The OCD

Rocket has said that he doesn't want to balance towards one play-style or another, so any kind of benefit or detriment towards heroes or survivors can just be thrown out.

This. Along with that, there is no electricity after the apocalypse to be able to refrigerate and preserve the blood bags, which is absolutely necessary even for short-term. There's a difference between implementing realistic ideas because they are realistic and implementing realistic ideas because they're good ideas that add to the game-play and make the experience more immersive. This proposed system is way too complex and would only degrade the experience overall, and doesn't even follow a realistic/authentic path. There is little to zero sterility without electricity, and administering blood tests would be dangerous without sterility. What would it add? Just another overly complex step in helping people/yourself.

The main problem with body language (and by extension talking to someone over local chat)is that established serial killers are more often than not sociopaths. In basic terms, they do not feel remorse or regret for killing people, and they believe that they can justify their actions. The reason they get to the status of serial killer is because they are good at what they do, and are experts at portraying themselves differently than they actually are. If we are going for realism, the absolute ONLY way I could see body language being used is if it was based on how many people you killed. The more people you kill, the less your mannerisms/body language would betray you, and after a certain point would disappear completely. Which is why I suggested something more subtle that could be construed either way, opposed to being a dead giveaway.

As much as I enjoy the bandit/hero skin system for survival reasons (as a hero, I only KoS bandits, and I can tell if they are a bandit from a long ways off), it is pretty broken. One of the most enjoyable/adrenaline rush aspects of this game is determining whether someone is either on overwatch protecting his "hero" buddies, or a bandit preying on unsuspecting survivors. It becomes a bit less of instinct and on-the-fly calculations (like we do in real life based on a person's mannerisms and behavior and potential gains for doing something etc.) and more of "is he wearing a bandit skin? He must be a bad guy" "Is he wearing a hero skin? 99% sure he won't KoS me on sight if i'm not a bandit" "is he in normal clothes? Does he have a hatchet or less? He's not much of a threat", "Is he wearing normal clothes and does he have a pistol or more powerful? He's potentially a threat, and needs to be taken care of" With the skin morphing, it's less of a survival game and more along the lines of "this guy is probably dangerous because of the way he is dressed". I get a huge rush when trying to figure out what type of person someone is based on their actions opposed to their appearance. That is the major reason I think a more subtle approach that can be an either/or scenario would be more beneficial than designated skins.

By definition, wouldn't this suggestion basically just be redundant? Instead of looking for 1 rare set of items, you now have to look for 2 (tools + packs). The only way I could see this being a positive gameplay enhancer would be to reduce the number of packs drastically, and have a chance for the actual tools to be included in those packs when you pick them up. For instance, by condensing like items into a single pack, you could completely do away with: Knife Pack Map Pack Canteen Buckle Hatchet Pack and combine them into one, maybe a "Survival Pack", and include a box of matches with it. Limit the number of Packs people can carry to 1, but boost their effectiveness by a good bit. So the survival pack would be able to hold all of those things, and give it maybe 4-8 additional slots for food or extra canteens. The same could be done for a medical kit/sewing kit(into a Medic Pack) while giving the wearer the ability to blood bag themselves (or up to 4 people at once as long as they are still, unattended thanks to the inclusion of a Fluid Infusion Stand(this would be a miniature version of the stands they use in hospitals for fluid infusion)) over a long duration(1-5 minutes maybe). Along with this, I'd like to see blood bags become much more rare; still in hospitals, but in much smaller quantities as well as providing an actual quantity of blood. Maybe that's 12,000, but it can be used partially and reused within the same day until it's empty. After a day, any non-full bags would be "spoiled" or something and unusable. Blood-bagging would take significantly more time, maybe around 1 minute if it's player to player, but it uses the entire bag if you don't have the Medic Pack. Condense the gun cleaning pack, holster, and ammo pack into one, and call it a Soldier's Pack or something. It would provide storage for an additional primary and secondary weapon, gun cleaning supplies(if that comes into play), and maybe 8+ additional slots for clips/boxes of ammo. Lump all of the "tools" into one Tool Pack(toolbox would still exist and would be vastly inferior to the tool pack), which will allow you to assemble/disassemble razor wire and tank traps/new fortifications much faster than normal. Up the time it takes to place these kinds of things with only a toolbox to maybe a minute, and with the Tool pack it would take you maybe 10-20 seconds to construct or deconstruct those same things. The goal is to offer actual perks to having those packs in your group, opposed to just convenience. So if each pack offered something Unique that nothing else in game could offer, the intrinsic value would be much higher. It might even outweigh the risk of KoS, but we just don't know until we see it in action. There is room for a few more Pack ideas, up to 6 minimum probably, to make the system into a complete functional overhaul and improvement for every play-style. TL;DR: Combine the like items into more condensed packs; Packs would provide one-of-a-kind benefits opposed to just convenience or more slots. Limit number of packs a person can carry to 1, while having maybe 4 tool slots on their belt.

I said nothing about absolute freedom, your words not mine. Adding police to GTA doesn't cripple anyone's gameplay. They may have to run from them and blow them up at times, but it does not prevent them from progressing at a reasonable rate. This suggestion on the other hand would limit solo play tremendously, requiring you to fill your pack up with extra tools that you NEED to progress, which is apparently what the suggestion is mostly about for some reason? I agree there should be better incentives for group play, but not at the intentional exclusion of solo play.

