DR@GON (DayZ)

I'm totally silly for the ghillie! I've had people run right past me (in the woods) while i was messing about with my inventory and I wasn't even in cover really, they prob just thought it was bush. At one point my teammate and I both had them and we kept loosing sight of each other while traveling. If you lay down with it, you're very hard to spot at close range, if you hide in pine trees while crouching or standing you're also very hard to spot. It's about the only piece of gear I care about loosing when I die (since you can't loot them off bodies)

I've been playing for a while now, got most things figured out. I've been trying to find info on a specific lil detail and I haven't found anything... When I click the middle mouse button, my xhair turns into a finger icon, and then I move it over whatever I want to interact with... however, It seems (from my personal experience) this doesn't work unless I have BOTH a primary weapon & side arm. I've come across backpacks I've wanted to take on a fresh spawn, or fully search a survivor's corpse (again in my experience this requires that menu) before I've found weapons. So, anyway, am I missing something? Is there another way to activate the "tactical menu" without weapons? Thanks, and sorry if this has been discussed before... I searched the net, youtube & forums and came up empty

have campfires (i guess fireplace is the proper term) be a place where you can manually save your character to the hive and provide "instant log out" make logging out of the game be a 5-10 second wait to prevent "alt+f4 combat logging" I realize the process of making a fire takes at least 10 seconds prob, but having the save point seems like a good idea, also, for groups, the other players could set up a watch while 1 player builds the fire, then everyone uses it. It would leave evidence of a player leaving the server to other players, and/or could be used to fake out other players in to thinking their prey logged out there. My response in advance to the problem of zombies killing a crashed player... too bad, this game is brutal in many ways and this is a minor issue compared to gear deletion glitches, admin abuse (intentional server crashing) & hackers running about unchecked.

really wish we had a way to manually save our characters, lost yet another weapon stashed in my backpack

pretty sure I've tried that (rolling mouse wheel over interactive objects with multiple options)... I will test it however, thanks for the suggestion. I'm not trying to be combative, just trying to get to the bottom of this and understand the interface Thanks!

If sniper rifles & range finders are common, it's because of hacking & duping... I've been playing this game like an addict since I discovered it a few weeks ago and I've NEVER found NVG or range finders spawned (found them on bodies tho)... same for .50 cal snipers... All I've found is the CZ and a DMR... and both we're deleted from my bag due to some sort of inventory glitch Also, I wouldn't call sniping easy in this game, I get it's not 100% realistic right now, but nor is it the quick scoping joke that it is in CoD. If something needs to be fixed about the sniping, it nothing to do with the guns at all, and more to do with how the game draws things like grass... player crawling thru tall grass might think he's concealed (and should be)... player 500m away says "wow, look at that moron crawling around in the wide open". I get this is not an easy thing to change, but I'd say this is the bigger issue when it comes to realism

ok, so how do you do it (get the cursor to appear when you dont have both weapon slots filled)? When I hit the enter key, it does the same thing as clicking the MMB for me

This game is such a rollercoaster lol! Was having a pretty crappy night as far as luck goes... was on a fresh spawn and made my way to elektro to roll the dice one last time before calling it a night. Didn't run into any players, but I wasn't finding crap for loot and was getting pretty frustrated. When I joined the server I was on (can't remember which) it was pretty lightly populated, but by the time I got to elektro it must have filled up. I was at the fire station looking for a decent weapon when I started to hear gun fire, explosions, and vehicles coming from the direction of the grocery store. An unarmed survivor comes my way a short time later, and he's got the blue & white face paint from braveheart?! uhhh, that's weird (hacker?)... He's talking to me over coms saying "friendly" and all that... I'm thinking "yeah sure, until you're armed..." I plugged him with my revolver a couple times so he'd leave. Next thing I know I see a frickn rabbit running around near me, and I didn't see it directly do this, but suddenly there's a M4 CCO SD w/ 6 mags of SD ammo on the ground in a non-typical loot spawn spot (hacker spawned?)... uhhh.... ok! Nabbed that thing as fast as I could, and ran for the hills outside of town! I almost got into a fight on the way out, but the player was being shot at by someone else so I continued my dash out of town. Started hearing sniper fire from what sounded like the steep hills near the power station, at first I was worried I was being shot at, then I considered going after the guy, but thought better to risk my prize so soon after finding it, decided my luck wasn't gonna get any better and went to bed! Anyone else notice things getting whacky the later it gets? I found a dead body with every desirable piece of gear in the game next to a blown up truck late one night last week, including an AS50 TWS... which isn't supposed to be in the game any more from what I've read... guess it was most likely a hacker or something... tho if they can spawn all that stuff, how did he die? I've run into players who wouldnt die after I shot them in the head 10 times at close range... meh... who knows lol!

