (self explanitory no paragraph needed) Upgrade your rig. The game loads quite reasonably (about 8 seconds for me) so long as you don't get stuck waiting to create character, which is a server > db issue I believe. There are a ton of servers where you can't load in quickly even if you should. Grow a pair of balls and stop trying to mask your butthurt about bandits with overly long, unoriginal posts and suggestions to turn DayZ into fucking L4D. I'm not upset by bandits. I got killed yesterday by one in part because I didn't care. I had a grenade I could have used to kill him through the wall of the building (go arma physics... /lol). He only saw me because the server had blues appear on the map. That's dumb. I don't want this game to be L4D but you have to admit the zombies I described could spice things up a bit no? In 2 hours I got back to where I was gear wise (exactly) except I have a different AK. I even had a nice bike ride that made the travel back to the NW quite fast. And you're still here why? Some people live to grief. You seem to be one of them. I think of myself as an optimist and with regards to this game I was merely thinking this game would be far more interesing with these changes. Perhaps you disagree. At least you took a minute to elaborate which is more than I can say for Cunster. Ooops sorry on that name misspelling.

I'd say he has succeeded this is definitely half a game. Ok you have half a point here and I'll counter by saying.... tell me one thing besides the creepy zombie aspect that you can do better in this game than you could just by playing Arma. Medic? nope. Kill other players? nope. Driving/flying around the countryside? nope. Snipers shooting at you from 400m+ is damn scary when you're playing a soldier sim. They may not be zombies but they can have the same resulting fear. And here you are confused. I said it would have consequences not be punished. Killing players would cause soldiers to shoot you on site. That would be a choice you make for becoming a bandit. It isn't a punishment because you can kill soldiers for loot. It isn't a punishment because you still get loot from dead players. It gives you something to do as bandit (this is drastically needed). Having consequences is not the same thing as punishment. So we're back to go here kill any players you see and pickup the loot. And you seem to imply this game had depth? Vehicles cost about 8x as many resources as one soldier zombie (more complex vehicles require more resources of course). Imagine the difference between a world where you say kill him he is a survivor vs.... kill him he's taking the last of the gas from that tanker. Or kill him he has gas cans. I didn't say all I can find to do is kill players. But that is what apparently 90% of the people who play this game seem to want to do. I've offered people help (food/blood/etc) and usually they either run if they don't see me or shoot back if they do.Going back to the idea of consequences don't you think it would shift the I see you I kill you attitude if there were npc soldiers with guns? It might make the atmosphere less "internety" in the sense that you can currendly do whatever you say or what and no one can really do anything about it.

Right because trained soldiers with automatic weapons would totally survive longer than 1 person with no weapons , no gear and no food. Did you not get the implied hint that they would be extremely rare? You can't just run into them all over the place. You're caught in the same loop as everyone else. I see a player I don't want him to kill me. Therefore I kill him. I keep doing this until I get killed. Soldiers who attack bandits would break this loop. Bandits can go kill soldiers for loot. But bandits must watch out for soldiers. It creates more things for you to do in the game. It creates a more dynamic game play experience. Until there is a reason for a break in the loop that loop will continue. Talk about going against the design of the game.... a clan is exactly that. I can automatically trust you , you , you and you. Everyone else I shoot. There's a ton of better platforms for killing other players. An endgame of 1% rare loot spawns that you obtain by running 4+ km isn't really worth repeating multiple times. Maybe it is for you, but I have much better games to play. You're making the sandbox far too small friend. It could be so much bigger and so much more interesting with the tools that are already availalbe in Arma. You probably think I have a problem with player killing. But I don't. What I do have a problem with is that the current sandbox has about 3 things to do: get basic gear, go north get better gear, kill players. Random soldier spawns would break up the monotony and so would random bandits. Adding these two things would give you more things to do: avoid soldiers/bandits, raid soldiers/bandits and help the soldiers at a zombie hoard event. Mc Donalds used to have two kinds of burgers.... cheeseburgers and hamburgers. If you didn't like pickles mustard onions and ketchup then you were out of luck. This is by the way why Burger King exists... they gave you an option to have it your way. Given the option to have more in the game you're basically saying, No I like my small sandbox thanks. I don't want an option to refuse ketchup on my burger. Sure this game has had 700,000 players becuase lots of people own Arma already. But the bottom line is that with the vast majoirty of the content being running around waiting for loot to spawn you're going to have a hard time selling the retail version of this game.

You may as well not post then as you don't even take the effort to explain why you disagree. I'd like to hear your thoughts. I would like to hear you tell me why people would keep playing a game with nothing to do at the top end. In about 30 minutes I can create a decent Arma mission. With 2-3 hours I can make a masterpiece that people want to play MULTIPLE times (and rotate them with my other missions).

There is little point of saying NOOOOOOOO in a nice video if you don't say why. Right now there is no reason to keep playing this game. I can log in to LOTS of different servers at the barracks and pray for something good. But there is nothing to do but hunt other players. This isn't really a good format for that as I stated (no vehicles) OR in the same time I could just go make my own Arma missions. I have 4 friends who bought this game just to play zombies..... bear in mind I've made arma missions that last 4 hours+ minimum to complete (don't ask how long they took to make). Essentially the end game of Day Z is less than 1% chance at a good drop. That's not an end game mechanic thats a hamster turning on a wheel. I feel certain in about 2 weeks my friends will stop playing Day Z. And then maybe I'll start writing missions again.

