Tartantyco

EDIT: To stem the tide of naysayers, WE ARE AWARE OF THE VARIOUS ISSUES THAT MIGHT ARISE, SO PLEASE DON'T SPAM THE THREAD WITH YOUR OBVIOUS OBSERVATIONS. The Cernarus Free Zone is an area on the Norway 1 server that will be protected by a militia with the intent of creating a safe(As possible) zone where survivors can trade and interact socially. Map of the Free Zone and Exclusive Territories http://i.imgur.com/a0Mda.jpg The Free Zone The Free Zone is an expansive territory North of Stary Sobor where the militia will make it as safe as possible for survivors to interact with each other on any level. The territory, along with surrounding areas, will be patrolled by the militia, in groups or as individuals. Conduct within the Free Zone Visitors are asked to keep their weapons lowered(Double-tap Control) while in the Zone. Any storage containers(Tents) within the area are considered off limits to visitors. Try to follow rules of etiquette established throughout all servers as much as possible. Exclusive Territories This zone is considered Militia property and survivors entering the area can be subject to penalties. It is suggested that you do not enter it. Militia Leaders Tartantyco Kremost Alexkx Lhurgoyf Saklig Misbruk If you wish to identify Militia members you can communicate with these individuals in chat(Teamspeak should come later). [More information will be added as required]

Another consequence of cross-server persistency. It de-contextualizes everything, making it unrewarding to play the mod in any other way.

This is just another reason why cross-server persistency isn't compatible with the intended gameplay.

I'm pretty sure the mod is not meant to be tailor-made for your preferences.

If no negative effect are incurred while offline then the advantage is with those who don't play very often. This would make for extremely poor gameplay.

I am perfectly capable of recognizing someone from 100m away and this must be represented in-game. As there most certainly is not enough detail in character faces the names much double as such. People shouldn't think of their name as their actual name, but rather a representation of their appearance, which is what is being identified, not some magic nameplate that starts hovering around people.

As I'm sure most are aware of on the forums, there are a lot of arguments about the apparent advantages of playing as a bandit, as well as counter-arguments. Now, a feature of most of these threads is direct mechanics attempting to nerf apparent flaws in implementation. However, the issue with this is that the actual behaviors people complain about are emergent behaviors created by a wide variety of underlying game mechanics. Tacking on some additional mechanic with the aim of trying to correct an error will simply exacerbate the problem and distort the gameplay even more, and should always be avoided. Instead, what is needed is an adjustment of the underlying game mechanics. The purpose of this is not to eliminate PKers, but to make behaviors more rational. ----- Currently, one issue is simply that of having spare time. Due to the abundance of resources available you just have way too much time to spend shooting at people for fun. There is no shortage of weapons, ammo, food, or drink, so time can easily be spent considering external activities(Things not directly related to your own survival). As such: ALL loot needs to be MUCH less common. Food, drink, and ammunition needs to be especially lower. The drink focus should perhaps focus more to water, making sodas rare and requiring survivors to locate and utilize water sources more often. This, accompanied with other relevant adjustments(Hunger rate, for instance), will make your own survival more of a focus than hunting other people. Killing people for their resources is still, if not more of, a valid strategy, but the potential returns may be lesser and, together with other adjustments, may be a much greater threat potential. ----- Another issue is that of a lack of dependence. Very few situations require assistance from other players. You can easily sneak into the most zombie-infested areas, current respawn rates make clearing out an area something of a pain at times, you can heal yourself from all but the gravest of injuries, all of it instantly, and you usually have enough firepower to deal with zombie threats. All of this means an individual player is frequently as strong as the group, if not stronger due to the extremely low chance of an individual backstabbing himself. Remedies here are: Make more of the medical aspects of the game assistance-dependent. No more fixing your broken leg with a jab of a morphine syringe. Resource scarcity and increased threat potential from zombies due to medical assistance dependence makes cooperation more important if you want to loot safely. Resource scarcity creates increased instances of equipment incompatibility, meaning you have to trade more equipment to keep yourself stocked with the proper ammo, with navigation tools, etc., making groups stronger and trust more powerful. ----- Another issue brought up is griefing and exploits, mainly DCing to get away and going on a spree with a new character. I am certain that rocket has solutions for this, but I'll add this nonetheless: A short timeframe with a new character in which he cannot be injured or injure others. This stops any immediate sprees and makes spawn camping impossible. Firing a weapons starts a timer(Reset for every shot) of 5 or so minutes in which DCing does not remove your character from the world until the timer runs out. DCing during this timeframe makes your character light up like a flare at night(Even during the day), making you easily located.

Time that could be better spent putting more beans into Day Z.

The Enfield is louder? I have a hard time believing that(But I haven't used the Zombie Dinner Bell in quite a while).

I managed to lose a silenced M4 because I misjudged the space it would occupy in my backpack. I tarded.

Feel free to move it into suggestions. I posted it here because it's kind of a half and half, discussing the reasons behind bandit behavior and putting forth examples of things that would fix it. And I already have a thread in the 'series' in this forum.

10 slots, I think.

Is there any way you could use the zombie aggro system as a way of deciding at what range a player could be identified? 3 bars=100m, 2 bars=50m, 1 bar=25m, 0 bars=Nothing(Visual bars).

