ACow

Some of the suggestions are good/common sense, and are being tackled. Like the hacking/inventory management being clunky, etc. The other part that I want to respond to is the general theme of "turn it into a typical computer game". So by this I mean things like "impliment higher costs for killing", repeatable audio cues for being spotted, zombie death, player in vacinity with weapon drawn. To this I must vote a healthy NO. Obviously there's problems with zombie animations, AI, behaviour. But I remember one review which correctly stated that to play DayZ, you have to "unlearn" many of the behaviours that have been conditioned into you by other computer games, and these strike me as one of those things. Yes, other games have taught you that you need basic signals and pavlovian conditioning to recognise that you've got a reward/response (i.e death sounds, cues, kill signifiers/counts). I don't want that in DayZ. Its one of the things that was great about the game. I want no indicator that there's another player near me except for when I see/hear them. I want no cue that they have a weapon except for when I see them with it/hear them fire it. I want no cue for a dead player/zombie except for when I see/hear them drop, and I walk up and inspect their dead body. If they're breathing heavily, I want to hear it, but I only want it to be because they've just sprinted across a field with a backpack on and are catching their breath. I want to be confused. I want the fog of war. I want to be scared and uncertain. I want to have to approach a city thinking about whether I can be seen, and whether I can see other players. I want to have to scout. I want to have to hold back. And I want to have to flee in a panic because I don't know how many players/zombies I've killed and I don't know how many are left until I take the time to count the bodies. Obviously(or perhaps not obviously), I'd like decent audio. But don't link it to these "game events" like other games do. Just make it realistic environmental noise and make the player respond to that.

I think i would cream myself (with joy) if servers went expert.

Do you have a script which tells you how many times a person was by another weapon after being spotted with it when they wouldn't have been spotted otherwise? /the answer...is no.

*am not playing* *waiting for standalone*

I think a very strong case can be made that this simply isn't true. I know, I know! All our lives we're told popularity of a game is the epitome of good, so even suggesting that it might be bad (or at least not necessarily good) throws people. But really, all one needs for this game is a handful of populated servers distributed around the globe, and you're basically set. You need enough popularity to get it going and keep it going, but popularity above that level doesn't necessarily give any benefit. Now if you actually have to change the game, or make concessions in order to make it "popular", or sell 1,000,000 copies vs 100,000, then for those people who actually liked the game that was designed and sold 100,000, popularity is actually an actively bad thing. And if the game companies won't take you on, or your idea, because your awesome game is only a 100,000 game rather than a 1,000,000, well, that's too bad. It never gets made. But if you like that kind of game, then the only way to get it made it to stick to your guns, and just say "fuck it". And I believe rocket did. And he's done enough to now get the game he wants preduced. And at the end, he might not have 1,000,000 copies sold. He might have 100,000, which is nothing to sniff at. But it'll be a game that is different at last, thank god. And for those of us who are almost violently ill at the prospect at the concessions that need to be made to produce another popular game, we'll be greatful, and we'll enjoy playing it. So Rocket, stick to your guns. Work on the stand alone. Create the game you had in mind. If it gets popular, all good. If its just mildly so, it doesn't matter. Because it'll be DayZ. I don't know about everyone else, but if its not popular, it'll still be the game I wanted to play. I imagine I won't have trouble finding a server with others who feel the same.

Kudos on the decent information. Its helpful. But "surviving for 60 days" while playing/item farming on relatively unpopulated servers. I don't know if I'd call that "surviving" or "Playing DayZ". Given that players are the main source of tension/death, especially around sites where anything decent spawns... It's sort of like making a post with information about how to overcome social anxiety by holding a party...where no one was invited and no one attended. I.e: I think you're missing the point of why surviving for a long time is impressive. /not that one can survive more than a day or so playing dayz at the moment. So I suppose there is that....

