flimsypremise

If you've never worked on a game development process, you should probably not be offering opinions about the pace, approach or overall approach to developing DayZ. Building something like this is an incredibly complex project, and possibly the worst thing you can do is rush the process. Most software projects are rushed to completion, and software developers are almost always forced to sacrifice the best approach in order to hit arbitrary deadlines. Get over your sense of entitlement and stop harassing the development team about shit you know absolutely nothing about. It'll be done when it's done.

Could someone with knowledge of the game internals give us a better sense of why active game objects like zombies cause high server resource utilization? My understanding is that the current game version can support 5000 active game objects per instance. This seems to suggest that all zombie-like game objects are active at all times, even if a player isn't in the vicinity. From what I can gather, this is related somehow to making the item logic more robust, but it seems fairly expensive to do. I also wonder if there are certain kinds of zombie behavior that are cheaper than others. For instance, I'm assuming that ARMA 2 operates on an event loop, like most game engines. If zombies moved slower, could their AI poll at a lower rate? Could a horde of zombies share their compositional objects in ways that would lower the individual cost for a zombie as the number of zombies increase in a given area?

I like how everyone acts as if this behavior is somehow something unique to DayZ players. Welcome to the human race. You learned an important lesson about what happens when you encounter other humans unconstrained by laws or societal prohibitions on certain behavior.

The community is dead. Everyone I know that was playing has stopped.

Both the M107 and the AS50 have an audible range of 455m, which is the longest of any weapon in the game. For comparison, the Lee Enfield has an audible range of 162m, and the other sniper rifles have an audible range fo 180m. So if you're within a half-kilometer of any zombies, prepare to run.

What exactly is the argument for keeping sniping as it is?

Should change the title of this thread to "HEY EVERYONE I AM A HUGE DICK".

I think you seriously underestimate the lengths to which people will go to get an advantage in a game. And on the topic of hacking, I don't really think it's an inevitability. There are plenty of MMOs that aren't riddled with vulnerabilities. The reason DayZ is vulnerable to hacks is the unsuitability of Arma II to the sort of gameplay Rocket wants to achieve. I think we should expect that the standalone will not be susceptible to hacks. I don't see any need for skill training. I think future development should focus on fixing bugs, and developing existing mechanics rather than adding new ones. Adding more building interiors is the sort of thing that adds to DayZ without fundamentally changing it. Adding skill sets or specializations will fundamentally change the nature of the game, which I really don't think is necessary. The standalone should be improved version of DayZ, not an entirely different game.

I think there may be a solution involving a popular and widely used mechanic from other games: storage in furniture items in buildings. If Rocket were to implement a skyrim type system, and allow players to enter any building, players could create private caches of items in anonymous furniture. It would be susceptible to discovery, but a player would have to go around for hours checking empty drawers. The key would be the sheer number of players to keep stuff. The random sheds scattered around the map would suddenly become a real resource, rather than just useless scenery.

How exactly are you going to stop people from grinding a skill that improves based on how much you perform an activity? If you get better the more you shoot, people will go to remote areas with early game guns and widely available ammo and shoot hundreds of rounds. Even if you base it on time spent alive, players will simply collect food and water and "incubate" characters. Any skill system is gameable, and if you introduce skills, you are inviting a certain portion of the player base to figure out ways to game the system. It doesn't matter what specific ruleset you introduce, someone will figure out a way to grind out that skill. The game does not lack for a skill system. It is not a necessary feature. Survival goals should be oriented around building, equipping and exploring. You introduce skills and it will spawn a third-world industry for grinding those skills. Say hello to players paying chinese gamers to max their character before they play.

I think this is probably the most important single thing to keep in mind when considering the standalone. Fixing the existing bugs and tweaking the current mechanics should probably be 99% of what gets focussed on.

The zombies in the video are perfect. That's exactly how they should behave.

You don't think running faster and shooting more accurately help you in PvP? I don't see what this adds to the game, besides benefitting obsessive grinders at the expense of everyone else. What specific lack is this addressing?

I don't really see what the argument is for maintaining sniper rifles as they are. Increasing the recoil and accuracy on the .50 cals, and decreasing the damage on the smaller caliber rifles to bring them in line with the damage of other weapons of the same caliber would bring sniping back in line with other forms of combat. I'm open to arguments to the contrary, but everyone in this thread who wants to keep rifles as they are is pretty much responding at the level of HUUUURRRRRR FAGGOT which, if these are the people in favor is probably a good indication that they should be changed.