yeah, ive messed with mine a bit, but didn't see any face paint, thought it was strange, and I'm assuming it's custom unless ARMA has that braveheart paint built in? Anyway, I included it cos it added to my nervousness lol!

yes, you can do whatever action pops up, but you CANNOT get the scroll wheel options unless you've turned your xhairs into the cursor finger, THEN move it over the object... Try taking a backpack without weapons and you'll see what I mean, you can only open it, not take it. This means you also cannot perform medical actions on teammates until you're armed, or any other situation that requires the full list of options from said menu

one of the reasons I love this game so much, the choice depends on your game play style and both are great weapons... I've only had the SD of the 2, but would love to see a holo just to try it. I would get which ever one you dont want to a buddy or stash it in a tent asap... I cannot tell you how many weapons have gone missing from my backpack due to hive desync or whatever causes it. (Seems to happen most when a server crashes in my experience). Keep which ever one you want more in your hands. Last time I had the SD I had well over 200 (with almost all of the headshots) zed kills, I find the zeds WAY easier to deal with when you have a silencer... just drag em into a large building and plink em off one by one, and let looting commence.

Finally got a chance to test this on a fresh spawn... I'm pretty sure I can confirm now that in order to get the "action menu" (or tactical menu if you prefer) without having both a primary & secondary weapon... the primary CAN be a crowbar / hatchet however. I didn't think to test this, but logic would assume that a flashlight as secondary would get it working if you haven't found a sidearm

I was firing SD ammo from an non-silenced m16 acog the other day, it seemed a little quieter... could be just wishful thinking tho

I played a fair bit of Diablo 3 not long ago (haven't even logged in to my account since I discovered this game! :D ) Anyway, I got a bit of inspiration from it that could apply to this game. First off, let me admit that this is not a "sure fix" or "un-exploitable", but imo, might be worth a try... So in D3, when you reach max lvl, you get this buff called "nephalem valor" when you kill an elite mob, and it can stack up to 5 times. The buff gives you increased magic & gold find. What if DayZ had a system like this? Killing zombies increases your chances of finding higher quality loot, killing a player resets this buff to 0... perhaps you could have it even go negative if your murder to zombie kill ratio is way off. Honestly it wouldn't stop a lot of ppl from being bandits, because if "non-bandits" are getting better loot, so are the bandits if they kill someone and loot them. (there should prob be a min / max to this tho, and lots of play testing to find a good balance) It should give enough incentive for a lot of players to avoid killing other players out of fun or boredom, and might even encourage more team work. It might also have the affect of spreading out the "loot hot-spots"... which might be a good or bad thing. I can just imagine the betrayal factor this might cause if someone is dumb enough to announce to their group they just found something really cool... lol! Are those NVG's worth the karma hit? :D I'm thinking this might be a good solution to the problem of "what's the point in not being a murderer?" question I've seen in other threads around the forum.

would love customizable weapons... include ways to paint them with different camo patterns too Would also like to see weapon wear / repair

I like the idea of a military quarantine / infection containment personally, it opens up possibilities galore... NPC military (not zombies) roadblocks & patrols looking for murderers... "safe zones" with stores & storage, opens up economy possibilities. gives reasons not to be a murderer, adds challenges if you do. I like the multiple islands idea too tho... 2 different worlds really... 1 with the possibility of civilization existing outside the "zone", and the other where the everything collapsed.

Might be neat to have some "overrun military road blocks" that randomly spawn (on roads of course) like heli crash sites, perhaps make them a bit less rare than a heli crash, but with lower quality loot... just to have another reason to explore the map and chance of "random encounter" while traveling. Could be interesting to have these be LIVING soldiers who shoot ppl with a high murder count on sight... but not sure if that breaks Rocket's vision of the world. Could have small patrols of these NPCs that wander the wilderness too. They of course would have military grade loot.

it's kind of 2 seperate ideas, with the primary being just military zed spawns around a military roadblock gone wrong and some military loot in the area... pretty much the same thing as a heli crash site. The other idea is much more of a game changing thing, and I don't know a whole lot about arma's AI as DayZ is my first experience with it... I also realize it would be a lot more work and could cause more problems than anything else lol.