Alot of suggestions so far, some really good...some others well...yeah. In the interest of trying to supply something unique, interesting, debatable and different: Black Swan Events, delivery of a loose indirect narrative through said in-game events, and the issue of resets/partial levelling of the playing field events or things which change up the balance, but in a believable way. Games can tend to get a bit slow as people bunker down, people get bored and complain of a lack of "end-game", and a heirachy can quickly establish itself based on the amount of gear people have and how long they've been playing the game. Clearly, one doesn't want to eliminate gear/benefits, but on the other extreme, one doesn't want a system that reaches a static equilibrium quickly and then never moves. This leads to quick game-fatigue. Plus, certain mechanics have logical problems end points: What happens when there's too many tents? What happens for exploration when the maximum number of vehicles have already spawned and they're all collected? Can people ever really be absolutely independent of the towns and civilisation? Hence the suggestion of some black-swan events, or injections or game mechanics designed to provide events of a "narrative-like-nature-but-not-actually-a-narrative". The player still interprets how they react to these events, and they don't provide a story but lets the player project their narrative on to them. Like all of these things, they rely on being implimented in a psychologically effective way. Some people have already, unknowingly, suggested some of them: -randomly venturing zombie packs every now and then outside of towns. -radio chatter -crashed choppers/washed up boats Perhaps some extra random ideas (and as far as I'm concerned, all should be exceptionally rare and appear practically random, but not frequent): -Extreme weather events (wind/rain/lightning/heat/cold beyond what we have now) -Infection events (i.e. new-strains/effects/sudden rebalancing of the zombie population tables) -Diaries/notes -Droughts/Famines/sanitary outbreaks in localised areas -Random small hostile well-armed paramilitary groups moving into/inhabiting/through an area -Chopper flying overhead -Rare or strange animal behaviour (lots of dead animals around a water hole, animals moving in a pack/pattern, rare/strange/dangerous animal). -Discovering a "safe-room"/signs of previous inhabitation -Gas/Petrol explosion (as in, in the distance). -Fires/smoke -Something which gets some nice rumours/old wives tales going round... In these kind of games, you don't want to supply a narrative straight up, but you've got to do three things to keep the humans interested. 1. No one, NO ONE, can ever feel perfectly safe. SafER, yes, but never safe. 2. To balance out the quitters who will leave because they can never feel perfectly safe, you have to make sure you supply hope/desire/curiosity/change. 3. You have to do it in such a way that people believe that its happening in the world, that it isn't at the behest of some unfair intelligence targetting them specifically just to level the playing field. It has to be reasonable, random, rare, and unpredictable. I suggest if you can work these kinds of things into the mechanics of the game/engine/environment skillfully, you'll have the psychological equivalent of gaming crack.

Solo player, with self imposed moral restrictions. Gear: -Whatever I find myself in natural spawn sites or hunt for myself. So usually axe->leeenfield->AK as the commonality of items go. -If I find tents, or kill another survivor and it looks like they've got duped equipment, hacked in or "rare" items, I will generally make the choice to leave it. When the game gets fixed I won't, but %80+ of the time all this equipment has been hacked in, and I don't want to play an artificially easy game. I have yet to find NVG's legitimately in all my time playing, I have found a gillie suit twice, and I have found a sniper rifle once (and then got shot while debating whether to take it). And yet every man and his dog seems to be porting all three with ridiculous amounts of ammo. Shame. Playstyle: Friendly, but try to stay out of other player's way. Will make contact if I deem its safe and you can't tell where I am. If I see a survivor chasing/hunting/shooting another survivor and I deem it safe, I will shoot the person doing the chasing/hunting. I will defend myself. If I can retreat and leg it I probably will. People who engage me and alt-f4 piss me off even more than those that alf-f4. Had one guy pop several rounds of bullets into a supermarket to try to take me out. I managed to get out of the building and loose him running through the city, but I decided quickly that he was probably going to raid the place afterwards, so I ran as fast as I could, took up position overlooking the place, and waited for 60 seconds. Sure enough, back he comes. First time I actually have a scope and a weapon. The moment he hears a bullet that isn't his: alt-f4. Sunnova bitch.

I am making the unspoken assumption that all issues of hacking/duping/tent/vehicle bugs will be fixed and removed eventually, and thus that the current "experience" of the game isn't really a good place to look for how things are working out. Again, I'm not against clans. Clans get a natural bonus simply by being a clan. That is, social theory aside, why people naturally team up in the first place. But the players in them shouldn't be able to avoid the negative and natural mechanics that all other players in the game face. Mechanics which are the things that make DayZ stand out, without which it is just another shooter. And there should probably be some realities of the social aspects that they now have to consider (i.e who to send in to raid with the possibility of dying, finite resources amongst more mouths to feed/bigger groups have a bigger footprint, and some consequences if a person sent on a raid does die). I know, some/most? clans like it to not be that way, for the same reason that many gamers say they like things which are "hardcore" and then try their best meta-style to get around them, but otherwise it becomes not about freedom/real consequences/choice, but about pushing players towards the necessity of clans at the cost of no more unique Dayz mechanics, instead of letting them choose between a rock and a hard place...edit: the grenade vs tent thing is a mechanic I really like, and I hope the philosophy of such things continues in that vein (i.e you can have boons, but they can also be taken away/stolen from you).

