mooncabbage

Did you even read the thread? It's impossible to lower a pistol, you would have to switch to a rifle, assuming you even had one, in order to do so. Plus it's nowhere near as quick as in real life. Frankly it's ridiculous.

I can see that it might be nice to have some very small benefit to surviving for longer periods of time. I'm not sure that a skill tree or experience is the right approach, but I think the kernel of the idea you want to build on is the idea of survivor benefits. Make people want to stay alive, beyond just losing all their gear. I don't think a skill system necessarily fits, it needs to be more organic. It could be something visual, like various survivor skins, or various stages of beard length, but I think it needs to have some kind of gameplay component, without upsetting the core game. Although that's potentially a problem, realistically that's not as easy in this game as it might be in others. You could die of thirst or starvation, or someone might just come along and shoot you while you're idling. Also I suspect idlers would be kicked off just about any server, especially with server pops as high as they currently are.

I just don't think it's necessary to have this kind of experience system in. Does it reset if you die? Also you're not butchering the cow for prime cuts, you're butchering it for meat. Hackjob or no, you're going to have the same amount of meat available. Infact one cow would provide more meat than any one person could store and eat. I think experience in this game comes in the form of learning how it works, like where the best gear is, how to move without getting shot etc. I don't see any benefit in adding probably the worst part of MMOs and RPGs, which is the skill system. The only reason those games have them is because they need them.

Let me try this with you again: You can't lower a pistol. So you can double tap ctrl until the rapture, it won't do a fkn thing.

No, purely because I dislike any kind of skills system. I prefer to think of it as an avatar, rather than a character. It's a means for me to interact with the world, rather than a character I play. As rocket has said in the recent interviews, it's MY skill with the guns that counts, not some BS stat that determines how much my gun wobbles or whatever. And I think that's how it should stay. Players get better at the game, and that's progress enough for me.

First of all, there isnt' a damn thing you can do about people using vent or similar, even once you disable global chat. And I don't really see a problem with groups of friends behaving as groups of friends. They can kill you and not each other and thats fine. If it helps, just imagine that they all have radios or something. Cellphones would be cool though, +1 that suggestion. Also I really don't think rocket is going to care about radios. He doesn't have any problem with people using an out of game map, nor the out of game loot cheat sheet. Clearly he doesn't object to the metagame, so you might as well learn to live with it.

That's a pretty terrible idea. I suggest you get a water bottle, stand outside when it rains, and see how long it takes to fill up. Fact is, even very very heavy rain is only a few cm over any given area. Given the size of the neck in the bottle, you'd be lucky to get a quarter cup of water.

The military weapons are alright, but then you wouldn't want them to be super powerful. It's just an option. My AK kills zombies fine. Also, military weapons seem to be much more effective against players than civilian weapons. Most of up north is also safer than down south, with the possible exception of the Sobors and the airfield. And I'd say the guy turning around and killing you had more to do with server and latency issues than anything else.

I can tell you exactly WHY stmovement or something that does the same job NEEDS to be included in the mod. I was trying to meet up with a mate in stary last night, long story short, he accidentally aggro'd some zeds, and ran into one of those red brick houses and up the stairs to try to try to create a choke point. Unfortunately for him, he walked up the stairs instead of backing up them, and couldn't turn around. As a result he was torn to shreds by zombies. I know that's what happened because it nearly happened to me too, when I went to borrow his matches and AK. I don't care how "realistic" your long arm bullcrap is, having to back down WIDE stairs in order to turn around is NOT realistic. I'd rather have my gun clip through walls than be stuck because my avatar's arms are made of reinforced concrete.

Dead is dead. If you get torn to shreds by zombies or bleed out from a gunshot wound, there isn't much anyone in the post-apocalypse world can do about it. There is already quite a bit of pre-death stuff in the game, compared to standard arma. If you get shot, there is the chance to bandage you and nurse you back to health. Also your vision etc degrade with your health. I dont think this mechanic is necessary.

The problem with this suggestion is the risk of over-balancing the mod, which would destroy the flavour. Particularly the idea of having zombies per player in the area. That makes every area the same. As it is, cherno and elektro ARE more dangerous, and I dont think that's a bad thing.

You could just give your friend beans. Eating restores blood.