I'm enjoying playing Dayz but I think it needs some serious improvement if it ever wants to become a real game. Yes it is an alpha and I realize that but there are some glaring holes in the gameplay. That being said I'd like to offer a few suggestions. 1) Zombies need to be more of a threat than other survivors. After you've survived to day 3 or longer you pretty much can't lose this game except to another player. That's kind of garbage when you think about what that does for end game play. End game play becomes hunting for better gear which often entails shooting other players. Other players collect gear you probably want so why bother going to look for it? As countless others have said there is no reason I should NOT shoot you when I see you. That means somewhere along the line you've failed as a designer (don't worry there are ways to fix it). How do you make zombies more dangerous? The obvious solution there is to allow players to play zombies. I get the sense the spirit of this game was that survivors were not primarily designed to kill each other. Letting people play as zombies is a good way to encourage people to kill other survivors when they are a zombie and let them go when they are a fellow survivor. Mechanically speaking Arma is setup to have the zombies be hostile civilians. Just have zombie players join that team. If a player zombie gets numerous suvrivor kills he could perhaps rank up or get new powers (unrealistic perhaps but it IS a video game right). At the least he could be promoted to a zombie lieutenant with all the powers that grants in arma. That's right.... let players command AI zombies. Now that is a scary thought. People will want to play zombies and people will want to kill zombies. The result is more people want to play the game. Zombie players should be marked with a green square next to their name on the player list. Obviously we need aso need a larger variety of zombies. I'm just going to list a few suggestions: a] Zombie mouth foamer: has an infectious bite that deals damage over the course of a day (maybe 1000 dmg initially and 1000 damage daily until cured by antibiotics). b] Zombie screamer: lets have a female zombie shall we not? She yells in a hideous zombie scream if you aggro her and that scream will call ALL the nearby zombies (200m). c] Zombie brute: built like a tank he can get shot 20-30 times and not die but 3 bullets in the head will stop him. d] Zombie charger: he runs faster than other zombies and will knock you over when he hits you. To compensate for this this attack must be very slow (maybe every 20 seconds). 2) Banditry needs to have consequences. I'm going to suggest that anyone who has more than 5 survivor kills (maybe 10) should be placed on the red team. They would have a red square on their name on the player list. Ideally you would have to do something to learn they are a bandit (such as look at the corpse of someone he killed but Arma can't do that as far as I know). That would of course be the superior option to have people permanently be labeled as bandits (red name when you look at them) if you examine a corpse shot by another player. On this line I suggest that we have player killer notices enabled as a default. It makes for a more interesting experience. I'd like to have perhaps 3 permanent soldier stations on the map that will shoot at bandits. It shouldn't be anything too brutal but I think the squad should be at least 8-10 soldiers (at least 1 sniper, 2 MG, 1 officer, 1-2 medics ). This gives bandits something to do.... you can kill the soldiers for guns instead of other players. There should also be random soldier squads that spawn probably 4-6 soldiers (officer with NVG, MG, sniper in ghillie suit, medic, and the extras would be riflemen). They roam across the map and shoot zombies and bandit players if they see them. They spawn in at any of a number of points and just walk across the map hunting hostiles. Arma is well suited to handle such scripts. You can even spawn in a squad of 4 soldiers in a Humvee that players could steal (soldiers should have a habit of getting out to kill zombies). Now you have a situation where Bandit players have something to do (and a new thing to do... watch out for soldiers!). There are "players" that survivors can trust (unless you shoot a member of their squad) and you have new ways to get loot. Along the same line there should be random bandit spawns. They should have more bandit like gear.... enfields, shotguns, etc but be larger groups overall. A bandit roaming spawn should be 6-10 enemies and a static bandit element should only be 4 enemies (because bandits double cross each other). Note you cannot become friendly to bandits! Bandits should have large stores of food and water and general supermaket supplies. Instead of rading 5-10 supermakets you could just attack a bandit group instead. Maybe give each bandit a guaranteed: axe, knife, compass, map, matches or watch. You can even spawn 1 bandit in the bigger cities as well.... but he only kills survivors, bandits, and zombie players. The big loot from the bandits of course would be the all black outfit (shouldn't be too hard to implement if it isn't already there). And then you'd have people wearing black suits and black bandannas (or maybe even old timey black bandit masks). There would be no question... if you see a player wearing black you shoot them. 3) Don't have all the best loot in the same place. The only real place to go once you have gear is to the airfield if you want better stuff......BORING! You could do all sorts of neat things with this game. Take one castle and have a zombie hoarde event. Arma can handle scripts for this too. Every so often have the event trigger when a player gets close to the castle. Spawn in 60-80 zombies to attack a group of 5 soldiers in the castle. The soldiers will almost surely die. The question is can the player clear them out to get the loot from the bodies of the zombies/soldiers? Right now everyone will just build their compound up north because that's where the good gear spawns. Once again this would be boring. On that note shouldn't there be a few alive soldiers at the airfield? 4) Arma as a walking simulator is extremely boring. People hoard vehicles and it ruins the experience for others. I've looked up where all the vehicles have spawned and other than a bike I've never seen one. Why? Because people immediately take them to other places for their personal use. I really like whoever made the suggestion before that repairable vehicles should be more common and gasoline should be the rarity. 5) Loading takes way too long (self explanitory no paragraph needed) Ok those are my thoughts about your game. It's a nice effort as is but there's no way it will continue to be viable in its current form. There is a reason people are getting bored. It's not because you can't build bases yet.... there isn't enough to do in game that doesn't revolve around killing other players.