Indeed, I think someone with a makarov deserves to kill me if I'm careless enough to let them get close enough to hit me several times with that thing when I've got an AK or a lee enfield and I haven't downed them first. Ever tried to hit someone moving two blocks away with that peashooter :P Think its better than trying to aim with the lee enfield, then use it. If its better in enclosed spaces than the lee enfield/AK, that's a good thing. Opportunity cost and adapting, that's what its all about. Tangent idea: bulletproof/ballistic vest. Rare. Realistic. Partially deadens the impact from 1-2 low calibre rounds, then its largely useless. Sniper rifle or something bigger still practically goes right through the thing. Bigger armour=slower, laboured awkward movement. But everything should still be pretty realistic as far as I'm concerned. Take a small hit and you might survive where you otherwise didn't, but you've still taken damage/bruised/got broken bones, and the next one will still kill you. Shot to the head still kills/knocks unconscious at the least. Possible in the arma II/III engine? Edit: the thought of trying to run from proper dangerous zombies in full body armour elicits a few giggles...

-One time purchase. I will pay quite a bit for the game up front, but asking for monthly subscription to play is going to get me, and I'm guessing a fair few others, to simply not play. Either way, it would result in a bullet to the head in terms on numbers playing in the community long term unless you can fit into a very small elite niche group (wow). -Cash shop: cosmetics only....although....while the thought of paying to win makes me almost physically sick, there would be a certain deliciousness if us non-payers could actually take something some other poor sod actually paid money for. Good luck with that though, I imagine that would piss off the purchasers and drive them from your community, so my initial opinion says cosmetics only. -Studio developed. But keep up the practice of skimming the cream off the top of the community participation. Builds involvement, lessens your work, increases idea and output, and makes people feel they're participating and that you listen. Keeps things fresh and evolving. But for the love of god, keep control, and don't let it become purely community/democracy driven. Just because people play a game doesn't mean they understand either what they'll enjoy the most, or the basic psychology/design/real world implications of game design. Most gamers are intellectual children. They'll scream for candy, eat it all if you give in and give it to them, make themselves sick and throw up on you, and then they'll hate you and tell you that you and your game suck and move on to the next game, and when asked for suggestions, they'll suggest candy again. -Both official and community servers. Lessens your total bills as you can provide fewer servers and distribute the cost out into the community. Leaves room for modders. -Kickstarter, if it floats your boat.

Thanks to everyone for a relatively deep and mature discussion so far. I admit I didn't log on this morning expecting to see this many responses. I couldn't possibly respond to everyone, but I can offer a few canned responses: To the "'agree with the OP" Many thanks, I figured I would probably some tone of agreement with a lot of people :) To the "respectfully disagree with the OP" Also many thanks. As many of you are pointing out, there's actually a lot of complex issues here, and not everyone wants to play the game as I want to play it. To the "harden the fuck up"/"leave my banditry alone crowd" Read the original post again. You're either projecting your own insecurities, or you're the people on who I'm making these observations. Indeed, I point out people are avoiding the game mechanics in place to specifically to make the game easier and like other generic games. I like it hard. I want player killing in the game. In fact, I specifically point out that I want you to suffer the consequences when I kill YOU in the same way as when YOU kill ME. At no point do I suggest stopping bandits or changing things to specifically target bandits. Now, for the players who think that "banditry"="avoiding all unique DayZ game mechanics/farming", I guess we'll have to agree to disagree. To the "don't tell me what DayZ is supposed to be" crowd I limited my prescriptions deliberately in the original post, because I'm not proposing to tell people what the game SHOULD be like, merely make the observation on how it IS. And how it IS, is that alot of people are coming across DayZ, proclaiming its greatness, and then spending their entire game trying to play it largely with the same consequences and mechanics as most other multiplayer games. Now part of the reason I don't jump out there with my prescriptions is because I honestly consider it an open question as to whether the game could in fact survive if rocket tried or succeeded in stopping people playing it like every other game. As many people point out, those games have in some sense become like that for a reason. For all of most people's elitism and professions to the contrary, its how most people and clans want to play games: without consequences, without stark resource limits, with friends, with quick gratification. I would like it the other way, I admit that, but I also accept that it might not be commercially viable, and that's without even touching upon the game design issues, or "what rocket wants" issues. For the "leave my tents alone" people I'm sorry, I don't know how to break this to you. They're going to be changed. How can I be so certain? Because its basic math/game design. Tents stay permanently. Things in tents stay permanently. If you have something that exists permanently beyond player death, and items respawning, and new tents coming in, then tents will just multiply until their rate of destruction equals their rate of placement. This is both going to increase the amount of items the server needs to keep track of, and the number of tents. Indeed, given the mechanics of DayZ, tents and items will likely just gradually increase in density over time. I do not know rocket, but I've read a couple of his posts, and I think he's smart enough to figure this out. I do not propose to dictate to rocket how to run his game, but if I was a betting man, I know where I would place my money... The "meta-gaming/realism" issues This is interesting. I don't think we can realistically stop meta gaming. So I say keep your clans, teamspeaks, pre-arranged meetups, social networks, etc. What can be changed are the mechanics in the game: destroying/transferring items on death. I've seen a few people raise objections to the likes of destruction of tents on the grounds that it would be hard for clans to store countless items because Joe died in a raid and now Joe's tent is gone. I say good. Good that your clan now has to think about who goes/dies/who to protect. Good that your clan now has some consequences to losing people on raids. Oh, joe isn't going to want to just sit around and protect the camp/loot? Welcome to the consequences everyone else faces.... The realism/game balance argument against item/object despawning faces one big problem. Where is the realism in being shot in the face, dying, then running back to your camp to restock? Where is the realism in spawning loot? At some stage, realism must take a back seat to game design. Of course, all this rests on what is possible, what rocket and the community want the game to be. Who knows, perhaps when the standalone comes out, people like me can make a DayZ mod on top of DayZ :P

