Pocket4s

This suggestion only works if rocket sets up official servers with some guarantee of persistence and accessibility. I do not want hundreds of hours of exploration, progress and discovery to rest in the hands of some random joe blow who can decide on a whim at any moment to cut off my access to his server because he can't afford the bandwidth anymore.

Zero posts. Not because anyone's attitude would change' date=' but because nobody would play that game. There is a fine line between harsh, brutal, challenging and intense and simply punishingly tedious. Crawling around prone everywhere I go because there are literally 40-50 zombies in earshot at all times crosses that line, sorry. It would be in no way a compelling experience, "fun" or otherwise. And say what you will about the "carebears" but multiplayer games, even harshly realistic ones, need players. If the game world is empty because you've decided your design philosophy is to punish people for paying your game, the game isn't going to be very interesting. Zombies are not the focus of DayZ - other survivors and bandits are. And those are people. I love DayZ and I love that it's not pulling punches. I haven't felt this level of intensity in a game in decades - not since MUDs that allowed players to be fully looted upon PK resulting in the loss of potentially months of effort. I welcome that intensity and challenge, and I am enjoying every moment in the game. But that's just it - at the end of the day it's a game. Games are played. Play, by definition, is an activity undertaken for enjoyment. Most of us have lives that are full of a certain amount of unavoidable tedium - school, jobs, housework, etc. - so when we retire to our gaming hobby, even those of us who are into the sort of harsh experience that DayZ has to offer, we still want to enjoy ourselves. If all a game has to offer is tedious repitition followed quickly by a punishing death, how many people are going to be devoting their leisure time to it? Very few. And those of us who do will feel very lonely and as a result soon bored. If DayZ is to mature from Alpha into a successful product (a successful game being one that your target audience wants to play), it needs to toe the line carefully. Do I want to see "Ding level 50!" in general chat? No. But would it be kind of neat if I could indicate that my survivor used to be a Doctor before Z-Day, granting him a very slight bonus to bandage speed? Or, after my 10th animal gutting would it be cool to learn something new about animal anatomy, granting a chance at an extra raw meat from the carcass? Yes. And these would fit perfectly well within the confines of the "harsh reality" of the game. As to the OP, you can take your "only post suggestions I personally find amenable" proclamation and stuff it. I'll let rocket peruse the forums and trust him to decide for himself which ideas are compelling and which are not. None of us need you to police the forums for us. If you're so convinced you know exactly what features a game like this needs, I suggest you go make one of your own. No, that's not what he said. He said frustration, not difficulty. They are not the same thing. A difficulty that presents a unique challenge and requires critical thinking, reflexes, a deep understanding of the game, experience, etc. and can be overcome through interesting means, etc. is fine. Difficulty for its own sake - just to confound the player or create needless tedium is poor design. For example, if your game is hard because the enemies are incredibly smart - that's positive difficulty. If your game is hard because the controls are unintuitive and unresponsive - that leads to frustration and is a sign of bad design. Not saying this applies to DayZ - I'm just pointing out there's a distinction to be made.

Too many bored server admins spawning NVGs for themselves and all their friends' date=' then going to night servers to pray on new players. Besides, "thriving with activity" is a bit of a stretch. Most night servers are between 10/50 and 25/50 while the daytime servers are virtually always packed to the point of needing to spam refresh in order to get into the game. That's telling. I'm guessing they're reading them and considering them carefully. That's the whole point to an Alpha. I don't think the darkness level has been altered from the original ARMA engine - a game in which players are usually traveling in vehicles or have no scarcity of NVGs. It's entirely possible they are open to this discussion. Assuming they are sitting there "laughing at us" is presumptious.

I completely disagree. The game itself already encourages movement and this does the opposite. Before I always wanted to be on the move - traveling from town to town to get new loot and encounter new things. Now if I've used my last wood and haven't found a new one' date=' as soon as my temperature hits the 50's I'm headed to the nearest building to... do nothing? Leaving risks death so my survival option is to stay in one place until someone is nice enough to bring me wood or the sun rises. Or, practically speaking - it's another reason to switch to a daytime server which is already a behavior that's too common in this game. Make that +2.

He's not asking about cold medicine, he's asking about antibiotics. I really wasn't trying to be a smartass. The game is more fun, in my opinion, if you take the risk to discover things on your own. Just friendly advice that I feel I delivered reasonably.

