falconne

Yeah I've thought it would be cool if you could "learn" things in the game by finding books (rarely) in certain buildings, like libraries and sometimes in residential buildings. It would allow more sandbox features to be added to the game, like foraging, repairing, first aid, etc. It shouldn't involve "skill levels" though, because that would encourage the "upskilling by grinding" pattern that RPGs use... it should just be "knowledge" that's hard to find, but if you find it it you have it, no need to have levels of it. This could also promote more co-operation between strangers and less senseless killing. If some people may have valuable knowledge everyone would be more inclined to talk to each other to find out and there'd be more ad-hoc teamwork. Also you'd be far less likely to become a bandit and risk your character dying if he's learned some pretty useful things. It's hard to implement without breaking plausibility though. Your character would need to spend a fair bit of time reading before he can learn something, so if you just make it so that he opens a book and he gains knowledge instantly, that breaks immersion. Maybe something like you have to put the book in your inventory and you only receive the knowledge if you leave it there for a certain amount of time. Then it starts getting messy.

I think if you mention the word "skill" in a suggestion it will get shot down no matter what :P

Birds over a bandit don't make sense, but birds flying around an area where several players have been killed would be a nice touch I think. It would add atmosphere and warn approaching players of a dangerous spot (or attract players looking to loot the bodies).

I thought a primary purpose of the game was to be a sandboxed open ended survival game. To do that you need to make multiple play styles viable so players get to choose. This suggestion would be forcing one kind of gameplay on everyone. The game needs more options for variable play styles, not less.

I'm in NZ, looking to team up as I'm fairly new to DayZ and only just found out what TeamSpeak is. Is it ok to join in if I'm not that good yet? What's the procedure, go into the dayz channel and just say "Hi" and find out what server everyone's on?

This wasn't the case for me as I mentioned in a post above. I lost stuff that I had for 30 minutes (actually the bulk of it was an hour and more old). I lost my torch... the one that's there from the start. That can't be explained by save issues. I can't imagine a server running so slow it lost something I had for 2 hours.

This wasn't the case for me. I lost stuff I had for over 30 minutes. I also lost my torch which you spawn with. Also, if the progress wasn't saved, I would have expected the stuff I dropped to grab the new gear, such as my basic pack I replaced with a bigger one, to have reappeared... also I wouldn't have spawned back in the place i logged out if it wasn't saved.

I think I've just experienced this bug... was going to make a thread but I see it's been done. I log back in and I've lost my entire backpack (the actual backpack itself)... it was a large one with 12 slots, containing an AK-47 and one clip, I also lost my primary weapon, an AKM and my hatchet and torch were gone too. That was harsh :(