JerFeelgood

I believe it's a central issue. If the idea is to simulate the apocalypse with humans in their modern incarnation i.e. no telepathic ability. The telepathic communication ability conferred by 3rd party comms gives squads massive advantages to the massive detriment of the loner. Ideally I would love to see maual slow comms (flashlights, hand signals, radios found in game) be the norm as it would be more authentic to the proscribed environment and would be massively more immersive and tense. is this a simulation or a game?

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have i missed something? did the zombies not *cause* the apocalypse? it they've managed to take over the planet they must be tough as nails... now without the storyline it's impossible to determine where we are in the zombie evolution timeline. If we are now witnessing the tail end of the population bell curve where population contracts after consuming all available resources, and PC's are humans who've survived or recovered from the infection then that might explain why they're so weak... lack of food/new infectees etc... etc...if however the zombie population is still in the growth phase of it's population curve then they should be hard as nails as they have all they need to maintain their strength... all dependent on the backstory... how much would I like to see a dynamic where new spawns are individuals recovering from the infection.... imagine a spawn intro of a speeded up zombie life leading to a collapse where the red mist drops from your eyes and you awake, having fought off the infection... but i digress....

a simple counter to cranking up zombie volume is to instead crank up their lethality. 1500 relatively easy zombies in a server or 300 that are crazy dangerous to be anywhere near. easier on the server as less zombies to path for. with the same over all effect. Make them harder to kill, and much more lethal when aggroed on you. I suggested elsewhere giving them more methods of detection to make it much more difficult to creep past them. the game already has wind, by giving the wind a vector direction and creating a detection plume drifted by the wind you would create a body odour detection system. by having more players close together you would concentrate the detection plume thence stronger odour etc... would give the infected another way to detect you making them harder to sneak past...

okay, just read this thread re game comms http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/23-acre-support/ It would seem that a lot of people from the arma community are in favour of a strong in game comms system (voice and radio), and rocket has said that he is very supportive of in game comms though the ArmA ACRE radio system would be difficult to implement. so that just leaves me the question... is the use of external comm software to talk *telepathically* an exploit?

Is anyone here familiar with FsInn for flight sim? how hard would it be to adopt this code into the engine, or write similar code into the engine to provide radio support in game? combined with a buff to in game VON, gets rid of the parallel VOIP software problem and provides for an internal radio communication network.FsInn provides range based radio network for large networks, An active night on fs inn can see up to a thousand flight sim heads on the one network so the software is very robust and stable. I have started a new debate on game comms with a particular emphasis on the negative aspect of third party VOIP comms conferring telepathic comm skill here http://dayzmod.com/forum/index.php?/topic/47031-permadeath-in-the-post-apocalypse-bit-of-an-essay-repost-from-newbie-group/ I think secure in game comms system with localised speech and radio comms would contribute massively to the experience.... jer

Sorry, the hackfest comment was in no way related to the discussion, just an adlib reference to all the hacking being complained about at the moment on the forums... re centralised documents, yes there are stickies, and random posts sprinkled through the threads from the dayz devs. I was simply saying that a single centralised living mission statement posted possibly to the site page rather than buried in the forums may show a more cohesive direction to the project.... re comms issue: just cos a certain style of play is "ingrained" in the playerbase does not necessarily mean that it will contribute positively to the goal of the project. the parallel voip comms gameplay has evolved from a generation of games that have led gaming in a direction that the mod was deliberately designed to rail against i.e. rocket saying the game is not intended to be fun. I think that this element of the gameplay feels completely counter to my idea of an apocalypse simulator, which is what the goal of this mod is in my opinion. What seems to be the case at the moment is that there are those who are involved as part of the hardcore apocalypse simulator and those that are here to corrupt that goal... as I said in the OP, has the experiment merely shown that gamers are homicidal maniacs in their virtual lives? I've had a good chance today to spin off into a lot of other threads, and some of my OP points have been raised elsewhere in much more depth in the forums, but this is the only one so far i've seen that's discussing the corrupting/exploitative influence of the comms issue... and maybe I should have said this earlier, but these are simply my own ideas on which mechanics *I feel* would be detractive to my gameplay experience... *edit* just re-read the last line of your post, your staement re squashing external voip not being an option... I would argue that it is very possible and achievable as the effects of parallel comms are so easily observable in the game environment from an admin observer mode... maybe just not in the interests of commercial success as it would be a gaming paradigm shifter and people always resist the need to change their behavioural norms....