You asked me what I would do with 5 swings, and I would swing at zombies. I'm not sure where your aggro rant comes into play, and you contradict yourself immediately about "glitchy" zombies. We've gotten to the point where you just blatantly ignore anything I say or try to question and reiterate the same thing over and over. Hardcore game. L2Play noob. I understand. There just really isn't a point in continuing when you offer no genuine feedback other than ways that i'm playing the game wrong. The worst part is it has nothing to do with my play-style, yet everyone keeps bashing me for poor tactics. I have no issues with zombies in any sense, I've just noticed that a lot of newer players struggle with the spawn areas that are really close to the coastal towns. So i'll ask again, if there has been such emphasis on hardcore gameplay since the beginning, why were pistols ever introduced for new spawns? Obviously someone thought there would be a good reason to have them.

As it is now, you can play as efficiently by yourself as you can in groups. With your idea, solo play would be severely crippled. In a sandbox game, you strive for more sandbox, not punishing people for playing a certain way. That's called regression. It isn't a matter of me "liking" the idea or not; it doesn't fit with the premise of the game and punishes people for not being social players.

You said you were creating a "non-class" system, but that is exactly what this system is. You force people to play the "class" based on the Packs they pick up. The worst part is you can't change Packs/gear quickly if you need to or your group decides that you need to; you first have to find the new Packs you want, then drop your current ones, which severely limits your effectiveness until you find all new gear to go in your packs. So you're basically a terrible hybrid class until you find the tools you need AFTER having picked up your new Packs. You can't just pick up and change "classes", because you can't even store the items you need for the next class without crippling yourself. This will in no way change the KoS issue if people can play "lone wolf" as easily as you say they can. The reason people KoS is because the reward for not killing them doesn't outweigh the risk of them being alive and potentially being a murderer/bandit. If anything, it would promote more KoS. People looking for hard to find packs would just murder people until they found what they wanted. This is a terrible way to force co-op play as well; With this system, unless you played together every waking moment with your buds, you would be forced to rely on the "cooks" in the party; The guys carrying matches/wood/hatchet/knife. That's 4 toolbelt slots gone already just to cook food, unless you use the "Knife" and "Hatched" Packs, which is still minimum 2 slots from your main belt gone already. Sure you could split it up, but that makes your team even more susceptible to failure because if even one person isn't there, someone has to change their "class" just to pick up matches or a hatchet for wood or whatever. This is anything but full freedom; It's extremely limiting the play-style of anyone that doesn't play with a bunch of friends. I admire your efforts to knock out 2 pretty big issues with one suggestion, but this is not a long-term fix for either issue. It just isn't practical in the scope of a survival environment, since you're literally having to rely on a minimum of 4 other people to make sure all of your bases are covered.

I'd swing it 5 times at glitchy as fuck zombies. If I wanted 10 swings, i'd suggest 10 swings. Obviously my opinion has changed from the original post; are people not allowed to change their opinions based on feedback? If rocket was so fixated on this being a "hardcore survival game", why did people ever spawn with pistols in the first place? Obviously the idea behind the game is not exactly as it was when it originated; ideas evolve, as do opinions.

This is a sandbox, play how you want to with the tools you are given. You are forcing a certain style of play for someone who wants to play alone, and that is not the direction Rocket wants this "anti-game" to go.

I'm not a big fan of the pouch idea. It's really good for promoting co-op play, but it is a negative aspect in every category for solo play. You are extremely limited in what you can do by yourself, and a lot of people prefer the "lone-wolf" style play. This would completely alienate that self-sufficiency that some people strive on.

We've already tried starting with a pistol before, and it went horribly. AFAIK, we've never tried spawning with another weapon of any kind. I'll agree that a "permanent" hatchet on spawn probably isn't in the community's best interest at this point, but what harm could come from an extremely temporary melee weapon? Temporary as in 5-10 swings, which is enough to deter/kill a few zombies. After 5-10 swings, it just decays, like the hatchet would if it ever ran out of ammo. It still comes down to the core issue of new players literally spawning within aggro range of zombies by just moving around a few feet. It has happened to me, and has probably happened to many others. Half of the people against this say "You can find a hatchet in the first 5 minutes". Cool, so if you haven't used your 2x4/driftwood/crowbar/whatever, you can easily replace it. As it is now, I think an easily breakable melee weapon is a good compromise between pistol and defenseless.

A water-logged backpack is surely heavier than a hammer or something. That's assuming you even washed up on shore, which there is no evidence of in the first place. If you did in fact wash up on the shore, i'm sure lots of other things did too... Like drift wood, or "egg crates" as they're called. You can't justify not using anything around you as a weapon, you just come off as a prick when you demean other people by insulting their language skills. Really? If people can find hatchets everywhere within the first 30 seconds of the game anyways, why would it matter at all? You can't play the lore card, because there are too many unknowns and too many inconsistencies.

That's how I died the first time, jumping off of a shed that was 3 feet off the ground. I broke my leg, attracted infected, and they began to eat me as I tried to crawl away. The frustration should come from lack of "skill" or lack of caution in a situation that caused unforeseen circumstances, things you can improve on; Not from being unable to improve because there literally is no option. It's the same argument from a different approach, seeing as the other approach was calling all the trolls to scream and cry "CAREBEAR!!!" at the top of their lungs.