Roaming bands of zombies would be interesting, but I think more as a later feature. Particularly if they follow the roads. The zombie AI needs more work first, because atm I think it's far too easy to aggro zombie hordes by accident rather than by stupidity.

First of all, balance isn't important. Secondly I think the winchester is likely to get nerfed in terms of reload time and ammo capacity eventually, because it's not realistic right now I don't think. But the CZ has a scope, and the winchester does not.

Sounds like Cherno :P

I absolutely 100% disagree with you. First of all, the deer stands are not supposed to be easy to find. This mod isn't about magical loot. If you need stuff, that's what towns are for. Secondly, they shouldn't have good loot. I would argue they should be nerfed from military loot with soldiers, to hunters. It'd make more sense anyway. Also it's the only time you ever stumble on zombies in the woods, which makes for a much more tense experience when you do. Having individual zombies randomly wandering the woods is no good either, because they become a CONSTANT threat, and only an annoying one. Having 3 zombies in certain locations works perfectly for me.

Regardless of snipers, I think an alert state makes sense. Zombies shouldn't know exactly where you are, and even if they do, they should really only know where you LAST were. I think it's probably a technical problem though. Right now the zombies are animals, they use ambient AI. I don't know anything about arma modding at all, but it's likely that the more stuff you add to the AI, the more stress they'll put on the server and the less you can have. Zombies do seem a bit too easy to aggro and too hard to lose atm though. The on/off is no fun. I can crawl through a town with total impunity, but if I accidentally stand up and run leaving a doorway, I could aggro every zombie in town on me.

More to the point, what's this Bandit vs Survivor nonsense. It's Survivor vs Survivor. If me and my mates shoot other people, but not each other, how does that work. Just because I shoot Frank doesn't mean I'm going to shoot Henry. The problem is more to do with difficulty identifying other players, not so much identifying who is trustworthy and who is not. I'll make friends, and I'll trust them. So will other people. And there are plenty of reasons to cooperate. Groups are more zombie resistant, more bandit resistant, and more capable of distributing tasks. Soloing, grouping, banditry, and any combination thereof are perfectly valid ways to play.

Right now all you'd have to do is kick someone from the server on death, someone else would take their slot and that'd be it. Pros: A delay on respawning, if coupled with ejection from the server, would allow more people to get on to the currently packed out servers. It'd also add a significant death penalty. I remember when I started playing, I was quickly down to no ammo in my makarov and a single tin of beans, death would have been advantageous. I played on anyway because I like a challenge but I can see the point. Cons: Too serious a death penalty could make bandits into something truely reviled. Right now being a bandit is fair play for the most part. Making death too serious could have a very profound effect on the tone of the gameplay. Just my thoughts. A 5-10 minute delay would probably be ok, especially if it helped take a tiny bit of strain off the server, and remind noobs to be a bit cautious. It's definitely a double edged sword though.

1) I don't care about total stats, but I would like to know for example, how long I've been alive, and how far I've travelled. 2) I haven't used the crossbow, but I think I've seen far more sporterized hunting rifles with scopes than without. So that'd make sense. 3) I agree 100% that panic sounds are useless. They're loud and annoying and don't contribute to the atmosphere. I think they detract. I can see adding morale or sanity as a mechanic, but it's annoying to have my character freak out at the zombies when I'm perfectly safe.

Yes that's something that bugs me. There isn't much consistency to zombies. I can RP away the fact they mill about the bottom of ladders, but the way they sprint across a field in a mad zigzag, only to politely stroll at you in buildings is a bit ridiculous. And again, mixed zombies is a terrible idea, leave that crap in L4D. Consistency is key.

I think you bring up some valid points, but the server to server persistence is one of the things that makes DayZ interesting. I don't know what the best solution is, but it seems like taking away the persistence to solve the exploits is less than ideal. I think players should be able to camp safely in their fortifications, it's the server switching to get in and out that's the problem. It cuts both ways too. A group of players who've fortified an area could be totally destroyed by someone teleporting in as it were from another server, and that doesn't seem fair either. Also, with the current state of servers, ie. 50 slots per server, and all of them full, it seems like having per-server characters would encourage people to want to only play on one server with their friends, putting more stress on servers. If it was going to work at all I'd suggest you'd need servers to be capable of supporting a LOT more concurrent players.