by writing into a code of conduct/EULA that you're not allowed to use parallel external real-time coms, and giving admins the authority to kick/ban offenders... having read the article linked above re comms/alt-f4 exploit behaviour, these rules would have to be handed down centrally (from the devs) and applied across the entire dayz serverscape otherwise the centralised statistic databse is completely irrelevent if it is sampling from a non uniform data pool... and people have discussed elsewhere the value of the central statisic model to the development of the mod... the more i debate this, the more hardened I feel my position becoming, I guess what I feel is missing here is a central written constitution/mission statement as to the purpose of the experiment/mod which we can all point to... this could be a living document... there seems to be a lot of confusion over what the aims are... for me a hyper realistic apocalypse scenario would be ultracool but may be commercially unviable... but I think the genuine anti-game following that has built up may be capable of supporting the project. I would hate to see commercial considerations dumb down the project... again fair beans to the boyz for attempting this project.... with the hackfest that seems to be going on at the moment i'm now unsure whether i will ever get to enjoy the true fruits of their labour :(

.... so if eating or firing a rifle attracts zombies, then all player generated noise should increase zombie detection and contribute to the ear symbol threat warning including any sort of vocal communication.... but lets move past that. I'm talking about voip giving telepathic communication ability. a player killed discretely should absolutely not be capable of warning his teammates to the threat. it completely invalidates anyones ability to play lone wolf/stealth survival character. If a hunter squad comes a knocking in your territory you should and you have the in game stealth capabilities to protect what you've scavenged, the hunters should not be given an unfair ability to circumvent your mad skillz...

....which returns me to the argumentof my original post re the value of communication being controlled from within the game, and an escalation of the zombie threat level... from what I can see, zombies aren't all that threatening. If you lie on your belly and shut up, a zombie won't agro on you... why I was arguing in favour of increasing the ways that zombies can detect you.... That these things aren't currently *in* the game doesn't mean we can't discuss their usefulness to the concept...

but it will also massively affect cooperative hunter bandit groups. And once players adapt they will develop their own system of communication. Verbal, audible, communication in the zombie post apocalyptic world should incur massive penalties. in the same way that shooting a gun draws in the zombie hoard. Players should have a massive incentive for paranoid silence. Allowing/encouraging external tools is contraindicated to my perception of what the game is trying to achieve... as it is not controllable in the game environment. If the devs decide to extend radio voice communication internally to the game then so be it. But using a radio for audible communication in game should still generate an audio detection footprint. Using external VOIP is conferring a telepathic communication ability to your ingame PC. Surely that is an exploit?

i apologise, somebody said earlier that they could cover the entire coast in 30mins, meaning 15mins down the side, from which I extrapolated the 60km/hr speed. my bad

Right. It dawned on me that a lot of the problems in the current game are attached to the value of life in the game. So give a life a value. Create a subscriber model as part of the standalone release where you pay for EVERY spawn. .10$/spawn. Lets see how quickly people go shooting each other then. this would have to be built into a secure game i.e. extreme security re hacking, server stability etc... You bet that people will rapidly become wildly intolerant of banditry then... :)

I apologise. the .10$ idea was a spitball... what I was aiming for was discussion on how to assign an incontivertible value to every spawn so that lives would not be needlessly be thrown away.... and as a way to prevent the respawn behaviour that some people argue is ruining the game...

And therein lies the entire crux of my argument. Mumble dictates your gameplay. Which means, very simply that the concept of permadeath and apocalypse are entirely abhorrent to you. In order to experience these concepts for which the mod was conceived. you must be willing to give up your Mumble and learn to communicate IN GAME. Parallel software comms can only be perceived as a deliberate exploit to the entire concept? *edit* I think restricting external VOIP would be the single greatest achievement this game could possibly make. The biggest threat to the concept is the ease of communication. If interplayer communication to build trust were extremely difficult, then the value of an ingame community would be incredibly increased and would lead to a massive increase in the paranoia factor. and again.... rocket has stated that he never intended for the concept to be *fun* to play... that there was already enough of that style of game out there....

Surely the core game concept is permadeath. actively seeking to rejoin friends after one has died is deliberarely circumting this core concept of the game. Subscribing to the concept of the game means upon each new spawn you have NO friends. Mechanics should be built into the game to make it much much more difficult to rejoin groups and to reclaim gear from from previous iterations. That is deliberate circumvention of the concept of permadeath. As (according to the map) it is approx 14km from the northeast city to chernarus, this distance should take 1hrs to cover in game at full run and a similar time to the west end. either the game is 225 square kms or it is not. giving your players superhuman run capability (even a cheetah couldn't hold down 60km/hr for 15mins) is surely a flaw in the game mechanics. Simply saying the map is 225 km sq does not make it so. If you can cover said ground in approx 15 mins of running then the map is actually about 10 km sq.

I think once it was written into the rules/code ofconduct/EULA, it would legitimise Admins kicking people for ungamesmanship behaviour. I perceive the thrill of the game being the paranoia/tension. In gaming i regard the use of any parallel external software to be an exploit and should be regarded as such. How can can you subscribe to the concept of simulating an apocalypse scenario without first casting off pre apocalypse tools.... maybe putting a NO TS a la NO 3DP header in the server listing to show that external comms are not allowed on that server? I Know there would be know actual way to control this directly form the Software itself, but it should be very very observable in game from player actions from an admin point of view whether or not a group is using TS/Mumble/Ventrillo...

I'm pretty sure rocket said he never intended for the game to be enjoyable in the fun way, that there are plenty of FPS games out there for that already, that this was supposed to be an anti game.... perhaps it's because the game is *FUN* at the moment that it's attracting hordes of PvP gamers... Surely the devs should be striving to make the game less fun... but i digress....

Interesting post re game theory, I think the limiting factors to PVP are much more easily contolled than you think. Limiting access to resources so one must trade, locked into a single easily identifiable PC by whatever means, a massive increase of the zombie threat level especially around population centres to decrease the PVP war zone effect (one would presume there would be a whole shed load more zombies in these areas with mortality rate in the cities...) in my opinion two major factors are encouraging the PvP element in this game, ease of access to ready made consummables (blood, bullets, beans) and ease of communication (ventrilo, teamspeak etc). Without strict controls on both the game will remain on a war footing...

absolutely brilliant..... LOL

In the post apocalyptic world, where does jet a-1 come from? and the spares to operate a jet? and the expertise to service said aircraft? I can just about comprehend there being spare tyres/engines and such but spare military hardware????

yes, but Isn't that form of communication linked to an audible range/proximity game device? like speech in the real world?

no but i get the gist, have plenty of FPS experience.... And I will once I get my games PC back (i'm away from it for a while!) does this mean i'm not allowed to comment on what i've observed? Am I not allowed to the discuss the game before I invest time in playing it? :)

Yo yo, I recently discovered the world of DayZ and ArmA, but unfortunately do not have the sys req at the moment to actually play the game. I;ve watched a lot of videos online re the project and been reading the forum intensively... newayz.... I like what I think Rocket was aiming for when he started this project. To use existing tools (The ArmA engine with which he was familiar) to simulate a post apocalyptic world in which a social experiment regarding which direction humanity would take in such a situation. I believe when I get back to my PC to actually play the game, I would like to play keeping the ideal of the original concept in place. In looking at the way the game plays now, I believe that their are several problems outside of his control in a F2P open server environment (and that he will never be able to control with ANY update) that limit the viability of the experiment. Players will not give up ingrained tools and concepts to actively participate in the experiment. The biggest tool is communication. In a paranoid post apocalyptic world, communication should be extremely difficult. The existence of global chat, where you can assess someones intentions from miles away should be strictly curtailed. All communication should be restricted to within the game. With the existence of TeamSpeak and Ventrillo this will be impossible to enforce. Absolutely impossible. And without this restriction it makes it way too easy for clans and squads to dominate the combat environment. Imagine a group environment where you had to communicate with flashlight or visual codes to transmit outside of ingame audible distance. I think if players were willing to give up their communication tools, it would go a long way to making the game a lot more interesting from a survival point of view. It would be like reinventing the wheel in terms of gameplay. How would you assess someones intentions without these tools? would a community reinvent signals and tools to advertise their friendly intentions? Imagine your squad of four hunters trying to coordinate an attack without an independent comms tool? Imagine they had to make sounds audible to all in-game to actually communicate and coordinate, you're set up in your sniper position and one of your squad scouts 400m away to your west, and then wants to return, how does he identify himself when returning to the squad to prevent infiltration? After player death, how do you safely relocate your squad? I think this would MASSIVELY increase paranoia levels in the game... and go a long way to increase the seriousness of the permadeath experiment... How would you even relocate your friends after you wake up on the beach? how would you identify yourself to them to come within the security perimeter that would inevitably spring up? How could one enforce this in the current game environment? It could only be done voluntarily. Players would have to choose to give up the tools on which they rely. And that could be maintained with closed access subscriber based servers or a code of conduct signup in the installation of the mod. A server where one must sign up to a code of conduct before being allowed in, and being banned for breaches of the code of conduct. It should be fairly easy to determine from admin observer mode whether someone is using illegitimate modes of communication. This code of conduct would only relate to the use of tools external to game and the post apocalyptic world which the devs have not deliberately given you access. Anything in game would be fair game. PvP vs PvE seems to be a massive argument ongoing in these forums at the moment.... I would argue that it should be possible to make the PvP element part of the PvE so that there is no difference, but this would only be possible if you could limit access to the tools that make PvP play so easy i.e. ease of communication, the abiity to bring equipment from one server to another... I have no real problems with lone nuts on killing sprees, they may well be a reality of the post apocalyptic zombie world. I do have a major problem with players using tools not given (external comm programs) to them to clean up in the game... is the use of ANY external software not an exploit in itself? anyway, I also think the 3rd person look around corners exploit is a bit broken when a tool (mirror on a bayonnet anyone?) could do the same in a much more immersive and realistic way. I have no problems woth loads of guns lying about but surely in the post apocalypse ammo would get really rare really fast. Readily consummable items should have the highest rareity value (ammo, matches, food, fresh blood, meds, batteries etc) and making them extremely rare woud go a long way to absorbing the PvP element into the PvE one as camping cherno wouldn't allow you to survive. You'd have to get out into the woods to make your own food. Similar to how vehicles are restored with parts, a limited access to lead, saltpetre, fire and relevent casting tools would allow you to make your own ammo and make it a tradeable commodity, It's the ease of access to these resources that makes PvP style of play so easy. it would be so easy to make an ingame specific tool which is a container, into which you place the required elements, then use it at a relevent spot an out pops what you where aiming for. Mouldy fruit + mortar and pestle + distillation equipment + fire = penicillin. Blood extaction kit + container + well hydrated/well fed indiviaual = bloodbag. Thinking along the lines of potion making from oblivion or skyrim. An ability to perform certain tasks could be restricted to certain environments. Imagine a garage building in a couple of towns where you would have to push/tow vehicles to in order to perform certain sorts of repairs, a chemist where one could make meds, and so on for all of the in game essentials..... Why are people so absolutely willing to circumvent the dev inspired game concept of permadeath? With a player death, surely all previous knowledge and ties should be lost to you. This includes knowledge of your friends and the surroundings.... It has always been true that the two greatest tools to humanity are knowledge and information. An ability to store and transmit these. In the post apocalyptic world, so much of both should be lost as to make certain specialist equipment both unusable and unmaintainable. In game high end electronics would suffer quickly, and as a result should disappear relatively quickly, and thence their value should be huge. This would imply the game would have to have a skill acquisition system, and massive penalties for those individuals without access to certain skills i.e. PvP bandits. These simple couple of things would inspire communities to spring up around certain resources, become protective of those resources and thence make those resources tradeable as they would have value... And with restricted access to bullets, meds and beans, I would not see a player killer surviving very long. With no comms, coordinated raids on burgeoning communities would have a much lower chance of succeeding. And lastly, the threat element from the zombie apocalypse should be massively strenghtened. If it was bad enough to take out the world in the first place it should should still present a massive threat to all human life. Ideally adding extra senses in game would add to the realism, touch (think wind sense, heat sense), smell and taste via a pc odor plume (and other odour plumes) and wind directions for upwind/downwind combined with a colour code to identify the type of odour. A zombie awareness of these elements would lead to an increased threat factor, a group of people would generate more odour and thence would attract more zombies, staying in a place too long could massively increase risk and should prevent camping.... I really don't know how many of these game devices could realistically be added to the game engine without overwhelming the server and user hardware.... Anyway. Sorry about the essay. I'm all for some PvP play once it's made intrinsic to the game device. I apologise if some of these ideas have been discussed in other threads.... and big up to the devs for the concept. It seems clear that the PC gaming public are fairly homicidal... will that be the result of the DayZ experiment...? My closing thought... do players want a survival based community game or a modern-day PvP persistent world warfare game with a zombie threat... do zombies in modern culture not just replace the wolves and bears and dragons that represented the horror threat of the medieval and dark ages? whew. that was almost to much. hope i don't get flamed... Jer *edit* whoops meant to post this in general discussion not newbie forum....

As i said, if a code of conduct was included in the installation, EULA, then admins could legitimately kick and ban users displaying traits of external communication. How? Use observer mode. If a squad strolls up a hill, disperses to a plan, and reacts universally to individual knowledge without any evidence of ingame communication then that would be legitimate grounds for a kick. ban for repeated offenses... Obviously an appeal method would have to be included... in a closed server invite only environment, I think this could be workable... jer *edit* what I meant to say was the effects of external comm tools should be easily observable in game, and if they were in breach of the code of conduct etc. etc......