I get the feeling that even more people would avoid playing on night servers if they didn't have NVG... perhaps making a less rare "night vision monocle" that uses the binocular slot (have to pull it up to scout / cant use while moving) might be a better solution. Personally I love that this game has high tech tactical gadgets and would hate to see them taken away. I also like that you can see UV weapon lasers when using night vision. I agree that batteries would make ppl use these items less and might be a better solution... would require alternate light sources if you want to save batteries, or if all you have is the monocle, you'll need another light source for fighting in the dark

headlamps! I'd be ok with removing thermal, gives a massive scouting advantage and seems a bit like cheating... NVG, or a weapon with a night scope is something to strive for and isn't as unbalancing as thermal imo

@Green... you have a good point about spawning loot for other players with this, I don't think that would be too hard to work out tho... I'm not a big fan of the way loot spawns right now anyway... so an overhaul to the loot system wouldn't bother me any. Without the "overhaul"... Perhaps a better solution to this problem is to have this bonus only affect the loot found on zombie kills... give players an incentive to fight the zeds and works with my original idea. @ Brett McRage ... not sure why you feel the need to lash out, but if "good players" are getting better loot, then bandits will get it too when they loot them...

good idea, but I worry about the game performance a bit... might not be a big deal tho I'd like to see the game force everyone to the same "draw distance" too, I hate that crawling thru tall grass makes you really hard to see up close, and makes you look like an epic fail tard to a ppl at long range lol

thanks I'll give that a try :)

Very well thought out and I agree with almost all of it... I don't agree with the weapons shake thing, or would like to amend it (along with some other ideas I've had). I would just start my own thread, but I like your ideas so much that I'll just post these here, if you like em, feel free to steal them and add them to the original post. Inventory system - would prefer to see it switch from a "slots" or "volume" systems (as it is currently), to more of a weight based system. With weight, you could affect run speed, fatigue rate, and noise levels with realistic results. You might then see players ditch a backpack outside of town before they go in looking for supplies, so they move faster & quieter. Having a second "primary weapon" stashed in a backpack (as it is now) bothers me a little as most rifles wouldn't fit realistically. However I don't see why you cant have 1 in your hands and another slung on the back. The better backpacks should allow you to carry more weight with less fatigue (I backpack in real life a bit and I know 1st hand the difference a nice pack makes). * To the devs - I realize overhauling the inventory system is a massive undertaking, but it's also one of the buggiest & clunkiest things in the game right now, so might not be a bad thing. Weapons - all guns (& xbow) should "sway". Sway should be affected by body position and heart rate (if you just got done sprinting across a field it should be hard to steady your weapon). You should be able to steady the weapon for a limited time (like "hold breath" in call of duty... arma seems to have something like this too). Typically I only see this sort of mechanic applied to scoped weapons, when imo, they should all behave like this. How long you can steady should be affected by how high your heart rate is. I already hear my character's breathing rate change in game, and I've read that the hydration and hunger meters are affected by this... so perhaps this mechanic is already partially in the game. Ammo - would like to see mag's & bullets be 2 separate inventory items. Add an action to refill mags from a loose ammo pool. Add a "loose ammo pool" inventory section. My point here is that a lot of the guns in game should share ammo types but don't (FAL is same caliber as DMR/M14), also ammo shouldn't take up much room unless it's in fairly large amounts... a weight based system could make this easy Fire Making - replace matches with "flint & steel" or something similar... also, have a cost of 1 bullet (any type, just using the gun powder). Tool belt items are supposed to be "unlimited use" items, so flint & steel makes more sense imo. Making a fire should have a chance of failure based on conditions (rain). Perhaps add "dry kindling" and a consumable item that you can stash to guaranty fire making success. Water - love your ideas... imo you should be able to fill your bottles "anywhere" when it's raining out (there would be puddles and other ways to collect the rain water)... perhaps a use for empty cans here? Also, perhaps have another "tool belt item" like a water filter so you can skip the bleach. Iodine tablets are another idea, but it's fundementally the same idea as bleach, only perhaps a bit more realistic since bleach is liquid, and liquid is heavy. Iodine tablets are a pretty common item with hikers, light weight and small. 1 last thing on water, would be interesting to see a backpack with a hydration pouch (camelbak)... perhaps have it be an item that replaces the need to carry canteens around, freeing up some inventory space? I've own one that holds 100 oz of water, which is roughly 2 canteen's worth.

I agree with treehugger... hell I consider myself pretty well experienced now and I'm still learning things (usually on death lol). I've had some pretty drastic ups & downs, been killed with lots of cool loot, lost rare weapons due to glitches, but I just don't let it bother me for too long. The game is great and starting fresh gets easier every time you do it.