Skill training completely undermines everything DayZ is about. Everyone, no matter how old their character is, and how much gear they've managed to acquire, is fundamentally the same. That means that a 20 minute old character can find a gun and kill a 2 month old ghillie suited sniper if they're clever enough. Changing this dynamic would just introduce the same grind bullshit and level whoring that infests every other MMO on the planet. I don't want to log in to DayZ and have to grind up skills so that I can compete with other players. If you want to play that game, go play Eve or WoW.

After changing zombie behavior, this is probably the single most critical thing to add. Players should be able to leave notes and pick up cans of spraypaint. Player created graffiti would greatly enhance the sandbox feel of the game.

Rocket should just eliminate or nerf everything that anyone would ever want to dupe. If the relative difference between weapons were reduced, duping would be pointless.

The AS50 is the preferred weapon of dupers and hackers, but aside from the one shot kill it's really not that great a weapon. First of all it's loud, so you run the risk of having every zombie in the area running straight at you when you fire it. Second of all it's not that accurate, and the mildots are screwed up, so you really need a rangefinder to use it. Basically if you're looking for one-shot kills at long range, and you have a rangefinder, an AS50 will do the job, but for almost everything else, the M24 is a superior weapon for a couple of reasons. It's much more accurate than the AS50, so you'll have an easier time getting head shots, (which are a one-hit kill); it shares ammo with the DMR and the M16-AIM, which is arguably the best assault rifle in the game, (you have to split the 20 rnd. DMR into 4 x 5 rnd. magazines, but it's the same round), and it's small and camouflaged. tl;dr People who prefer AS50s usually run around in large groups of well-equipped players, or they're hackers and dupers who don't really know what they're doing. The M24 is the better all-around weapon.

So just now I randomly respawned in Cherno without any gear, no backpack, nothing, after logging out last night under a pine tree in the hills behind Stary Sobor. Why did this happen? A hacker? Another of the myriad unresolved bugs that Rocket allows to litter this game like dog shits in an unfinished basement? Who the fuck knows, and besides its not the point of this story. I decide to make the best of it, assuming I will likely die, and run into Cherno looking for a quick gear up. I hear some gunshots, but I also hear the sounds of zombies being shot, so I'm not particularly worried, and besides I have less than nothing to lose, since death will actually get me more gear than I currently have (D O G S). I'm looking around for the army tents in the northwest part of town, and I notice that someone has broken the glass on the hospital, so I decide to check it out. I run in, start gearing up, and as I go around behind the wall in the middle of building, I run into two dudes in bandit skins couched down around a medical box. Now my character has literally nothing on it. No gun, no pack, nothing. These two geniuses immediately start firing on my completely unarmed character, except the dude in back doesn't wait for his buddy to get out of the way before he opens up. He unloads right into his friend's torso, missing me entirely, and then proceeds to fire wildly until he runs out of ammo. I am completely unscathed. I start laughing over VOIP and point out that I am completely unarmed, but he reloads and keeps shooting. I see his friend start to move again, so I figure his period of unconsciousness is over, and I run over his legs for good measure. After emptying three entire clips at me as I run around, the guy finally manages to kill me, but not before attracting every zombie in Cherno to the hospital. So a piece of advice for you fuckups, if you happen to find this thread. I'd get out of banditry if I were you, for your own well being.

Yeah well, I do all of that, and today I logged in and I was dead for no apparent reason. The only way to survive for more than a few days is by being lucky enough to avoid the hackers and bugs.

Engine issues aside, I think if you're going to hang around in cherno shooting unarmed players, you should probably A) try not to waste 3 magazine on a guy who can't feasibly hurt you, and B) not shoot your friend in the face.

Rocket is a fucking moron. The engine doesn't render properly at night, turning the brightness and gamma was a necessity driven by that failure. I've also noticed that brightness and gamma no longer work well at night, which means that Rocket, instead of fixing the myriad of serious, gamebreaking bugs that afflict this mod, took the time out of his busy schedule to make sure that only people with NVGs can see anything but absolute blackness at night. Glad he has his priorities straight. Can't wait for those fucking dogs.

But guys, dogs! Dogs D O G S

The people in this thread who want to keep all of the sniper rifles in the game as-is don't really have much of an argument. All of the rifles should be reduced in accuracy, and sniper rifles below .50 cal should all take a big damage reductio. .50 cal rifles should have heavy recoil after each shot. It shouldn't be possible to hit anything while standing with a .50 cal.