Markevens: Its funny you should mention it, because the very same thing largely happened to me when I found my first tent as well. "Now I can stock my tent, and walk around raiding places with impugnity!" I've discovered several tents across several servers, all always well stocked, just while skulking around the forests. It does take away from the fear of it all somewhat, knowing that there's all this equipment just permanently lying out there. It does make me seriously wonder...while a balance needs to be made between lootability/destruction after death/killing someone, I think its pretty obvious that the current state of tents is unsustainable and balanced far too much in favour of permanence after death. Good news though, all the computer science/game design/stat/math/econ guys might have already realised one little factoid. The predictable outcome given the current state of things is the map becomes absolutely covered with lots of tents with lots of items in them. Its only natural given a finite space, the respawning of items, and their relative permanancy. The equilibrium might settle somewhere between their creation/destruction, but I'm relatively certain that's not going to be at a place that makes Rocket or the community comfortable, meaning the inevitable outcome is either rolling wipes of tents/items, or a change of the mechanic in the future....

Firstly, let me say thanks for the kind and respectable responses :) Ezay75: And hence why I'm not necessarily going to prescribe an answer. I don't pretend there is one answer, nor do I pretend all the community wants the same thing. I do find it ironic however, that in a game which has in some way become great because of losing resources on death, size and isolation, random encounters, severely finite resources, that a good portion of the community has taken it to ensure that they want their game to involve: a) not losing resources on death B) not being isolated and having quick transport as much as possible c) non-randomness of encounters (i.e only with friends and only on organised raids with said friends, killing everyone else because they have no need for them given their play style and preferences). d) ensuring that they and their friends always have the best gear and in easy and plentiful supply(i.e through farming/server jumping). Is this the game people want? I don't know, maybe. Some definitely, some definitely not. I think a strong part of it is that these people like the game not because its DayZ, but because its DayZ for everyone BUT THEM. Is it possible for a game to be genuinely popular if this kind of thing wasn't possible? I dunno. Maybe we'd find people would leave pretty quickly if playing DayZ meant you had to actually "play DayZ" instead of "log on to pre-arranged meeting with friends, stop off at fully-stocked-gun-shop-camp, take taxi to hunt people for sport, server hop to restock all weapons at already known locations, wash rinse repeat....". Maybe we'll find people tire of such antics and move on eventually after the initial popularity boom. But the way I see it, we currently have two games: DayZ: Zombie apocalypse survivial simulator and DayZ: Server hopping, item farming, meet with friends to go people hunting/pubstomping with no consequences/attention paid to the great and unique dayz mechanics. They just happen to share the same servers. I am, I admit, putting out the idea that perhaps group 1 would enjoy DayZ more if group 2 weren't there. I think group 2 would REALLY hate it if group 1 wasn't there. /hackers aside as group 3.

Hi h3retic, Just for the record, because I think there's been a bit of a misinterpretation. I like/want the isolation/disorientation. I am making the observation that many people are trying to get around it, and openly say they don't want it.