That's just not true' date=' Dallas. I was raised in a very rural area with zero light pollution and I can tell you from personal experience standing in an open field on a moonless night you can see your surroundings quite well. Objects are muted, details are lost and color is practically non-existent, but the lay of the land and the general shape and position of nearby objects is absolutely clear by starlight alone. The "ink dark" night in DayZ does not exist in reality. If it did, I suspect the human race would not have survived this long. Now, if you're in a tall stand of trees, a steep valley, among rocks, or I imagine among the abandoned buildings of larger cities (I can't speak personally to the experience of a moonless night in the center of an abandoned major population center unfortunately) then of course this changes. It can definitely be "pitch black" in a forest or steep ravine. So, I think that's the compromise that makes sense for this game - traveling by night across open land or lightly populated towns in otherwise open areas (like Pavlovo, for example) should absolutely provide better visibility than exists now in the game. Flares and chemlights come into play in forests, cities, and especially building interiors which is where all the good stuff is anyway, right? If you want to travel indoors to get loot or engage in combat, you're still going to need a light source to do so effectively. Uhh, so then you DO have a problem playing at night? If you're altering your video settings as a course of game play, that's a pretty bad sign. I grew up 5km from the nearest small town (no street lights) and 20km from the nearest city. I am also not "lying." Visibility by starlight is orders of magnitude better than the engine currently depicts.

I think we should trust rocket to add features that enrich and expand the experience, as opposed to making it "fuzzy" or overly intricate or complex. A more appropriate request would be "Please carefully consider the impact your features will have on the things that make DayZ an incredible experience." But, then again, that goes without saiyng.

I hate to be dismissive, but I'm sure if you spent the amount of time it took you to post this thread thinking instead about where medicine might logically appear, you would be able to figure this out for yourself. The entire premise of this game is to use your wits to survive. Try to do so before resorting to a forum thread, and you might find your experience enriched. I'm not saying this to be a dick, but I genuinely think the game is more fun if you take on challenges like this on your own. Spawn rate is below 1% so if you don't succeed at first, come back tomorrow (assuming you haven't been eaten alive by then).

Hacker, or bored admin? This game needs official servers as soon as possible.

I'm really at a loss for how you can dismiss this as unimportant. What is more important in a PvP-focused zombie survival game than an incredibly simple exploit executed with two keystrokes that completely eliminates all threats from zombies and most threats from PvP? Zombies are supposed to make it hard to gather loot and survive. As it stands' date=' many people simply run headlong full bore through the middle of town until they reach their destination, disconnect and relog to free loot. As for PvP - headshots become the only reliable method for successfully defeating an enemy. Anything else and either player is free to end the combat in an instant with two keystrokes. It's insanely game-breaking. Yes, there are other severe bugs but to pretend this is unimportant is a special kind of ignorant. Okay - unless you're engaging zombies or players in combat or running around gathering loot between "hops" then my proposal would not affect you.

I agree with you on the surface, but to play devil's advocate there are certainly ways I can see "leveling up" being incorporated without upsetting the immersion, realism or sandboxiness. Best example I can think of off the top of my head is improving your ability to butcher animals. I have no idea how to butcher an animal. If I tried, I would probably ruin some of the meat. But if I practiced, and my very survival depended on it, I would probably get better with each passing attempt (i.e., increasing the amount of raw steak acquired from animal caracasses as my skills improve). Medics could apply bandages and give blood transfusions faster. You could increase your athleticism over time by eating regularly and running long distances - reducing reticule wander from exhaustion, increasing recovery time, or even eventually increasing run speed slightly. etc., etc. I think there are ways to incorporate slight and subtle differences in player abilities - and doing so might add some interesting variety and secondary goals to the game.

The logic is simple and it has been done before to great success on numerous titles with similar issues. PK MUDs were doing it in the 90's, and many PvP-oriented multiplayer games have done similar: Player can receive 'NOQUIT' flag by taking or being the victim of various actions. An active NOQUIT flag means you cannot logout of the game until the flag expires - either by normal means, or by ALT-F4. The duration of the flag depends on the severity/intensity of the action: Kill a player, NOQUIT = 90s Attack player, be attacked by player, NOQUIT = 60s Attack zombie, attacked by zombie, NOQUIT = 45s Pass near player you have not recently been near, NOQUIT = 20s etc., etc. The timings are obviously imprecise and can be tweaked up or down to the DEV's liking - but the system itself is tried and proven to prevent these cheap evasion tactics. Yes, this means that occasionally you will die to a particularly ill-timed disconnect, computer crash or power outage. The negative of these rare occurrences, however, is FAR outweighed by the increased integrity of the PvP system. As it stands, the system is broken. Snipers can take a shot and logout if they miss. You can kill someone and logout before their friends find you. Hell, you can probably drop a grenade at your feet and logout before it explodes killing everyone in the room. The problem is severe and the fix is simple. We call this "low hanging fruit."