First of all, amazing post. Well thought out, and I really like the pacing angle. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it really is something that needs to be considered. Re: Forests, I think they do need to be a safe haven like you have said. There is food in the form of animals you can hunt, but it's a bit tricky to get and animals are often close to towns anyway. In towns, you know there are zombies, so you can pretty much just crawl if you're patient and not worried about getting shot. If forests were full of zombies too, I'd have to crawl everywhere, and pacing would be shot, it'd all be exactly the same. As it is, I can skirt towns via forests (realistic), and run to move faster. Which leads into another point that you missed about pacing. To recap, IN TOWN YOU KNOW THERE ARE ZOMBIES. So you are alert. In a forest you tend to let your guard down a bit, maybe looking around for bandits but for the most part not too worried. Woe to the survivor who stumbles into a hide, and doesn't notice hte zombies until too late. That's happened to me twice, and the second time I knew to look. It's really the only time in the game you actually get a shock. In towns you can be tense, and if a bandit shoots you you're usually already cursing at the restart screen, but zombie ambushes in the forest are terrifying, BECAUSE they're rare and unexpected. RE: Zombie numbers, I don't think they're too bad. I've easily soloed lots of places, including Zelenogorsk. However I can certainly see your argument for the spawn radius. I think it would be nice if it was possible for a group of players to take over a building (town centre, hospital, church) and fortify it, as an inner city safe zone, from which they can go out and do raids. Some mechanism to stockpile goods would be great, not just to encourage cooperation, but to increase the danger level. Afterall, if you have collected lots of good stuff, who's to say the group down the road won't try to take it. The theory isn't perfect, because it relies on players maintaining their base over a reasonable period of time, but it does add to the PvE/PvP/COOP dynamics that make DayZ so interesting. PS. I just realised Swi1ch kind of already made my point about forests, and made a good added point about alerting other players. Oh well.

RE: Slow zombies. They're my personal preference, but I can see why rocket would want to use fast zombies. I strongly disagree with any suggestion of mixed zombie types. Since the zombies are humans suffering from a viral infection, the symptoms are going to be basically the same. They're not magic zombies. In defence of Slow(er) zombies: 1) Ammo is a precious commodity. Even at a rate of 1 bullet per zombie, if they spawn fast enough and you don't get any good gear from a raid, you come out with an economic loss. Loss of life is not the only kind of loss you can experience. At the end of the day, this mod is as much about resource management as anything else. 2) Slow zombies would mean people wouldn't have to crawl across entire towns. Right now you can crawl with absolute impunity. And if zombies could spot you if you were crawling, going into town would be virtually impossible, as it's so easy to alert them, and impossible to shake them. Zombies should be a threat, not a death sentence. Basically it goes without saying that slower zombies need to be more alert zombies. 3) Contagious zombies would be a serious threat. If zombies were capable of passing their infection to a player, any kind of hit would be serious, upping the ante and tension in any zombie encounter. I'm not proposing any kind of instakill zombie tag where a zombie hits you, and you become a zombie or anything like that. I'm suggesting that the zombie plague might work a bit like vampirism or lycanthropy in other games. You have a chance of being infected each time you're hit, and once you become infected, you have a certain period of time to treat the infection or you turn. In this case it means, bad luck, game over, you "die", and are replaced with a zombie, start again. The anti-viral medicine could be quite rare, spawning a whole new gameplay goal for you and your friends. I see slow zombies working as less of a direct threat to players, and more of a cost of doing business. The more you shoot, the more zombies you attract, the harder it is to get into town and get your stuff, and the harder it is to get out. Between the cost in bullets and the risk of infection, going into town becomes less of a leisurely crawl and more of a tense race. ALL that aside, there are obviously gameplay reasons for faster zombies, but I think the sweetspot is going to be somewhere between the omnipresent shamblers of the movies, and the dumb as two bricks speedfreaks we have now. Honestly in the current state of the AI, it's more believable that the zeds have had a bad batch of meth than it is a virus. Oh, and as an asside, rocket is always going on about how everything to do with this mod is an experiment, so maybe he'll try slow zombies in a later patch, if only to prove once and for all they don't work. Sounds good to me right :cool: