sidneymcdanger

Doesn't matter, really, that they're not dead. They're certainly not the people that they once were, so the mechanic still fits the theme. A player gets infected as a result of losing too much blood to zombie attacks, and they lose control of their character. Mechanically, no different from player death at the hands of zombies; thematically, the zombie infects their living victims instead of killing them. Whether the character is dead or infected doesn't matter from the perspective of the poor schlub who starts back on the beach without their stuff. As for how long it should take, maybe it would be fun to give it about 15 minutes, so that the player has a prayer of making it back before it's too late... or just in time to be mauled to death/infected by their previous character.

As was mentioned above, it's important to bear in mind that in a game, developers can balance any system that they care to put effort into, and this game is clearly a project that this guy is willing to put effort into! This game is about survival. That is the absolute primary conceit. Everything about this game centers on survival, and all other pursuits are auxiliary. The better survival horror games that have ever been made have used scarce resources as a primary method to apply tension, and this mod is right up there with the best of them. However, another great aspect of good survival horror games are the last moments where you see a threat bearing down on you, and you hear a click from your firearm, and you pull out a length of pipe or a 2x4 and say "Eff it. I don't want to die, and this is all I've got left, so let's do this and see how it goes." Managing to overcome a threat that should have killed you with your very last resort is one of the most satisfying, visceral game moments that a player can experience, and Day Z is nothing if not visceral. If the system were properly balanced, I don't believe that it could do anything other than improve the overall experience.

If a player is killed by a zombie, that player's character should rise back up as one of the undead and mill around with its new colleagues. That new zombie should be exactly like the others, except that it carries all of the former player's stuff. Killing a town full of zombies suddenly becomes a highly lucrative, if very, very dangerous, activity if players can expect to grab a few players' inventories worth of canned food, ammunition, guns, and supplies. Note that if a player kills another player, the victim is just regular dead, and the loot is as normal.