thesodesa

If I didn't know any better, just looking at most patch notes would make me think that they're not even trying to make a survival simulator. It feels really silly, putting all of these guns in the game, if the amount of gun spawns are going to be drastically reduced in the future in favor of either spawning, or crafted bows and slings and things. Just so many friggin' GUNS.

Well, the way I see it, if this game is a simulator, the devs might as well go all out on that aspect. Also, there are probably a bunch of people here, myself included, who have never taken a single driving lesson, and therefore can't drive. Making cars act realistically would therefore add value to people who can drive, because even if they weren't used to doing it in game, they would know the mechanics in theory and would quickly pick it up, and would therefore have an advantage over others. I'm all for adding features that would make people more useful if they had real life experience and skills, that could be somehow translated to in-game mechanics, even if that put me at a disadvantage.

Personally I think that guns should be found, not made, but on the other hand I would much prefer that the game would focus more on player made, improvised, weapons like slings, and that guns would become a rare luxury item. From wikipedia: "The sling is inexpensive and easy to build. It has historically been used for hunting game and in combat. Film exists of Spanish Civil War combatants using slings to throw grenades over buildings into enemy positions on the opposite street. Today the sling interests sportsmen as a wilderness survival tool and as an improvised weapon." Simple, but deadly once you learn to use them well. Also, traps should probably be a viable way of hunting small game.

This.

But should it not be put into the game at all? If the devs are willing to put weapon crafting into the game, why limit peoples' options? Personally I think that the importance of looting should be reduced (not removed altogether) in general in favor of player made items.

I agree.

It would be nice if the zombies could run up stairs, but it might never happen. The last time I tested, even I couldn't do it in game (didn't try spirinting, though).

For me, it's not so much about what vehicles are put in, but when it comes to motorized vehicles, I would actually like to be forced to operate a manual transmission with the mouse (maybe just have it so that you click on the required point on the stick, to not make it too demanding) in free look, and even possibly have different buttons for the pedals, including the clutch. Maybe: W for gas, Shift for clutch, and space for brakes. Also, bicycles. Those definitely need to be put into the game. EDIT: The free look -thing is totally doable, since you can pretty easily fly a helicopter in 'Take on helicopters' like that.

The thing that confused me was the wording "You need meat for your body to function", instead of "You need certain amino acids in order for your body to function". I find the use of the word "meat supplement" a bit silly, and I feel the word should be "amino acid source". Same applies to fatty acids and any other "micronutrients". However, I'm still insisting, that if the necessary plant items find their way into the game, and if you can cultivate them in decent amounts, it should be possibe to survive without meat. I don't know why anyone would want to live on nothing but plants, because of the extra hassle, but it should still be doable. A persons survival should be dictated by what nutrients they get through their diet, not by what they are eating. What I mean by that is that the game should only be keeping track of your nutrient levels when determining the level of your health, and that has been the thing that I've been arguing about all along. I guess it's a bit pointless, but for completeness' sake I might as well add, that by eating nothing but cooked meat, your vitamin, particularly vitamin C, and fiber intake would be drastically reduced (the vitamin breaks down when heated), which would lead to health problems as well, like gout for example. So if you plan on just hunting, then cooking your meat and also not using every possible part of the animal as food, you're not going to get by either. http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2011-04/fyi-what-would-happen-if-i-ate-nothing-meat. Raw meat has the vitamins, but the risk of catching a hookworm or the Giant roundworm might deter people from eating it. Hosting a food leaching parasite doesn't sound too tempting in an apocalypse either. I'm so hoping they put parasites in as well, by the way. :)

I still feel like we are debating about different things. You are clearly either trying to get me to admit that eating meat is compulsory to survive, or that only by eating meat are you going to have an optimal diet. The first point is clearly wrong, as there are many people on this earth living off of nothing but veggies(mainly for religious reasons or poverty). Therefore it should be doable in game as well. The second point I might concede, but I'm not going to do it based on just 1 article. You don't have to worry though, I'm not a vegan, so there is no need to convert me into a meat eater. My stance is neutral on this topic. If the devs insert the correct nutritional values for all the food items in the game, which is all i care about when it comes to this conversation, we both win. I just sort of feel like this debate is a bit pointless, since we both seem to agree on the whole "correct nutritional values for food items"-thing.