All you have to do is institute a few barriers for griefing and make it so that bandits have to worry about things other than lying around shooting people all day. I haven't had to 'survive' since maybe the 2nd day of playing DayZ, I always have enough food, easy access to weapons, way too much ammo, and no lack of navigation equipment, which means I could just hang around shooting people all day if I wanted to, and I could still just run back to one of my numerous stashes to pick up new weapons and supplies if I got killed(Although I usually find 2-3 weapons easy on the way back anyway). If people in the game had to actually focus on surviving instead of the current situation things would be radically different. Everything needs to become a lot more scarce. Weapons, ammo, high-end equipment needs to be way more scarce, food needs to be something you need to scour the wastes for days to find, and the walk/sprint food consumption ratio needs to be more separated(As in, food consumption while walking is low; while running it is very high). Additionally, the potential harm involved in engaging someone should be far higher. First of all, the medical system needs to be more dependent on assistance(Like blood bags), meaning you'd try damn hard to avoid any damage. Trying to directly affect an emergent behavior will do nothing to fix an issue; you have to identify the underlying game mechanics that create the problem.

I've seen plenty of wildlife. Heli crashes aren't that common to begin with, though, so I don't know about that. Pretty sure I saw someone complain about there not being any loot in helis yet, though, so it would seem that they exist still.

Cross-server persistency, the saving of a character's gear and position across servers, is a game mechanic that serves to cripple the potential emergent gameplay of the mod. As it stands, entropy has all the advantages in this mod and the collaborative efforts of a multitude of players can easily be undone by a few bandits abusing this game mechanic to their own ends. The mod must strike a balance between players valuing their character's lives and knowing that death is inevitable. Right now life has very little value, and as a consequence it is an expendable resource for causing disruption. This is not a rant against bandits. Bandits are great. Bandits are one of many facets that should grow organically out of the game mechanics, contextualized within the server environment. So please, do not mistake it for that. What are the effects of cross-server persistency? Value: No specific server has any inherent value. People may attempt to atrificially create value by limiting themselves to certain servers, but as long as it is artificial it will be ignored by the vast majority of players, making it worthless. The contents and players of a server, as well as their interaction with each other, is what creates value. Life doesn't have value, either. As the value of your character is tied to your gear, and you can have gear scattered across many servers and have the ability to bring these onto other servers, the value of ones life is drastically reduced. Emergent gameplay: This is gameplay where the players create the gameplay through utilizing very simple game mechanics to accomplish complex systems. An example of this is creating persistent entities within one server, such as safe zones. Although we are attempting this the problem lies with how players can compromise any entitiy on one server by using another server to teleport into location. This invalidates pretty much any attempt at creating most organizations, limiting the gameplay to bandits, roving clans, and survivors, all accomplishing just one feat; move and loot. Another picture could be one where various groups create territories, claim loot areas, engage in wars with other groups, where a rich and deep tapestry of player interaction can occur. And there's still room for the lone survivors and bandits. But this can't happen. Not with cross-server persistency. A single group of players with the aim of destroying these organizations can lay to dust the plans of dozens of organized groups. Economics: As people can transport equipment from one server onto another the internal economics of a server is dismantled. There is no value in controlling territory containing an abundance of medical supplies or military gear if you can just import it from another server anyway. Of course, the current spawn rates for equipment do a good job of undermining the economy already, but if you can get rare gear onto other servers you can again disrupt the inherent state of the server. ----- What I think draws a lot of people to this game is the fact that behavior is not based on instructions from the game, but rather it is based on the players themselves, and cross-server persistency is undermining any expansion of this. Emergent gameplay is what will keep the mod fresh, and cross-server persistency will always keep that emergence on a one-dimensonal level.

The simple solution here would be to leave the player in for x minutes(Since last firing a weapon or something, preferrably) and make him light up like a flare or something(Both during the day and night) so his position is easily visible. But I'm sure something like this is already in the works, but not as prioritized as other things.

Whooooo!

There are a lot of improvements that could be made with the inventory system, but I wonder how much of it is actually malleable.

Yeah, it looks like a lot of stuff just bugs out on any sloped terrain, which is why I always drop stuff on the flattest ground around and drop something worthless like a food can first, then add stuff to that pile as it doesn't seem to bug out equipment if you're just adding it to an existing pile. Things also appear to bug out if they are dropped or spawn close to/partially inside a wall, which is why so many backpacks bug out when they spawn in deer blinds.

The backpack is fine, stop complaining about every single inconvenience. You can't carry everything on your person within arm's reach and when you need to get something from your pack you will actually have to go into the pack and take stuff out of it, which is why the backpack works the way it does.

Night time isn't meant to be happy fun time. Deal with it.

It intrigues me that people find this mod to be a novel idea.

I haven't really noticed anything other than a slightly increased aggro range(Although the previous range seemed to be different from shot to shot, which makes it hard to judge the actual range it had). Still a trustworthy zed shooter.

coolmanyou1, I suggest you just give up this idea. It's neither functional nor conducive to gameplay. First of all, this is an ALPHA version, which means most of the features are either not implemented or not balanced, at all. Second of all, you seem to misunderstand what the intention of the mod is. Third of all, your ideas don't make any sense.