My point about the player avatar's needs still stands though, doesn't it. If the devs want to include things like the rate of absorption of iron from meat vs broccoli/spinach they can by all means do that, although a simpler way of doing it would be to just make plants have less iron in them to reflect the actual amount absorbed during digestion. You could still in theory get the necessary amount of iron from eating nothing but broccoli. You would just have to eat more of it.

As far as I know, vegans can live off of nothing but plant matter. It just tends to be rather difficult in an apocalyptic scenario. I feel like you missed my point and based on your post we actually seem to agree on things. Player characters have needs and as long as those needs are satisfied, it shouldn't matter where the nutrition comes from. If you get your daily energy and nutrient needs from protein shakes, vitamin pills, saline bags and sugar, that should be a completely acceptable option for players. Whether that's practical, and whether those things actually provide you with enough energy and required nutrients and not too much of any single nutrient, should be the only limiting factors when it comes to survival. All I'm asking for is that the devs attach accurate nutritional values to all the sources of food and drink in the game, and accurate nutritional requirements to player characters, depending on whether they are male or female. EDIT: Also, I wouldn't call the real life needs completely arbitrary, since there is a certain minimum level of nutrition required to keep a body going. The way those requirements were set (evolution) wasn't completely random, in the usual sense of the word.

Forcing people to eat meat to maintain full health sounds a bit arbitrary. The game already has required daily nutritional values hidden somewhere in the code, and it shouldn't matter where you get your nutrition from, as long as your needs are fulfilled. Of course, things like canned peaches aren't going to contain much in the way of protein, so eating nothing but peaches isn't going to fill your nutritional needs, and you might actually "overdose" on sugar. I'm not sure if there are negative effects planned for following a one-sided diet (including eating nothing but meat), but I'd be all for it. Basically I'm saying that I don't like the idea of putting arbitrary limitations on players. This is a simulator and should relfect the real world accordingly.

It's not even a question of optimization. That is usually done after the rest of the game is already finished, and no new features are going to be added. With Dayz that stage is probably at least 2 years away from now. When Dean was talking about himself possibly leaving Bohemia at the end of this year, he mentioned it would only happen if everything went according to plan, and that he would stay behind to help the team if they still absolutely needed his input. Personally I think they will get the zombies, hunting and the required server performance for those two done this year. Vehicles might be moved onto next year along with base building/renovation of existing buildings. But that's just my opinion based on the current state of the game.

In the past both big publishers and indie developers alike would have waited way, WAY longer before revealing anything about their game to the public. In the old days most games would have already reached a stable state by the time any information was released on them. If you're used to the old model, I can understand your concern. Realize however, that the game is expected to only reach a stable state by the end of this year, and that's only talking about performance and basic features. Those may not include things like base building, or vehicles at all. It might be that only zombies, hunting and the required server performance for those two things are finished at the end of this year. My understanding is that Bohemia is looking do things exactly like Mojang did with Minecraft, and Minecraft still isn't finished. They are still releasing patches and features for it. This is going to be the future of DayZ as well, as far as I know. So be patient. Game development is much slower than most people realize, and it doesn't help people's nerves that they chose to release a game that is basically close to it's prototype stage.

I agree with your second point, servers shouldn't be too different, at least when it comes to vanilla DayZ. I'm not too keen on taking away the possibility of a group becoming self sufficient through farming, hunting, foraging building alarm systems etc. The first thing I would try to do in an apocalypse would be to set up a safe haven with a large community, since together people are stronger, as long as they take care to not to poop anywhere close to where they keep their food. Hygiene is important.

Modular in the sense that they are going to be like the guns of the game, with interchangeable attachments, like possibly doors (the specific idea was that a different colored doors could be swapped between cars of the same model, if I recall correctly) and wheels dand engines. This was his vision at least in the early days of development, and he mentioned it in multiple videos where he was asked about it. This was over a year ago though, so maybe things have changed.

Dean has already said that vehicles are going to be modular, meaning you could possibly swap parts between them. So at least something similar might be doable in the vanilla game.

Honestly I'd like the spawn rate for firearms to be reduced drasticaly across the board, especially once the possibility of crafting makeshift weapons is added to the game. If a firearm did spawn, it should have a higer chance of being a civilian grade weapon, than a high tech military one. So I guess what I'm saying is, yes increase the spawn reate of shotguns in relation to other weapons.

This is one of those things that could be made realistic, adjusting the analog focus of your binoculars and scopes for each individual eye by rotating the screws that the lenses are attached to. Even if it would be a too much of a bother to make peoples eyes behave differently, like they usually do in real life, at least make it so that you have to turn one screw to adjust both of the lenses at the same time. Digital scopes are a different issue, and I dont have much experience with those, but they could be made to behave authentically as well. Make binoculars and scopes spawn with random adjustment values.

This. Why would you even want to have unique serial numbers on every weapon. What purpose does it serve in a game/simulator? You just threw a suggestion post at us without going into much detail about the reasoning behind your idea.

Just having all zeds within a certain area react to a single zombie screaming would be challenging enough, methinks. Once the zombie development is finished and fighting them is made challenging enough, having a townful of zombies running to your location because a single one saw you would make me think twice about engaging them, and would pretty much scare me shitless should an engagement occur. No need for Slendie, or any other supernatural boogiemen for that matter, to show their faces around here. EDIT: Unless of course you are talking about halluciantions caused by taking hallucinogens, e.g. some medicines and uncooked mushrooms. but even then the hallucinations should in some cases (not all the time) show you things, like real players. If all of the hallucinations were things like slendermen or other supernatural stuff, people would soon learn to ignore them, since they could be sure that the hallucinations were not real.

There is no nuclear power plant on chernarus, so a meltdown accident is out of the question. If a nuclear weapon was detonated above chernarus, pretty much half of the map would be obliterated, and I see no indication of that. So, if this thing was put into the game, where do you suggest the nuclear fallout originated? I don't think the required condtions for a nuclear accident are met, so I would say no this suggestion. Plus, I don't really want to have to deal with a fallout zone in addition to all the other issues that we are going to face. Unless of course Bohemia somehow manage to turn this game into some arcady crap that makes things so easy that absolutely no thinking is required, and ignore the fact, that the original idea was to make a survival simulator(= learning tool that ~accurately portrays a realistic survival situation).

I think I made a similar suggestion/post in the past, and I totally agree, this would be an important feature to add at some point. Especially from a survival simulator perspective.

It would be cool from a roleplaying perspective if you could choose to spawn with a disease that would somehow reduce what you can do in game. This would be easy to implement, especially when the devs are already implementing things like heart attacks and fevers and so forth. If they chose to put genetic disorders in as well, that would make it even more interesting. Then again this would probably be used only on roleplaying servers, so I'm not sure if there's any point in implementing it. However, when it comes to things like exp, I'm going to say no, especially if you're suggesting the exp values be made visible to players. I tend to obsess about numbers in games, so the game would turn into a stressful grindfest for me. What I'm not against is invisible stats, like: 1) endurance + bone density: (both develop as you run or practise running (= running continuously a certain amount within a certain timeframe), so you would be able to run further and your feet would develop stress fractures more slowly). 2) reloading speed: (increases as you reload your gun with a magazine/clip or practise reloading your gun (= press the reload button a certain number of times within a certain timeframe, different stat for different loading mechanisms, like manual (single and repeater) and automatic)), 3) swimming: (increases the endurance stat) 4) removing vehicle tires and so forth. Basically actions where you, the player, are not required to do anything except press a button could become easier/faster for the player avatar to complete, or you could do things like running for longer. When it comes to things like loading a magazine with bullets or fixing a car engine or a flash light, I would actualy like to see 'minigames' implemented where you actually have to drag and drop (for example) things into correct places etc. Minigames that would require some real life expertise on a subject like electronics or car engines. If you wanted to fix a car engine you would have to manually fit the parts in place, maybe using the 3d viewing mode that already allows you to look at items in 3d in your inventory. That mode could be extended to allow the assembly of engine parts into a whole engine block or it could be used to view an engine looking for a broken cylinder to replace, or a blown out capacitor in the case of an electronic circuit etc. This would actually increase the value of both, the players who have been alive for long so they are fast at certain skills and people who know things about what medication is used for what illness (doctors) and car/electronics/avionics engineers. Just my 500$ on the subject. (I'm implying this post is a huge wall of text)